The worry of nanites replicating themselves across the planet just doesn't seem like a possibility to me for the following reasons. Please correct where you see fit.
Building machines that build other machines is easier than building ones that build copies of themselves.
We haven't found a simple way to turn lead into gold, so nanites won't be able to build aluminum-based nanites without a supply of aluminum.
Without very complex programming and precise controls, nanites won't be able to distinguish each other from building supplies. Wouldn't they end up tearing each other apart?
The same was said about Java: "We already write e-commerce apps in Perl. Why should we bother to learn something new and support Sun's closed effort?" It's just one more tool on your belt, and if it proves to be a useful tool, people will use it.
The danger -- which I think neither article presented clearly -- is that.NET will grow in popularity with most websites using Passport for authentication since it will be available and supported by Microsoft. Once a critical mass of consumers and companies are all using Passport, switching to something else will be difficult.
If the OSS community doesn't create an alternative to Passport that is entirely interoperable, then Microsoft will have created their own Internet Sales Tax. Petreley's worry is that by creating our own.NET without our own Passport, we will help Microsoft lock-in the consumers to Passport.
My worry is that Microsoft will not make the Passport API public. They'll say, "Sure, write your own.NET to the spec and support us, but you can't implement an interoperable authentication service." If that happens, you can bet Ebay isn't going to want to write two authenticationo access schemes.
It needs to be as simple as having an email address: user@auth.foo.com. Knowing only your address, I can send you email.* I don't have to ask if you're using Outlook or PINE before sending a message. Compare that to instant messaging: AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Jabber. They all provide the same core set of services, but each with their own API, so I have to deal with more software and protocols.
If other companies and OSS are able to code to the same authentication API that Microsoft is developing in Passport and Hailstorm, then I'm happy. However, Microsoft has a history of sharing halfway (shared source is the latest example).
* The downside -- easily addressable when creating a new system -- is that advertisers can send email to random addresses with the receiver bearing the cost. A good security model could block this possibility.
XNS is a good start.
Why does he claim that he will put Britannica out of business?... Though I recognize the benefits of these claims in motivating troops or getting momentum and coverage, I feel that they are immature and short-sighted.
Unfortunately, I believe this is simply a matter of the U.S. culture of competition. From an early age we are all taught to compete with each other before we cooperate. We compete for our parents' attention, for grades, in sports and games, for popularity, for jobs and raises, etc.
Free software (to me) is primarily about cooperation. In some projects, volunteers work together to produce a product. Once released, developers allow users to fix or improve it at whim. That's based on cooperation. However, these same people were still raised in competitive cultures, and it tends to seep in with comments about squashing the closed source competitors and ultimately the entire concept of closed source.
While some will claim that competition is important for breeding better products, I just don't buy it. When I write software for myself and post here, I'm not competing against anyone, yet I do my best because I want to. I won't claim not to feel my ego boosted when I see one of my posts moderated up, but I get far more enjoyment from seeing my post generate a good discussion. I too was raised in the U.S., and the best I can do now is be aware of my drive to compete and temper it with my desire to cooperate with my peers.
Open source minusses
- designed for coders
- no respect of deadlines
- never completed
Closed source plusses
- designed for users
- meets deadlines
I am a software developer. I've developed for myself and for others. With regards to deadlines, no software of non-trivial complexity is ever completed on time. Obviously that's an over-generalization, but it's damn near accurate. Writing software, like writing a book, is a creative act and cannot be driven as easily as a manufacturing process. It's also a fairly young art, and we're learning all the time.
If by "never completed" you mean that many free software projects simply die off, that's just life. I've left many personal projects incomplete due to lost interest or finding a new way to do it. If you mean that they are never "final," then I put forth that no software is ever final. Version 1.0 comes out, then 1.1, 2.0, 2.5, and so on. Software is a very complex tool, like a car. You can't expect it to be like a hammer where you design it and, well, it's done. Maybe you add a better grip later, but for all intents and purposes, it's still a hammer. I don't see a difference between closed and open source here.
You are very correct about the difference in target audience, but that's due to their reasons for being produced. Corporate software is created to make money; free software is created to solve a problem. Making it easy to use for as wide an audience as possible is merely the best way to maximize profit. It has nothing to do with the process behind it. Corporations can spend money on usability studies and focus groups.
I predict that soon there will be free focus groups -- users that provide open/free usability studies for everyone to use. This is the equivalent of developers writing open/free code. There will be people that create better interfaces around existing applications because they can.
There are a few tweaks I'd like to make to Windows 2000 to make it easier for me to use (Oh hush!), but that's impossible. Microsoft won't cooperate and allow me to do that. There are many tweaks I'd make to linux so that I could use it, but right now I don't have the time. The difference is that if I made the time, there's nothing to stop me. In fact, I bet I could find a few other developers that would be more than happy to work with me.
[Note: my vision sucks, and I have tried three separate times to get linux to an acceptable level of visibility for me (fonts and colors) and failed. However, I didn't take the time to seek help from others, so it's my failing. As well, I am totally keyboard-centric since I can hit key combinations without depending on my eyes, and I find X-Windows to be more mouse-centric, oddly enough. I bet there are people out there that could show me how to configure it to work for me, but I haven't looked. Again, this is because *I* haven't taken the time, not because it's not doable on linux.]
So here's my suggestion for the free software and free encyclopedia community: Enlist students to help with your projects. Talk to teachers and arrange for course credit in exchange for coding and research. I would have loved an opportunity like that as a kid. I taught myself Basic, 6502 assembly, Pascal, and finally C before graduating high school. I could have learned even faster by cooperating with others and working on real-world projects rather than yet-another-space-invaders-clone (though that was fun too).
For English class, I did research for a debate on whether or not tobacco should be criminalized. That was cool, but again I would have loved to tackle researching the U.S. invasion of South Vietnam for an encyclopedia. And to have gotten some course credit, in lieu of some other class, like Basic Programming, for which I completed the 21 programming assignments in the first two weeks and had to entertain myself for the remaining ten, would have rocked.
And think about it. Who more than children have tons of free time, boundless energy, and untapped creativity? There is your talent pool. And as they move into adulthood, they will have a much stronger understanding of the power of cooperation and the value of freedom.
If only it were that easy. Back in 1989, Saddam Husein was busy gassing the northern Kurdish population with U.S. support of weapons and money. The U.S. had no problem with it because it was an "internal matter" and we were barred by international law from interfering. Okay, let's accept that on the face.
In 1991 Iraq invades Kuwait and we step in to drive Iraq out. Fine, let's accept that too.
Shortly thereafter (1993, iirc) a group of Iraqi generals staged a coup to remove Saddam from power. It had much support from the citizens and the military. Saddam sent in planes to the Southern region where the revolt was taking place. The generals asked for our support. We denied them. After the planes wiped out the resistance, we expressed horror that the planes actually attacked the resistence. We claimed we thought they were just going to investigate. We're stretching it here, but let's accept that.
After the initial fighting, we initiated a ten-year plan of sanctions. Our reason was that we wanted U.N. inspectors inside the country to find and dismantle any factories producing weapons of mass destruction. Every so often we'd be a little more insistant by bombing them, but I'm sure we stuck to military targets.
So finally Saddam gave in to our demands and weapons inspectors were allowed in, and they found and removed lots of weapons and factories. Okay, so it's all over, right? No, we wanted to start bombing again in 1998. The U.N. pointed out that this would end the inspections, which was the sole purpose of sanctions. There was much protest, and the U.S. backed down. However, the U.N. also ruled that the sanctions were over -- that we should not reenact them after the initial ten-year period.
Why? The U.N. found that it was civilians that were suffering -- not the military or Saddam. We denied them food, clothing, pencils (because you can take out the grafite and make weapons), medicine. Oh, but we started a program to trade food for oil out of kindness.
Anyway, so the U.N. passes a resolution, making it international law, and the U.S. says, "Oh that's nice, but we don't care." And the sanctions continued. The U.S. was willing to break international law to kill civilians, but it wouldn't do so earlier to save civilians.
Well over 1.5 million people have died so far. 4,500 children die each month. What's our demand? That Saddam allow inspectors.
But he DID allow inspectors!
So now he has no options. He gave in to our demands yet we continue punishing his people. Again, Saddam has done some decidely nastly shit, but the U.S. government has done far more in many countries the world over than Saddam could possibly do.
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Cuba, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, Indonesia, East Timor, Philipines, most of Africa. How many nations do we have to terrorize before someone stops us? Do you realize most of the world sees the U.S. as an insane rogue state that must be stopped? Some point very soon someone's going to take the fall for the world and nuke us.
But apparently all is okay because we're following the "American" dream of profit over all else. I'm a U.S. citizen, but that's hardly my dream.
Note, I'm not saying this country is worthless. There are some very important values in our history. However, the apple-pie ideal that is put forth in the media is a farce. We have the world's biggest and most effective propoganda and indoctrination systems. So good in fact that most people believe that we don't have them -- that democracies don't need them.
I'm sorry, but did you just imply that the United States of America is a free country? The U.S. has been bombing Iraq and upholding illegal sanctions (The U.N. passed a resolution to stop the sanctions, we showed them the finger). These sanctions have caused the death by starvation, malnutrition and disease of 1.5 million citizens.
I'm not defending Saddam Husein's use of violence against his own citizens and the invasion of Kuwait, but punishing Iraqi citizens for the crimes of Iraq's leader and military is hardly reasonable. We are in effect saying, "We'll keep murdering your citizens until you stop murdering your citizens."
I can't consider this to be a truly free country when our leaders routinely break international law, won't support the one organization created to allow all the world's countries to settle their differences peacably, and won't accept responsibility for their own actions. If I went on a killing spree or stopped paying taxes, I'd be arrested and thrown in jail. Why don't we hold our leaders to the same standards?
Of course: after all Hitler had strong support among Germans.
First of all, Hitler didn't run for office under the banner, "Gas the Jews and Gypsies! Annex France and Russia! Take over the world!" I hardly believe Germans at the time would have swallowed that. Similarly, Bush didn't run with the tagline, "Cowtow to corporate power! Murder 4,500 Iraqi children every month! Biotech warfare in Columbia!" There's this thing called public relations that states true honesty is usually a bad idea.
Second, in order to get the German citizens to back the war effort, significant propoganda compaigns were carried out (and in Brittain and the U.S. as well). Citizens weren't agreeing to the extermination of Jews. They were told the Jews were being deported or moved away. Sure, after a while the evidence was pretty overwhelming, but that was quite late into the game.
DMCA was enacted following the standard practices of the US; it is what the country wanted.
As I stated
above, that Congress or the Senate pass a law doesn't necessarily mean the citizens desire it. I suspect you do not live in the U.S. and have simply accepted our government's propoganda campaign. As a U.S. citizen, I ask that you reconsider what you have been taught about how the U.S. "democracy" works.
The problem with that statement is that it takes the premise that this country's citizens elect the government officials and adds several untrue assumptions:
The officials elected are freely chosen by the citizens.
The officials enact policy based on the wishes of the citizens that elected them.
The entire country participates in the election process.
The problem with (1) is that citizens don't get to pick whomever they want. Instead, someone else chooses the set of candidates from which citizens must pick. In every presidential election I've been old enough to follow, I would never have chosen any of the candidates to begin with, let alone pick one for president.
One has to look no further than the list of compaign contributors for the candidates to see how laughable (2) is. In the 1999/2000 California election cycle, energy companies alone made over $17 million in campaign contributions. Translation: they purchased the support of every candidate except ONE. Thus whomever wins, the energy corporations know that their wishes will be followed out of debt.
The U.S. has such a dismal voting turnout, so (3) is out. You may want to blame the voters, which is partially reasonable, but realize that many don't participate because they know that (1) and (2) mean they will have little impact.
There is hope, however. Right now, nearly 100,000 protesters are
demonstrating at the G8 Summit in Genoa, Italy. People are starting to realize that they don't have to vote to make their opinions heard. In fact, it is often more effective to take to the streets.
It's really quite basic. Corporations' number one rule is to maximize profit for the shareholders. If they can "invest" a couple hundred thousand greasing the palms of congressman to ensure those "public servants" will enact laws beneficial to the corporations, that's what they *must* do. Sure, it's effectively bribery, and thus illegal, but they're following the rules of capitalism, not ethics or democracy.
It's going to take a lot of work to change the way our system works. And just because it isn't changing fast enough, it doesn't mean the people in the country somehow deserve the shit. Just as East Timorese hardly deserve the twenty-five years of genocide they've suffered at the hands of the Indonesian military with U.S. support (money, weapons and training), against congress's ruling.
You can draw a nice parallel to the AIDS drugs and South Africa's recent protests. The public was taxed to fund the research. Genetic and biological material was taken from the public through tests and research. A private corporation that helped fund some of the research gets the sole IP rights.
That corporation produces the product and sets a price. South Africans cannot afford to pay for the monopoly-priced drugs, so they produce their own generic brands of the same drugs. The corporation then sues the South African government based on IP violations.
Given that the corporate funding was something like $20 million, and the lawsuit is contending BILLIONS of dollars in lost profit, why not just pay them back the $20 million and put the drug on the free market for anyone to produce? Hell, give them $25 million -- a 25% return is pretty damn sweet.
But the GPL "breaks that cycle--that is, it makes it impossible for a commercial company to use any of that work or build on any of that work. So what you saw with TCP/IP or Sendmail or the browser could never happen."
Yet I'm quite sure that if RMS uttered the following, Microsoft would be crying Communism.
"But commercial software breaks that cycle--that is, it makes it impossible for free software developers to use any of that work or build on any of that work. So you will never see GnuWindows, Red Hat Explorer, or LookOut Express."
It's not what Microsoft executives say that surprises me anymore. It's that most media just print it as if it was coherent.
You're enjoying a lovely Sunday drive along a twisty mountain pass when you realize your brakes have ceased working. No longer cruising along at 40 mph, your car picks up speed. 50... 60... 70 mph! You wrestle the wheel to maintain control, turning into each skid as you were taught in advanced driver training.
Suddenly your concentration is broken when your car cheerily announces, "You've got a ticket!" It then thoughtfully reads it aloud for you.
"Dear driver. The SafeDriver(tm) system has noted that you're traveling at 83.2mph. Please note that the speed limit at your current location is 45mph. For your convenience, $250 has been automatically deducted from your checking account. Thank you, and remember to drive safely!"
"What the --" But it's too late. Your car crashes through the flimsy side rail and soars into the ravine below!
"You've got a ticket!"
"Dear driver. We see that you have willfully disregarded our previous message and are now recklessly speeding at 142.8mph. While we understand you may be in a hurry, it's not fair to endanger the other drivers around --"
That's simply because Microsoft *loves* the BSD license as it allows commercial interests to take the code, modify it, and sell the *binaries* without sharing their changes in source form. In other words, the BSD license allows you to co-opt source code whereas the GPL forces you to share.
I have no trouble with either license -- it's up to the original developer to choose one. And while it's tempting to view the GPL as non-free since you aren't free to co-opt the code, I really like the "sharing is a two-way street" mentality of the GPL.
If you take code under the GPL, modify it, release the binaries without the source and then claim ignorance and whine that the GPL has somehow "infected" your hard work, you're just dumb. If Microsoft believes that all their customers should read and understand the five-page, ALL CAPS legalese they ship with their products, they should be held accountable for realizing when they're basing their code off something that's released under the GPL. And so instead they spread FUD that GPL code is a bad thing since they can't use it in their products.
Pop quiz. You arrive at a birthday party, and everyone's brought some toys to play with, including you. You play with other people's toys, but when someone reaches for one of your toys you slap their hand and scream, "That's my toy!" How long before you get kicked out of the party? And how many people in attendance will miss you?
Cell towers are tiny things that are generally located in populated areas. The bombing pattern you suggest would make swiss cheese out of an undefended civilian center.
Any government that would authorize that sort of attack is a monster. [My emphasis]
c.f. United States of America vs. South Vietnam. Our strategy was to drive the rural population to the cities to create refugees and starvation by massively decreasing food production. The U.S. Air Force bombed villages, farms, and other civilian centers in an effort to destroy the support of the popular government. They did this because the totalitarian regime the U.S. had installed couldn't maintain power on its own behalf.
Just in case you were thinking South Vietnam may have been an isolated incident -- a momentary insanity on the part of those running the show -- it gets better:
To bring North Vietnam into the war, we bombed their cities.
While fighting in Korea, we bombed a major damn to flood the rice fields, calculating this would lead to the starvation of over one million civilians within two years.
We dropped more ordnance on Loas during the invasion of South Vietnam than that dropped on all of Europe during World War II.
The CIA sponsored a coup in Indonesia and has been supplying the military with weapons, aircraft, vehicles, ammunition and money for twenty-five years as it continues the genocide in East Timor. The population has been reduced from 800,000 to 200,000 in that time. No worries though, they're almost done -- only 25% to go!
Remember, when you go looking for monsters, you rarely have to look further than under your own bed.
That won't entirely work. You see, Microsoft's game has been and continues to be to use the media to spread their FUD.
Control the media and you control the mind.
-- Jim Morisson
Ignoring this wisdom is exactly what Microsoft is hoping we'll do. Granted, we can't ignore our game in playing theirs. What's our game? Continue writing great free software and building grass roots support. But we simply cannot ignore the media.
The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source.... Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works.
Simple lie. Since there's no protocol for handling lies in the media except by responding to them through the media, we must refute their lies when they show up -- especially when a senior executive is spouting them. As more and more people begin seeing the collective Microsoft nose lengthen, we'll see more progress.
"The license"? As if there's only one. "[I]f you use any open-source software," your stuff is open source? This is obviously a blatent falsification, as your work is open if and only if you derive your work from it. Using Linux and the hundreds of GNU tools do not have any impact on your choice of licenses. How many ways can we say this to get the media to understand it? Or does the media already understand and simply ignore it (they know who's buying their advertising, after all)?
The only thing we have a problem with is when the government funds open-source work. Government funding should be for work that is available to everybody. Open source is not available to commercial companies.
Let's set one thing straight right here. "Everybody" here is the same meaning as "everybody" in the US Constitution: people. Corporations do not have rights. LLCs, partnerships, governments, churches -- all organizations -- were not granted any rights, and they should have none. They are legal entities only and should not be treated as individuals.
And even ignoring that, corporations are free to "use" free software, just as people are. What they are not free to do is steal the very intellectual property they are claiming to protect!
Judge: "Mr. Ballmer, what exactly is your complaint against free software and open source."
Ballmer: "Open source software endangers intellectual property of every American corporation."
Judge: "How does it do that?"
Ballmer: "The license prevents us from taking the source code, modifying it, and making it proprietary. You know, embrace and extend it."
Judge: "So basically you're pissed that you can't steal their IP? And that somehow endangers your IP?"
. . . but really it is just a branch of the modern military, and a legitimate form of defense. In the modern world, defense through physical aggression really doesn't work.
Would that be the same military that "defended" South Vietnam by invasion and genocide? The same military that bombed North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia to ruins, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, if not millions? Perhaps the same military that "defended" Central and South America by overthrowing many a popularly-elected government because they showed signs of "communism" such as policies favoring land reform, education, labor rights, and health care? (See for instance Guatemala, El Salvador, Argentina, Nicaragua, et al)
America's indoctrination and propoganda system is a mighty fine piece of work, but even I am surprised that people still believe we need to defend ourselves from communism by using murder, torture, state terror, repression, and effective slavery of entire nations.
And that might be fine if it were really about communism rather than money. I understand that we like our high living standards, but is it worth terrorizing other people to "protect our sources of raw materials and ensure markets for our exports"? Would you be willing to fly to South America and do some of the killing yourself?
And Bush wants to increase the already insane level of military spending. I guess maintaining a puppet dictatorship with military force -- uh, I mean defense -- is quite expensive. Damn those peasants, always demanding to be fed and clothed and occasionally educated.
At the end of the day, Echelon is controlled by our democratic governments, and the information it reveals is used responsibly. We very rarely give information out to companies or the public, unlike the french.
And who controls our democratic governments? You aren't under the belief that we as citizens of the various democracies control our governments, are you? When information gathered through Echelon was given to Boeing, causing Airbus to lose a contract to them, that was just another case of staving off fascism? Unlike the French indeed.
. . . where we should be strong, proud and altruistic.
You forgot massacre indigenous populations, force our moral values upon others, destabilize peace to ensure unfetered access to oil, markets, and cheap labor, and use the CIA to overthrow popular governments. Oh yes, and how could I forget rape, pillage, and burn!
At least you -- and thus hopefully your company -- are aware of the importance of giving the developers time outside of work to do their own projects. That makes it more likely the programmers you hire won't be asked to work 100 hours a week on the games, leaving no time for OSS development.
There are many projects to which I'd like to devote some of my time and creativity. Some are being created now (Jabber for one); others live only in my mind. Yet I work for a startup company, and that tends to translate into "We give you stock and a little cash; in return you work on our product to the exclusion of everything else."
I've justified it in the past by believing that one of these endeavors will pay off if the company is bought or better, goes public. At that point I would be free to pursue my true desires, working an occasional contract for money to keep from depleting my savings. More and more, however, I'm beginning to lose faith in the concept.:(
So much of our (American) economy is based on money making money. Banks lend it to buy things on credit (sometimes at 18.9% interest!); the IMF uses it to destroy developing countries for the gain of the top bankers; our government uses it via the CIA to overthrow popular governments in Asia and Latin America and to bribe top officials in the name of fighting communism but actually to keep these nations within the American sphere of influence (iow, force them to import our goods at American prices and export their own cheaply), again to the gain of domestic investors. </rant>
My point is that we as a society have moved so completely away from doing work that we enjoy and feel makes a contribution to people rather than someone else's bank account. So if you can convince your company to provide a pretty cool job to someone and still allow them the time to follow their dreams, more power to you!
Peace
PatientZero
P.S. Did you know that you just finished working for the government for this year? Starting a few days back, you actually began earning money for yourself. Rejoice!
Again this comes down to a corporation taking an unethical position while standing behind the law. This is short, so read before dismissing.
Back in the late 80's, Compuserve and AOL both discovered this vast area called the Internet, and their users clamored to be able to email their friends at school and work from those services. What did they do? They used the standard mail protocol, SMTP, and began using the resources of schools, offices, government, the military, etc.
Did UCLA ban AOL traffic since it cost UCLA money -- and thus me since I live in California and UCLA is a public institution funded by my tax dollars? No. Everyone said, "Welcome to the party; use our servers; talk with us."
Instant messaging, while more server-processing intensive, in my view is just like email. It's a form of communicating with the world. Messages, files, speech, et al. These are all the same; they should be public infrastructure.
They claim that using their servers 1) costs them money in support and resources and 2) costs them in lost eyeballs for advertising. Instead, they should work with the IETF, Jabber, everyone to turn IM into an Internet standard so the servers could be distributed just as email servers are.
This may seem idealistic, based on the good of the public, even *gasp* un-American... But fsck it's just the right thing to do!
Ah, but Kleenex(tm) is the mark and tissue is the descriptive word. I can not trademark Tissue brand tissues and start making everyone else change their names. Likewise, doesn't secure shell describe the tool, rather than name it?
Now that I look at their product page, I see that SSH Communications Security sells a product named SSH (r) Secure Shell(tm) that implements "the SSH protocol, the de-facto standard for encrypted terminal connections on the Internet." It's an encrypted terminal connection. Encryption is used to make things secure, and you typically use a terminal connection for a shell.
Is secure shell a reasonable synonym for encrypted terminal connection? It's certainly easier to say, and securing the terminal is the real goal -- encrypting it is merely the means.
Anyway, naming the company after the unix command seemed dubious. Apparently NetManage bought FTP Software. Was FTP Software going after the other FTP client and server software vendors? WS FTP, CureFTP, WarFTP...
Keep in mind that Tea's function is not to determine an appropriately ranked list of sites using a user's search request. Instead, Tea takes the results from the search engine (or any other source of content) and uses templates to present them to the user.
Just a friendly reminder to separate the apples from the oranges before passing judgment.
- PatientZero
Re:Freedom without responsibility?
on
CFP 2000 Wrapup
·
· Score: 2
Upon reading
Freedom and responsibility are not opposites. They have to be discussed together for either to be meaningful.
the following thought ripped through my mind: Freedom is what naturally arrises when everyone acts responsibly.
If so, then freedom is merely an effect (albeit a highly desirable one) of responsibility. We are taught this by our parents as children, although it tends to be used as a reward for doing what you're told or a punishment for doing something "wrong."
By trying to create freedom without first creating widespread responsibility, that freedom will be inherently unstable.
Slashdot is the perfect example. Everyone has the freedom to say what they want, anonymously if they desire. That usually works out well for those that take responsibility naturally. However, one need not read far to encounter numerous trolls and first posts.
Is Slashdot stable? Given that only a small increase in the number of irresponsible posters could make it almost unreadable speaks enough to that point. That a large amount of moderator time is put into weeding out the crap does, too.
The question then becomes, how can we teach others to act responsibly? Obviously, the first step is to do so ourselves as doing something is a method of teaching others to do the same.
Another question is, do people really not know how to act responsibly, or do they simply choose not to? I've met many of the latter.
The thing is that the Swiss don't simply mandate that you own a gun. You are taught how to fire, clean, be safe with, take cover, ad nausea. Here in America, we tell kids that guns are taboo (kids love anything that's taboo), keep them from learning how to be safe with them, and then at 18 say, "Okay, you can go buy one now." Expected outcome? However, a good look at car accident statistics vs. gun deaths and you'll wonder why so much fuss is put onto guns. Guns are designed to kill people, yet far more people die in car accidents each year. Why do we put up with that? Why aren't our driving tests difficult to pass? Ah, but that's another story... - PatientZero
Putting aside arguments about the "tyrany of the majority" and whether or not our government is truly democratic -- or even if democracy is a good form of government -- my main problem with voting is that most people have no clue what they are voting for.
In California, we had elections last Tursday on various bond measures along with the candidate selections. I read through much of the material this year to see what those measures were really about. What I found was truly appalling: the bond names related to about 1% of the bonds' effects.
Two examples will help:
Prop 12: Parks, Water, and Coastal Protection Act The $2.1 billion bond covers aquisition of land containing natural resources, cultural centers for youth and senior groups, creating natural habitats, archaeological deposits, rock art, artifacts of California's physical legacy, sites, ruins and more.
Hmm, did I miss the part about "coastal protection"? What do youth groups have to do with protecting our water? $2.1
billion... need I say more?
Prop 26: Majority Rule Act for Smaller Classes, Safer Schools and Financial Accountabiity Revokes most of Prop 13 from 1978 which implemented a cap (1%) on runaway property taxes. It changes the vote necessary from 2/3 to 1/2 for school bond issues. The rest mostly deals with limiting the growth of charter schools by increasing their costs.
Safer schools sounds good, but it's not safety from guns or violence, it's safety from cracking ceilings and old buildings. The majority of the proposition deals with changes in charter schools: charging for use of unused public school facilities (it's free now), mandating attendance not drop from projected figures (and charging fees if it does), requiring charter schools be adjacent to or on public school property.
Where are they getting the names for these bills? And have you read any of them? First, they're in lawyerspeak, which most Americans cannot understand. Second, they are looooong.
Bill of Rights: 482 words
Constitution of the United States: 4,735 words
Declaration of Independence: 1,302 words
Gettysburg Address: 271 words
The bill that became Prop 13: 56 pages, single spaced.
roughly 13,000 words!
So how is one to choose how to vote? Why, watch all the TV commercials: "Our schools are filled with violence!" -- "Our water gets more polluted every year" -- "Our kids will lose $700 million each year" -- "Indians will open casinos in your neighborhood."
The legislators know very few people will read the bills and be able to make an informed vote. They know the rest will rely on the TV ads. So the TV ads use the same tactics used to persuade you to by one laundry detergent over another: branding that appeals to your emotions and fears.
By encouraging everyone to "just get out and vote," we are vastly increasing the number of uninformed voters. Believe me, I want people to vote, but I don't want sheep to vote. But I'm sure that's what the legislators want.
No, I don't know what the solution is. People have suggested having civics classes that teach people what the bills mean, but who decides what the bills mean? If it's the legislators who provide the summary material, what's the difference?
I'd like to see the people who really care to take the time to research the bills be the ones voting. There's no reason for everyone to vote on all issues. Instead, provide a very easy way for people (everyone) to make their general desires known:
Taxes are too high.
Decrease defense budget.
No, it's not okay to tax tobacco users and give the money to children, as "nice" as that sounds.
Victimless crimes should not be crimes.
Then, those that research and vote can take into consideration the consensus of their community along with their own views. This, I believe, was supposed to be the role of the legislators, but we are well past the point of that being viable. Now they are merely concerned with reelection and spreading pork to their districts.
He either honors the GPL or never distributes to anyone. (Or gets special licence from ID... which obviously isn't happening)
From what I understand, once the source goes under the GPL, that's it. There is no special licensing allowed -- not by Slade and not by id.
Can someone confirm or deny this? And is there a case of an original author pulling something out of being covered by the GPL after releasing it?
I know this is not the case here, but I'd hate to see Carmack set a bad precedent. Fortunately, it looks like he's heavily sided with the GPL spirit on this one.
Free software has actually been given out by Microsoft (remember Internet Explorer? Netmeeting? Messenger?) and Microsoft recognizes and even links to many sites that promote Windows freeware.
Remember that the free in free software is not the same as free beer. Microsoft did not make available any means to freely muck with the software they distributed. You have to use it exactly as the EULA stipulates, which does not include modifying the behavior nor redistributing it in any form. Thus, those apps are not free software; they just don't cost money to use.
I do not give a community the group right to tinker with my car.
They couldn't just tinker with it. Someone might release a new version of the fuel injection driver. Car afficianados would check it out, test it, and modify it more. If you so wanted, you could surf to a site that distributed new patches and pick the one for you:
Drag racer
Commuter-mobile
Weekend mountain driving
Whatever you wanted, but you have choices, and that is the point of free software. With Internet Explorer, what are your choices? Yes or no, that's it. Not much of a selection.
I do not want an open-source model managing my electric utilities or my sewage or my education.
Same thing here. Suppose all of the California utilities use the same base of free software for running their plants. People "in the know" tinker with the development -- not production -- versions to improve performance, lower prices, etc. Some plants test it early under more restrained conditions and find that they can save 1 cent per kWh on electricity production. Ask any utility company if they'd implement such a change that still maintained safety levels and what do you think the answer would be? Yeah, I thought so.
Keep in mind that if Bob has the ability to modify the source for a particular program, it doesn't mean that the binaries on my machine will be affected. I have to actively choose to pick up those changes.
Now skip forward two or three years. People are used to frequent enhancements being made to their apps, but it starts to get difficult for Joe Consumer to benefit. Someone will start a company to provide a hands-free home package that continuously and automatically adds updates to their system. The system provides all the basics: web, mail, personal financing, security, yada yada yada.
It's this model that I drool over. I haven't taken the time to delve into Linux. I've installed it, gotten most everything working, etc. However, I am sure that it's not at all secure. I'd bet any newbie hacker could get on it, grab the root password, and launch whatever attack they liked from it.
I don't like that, but do I have time to read all the CERT advisories and grab all the latest patches to make it more secure? No, and I'd rather play Quake anyway. But I'd love to be able to trust someone else to do that for me at a reasonable price.
I'd also bet there are millions of consumers that want the same thing. They don't want to install anything. They want a functional internet terminal that can play games and balance their checkbook.
My friends and I have had several design conversations around how you could integrate FPS and RTS (real-time strategy) games into huge (hundreds of players) grand-scope internet games. Imagine if you will...
Those that enjoy strategy will use an overhead map to plan missions that coordinate several teams/squads.
Those that have a lot of FPS experience would plan the actions of their team of perhaps 5-10 others, choosing the assault entry point, laying out snipers, and directing their troops.
The hard-core FPS gamers would maintain the same basic interface and concept -- search and destroy -- with the added twist of seeing their orders and waypoints directly in their interface, perhaps as flags on the field or a compass, with timing signals for coordination.
To take a "real-world" example most everyone has seen, think back to the APC in Aliens. The lieutenant had a viewscreen for each squad member showing vital stats, location, etc. Since watching tens of video feeds would be both information overload and network death, I envision one spotter per squad that would sit back, maintain watch over the squad, and provide two-way communication back to the command post. Perhaps this is the squad leader, or maybe more along the lines of the radio carrier from wars past.
The real challange will be creating an architecture that can run over the net and include hundreds of players in a single world. With judicious use of segmenting the world, showing less detail for far-off battles, etc, this should be doable soon, if not now.
My question, then, is when, if ever, do you see this occuring? Not necessarily FPS and RTS games, but larger games with tens or hundreds of players?
And it would be incomplete without: Thank you thank you thank you! I have enjoyed many a game of Wolf, Doom, and the Quake trilogy. Love ya!
I, unfortunately, have been bound to the Wintel platform for a decade now (switched from Mac, but still pine for Unix/Linux at work someday). I've used the following IDEs:
Mac
Symantec C++ (rocked!)
CodeWarrior (only used it a bit, but it was great also)
Win
MS Visual C++ 5 (very little, no comment other than sluggish)
PowerBuilder 4/5 (nice, integrated, but obviously proprietary)
Symantec Cafe 2/3 (slow, slow, slow, lame editor)
Now I've been working at a startup for the last six months doing Java. There are few tools to support Java development to the level of complexity offered C++ coders, so we rolled our own. It's still basic as I haven't had much time to continue building it, but that changes next month.:)
Here's what we're currently using:
Cygwin (crucial!)
bash
cpp (for #define et al)
all the other nice GNU tools
Perl 5 (for some build scripts and tools)
CVS
JDK 1.1.7b
Most everyone here uses Symantec Cafe. I had already chosen my IDE prior to arriving, however, at a contract a year earlier. After using so many IDEs, I found that the central feature lacking in them all was a good editor. I spend 90% of my coding time actually coding, and very little building.
I eventually found CodeWright (windows only) and have used it since. For one, I have not found a better editor out of the box. Emacs can be configured to do nearly everything and more, but I don't have the time yet to jump in fully. I can get by editing in Emacs, but that's about it.
CodeWright, like Emacs, has extensibility. You can use one of their own three macro languages, C, C++, or Perl to write extensions to the editor. Even easier, however, is that it has hooks for compilers, make, version control, etc. You just enter the (cmd.exe) command line to execute for each function:
Example Source Check-in: d:\public\bin\cvscommit.bat %v%d %r%e
%v%d is the project path %r%e is the source file
The meat of cvsput.bat is d: cd %1 cvs commit %2
And it was just as trivial to tweak it to use our build scripts, tag files, etc.
Bottom Line: Take the time to pick a good editor and extend it. Yes, I'd love a class browser, but far more important for me is to be able to hit ctrl-F10 and have the current file saved, preprocessed, and compiled; and the cursor jumps to the first error. You can do all that with Emacs and JDE, and we'll move that way once we jump fully to Unix next year.
Now all I have to do is convince the black hats that Linux is an enterprise platform. Got any ideas?
Slashdot Mirror
The worry of nanites replicating themselves across the planet just doesn't seem like a possibility to me for the following reasons. Please correct where you see fit.
The same was said about Java: "We already write e-commerce apps in Perl. Why should we bother to learn something new and support Sun's closed effort?" It's just one more tool on your belt, and if it proves to be a useful tool, people will use it.
The danger -- which I think neither article presented clearly -- is that .NET will grow in popularity with most websites using Passport for authentication since it will be available and supported by Microsoft. Once a critical mass of consumers and companies are all using Passport, switching to something else will be difficult.
If the OSS community doesn't create an alternative to Passport that is entirely interoperable, then Microsoft will have created their own Internet Sales Tax. Petreley's worry is that by creating our own .NET without our own Passport, we will help Microsoft lock-in the consumers to Passport.
My worry is that Microsoft will not make the Passport API public. They'll say, "Sure, write your own .NET to the spec and support us, but you can't implement an interoperable authentication service." If that happens, you can bet Ebay isn't going to want to write two authenticationo access schemes.
It needs to be as simple as having an email address: user@auth.foo.com. Knowing only your address, I can send you email.* I don't have to ask if you're using Outlook or PINE before sending a message. Compare that to instant messaging: AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Jabber. They all provide the same core set of services, but each with their own API, so I have to deal with more software and protocols.
If other companies and OSS are able to code to the same authentication API that Microsoft is developing in Passport and Hailstorm, then I'm happy. However, Microsoft has a history of sharing halfway (shared source is the latest example).
* The downside -- easily addressable when creating a new system -- is that advertisers can send email to random addresses with the receiver bearing the cost. A good security model could block this possibility. XNS is a good start.
Peace PatientZero
Unfortunately, I believe this is simply a matter of the U.S. culture of competition. From an early age we are all taught to compete with each other before we cooperate. We compete for our parents' attention, for grades, in sports and games, for popularity, for jobs and raises, etc.
Free software (to me) is primarily about cooperation. In some projects, volunteers work together to produce a product. Once released, developers allow users to fix or improve it at whim. That's based on cooperation. However, these same people were still raised in competitive cultures, and it tends to seep in with comments about squashing the closed source competitors and ultimately the entire concept of closed source.
While some will claim that competition is important for breeding better products, I just don't buy it. When I write software for myself and post here, I'm not competing against anyone, yet I do my best because I want to. I won't claim not to feel my ego boosted when I see one of my posts moderated up, but I get far more enjoyment from seeing my post generate a good discussion. I too was raised in the U.S., and the best I can do now is be aware of my drive to compete and temper it with my desire to cooperate with my peers.
I am a software developer. I've developed for myself and for others. With regards to deadlines, no software of non-trivial complexity is ever completed on time. Obviously that's an over-generalization, but it's damn near accurate. Writing software, like writing a book, is a creative act and cannot be driven as easily as a manufacturing process. It's also a fairly young art, and we're learning all the time.
If by "never completed" you mean that many free software projects simply die off, that's just life. I've left many personal projects incomplete due to lost interest or finding a new way to do it. If you mean that they are never "final," then I put forth that no software is ever final. Version 1.0 comes out, then 1.1, 2.0, 2.5, and so on. Software is a very complex tool, like a car. You can't expect it to be like a hammer where you design it and, well, it's done. Maybe you add a better grip later, but for all intents and purposes, it's still a hammer. I don't see a difference between closed and open source here.
You are very correct about the difference in target audience, but that's due to their reasons for being produced. Corporate software is created to make money; free software is created to solve a problem. Making it easy to use for as wide an audience as possible is merely the best way to maximize profit. It has nothing to do with the process behind it. Corporations can spend money on usability studies and focus groups.
I predict that soon there will be free focus groups -- users that provide open/free usability studies for everyone to use. This is the equivalent of developers writing open/free code. There will be people that create better interfaces around existing applications because they can.
There are a few tweaks I'd like to make to Windows 2000 to make it easier for me to use (Oh hush!), but that's impossible. Microsoft won't cooperate and allow me to do that. There are many tweaks I'd make to linux so that I could use it, but right now I don't have the time. The difference is that if I made the time, there's nothing to stop me. In fact, I bet I could find a few other developers that would be more than happy to work with me.
[Note: my vision sucks, and I have tried three separate times to get linux to an acceptable level of visibility for me (fonts and colors) and failed. However, I didn't take the time to seek help from others, so it's my failing. As well, I am totally keyboard-centric since I can hit key combinations without depending on my eyes, and I find X-Windows to be more mouse-centric, oddly enough. I bet there are people out there that could show me how to configure it to work for me, but I haven't looked. Again, this is because *I* haven't taken the time, not because it's not doable on linux.]
So here's my suggestion for the free software and free encyclopedia community: Enlist students to help with your projects. Talk to teachers and arrange for course credit in exchange for coding and research. I would have loved an opportunity like that as a kid. I taught myself Basic, 6502 assembly, Pascal, and finally C before graduating high school. I could have learned even faster by cooperating with others and working on real-world projects rather than yet-another-space-invaders-clone (though that was fun too).
For English class, I did research for a debate on whether or not tobacco should be criminalized. That was cool, but again I would have loved to tackle researching the U.S. invasion of South Vietnam for an encyclopedia. And to have gotten some course credit, in lieu of some other class, like Basic Programming, for which I completed the 21 programming assignments in the first two weeks and had to entertain myself for the remaining ten, would have rocked.
And think about it. Who more than children have tons of free time, boundless energy, and untapped creativity? There is your talent pool. And as they move into adulthood, they will have a much stronger understanding of the power of cooperation and the value of freedom.
Peace PatientZero
In 1991 Iraq invades Kuwait and we step in to drive Iraq out. Fine, let's accept that too.
Shortly thereafter (1993, iirc) a group of Iraqi generals staged a coup to remove Saddam from power. It had much support from the citizens and the military. Saddam sent in planes to the Southern region where the revolt was taking place. The generals asked for our support. We denied them. After the planes wiped out the resistance, we expressed horror that the planes actually attacked the resistence. We claimed we thought they were just going to investigate. We're stretching it here, but let's accept that.
After the initial fighting, we initiated a ten-year plan of sanctions. Our reason was that we wanted U.N. inspectors inside the country to find and dismantle any factories producing weapons of mass destruction. Every so often we'd be a little more insistant by bombing them, but I'm sure we stuck to military targets.
So finally Saddam gave in to our demands and weapons inspectors were allowed in, and they found and removed lots of weapons and factories. Okay, so it's all over, right? No, we wanted to start bombing again in 1998. The U.N. pointed out that this would end the inspections, which was the sole purpose of sanctions. There was much protest, and the U.S. backed down. However, the U.N. also ruled that the sanctions were over -- that we should not reenact them after the initial ten-year period.
Why? The U.N. found that it was civilians that were suffering -- not the military or Saddam. We denied them food, clothing, pencils (because you can take out the grafite and make weapons), medicine. Oh, but we started a program to trade food for oil out of kindness.
Anyway, so the U.N. passes a resolution, making it international law, and the U.S. says, "Oh that's nice, but we don't care." And the sanctions continued. The U.S. was willing to break international law to kill civilians, but it wouldn't do so earlier to save civilians.
Well over 1.5 million people have died so far. 4,500 children die each month. What's our demand? That Saddam allow inspectors.
But he DID allow inspectors!
So now he has no options. He gave in to our demands yet we continue punishing his people. Again, Saddam has done some decidely nastly shit, but the U.S. government has done far more in many countries the world over than Saddam could possibly do.
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Cuba, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, Indonesia, East Timor, Philipines, most of Africa. How many nations do we have to terrorize before someone stops us? Do you realize most of the world sees the U.S. as an insane rogue state that must be stopped? Some point very soon someone's going to take the fall for the world and nuke us.
But apparently all is okay because we're following the "American" dream of profit over all else. I'm a U.S. citizen, but that's hardly my dream.
Note, I'm not saying this country is worthless. There are some very important values in our history. However, the apple-pie ideal that is put forth in the media is a farce. We have the world's biggest and most effective propoganda and indoctrination systems. So good in fact that most people believe that we don't have them -- that democracies don't need them.
Peace PatientZero
I'm not defending Saddam Husein's use of violence against his own citizens and the invasion of Kuwait, but punishing Iraqi citizens for the crimes of Iraq's leader and military is hardly reasonable. We are in effect saying, "We'll keep murdering your citizens until you stop murdering your citizens."
I can't consider this to be a truly free country when our leaders routinely break international law, won't support the one organization created to allow all the world's countries to settle their differences peacably, and won't accept responsibility for their own actions. If I went on a killing spree or stopped paying taxes, I'd be arrested and thrown in jail. Why don't we hold our leaders to the same standards?
Peace PatientZero
First of all, Hitler didn't run for office under the banner, "Gas the Jews and Gypsies! Annex France and Russia! Take over the world!" I hardly believe Germans at the time would have swallowed that. Similarly, Bush didn't run with the tagline, "Cowtow to corporate power! Murder 4,500 Iraqi children every month! Biotech warfare in Columbia!" There's this thing called public relations that states true honesty is usually a bad idea.
Second, in order to get the German citizens to back the war effort, significant propoganda compaigns were carried out (and in Brittain and the U.S. as well). Citizens weren't agreeing to the extermination of Jews. They were told the Jews were being deported or moved away. Sure, after a while the evidence was pretty overwhelming, but that was quite late into the game.
As I stated above, that Congress or the Senate pass a law doesn't necessarily mean the citizens desire it. I suspect you do not live in the U.S. and have simply accepted our government's propoganda campaign. As a U.S. citizen, I ask that you reconsider what you have been taught about how the U.S. "democracy" works.
Peace PatientZero
The problem with that statement is that it takes the premise that this country's citizens elect the government officials and adds several untrue assumptions:
The problem with (1) is that citizens don't get to pick whomever they want. Instead, someone else chooses the set of candidates from which citizens must pick. In every presidential election I've been old enough to follow, I would never have chosen any of the candidates to begin with, let alone pick one for president.
One has to look no further than the list of compaign contributors for the candidates to see how laughable (2) is. In the 1999/2000 California election cycle, energy companies alone made over $17 million in campaign contributions. Translation: they purchased the support of every candidate except ONE. Thus whomever wins, the energy corporations know that their wishes will be followed out of debt.
The U.S. has such a dismal voting turnout, so (3) is out. You may want to blame the voters, which is partially reasonable, but realize that many don't participate because they know that (1) and (2) mean they will have little impact.
There is hope, however. Right now, nearly 100,000 protesters are demonstrating at the G8 Summit in Genoa, Italy. People are starting to realize that they don't have to vote to make their opinions heard. In fact, it is often more effective to take to the streets.
It's really quite basic. Corporations' number one rule is to maximize profit for the shareholders. If they can "invest" a couple hundred thousand greasing the palms of congressman to ensure those "public servants" will enact laws beneficial to the corporations, that's what they *must* do. Sure, it's effectively bribery, and thus illegal, but they're following the rules of capitalism, not ethics or democracy.
It's going to take a lot of work to change the way our system works. And just because it isn't changing fast enough, it doesn't mean the people in the country somehow deserve the shit. Just as East Timorese hardly deserve the twenty-five years of genocide they've suffered at the hands of the Indonesian military with U.S. support (money, weapons and training), against congress's ruling.
Peace PatientZero
That corporation produces the product and sets a price. South Africans cannot afford to pay for the monopoly-priced drugs, so they produce their own generic brands of the same drugs. The corporation then sues the South African government based on IP violations.
Given that the corporate funding was something like $20 million, and the lawsuit is contending BILLIONS of dollars in lost profit, why not just pay them back the $20 million and put the drug on the free market for anyone to produce? Hell, give them $25 million -- a 25% return is pretty damn sweet.
Peace PatientZero
Yet I'm quite sure that if RMS uttered the following, Microsoft would be crying Communism.
It's not what Microsoft executives say that surprises me anymore. It's that most media just print it as if it was coherent.
Peace PatientZero
Suddenly your concentration is broken when your car cheerily announces, "You've got a ticket!" It then thoughtfully reads it aloud for you.
"Dear driver. The SafeDriver(tm) system has noted that you're traveling at 83.2mph. Please note that the speed limit at your current location is 45mph. For your convenience, $250 has been automatically deducted from your checking account. Thank you, and remember to drive safely!"
"What the --" But it's too late. Your car crashes through the flimsy side rail and soars into the ravine below!
"You've got a ticket!"
"Dear driver. We see that you have willfully disregarded our previous message and are now recklessly speeding at 142.8mph. While we understand you may be in a hurry, it's not fair to endanger the other drivers around --"
KA-BOOOOM
Peace PatientZero
I have no trouble with either license -- it's up to the original developer to choose one. And while it's tempting to view the GPL as non-free since you aren't free to co-opt the code, I really like the "sharing is a two-way street" mentality of the GPL.
If you take code under the GPL, modify it, release the binaries without the source and then claim ignorance and whine that the GPL has somehow "infected" your hard work, you're just dumb. If Microsoft believes that all their customers should read and understand the five-page, ALL CAPS legalese they ship with their products, they should be held accountable for realizing when they're basing their code off something that's released under the GPL. And so instead they spread FUD that GPL code is a bad thing since they can't use it in their products.
Pop quiz. You arrive at a birthday party, and everyone's brought some toys to play with, including you. You play with other people's toys, but when someone reaches for one of your toys you slap their hand and scream, "That's my toy!" How long before you get kicked out of the party? And how many people in attendance will miss you?
Peace PatientZero
c.f. United States of America vs. South Vietnam. Our strategy was to drive the rural population to the cities to create refugees and starvation by massively decreasing food production. The U.S. Air Force bombed villages, farms, and other civilian centers in an effort to destroy the support of the popular government. They did this because the totalitarian regime the U.S. had installed couldn't maintain power on its own behalf.
Just in case you were thinking South Vietnam may have been an isolated incident -- a momentary insanity on the part of those running the show -- it gets better:
Remember, when you go looking for monsters, you rarely have to look further than under your own bed.
Peace PatientZero
"The license"? As if there's only one. "[I]f you use any open-source software," your stuff is open source? This is obviously a blatent falsification, as your work is open if and only if you derive your work from it. Using Linux and the hundreds of GNU tools do not have any impact on your choice of licenses. How many ways can we say this to get the media to understand it? Or does the media already understand and simply ignore it (they know who's buying their advertising, after all)?
Let's set one thing straight right here. "Everybody" here is the same meaning as "everybody" in the US Constitution: people. Corporations do not have rights. LLCs, partnerships, governments, churches -- all organizations -- were not granted any rights, and they should have none. They are legal entities only and should not be treated as individuals.And even ignoring that, corporations are free to "use" free software, just as people are. What they are not free to do is steal the very intellectual property they are claiming to protect!
Peace PatientZero
Would that be the same military that "defended" South Vietnam by invasion and genocide? The same military that bombed North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia to ruins, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, if not millions? Perhaps the same military that "defended" Central and South America by overthrowing many a popularly-elected government because they showed signs of "communism" such as policies favoring land reform, education, labor rights, and health care? (See for instance Guatemala, El Salvador, Argentina, Nicaragua, et al)
America's indoctrination and propoganda system is a mighty fine piece of work, but even I am surprised that people still believe we need to defend ourselves from communism by using murder, torture, state terror, repression, and effective slavery of entire nations.
And that might be fine if it were really about communism rather than money. I understand that we like our high living standards, but is it worth terrorizing other people to "protect our sources of raw materials and ensure markets for our exports"? Would you be willing to fly to South America and do some of the killing yourself?
And Bush wants to increase the already insane level of military spending. I guess maintaining a puppet dictatorship with military force -- uh, I mean defense -- is quite expensive. Damn those peasants, always demanding to be fed and clothed and occasionally educated.
And who controls our democratic governments? You aren't under the belief that we as citizens of the various democracies control our governments, are you? When information gathered through Echelon was given to Boeing, causing Airbus to lose a contract to them, that was just another case of staving off fascism? Unlike the French indeed.
You forgot massacre indigenous populations, force our moral values upon others, destabilize peace to ensure unfetered access to oil, markets, and cheap labor, and use the CIA to overthrow popular governments. Oh yes, and how could I forget rape, pillage, and burn!
Peace PatientZero
There are many projects to which I'd like to devote some of my time and creativity. Some are being created now (Jabber for one); others live only in my mind. Yet I work for a startup company, and that tends to translate into "We give you stock and a little cash; in return you work on our product to the exclusion of everything else."
I've justified it in the past by believing that one of these endeavors will pay off if the company is bought or better, goes public. At that point I would be free to pursue my true desires, working an occasional contract for money to keep from depleting my savings. More and more, however, I'm beginning to lose faith in the concept. :(
So much of our (American) economy is based on money making money. Banks lend it to buy things on credit (sometimes at 18.9% interest!); the IMF uses it to destroy developing countries for the gain of the top bankers; our government uses it via the CIA to overthrow popular governments in Asia and Latin America and to bribe top officials in the name of fighting communism but actually to keep these nations within the American sphere of influence (iow, force them to import our goods at American prices and export their own cheaply), again to the gain of domestic investors. </rant>
My point is that we as a society have moved so completely away from doing work that we enjoy and feel makes a contribution to people rather than someone else's bank account. So if you can convince your company to provide a pretty cool job to someone and still allow them the time to follow their dreams, more power to you!
Peace PatientZero
P.S. Did you know that you just finished working for the government for this year? Starting a few days back, you actually began earning money for yourself. Rejoice!
Back in the late 80's, Compuserve and AOL both discovered this vast area called the Internet, and their users clamored to be able to email their friends at school and work from those services. What did they do? They used the standard mail protocol, SMTP, and began using the resources of schools, offices, government, the military, etc.
Did UCLA ban AOL traffic since it cost UCLA money -- and thus me since I live in California and UCLA is a public institution funded by my tax dollars? No. Everyone said, "Welcome to the party; use our servers; talk with us."
Instant messaging, while more server-processing intensive, in my view is just like email. It's a form of communicating with the world. Messages, files, speech, et al. These are all the same; they should be public infrastructure.
They claim that using their servers 1) costs them money in support and resources and 2) costs them in lost eyeballs for advertising. Instead, they should work with the IETF, Jabber, everyone to turn IM into an Internet standard so the servers could be distributed just as email servers are.
This may seem idealistic, based on the good of the public, even *gasp* un-American ... But fsck it's just the right thing to do!
Peace, PatientZero
Ah, but Kleenex(tm) is the mark and tissue is the descriptive word. I can not trademark Tissue brand tissues and start making everyone else change their names. Likewise, doesn't secure shell describe the tool, rather than name it?
Now that I look at their product page, I see that SSH Communications Security sells a product named SSH (r) Secure Shell(tm) that implements "the SSH protocol, the de-facto standard for encrypted terminal connections on the Internet." It's an encrypted terminal connection. Encryption is used to make things secure, and you typically use a terminal connection for a shell.
Is secure shell a reasonable synonym for encrypted terminal connection? It's certainly easier to say, and securing the terminal is the real goal -- encrypting it is merely the means.
Anyway, naming the company after the unix command seemed dubious. Apparently NetManage bought FTP Software. Was FTP Software going after the other FTP client and server software vendors? WS FTP, CureFTP, WarFTP ...
Ciao PatientZero
Just a friendly reminder to separate the apples from the oranges before passing judgment.
- PatientZero
the following thought ripped through my mind: Freedom is what naturally arrises when everyone acts responsibly.
If so, then freedom is merely an effect (albeit a highly desirable one) of responsibility. We are taught this by our parents as children, although it tends to be used as a reward for doing what you're told or a punishment for doing something "wrong."
By trying to create freedom without first creating widespread responsibility, that freedom will be inherently unstable.
Slashdot is the perfect example. Everyone has the freedom to say what they want, anonymously if they desire. That usually works out well for those that take responsibility naturally. However, one need not read far to encounter numerous trolls and first posts.
Is Slashdot stable? Given that only a small increase in the number of irresponsible posters could make it almost unreadable speaks enough to that point. That a large amount of moderator time is put into weeding out the crap does, too.
The question then becomes, how can we teach others to act responsibly? Obviously, the first step is to do so ourselves as doing something is a method of teaching others to do the same.
Another question is, do people really not know how to act responsibly, or do they simply choose not to? I've met many of the latter.
-- PatientZero
The thing is that the Swiss don't simply mandate that you own a gun. You are taught how to fire, clean, be safe with, take cover, ad nausea. Here in America, we tell kids that guns are taboo (kids love anything that's taboo), keep them from learning how to be safe with them, and then at 18 say, "Okay, you can go buy one now." Expected outcome? However, a good look at car accident statistics vs. gun deaths and you'll wonder why so much fuss is put onto guns. Guns are designed to kill people, yet far more people die in car accidents each year. Why do we put up with that? Why aren't our driving tests difficult to pass? Ah, but that's another story... - PatientZero
In California, we had elections last Tursday on various bond measures along with the candidate selections. I read through much of the material this year to see what those measures were really about. What I found was truly appalling: the bond names related to about 1% of the bonds' effects.
Two examples will help:
- Prop 12: Parks, Water, and Coastal Protection Act
- Prop 26: Majority Rule Act for Smaller Classes, Safer Schools and Financial Accountabiity
Where are they getting the names for these bills? And have you read any of them? First, they're in lawyerspeak, which most Americans cannot understand. Second, they are looooong.The $2.1 billion bond covers aquisition of land containing natural resources, cultural centers for youth and senior groups, creating natural habitats, archaeological deposits, rock art, artifacts of California's physical legacy, sites, ruins and more.
Revokes most of Prop 13 from 1978 which implemented a cap (1%) on runaway property taxes. It changes the vote necessary from 2/3 to 1/2 for school bond issues. The rest mostly deals with limiting the growth of charter schools by increasing their costs.
So how is one to choose how to vote? Why, watch all the TV commercials: "Our schools are filled with violence!" -- "Our water gets more polluted every year" -- "Our kids will lose $700 million each year" -- "Indians will open casinos in your neighborhood."
The legislators know very few people will read the bills and be able to make an informed vote. They know the rest will rely on the TV ads. So the TV ads use the same tactics used to persuade you to by one laundry detergent over another: branding that appeals to your emotions and fears.
By encouraging everyone to "just get out and vote," we are vastly increasing the number of uninformed voters. Believe me, I want people to vote, but I don't want sheep to vote. But I'm sure that's what the legislators want.
No, I don't know what the solution is. People have suggested having civics classes that teach people what the bills mean, but who decides what the bills mean? If it's the legislators who provide the summary material, what's the difference?
I'd like to see the people who really care to take the time to research the bills be the ones voting. There's no reason for everyone to vote on all issues. Instead, provide a very easy way for people (everyone) to make their general desires known:
Then, those that research and vote can take into consideration the consensus of their community along with their own views. This, I believe, was supposed to be the role of the legislators, but we are well past the point of that being viable. Now they are merely concerned with reelection and spreading pork to their districts.
- PatientZero
From what I understand, once the source goes under the GPL, that's it. There is no special licensing allowed -- not by Slade and not by id.
Can someone confirm or deny this? And is there a case of an original author pulling something out of being covered by the GPL after releasing it?
I know this is not the case here, but I'd hate to see Carmack set a bad precedent. Fortunately, it looks like he's heavily sided with the GPL spirit on this one.
- PatientZero
Remember that the free in free software is not the same as free beer. Microsoft did not make available any means to freely muck with the software they distributed. You have to use it exactly as the EULA stipulates, which does not include modifying the behavior nor redistributing it in any form. Thus, those apps are not free software; they just don't cost money to use.
They couldn't just tinker with it. Someone might release a new version of the fuel injection driver. Car afficianados would check it out, test it, and modify it more. If you so wanted, you could surf to a site that distributed new patches and pick the one for you:
Whatever you wanted, but you have choices, and that is the point of free software. With Internet Explorer, what are your choices? Yes or no, that's it. Not much of a selection.
Same thing here. Suppose all of the California utilities use the same base of free software for running their plants. People "in the know" tinker with the development -- not production -- versions to improve performance, lower prices, etc. Some plants test it early under more restrained conditions and find that they can save 1 cent per kWh on electricity production. Ask any utility company if they'd implement such a change that still maintained safety levels and what do you think the answer would be? Yeah, I thought so.
Keep in mind that if Bob has the ability to modify the source for a particular program, it doesn't mean that the binaries on my machine will be affected. I have to actively choose to pick up those changes.
Now skip forward two or three years. People are used to frequent enhancements being made to their apps, but it starts to get difficult for Joe Consumer to benefit. Someone will start a company to provide a hands-free home package that continuously and automatically adds updates to their system. The system provides all the basics: web, mail, personal financing, security, yada yada yada.
It's this model that I drool over. I haven't taken the time to delve into Linux. I've installed it, gotten most everything working, etc. However, I am sure that it's not at all secure. I'd bet any newbie hacker could get on it, grab the root password, and launch whatever attack they liked from it.
I don't like that, but do I have time to read all the CERT advisories and grab all the latest patches to make it more secure? No, and I'd rather play Quake anyway. But I'd love to be able to trust someone else to do that for me at a reasonable price.
I'd also bet there are millions of consumers that want the same thing. They don't want to install anything. They want a functional internet terminal that can play games and balance their checkbook.
- PatientZero
My friends and I have had several design conversations around how you could integrate FPS and RTS (real-time strategy) games into huge (hundreds of players) grand-scope internet games. Imagine if you will...
To take a "real-world" example most everyone has seen, think back to the APC in Aliens. The lieutenant had a viewscreen for each squad member showing vital stats, location, etc. Since watching tens of video feeds would be both information overload and network death, I envision one spotter per squad that would sit back, maintain watch over the squad, and provide two-way communication back to the command post. Perhaps this is the squad leader, or maybe more along the lines of the radio carrier from wars past.
The real challange will be creating an architecture that can run over the net and include hundreds of players in a single world. With judicious use of segmenting the world, showing less detail for far-off battles, etc, this should be doable soon, if not now.
My question, then, is when, if ever, do you see this occuring? Not necessarily FPS and RTS games, but larger games with tens or hundreds of players?
And it would be incomplete without: Thank you thank you thank you! I have enjoyed many a game of Wolf, Doom, and the Quake trilogy. Love ya!
- P0
Mac
Win
Now I've been working at a startup for the last six months doing Java. There are few tools to support Java development to the level of complexity offered C++ coders, so we rolled our own. It's still basic as I haven't had much time to continue building it, but that changes next month. :)
Here's what we're currently using:
Most everyone here uses Symantec Cafe. I had already chosen my IDE prior to arriving, however, at a contract a year earlier. After using so many IDEs, I found that the central feature lacking in them all was a good editor. I spend 90% of my coding time actually coding, and very little building.
I eventually found CodeWright (windows only) and have used it since. For one, I have not found a better editor out of the box. Emacs can be configured to do nearly everything and more, but I don't have the time yet to jump in fully. I can get by editing in Emacs, but that's about it.
CodeWright, like Emacs, has extensibility. You can use one of their own three macro languages, C, C++, or Perl to write extensions to the editor. Even easier, however, is that it has hooks for compilers, make, version control, etc. You just enter the (cmd.exe) command line to execute for each function:
And it was just as trivial to tweak it to use our build scripts, tag files, etc.Bottom Line: Take the time to pick a good editor and extend it. Yes, I'd love a class browser, but far more important for me is to be able to hit ctrl-F10 and have the current file saved, preprocessed, and compiled; and the cursor jumps to the first error. You can do all that with Emacs and JDE, and we'll move that way once we jump fully to Unix next year.
Now all I have to do is convince the black hats that Linux is an enterprise platform. Got any ideas?
-PZ