To the extent that I could believe in a God, it'd have to be the type of God who'd design a set of physical constants and behaviors (including all that quantum and stringy stuff we're still trying to understand) and sit Himself back to see what unfolded over a few billion years.
Sounds like Deism. Deism is the believe that God created the universe in one shining moment, perfectly constructed to unfold in the manner he wanted, and has not done a damn thing since. (Why would he need to? The only reason to make later adjustments would be if you didn't get it right at first, which would contradict the notion of a perfect god.)
Heh! That accounts for how I use my computers (both at home and at work) pretty well. Netscape, VMware, and several open aterm windows. Of course, I don't use Afterstep, I use Window Maker...
If the windows install program can tell that you are not running on "bare hardware,"
You're a little confused. The Windows install program from OEM manufacturers that do this trick cannot tell that you're not running on bare hardware, nor is that what it's trying to check for. What it's trying to check for is that you're running on the OEM's hardware (i.e. you aren't pirating the OS by installing Manufacturer A's Win9X on Manufacturer B's PC). So when you try to install Win9X under VMware, the antipiracy feature kicks in because it thinks you're trying to install on different bare hardware than you're licensed to.
Now I don't mean to knock the book, but it sounds like this is old news to me. The crusades, the red scare, the holocaust... seems to me like half the wars in history have been made possible by self-replicating and self-perpetuating belief systems, indepedent of the best interests of the poor bastards doing the fighting.
Of course it's old stuff. Memes have existed and have been replicating and evolving for thousands of years. I think the point of the book is what happens because of this. If memes are truly competing and evolving as time goes by, aren't they gradually becoming more and more powerful? What happens because of this? At some point, does free will become a think of the past, as these memes become more and more powerful? The book wouldn't make any sense unless your observation was true...
Well, it Slashdot has both pro and anti-Sony articles, that makes them fair and balanced, right? News sites shouldn't be biased... (and if you believe they aren't, I have a bridge to sell you...)
Now suppose some third party wanted to combine some of my software with some other software covered by the GNU Public License. That third party notices that each of these two licenses insists that all the parts combined must be covered by itself
I don't know about your imaginary PL, but the GPL does not insist this.
but each licenses insists that you cannot change it over to the other. Now we have a problem.
Nope. If your license is as you described ("the wording were a little different, but in essence, the license had exactly the same legal implications of the GPL"), then there's no problem. The GPL would only be incompatible with your license if your license did NOT have the same implications as the GPL. Even then, it would be compatible with the GPL unless it placed additional restrictions that the GPL does not. This is why the BSD license (sans advertising clause) is perfectly compatible with the GPL, despite being a different license with different legal implications.
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but it is always seemed to me that the GNU Public License exhibits an intolerance to even the slightest differences in philosophy.
You are mistaken. Many license advocates on all sides of the issue display intolerance to even the slightest differences in philosophy (including the people who've obviously lied to you about what the GPL says, assuming you really believe the stuff you wrote above), but the GPL works quite well with any license that doesn't place additional restrictions. It is only intolerant towards licenses less free than it, and considering its detractors don't think its very free at all, that means it's only intolerant towards truly non-free stuff. Which is not a "slight difference" in philosophy, it's a huge chasm.
Not that I think the GPL is perfect or anything. In fact, I'm rather more of a fan of the so-called "Lesser GPL" precisely because the GPL sucks for precisely the reasons that got KDE in trouble. You ought to be able to link to any damned library you like, just as you can code to any operating system you like, regardless of the "freeness" of the OS.
But you don't advance your cause by repeating lies about the GPL to do it. You just provoke arguments where people point out that you're blowing smoke, and we all avoid talking about the real issues...
He also said KDE contained code it shouldn't have and would've violated its license. According to RMS, that violation was clear to KDE's programmers and despite that they ignored it.
Now suddenly he says he doesn't even know what type of code KDE contains and that we were the ones that misinterpreted what he wrote.
RMS did not "suddenly" change what he said about anything. What he says here is that he doesn't know if KDE contains any FSF code or not. This is not a sudden change in position, he's never claimed it did! He did in the past quite correctly point out that it contained GPL'ed code, and that, lacking permission from the author, the KDE team was violating the GPL in using it the way they were.
As for you being one of the ones misinterpretting what he wrote, that's probably not the case. You don't seem to have read it to begin with...
The webpage says deCSS was removed on the 1.3.1 version. So either (a) it lies, (b) it was removed but added back later, or (c) your post is incorrect in claiming it comes with integrated DeCSS.
Err, so? What difference does that make? If someone markets a similar product to mine, they're competition, it matters not a bit whether they're making a profit or not, or whether they ever intend to or not. In fact, competition against people who don't want to make a profit can be the toughest competition of all to beat...
OTOH, I've seen banks happily pay checks where the signature bore no resemblance at all to the owner's signature. Running around with all your checks signed only really lets the theif know he can do what he can probably do anyways without the checks being signed.
If someone steals your checkbook, make sure you report it immediately...
Why else you think car manufacturers release cars with defects?
Same reason Debian or RedHat or whoever you want to name releases software with bugs. They'd rather not, but it happens, and will continue to happen as long as people remain imperfect. When we all become perfect beings, then we'll start producing cars without defects. Until then, it's kinda stupid to expect that, and immediately decide there are conspiracies and/or shady motives involved when it doesn't happen.
if they CARE about your safety, would they so actively promote those big dumb SUVs?
If that's what people want to drive, sure they would. Your logic here is extremely spurious. The fact that other cars are safer than SUVs doesn't mean people selling SUVs don't care about safety. That's like saying because taking a ride at the county fair is safer than SCUBA diving, SCUBA instructors care less about safety than the idiots running the county fair, and I can assure you this is not the case, knowing representatives of both groups.
At the beginning of the record, encrypted using the common key. Encrypt the rest of the record using the (completely randomly generated) record key, and encrypt the record key with your single, common key. The common key is now pretty much unbreakable, since the ONLY thing it encrypts is random bits. No way to make a known plaintext attack against that, and brute forcing it is not an option unless you have a few centuries to kill. And each record is now encrypted using a different key. Give me a few years computing time, and I'll be able to crack one users CC#, with which I'll be able to make changes worth 0.001% of what it cost me to get it.
Actually, "creation" is not a central belief among neopagans, at least in my experience. That sort of linear thinking is common for Christians, who see the world progressing in a line from creation to apocalype, but most pagans don't think in lines, they think in circles. Spring is followed by Summer is followed by Fall is followed by Winter is followed by, oh look, another Spring, and on and on. The Wheel turns, the cycle repeats, we live one life and then we live another, etc. The Wheel turns, as it always has and always will. There was no point in time when it began, and there is no point when it will end. Things change over time, 'tis true, but the Wheel always turns...
What's wrong with keeping promises? (I suspect that once again I have no idea what the poster means... so perhaps I should simply ask...) Okay, what's a "Promise Keeper"?
Incidently, your other interests list looks a lot like mine. Err, except for the blowing things up. And replace "walks on the beach" with "walks in the woods"...
You misunderstood my comments. The previous poster said an interest in role-playing games was something that 99.9% of computer geeks have in common. I was merely saying that the only interest 99.9% of computer geeks have in common is computers. Obvious, I and the majority of computer geeks are also interested in many other things besides computers. I would describe all the ones I know as quite well-rounded. There's just no single thing 99.9% of us have in common besides an interest in computers. Only 20% of us in my company are interested in role-playing games, in contrast to what the person I was replying to was saying. 60% had an avid interest in outdoor activities, 40% were interested in team sports.
I don't know what you mean by "the web design thing", so I'll pass commenting on that.
My off the cuff answer is "a pathologically eclectic one".:)
After following your hyperlink, I'm not sure if I can give a better answer, but I'll take a stab at it. I guess you might say I'm something of the Technoshaman type. I always giggle as the phrase "software engineer", since how I write code has nothing in common with what most people think of as engineering. It's an intuitive, artistic talent, based almost entirely on ones sense of aesthetics, or at least that's my experience. I completely dumbfounded my boss when he discovered I can't tell a resistor from a, well, I can't even think of the name of another electronic component to complete this sentence. I have no idea how computers work. Everything below the level of assembly language is simply magick as far as I'm concerned. I believe ideas exist independently of people, and I believe they sometimes desire to be expressed into the physical world. Philosophers have often wondered at how mental events cause physical events and vice versa (the lack of a plausible mechanism is the primary argument used against Dualism). I don't know and/or care much how it happens, but I know it does. Because of this, we serve as perfect conduits for ideas (completely mental things) who want to find physical expression, to actually affect the physical world. ESR has been known to describe programming as scratching an itch nagging at you. That itch is an idea trying to being expressed. For me, though, this would be a gross understatement. Some ideas I can ignore, and they either continue to hound me or go look for another conduit. But some are far more powerful than an itch. The really powerful ones take over completely. I am ridden, as a voudon preist ridden by the legba. I achieve a state psychologists call disassociation. I watch, passively, as this living, willful force expresses itself through me. I do not tire, I do not hunger, I have no sense of touch, I do not hear the events around me, I do not see except in the narrow tunnel before me. I feel the idea, I feel its presence. I don't think about algorithms, I feel them. There's no normal sensory analog, but I liken it to that feeling you get when you walk through a dark room that you're familiar with -- you can feel where all the furniture is. It's like that -- I feel the program taking shape, and I feel the idea moving about to flesh it out, and not being the kind of person who can easily dismiss the evidence of my own senses, I cannot possibly rationally disbelieve in the real, independent existance of the ideas, and their ability act idependantly of us. The ancient greek philosophers were right, the Forms are there, I know for I have seen them. I communicate with them, in a way, and they communicate with me, "speak" to me, "speak" through me when I let them (and sometimes I cannot help but let them).
Sometimes they are not around. Then, I plod through code like the untalented students I went to school with, producing mediocre stuff. But eventually, the spirits return, and I produce works of great beauty and efficiency. And I thank the gods for allowing me to serve this function.
The problem with Clarke's Law is that is seems to suggest there is some fundamental difference between technology and magic, if you don't take the word "indistinguishable" literally. If you do (i.e. you take it to mean that there is nothing that distinguishes the two), then I think it's spot on.
The ninja example is good. Personally, I do believe in magick, but I don't believe in the supernatural...
You don't see it because you're looking in the wrong direction. I take it for granted we can agree that most geeks are not mystics. Sure, there are some prominent ones like ESR, but for the most part they aren't. Your anecdotal observation that hackers tend to be engineering & science oriented folks is dead on as far as I can tell. However, setting aside the general tendency and what the majority happens to be, there are pagans and mystics amoung hackers, too. The point is that although they are a minority, it's a larger minority percentage-wise in the hacker community than it is percentage-wise in the entire population. Also, if you survey pagans, you'll find computer/I.T. people represent a larger percentage than they would if you sampled the same number of people amoungst the general population. It's even more obvious when you look at it from this direction -- we're talking a much larger percentage when you look at it that way.
By no means does this mean the typical hacker is into mysticism, nor does it mean the typical mystic is a geek. It does seem to beg some sort of explanation, though...
Incidently, engineering & science types tend to be over-represented among pagans, too. Lots of pagans tend to be very scientific. Part of what drives them from mainstream religion is a design to experiment with things to determine what is true, rather than simply accept dogma taught to them. Paganism is sometimes said to be a designer religion because people tend to experiment with any new idea that comes along to put it to test, and only keep the ones that work best. Putting it to the test is kinda frowned upon by more dogmatic religions, as well as determining for yourself what is true. Putting it to the test is smiled upon by science, but determining for yourself what is true is frowned upon -- that's what the community and peer review is supposed to do. So, most pagans are completely at home with either, although their experimental style often serves them well as scientists...
Slashdot Mirror
Err, neither are lunar phases. About 29.5 days on average IIRC, but it does vary (in a predictable manner, of course)....
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Sounds like Deism. Deism is the believe that God created the universe in one shining moment, perfectly constructed to unfold in the manner he wanted, and has not done a damn thing since. (Why would he need to? The only reason to make later adjustments would be if you didn't get it right at first, which would contradict the notion of a perfect god.)
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You're a little confused. The Windows install program from OEM manufacturers that do this trick cannot tell that you're not running on bare hardware, nor is that what it's trying to check for. What it's trying to check for is that you're running on the OEM's hardware (i.e. you aren't pirating the OS by installing Manufacturer A's Win9X on Manufacturer B's PC). So when you try to install Win9X under VMware, the antipiracy feature kicks in because it thinks you're trying to install on different bare hardware than you're licensed to.
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Of course it's old stuff. Memes have existed and have been replicating and evolving for thousands of years. I think the point of the book is what happens because of this. If memes are truly competing and evolving as time goes by, aren't they gradually becoming more and more powerful? What happens because of this? At some point, does free will become a think of the past, as these memes become more and more powerful? The book wouldn't make any sense unless your observation was true...
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This is the basic premise behind every post I've ever seen by people calling Slashdot users hypocrites, so it must be true...
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apt-get install aterm
I don't know the rpm equivalent, sorry...
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I don't know about your imaginary PL, but the GPL does not insist this. but each licenses insists that you cannot change it over to the other. Now we have a problem.
Nope. If your license is as you described ("the wording were a little different, but in essence, the license had exactly the same legal implications of the GPL"), then there's no problem. The GPL would only be incompatible with your license if your license did NOT have the same implications as the GPL. Even then, it would be compatible with the GPL unless it placed additional restrictions that the GPL does not. This is why the BSD license (sans advertising clause) is perfectly compatible with the GPL, despite being a different license with different legal implications.
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but it is always seemed to me that the GNU Public License exhibits an intolerance to even the slightest differences in philosophy.
You are mistaken. Many license advocates on all sides of the issue display intolerance to even the slightest differences in philosophy (including the people who've obviously lied to you about what the GPL says, assuming you really believe the stuff you wrote above), but the GPL works quite well with any license that doesn't place additional restrictions. It is only intolerant towards licenses less free than it, and considering its detractors don't think its very free at all, that means it's only intolerant towards truly non-free stuff. Which is not a "slight difference" in philosophy, it's a huge chasm.
Not that I think the GPL is perfect or anything. In fact, I'm rather more of a fan of the so-called "Lesser GPL" precisely because the GPL sucks for precisely the reasons that got KDE in trouble. You ought to be able to link to any damned library you like, just as you can code to any operating system you like, regardless of the "freeness" of the OS.
But you don't advance your cause by repeating lies about the GPL to do it. You just provoke arguments where people point out that you're blowing smoke, and we all avoid talking about the real issues...
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Now suddenly he says he doesn't even know what type of code KDE contains and that we were the ones that misinterpreted what he wrote.
RMS did not "suddenly" change what he said about anything. What he says here is that he doesn't know if KDE contains any FSF code or not. This is not a sudden change in position, he's never claimed it did! He did in the past quite correctly point out that it contained GPL'ed code, and that, lacking permission from the author, the KDE team was violating the GPL in using it the way they were.
As for you being one of the ones misinterpretting what he wrote, that's probably not the case. You don't seem to have read it to begin with...
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Err, so? What difference does that make? If someone markets a similar product to mine, they're competition, it matters not a bit whether they're making a profit or not, or whether they ever intend to or not. In fact, competition against people who don't want to make a profit can be the toughest competition of all to beat...
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If someone steals your checkbook, make sure you report it immediately...
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Same reason Debian or RedHat or whoever you want to name releases software with bugs. They'd rather not, but it happens, and will continue to happen as long as people remain imperfect. When we all become perfect beings, then we'll start producing cars without defects. Until then, it's kinda stupid to expect that, and immediately decide there are conspiracies and/or shady motives involved when it doesn't happen.
if they CARE about your safety, would they so actively promote those big dumb SUVs?
If that's what people want to drive, sure they would. Your logic here is extremely spurious. The fact that other cars are safer than SUVs doesn't mean people selling SUVs don't care about safety. That's like saying because taking a ride at the county fair is safer than SCUBA diving, SCUBA instructors care less about safety than the idiots running the county fair, and I can assure you this is not the case, knowing representatives of both groups.
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I don't know what you mean by "the web design thing", so I'll pass commenting on that.
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After following your hyperlink, I'm not sure if I can give a better answer, but I'll take a stab at it. I guess you might say I'm something of the Technoshaman type. I always giggle as the phrase "software engineer", since how I write code has nothing in common with what most people think of as engineering. It's an intuitive, artistic talent, based almost entirely on ones sense of aesthetics, or at least that's my experience. I completely dumbfounded my boss when he discovered I can't tell a resistor from a, well, I can't even think of the name of another electronic component to complete this sentence. I have no idea how computers work. Everything below the level of assembly language is simply magick as far as I'm concerned. I believe ideas exist independently of people, and I believe they sometimes desire to be expressed into the physical world. Philosophers have often wondered at how mental events cause physical events and vice versa (the lack of a plausible mechanism is the primary argument used against Dualism). I don't know and/or care much how it happens, but I know it does. Because of this, we serve as perfect conduits for ideas (completely mental things) who want to find physical expression, to actually affect the physical world. ESR has been known to describe programming as scratching an itch nagging at you. That itch is an idea trying to being expressed. For me, though, this would be a gross understatement. Some ideas I can ignore, and they either continue to hound me or go look for another conduit. But some are far more powerful than an itch. The really powerful ones take over completely. I am ridden, as a voudon preist ridden by the legba. I achieve a state psychologists call disassociation. I watch, passively, as this living, willful force expresses itself through me. I do not tire, I do not hunger, I have no sense of touch, I do not hear the events around me, I do not see except in the narrow tunnel before me. I feel the idea, I feel its presence. I don't think about algorithms, I feel them. There's no normal sensory analog, but I liken it to that feeling you get when you walk through a dark room that you're familiar with -- you can feel where all the furniture is. It's like that -- I feel the program taking shape, and I feel the idea moving about to flesh it out, and not being the kind of person who can easily dismiss the evidence of my own senses, I cannot possibly rationally disbelieve in the real, independent existance of the ideas, and their ability act idependantly of us. The ancient greek philosophers were right, the Forms are there, I know for I have seen them. I communicate with them, in a way, and they communicate with me, "speak" to me, "speak" through me when I let them (and sometimes I cannot help but let them).
Sometimes they are not around. Then, I plod through code like the untalented students I went to school with, producing mediocre stuff. But eventually, the spirits return, and I produce works of great beauty and efficiency. And I thank the gods for allowing me to serve this function.
I hope this answers your question...
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The ninja example is good. Personally, I do believe in magick, but I don't believe in the supernatural...
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By no means does this mean the typical hacker is into mysticism, nor does it mean the typical mystic is a geek. It does seem to beg some sort of explanation, though...
Incidently, engineering & science types tend to be over-represented among pagans, too. Lots of pagans tend to be very scientific. Part of what drives them from mainstream religion is a design to experiment with things to determine what is true, rather than simply accept dogma taught to them. Paganism is sometimes said to be a designer religion because people tend to experiment with any new idea that comes along to put it to test, and only keep the ones that work best. Putting it to the test is kinda frowned upon by more dogmatic religions, as well as determining for yourself what is true. Putting it to the test is smiled upon by science, but determining for yourself what is true is frowned upon -- that's what the community and peer review is supposed to do. So, most pagans are completely at home with either, although their experimental style often serves them well as scientists...
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