Not quite. The modern industrial society, headed by the US and other industrial powers, has a far wider reach, and a potentially far more destructive impact upon the biosphere than anything the Romans could have imagined possible. Nukes, deforestation, pollution, etc.
The developmental model of contemporary Western society is simply not maintainable; it will fall apart.
On a similar note, I think that making that kind of prediction is pretty much like playing the lottery. You can be "right" in the number you predict/play, in the sense that it eventually turns out that 2050 is the winner, after all. But if you had no well motivated reason for predicting that, the fact that you get it right is completely uninteresting.
Anything that translates to and from so many languages must have some meta-language that it works with internally.
Well, this is either trivially true or patently false, depending on what you meant with "language". If you mean something similar to a natural language (like Esperanto as you suggest below) then it is false. You know, parsing and interpreting a sentence in a natural language (a task that no one knows how to do as of now) is more than complicated enough of a task; if you have managed todo this, you obviously want to store the information in some "language" that's easy to decode.
Schematically, what a translator should do is parse natural language utterances, derive from them semantic representations, and then generate from those as semantically close as feasible utterances in the target language.
What a "semantic representation" should precisely look like no one knows; there is really A LOT involved in it. Pick up an introductory textbook in Semantics and Pragmatics (like Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet, Meaning and Grammar, 1990) and look through it to get an idea.
The short story is that a semantic representation for a sentence has to include tons of stuff that might not be present in the sentence itself. For a very simple example, the English sentence "I'm handsome" is lacking some information that its semantic representation should have; namely, whether the sentence should be intepreted as meaning "I'm handsome now" or as meaning "I'm always handsome". This can only be determined from context (what the hearer knows or can infer about the speaker). Yet if you cannot make a correct assumption as to which of these meanings to assign to particular utterance of this sentence, you cannot correctly translate it into Spanish. Because you have to choose between "Yo estoy guapo" and "Yo soy guapo". These sentences each correspond to one of the two possible meanings of "I'm old" mentioned above.
So what is that Meta-language, and can we figure out how to turn it into something that could be used as the universal language? Perhaps all communications should be translated into that on public channels.
Pure fiction. We simply don't know what a semantic representation looks like, but we do know that it is bound to be enormously complicated, too much for it to be useful (or for us to use it consciously with any significant skill, for that matter).
Don't pay any attention to "accuracy" (mis)claims from manufacturers about these "translators". Believe it, these things simply cannot be any good.
Natural language processing is not advanced enough to produce any kind of real-world acceptable translation. Especially when we are talking about realtime voice recognition + translation stuff.
BTW, I'm a linguistics grad student. Not that that makes me be right in anything I say above, but at least I'm not speaking out of gross ignorance.
I remember like a year and a half back, Rob used to post the URLs for polls that were being run, so/. readers could massively go and vote to turn them around.
I remember the funniest one ever: a poll asking "Do you think Web polls are vulnerable to robot vote attacks?" When I first saw it, the option "No" was winning by a good amount; when I checked back in half an hour, the results had been "retired because of a robot attack". Then I check/., and someone had posted a Perl script to get around the site's voter-tracking measure, and vote "Yes" repeatedly. Hehehe.
The concept of "Bad Gramar", like "Bad Spelling" is nothing more than a concept of fools who feel a need to have a rule for everything.
Not quite. "Good grammar" is actually a good thing when you have a language spoken by hundreds of millions of people all over the world. A good grammar for a language tries to pick out those modes of expression in a language which are as good as possible for you to convey your message to the widest possible audience.
IMHO As long as the point gets acrosss...then it is correct.
You are absolutely right on this. But this is supposed to be the point of grammar-- getting the point across, despite geographically or socially diferring uses of the same language. For example, about 400 million people speak Spanish all over the world. Every country has its own local dialect(s), but there is a general grammar that all the language academies in each Spanish-speaking country agree to. I can follow the recommendations of the Spanish Language Academy in writing stuff, and I don't really have to worry too much about it being understood in, say, Chile.
But I can see where you're coming from. I too really hate arrogant assholes who get a trip out of humiliating people for their grammar.
War is war isn't it. It is the killing of people or industries to make the other side bend under the pressure of your forces.
Actually, the use of indiscriminate military force against civillian targets (which your description seems to imply) is illegal in any country that has signed and ratified the Geneva convention, like the US has.
In other words, at the end of the day, "what the GPL does" is to grant an author the right to "control activities that mainly affect other people." In other words, even accepting RMS statements on their face, what GPL does is about power, and not freedom.
I figure that since proprietary software developers use copyright to stop us from sharing, we cooperators can use copyright to give other cooperators an advantage of their own: they can use our code.
The idea of copyleft is to use software copyrights, which RMS believes should no exist, both as a defensive measure against the efforts of free sowftare authors being exploited by non-cooperators, and to build a collaboratory community of people who create free software.
While it is true that copyleft is a form of copyright, and thus an use of power, this power is used as a means to abolish itself; it is a self-subverting use of power. The world the FSF wants us to live in is one in which this power does not exist. Since the GPL is a means to that end, and not an end in itself, it is about freedom, not power.
We are left with #1: Use GPL code in your app, and you MUST release your app under GPL, with all that entails.
Sigh. I must have said this like in 4 posts by now. Let me quote the GPL:
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.
Thus, option #4: Make sure your program can be used without linking to any GPL code ("not a derivative work" of GPL code). Then you can distribute versions not linked to any GPL code under any license you choose. Any version that links the GPL code will have to be distributed under GPL.
The Python interpreter, which is not GPL, has a compile-time option to build a binary linked to Readline, which is a GPLed library. Since this is an option, and Python itself can work without using Readline (i.e. it is an independent work), this does not affect the distribution of the Python source by itself, or binaries of that source that don't link any GPL code. However, if you compile a Python with Readline support, you can only give out that binary under the terms of the GPL.
Python itself has a quite liberal license; you can modify Python itself and make it proprietary. But however, you are prevented from simultaneously doing this and linking the proprietary binary to Readline.
You are free to use GPL code in other free software, be it GPL or non-GPL. What you are prevented from doing is releasing software that NEEDS third-party GPL code as non-GPL.
No dictionary is a definitive reference on the meaning of any word (well, almost any word). Dictionaries, after all, are quick reference books. They are meant to give you an idea of what some utterance by some source might mean, when you find an unreconizable word.
A dictionary definition of freedom will never tell you all there is to freedom. Who has used the term? What did they mean to use it? Have different people used it in different, or even uncompatible ways? (When a socialist and a libertarian say freedom, they definitely do no mean the same thing by using the same word.) How has its meaning changed across the years?
Since for a good deal many words different people use in different ways at different moments, and since no dictionary definition can be inmensely long, compiling a dictionary becomes much a work of choice and compromise.
Yes, I agree, developers using the GNU GPL are exercising power over users of their software.
Technically, you are right in this. However, there is a fundamental RMS point you are overlooking. He has explicitly said in the past that he does not believe anyone should have that power over software users, and that the GNU project uses it only to protect the rights he believes software users should have. That is, to protect those rights from the institutionalized power to deny them.
In a world where no one has power to make software proprietary, no need would exist for a copyleft.
So, if you use GPL code, the originator cannot make you release the result under the GPL. They can deny permission to release their own code then. Does this mean that when alls said and done, the GPL code must be removed before the program is released, or that that part of the code must be released?
If your work requires linkage to GPL code to work, then your work is a derivative work from that code, and if your release it, you must do so under GPL.
If your work does not require any GPL code to work, then it is a work independent from any GPL code. Even then, your program might be able to (optionally) make use of GPL code, if it's licensing terms are such that they are not incompatile with the GPL. That is, your program could then be linked with GPL code. You would have to distribute the combination under the terms of the GPL, but anything that does not require GPL may be distributed on its own without complying with these terms.
And there actually is some software like this. Case in point: the Python intepreter. Python has a very liberal license, which allows you to make proprietary modifications to it if you wish. Yet you can build Python with GNU Readline support if you so wish. What you can't do is make a proprietary version of Python linked to Readline. Any time you link Python to Readline, and distribute the resulting binary, you are bound by the GPL. Yet you can always distribute Python without Readline.
This seems to say that when using a large amount(how much?) of code you must either remove the GPL code(probably rendering the program useless) or release it GPL'd. This contradicts his claim that he cannot force you to use the GPL if he uses some GPL code in his own program.
Not true, since there is a third option: do not release. And a fourth option: do not use GPL code in your programs. You know, when you get a GPL program, you get the license terms along with it. You should read them and agree to abide by them before you use the code. (This is not to mean that you should not USE a GPL program unless you agree with the terms; the GPL explicitly states that there are no restrictions on merely running the program or its output, unless the output is a derivative work from the program. It means that you only are allowed to distribute GPL code if you abide by the terms of the GPL.)
Basing your work on GPL code is a voluntary act, so there is zero coercion involved here.
There are non-GPL programs that can use GPL libraries. The Python interpreter, and a Haskell interpreter called Hugs, may be built linked to Readline, which is GPL.
These programs are indisputably separate works from any GPL code, you can build them without any GNU code, so the GPL does not apply to them when they are distributed as separate works. It is only when someone compiles the software linked to the GPL library, AND distribute it herself, that she is bound to distribute the GPL-linked version under the terms of the GPL.
No, not argument from authority. You asked me for substantiation of my claims of quantitative models and I provided them. You are changing the question. Your original claim was:
there is no such thing as the real quantitative study of what actually happened
I provided direct evidence of such studies. Done by people who have a lot better empirical track record than do either astrologers or Marxist economicists.
But in fact there is no such thing as the real quantitative study of what actually happened!!!! Gee, if you are taking this as controversial, you need to do some studies in the philosophy of science.
As for "empirical track records", there is no such thing as independent empirical data, and specially not in economics. Data is not floating around people, just waiting for someone to catch it all; it is the result of hard work by people who have limited time, and must decide what kind of data is really important for some preconceived theory that they have.
So in science you really have to go after every single unstated assumption in your theories as agressively as you can, and see if they are reasonable assumptions, if they can be falsified, what are the objects that the theory attempts to explain, what properties of those objects are important for the theory (and which it overlooks, and whether this is acceptable), etc. And, when we're dealing with a science that deals with the relationships between people, you can't avoid the ethical implications of the theory.
I believe mainstream economics does not do a very good job looked in this light.
You have declined to provide any substantiation of your position. When I provide substantiation you change the question.
For which I apologize. I was trying to get across that I don't swallow your story, but for reasons of my workload, I really can't substantiate my skepticism and my claims in this forum today. Right now I'm too engrossed on nontransformational lexicalist approaches to the syntax of Spanish pronominal object clitics (ooh how exciting) to make anything more than very general remarks on what I percieve to be far-reaching inadequacies of mainstream economics.
What you mention is just having an independent local economy. That is precisely what countries/regions should have. And precisely what big corporations don't want for other countries-- if countries start being able to produce their own goods, it means one less market for the company. So if, say, Bolivia could subsidize farm production, they would stand a better chance of developing their own local, self-suffcient farming industry. But if they started doing such subsidies, their IMF aid would be cut off. Quite convienient for food producers who export to Bolivia.
Of course this, combined with further IMF conditions on being open to foreign imported goods, puts local farmers at a huge disadvantage. They have to compete with US food companies which receive government subsidies, one of the factors that contributes to their being able to outsell them. This way, the only profitable crops turn out to be marijuana and coca.
The argument can be extended to encompass the almost the whole of autonomous economic development of a society. For example, take high tech industry. Governments of industrialized countries invest heavily on doing research on cutting-edge science, which later turns up in consumer products. The net is a prime example. So governmental subsidies are an important factor in autonomous economic development; thus it is no surprise that "aid" programs for poor countries, like those of the IMF, try to curtail that, while rich countries get to do it.
Our government has been screwing around with other nations all the time. I agree that they should not be. And certainly if the US stopped propping up dictators and sticking its nose into every global conflict other nations would be better off. But I find it hard to believe that we are single-handedly responsible for poverty around the world. There are certainly some countries where we propped up corrupt regimes, but there are other nations where we haven't done anything particularly viscious and those nations are still poor.
You pass over one of the things I said, which I will put in bold-- that corrupt, oppressive dictatorships in third world countries are usually supported by first world governmental and private interests. Corporations also give decisive support.
You also pass over the motivation behind international intervention, and limit yourself to lamenting the US government "sticking its nose" into places it shouldn't. This fits completely well with a picture of the US randomly going around, propping up dictatorships for the fun of it. The truth is that where the US gives support, it is almost invariably in the interests of the "national interest" (read: US corporations), to create a "favorable invesment environment" (read: to crush laboral movements, restrictions on foreign investment, and environmental protection laws). These, of course, are what corporations like: countries where they may dump toxic wastes where poor people live, where union leaders get shot, and they can get out as much of what they produce as they can, investing as little as possible in the country.
As for the countries where the US "has not done anything particularly viscious", you are thinking only of extreme measures like death squads (which I might have overemphasized in my post, though). In fact, the measures that result in world-wide poverty are many and subtle; threats of intervention, IMF programs, threat of capital flight, the WTO, etc.
It is true that the US had high tarriffs. But I don't see how this lead to prosperity. Simple economics will tell you that free trade is a benefit to both countries involved. And one of the things that allowed the US to be successful is that within its borders was one of the largest free trade zones in the world.
Suppose the US had had no tariffs. Could its industry have developed like it did if it were cheaper to import English goods?
This is the case for many US industries. I don't remember which right now, but I know where to look it up.
Me: I can not keep a straight face at you calling enthusiastic US government and corporate support of third world death squads "helping the poor".
You:Please reread my sentence. I said "attempts" at helping the poor. I didn't say they actually helped, nor am I endorsing such.
Economicists have been studying the impact of capital flows of this nature for a long time, and have developed quite comprehensive quantitative models. If you want to examine some discussion of this, take a look at some course syllabi and accompanying references like: [link snipped]
And astrologists have been studying the nature of astral body movements for a long time, and have developed quite comprehensive quantitative models. Argument from authority.
Modern mainstream economics is full of unstated assumptions and value judgements that influence the analyses negatively. I'm sad I can't explain what I mean right now, because I'm very busy and have to get right back to the books:-(. So I won't be able to answer your challenge to substantiate my arguments.
You neglect to consider the transfer of wages and capital that would have gone to first world workers that now go to third world workers. Usually this far outweighs the profits of the multinational companies. Not to mention the the educational infrastructure investments that often accompany such investments. This is why governments of third world countries strive to attract foriegn investment. Investments of this nature have done a lot to improve the economies of developing nations.
The unstated assumption here is that these countries would be worse off in the long run if other countries didn't invest in them. Can you substantiate that?
What if the presence of very strong foreign investment makes a greater potential for local development undoable?
At the end of the day, should hundreds of folks live at (or below) subsistence level because their farming implements consist of a wooden stick and some muscle power?
Here we go again. Should organization like the IMF, with the backing of big corporations and the governments of the industrial nations, pressure third world countries into not helping out their farmers economically (i.e. giving them equipment and training so they don't have to rely merely on wooden sticks and muscle power)?
Nonsense. All econometric studies of this idea have failed miserably to show that anywhere close to enough wealth has been transferred from third world countries to account for first world economic growth.
This sounds funny. Every single econometric study says the very same thing?
Anyway, I'm not about to accept unsubstantiated claims from your part here.
This 'theory' is just of of many Marxist economic postulates that in fact have been totally discredited by real quantitative study of what actually happened.
My goodness. You can see it happening around you, yet you deny it. Go check, for any multinational corporation with factories in the third world, what are their expenditures in each third world country, how much they make out of selling the resultant products, and where does that money end up.
And, for gods sake, there is no such thing as the real quantitative study of what actually happened! This is true for any branch of human knowledge. You make assumptions about which data are relevant to what you wish to study, you gather that data using the methods you consider to be most reliable, and you interpret the data. If your assumptions are bad, your methods for collecting data are bad, and your interpretation is bad, you're going to get a bad result.
The simple fact of the matter is that there has NEVER been a single succesful implementation of Marxist economic theory. Nations that have tried it have ended up regressing economically, and in many cases have had large numbers of their citzens die of starvation.
The size of your paycheck is a reflection of your productivity as a worker, which is, after all, the purpose of going to work: to produce new values. Capitalism is geared toward maximization of profits, which means the maximization of production.
In 1979, I think it was, the average CEO of a US company made 30 times as much as the average worker. Nowadays, it is about 240 times. And workers' wages have stagnated in this 20 year period; they have not even kept up with inflation. Are we to conclude that CEOs are now 8 times as productive as they were in 1979, while workers are less productive?
The problem of poverty in the third world has little to do with Western greed. The primary problem in these countries is oppressive, corrupt, and bloated governments.
Aren't you talking about oppressive, corrupt, bloated governments diplomatically , economically and militarily supported by first-world governmental and private interests? You know, Colombian death squads' M16 rifles don't grow on plants. You know, those governments are not in power accidentally, they are in power because they receive decisive support from powerful first world interests. That's why you see the Indonesian militias with M16s, while the Timorese peasants are usually unarmed.
The US achieved its current prosperity during a period of real free-market capitalism in the last century.
False. The US (and England, and every industrial first world country) achieved its current prosperity by means of protectionist policies and economic colonialism. This is very well documented in US history; throughout the 19th century, the government would pass tariffs on goods that were produced outside the US cheaper, in order to protect the development of local production. Precisely this is one of the things the IMF denies third world countries which seek its assistance, BTW.
Economic growth is stifled in these nations because people do not have the freedom to take economic risks, and if they do succeed, that income is confiscated for the benefit of the rulers or the "people."
Actually, most of the wealth produced in third world countries is siphoned away by multinational corporations, not by the local governments.
Attempts by our government to help the poor in other countries have resulted in the money going to the government of those countries, and often propping up the corrupt regimes that caused the problem in the first place.
I can not keep a straight face at you calling enthusiastic US government and corporate support of third world death squads "helping the poor". The whole history of US intervention in the thirld world goes against the idea that the US tries to help people in other countries. For recent examples, take Guatemala, or El Salvador, or Nicaragua, where the US supported death squads in the 80s. All of this because the US seeks a "friendly foreign investment environment" (i.e. subsistence wages, no workers rights, no environmental protection laws, no tariffs on US imports, no restrictions on capital flight).
Immigrants tend to be very hard workers, and second or third generation immigrants are often members of the middle or upper class.
Hmmm. I live in Palo Alto, California. When I meet middle and high class people, they are almost invariably white.
You obviously don't get it. The US farmers are producing food (not necessarily good food, BTW) for cheap because they get financial assistance.
If the US can produce food cheap, because the government helps out producers, I'm fine with that. If just they didn't use their enormous power to coerce other countries into not doing the same...
Many third world countries suffer, not because of the lack of farming (they are lacking, but many countries suppliment their crops with food) but from inept and corrupt governments.
Inept and corrupt governments which more frequently than not receive diplomatic, economic and military backing from first world countries with economic interests in the country.
As for the "lack of farming": it is well known that International Monetary Fund Structural Adjustment Programs (which are a way for such countries to get economic help) tend to have a terrible effect on local agriculture. Governments accepting an IMF SAP are not allowed to subsidize farming, and cannot put significant tariffs on food imports. The result is that local farmers cannot compete with subsidized agricultural goods from other countries, like the US.
Imagine how much better life in third-world countries would be if just a fraction of the intelligence and energy that have gone into building the Internet had been applied to subsistance-level agriculture. Or if some of the high-ability, high-concept managers who have been drawn to Internet and computer businesses had gone into politics. I don't think there would be nearly as much hunger and misery in the world if so much talent hadn't been sucked into computers and the Internet.
Of course, this just assumes that life in third-world countries is bad supposedly because they haven't had enough help from the first world countries.
First of all, the wealth of the "first-world" nations is based on centuries of economic exploitation of the third world.
Second, you might be amazed at how much talent and dedication has gone from first world institutions into keeping the third world poor. (Think of the International Monetary Fund, if you want a contemporary example.)
And, for all the talent that was "sucked into the Internet". The Internet was developed as a military defensive system; the goal in its design was further strenghten the US industrio-military complex, so that the US can conduct its exploitative economic practices around the world.
I think you need to read more about the relation between the first world and the third world, Roblimo. This idea of "these poor starving people in third world countries, they need our help so they don't starve" is absolutely fscking misleading. It's more like, "these hard-working poor foreigners in third world countries, we need to stop from screwing them over at every chance."
Slashdot Mirror
The developmental model of contemporary Western society is simply not maintainable; it will fall apart.
---
---
Well, this is either trivially true or patently false, depending on what you meant with "language". If you mean something similar to a natural language (like Esperanto as you suggest below) then it is false. You know, parsing and interpreting a sentence in a natural language (a task that no one knows how to do as of now) is more than complicated enough of a task; if you have managed todo this, you obviously want to store the information in some "language" that's easy to decode.
Schematically, what a translator should do is parse natural language utterances, derive from them semantic representations, and then generate from those as semantically close as feasible utterances in the target language.
What a "semantic representation" should precisely look like no one knows; there is really A LOT involved in it. Pick up an introductory textbook in Semantics and Pragmatics (like Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet, Meaning and Grammar, 1990) and look through it to get an idea.
The short story is that a semantic representation for a sentence has to include tons of stuff that might not be present in the sentence itself. For a very simple example, the English sentence "I'm handsome" is lacking some information that its semantic representation should have; namely, whether the sentence should be intepreted as meaning "I'm handsome now" or as meaning "I'm always handsome". This can only be determined from context (what the hearer knows or can infer about the speaker). Yet if you cannot make a correct assumption as to which of these meanings to assign to particular utterance of this sentence, you cannot correctly translate it into Spanish. Because you have to choose between "Yo estoy guapo" and "Yo soy guapo". These sentences each correspond to one of the two possible meanings of "I'm old" mentioned above.
So what is that Meta-language, and can we figure out how to turn it into something that could be used as the universal language? Perhaps all communications should be translated into that on public channels.
Pure fiction. We simply don't know what a semantic representation looks like, but we do know that it is bound to be enormously complicated, too much for it to be useful (or for us to use it consciously with any significant skill, for that matter).
---
Natural language processing is not advanced enough to produce any kind of real-world acceptable translation. Especially when we are talking about realtime voice recognition + translation stuff.
BTW, I'm a linguistics grad student. Not that that makes me be right in anything I say above, but at least I'm not speaking out of gross ignorance.
---
I remember the funniest one ever: a poll asking "Do you think Web polls are vulnerable to robot vote attacks?" When I first saw it, the option "No" was winning by a good amount; when I checked back in half an hour, the results had been "retired because of a robot attack". Then I check /., and someone had posted a Perl script to get around the site's voter-tracking measure, and vote "Yes" repeatedly. Hehehe.
---
First of all, you don't give him weapons and cheer when he massacres Kurds, like the US did in the 80s.
---
The concept of "Bad Gramar", like "Bad Spelling" is nothing more than a concept of fools who feel a need to have a rule for everything.
Not quite. "Good grammar" is actually a good thing when you have a language spoken by hundreds of millions of people all over the world. A good grammar for a language tries to pick out those modes of expression in a language which are as good as possible for you to convey your message to the widest possible audience.
IMHO As long as the point gets acrosss...then it is correct.
You are absolutely right on this. But this is supposed to be the point of grammar-- getting the point across, despite geographically or socially diferring uses of the same language. For example, about 400 million people speak Spanish all over the world. Every country has its own local dialect(s), but there is a general grammar that all the language academies in each Spanish-speaking country agree to. I can follow the recommendations of the Spanish Language Academy in writing stuff, and I don't really have to worry too much about it being understood in, say, Chile.
But I can see where you're coming from. I too really hate arrogant assholes who get a trip out of humiliating people for their grammar.
---
Actually, the use of indiscriminate military force against civillian targets (which your description seems to imply) is illegal in any country that has signed and ratified the Geneva convention, like the US has.
---
You are ignoring the main idea behind the copyleft. From RMS's Pragmatic Idealism essay:
The idea of copyleft is to use software copyrights, which RMS believes should no exist, both as a defensive measure against the efforts of free sowftare authors being exploited by non-cooperators, and to build a collaboratory community of people who create free software.
While it is true that copyleft is a form of copyright, and thus an use of power, this power is used as a means to abolish itself; it is a self-subverting use of power. The world the FSF wants us to live in is one in which this power does not exist. Since the GPL is a means to that end, and not an end in itself, it is about freedom, not power.
---
Sigh. I must have said this like in 4 posts by now. Let me quote the GPL:
Thus, option #4: Make sure your program can be used without linking to any GPL code ("not a derivative work" of GPL code). Then you can distribute versions not linked to any GPL code under any license you choose. Any version that links the GPL code will have to be distributed under GPL.
The Python interpreter, which is not GPL, has a compile-time option to build a binary linked to Readline, which is a GPLed library. Since this is an option, and Python itself can work without using Readline (i.e. it is an independent work), this does not affect the distribution of the Python source by itself, or binaries of that source that don't link any GPL code. However, if you compile a Python with Readline support, you can only give out that binary under the terms of the GPL.
Python itself has a quite liberal license; you can modify Python itself and make it proprietary. But however, you are prevented from simultaneously doing this and linking the proprietary binary to Readline.
You are free to use GPL code in other free software, be it GPL or non-GPL. What you are prevented from doing is releasing software that NEEDS third-party GPL code as non-GPL.
---
A dictionary definition of freedom will never tell you all there is to freedom. Who has used the term? What did they mean to use it? Have different people used it in different, or even uncompatible ways? (When a socialist and a libertarian say freedom, they definitely do no mean the same thing by using the same word.) How has its meaning changed across the years?
Since for a good deal many words different people use in different ways at different moments, and since no dictionary definition can be inmensely long, compiling a dictionary becomes much a work of choice and compromise.
---
Technically, you are right in this. However, there is a fundamental RMS point you are overlooking. He has explicitly said in the past that he does not believe anyone should have that power over software users, and that the GNU project uses it only to protect the rights he believes software users should have. That is, to protect those rights from the institutionalized power to deny them.
In a world where no one has power to make software proprietary, no need would exist for a copyleft.
---
If your work requires linkage to GPL code to work, then your work is a derivative work from that code, and if your release it, you must do so under GPL.
If your work does not require any GPL code to work, then it is a work independent from any GPL code. Even then, your program might be able to (optionally) make use of GPL code, if it's licensing terms are such that they are not incompatile with the GPL. That is, your program could then be linked with GPL code. You would have to distribute the combination under the terms of the GPL, but anything that does not require GPL may be distributed on its own without complying with these terms.
And there actually is some software like this. Case in point: the Python intepreter. Python has a very liberal license, which allows you to make proprietary modifications to it if you wish. Yet you can build Python with GNU Readline support if you so wish. What you can't do is make a proprietary version of Python linked to Readline. Any time you link Python to Readline, and distribute the resulting binary, you are bound by the GPL. Yet you can always distribute Python without Readline.
This seems to say that when using a large amount(how much?) of code you must either remove the GPL code(probably rendering the program useless) or release it GPL'd. This contradicts his claim that he cannot force you to use the GPL if he uses some GPL code in his own program.
Not true, since there is a third option: do not release. And a fourth option: do not use GPL code in your programs. You know, when you get a GPL program, you get the license terms along with it. You should read them and agree to abide by them before you use the code. (This is not to mean that you should not USE a GPL program unless you agree with the terms; the GPL explicitly states that there are no restrictions on merely running the program or its output, unless the output is a derivative work from the program. It means that you only are allowed to distribute GPL code if you abide by the terms of the GPL.)
Basing your work on GPL code is a voluntary act, so there is zero coercion involved here.
---
These programs are indisputably separate works from any GPL code, you can build them without any GNU code, so the GPL does not apply to them when they are distributed as separate works. It is only when someone compiles the software linked to the GPL library, AND distribute it herself, that she is bound to distribute the GPL-linked version under the terms of the GPL.
---
there is no such thing as the real quantitative study of what actually happened
I provided direct evidence of such studies. Done by people who have a lot better empirical track record than do either astrologers or Marxist economicists.
But in fact there is no such thing as the real quantitative study of what actually happened!!!! Gee, if you are taking this as controversial, you need to do some studies in the philosophy of science.
As for "empirical track records", there is no such thing as independent empirical data, and specially not in economics. Data is not floating around people, just waiting for someone to catch it all; it is the result of hard work by people who have limited time, and must decide what kind of data is really important for some preconceived theory that they have.
So in science you really have to go after every single unstated assumption in your theories as agressively as you can, and see if they are reasonable assumptions, if they can be falsified, what are the objects that the theory attempts to explain, what properties of those objects are important for the theory (and which it overlooks, and whether this is acceptable), etc. And, when we're dealing with a science that deals with the relationships between people, you can't avoid the ethical implications of the theory.
I believe mainstream economics does not do a very good job looked in this light.
You have declined to provide any substantiation of your position. When I provide substantiation you change the question.
For which I apologize. I was trying to get across that I don't swallow your story, but for reasons of my workload, I really can't substantiate my skepticism and my claims in this forum today. Right now I'm too engrossed on nontransformational lexicalist approaches to the syntax of Spanish pronominal object clitics (ooh how exciting) to make anything more than very general remarks on what I percieve to be far-reaching inadequacies of mainstream economics.
---
Of course this, combined with further IMF conditions on being open to foreign imported goods, puts local farmers at a huge disadvantage. They have to compete with US food companies which receive government subsidies, one of the factors that contributes to their being able to outsell them. This way, the only profitable crops turn out to be marijuana and coca.
The argument can be extended to encompass the almost the whole of autonomous economic development of a society. For example, take high tech industry. Governments of industrialized countries invest heavily on doing research on cutting-edge science, which later turns up in consumer products. The net is a prime example. So governmental subsidies are an important factor in autonomous economic development; thus it is no surprise that "aid" programs for poor countries, like those of the IMF, try to curtail that, while rich countries get to do it.
---
Our government has been screwing around with other nations all the time. I agree that they should not be. And certainly if the US stopped propping up dictators and sticking its nose into every global conflict other nations would be better off. But I find it hard to believe that we are single-handedly responsible for poverty around the world. There are certainly some countries where we propped up corrupt regimes, but there are other nations where we haven't done anything particularly viscious and those nations are still poor.
You pass over one of the things I said, which I will put in bold-- that corrupt, oppressive dictatorships in third world countries are usually supported by first world governmental and private interests. Corporations also give decisive support.
You also pass over the motivation behind international intervention, and limit yourself to lamenting the US government "sticking its nose" into places it shouldn't. This fits completely well with a picture of the US randomly going around, propping up dictatorships for the fun of it. The truth is that where the US gives support, it is almost invariably in the interests of the "national interest" (read: US corporations), to create a "favorable invesment environment" (read: to crush laboral movements, restrictions on foreign investment, and environmental protection laws). These, of course, are what corporations like: countries where they may dump toxic wastes where poor people live, where union leaders get shot, and they can get out as much of what they produce as they can, investing as little as possible in the country.
As for the countries where the US "has not done anything particularly viscious", you are thinking only of extreme measures like death squads (which I might have overemphasized in my post, though). In fact, the measures that result in world-wide poverty are many and subtle; threats of intervention, IMF programs, threat of capital flight, the WTO, etc.
It is true that the US had high tarriffs. But I don't see how this lead to prosperity. Simple economics will tell you that free trade is a benefit to both countries involved. And one of the things that allowed the US to be successful is that within its borders was one of the largest free trade zones in the world.
Suppose the US had had no tariffs. Could its industry have developed like it did if it were cheaper to import English goods?
This is the case for many US industries. I don't remember which right now, but I know where to look it up.
Me: I can not keep a straight face at you calling enthusiastic US government and corporate support of third world death squads "helping the poor".
You:Please reread my sentence. I said "attempts" at helping the poor. I didn't say they actually helped, nor am I endorsing such.
Minor point. I still can't keep my face straight.
---
And astrologists have been studying the nature of astral body movements for a long time, and have developed quite comprehensive quantitative models. Argument from authority.
Modern mainstream economics is full of unstated assumptions and value judgements that influence the analyses negatively. I'm sad I can't explain what I mean right now, because I'm very busy and have to get right back to the books :-(. So I won't be able to answer your challenge to substantiate my arguments.
You neglect to consider the transfer of wages and capital that would have gone to first world workers that now go to third world workers. Usually this far outweighs the profits of the multinational companies. Not to mention the the educational infrastructure investments that often accompany such investments. This is why governments of third world countries strive to attract foriegn investment. Investments of this nature have done a lot to improve the economies of developing nations.
The unstated assumption here is that these countries would be worse off in the long run if other countries didn't invest in them. Can you substantiate that?
What if the presence of very strong foreign investment makes a greater potential for local development undoable?
---
---
Here we go again. Should organization like the IMF, with the backing of big corporations and the governments of the industrial nations, pressure third world countries into not helping out their farmers economically (i.e. giving them equipment and training so they don't have to rely merely on wooden sticks and muscle power)?
---
This sounds funny. Every single econometric study says the very same thing?
Anyway, I'm not about to accept unsubstantiated claims from your part here.
This 'theory' is just of of many Marxist economic postulates that in fact have been totally discredited by real quantitative study of what actually happened.
My goodness. You can see it happening around you, yet you deny it. Go check, for any multinational corporation with factories in the third world, what are their expenditures in each third world country, how much they make out of selling the resultant products, and where does that money end up.
And, for gods sake, there is no such thing as the real quantitative study of what actually happened! This is true for any branch of human knowledge. You make assumptions about which data are relevant to what you wish to study, you gather that data using the methods you consider to be most reliable, and you interpret the data. If your assumptions are bad, your methods for collecting data are bad, and your interpretation is bad, you're going to get a bad result.
The simple fact of the matter is that there has NEVER been a single succesful implementation of Marxist economic theory. Nations that have tried it have ended up regressing economically, and in many cases have had large numbers of their citzens die of starvation.
Marxism is discredited and dead. Long may it rot.
And why do you drag Marxism into this, anyway?
---
In 1979, I think it was, the average CEO of a US company made 30 times as much as the average worker. Nowadays, it is about 240 times. And workers' wages have stagnated in this 20 year period; they have not even kept up with inflation. Are we to conclude that CEOs are now 8 times as productive as they were in 1979, while workers are less productive?
The problem of poverty in the third world has little to do with Western greed. The primary problem in these countries is oppressive, corrupt, and bloated governments.
Aren't you talking about oppressive, corrupt, bloated governments diplomatically , economically and militarily supported by first-world governmental and private interests? You know, Colombian death squads' M16 rifles don't grow on plants. You know, those governments are not in power accidentally, they are in power because they receive decisive support from powerful first world interests. That's why you see the Indonesian militias with M16s, while the Timorese peasants are usually unarmed.
The US achieved its current prosperity during a period of real free-market capitalism in the last century.
False. The US (and England, and every industrial first world country) achieved its current prosperity by means of protectionist policies and economic colonialism. This is very well documented in US history; throughout the 19th century, the government would pass tariffs on goods that were produced outside the US cheaper, in order to protect the development of local production. Precisely this is one of the things the IMF denies third world countries which seek its assistance, BTW.
Economic growth is stifled in these nations because people do not have the freedom to take economic risks, and if they do succeed, that income is confiscated for the benefit of the rulers or the "people."
Actually, most of the wealth produced in third world countries is siphoned away by multinational corporations, not by the local governments.
Attempts by our government to help the poor in other countries have resulted in the money going to the government of those countries, and often propping up the corrupt regimes that caused the problem in the first place.
I can not keep a straight face at you calling enthusiastic US government and corporate support of third world death squads "helping the poor". The whole history of US intervention in the thirld world goes against the idea that the US tries to help people in other countries. For recent examples, take Guatemala, or El Salvador, or Nicaragua, where the US supported death squads in the 80s. All of this because the US seeks a "friendly foreign investment environment" (i.e. subsistence wages, no workers rights, no environmental protection laws, no tariffs on US imports, no restrictions on capital flight).
Immigrants tend to be very hard workers, and second or third generation immigrants are often members of the middle or upper class.
Hmmm. I live in Palo Alto, California. When I meet middle and high class people, they are almost invariably white.
---
If the US can produce food cheap, because the government helps out producers, I'm fine with that. If just they didn't use their enormous power to coerce other countries into not doing the same...
---
Inept and corrupt governments which more frequently than not receive diplomatic, economic and military backing from first world countries with economic interests in the country.
As for the "lack of farming": it is well known that International Monetary Fund Structural Adjustment Programs (which are a way for such countries to get economic help) tend to have a terrible effect on local agriculture. Governments accepting an IMF SAP are not allowed to subsidize farming, and cannot put significant tariffs on food imports. The result is that local farmers cannot compete with subsidized agricultural goods from other countries, like the US.
---
Of course, this just assumes that life in third-world countries is bad supposedly because they haven't had enough help from the first world countries.
First of all, the wealth of the "first-world" nations is based on centuries of economic exploitation of the third world.
Second, you might be amazed at how much talent and dedication has gone from first world institutions into keeping the third world poor. (Think of the International Monetary Fund, if you want a contemporary example.)
And, for all the talent that was "sucked into the Internet". The Internet was developed as a military defensive system; the goal in its design was further strenghten the US industrio-military complex, so that the US can conduct its exploitative economic practices around the world.
I think you need to read more about the relation between the first world and the third world, Roblimo. This idea of "these poor starving people in third world countries, they need our help so they don't starve" is absolutely fscking misleading. It's more like, "these hard-working poor foreigners in third world countries, we need to stop from screwing them over at every chance."
---