RMS's key point is the sentence: "The fact is, I'm more interested in defending your freedom and mine than in how software entrepreneurs feel." Any BSD/GPL flame war will eventually boil down to this.
I though the article was very well written; he didn't take any personal shots at Stig (the author of the previous article). But note the cheap shot at the end of the article: calling ESR's vision "almost Marxian"! Interesting to see RMS sound almost libertarian there at the end while calling ESR a Marxist!
The LSM database lists the primary, or sometimes original developers of a project. When you take into account that most patches come from an even broader range of people, the point of the article becomes even stronger. Namely, contributers to free software are not generally a bunch of hippie freaks... even though a couple of the most visible contributors clearly are!
I have heard unsubstantiated rumors that Dimension films will also release a subtitled version, although only on video. They did this for Kiki's Delivery Service (majo no takkyubin) also. This would us hard core fans happy without having to buy the Japanese LD for over $100 (although I guess a true otaku would do that). Anyone with more substantial info, please post a link!
More info on the film, including an interview with Neil Gaiman, can be found here.
As long as the FCC exists, phone companies will continue to lobby for handouts... it's their version of $$$MAKE MONEY FAST$$$ (another notorious pre-web chain letter).
As others have pointed out, these fees are banned until 2001; unless there's a reason to expect this ban to be lifted at that time, this simply gives people something to panic about after Y2K.
You're not thinking ahead; after Linux hits 80% market share in 2001, how do we stop it? A few more doublings later, and by 2010 every man, woman, and child on Earth will have no time for anything other than administering their Linux machines. The human race will become nothing more than batteries!
So, why does my bank charge $10 for a wire transfer and $5/mo for bill payment? I can do ACH transactions for free if I initiate them from the company I'm paying, but for bill payment I prefer the "push" approach so I can check the amount of the bill. Instead of paying these fees, I waste the bank's time and money with my unlimited free checks.
Sorry this is off topic, but I'm very interested in the perspective of somebody clueful within the banking industry.
I notice it's tested on "just a few spoken words". Even though researchers claim better performance than current systems on this small test set, I'd like to see how well it scales. Training a net with 11 neurons and 30 connections could be done using a lot of algorithms; some do not scale well at all to larger networks.
I'm more concerned that USC is trying to patent the "system and the architectural concepts on which it is based". As a computational biologist who uses neural nets in my work, I rely on the AI community to develop the underlying algorithms. If they get a patent on the algorithm and not just their hardware, that would severely limit the use of this breakthrough in other scientific areas.
I find the excuse that "one team was doing calculations in English units" hard to believe. When do scientists ever do calculations in anything other than metric? I still remember terms like 9.8 m/s^2 from my physics classes; there aren't too many physics textbooks around that still list constants in anything but metric.
"OK, we'll give you the $10 million. Where do you want that sent?"
It seems much more likely that authorities could trace a single such (planned) transaction (even if it goes through an online Swiss bank or something) than if J. Random Cracker just transferred the $10 million to his account without the bank's knowledge. So, why would J. even demand a payoff at all unless he's bluffing or too stupid to realize he's increasing the chances of being caught?
Since a gene is just a blueprint for a nanotech machine (a protein), if you believe patents should be allowed at all (which is another issue) you should allow people to patent genes.
Like most of you, I think that patenting a naturally occuring gene that you sequence out of some organism (including humans) should not be allowed. The issue gets tricky when you talk about mutations. If I work for a detergent company and make a few base changes in a lysozyme gene so that the protein gets grass stains out of clothes better, should I be able to patent that? There are billions of creatures out there making lysozyme; how do I know that at least ONE of them isn't making the same sequence I've created? Remember, even when the human gene project (along with genomic sequences of other organisms) is complete, each will still be the sequence of one individual... meaning we'll only have one or two sequences for each gene which may have hundreds of commonly occuring phenotypes (i.e. the genes which determine whether you have blue or brown eyes, or your blood type) within a species.
We are still quite a ways from being able to create protein machines "from scratch" without a naturally occuring protein to use as a starting model. Even the latest domain swap experiments are as crude as welding a radio transmitter to a bowling ball so you can track where the bowling ball goes after it hits the pins. Whether domain swaps are sufficiently novel to patent is another issue... they're certainly very unlikely to occur naturally.
This compromise between big computer companies and the government is fine for the companies... submitting to a code review and paying a one time fee in the tens of thousands of dollars is nothing compared to the hassle they go through now of maintaining separate domestic and exported versions. However, free software is usually continuously developed rather than being released in incremental versions, so each patch checked in would probably require a new code review. Also, free software developers (even if backed by RedHat) are rarely going to come up with that kind of money even once, much less if the fee was required every time a new version is released.
As the author said, the fight for looser encryption regulation is currently being led (and funded) by the commercial software industry lobby. If these guys become satisfied and drop out, there's no hope of ever getting US developers to be able to participate in GPG or other free encryption development projects.
Make your contribution to Civilization! No, not all civilization, but rather you have the chance to take part in our Freeciv Hack 2000 contest to improve Freeciv. Recent improvements include more races and nations, city build lists, and the addition of more CivII rules (paratroopers, more terrain specials). Other improvements such as GUILE scripting, improved AI, hex maps, and stacked combat are being developed. (Read our mailing list archives for more info.)
What is Freeciv Hack 2000? It's a special contest in cooperation with an international term of developers, where you can show off your Linux (and BSD, commercial Unix, BeOS, Java, even Windows) hacking skills to everybody...and win prizes to boot! First prize is the ego gratification of getting your name in the PEOPLE file.
Here's how it works: download the source from ftp.freeciv.org and get to hacking. Everybody with a C compiler will be chosen. If you're chosen, you can show up to our hackfest, which will conveniently be held on your own computer!
Any and all changes and improvements worthy of improving Freeciv (and, by extension, civilization as a whole) will be included in the CVS snapshots and new public releases starting with 1.8.2. So what are you waiting on? Download the source and get hacking!
JMC
Stephenson in Internet Top 100 List
on
The Diamond Age
·
· Score: 1
According to the Internet Top 100 SF/Fantasy List, Diamond Age is #37 (right below the underrated but really excellent Best of Cordwainer Smith collection). Snow Crash comes in at #47, having recently passed the also excellent Feersum Endjinn. Cryptonomicon has not yet appeared on the list.
The relative ranking of Diamond Age and Snow Crash pretty much agrees with my opinon. Diamond Age had very well developed characters and plot; Snow Crash was a bit cheezier. I'm still waiting my turn to get Cryptonomicon out of the local library, so I have no opinion on this yet.
SF/Fantasy fans should check this list out; there are a few gems (like Cordwainer Smith) that are rarely heard of.
My PhD thesis was mostly about using neural networks to predict protein secondary structure. Neural networks are currently the most accurate method for predicting what parts of a protein (that you know nothing much about besides the sequence) will fold into various local structures. No, you can't currently apply this to nanotechnology.
I want free T-shirts, beer mugs, and stuffed penguins. I want a connection to check my email. I want a free (or up to $10) exhibits-only pass. I want to hang around the FSF booth listening to RMS tell reporters to say GNU/Linux, and playing with the latest versions of GNOME and Enlightenment. I want to go by the/. booth and annoy Rob and Hemos. I want a speech by Linus which is fiery, but dignified; elegant, but strong.
I want it all back the way it once was... at the March Linux World in San Jose.
The problem with giving high-karma people more moderation power is that, even though they can't moderate up their own comments, they can selectively moderate up comments of their friends or those they agree with. This, in turn, increases their friends' moderation power, which will end up giving them more karma, etc.
You make an example of a bad (GNOME-bigot) moderator moderating down 5 KDE-related posts. I think it's more likely (and I've seen on slashdot many times) that the moderator will moderate up 5 rather uninspiring or moderately interesting GNOME-related posts, and ignore more insightful KDE-related ones. I metamoderate and think "well, that wasn't THAT insightful. But I can't really say it was unfair either."
Personally, I don't see that as an easily solvable problem; you can't metamoderate taste in what people find interesting or funny. No matter how you randomly choose people, you will probably always end up getting the same ratio of, say, pro-GPL to anti-GPL moderators (whatever the ratio is in the/. reading community). But it would make matters worse if more prevalent views (and thus, higher karma) could feedback into more moderating power.
Oh, and I'd like to point out that I like your idea of metamoderating in the context of an article. If it wouldn't slow things down too much!
I assume they are using GNU libc as the C library for their compiler.
I believe libio was written under the GPL (with the exception you mentioned) specifically so that authors of proprietary compilers (such as Compaq) would not be able to use their work without giving something back to the free software community. Thus, Compaq will have to rewrite libio for themselves. If Per is wasting his time on./ instead of writing us some more free code, perhaps he would like to comment?
I personally would have worded the exception "... with a GPL'ed compiler" in order to encourage Compaq to consider releasing their compiler under the GPL; the wording "GNU compiler" is ambiguous and implies (to me) only GCC/EGCS. For that matter, it seems as if Compaq could call their compiler a "GNU compiler" (without GPL'ing it) since the definition of this is fairly ambiguous.
Anyway, this is not the forum for another GPL flame war. But I'm sure the author's intent in this case was not to try to trick people into GPL'ing their software, but rather to prevent proprietary compiler companies from "stealing" his work.
Slashdot Mirror
JMC
I though the article was very well written; he didn't take any personal shots at Stig (the author of the previous article). But note the cheap shot at the end of the article: calling ESR's vision "almost Marxian"! Interesting to see RMS sound almost libertarian there at the end while calling ESR a Marxist!
JMC
JMC
JMC "hippie freak in training"
More info on the film, including an interview with Neil Gaiman, can be found here.
JMC
There's a Christian HURD? Are the developers collaborating with the Jesux freaks?
As others have pointed out, these fees are banned until 2001; unless there's a reason to expect this ban to be lifted at that time, this simply gives people something to panic about after Y2K.
JMC
JMC
Sorry this is off topic, but I'm very interested in the perspective of somebody clueful within the banking industry.
JMC
JMC
I'm more concerned that USC is trying to patent the "system and the architectural concepts on which it is based". As a computational biologist who uses neural nets in my work, I rely on the AI community to develop the underlying algorithms. If they get a patent on the algorithm and not just their hardware, that would severely limit the use of this breakthrough in other scientific areas.
JMC
JMC
I could compile everything from source, but I have a slow connection and don't feel like downloading it.
Thanks,
JMC
It seems much more likely that authorities could trace a single such (planned) transaction (even if it goes through an online Swiss bank or something) than if J. Random Cracker just transferred the $10 million to his account without the bank's knowledge. So, why would J. even demand a payoff at all unless he's bluffing or too stupid to realize he's increasing the chances of being caught?
From looking at my slashdot profile, it appears I'm a geek obsessed with GPL or biology related news. Wouldn't want that to become public knowledge...
At least I can always become an AC if I want to talk about embarrassing topics like IPv6.
Like most of you, I think that patenting a naturally occuring gene that you sequence out of some organism (including humans) should not be allowed. The issue gets tricky when you talk about mutations. If I work for a detergent company and make a few base changes in a lysozyme gene so that the protein gets grass stains out of clothes better, should I be able to patent that? There are billions of creatures out there making lysozyme; how do I know that at least ONE of them isn't making the same sequence I've created? Remember, even when the human gene project (along with genomic sequences of other organisms) is complete, each will still be the sequence of one individual... meaning we'll only have one or two sequences for each gene which may have hundreds of commonly occuring phenotypes (i.e. the genes which determine whether you have blue or brown eyes, or your blood type) within a species.
We are still quite a ways from being able to create protein machines "from scratch" without a naturally occuring protein to use as a starting model. Even the latest domain swap experiments are as crude as welding a radio transmitter to a bowling ball so you can track where the bowling ball goes after it hits the pins. Whether domain swaps are sufficiently novel to patent is another issue... they're certainly very unlikely to occur naturally.
JMC
As the author said, the fight for looser encryption regulation is currently being led (and funded) by the commercial software industry lobby. If these guys become satisfied and drop out, there's no hope of ever getting US developers to be able to participate in GPG or other free encryption development projects.
JMC
Make your contribution to Civilization! No, not all civilization, but rather you have the chance to take part in our Freeciv Hack 2000 contest to improve Freeciv. Recent improvements include more races and nations, city build lists, and the addition of more CivII rules (paratroopers, more terrain specials). Other improvements such as GUILE scripting, improved AI, hex maps, and stacked combat are being developed. (Read our mailing list archives for more info.)
What is Freeciv Hack 2000? It's a special contest in cooperation with an international term of developers, where you can show off your Linux (and BSD, commercial Unix, BeOS, Java, even Windows) hacking skills to everybody...and win prizes to boot! First prize is the ego gratification of getting your name in the PEOPLE file.
Here's how it works: download the source from ftp.freeciv.org and get to hacking. Everybody with a C compiler will be chosen. If you're chosen, you can show up to our hackfest, which will conveniently be held on your own computer!
Any and all changes and improvements worthy of improving Freeciv (and, by extension, civilization as a whole) will be included in the CVS snapshots and new public releases starting with 1.8.2. So what are you waiting on? Download the source and get hacking!
JMC
The relative ranking of Diamond Age and Snow Crash pretty much agrees with my opinon. Diamond Age had very well developed characters and plot; Snow Crash was a bit cheezier. I'm still waiting my turn to get Cryptonomicon out of the local library, so I have no opinion on this yet.
SF/Fantasy fans should check this list out; there are a few gems (like Cordwainer Smith) that are rarely heard of.
JMC
More info is available at my server... Go ahead and slashdot me!
JMC
I'll tell you what I want, Mister Taco.
I want free T-shirts, beer mugs, and stuffed penguins. I want a connection to check my email. I want a free (or up to $10) exhibits-only pass. I want to hang around the FSF booth listening to RMS tell reporters to say GNU/Linux, and playing with the latest versions of GNOME and Enlightenment. I want to go by the /. booth and annoy Rob and Hemos. I want a speech by Linus which is fiery, but dignified; elegant, but strong.
I want it all back the way it once was... at the March Linux World in San Jose.
You make an example of a bad (GNOME-bigot) moderator moderating down 5 KDE-related posts. I think it's more likely (and I've seen on slashdot many times) that the moderator will moderate up 5 rather uninspiring or moderately interesting GNOME-related posts, and ignore more insightful KDE-related ones. I metamoderate and think "well, that wasn't THAT insightful. But I can't really say it was unfair either."
Personally, I don't see that as an easily solvable problem; you can't metamoderate taste in what people find interesting or funny. No matter how you randomly choose people, you will probably always end up getting the same ratio of, say, pro-GPL to anti-GPL moderators (whatever the ratio is in the /. reading community). But it would make matters worse if more prevalent views (and thus, higher karma) could feedback into more moderating power.
Oh, and I'd like to point out that I like your idea of metamoderating in the context of an article. If it wouldn't slow things down too much!
JMC
It would have been much more 31337 if the guy had realized his original goal of creating the first online server inside somebody's ass.
I believe libio was written under the GPL (with the exception you mentioned) specifically so that authors of proprietary compilers (such as Compaq) would not be able to use their work without giving something back to the free software community. Thus, Compaq will have to rewrite libio for themselves. If Per is wasting his time on ./ instead of writing us some more free code, perhaps he would like to comment?
I personally would have worded the exception "... with a GPL'ed compiler" in order to encourage Compaq to consider releasing their compiler under the GPL; the wording "GNU compiler" is ambiguous and implies (to me) only GCC/EGCS. For that matter, it seems as if Compaq could call their compiler a "GNU compiler" (without GPL'ing it) since the definition of this is fairly ambiguous.
Anyway, this is not the forum for another GPL flame war. But I'm sure the author's intent in this case was not to try to trick people into GPL'ing their software, but rather to prevent proprietary compiler companies from "stealing" his work.
JMC