Unless you own the company, let them make their mistakes. Put in your advice, and if they take it and benefit, so be it, but otherwise, you can - and under certain circumstances should - move on at their loss. It's not your company to run, and if the company fails, it's not your fault. Constructively critise, but don't undermine the managers opinions.
Don't blame the mangers, either - someone put them there, and I have seen poor management come from resentment towards techies as much as incompetence. They are people, get to know them, and you may find that they agree with you in assessing their own shortcomings. From that admission you have options - management need not imply dictation.
Do your personal due diligence, but if the owners don't ask for your help, don't go out of your way to offer it. Save your energy for bigger stakes, IMHO. ("Owners" is vague, I know, but this is slashdot, and I'm being sweepingly vague;) )
This will be a case of GPL versus Patent law, then. Certainly the patenting and prohibition of distribution and use of SELinux is contrary to the necessity of redistribution and free use stipulated in (and forced adherence to) the GPL.
How does the GPL interact with patents? GPL is a copyright (copyleft) law, whereas patents are an exclusive monopoly. How does one separate them?
Certainly, given the code, we (by "we", I mean "you" the kernel hacker... heh) could remove all references to this type checking, or better still, extend it into a derivative patent. The power of the GPL, even should it prove impotent in protecting us against unwanted patent license remuneration, still gives us the power to remove that Patented material and continue in our merry way.
You make good points. I followed "valuable" by "invaluable" perhaps more for assonance than semantics.
Neil Stephenson makes good light of your first point in Cryptonomicon (ie. detachment 2703+1), and certainly your second is adamantly indicated by Sun Tzu's fundamentals. Who am I to disagree?;)
However, I would hazard that one could permit the definition of invaluable (valuable beyond estimation) for Enigma insofar as it provided options to the Allies that would not have otherwise been available. I am not qualified to answer that authoritatively, but certainly Stephenson's fictional history indicates this to be permissible, if not appropriate.
Give a man a fish and tomorrow and he will be hungry the day after. Teach a man to fish, and he will subsist. Certainly, algorithms then are the most valuable. Take DeCSS - how many bytes was that down to? Look at it's financial, freedom, and legal implications.
Even more importantly - look at WWII German Enigma codes - the decoding of any one single message was certainly valuable, but understanding how to decode it was invaluable. Like life - power is knowledge, and understanding is inferring knowledge where before there was none (read: understanding creates power).
The state has the right of force of law, the only acceptable form of violent force. Hence, force as applied by the state, defines all rights of itself and citizens. As such, their right to punish is a direct consequence of their monopoly on force (of law) and the inability to oppose said force (short of riots).
Nuclear radiation or spent rods? The prior isn't an relative issue since coal plants release exponential magnitudes more radioactive material than nuclear power plants. The latter is a strange issue; the "spent" rods are actually have more potential energy than the new, or pure uranium rods.
There are many atomic derivatives of uranium fission, not the least of which is plutonium. It is very possible, indeed much easier, to reach critical mass with spent rods than pure uranium rods. (technically, all you have to do is smash them together). You can put a pure uranium rod into a pool, and nothing happens, but if you put spent rods in the pool it glows blue/green (ala Cocoon, the movie) for a day or so. (YMMV)
The point would be that there is a harvestable energy source in "spent" rods, that can be remanufactured. Thermodynamics of course comes into play, and there are stil residuals, but nevertheless, the waste from one nuclear chamber is potential fuel for another. There are marginal returns in many cases, nevertheless the eventual breakdown leads to non-radioactive materials.
I only know this because I worked at a nuclear power plant; this is what I soaked up.;)
Less a result of object oriented programming, I would hazard, and more component oriented API. MS COM objects, though hellish beasts of complexity themselves, mitigate and abstract user application complexity. The COM model is in mild competition with the markup model of XUL and XPCOM seen in Mozilla/Netscape, which makes for an interseting debacle, philosophically if not just technically.
Re:One thing I've NEVER seen here....
on
Fair IP Laws?
·
· Score: 2
As was mentioned by the sibling post, and I will reiterate: it costs money to get patents; not only a barrier to entry, money is not in the objective schema of free software and open innovation.
Your description is of a good idea, both RMS and ESR have at least idenified the "free software patent pool" as leverage against corporate patents. Indeed, former IBM CEO Lou Gerstner stated that patents were not nearly as valuable in remuneration as they were for cross-patent leverage.
So, yes, this is theoretically a good idea. But it really adds nothing to the free software arena other than protection against hostile corporate self-interests. Indeed, it takes away from the time, money, and effort that developers want to put into creativity and puts it into mindless and valueless litigation. Patents kill creativity; in no space is this more apparent than free software.
Also, re. your MS PR hit example, keep in mind: Microsoft has a monopoly - they have no concern for public opinion. Everything is an advertisement to them.
Cheers
Re:One thing I've NEVER seen here....
on
Fair IP Laws?
·
· Score: 2
For what reason are patents protected by force of law?
- Preserve intellectual property. For open/free software, the preservation of intellectual property is a derivative of its use, a consequence of its distribution, so patents hold no value here.
- Promote innovation. Software, like many industries (ie. the chemical one listed here), is a hunting ground for barrier-to-entry patents. It is a particularly good hunting ground given the general ignorance surrounding computers (see the 'obviousness' comments above; one click patents, gif compression, etc).
- Remunerate effort. This undermines, nay: attacks, the community, as a whole and in parts, that free software develops in. We barter in time and code. Money screws with our system; it does not belong; it taints the incentives, the personal motivation.
- Establish credentials. Free software has its own credentials - we review and are reviewed by our peers. A more accurate, precise, and diligent method than unqualified 9-5 patent clerks.
- Distributes ideas. The internet does that for us.
...
Why would we want software to have patents in the free software world? How do they add value? Why should they be protected by the force of law?
This is one sided - from the spirit of my interpretation of RMS. Perhaps patents can have a valuable place in software, but they certainly do not seem to belong in open software.
Depleting their common share securities collateral, not their non-liquid capital. They no doubt have fixed income securities abound, meaning that they still have enormous collateral to leverage AAA+ loan rates against. Not to mention monopoly revenue and offensive profit margins.
Could someone explain to me how it is possible that Episode I, which turned so many people off to Star Wars, grossed less than its successor? If you didn't see Episode I, what are the odds that you would see Episode II?
I know that our theatre, in the interim, had a $2 hike in prices. I wonder if it is related to the monotonic increasing revenues.
Anyone else find it odd that Episode II garnered more money than Episode I, though?
In a way, the success of this plea would endanger the fight against DMCA et al., by providing enough fair use to make the law as a whole acceptable to this company, other companies, and perhaps even many consumers. If this agreement is unilaterally struck down, then there is another entity out there who wills the end of the DMCA content control.
Indeed, winning this court case may be a tool to fight for fair use in a world of DMCA, but in the overall war we will sacrifice a valuable ally in the fight for a world without DMCA.
I would rather a post DMCA era, where freedom is presumed until proven a crime, rather than feel the need to prove my freedom for actions of thought and speech now considered criminal.
Economists will cringe at my assumptions, but let's briefly investigate the $1 million mark as above the 5% rule...
95% of the US GDP of 1.8 trillion is $9.3 quints in 1999, spread among 5% of the US population, or 12.5 million people, is a harmonized $744 million each.
So assume a deviation of say 20%, which is high, most of these people still have over $500 US million. The millionaire is hardly a contender in this 5% of wealth owners, and in fact probably falls close to the 90th percentile, a far cry from the 95th percentile.
Plus, presume the legal autonomity at this level of chargen wealth, as you can begin purchasing laws in 3rd world countries and the United States, and as such inheritance laws are defunct, as are capital gains taxes and provisions can be fabricated for income, inheritance, gains, interest and property tax shelters.
The sum of wealth in a society is proportional to the productivity of its citizens and is not constant.
I assume then that in the context of your argument monetary measurement and wealth measurement for a state are different and incompatible? Axiomize that 95% of the monetary wealth is owned, and will forever be owned by no more than 5% of the population, most disturbingly likely the same 5% based on geneology and inheritance. Then at an impossibly low 1% interest rate, that 5% of owners will each make more money on interest than the average person, without working or incentive at all. Indeed, it is in their interest to undermine the ability of the average person to belong to their aristocracy, to prevent variables that would undermine their fabricated self-interested redistribution of wealth.
The UN, with good experimental justification, uses the difference between the wealthiest and the poorest people of a nation to measure the "happiness" of a nation. Or so I have read, at any rate.
Sometimes, even in a free capitalist society, it's good to give to the community.
I find that is a matter of opinion. I find that I am socialist at heart, but I have had disagreements with people who could genuinely support arguments for monoculture self interest, and by turning a few moral checks off at the door, I could wholeheartedly agree with them. Most of these people were economists, and their microcosm is "special" in the capitalist versus socialist debacle. Their interests are not the same as the interests of humans.
Kiting, eh? There's something like that in Everquest, if I recall correctly, stringing MOB's along without them ever being able to hit you. Interesting since before hearing the EQ lingo at work, I never heard the term "kiting" before, but in this context it applies with interesting but not dissimilar connotations. I wonder if the compatible definition for "kiting" came from the financial world, or some common geneology.
There is a cap at 50, although some people are still above that. I'm pretty sure some were in the 200's. Negatives can knock them down but positives will not bring them up.
I would speculate that Slashdot is one of those rich getting richer, like Amazon. It has reached a critical mass of readers. All the other message boards, and I have been to many, are relatively sublime in comparison.
Slashdot type boards might be an exception since their interest - their value (or perceived value) to readers, their content, is defined by the probability of a reader writing something, which is the most interesting factor to take into account. Of course, once enough readers are there, statistical odds of a story getting a full compliment are very high, and thus good content. Slashdot seems to be past that critical mass.
The debate about absolute laws versus interpretation has been around for at least a thousand years.
Quite right, and good post. The consistency we have is reflected by precedence - those judgements that have come before us are those to which we will adhere. The precedent system has problems of its own, but it reduces the amount of arbitrary judgement that cannot be overturned. It makes the relevence of past cases apparent, the reduces the likelihood of apparently unfair or inconsistent decisions based on interpretation, and eases the necessity of judges to really think about the judgement. Most lawyers before a judge appeal to precedent, because that is where judgement is made.
Some believe that in precident, the word of the law itself becomes moot, and the spirit of the law lost.
Here here! The "moral outrage" is an example of the technical elite corporate ignorant defending the bourgoisie against the corporate elite technical ignorant. It's all about the power of the middle class, and the struggles of those powers, in this case the will of the technical smart to live in a world with less problems, and the will of the corporates to push the average person into directed consumerism. Key insight to the corporate side: the average person, not every average person.
Re:The best he can build is a disintegration chamb
on
Time Travel
·
· Score: 2
Time travel into the future, and time travel into the past are two totally different things. The popularized theory can be summarised...
"Travelling" into the future merely requires acquiring a relative speed close to that of light in a vacuum. Think of the speed of light as a maximum speed by law, and the other principles must bend to suit this rule. When you approach the speed of light, in a relative way, the only possible way to actually attain that velocity is have the rest of the universe pass by faster. If time is not as immutable as the universal maximum speed (how universal is it? e=mc^2, c being the speed of light. Fairly ubiquitous, then.)
Travelling into the past requires a quantum universe (or something... else), which we are quite sure we live in, to be even plausible. In that case, time travel could be extradimensional, or dimensional spawning, for the sake of prevention of temporal paradoxes. An alternative case is that the sequence of events in our universe that would dictate time travel would be under precisely those temporal restrictions preventing paradoxes, or a rule that generalizes such. One such rule is forward-only time travel. Another is energy-barrier historical time travel, such as travelling backwards in time requires as much energy as the universe, or temporal distance barriers, such as travelling back in time requires that for you to return to the origin of your time travel as much time must have passed as you have travelled backwards into, thus to cover the distance to return to your origin your time travel would have been negated.
Obviously, with a universe predominantly orbital / field based, the latter might not be so reliable - unless you take into account a gravitational metric and orthogonality that includes a minimum distance not undermined by cyclical astrophysical principles.
Slashdot Mirror
Unless you own the company, let them make their mistakes. Put in your advice, and if they take it and benefit, so be it, but otherwise, you can - and under certain circumstances should - move on at their loss. It's not your company to run, and if the company fails, it's not your fault. Constructively critise, but don't undermine the managers opinions.
;) )
Don't blame the mangers, either - someone put them there, and I have seen poor management come from resentment towards techies as much as incompetence. They are people, get to know them, and you may find that they agree with you in assessing their own shortcomings. From that admission you have options - management need not imply dictation.
Do your personal due diligence, but if the owners don't ask for your help, don't go out of your way to offer it. Save your energy for bigger stakes, IMHO. ("Owners" is vague, I know, but this is slashdot, and I'm being sweepingly vague
Introducing killer bees and African Lady Bugs were also in the name of science. Just $0.02 from the other side of the coin.
This will be a case of GPL versus Patent law, then. Certainly the patenting and prohibition of distribution and use of SELinux is contrary to the necessity of redistribution and free use stipulated in (and forced adherence to) the GPL.
... heh) could remove all references to this type checking, or better still, extend it into a derivative patent. The power of the GPL, even should it prove impotent in protecting us against unwanted patent license remuneration, still gives us the power to remove that Patented material and continue in our merry way.
How does the GPL interact with patents? GPL is a copyright (copyleft) law, whereas patents are an exclusive monopoly. How does one separate them?
Certainly, given the code, we (by "we", I mean "you" the kernel hacker
You make good points. I followed "valuable" by "invaluable" perhaps more for assonance than semantics.
;)
Neil Stephenson makes good light of your first point in Cryptonomicon (ie. detachment 2703+1), and certainly your second is adamantly indicated by Sun Tzu's fundamentals. Who am I to disagree?
However, I would hazard that one could permit the definition of invaluable (valuable beyond estimation) for Enigma insofar as it provided options to the Allies that would not have otherwise been available. I am not qualified to answer that authoritatively, but certainly Stephenson's fictional history indicates this to be permissible, if not appropriate.
Give a man a fish and tomorrow and he will be hungry the day after. Teach a man to fish, and he will subsist. Certainly, algorithms then are the most valuable. Take DeCSS - how many bytes was that down to? Look at it's financial, freedom, and legal implications.
Even more importantly - look at WWII German Enigma codes - the decoding of any one single message was certainly valuable, but understanding how to decode it was invaluable. Like life - power is knowledge, and understanding is inferring knowledge where before there was none (read: understanding creates power).
cheers
The state has the right of force of law, the only acceptable form of violent force. Hence, force as applied by the state, defines all rights of itself and citizens. As such, their right to punish is a direct consequence of their monopoly on force (of law) and the inability to oppose said force (short of riots).
Nuclear radiation or spent rods? The prior isn't an relative issue since coal plants release exponential magnitudes more radioactive material than nuclear power plants. The latter is a strange issue; the "spent" rods are actually have more potential energy than the new, or pure uranium rods.
;)
There are many atomic derivatives of uranium fission, not the least of which is plutonium. It is very possible, indeed much easier, to reach critical mass with spent rods than pure uranium rods. (technically, all you have to do is smash them together). You can put a pure uranium rod into a pool, and nothing happens, but if you put spent rods in the pool it glows blue/green (ala Cocoon, the movie) for a day or so. (YMMV)
The point would be that there is a harvestable energy source in "spent" rods, that can be remanufactured. Thermodynamics of course comes into play, and there are stil residuals, but nevertheless, the waste from one nuclear chamber is potential fuel for another. There are marginal returns in many cases, nevertheless the eventual breakdown leads to non-radioactive materials.
I only know this because I worked at a nuclear power plant; this is what I soaked up.
Cheers
Less a result of object oriented programming, I would hazard, and more component oriented API. MS COM objects, though hellish beasts of complexity themselves, mitigate and abstract user application complexity. The COM model is in mild competition with the markup model of XUL and XPCOM seen in Mozilla/Netscape, which makes for an interseting debacle, philosophically if not just technically.
As was mentioned by the sibling post, and I will reiterate: it costs money to get patents; not only a barrier to entry, money is not in the objective schema of free software and open innovation.
Your description is of a good idea, both RMS and ESR have at least idenified the "free software patent pool" as leverage against corporate patents. Indeed, former IBM CEO Lou Gerstner stated that patents were not nearly as valuable in remuneration as they were for cross-patent leverage.
So, yes, this is theoretically a good idea. But it really adds nothing to the free software arena other than protection against hostile corporate self-interests. Indeed, it takes away from the time, money, and effort that developers want to put into creativity and puts it into mindless and valueless litigation. Patents kill creativity; in no space is this more apparent than free software.
Also, re. your MS PR hit example, keep in mind: Microsoft has a monopoly - they have no concern for public opinion. Everything is an advertisement to them.
Cheers
For what reason are patents protected by force of law?
- Preserve intellectual property. For open/free software, the preservation of intellectual property is a derivative of its use, a consequence of its distribution, so patents hold no value here.
- Promote innovation. Software, like many industries (ie. the chemical one listed here), is a hunting ground for barrier-to-entry patents. It is a particularly good hunting ground given the general ignorance surrounding computers (see the 'obviousness' comments above; one click patents, gif compression, etc).
- Remunerate effort. This undermines, nay: attacks, the community, as a whole and in parts, that free software develops in. We barter in time and code. Money screws with our system; it does not belong; it taints the incentives, the personal motivation.
- Establish credentials. Free software has its own credentials - we review and are reviewed by our peers. A more accurate, precise, and diligent method than unqualified 9-5 patent clerks.
- Distributes ideas. The internet does that for us.
...
Why would we want software to have patents in the free software world? How do they add value? Why should they be protected by the force of law?
This is one sided - from the spirit of my interpretation of RMS. Perhaps patents can have a valuable place in software, but they certainly do not seem to belong in open software.
Depleting their common share securities collateral, not their non-liquid capital. They no doubt have fixed income securities abound, meaning that they still have enormous collateral to leverage AAA+ loan rates against. Not to mention monopoly revenue and offensive profit margins.
Could someone explain to me how it is possible that Episode I, which turned so many people off to Star Wars, grossed less than its successor? If you didn't see Episode I, what are the odds that you would see Episode II?
I know that our theatre, in the interim, had a $2 hike in prices. I wonder if it is related to the monotonic increasing revenues.
Anyone else find it odd that Episode II garnered more money than Episode I, though?
Him and James Gosling
In a way, the success of this plea would endanger the fight against DMCA et al., by providing enough fair use to make the law as a whole acceptable to this company, other companies, and perhaps even many consumers. If this agreement is unilaterally struck down, then there is another entity out there who wills the end of the DMCA content control.
Indeed, winning this court case may be a tool to fight for fair use in a world of DMCA, but in the overall war we will sacrifice a valuable ally in the fight for a world without DMCA.
I would rather a post DMCA era, where freedom is presumed until proven a crime, rather than feel the need to prove my freedom for actions of thought and speech now considered criminal.
Economists will cringe at my assumptions, but let's briefly investigate the $1 million mark as above the 5% rule ...
95% of the US GDP of 1.8 trillion is $9.3 quints in 1999, spread among 5% of the US population, or 12.5 million people, is a harmonized $744 million each.
So assume a deviation of say 20%, which is high, most of these people still have over $500 US million. The millionaire is hardly a contender in this 5% of wealth owners, and in fact probably falls close to the 90th percentile, a far cry from the 95th percentile.
Plus, presume the legal autonomity at this level of chargen wealth, as you can begin purchasing laws in 3rd world countries and the United States, and as such inheritance laws are defunct, as are capital gains taxes and provisions can be fabricated for income, inheritance, gains, interest and property tax shelters.
I assume then that in the context of your argument monetary measurement and wealth measurement for a state are different and incompatible? Axiomize that 95% of the monetary wealth is owned, and will forever be owned by no more than 5% of the population, most disturbingly likely the same 5% based on geneology and inheritance. Then at an impossibly low 1% interest rate, that 5% of owners will each make more money on interest than the average person, without working or incentive at all. Indeed, it is in their interest to undermine the ability of the average person to belong to their aristocracy, to prevent variables that would undermine their fabricated self-interested redistribution of wealth.
The UN, with good experimental justification, uses the difference between the wealthiest and the poorest people of a nation to measure the "happiness" of a nation. Or so I have read, at any rate.
I find that is a matter of opinion. I find that I am socialist at heart, but I have had disagreements with people who could genuinely support arguments for monoculture self interest, and by turning a few moral checks off at the door, I could wholeheartedly agree with them. Most of these people were economists, and their microcosm is "special" in the capitalist versus socialist debacle. Their interests are not the same as the interests of humans.
Kiting, eh? There's something like that in Everquest, if I recall correctly, stringing MOB's along without them ever being able to hit you. Interesting since before hearing the EQ lingo at work, I never heard the term "kiting" before, but in this context it applies with interesting but not dissimilar connotations. I wonder if the compatible definition for "kiting" came from the financial world, or some common geneology.
There is a cap at 50, although some people are still above that. I'm pretty sure some were in the 200's. Negatives can knock them down but positives will not bring them up.
I would speculate that Slashdot is one of those rich getting richer, like Amazon. It has reached a critical mass of readers. All the other message boards, and I have been to many, are relatively sublime in comparison.
;)
Slashdot type boards might be an exception since their interest - their value (or perceived value) to readers, their content, is defined by the probability of a reader writing something, which is the most interesting factor to take into account. Of course, once enough readers are there, statistical odds of a story getting a full compliment are very high, and thus good content. Slashdot seems to be past that critical mass.
Then come the trolls.
Hehe ... touche.
Georgia Tech adds DMCA clause to their entrance agreement.
Don't laugh. I'm being satirical. It's funny because it's not far from the truth.
The debate about absolute laws versus interpretation has been around for at least a thousand years.
Quite right, and good post. The consistency we have is reflected by precedence - those judgements that have come before us are those to which we will adhere. The precedent system has problems of its own, but it reduces the amount of arbitrary judgement that cannot be overturned. It makes the relevence of past cases apparent, the reduces the likelihood of apparently unfair or inconsistent decisions based on interpretation, and eases the necessity of judges to really think about the judgement. Most lawyers before a judge appeal to precedent, because that is where judgement is made.
Some believe that in precident, the word of the law itself becomes moot, and the spirit of the law lost.
Here here! The "moral outrage" is an example of the technical elite corporate ignorant defending the bourgoisie against the corporate elite technical ignorant. It's all about the power of the middle class, and the struggles of those powers, in this case the will of the technical smart to live in a world with less problems, and the will of the corporates to push the average person into directed consumerism. Key insight to the corporate side: the average person, not every average person.
Time travel into the future, and time travel into the past are two totally different things. The popularized theory can be summarised ...
... else), which we are quite sure we live in, to be even plausible. In that case, time travel could be extradimensional, or dimensional spawning, for the sake of prevention of temporal paradoxes. An alternative case is that the sequence of events in our universe that would dictate time travel would be under precisely those temporal restrictions preventing paradoxes, or a rule that generalizes such. One such rule is forward-only time travel. Another is energy-barrier historical time travel, such as travelling backwards in time requires as much energy as the universe, or temporal distance barriers, such as travelling back in time requires that for you to return to the origin of your time travel as much time must have passed as you have travelled backwards into, thus to cover the distance to return to your origin your time travel would have been negated.
"Travelling" into the future merely requires acquiring a relative speed close to that of light in a vacuum. Think of the speed of light as a maximum speed by law, and the other principles must bend to suit this rule. When you approach the speed of light, in a relative way, the only possible way to actually attain that velocity is have the rest of the universe pass by faster. If time is not as immutable as the universal maximum speed (how universal is it? e=mc^2, c being the speed of light. Fairly ubiquitous, then.)
Travelling into the past requires a quantum universe (or something
Obviously, with a universe predominantly orbital / field based, the latter might not be so reliable - unless you take into account a gravitational metric and orthogonality that includes a minimum distance not undermined by cyclical astrophysical principles.