No problems there. I did, however see the BBC thing where they asked who should play the next doctor, and some people actually voted for Rik Mayall and/or Adrian Edmonson. Dear God. Imagine Rik fucking Mayall as the Doctor.
Actually, both of them have proved that they can play it straight - I'd love to see Ade Edmonson as the Doctor. Or even Rik Mayall. The only thing they have to do is play it straight - which goes with the territory (apart from the terrible Tom Baker days)
This Minsky guy seems to be promoting the discredited 'strong AI' hypothesis. Well, that would seem to render 1000's of years of religious insight redundant. But then, what would we expect from someone from MIT.
Hmmm... 1000's of years of religious insight would have the Sun rotating around the Earth, the world being flat, there being no such thing as dinosaurs, and the Universe being finite and Earth the only thing in it (a principle that was only punctured when someone pointed out that this would put limits on God).
For example: Racist papers that are only intended for KKK members. Should these be allowed to write anything they like and can come up with just as long as they only let rasists read?
As much as I hate to say it... yes. Freedom of Speech should be blind.
Less power and better yields are a big deal, because those properties don't scale with Moore's Law - quite the opposite.
And even though diagonal wiring might seem like an obvious idea, I bet developing good routing algorithms that can take advantage of it is not easy at all. Most of the interesting problems in circuit interconnection are NP-complete.
The routing algorithms have been around to do this well for years - they're mostly based around simulated annealing.
On a more serious note, it seems to me, that whoever invented zip would have the patent, and if I'm not mistaken, he died, moving the patent into public property.
IIRC, the LZW patent expires either next year or the year after (depending on which treaty you go off). Isn't Zip based (partly) on LZW, thus the patent issues?
Not sure I follow you: if the government funds it, then it's the government that gets to decide how it's released. Just like working for a 'real' company. The coder's been paid for it already, and his/her having lost something in exchange isn't exactly unheard-of.
No, the Government doesn't get to choose - Title 17, U.S.C. Chapter 1 explicitly prohibits the Govt. from holding any copyrights.
We walked into the expo center, scooped up all the free "gifts" we could, ate lunch on Microsoft, then proceeded to the AntiPiracy booth (don't think irony was lost on us...how can you pirate Freesoftware?), stacked the CDs up, and watched them fly. We were happy to explain to anyone who asked what they were there for, what Linux was, and in general promote the use of the OS. For a little while. Then, the Microsoftie lady came over and proceeded to escourt us out of there. We could have resisted, but we didn't.
Good. Because the next step would have been for you to be arrested.
Where the heck do you get 'the middle of a display Microsoft had paid huge money to rent'? Makes it sound like they climbed into the MS booth or something.
I read it as the entranceway TO THE HALL. The fact that MS put a big inflated thingie there hardly grants them ownership of the whole fscking building.
Not been to many trade shows have you? (Or rather, not been to many where you were organizing the stand and booking the space)
Yes, MS had ownership of that area for the event. Expo and Trade Show organizers charge MUCHO DINERO for that spot.
So MS paid for it. The Linux User Group did not. And as such, they didn't pay to peddle their wares there.
Tough cookies.
If they wanted to hand stuff out without paying for a space, they should have done it outside of the exhibition hall property.
That's funny. I thought the main point of the GPL was to ensure that the code - in this case the Government code that you refer to above - would continue to be in the public domain, in perpetuity. By being less restrictive, the BSD license allows Government code to be taken out of the public domain. It sounds like you are saying "government code should be freely available to begin with, then it should be co-opted by the private sector and made proprietary". What the GPL generally says is "GPL code should be freely availble always, even when it is being used by the private sector". Do you see the difference here?
No, once it's in the public domain, it can never be taken out -- the GPL doesn't 'ensure that it continues to be in the public domain in perpetuity' AT ALL. GPL'ing it only affects people who use that source code as a basis for further development.
Someone writes a nice program, then makes it available to you, along with the source, and all people do is bitch about the restrictions of the GPL. Get over it! Don't want restrictions? Then WRITE IT YOURSELF. Get off the box, people. That goes especially for you, Ballmer.
You don't seem to get it. If the government funded the development, then that person DID write it themselves, and should be able to do whatever they like with it.
There's these things called "Fast Breeder Reactors". They have them in Canada. They convert Plutonium into less radioactive byproducts which are safer. They generate power.
Jeeeeez... it's like saying "Let's put all of the world's oil in a big vat in the middle of the Atlantic...".
What about companies' in-house developers? IIRC, they significantly outnumber the number of developers that are employed by for-profit software concerns. I've read before that the early IBM mainframe customers did just that what you describe. The source was delivered with the product (Even the Tech Ref Manuals for the early IBM PCs had the BIOS code). Someone at GM would solve a common problem, report what he did to other, incorporate other people's patches, etc. Universities were like this also. This was the sort of environment that Stallman came from and the ethic that he's wanting to preserve. It's not an original idea of his.
You mean, he wants the hardware companies to make all the money, not the software companies, because the software companies are immoral, whereas the hardware companies are doing it for the good of the people, and hardware after all is so expensive?
IMO we should concern ourselves with trying to reduce the vast differences in income, not increase them. This is not only the ethical Right Thing to do, it is smart for yourself in the long term too.
Society is built upon cooperation, and large differences of income undermine that. Unless our society changes, it is heading for disaster (police state and/or revolution and/or civil war). More and more people are parasites on society today (day traders e.g.) who do not contribute anything and yet expects not only to get fed but to get rich! Loathsome. IMHO such people ought to be shot.
Actually, society is built on a blend of cooperation and competition, with a good dose of selfishness.
Let me put it to you this way:
If you want to reduce the vast differences in income, then presumably it's a good thing to give people welfare?
Now... the question is this: if you're making everyone economically equal, then why would anyone do anything but sit around on their asses all day and live off their welfare check?
So you'd have people who work their asses off paying for those who do nothing, ending up with people who get bupkiss for their hard toil, versus people who get plenty for doing nothing.
Does this seem right, fair or 'morally and ethically correct' to you?
Certainly, in a perfect world, this is how it would work. But unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world. Personally, I view this as a good thing; a perfect world would quickly become a stagnant one. Heck, I'm all for giving people a leg-up when they've fallen on hard times -- and schmuck that I am, I even give money to people on the street on the offchance that one time in twenty it'll actually go to someone deserving of it. But if you go down the 'equal share for one and all' route, you'll end up with leeches -- and frankly, I ain't willing to pay for them.
Last time I checked, IBM was doing fine. So was hp.
Contrary to popular belief, HP, IBM and Sun (who you omitted, but is often included in this list) are not software companies. They make money selling hardware so why would they give a shit about giving away the software that runs on it? The software is the loss leader - they make the real money on the high-margin hardware and support costs.
But you can never be assured that the waiter did not spit on your food (cos you pissed him off), that the fish is five days old, and that the hollendaise dressing was made this morning and has been sitting under a heat lamp for 6 hours (a recipe for illness).
Yes, you can.
You know how?
1. You check to see if lots of people are eating in the restaurant. (Bad news travels fast; this assumes that the place opened more than a couple of months ago, so the honeymoon effect is over).
2. You get to know the chef. This process starts by having a meal. If you enjoy it, you ask if you could speak to the chef after the kitchen has closed. (They'll usually sit, chat and have a drink or two at the bar if they don't have to be anywhere else).
3. Ask people. The wait staff will tell you honestly and truthfully if you ask them to. Tip heavily.
4. If a place treats you well, return to it, and tip well.
Not that it's reasonable, but it could be easily argued that it's the BSD license that fucks people over. Companies can steal and cannibalize students' and other people's code (with their permission, which makes it legal), then sell it with few modifications for lots of money. Microsoft did it with active directory and kerberos, and after the spec NDA thing was dropped, people may not have been furious, but there are a lot of people who probably wouldn't work on similar projects with the BSD license again, knowing microsoft or some other corporation could come take their code and sell it without paying royalties.
Look, they used the specs (you know, RFCs?), not the code. Microsoft didn't do this with Active Directory [LDAP] OR Kerberos.
If you're going to blame Microsoft for the entire world's problems, at least pick the ones they're responsible for. You'll be much more credible that way.
Since the idea is to maximize the benefits to all taxpayers, it would make sense to give them the source code, and it would help to reduce maintenance and development costs. Therefore, an important condition would be to make it Open Source... and actually the GPL would be a good candidate for a license.
Whether the billions of dollars go to the FSF, IBM, or Microsoft doesn't matter. The developed software goes to the community, GLPed and everything
No, putting it into the PUBLIC DOMAIN would be the ideal license. Namely because if the Government is funding it, it is MANDATED to do so by law.
If my tax money goes into creating something, I want to get the fruits of that labor no matter how I choose to do so -- and if that means rolling that code into a proprietary product, so be it. I paid for it - I get to use it. NO STRINGS ATTACHED.
...which is why they abandoned the 4.7 codebase and started from scratch, so it doesn't actually share any code. Mozilla has actually been written from the ground up.
Which was their choice. They still started with a mature codebase; scrapping the old stuff mid-go is no excuse if you're a commercial software engineer - you still have to hit your targets.
Has anything realy improved since IE4, beyond minor tweaks and small, incremental steps towards (not to, but towards) standards compliance?
How about a massively sped-up rendering engine?
Simon
Re:Best reply to Mundie yet.
on
GPL FAQ
·
· Score: 1
I suspect that the GNU people didn't intend the FAQ as a response to Mundie. That having been said, this FAQ is the best reply to Mundie's FUD that I've seen yet. It is succinct, informative, non-inflamatory, and talks in terms that people can understand without an extensive legal background.
We should distribute this far and wide. We should put this on T-shirts and posters. We should make folders and notebooks with this stuff on it. We should take out full page ads in the Technology section and put this in there. We should put it on cerial boxes if we possibly can.
Certainly, that's a great idea!
You know why? Because if developers point out to their bosses that linking to GPL'd libraries in any way forces them to release their code under GPL, they'll stop using it. (see the FAQ)
That might usually be the case, but all of the Sierra companies (ie. Vivendi Universal Interactive - which includes Blizzard, Dynamix, Sierra et al) run extensive beta programs on the games they release. I was on the You Don't Know Jack: 5th Dementia program.
Just hang out on the mailing lists and message boards to get the hook up.
Slashdot Mirror
No problems there. I did, however see the BBC thing where they asked who should play the next doctor, and some people actually voted for Rik Mayall and/or Adrian Edmonson. Dear God. Imagine Rik fucking Mayall as the Doctor.
Actually, both of them have proved that they can play it straight - I'd love to see Ade Edmonson as the Doctor. Or even Rik Mayall. The only thing they have to do is play it straight - which goes with the territory (apart from the terrible Tom Baker days)
Simon
In that case, how about this news?
;-)
The Sci-Fi channel will be showing the Doctor Who TV-movie (1996 - Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann as the Doctor) on July 15th.
Just thought I'd let you know
Si
This Minsky guy seems to be promoting the discredited 'strong AI' hypothesis. Well, that would seem to render 1000's of years of religious insight redundant. But then, what would we expect from someone from MIT.
Hmmm... 1000's of years of religious insight would have the Sun rotating around the Earth, the world being flat, there being no such thing as dinosaurs, and the Universe being finite and Earth the only thing in it (a principle that was only punctured when someone pointed out that this would put limits on God).
Simon
For example: Racist papers that are only intended for KKK members. Should these be allowed to write anything they like and can come up with just as long as they only let rasists read?
As much as I hate to say it... yes. Freedom of Speech should be blind.
Doesn't make it any better though. *sigh*.
Simon
Less power and better yields are a big deal, because those properties don't scale with Moore's Law - quite the opposite.
And even though diagonal wiring might seem like an obvious idea, I bet developing good routing algorithms that can take advantage of it is not easy at all. Most of the interesting problems in circuit interconnection are NP-complete.
The routing algorithms have been around to do this well for years - they're mostly based around simulated annealing.
Simon
On a more serious note, it seems to me, that whoever invented zip would have the patent, and if I'm not mistaken, he died, moving the patent into public property.
IIRC, the LZW patent expires either next year or the year after (depending on which treaty you go off). Isn't Zip based (partly) on LZW, thus the patent issues?
Simon
How bout those SOBs in Congress send everyone a questionaire where we get to determine how we want a percentage of our taxes spent.
USA-Democracy is 270 million YESes and NOes a day, not one every four years
Unfortunately, you live in a democratic republic, not a democracy.
Simon
Not sure I follow you: if the government funds it, then it's the government that gets to decide how it's released. Just like working for a 'real' company. The coder's been paid for it already, and his/her having lost something in exchange isn't exactly unheard-of.
No, the Government doesn't get to choose - Title 17, U.S.C. Chapter 1 explicitly prohibits the Govt. from holding any copyrights.
Simon
We walked into the expo center, scooped up all the free "gifts" we could, ate lunch on Microsoft, then proceeded to the AntiPiracy booth (don't think irony was lost on us...how can you pirate Freesoftware?), stacked the CDs up, and watched them fly. We were happy to explain to anyone who asked what they were there for, what Linux was, and in general promote the use of the OS. For a little while. Then, the Microsoftie lady came over and proceeded to escourt us out of there. We could have resisted, but we didn't.
Good. Because the next step would have been for you to be arrested.
Simon
Where the heck do you get 'the middle of a display Microsoft had paid huge money to rent'? Makes it sound like they climbed into the MS booth or something.
I read it as the entranceway TO THE HALL. The fact that MS put a big inflated thingie there hardly grants them ownership of the whole fscking building.
Not been to many trade shows have you? (Or rather, not been to many where you were organizing the stand and booking the space)
Yes, MS had ownership of that area for the event. Expo and Trade Show organizers charge MUCHO DINERO for that spot.
So MS paid for it. The Linux User Group did not. And as such, they didn't pay to peddle their wares there.
Tough cookies.
If they wanted to hand stuff out without paying for a space, they should have done it outside of the exhibition hall property.
Simon
Did you read the comments?
No.
They were all of the nature of "Hey, you're an idiot - fossil fuels are made from decaying vegetable matter, not from decaying dinosaurs".
I don't take that as being 'in good fun'.
Simon
That's funny. I thought the main point of the GPL was to ensure that the code - in this case the Government code that you refer to above - would continue to be in the public domain, in perpetuity. By being less restrictive, the BSD license allows Government code to be taken out of the public domain. It sounds like you are saying "government code should be freely available to begin with, then it should be co-opted by the private sector and made proprietary". What the GPL generally says is "GPL code should be freely availble always, even when it is being used by the private sector". Do you see the difference here?
No, once it's in the public domain, it can never be taken out -- the GPL doesn't 'ensure that it continues to be in the public domain in perpetuity' AT ALL. GPL'ing it only affects people who use that source code as a basis for further development.
Nice fallacious argument though. Do them often?
Simon
Someone writes a nice program, then makes it available to you, along with the source, and all people do is bitch about the restrictions of the GPL. Get over it! Don't want restrictions? Then WRITE IT YOURSELF. Get off the box, people. That goes especially for you, Ballmer.
You don't seem to get it. If the government funded the development, then that person DID write it themselves, and should be able to do whatever they like with it.
Simon
Er.. hello? Stick it in a building? NO THANK YOU.
There's these things called "Fast Breeder Reactors". They have them in Canada. They convert Plutonium into less radioactive byproducts which are safer. They generate power.
Jeeeeez... it's like saying "Let's put all of the world's oil in a big vat in the middle of the Atlantic...".
Simon
What about companies' in-house developers? IIRC, they significantly outnumber the number of developers that are employed by for-profit software concerns. I've read before that the early IBM mainframe customers did just that what you describe. The source was delivered with the product (Even the Tech Ref Manuals for the early IBM PCs had the BIOS code). Someone at GM would solve a common problem, report what he did to other, incorporate other people's patches, etc. Universities were like this also. This was the sort of environment that Stallman came from and the ethic that he's wanting to preserve. It's not an original idea of his.
You mean, he wants the hardware companies to make all the money, not the software companies, because the software companies are immoral, whereas the hardware companies are doing it for the good of the people, and hardware after all is so expensive?
Simon
IMO we should concern ourselves with trying to reduce the vast differences in income, not increase them. This is not only the ethical Right Thing to do, it is smart for yourself in the long term too.
Society is built upon cooperation, and large differences of income undermine that. Unless our society changes, it is heading for disaster (police state and/or revolution and/or civil war). More and more people are parasites on society today (day traders e.g.) who do not contribute anything and yet expects not only to get fed but to get rich! Loathsome. IMHO such people ought to be shot.
Actually, society is built on a blend of cooperation and competition, with a good dose of selfishness.
Let me put it to you this way:
If you want to reduce the vast differences in income, then presumably it's a good thing to give people welfare?
Now... the question is this: if you're making everyone economically equal, then why would anyone do anything but sit around on their asses all day and live off their welfare check?
So you'd have people who work their asses off paying for those who do nothing, ending up with people who get bupkiss for their hard toil, versus people who get plenty for doing nothing.
Does this seem right, fair or 'morally and ethically correct' to you?
Certainly, in a perfect world, this is how it would work. But unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world. Personally, I view this as a good thing; a perfect world would quickly become a stagnant one. Heck, I'm all for giving people a leg-up when they've fallen on hard times -- and schmuck that I am, I even give money to people on the street on the offchance that one time in twenty it'll actually go to someone deserving of it. But if you go down the 'equal share for one and all' route, you'll end up with leeches -- and frankly, I ain't willing to pay for them.
Simon
Last time I checked, IBM was doing fine. So was hp.
Contrary to popular belief, HP, IBM and Sun (who you omitted, but is often included in this list) are not software companies. They make money selling hardware so why would they give a shit about giving away the software that runs on it? The software is the loss leader - they make the real money on the high-margin hardware and support costs.
Simon
Open source programers are noble fools who get themselves taken advantage of when in actuality should be the ones lavished in money
If you read the GNU manifesto, that's the whole point. RMS wants programmers to be seen as little more than store clerks. Try reading it some time.
Simon
But you can never be assured that the waiter did not spit on your food (cos you pissed him off), that the fish is five days old, and that the hollendaise dressing was made this morning and has been sitting under a heat lamp for 6 hours (a recipe for illness).
Yes, you can.
You know how?
1. You check to see if lots of people are eating in the restaurant. (Bad news travels fast; this assumes that the place opened more than a couple of months ago, so the honeymoon effect is over).
2. You get to know the chef. This process starts by having a meal. If you enjoy it, you ask if you could speak to the chef after the kitchen has closed. (They'll usually sit, chat and have a drink or two at the bar if they don't have to be anywhere else).
3. Ask people. The wait staff will tell you honestly and truthfully if you ask them to. Tip heavily.
4. If a place treats you well, return to it, and tip well.
There you go - guaranteed recipe for success.
Simon
Not that it's reasonable, but it could be easily argued that it's the BSD license that fucks people over. Companies can steal and cannibalize students' and other people's code (with their permission, which makes it legal), then sell it with few modifications for lots of money. Microsoft did it with active directory and kerberos, and after the spec NDA thing was dropped, people may not have been furious, but there are a lot of people who probably wouldn't work on similar projects with the BSD license again, knowing microsoft or some other corporation could come take their code and sell it without paying royalties.
Look, they used the specs (you know, RFCs?), not the code. Microsoft didn't do this with Active Directory [LDAP] OR Kerberos.
If you're going to blame Microsoft for the entire world's problems, at least pick the ones they're responsible for. You'll be much more credible that way.
Simon
Since the idea is to maximize the benefits to all taxpayers, it would make sense to give them the source code, and it would help to reduce maintenance and development costs. Therefore, an important condition would be to make it Open Source... and actually the GPL would be a good candidate for a license.
Whether the billions of dollars go to the FSF, IBM, or Microsoft doesn't matter. The developed software goes to the community, GLPed and everything
No, putting it into the PUBLIC DOMAIN would be the ideal license. Namely because if the Government is funding it, it is MANDATED to do so by law.
If my tax money goes into creating something, I want to get the fruits of that labor no matter how I choose to do so -- and if that means rolling that code into a proprietary product, so be it. I paid for it - I get to use it. NO STRINGS ATTACHED.
Simon
...which is why they abandoned the 4.7 codebase and started from scratch, so it doesn't actually share any code. Mozilla has actually been written from the ground up.
Which was their choice. They still started with a mature codebase; scrapping the old stuff mid-go is no excuse if you're a commercial software engineer - you still have to hit your targets.
Simon
Has anything realy improved since IE4, beyond minor tweaks and small, incremental steps towards (not to, but towards) standards compliance?
How about a massively sped-up rendering engine?
Simon
I suspect that the GNU people didn't intend the FAQ as a response to Mundie. That having been said, this FAQ is the best reply to Mundie's FUD that I've seen yet. It is succinct, informative, non-inflamatory, and talks in terms that people can understand without an extensive legal background.
We should distribute this far and wide. We should put this on T-shirts and posters. We should make folders and notebooks with this stuff on it. We should take out full page ads in the Technology section and put this in there. We should put it on cerial boxes if we possibly can.
Certainly, that's a great idea!
You know why? Because if developers point out to their bosses that linking to GPL'd libraries in any way forces them to release their code under GPL, they'll stop using it. (see the FAQ)
Simon
Yep, you're just brainwashed :)
That might usually be the case, but all of the Sierra companies (ie. Vivendi Universal Interactive - which includes Blizzard, Dynamix, Sierra et al) run extensive beta programs on the games they release. I was on the You Don't Know Jack: 5th Dementia program.
Just hang out on the mailing lists and message boards to get the hook up.
:)
Si