I want freedom too. The difference between us is that I understand that governments aren't unique in their ability to deny people freedoms.
Besides, you already live in the completely free world that you've always wanted. Because the world is completely free, a large group of people who have more guns than you are forcing you to live in a mostly capitalist democracy with some small hints of socialism, and no one is powerful enough to stop them.
This video picks an absolutely abysmal example of the tragedy of the commons. A pasture, really? Yes, privatize the pasture. It's obvious.
What about the airwaves? How do we determine the ownership of those? Does everyone own the airwaves on their property? Do we choose one private person or company to own *all* the airwaves? If your answer is that the best way it to split them up and auction them off to private companies, then it's worth noting that that's what the FCC does already. But then you need government regulation for that.
Also, just a question in general... have you talked to libertarians on Slashdot? The minute you suggest that maybe a regulation somewhere would be a good thing, the immediate response is, "Oh, so you're going to solve problems with more government?" If people feel that libertarians are dogmatically anti-government, it's because they run into a lot of libertarians who are, in fact, dogmatically anti-government. Far more often, I might add, than libertarians who are actually interested in offering real, detailed solutions for problems that aren't just "deregulate and privatize, because that always works."
I wonder if this will ever be viable as a form of travel rather than just space tourism, or if it will always be cost prohibitive. Most people can't afford a quarter million dollars, but for a few thousand dollars, I think a lot of people would love the opportunity to fly in space at Mach 2+ and get across the country in a couple of hours.
You're probably going for an all-government-is-bad angle here, but in the case of services where the providers need to be able to lay cable on private property, either the government needs to get involved or the cable will never need to be put in at all.
I would certainly agree with you that it's bad when the government allows for artificial monopolies, though. What they should be doing is saying that since that cable is a public resource put down in part with public money, that any company wanting to use the cable should be able to do so at cost. In addition, the (local) government should internet to consumers directly, since in the past municipal internet providers have actually compared very favorably in terms of cost and bandwidth to their privately owned competitors, despite the ostensible disadvantage of not being motivated by profit.
Race alone would account for a huge genetic difference, and people tend to be friends with people of their own race for all sorts of reasons that can be easily explained through psychology and sociology. You're also more likely to be at least distantly related to people who live in the same area as you do.
All this time I thought maybe people who have studied the climate for years and years might be on to something, but you have convinced me that I was wrong with your deep understanding of the topic and highly credible, well thought out refutation of their claims, random dude on the internet!
Then the government needs to take charge at the top, bring people in to work on the field and make sure things are being done correctly, and keep the current experts on the payroll, then send BP and/or TEPCO the bill for actually doing things thoroughly and correctly instead of half-assing it to save money. Having caused damage to other peoples' property with these spills and leaks, the companies that are to blame are now liable for that, and they've shown repeatedly that they can't be trusted to clean things up on their own.
Well, if they do take over the cleanup, they should certainly keep the people who work in the plant on the job so that they have experts on hand, although bringing in more people to provide additional oversight would be a good idea.
I've never understood why they were so keen on helping Oracle thumb their nose at LibreOffice the rest of the FOSS community. My opinion of them took a nosedive when they did that, as I'm sure did many others'. What was the point, exactly?
'Freedom of expression is given to people who stand up for what they’re saying and not hiding behind anonymity'
Nice one. Way to conflate doing something perfectly reasonable (that is, disallowing anonymous comments on your privately owned to reduce trolls and spam) with the immensely wrong-headed idea that people should not in general be allowed to express themselves anonymously.
One thing you could try is using a pitch detection algorithm to come up with a notated approximation. If Auto-Tune can recognize what notes T-Pain is trying to sing, and if your phone's GSM speech encoder can compress your voice into fewer bits, a similar pitch detector can recognize what notes your musician improvised, provided the instrument was miked in a way that reasonably isolates a solo performance from other band members' instruments. So you could stop accepting fully mixed improvised recordings and insist on multitrack masters and reward someone else for notating it.
Meant to reply to this too. The large amount of extra work required in order to do that wouldn't push people to submit multitrack masters, it would just drive them away from submitting anything at all. Mind you, if I'm paying a musician to record a song, I would expect that, but when you're asking people to do something for free out of the goodness of their heart, making them jump through a bunch of extra hoops is only going to irritate them. And besides, single track recordings are what most game authors are looking for.
A better strategy (and one I might consider in the future) would be to encourage people to view music making as a collaborative process. Right now, one of the areas where OpenGameArt needs to improve is collaboration. We're good at connecting artists and programmers, but at the moment we're not so good at helping artists work together to make art. It's something I'd definitely like to improve upon.
Which Game Boy? The Game Boy Advance is capable of playing an orchestral recording. I even wrote a music player app for it [pineight.com] back when I was in the GBA homebrew scene. There's a huge difference in capability between a Game Boy Color, which compares to a Nintendo Entertainment System, and a Game Boy Advance, which compares to a PC with an old 8-bit stereo Sound Blaster.
I think you may have taken that sentence a bit too literally.
There are plenty of music formats that contain both the wavetable and the score, dating all the way back to Amiga MOD files (and likely even before then). That being said, you can't just magically convert a recording of a live performance into one of those files.
My point is that yes, of course you can have open source music, but the the analogy doesn't hold perfectly in all cases.
That is roughly what I said, except perhaps for what you said about compilers, which, while technically true, doesn't really detract much from my point. If you compile the same code with the same version of GCC running on the same operating system and the same architecture, you will get the same result, every time. This is doable for a normal person. Playing a song on the exact same set of instruments as the original recording is *not* doable for a normal person, if you even have the resources to get access to those instruments *at all*. Even if you do, and you have the exact same musicians playing the exact same notes, it's *still* not going to be exactly the same.
I didn't feel like writing a whole paragraph about that, so I simplified it... but once again, this is Slashdot.
I run OpenGameArt.org, and we host a lot of creative commons licensed music. This is a topic that comes up fairly frequently, and the answer short answer is that, yes, music can be open source. The long answer is of course a bit more complicated than that.
For something to be "open source", this means that you need some sort of preferred source format that's easy to modify. In the case of people composing sheet music, that answer is easy. You provide the sheet music, or some open file type that saves note information (generally a midi file). There are a couple of cases where it's a lot more complicated.
Improvised music
What is the preferred, easy to modify source format for improvisation? The only possible answer is a recording, but recordings are *not* easy to modify in ways that are musically meaningful and still maintain the integrity of the original recording. Of course, this is Slashdot, so some pedant will of course point out that you can get a wav editor and lengthen and change the pitch of notes yourself, but this requires a lot of effort to make it sound good, and if the recording is of multiple notes being played at once, you're essentially out of luck unless you happen to have access to some very expensive, closed-source software, and even then, the results aren't going to be perfect. We could simply stop accepting recordings and start insisting on sheet music, but the only thing that really does is close out submissions of improvised music -- it doesn't increase the amount of "source" available. (Whereas, if you write a program, there's a very good chance that you have access to your source code.)
Musical Instruments
The other problem with a Midi file (and regular sheet music) is that, while it provides instructions for playing a piece of music, it doesn't give you a means of duplicating a performance exactly. For instance, if someone with thousands of dollars worth of proprietary audio software, sound samples, and production equipment produces a midi file of an orchestra, it's going to sounds pretty damn good. Give the sheet music to a conductor of an orchestra, and it's gong to sound amazing. Give the midi file to a random person with a computer and it's going to sound like it's being played on a gameboy. Point is, sheet music and midi files are not complete means of reproducing a performance exactly, whereas computer code is a complete way of reproducing a binary.
So yeah, shoehorning music into the "open source" mold isn't completely trivial, because music isn't completely analogous to software. On the other hand, the problems aren't so insurmountable that it would be impossible to consider certain music to be "open source", particularly if you loosen the definition a bit with respect to music and musical performances.
That was a refreshingly well informed and interesting post. Most of the opposition to Obamacare that I see around here seems to be knee-jerk anti-government sentiment.
Honestly, I think part of what causes this kind of crap is our electoral system that essentially locks the two major parties into power and turns campaign contributions (rather than the desire of voters) into their main incentive. In order to win elections in the US, all you have to do is be slightly more appealing than the other party, since if you vote third party, you're not voting for one of the two viable parties, and you thus risk having your last choice win the election. And even if enough people can be convinced to vote for a third party, that party will just supplant one of the big two, and will eventually become corrupt as money is dumped into it from the outside. The only way to fix this would be to fundamentally alter the electoral system, but I'm not sure that's possible from a practical standpoint. There would be far too much resistance.
Slashdot Mirror
I want freedom too. The difference between us is that I understand that governments aren't unique in their ability to deny people freedoms.
Besides, you already live in the completely free world that you've always wanted. Because the world is completely free, a large group of people who have more guns than you are forcing you to live in a mostly capitalist democracy with some small hints of socialism, and no one is powerful enough to stop them.
This video picks an absolutely abysmal example of the tragedy of the commons. A pasture, really? Yes, privatize the pasture. It's obvious.
What about the airwaves? How do we determine the ownership of those? Does everyone own the airwaves on their property? Do we choose one private person or company to own *all* the airwaves? If your answer is that the best way it to split them up and auction them off to private companies, then it's worth noting that that's what the FCC does already. But then you need government regulation for that.
Also, just a question in general... have you talked to libertarians on Slashdot? The minute you suggest that maybe a regulation somewhere would be a good thing, the immediate response is, "Oh, so you're going to solve problems with more government?" If people feel that libertarians are dogmatically anti-government, it's because they run into a lot of libertarians who are, in fact, dogmatically anti-government. Far more often, I might add, than libertarians who are actually interested in offering real, detailed solutions for problems that aren't just "deregulate and privatize, because that always works."
Good, then you will be taken care of if you get sick.
Barbaric, I tell you!
I wonder if this will ever be viable as a form of travel rather than just space tourism, or if it will always be cost prohibitive. Most people can't afford a quarter million dollars, but for a few thousand dollars, I think a lot of people would love the opportunity to fly in space at Mach 2+ and get across the country in a couple of hours.
This argument is a) tired, b) stupid, and c) a prime example of reductio ad absurdum.
You're probably going for an all-government-is-bad angle here, but in the case of services where the providers need to be able to lay cable on private property, either the government needs to get involved or the cable will never need to be put in at all.
I would certainly agree with you that it's bad when the government allows for artificial monopolies, though. What they should be doing is saying that since that cable is a public resource put down in part with public money, that any company wanting to use the cable should be able to do so at cost. In addition, the (local) government should internet to consumers directly, since in the past municipal internet providers have actually compared very favorably in terms of cost and bandwidth to their privately owned competitors, despite the ostensible disadvantage of not being motivated by profit.
... such as birthplace and race?
Race alone would account for a huge genetic difference, and people tend to be friends with people of their own race for all sorts of reasons that can be easily explained through psychology and sociology. You're also more likely to be at least distantly related to people who live in the same area as you do.
All this time I thought maybe people who have studied the climate for years and years might be on to something, but you have convinced me that I was wrong with your deep understanding of the topic and highly credible, well thought out refutation of their claims, random dude on the internet!
Then the government needs to take charge at the top, bring people in to work on the field and make sure things are being done correctly, and keep the current experts on the payroll, then send BP and/or TEPCO the bill for actually doing things thoroughly and correctly instead of half-assing it to save money. Having caused damage to other peoples' property with these spills and leaks, the companies that are to blame are now liable for that, and they've shown repeatedly that they can't be trusted to clean things up on their own.
Well, if they do take over the cleanup, they should certainly keep the people who work in the plant on the job so that they have experts on hand, although bringing in more people to provide additional oversight would be a good idea.
We're talking about what Apache did in relation to Oracle and OpenOffice/LibreOffice, which makes Oracle's actions very relevant.
I find this far more likely than any of the other explanations.
"Because they're mature enough to help Oracle act like a spoiled brat" doesn't really hold a lot of water, honestly.
Interesting you should put it that way. Would you call Oracle's handling of the whole thing "mature"?
I've never understood why they were so keen on helping Oracle thumb their nose at LibreOffice the rest of the FOSS community. My opinion of them took a nosedive when they did that, as I'm sure did many others'. What was the point, exactly?
Don't bother the guy. He's just shillin'.
'Freedom of expression is given to people who stand up for what they’re saying and not hiding behind anonymity'
Nice one. Way to conflate doing something perfectly reasonable (that is, disallowing anonymous comments on your privately owned to reduce trolls and spam) with the immensely wrong-headed idea that people should not in general be allowed to express themselves anonymously.
Had you read the article, you would know that it specifically says that consumption is relevant.
Meant to reply to this too. The large amount of extra work required in order to do that wouldn't push people to submit multitrack masters, it would just drive them away from submitting anything at all. Mind you, if I'm paying a musician to record a song, I would expect that, but when you're asking people to do something for free out of the goodness of their heart, making them jump through a bunch of extra hoops is only going to irritate them. And besides, single track recordings are what most game authors are looking for.
A better strategy (and one I might consider in the future) would be to encourage people to view music making as a collaborative process. Right now, one of the areas where OpenGameArt needs to improve is collaboration. We're good at connecting artists and programmers, but at the moment we're not so good at helping artists work together to make art. It's something I'd definitely like to improve upon.
I think you may have taken that sentence a bit too literally.
sigh
There are plenty of music formats that contain both the wavetable and the score, dating all the way back to Amiga MOD files (and likely even before then). That being said, you can't just magically convert a recording of a live performance into one of those files.
My point is that yes, of course you can have open source music, but the the analogy doesn't hold perfectly in all cases.
That is roughly what I said, except perhaps for what you said about compilers, which, while technically true, doesn't really detract much from my point. If you compile the same code with the same version of GCC running on the same operating system and the same architecture, you will get the same result, every time. This is doable for a normal person. Playing a song on the exact same set of instruments as the original recording is *not* doable for a normal person, if you even have the resources to get access to those instruments *at all*. Even if you do, and you have the exact same musicians playing the exact same notes, it's *still* not going to be exactly the same.
I didn't feel like writing a whole paragraph about that, so I simplified it... but once again, this is Slashdot.
I run OpenGameArt.org, and we host a lot of creative commons licensed music. This is a topic that comes up fairly frequently, and the answer short answer is that, yes, music can be open source. The long answer is of course a bit more complicated than that.
For something to be "open source", this means that you need some sort of preferred source format that's easy to modify. In the case of people composing sheet music, that answer is easy. You provide the sheet music, or some open file type that saves note information (generally a midi file). There are a couple of cases where it's a lot more complicated.
Improvised music
What is the preferred, easy to modify source format for improvisation? The only possible answer is a recording, but recordings are *not* easy to modify in ways that are musically meaningful and still maintain the integrity of the original recording. Of course, this is Slashdot, so some pedant will of course point out that you can get a wav editor and lengthen and change the pitch of notes yourself, but this requires a lot of effort to make it sound good, and if the recording is of multiple notes being played at once, you're essentially out of luck unless you happen to have access to some very expensive, closed-source software, and even then, the results aren't going to be perfect. We could simply stop accepting recordings and start insisting on sheet music, but the only thing that really does is close out submissions of improvised music -- it doesn't increase the amount of "source" available. (Whereas, if you write a program, there's a very good chance that you have access to your source code.)
Musical Instruments
The other problem with a Midi file (and regular sheet music) is that, while it provides instructions for playing a piece of music, it doesn't give you a means of duplicating a performance exactly. For instance, if someone with thousands of dollars worth of proprietary audio software, sound samples, and production equipment produces a midi file of an orchestra, it's going to sounds pretty damn good. Give the sheet music to a conductor of an orchestra, and it's gong to sound amazing. Give the midi file to a random person with a computer and it's going to sound like it's being played on a gameboy. Point is, sheet music and midi files are not complete means of reproducing a performance exactly, whereas computer code is a complete way of reproducing a binary.
So yeah, shoehorning music into the "open source" mold isn't completely trivial, because music isn't completely analogous to software. On the other hand, the problems aren't so insurmountable that it would be impossible to consider certain music to be "open source", particularly if you loosen the definition a bit with respect to music and musical performances.
Relevant TV clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Uqv6hlXKU4k&t=25
That was a refreshingly well informed and interesting post. Most of the opposition to Obamacare that I see around here seems to be knee-jerk anti-government sentiment.
Honestly, I think part of what causes this kind of crap is our electoral system that essentially locks the two major parties into power and turns campaign contributions (rather than the desire of voters) into their main incentive. In order to win elections in the US, all you have to do is be slightly more appealing than the other party, since if you vote third party, you're not voting for one of the two viable parties, and you thus risk having your last choice win the election. And even if enough people can be convinced to vote for a third party, that party will just supplant one of the big two, and will eventually become corrupt as money is dumped into it from the outside. The only way to fix this would be to fundamentally alter the electoral system, but I'm not sure that's possible from a practical standpoint. There would be far too much resistance.