Read down the article for details on how they can now do things like mount the registry as a drive and walk it like a filesystem. Yegads!
Finally, they're starting to appreciate the unified namespace that unix has been offering since the seventies.
They're only doing it on a way to high level.
Everything should look like a file and be accessible through the same API. read(), write(), ioctl() and select() are all you fundamentally need to do with anything. Inband I/O, out of band I/O, and wait for event. What more could you want to do with any object whatsoever?
The unix model is so beautiful, too bad it isn't taken far enough, even in unix.
Microsoft has an especially long way to go if they're trying to unify all the different system objects on such a high level (the shell).
Yes, but the derived work only exists as long as the original work and the added bits are linked together.
There's no way on earth the added bits become tainted and remain derivative works of the original work even after they are combined with a different original work.
So, SysV (Copyright SCO) + JFS (Copyright IBM) is a derivative work of SysV.
There's no way Linux (Copyright 1000s) + JFS (Copyright IBM) is a derivative work of SysV, simply because once upon a time, JFS was used to create a derivative work from SysV.
This is what SCO just doesn't want to understand, or doesn't want the public and the judge to understand.
The problem is that the internet isn't about content. This is/the/ mistake, which is made by both the dotbombers and again with today's topic.
The internet is a any-to-any communications network. A packet based phone service for computers. It's not 'yet another distribution medium for the content cartels'. It's simply communications for the masses.
That is valuable in itself, and indeed, people and companies are willing to pay for the possibilities of global any-to-any communications. They communicate for whatever reasons they want to communicate, whether that's to sell a product, to make money off adverts, to try and wash the masses in propaganda, or to participate in society by interacting with other human beings.
It's not about consumption, unless you feel that talking to a fellow human being is also consumption. In which case I'd say your one very sad person, but that's just me.
"Providing content" is a fiction perpetuated by the media cartels. It's not what matters. People communicating, that's what matters. Some of that happens through top-down channels, but most of those primarily exist to help sell something, to influence people, and the little "content", the communications that happens there is just the sugar coating of the rat poison. We can do without that.
People who feel the need to say something, and put lots of their time and effort into it, and are willing to do it as long as they get enough money to survive, they are interesting. An artist who can make a living through some means, but who stops making his art because the pay isn't good enough, is probably not very interesting.
If we really think it's worthwhile what someone has to say, we will make sure he can say it, and keep him alive. Society will figure out a way. It used to be copyrights, in the internet age it will likely be something else such as pay-before-publish, but I am sure it won't be pay-per-view, simply because that can only be done if you take recording and copying away from users. This will *not* succeed. Contrary to what the cartels are trying to make you believe with the DMCA and EUCD they've bought, that will *not* fly. Let them whine. We don't care. Their days are numbered.
Indeed. Forbidding copying by itself creates a twisted maze of weird paradoxes and exceptions, all different.
I think the solution is to make copyright not govern the making of copies, but the distribution of copies to 3rd parties. Incidentally, the exceptions in a lot of old (pre-DMCA, pre-EUCD) copyright laws effectively create such a situation.
This avoids the copy-to-RAM issue. Time- and space shifting are automatically allowed. You can make as many copies as you like, as long as you don't distribute them to other persons -- i.e. they are automatically for personal use.
This makes economic sense too, because only if you're distributing a copy to another entity, are you diluting the value of the monopoly on copying granted to the author/rights holder by copyright.
The only consequence that would have some impact is that if a company is regarded as a person, a company would be able to make as many copies for internal use as it needs, thereby making it impossible for a software vendor to forbid the use of cheaper personal licenses inside a company.
However, I think that's a good thing. If you want to charge more money, you should provide more value. As simple as that. The current extortion that happens because of discriminatory licenses should end.
Since the large scale advent of the internet, it seems there are two schools in thinking about copyright. One is to solve the paradoxes by extending copyright into right to use; see the DMCA, CBDPTA, TCPA, and similar efforts. The vendors would love to control exactly the way you use works, and make sure you watch the adverts. The other is to solve them by restricting copyright to distribution. Indeed, mr. Moglen makes it sound like that's universal. As the poster pointed out, that's not the case, even though it would be nice.
IPv6 is ready for prime time. People are using it (I, for example). You can buy access to IPv6-native backbones. All the major OSses support it. There is really no excuse not to be already using it.
Except that connectivity provides you with little but the feeling of driving on a nice highway from nowhere to nowhere.
As Dan Bernstein says: what use is IPv6 if you can't use it to talk to www.cnn.com and smtp.hotmall.com?
IPv6 should have encompassed the whole IPv4 space.
IPv6 is to IPv4 what the Itanic is to IA32. IMHO, the IETF should have gone the Opteron route.
First off, you have to realize that under any even halfway sane copyright system, something like this can be implemented in userspace by means of a contract. [...] People could use this system right now; they don't because content producers know they can get a sweeter deal because of the abilities copyright currently affords them.
I don't think the current deal is so sweet. Look at how many artist detest the recording industry, but have no choice but to hope they'll create a smash hit and make some money too. And if the arms race between the file sharing public and the media cartels + governments (it's a powerful combination, I know) is ultimately won by the former (and I'm about 50% sure it will), then artists will be forced to look at alternatives to copyright.
This is exploitable to a minor degree by big-name creators who "cash in" on their names by writing junk that they know people will fund every once in a while.
Perhaps, but people are merciless. If you pull that stunt too often, you may need to record your next album in your own basement.
You seem to be coming from a pretty strict libertarian perspective, which I have a lot of sympathy for, but I think that products of the mind really challenge a lot of the assumptions that make libertarianism work so well for physical objects.
Heh. I'm not at all a libertarian. I think that laws that apply to everyone equally, and established by a democratic process, should be stronger than any random individual or corporation can ever get. The free market is no substitute for democracy. In the former rules the right of the (economic) strongest, in the latter every man and woman, regardless of economic power, rules a tiny bit. Markets don't work in the public interest. They work in efficiency's interest, nothing else. So I do want free markets, but only up to a certain point. If Europe doesn't want GM food, we should be able to make a democratic decision to keep the stuff away, without leaving that up to the individual consumer. Because if it's cheaper, there will be a market, even if involuntarily, and the market for non-GM food will be harmed. If you're poor, you're forced to buy the cheapest stuff, even if you hate it. Governments should be able to set minimum standards. Free markets think countries without environmental regulations or unions offer the best price/quality ratio. Unless we want to get rid of those things ourselves as well, we should not have a free market to compete with such countries.
But going back to your point, I do think that western governments today refuse to do anything that's in the public interest if it harms the big corporations and free trade. A lot of people think that way too. That's why I point out that in my proposed system, you still have a free market instead of a bureaucracy that divides tax money among artists. And in this particular case, I happen to favour the free market too.
I don't think it's that bad. A bank or record company runs the same risk of bands breaking up and drummers going up in flames. As a financial institution, they want to run that risk because successes will compensate. The audience wants to run the risk because they like the music. And if it doesn't like the music enough, then apparently the price/quality ratio wasn't quite right.
You may need to earn a better reputation by giving live concerts (making money at the same time) and providing more samples. That may be individual songs, or reduced bitrate songs. But I don't think there's ever a need to create your whole album up front. Your previous album is there, some work in progress is there, there are a few recordings of live concerts in circulation where you've played some new songs that will be on the album. That should be enough.
As to fanhood: I'm far from a die-hard Spielberg fan. However, I'm interested enough that if he'd run an auction for his next film, I'd happily invest my 25 euros if the description sounds any good.
If the money making doesn't seem to go well, I'm even going to try and convince my friends to pay too. Free advertising! I have an incentive to do that, because if the public doesn't raise enough money, I loose my 10 % and won't see that film.
I think there's an alternative to DRM, compulsory licensing or the tip jar, neither of which is particularly attractive.
I think it's possible to keep a free market. Not for released information-only products, but for non-released products. A scheme where popular artists earn more, where expensive productions remain possible, but without having to put any restrictions on use or redistribution of the material once it's published.
How, you say?
The starting point is that you can only demand a certain sum of money before you publish.
But that's not necessarily problematic. In order to make a living of your creative work, you could run an auction on the web. A band with a good reputation would say, "we ask $750,000 for our next album. The ending term for this is in 3 months. If we haven't received the total sum of money by then, we'll either decide to go ahead anyway, or pay everyone back what he payed, minus 10 % to offer auction expenses and living costs. Bank such-and-such is the trusted party for this transaction."
Of course, you need some technical and financial infrastructure to implement this, but running that would be a lovely new job for the poor record company execs. I'm definitely sure the artists will be more than happy to pay for the work of handling the auctions in a good and efficient manner, and for making sure there is an excellent search mechanism that allows people to find the artists they're looking for.
A lovely thing about it is that the investment doesn't come anymore from financial institutions that are only seeking a high return on investment, which encourages the riskless, prefab artists and mass marketing you see and here every day; here you have people investing who have an actual interest in the end product.
It surprises me that such a scheme hasn't been considered in the paper, which is otherwise quite comprehensive. Is there any reason why it would promote arts and sciences any less than the current copyrights?
I've been toying with this idea for a while, but so far the only drawback I've been able to find is that as an artist, you can never make more money than you've bargained for, except with your next production, where you can cash in on your improved reputation. In other words, surprise hits will no longer make unexpected amounts of money, because the multiplier effect is gone.
That will no doubt discourage some artists, but I think it's likely that as an artist you'll likely be completely satisfied if you're are able to make a decent living of your art. Personally, I would say that interesting artists don't create for the surprise effect that has a one in a million chance of happening. They create because they find that the best way to spend their lives, if only they could earn a reasonable living with it.
There's just two requirements. Artists mustn't whine if they can't win the lottery anymore except by buying a lottery ticket, the people in the audience mustn't whine if they get the art they payed for, while others are getting it for free.
This is going to cause a massive revolt in a few decades. Why? Because all sovereignty has gone from our democracies.
The WTO has more power than the people. Sure, you can get out of the WTO, but you'll not be able to do any business anywhere. The WTO thereby extorts its member states into submission to its singular business interests.
We have created the biggest monster to roam the earth. An organisation that is more powerful than any state, and that works in one singular interest: the intensity of global trade. And we have become its slaves. No more citizenry. No more freedom. Serve the economy. Just do it (tm).
Well, duh. But what is "good enough"? Not handling error cases? A few nasty races here and there?
If the demo program produces correct results in only 90 % of the cases, is that good enough? Or do you need that time to actually build sane synchronisation and error handling before you can ship?
And how about maintenance and support costs for a program that works 98 % of the cases?
Well, with cancer, or road accidents, it's easy. It's a binary risk. You either get it or you don't, and a lot of people are willing to take some extra risk there.
However, with pulsed radio waves that are absorbed by tissue, this may not be the thing to consider. What if the brain is susceptible? I'm not thinking about a tin foil hat because someone may read my thoughts or beam bad vibes into it, but if we really start flooding the world in microwaves, it a tin foil hat may become necessary to keep your ability to concentrate.
There is no way such effects can be scientitically proven. If a certain part of the population looses 10 % of their concentration strenght over a few years, who's to know, except that the next generation will again be a little more stupid and a little less likely to bring an Einstein? Over so many years, it can be thousands of factors. We'll simply never know.
There are a few experiments that show that 2.4Ghz pulse modulated with a low frequency (< 100 Hz, say your telnet packet rate) has a strong effect on calcium metabolism in (dead) brain cells.
Before we all run away with 2.4Ghz, 5Ghz, digital television, Tetra/C2000 (that's a real sweet tech that gives the cops using it headaches, litterally) as the best thing since sliced bread, we may wish to consider sticking with analog modulations on lower frequencies (lambda >> body size) and strongly directed digital links for a while, and perhaps UWB later.
But even with UWB, that looks absolutely terrific at first because to organic tissue, it resembles continuous white noise, who is to say that raising the EM noise level considerably, doesn't harm the brain in the longer run?
We hardly know how the most complex device in the known universe works, except that it's delicate and sensitive to chemical and electrical stimuli. I'd like RF committees to consider this a little more and waste less of their time on the harmless absorption rates of non-modulated waves. That's utterly uninteresting; no wonder you're allowed to send a few watts if heating by continuous waves is all the FCC looks at.
- We grow exponentially until there's a collapse, then do it all over again (if we survive). This option sucks.
- We make the transition to a stable, zero growth society. This transition seems politically impossible. Also, a stable, zero growth society sucks (e.g., prepare to give up basic freedoms, etc.). Admittedly it sucks less than a collapse, but it still sucks.
- We expand out of earth, and maintain a growing, open, free society. This is possible, but is expensive.
Option four:
- We actually develop ethics. The beginning of any ethical system is 'enough is enough' -- as opposed to 'I'll stop when I hit the brick wall'. If we can get this into our individual minds, then a stable, zero growth society should be possible without giving up any freedoms.
Of course you cannot force people to behave ethically; I agree that the totalitarian society required would not be worthy to live in. But right now we have a system that encourages, no, *requires unethical behaviour by law*.
If a corporation doesn't go after that last extra penny, whatever the immaterial cost, whatever the human consequence, management can be sued by the shareholders. This completely kills the 'enough is enough' concept. When you're part of a corporation, you're *forced* to abuse things to get an edge, until a law is made in a feeble attempt by the public to take care of public interests.
Currently, we have institutionalised the right of the strongest. That reduces us from people with a free will to single-direction ('get more') machines. If you don't, then your competitor will, and you'll starve or get sued by your shareholders. That is the problem.
Gandhi said something to the effect: there's more than enough for everybody, but not nearly enough for everbody's greed. That sums it up quite nicely.
Multiple major distros is good. Why? Because it hopefully forces the ISVs to specify their requirements in terms of standards instead of in terms of distros, thus lowering the barrier to entry for distros, which is good for innovation.
Oracle targetting RedHat only is a big problem, and not a solution for anything whatsoever. It doesn't help anybody but RedHat. They should support their product on any LSB-compliant linux.
Fragmentation will help there, because it makes standards not just a nice-to-have, but a/necessity/.
"Subversion" was written to deal with these issues. When it's done, it will do about what CVS does, but hopefully better. That indicates a failure of the patch-based open source process. CVS couldn't be fixed within the process; it was necessary to start a new project and rewrite.
Well, subversion is also an open source product. It follows that open source is capable of generating redesigns as well as patches, which makes your argument moot, really.
Nobody in their right mind is arguing that patches are all you need in software. I think the idea that open source can come up with solutions for every software need still holds though.
If you don't have a lot of money, you'll buy whatever's cheapest, and you'll leave ethical considerations out of the equasion. Apple certainly costs more than Wintel.
If you can only choose on the market whether or not pollution or child labour is OK, and not through democratic means, then the cheapest method of production will always have an advantage. The poorer you are, the greater the advantage, and the harder it is to choose against child labour or pollution. That's a very poor substitute for democracy.
If only 51 % of a population chooses to forbid child labour, then the market share of products produced by adults grows to 100 % (ignoring the black market for products produced by children), which lowers the price.
In a democracy, you can vote against child labour on the premisse that your vote will only take effect if at least 50 % of the population chooses this too, which will lower the price. So even if you're poor, you can still choose the ethical option. That isn't the case if democracy doesn't take precedence over the free market.
Well, I don't particularly subscribe to the idea that people can be truly beyond hope, even sociopaths.
However, I do agree with the idea that if you allow someone like that to harm you, you're effectively an accomplice to the crime of increasing the total amount of bad deeds done. Indeed, say no to sociopatic acts, regardless of how the sociopath will feel or try to make you feel, but say yes to sociopaths whenever they act different.
Humans are selfish, true. But if you are really saying that all choices are necessarily motivated from by interest, then that means we are not really free to choose, but are slaves to our perceived self interest.
I don't buy that. I believe that you're ultimately free to choose your intentions, meaning that you have absolute freedom to choose where you'd like to whenever the external circumstances, which include your character, make it possible. And of course do people act out of self interest. It's just not the only action open to you. I think it's possible to truly give and help others.
That doing so may help yourself is beside the point. We don't need to resolve the question of motives when you're helping youself and others at the same time. You're contributing to humanity. There is no "either it's self interest, or it's altruism". It's both, and I think all world views that are modeled from just one of these motive are invalid.
The fact that you can help others while helping yourself only shows how easy it can be to help others.
Art, science, and Free Software happens to be excellent examples of this.
Hmm, and RCU also seems to have come via Sequent. Could it be that SCO somehow has looked at Sequence's SysV license (which has passed to IBM) and think it is invalidated somehow, causing all of Sequent's Unix code to be a derivative work of AT&T/Novell/Caldera/SCO's SysV Unix?
Slashdot Mirror
At least have to courtesy to properly attribute the replaced parts analogy to Asimov! ;-)
Read down the article for details on how they can now do things like mount the registry as a drive and walk it like a filesystem. Yegads!
Finally, they're starting to appreciate the unified namespace that unix has been offering since the seventies.
They're only doing it on a way to high level.
Everything should look like a file and be accessible through the same API. read(), write(), ioctl() and select() are all you fundamentally need to do with anything. Inband I/O, out of band I/O, and wait for event. What more could you want to do with any object whatsoever?
The unix model is so beautiful, too bad it isn't taken far enough, even in unix.
Microsoft has an especially long way to go if they're trying to unify all the different system objects on such a high level (the shell).
Yes, but the derived work only exists as long as the original work and
the added bits are linked together.
There's no way on earth the added bits become tainted and remain derivative works of the original work even after they are combined with a different original work.
So, SysV (Copyright SCO) + JFS (Copyright IBM) is a derivative work of SysV.
There's no way Linux (Copyright 1000s) + JFS (Copyright IBM) is a derivative work of SysV, simply because once upon a time, JFS was used to create a derivative work from SysV.
This is what SCO just doesn't want to understand, or doesn't want the public and the judge to understand.
Amen, brother.
/insult/ corporations nowadays?
It's funny that people consider this flamebait. Can one even
The problem is that the internet isn't about content. This is /the/ mistake, which is made by both the dotbombers and again with today's topic.
The internet is a any-to-any communications network. A packet based phone service for computers. It's not 'yet another distribution medium for the content cartels'. It's simply communications for the masses.
That is valuable in itself, and indeed, people and companies are willing to pay for the possibilities of global any-to-any communications. They communicate for whatever reasons they want to communicate, whether that's to sell a product, to make money off adverts, to try and wash the masses in propaganda, or to participate in society by interacting with other human beings.
It's not about consumption, unless you feel that talking to a fellow human being is also consumption. In which case I'd say your one very sad person, but that's just me.
"Providing content" is a fiction perpetuated by the media cartels. It's not what matters. People communicating, that's what matters. Some of that happens through top-down channels, but most of those primarily exist to help sell something, to influence people, and the little "content", the communications that happens there is just the sugar coating of the rat poison. We can do without that.
People who feel the need to say something, and put lots of their time and effort into it, and are willing to do it as long as they get enough money to survive, they are interesting. An artist who can make a living through some means, but who stops making his art because the pay isn't good enough, is probably not very interesting.
If we really think it's worthwhile what someone has to say, we will make sure he can say it, and keep him alive. Society will figure out a way. It used to be copyrights, in the internet age it will likely be something else such as pay-before-publish, but I am sure it won't be pay-per-view, simply because that can only be done if you take recording and copying away from users. This will *not* succeed. Contrary to what the cartels are trying to make you believe with the DMCA and EUCD they've bought, that will *not* fly. Let them whine. We don't care. Their days are numbered.
Indeed. Forbidding copying by itself creates a twisted maze of weird paradoxes and exceptions, all different.
I think the solution is to make copyright not govern the making of copies, but the distribution of copies to 3rd parties. Incidentally, the exceptions in a lot of old (pre-DMCA, pre-EUCD) copyright laws effectively create such a situation.
This avoids the copy-to-RAM issue. Time- and space shifting are automatically allowed. You can make as many copies as you like, as long as you don't distribute them to other persons -- i.e. they are automatically for personal use.
This makes economic sense too, because only if you're distributing a copy to another entity, are you diluting the value of the monopoly on copying granted to the author/rights holder by copyright.
The only consequence that would have some impact is that if a company is regarded as a person, a company would be able to make as many copies for internal use as it needs, thereby making it impossible for a software vendor to forbid the use of cheaper personal licenses inside a company.
However, I think that's a good thing. If you want to charge more money, you should provide more value. As simple as that. The current extortion that happens because of discriminatory licenses should end.
Since the large scale advent of the internet, it seems there are two schools in thinking about copyright. One is to solve the paradoxes by extending copyright into right to use; see the DMCA, CBDPTA, TCPA, and similar efforts. The vendors would love to control exactly the way you use works, and make sure you watch the adverts. The other is to solve them by restricting copyright to distribution. Indeed, mr. Moglen makes it sound like that's universal. As the poster pointed out, that's not the case, even though it would be nice.
Linux is SOFTWARE. SOFTWARE. BITS ARRANGED IN ORDER TO DO STUFF ON SPECIFIC HARDWARE.
Only a snapshot of Linux is software.
The license isn't software. The way bugs are fixed isn't software. The direction in which it's going isn't software.
Linux has lots of interesting aspects that have nothing to do with the bitstring that is linux-x.y.z.tar.gz.
IPv6 is ready for prime time. People are using it (I, for example). You can buy access to IPv6-native backbones. All the major OSses support it. There is really no excuse not to be already using it.
Except that connectivity provides you with little but the feeling of driving on a nice highway from nowhere to nowhere.
As Dan Bernstein says: what use is IPv6 if you can't use it to talk to www.cnn.com and smtp.hotmall.com?
IPv6 should have encompassed the whole IPv4 space.
IPv6 is to IPv4 what the Itanic is to IA32. IMHO, the IETF should have gone the Opteron route.
Cheers,
Emile.
Thanks for your feedback.
First off, you have to realize that under any even halfway sane copyright system, something like this can be implemented in userspace by means of a contract. [...] People could use this system right now; they don't because content producers know they can get a sweeter deal because of the abilities copyright currently affords them.
I don't think the current deal is so sweet. Look at how many artist detest the recording industry, but have no choice but to hope they'll create a smash hit and make some money too. And if the arms race between the file sharing public and the media cartels + governments (it's a powerful combination, I know) is ultimately won by the former (and I'm about 50% sure it will), then artists will be forced to look at alternatives to copyright.
This is exploitable to a minor degree by big-name creators who "cash in" on their names by writing junk that they know people will fund every once in a while.
Perhaps, but people are merciless. If you pull that stunt too often, you may need to record your next album in your own basement.
You seem to be coming from a pretty strict libertarian perspective, which I have a lot of sympathy for, but I think that products of the mind really challenge a lot of the assumptions that make libertarianism work so well for physical objects.
Heh. I'm not at all a libertarian. I think that laws that apply to everyone equally, and established by a democratic process, should be stronger than any random individual or corporation can ever get. The free market is no substitute for democracy. In the former rules the right of the (economic) strongest, in the latter every man and woman, regardless of economic power, rules a tiny bit. Markets don't work in the public interest. They work in efficiency's interest, nothing else. So I do want free markets, but only up to a certain point. If Europe doesn't want GM food, we should be able to make a democratic decision to keep the stuff away, without leaving that up to the individual consumer. Because if it's cheaper, there will be a market, even if involuntarily, and the market for non-GM food will be harmed. If you're poor, you're forced to buy the cheapest stuff, even if you hate it. Governments should be able to set minimum standards. Free markets think countries without environmental regulations or unions offer the best price/quality ratio. Unless we want to get rid of those things ourselves as well, we should not have a free market to compete with such countries.
But going back to your point, I do think that western governments today refuse to do anything that's in the public interest if it harms the big corporations and free trade. A lot of people think that way too. That's why I point out that in my proposed system, you still have a free market instead of a bureaucracy that divides tax money among artists. And in this particular case, I happen to favour the free market too.
I don't think it's that bad. A bank or record company runs the same risk of bands breaking up and drummers going up in flames. As a financial institution, they want to run that risk because successes will compensate. The audience wants to run the risk because they like the music. And if it doesn't like the music enough, then apparently the price/quality ratio wasn't quite right.
You may need to earn a better reputation by giving live concerts (making money at the same time) and providing more samples. That may be individual songs, or reduced bitrate songs. But I don't think there's ever a need to create your whole album up front. Your previous album is there, some work in progress is there, there are a few recordings of live concerts in circulation where you've played some new songs that will be on the album. That should be enough.
As to fanhood: I'm far from a die-hard Spielberg fan. However, I'm interested enough that if he'd run an auction for his next film, I'd happily invest my 25 euros if the description sounds any good.
If the money making doesn't seem to go well, I'm even going to try and convince my friends to pay too. Free advertising! I have an incentive to do that, because if the public doesn't raise enough money, I loose my 10 % and won't see that film.
I think there's an alternative to DRM, compulsory licensing or the tip jar, neither of which is particularly attractive.
I think it's possible to keep a free market. Not for released information-only products, but for non-released products. A scheme where popular artists earn more, where expensive productions remain possible, but without having to put any restrictions on use or redistribution of the material once it's published.
How, you say?
The starting point is that you can only demand a certain sum of money before you publish.
But that's not necessarily problematic. In order to make a living of your creative work, you could run an auction on the web. A band with a good reputation would say, "we ask $750,000 for our next album. The ending term for this is in 3 months. If we haven't received the total sum of money by then, we'll either decide to go ahead anyway, or pay everyone back what he payed, minus 10 % to offer auction expenses and living costs. Bank such-and-such is the trusted party for this transaction."
Of course, you need some technical and financial infrastructure to implement this, but running that would be a lovely new job for the poor record company execs. I'm definitely sure the artists will be more than happy to pay for the work of handling the auctions in a good and efficient manner, and for making sure there is an excellent search mechanism that allows people to find the artists they're looking for.
A lovely thing about it is that the investment doesn't come anymore from financial institutions that are only seeking a high return on investment, which encourages the riskless, prefab artists and mass marketing you see and here every day; here you have people investing who have an actual interest in the end product.
It surprises me that such a scheme hasn't been considered in the paper, which is otherwise quite comprehensive. Is there any reason why it would promote arts and sciences any less than the current copyrights?
I've been toying with this idea for a while, but so far the only drawback I've been able to find is that as an artist, you can never make more money than you've bargained for, except with your next production, where you can cash in on your improved reputation. In other words, surprise hits will no longer make unexpected amounts of money, because the multiplier effect is gone.
That will no doubt discourage some artists, but I think it's likely that as an artist you'll likely be completely satisfied if you're are able to make a decent living of your art. Personally, I would say that interesting artists don't create for the surprise effect that has a one in a million chance of happening. They create because they find that the best way to spend their lives, if only they could earn a reasonable living with it.
There's just two requirements. Artists mustn't whine if they can't win the lottery anymore except by buying a lottery ticket, the people in the audience mustn't whine if they get the art they payed for, while others are getting it for free.
But is that really too much to ask?
This is going to cause a massive revolt in a few decades. Why? Because all sovereignty has gone from our democracies.
The WTO has more power than the people. Sure, you can get out of the WTO, but you'll not be able to do any business anywhere. The WTO thereby extorts its member states into submission to its singular business interests.
We have created the biggest monster to roam the earth. An organisation that is more powerful than any state, and that works in one singular interest: the intensity of global trade. And we have become its slaves. No more citizenry. No more freedom. Serve the economy. Just do it (tm).
Well, duh. But what is "good enough"? Not handling error cases? A few nasty races here and there?
If the demo program produces correct results in only 90 % of the cases, is that good enough? Or do you need that time to actually build sane synchronisation and error handling before you can ship?
And how about maintenance and support costs for a program that works 98 % of the cases?
These are hard questions.
Well, with cancer, or road accidents, it's easy. It's a binary risk. You either get it or you don't, and a lot of people are willing to take some extra risk there.
However, with pulsed radio waves that are absorbed by tissue, this may not be the thing to consider. What if the brain is susceptible? I'm not thinking about a tin foil hat because someone may read my thoughts or beam bad vibes into it, but if we really start flooding the world in microwaves, it a tin foil hat may become necessary to keep your ability to concentrate.
There is no way such effects can be scientitically proven. If a certain part of the population looses 10 % of their concentration strenght over a few years, who's to know, except that the next generation will again be a little more stupid and a little less likely to bring an Einstein? Over so many years, it can be thousands of factors. We'll simply never know.
There are a few experiments that show that 2.4Ghz pulse modulated with a low frequency (< 100 Hz, say your telnet packet rate) has a strong effect on calcium metabolism in (dead) brain cells.
Before we all run away with 2.4Ghz, 5Ghz, digital television, Tetra/C2000 (that's a real sweet tech that gives the cops using it headaches, litterally) as the best thing since sliced bread, we may wish to consider sticking with analog modulations on lower frequencies (lambda >> body size) and strongly directed digital links for a while, and perhaps UWB later.
But even with UWB, that looks absolutely terrific at first because to organic tissue, it resembles continuous white noise, who is to say that raising the EM noise level considerably, doesn't harm the brain in the longer run?
We hardly know how the most complex device in the known universe works, except that it's delicate and sensitive to chemical and electrical stimuli. I'd like RF committees to consider this a little more and waste less of their time on the harmless absorption rates of non-modulated waves. That's utterly uninteresting; no wonder you're allowed to send a few watts if heating by continuous waves is all the FCC looks at.
This leaves us three options:
- We grow exponentially until there's a collapse, then do it all over again (if we survive). This option sucks.
- We make the transition to a stable, zero growth society. This transition seems politically impossible. Also, a stable, zero growth society sucks (e.g., prepare to give up basic freedoms, etc.). Admittedly it sucks less than a collapse, but it still sucks.
- We expand out of earth, and maintain a growing, open, free society. This is possible, but is expensive.
Option four:
- We actually develop ethics. The beginning of any ethical system is 'enough is enough' -- as opposed to 'I'll stop when I hit the brick wall'. If we can get this into our individual minds, then a stable, zero growth society should be possible without giving up any freedoms.
Of course you cannot force people to behave ethically; I agree that the totalitarian society required would not be worthy to live in. But right now we have a system that encourages, no, *requires unethical behaviour by law*.
If a corporation doesn't go after that last extra penny, whatever the immaterial cost, whatever the human consequence, management can be sued by the shareholders. This completely kills the 'enough is enough' concept. When you're part of a corporation, you're *forced* to abuse things to get an edge, until a law is made in a feeble attempt by the public to take care of public interests.
Currently, we have institutionalised the right of the strongest. That reduces us from people with a free will to single-direction ('get more') machines. If you don't, then your competitor will, and you'll starve or get sued by your shareholders. That is the problem.
Gandhi said something to the effect: there's more than enough for everybody, but not nearly enough for everbody's greed. That sums it up quite nicely.
That was brilliant, thanks ;)
Multiple major distros is good. Why? Because it hopefully forces the ISVs to specify their requirements in terms of standards instead of in terms of distros, thus lowering the barrier to entry for distros, which is good for innovation.
/necessity/.
Oracle targetting RedHat only is a big problem, and not a solution for anything whatsoever. It doesn't help anybody but RedHat. They should support their product on any LSB-compliant linux.
Fragmentation will help there, because it makes standards not just a nice-to-have, but a
"Subversion" was written to deal with these issues. When it's done, it will do about what CVS does, but hopefully better. That indicates a failure of the patch-based open source process. CVS couldn't be fixed within the process; it was necessary to start a new project and rewrite.
Well, subversion is also an open source product. It follows that open source is capable of generating redesigns as well as patches, which makes your argument moot, really.
Nobody in their right mind is arguing that patches are all you need in software. I think the idea that open source can come up with solutions for every software need still holds though.
Yep. Love and virtue are foul words to the businessman.
If you don't have a lot of money, you'll buy whatever's cheapest, and you'll leave ethical considerations out of the equasion. Apple certainly costs more than Wintel.
If you can only choose on the market whether or not pollution or child labour is OK, and not through democratic means, then the cheapest method of production will always have an advantage. The poorer you are, the greater the advantage, and the harder it is to choose against child labour or pollution. That's a very poor substitute for democracy.
If only 51 % of a population chooses to forbid child labour, then the market share of products produced by adults grows to 100 % (ignoring the black market for products produced by children), which lowers the price.
In a democracy, you can vote against child labour on the premisse that your vote will only take effect if at least 50 % of the population chooses this too, which will lower the price. So even if you're poor, you can still choose the ethical option. That isn't the case if democracy doesn't take precedence over the free market.
I hope in a democracy you give orders by voting, not by buying.
When buying, only the rich have options. When voting, all citizens have options.
Well, I don't particularly subscribe to the idea that people can be truly beyond hope, even sociopaths.
However, I do agree with the idea that if you allow someone like that to harm you, you're effectively an accomplice to the crime of increasing the total amount of bad deeds done. Indeed, say no to sociopatic acts, regardless of how the sociopath will feel or try to make you feel, but say yes to sociopaths whenever they act different.
Humans are selfish, true. But if you are really saying that all choices are necessarily motivated from by interest, then that means we are not really free to choose, but are slaves to our perceived self interest.
I don't buy that. I believe that you're ultimately free to choose your intentions, meaning that you have absolute freedom to choose where you'd like to whenever the external circumstances, which include your character, make it possible. And of course do people act out of self interest. It's just not the only action open to you. I think it's possible to truly give and help others.
That doing so may help yourself is beside the point. We don't need to resolve the question of motives when you're helping youself and others at the same time. You're contributing to humanity. There is no "either it's self interest, or it's altruism". It's both, and I think all world views that are modeled from just one of these motive are invalid.
The fact that you can help others while helping yourself only shows how easy it can be to help others.
Art, science, and Free Software happens to be excellent examples of this.
Hmm, and RCU also seems to have come via Sequent. Could it be that SCO somehow has looked at Sequence's SysV license (which has passed to IBM) and think it is invalidated somehow, causing all of Sequent's Unix code to be a derivative work of AT&T/Novell/Caldera/SCO's SysV Unix?
That, my friend, is brilliant.
*LOL*