Lots of people have pointed out that Linux, *BSD, QNX, FreeDOS et al. will work fine on such a machine, and for most I can tell from experience that they do.
However, a painful point to consider is that when using Windows 95, IE4 and Word 97 also run fine on such machines, whereas Mozilla and OpenOffice (although great software, I use both every day) absolutely suck rocks as far as resource efficiency is concerned.
These applications are not usable on anything lower than a 300Mhz Celeron with 64Mb RAM (128 for OpenOffice not to feel too sluggish; StarOffice 5 is a little better here).
In the browser area, Opera may be a good alternative, but I don't see one for word processing.
It would have been great if Corel would still sell the SCO version of the (character mode) WordPerfect 5.1; it would probably run fine on Linux with iBCS, and together with Lynx you could even make a 4Mb 486/25 with a text-only video adapter useful this way.
For all we know, our descendants will be amazed that we didn't recognize Britney Spears as the greatest musician ever to grace the Earth. They might have whole movements based on her works, and be dismissive of lesser artists, like Bach.
Ah, now I finally understand why there are so many open proxies in China and why I get so much spam through them!
Interesting. If they're indeed left open for that reason, I'd almost change my opinion of the admins running them...
Re:1984? More of a Brave New World
on
Want Freedom?
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· Score: 2
And a total lack of all creative forces. I'd say that if we do not create things such as art, knowledge or ethics, we're reducing ourselves to mere animals. High-tech animals perhaps, but animals nonetheless. *That* is the big problem with the 'brave new world'. It's just eating and shitting and fucking and sleeping. Nothing more. You could do those things just as well without most of the human mind.
The dilemma presented is that only a sufficient amount of discomfort provides humans with a drive to create. It would be great for humanity to live in comfort without degenerating into pure consumers, though.
It's not an 'improvement' to encryption technology, it's an improvement to "please don't copy this or look at the method to copy this" form of copy 'protection'.
The popularity of which having greatly increased since the all-mighty US govt. decided that it can legislate away the need for real encryption, with the DMCA. The sad thing is that the thing was passed as well.
A thread of control means little if you post another program and wait for its response--it then moves from one program to the other and back.
A more sensible definition seems to me this: if a new work can change the intended behaviour of the original work, then it's a derivative.
In other words, you're always safe interacting with programs that live in other address spaces; by definition you can only interact with interfaces that the program's author decided to make public (or otherwise the program is buggy security-wise).
You're less safe when sharing an address space, eg. when linking statically or dynamically, because you can access every global variable and call every routine, possibly making the original program deviate stronly from its intended behaviour. However, if the original work is written as a library and the additional parts refrain from calling routines or modifying variables that are clearly marked as internal, it would not interfere with the library's intended behaviour, so the combined program would not be a derivative work.
I'm not sure to what extent the concept of 'not modifying intended behaviour' can be sensibly applied to programming languages other than C, such as eg. a complete Lisp system using a single address space.
However, I do feel that interfaces are a fundamental aspect of all computer programming, and that interface boundaries will always be more or less identifiable, regardless of programming model or language.
Indeed, following the practice set by the Linux kernel seems only too sensible now: if you use *public* interfaces, you're not creating a derivative work. Not with RPC mechanisms like CORBA, not even when sharing address spaces.
If you use internal interfaces (or worse), you're creating a possibly unauthorised derivative work. Of course, you're still free to use that, you're only not allowed to redistribute the combination without source or GPL to cover it, giving subsequent users the right and the means to do the same thing you did.
Sharing doesn't have to be prevented. Why would you think so? Only too much sharing should be prevented, and the way to do that is to make the value and cost balanced well enough so as not to force people to share -- simply because the price is way too high.
I don't understand your remark that we need a scarcity mechanism. The only way you can have artificial scarcity in a digital environment is by monstrosities like Hollings' SSSCA/TCPA.
Tke key here is that purchasing a download from the record companies should be more convenient than p2p sharing, because of more complete catalogues, earlier availability, and so on. The value provided for your money is the convenience, just that.
CDs can add more value in the non-digital domain, such as beautifully printed booklets with photographs and lyrics. Again, make it more convenient for the biggest part of the public to buy the CD than to reproduce the contents of the package by burning and printing.
It remains to be seen though wether content companies will want to remove their intellectual property from their balance sheets and keep their distribution network and recording and marketing experience as their only remaining assets. It doesn't seem very likely, but I still think it's the only solution that can be implemented without great harm to the general public (by taking away general purpose digital equipment from it and putting a monopoly over it in the hands of the content- and software industry).
However, it will probably take a while before the US government remembers it should act in the best long term interests of the overall public instead of some short term interests as presented to them by corporate lobbyists.
The problem is of course not the fact that your national government keeps your identity in a database in order to be able to issue passports and drivers licenses and to collect taxes and social insurances.
And neither would I consider it a problem that credit companies decide to share a database containing people with bad debts, as long as there are some good laws governing access to it (e.g. the organization maintaining the database is not allowed to share it with companies that do not have a banking license, and there must be an expiry date).
The problem is that the government's ID number is much too "convenient" for commercial purposes if no restrictions are put on its use, because the state guarantees unicity and life-long validity.
So, the shared use of such a number is the problem, because suddenly all kinds of commercial entities have a means to match their user databases. And if the same unique key can be used on a number of databases, then those databases effectively form a single database.
To prevent that, any democratic government should explicitly forbid the use of national IDs in commercial applications, forcing commercial entities to keep their own databases.
Commercial entities should also be prohibited to share any personal information (that is, anyting uniquely linked to a person) with other entities without explicit, prior consent, where you'd indicate exclusively what information you allow to be shared. That's the only way to prevent them from simply teaming up to set up a private version of the social security number, mandating it for every transaction.
I see no reason why the public would want to help companies to track a person's identity and share it with others. If the government does, it's simply not acting on behalf of the public.
We've got to start giving some counter pressure to those "mark of the beast" plans that are perverted commercial interests masquerading as ways to fight terrorism.
Sadly, other than obeying the law, increasing the wealth of shareholders is the only thing companies can be actually held accountable for, because that's what we give them as their sole mission.
Individual people may have ethics, but a corporation is something constructed to generate the maximum amount of wealth, given certain boundaries. That's what we in the western world, who seem to value money above freedom and power above peace, created corporations for.
I'd say the situation is hopeless until our governments become real democracies again, acting on behalf of all people in the best interests of all people -- not just the people with the most money to spend on campaign donations, and not just short term monetary interests. Right now, western governments seem to have accepted the same charter as most corporations: generate the maximum amount of wealth, no matter what. Make Money Fast (TM). And of course, the best way to do it seems to help the existing corporations in every possible way, but certainly not to act against their interests.
Could it be that we are guilty of secretly allowing them to be ruled by the law of the corporate jungle, because we too have started to value the surrogate freedom provided by money above freedom of thinking, freedom of communication, and privacy of our own affairs? The illusion of security provided by an orwellian state above the security provided by an even distribution of power in a democratic world?
But consider this though: the more power we transfer to coporations, the harder it will be to take it back into our own hands. At some point we'll need nothing less than a revolution to re-establish democracy: one man, one vote. Not one dollar, one vote.
... given that the BSA has defined piracy as "downloading software without paying for it" before. Having a bit of a narrow view on the world, aren't we?
Of course, software (and everything else) should be payed for. Nobody should give something of value away and not charge for it -- you're underselling if you do, and that's unfair to the good people who are trying to make a profit here. How else are we going to have a healthy ecosystem of goods and services?
In these tight times, citizens should not be harming the economy that way. All those ways in which a good transaction is still wasted today! People playing music for their friends, without purchasing records. Walking in parks with just trees and no shops. Reading books without advertising. Come on people, these models are just not viable anymore.
We should teach people that giving things away is stealing from the economy. It's simply unethical.
This has nothing to do with people wanting to keep the internet for free.
It has to do with the transformation of the internet as a *general purpose* network, for any use by any citizen that can pay for it, into a proprietary distribution mechanism for ads, DRM'ed content, ads, shopping, and more ads. Interactive TV.
And what the use of it otherwise anyway? Why should people's computers be able to communicate freely? Will they buy more then? Right. So why does society need a general purpose network then? Only evil can come of it.
Giving them the general purpose PC was just the same kind of mistake. It's a good thing Hollings cures that with his TCPA. Of course they only need a rented black box for some wordprocessing and pay-per-view entertainment. More convenient for them, and how else is the industry going to make money? How is the government going to find out who's subverting our way of life? You can't trust ordinary people with computers that can do anything they want.
Remember people: a good citizen is a *consumer*. And everyone that's not acting in the full interest of the friendly folks that offer all those great products and give you your jobs, is simply un-American, a communist, who knows, perhaps even a terrorist. After all, he's after the very fabric of the society! Keeping good people from going after some more hard-earned profits! Ah, come on. Democracy? The greatest common good? In the long term as well? Don't get ridiculous. If people just buy enough stuff, that's good for the economy, so we'll all get rich. If you want to have freedom, you need to pay for it anyway, ask the beggar round the corner. Does he have freedom? Does he care for your 'power to the people nonsense'? Thought so. Better make sure you don't stand in the way of people trying to make some money then, eh? Here's a free Britney Spears DVD, you can watch it twice before it expires. See? Now, there's a good boy. On your way, now.
Hear, hear. The problem with all these protocol foundation is that way too much complexity has been put into them.
It goes with my theorem: if you put someone to work on something full time and for a long time, that thing will eventually acquire all the complexity that person is capable of.
XML, ASN.1 et al. are jut not modest enough. They should have a humble, serving role in the process, consuming as little developer- and CPU cycles as necessary.
We shouldn't try to make high-level structured documents (SGML) into a RPC protocol. We shouldn't try to have a complete language (ASN.1) for transmitting data types. We should just define what information we want in the structure, and what facilities we want minimum, and come up with an extensible scheme to do it.
To me, it sounds like a tree of attribute/value pairs of variable length is all that's needed, using 4 octet attributes and 4 octet length fields (e.g. the ILBM image format). You can nest blocks all the way you want, and applications can ignore blocks while still being able to parse the message.
It's no wonder people invent their own protocols all the time at the *application* layer, as that's by definition application specific. We may wonder why we haven't got a *simple* presentation layer yet for streams and reliable, ordered datagrams, but I think the answer is that each attempt tried to do *way* too much.
If you think about it for a minute, wouldn't you just ridicule the person to suggest SGML (XML) to solve this problem? The only reason is that it's the basis of HTML and people were looking at the RPC problem with a web-developer's mindset. That's all.
It seems Microsoft merely 'grants' Apple its current market share to play with, provided that they promise to make money by putting existing users in the upgrade-treadmill, just as Windows users are.
I'd say that Mac users are probably very happy that they don't get a upgrade forced down their throats every 2 years.
Sounds like a good strategy, Apple. Increase profits by getting more customers, not by squeezing the last penny from the existing ones. MS will complain, but your customers will be grateful. Making money by extorting unhappy customers only works if you're a monopoly.
Secondly, he doesn't say we won't reach our full potential, he says that he will send us to burn for all eternity. Huge difference.
Agreed. I don't believe that He said that himself. If even a human parent could be more loving and forgiving for a child, I find it impossible to think that our Creator could not.
I think that each time humanity (organized religion) says "If... then God will punish you with...", we're putting ourselves on his throne so to speak. I'd say (and Christ seems to agree there) that he's very well capable of deciding that for himself, thank you very much. Add to that the assumption of God always doing perfect justice (you couldn't have defended yourself better than he would do for you), and of his perfect compassion, and you'll see there's indeed little ground for such statements from the church. I reject them just as you do.
The point is he made *all* the rules. So given the space of all possible rules, he made us in such a way as to naturally act against all of his rules and then says we'll burn if we don't follow them. Then to top it off, he picks and chooses exactly who will even be presented with the rules.
That may be what some churches have been telling, and indeed, probably in order to gather more power and control. But the self-righteousness contained in that kind of statement is so blatantly not Christian, I don't even know where to begin. Apparently lots of people fell for "your neighbor will burn, but *you* will be saved". Sadly.
To you it's a given that god exists I haven't chosen to accept this axiom seeing no need for it as it adds no new information.
This is an important one. To me, the existence of God is scientifically neutral; the only requirement science has is that a consistent mathematical model of our measurable perceptions be built. Apparently, we've been able so far to build a fairly decent mathematical model of the universe without having to introduce God into the equasion.
You are right, the assumption that God exists adds no information to the mathematical model, because its only requirement is describing measurements consistency, not describing life, truth, love, freedom, and so forth.
But that doesn't say a thing. It only says that God's universe is consistent enough for it to be described with mathematics to a large extent, or at least statistically when you consider fluid dynamics or quantum mechanics (it gets a bit difficult though when we want to predict what happens to an individual electron when presented with two identical choices; we're not able to calculate that, in a very fundamental sense. cf Heisenberg).
I've just chosen to think that there's life outside the mathematical model, as that purposedly stops at questions that are outside of its domain, such as what the reason of the universe's existence is, what life is, why we are here, and what our purpose is.
Apparently, you cannot answer these questions by merely modeling the measurable universe in a mathematical way.
Look at it for a second as if his existence wasn't a given. Further assume you control some primitive tribe. Can you come up with a better way to enslave the minds of the people under your rule?
Hardly. But if I assume God doesn't exist for a moment, that only tells me that we have the tendency to need power and control over others, and that we like to abuse religion for that because it is a powerful thing.
But the same statement holds if you *do* assume that God exists. It also doesn't say a thing about his nature, only about ours. He created us, you say, therefore our nature is his "fault"? That puts all responsibility for our "right of the jungle"-type of actions on God. I'm sure that to the extent that that's fair, God is able to "reason" the same way, and be even more forgiving than you are to yourself. However, I don't think that *all* human actions are *inevitable* in that sense, that we're enslaved by our animal side. I'd like to give the possibilities and freedom of the mind a bit more credit.
The only thing it liberates you from is the said religious laws in the second half of your sentence.
That's the most imporant part, but there's also other things, such as not suffering under the burden of guilt that we put upon ourselves and each other.
I see the concept as being able to realize that you can effortlessly choose to do differently tomorrow, if you truly realize what your current actions mean. It's very empowering; it does away with you having to justify yourself to yourself, finding reasons why it was inevitable that you did those things. Because *that* is slavery my friend, to nothing but fate.
Christ goes against fate, and says that you have choice. God went against fate when he created things, if he hadn't, the big bang wouldn't have occurred, according to the scientific models we derive from what we see in our universe today. The model sees no reason for Gods existance, but it sees no reason for the universe to exist either.
While similar religious laws existed prior to your god coming on the scene many of them were put into place as a result of your god. In fact, he created many of those repressive laws himself. I'm sure that you will say that he didn't and men did saying it was him.
Yes, that's my only way out of believing that he created people capable of mercy and compassion, without having those qualities himself. For me, *that's* impossible to believe.
So follow up on this thought. If perjury in a court of law is bad, then surely misrepresenting yourself as god is even worse. So these people are acting against the interests of god. Yet these are the people who wrote the bible.
Yes. I'm sure this has happened, and I don't view the bible as *just* the word of God. It's his inspiration mixed with our way of putting things, which can reflect our own agendas sometimes.
But that's no different when looking at the state the world itself in (a bit polluted here and there); the result is a mixture of God's creation and our own choices. To me, the bible is no different, and arguably it reflects even more of us and less of God than eg. a tree or a beautiful sky. But that doesn't say that there isn't a great deal wisdom to be found there.
So you have people who have completely discredited themselves in your eyes, and yet you ignore that when you accept even single word from the bible as true. That my friend is not liberation.
I accept it as words from people. Centuries worth of people thinking about God, experiencing God's proximity, who were inspired by him. How does that enslave my mind?
God is *all* powerful and *all* knowing. Christians generally have no problem saying this but they find it impossible to actually accept it and follow it to its conclusion.
I've seen that problem too, but chose to do otherwise, rejecting everything that contradicts with it, including God "changing is mind under our pressure" at times and so forth. But let's continue.
Since he made all the rules and everything else, he created it all in such a way as to send the people to hell who go there.
That's what my example about gravity was all about. Does he "send" you to the ground, painfully, if you step out of a window, or is that just a natural consequence of the way the universe works? I don't know. It's the same thing I guess. However, I do assume that he has better sense of justice than we are even capable of. If even we are capable of arguing why this is not doing these people justice, I'm sure God can do even better, as he knows those people more intimately than you and I do.
You can talk about free will all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that he knew before he even created the universe that Billy Joe Jim Bob over there would be condemned to burn forever.
Well, no, not if you assume perfect freedom to choose, then he *wouldn't* know in advance that BJJB would be "condemned" (whatever that means, I don't assume hell as literally as you seem to do - I'd like to imagine that when you die, there's a flash of realization of what your life meant. I'm sure that can be hell).
How does this relate with the concept that God is eternal, and knows the future, you ask? Well, I say that he encompasses *all possible futures* (I'm sure you know the many worlds theory from quantum mechanics). But that doesn't take away our freedom; it doesn't pre-determine what you and I will do.
In fact he created the rules in such a way as to ensure that. Yeah, yeah, I know, he (BJJB) could have chosen otherwise but that is the blind spot I'm talking about. God made the world and BJJB in such a way as to ensure that he wouldn't.
That last sentence implies that BJJB is a puppet on God string. If that were the case, then God cannot be forgiven for letting the holocaust or Pol Pot happen, to name a few things. I don't think that's the case. God didn't create us with a *necessity* to do this or that. We are created free. That's the only way out of it.
I was "created" in such a way as to make it impossible for me to submit myself to a belief system that has throughout its history been responsible for more evil than any other single entity in the history of the world.
Well, I think you underestimate your possibilities;-), but at least you trust yourself not to submit yourself to the system that *is* responsible for that evil: our tendency to want power over others. That's a good quality I'd say. Doesn't say much about God though.
Or, that people being what they are created the system to allow themselves to abuse it?
Yes, that's what I think too. Or at least we perverted it. I don't think that God created any religious laws, institutions, requirements, hate, whatever.
You believe that there is an all-powerful being who created everything, who had all possible information at his disposal. So he creates us with all of our desires as they are and specifically forbids us from acting on them. Further, he provides with intellects that work in such a way as to require proof to accept something and then actively denies us that proof. Furthermore, he makes that blind acceptance of that unprovable thing the sole requirement for gaining salvation. So if you don't spend your entire life fighting against the nature that he put in you then you are bad?!?
You put it nicely:) However, if you look at it a little more closely, it's not as bad as you think.
Essentially, you seem to think it's rather cruel of God to create us with the ability to do each other wrong, the ability to reject him and with the tendency to want simple, singular statements and binary proofs, while at the same time he says we won't realise our full potential when we don't choose *not* to do those things.
If you take this a bit further, it seems you think it's cruel of him to create you as a truly free man, who is responsible for his actions, which must be according to certain principles that are intrinsic to the way he has created things if we want to build on it further in a meaningful way.
As a nice example: he created gravity. Now, if you step out of a window, are you then "punished" for not honoring gravity as part of his creation, or are you just experiencing the natural consequence of your own decision?
To me, those two ways of saying it are completely interchangeable. You only have to accept that apparently God chooses not to stop you from doing things that do harm to you, your neighbor or the universe as a whole. Accepting freedom and the responsibility that comes with it is not too much to ask, is it? Or would you rather have someone else assume responsibility over you?
What Cristianity (or better, Christ) has to offer is to take this freedom one step further: it's not through a tedious process of self-realization that you can learn to act more in harmony with the rest of creation and the Creator himself; it's through mere choice. No matter what you did, you can always choose to do it differently tomorrow.
IMHO this is a very liberating concept, and the way I see it, this way he also frees you from all kinds of religious laws and obligations (sacrifice, paying money) that people force on each other and themselves: it's enough if you accept your freedom, your tendency to misuse it, and to start with the little things, being love of the Creator and your fellow (wo)man. That is the way to life in freedom, the way God intended it, he says.
It's not God's responsibility that we have suppressed and enslaved each other under religious laws, discrimination, and so on. It's ours. *We* have done that. Apparently we can be power hungry animals, and history displays an endless supply of examples of that.
But why would you think it's absurd that God, if he exists, apparently gives us freedom to do those things? It seems that he did, and he's willing to stick with it, even in the face of the worst evils we do. It's up to us to make our own choices, apparently.
It *does* matter. If the general populace believes that the GPL is more restrictive to publishers than it is, they'll be susceptible to proprietary software publishers' FUD about it.
And when the time comes that someone wants to use some GPL code for an in-house project, his boss will believe that FUD too, being a member of the general populace when it comes to anything other than running a business.
Going through something line-by-line is only done if it's already perceived as a serious option by the person with the budget to spend on that lawyer.
Don't forget that most decisions are made on emotion, not by going over things line by line. Decision makers are not any more careful than we are, rather the opposite: most believe that it's their intuition that makes them so good at decision making.
Very nice indeed. One thing though: the way you word it, it may frighten people into believing that if they combine a GPL program with their own stuff, they'll have to publish their stuff. That's a very common, and very unfortunate misconception about the GPL.
Perhaps a better second sentence would be:
"In return for this gift, I ask that if you improve our stuff and publish it, it remains our stuff."
You're free to combine a GPL program with something proprietary -- as long as you don't distribute the result. You're not violating copyright by doing that. The GPL only grants rights; it does not take any rights away (assuming copyright).
Slashdot Mirror
Look up the meaning of 'tongue in cheek'. It's in the dictionary. Sheesh.
Lots of people have pointed out that Linux, *BSD, QNX, FreeDOS et al. will work fine on such a machine, and for most I can tell from experience that they do.
However, a painful point to consider is that when using Windows 95, IE4 and Word 97 also run fine on such machines, whereas Mozilla and OpenOffice (although great software, I use both every day) absolutely suck rocks as far as resource efficiency is concerned.
These applications are not usable on anything lower than a 300Mhz Celeron with 64Mb RAM (128 for OpenOffice not to feel too sluggish; StarOffice 5 is a little better here).
In the browser area, Opera may be a good alternative, but I don't see one for word processing.
It would have been great if Corel would still sell the SCO version of the (character mode) WordPerfect 5.1; it would probably run fine on Linux with iBCS, and together with Lynx you could even make a 4Mb 486/25 with a text-only video adapter useful this way.
For all we know, our descendants will be amazed that we didn't recognize Britney Spears as the greatest musician ever to grace the Earth. They might have whole movements based on her works, and be dismissive of lesser artists, like Bach.
Heresy! Heresy! Heresy!
(And a horrible thought too. Brrr).
Another helpful poster pointed out the difference between a web proxy and an open mail server.
A socks proxy tends to make little difference between port 80 and port 25.
A proxy server is only useful if it is outside of the routers which do the filtering, i.e. outside of the PRC.
Such as Taiwan?
A socks proxy makes very little distinction by default though.
Ah, now I finally understand why there are so many open proxies in China and why I get so much spam through them!
Interesting. If they're indeed left open for that reason, I'd almost change my opinion of the admins running them...
And a total lack of all creative forces. I'd say that if we do not create things such as art, knowledge or ethics, we're reducing ourselves to mere animals. High-tech animals perhaps, but animals nonetheless. *That* is the big problem with the 'brave new world'. It's just eating and shitting and fucking and sleeping. Nothing more. You could do those things just as well without most of the human mind.
The dilemma presented is that only a sufficient amount of discomfort provides humans with a drive to create. It would be great for humanity to live in comfort without degenerating into pure consumers, though.
It's not an 'improvement' to encryption technology, it's an improvement to "please don't copy this or look at the method to copy this" form of copy 'protection'.
The popularity of which having greatly increased since the all-mighty US govt. decided that it can legislate away the need for real encryption, with the DMCA. The sad thing is that the thing was passed as well.
(Oh, and ending is better than mending.)
A thread of control means little if you post another program and wait for its response--it then moves from one program to the other and back.
A more sensible definition seems to me this: if a new work can change the intended behaviour of the original work, then it's a derivative.
In other words, you're always safe interacting with programs that live in other address spaces; by definition you can only interact with interfaces that the program's author decided to make public (or otherwise the program is buggy security-wise).
You're less safe when sharing an address space, eg. when linking statically or dynamically, because you can access every global variable and call every routine, possibly making the original program deviate stronly from its intended behaviour. However, if the original work is written as a library and the additional parts refrain from calling routines or modifying variables that are clearly marked as internal, it would not interfere with the library's intended behaviour, so the combined program would not be a derivative work.
I'm not sure to what extent the concept of 'not modifying intended behaviour' can be sensibly applied to programming languages other than C, such as eg. a complete Lisp system using a single address space.
However, I do feel that interfaces are a fundamental aspect of all computer programming, and that interface boundaries will always be more or less identifiable, regardless of programming model or language.
Indeed, following the practice set by the Linux kernel seems only too sensible now: if you use *public* interfaces, you're not creating a derivative work. Not with RPC mechanisms like CORBA, not even when sharing address spaces.
If you use internal interfaces (or worse), you're creating a possibly unauthorised derivative work. Of course, you're still free to use that, you're only not allowed to redistribute the combination without source or GPL to cover it, giving subsequent users the right and the means to do the same thing you did.
Right, and if a patented idea occurs to me, the thought police will prosecute me for patent violation.
That's why patents should cover *implementations* of ideas, not the ideas themselves, which is just absurd.
Sharing doesn't have to be prevented. Why would you think so? Only too much sharing should be prevented, and the way to do that is to make the value and cost balanced well enough so as not to force people to share -- simply because the price is way too high.
I don't understand your remark that we need a scarcity mechanism. The only way you can have artificial scarcity in a digital environment is by monstrosities like Hollings' SSSCA/TCPA.
Tke key here is that purchasing a download from the record companies should be more convenient than p2p sharing, because of more complete catalogues, earlier availability, and so on. The value provided for your money is the convenience, just that.
CDs can add more value in the non-digital domain, such as beautifully printed booklets with photographs and lyrics. Again, make it more convenient for the biggest part of the public to buy the CD than to reproduce the contents of the package by burning and printing.
It remains to be seen though wether content companies will want to remove their intellectual property from their balance sheets and keep their distribution network and recording and marketing experience as their only remaining assets. It doesn't seem very likely, but I still think it's the only solution that can be implemented without great harm to the general public (by taking away general purpose digital equipment from it and putting a monopoly over it in the hands of the content- and software industry).
However, it will probably take a while before the US government remembers it should act in the best long term interests of the overall public instead of some short term interests as presented to them by corporate lobbyists.
Perhaps an ID for government use is not much of a problem, but in that case only that government should be allowed use it. See
i d= 4011367
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=37421&c
The problem is of course not the fact that your national government keeps your identity in a database in order to be able to issue passports and drivers licenses and to collect taxes and social insurances.
And neither would I consider it a problem that credit companies decide to share a database containing people with bad debts, as long as there are some good laws governing access to it (e.g. the organization maintaining the database is not allowed to share it with companies that do not have a banking license, and there must be an expiry date).
The problem is that the government's ID number is much too "convenient" for commercial purposes if no restrictions are put on its use, because the state guarantees unicity and life-long validity.
So, the shared use of such a number is the problem, because suddenly all kinds of commercial entities have a means to match their user databases. And if the same unique key can be used on a number of databases, then those databases effectively form a single database.
To prevent that, any democratic government should explicitly forbid the use of national IDs in commercial applications, forcing commercial entities to keep their own databases.
Commercial entities should also be prohibited to share any personal information (that is, anyting uniquely linked to a person) with other entities without explicit, prior consent, where you'd indicate exclusively what information you allow to be shared. That's the only way to prevent them from simply teaming up to set up a private version of the social security number, mandating it for every transaction.
I see no reason why the public would want to help companies to track a person's identity and share it with others. If the government does, it's simply not acting on behalf of the public.
We've got to start giving some counter pressure to those "mark of the beast" plans that are perverted commercial interests masquerading as ways to fight terrorism.
Sadly, other than obeying the law, increasing the wealth of shareholders is the only thing companies can be actually held accountable for, because that's what we give them as their sole mission.
Individual people may have ethics, but a corporation is something constructed to generate the maximum amount of wealth, given certain boundaries. That's what we in the western world, who seem to value money above freedom and power above peace, created corporations for.
I'd say the situation is hopeless until our governments become real democracies again, acting on behalf of all people in the best interests of all people -- not just the people with the most money to spend on campaign donations, and not just short term monetary interests. Right now, western governments seem to have accepted the same charter as most corporations: generate the maximum amount of wealth, no matter what. Make Money Fast (TM). And of course, the best way to do it seems to help the existing corporations in every possible way, but certainly not to act against their interests.
Could it be that we are guilty of secretly allowing them to be ruled by the law of the corporate jungle, because we too have started to value the surrogate freedom provided by money above freedom of thinking, freedom of communication, and privacy of our own affairs? The illusion of security provided by an orwellian state above the security provided by an even distribution of power in a democratic world?
But consider this though: the more power we transfer to coporations, the harder it will be to take it back into our own hands. At some point we'll need nothing less than a revolution to re-establish democracy: one man, one vote. Not one dollar, one vote.
Amen, brother. Couldn't have said it better, not by a long shot.
Ugh. Defeat copy protection, and you're re-enabling fair use.
Distribute copies en masse, then you're a pirate.
Or where you just expressing how John Q. Public is likely to perceive this?
Funny as it may be, I don't think that 'stupidity' accurately describes someone who takes a risk to defend a fundamental freedom. Sorry.
... given that the BSA has defined piracy as "downloading software without paying for it" before. Having a bit of a narrow view on the world, aren't we?
Of course, software (and everything else) should be payed for. Nobody should give something of value away and not charge for it -- you're underselling if you do, and that's unfair to the good people who are trying to make a profit here. How else are we going to have a healthy ecosystem of goods and services?
In these tight times, citizens should not be harming the economy that way. All those ways in which a good transaction is still wasted today! People playing music for their friends, without purchasing records. Walking in parks with just trees and no shops. Reading books without advertising. Come on people, these models are just not viable anymore.
We should teach people that giving things away is stealing from the economy. It's simply unethical.
This has nothing to do with people wanting to keep the internet for free.
It has to do with the transformation of the internet as a *general purpose* network, for any use by any citizen that can pay for it, into a proprietary distribution mechanism for ads, DRM'ed content, ads, shopping, and more ads. Interactive TV.
And what the use of it otherwise anyway? Why should people's computers be able to communicate freely? Will they buy more then? Right. So why does society need a general purpose network then? Only evil can come of it.
Giving them the general purpose PC was just the same kind of mistake. It's a good thing Hollings cures that with his TCPA. Of course they only need a rented black box for some wordprocessing and pay-per-view entertainment. More convenient for them, and how else is the industry going to make money? How is the government going to find out who's subverting our way of life? You can't trust ordinary people with computers that can do anything they want.
Remember people: a good citizen is a *consumer*. And everyone that's not acting in the full interest of the friendly folks that offer all those great products and give you your jobs, is simply un-American, a communist, who knows, perhaps even a terrorist. After all, he's after the very fabric of the society! Keeping good people from going after some more hard-earned profits! Ah, come on. Democracy? The greatest common good? In the long term as well? Don't get ridiculous. If people just buy enough stuff, that's good for the economy, so we'll all get rich. If you want to have freedom, you need to pay for it anyway, ask the beggar round the corner. Does he have freedom? Does he care for your 'power to the people nonsense'? Thought so. Better make sure you don't stand in the way of people trying to make some money then, eh? Here's a free Britney Spears DVD, you can watch it twice before it expires. See? Now, there's a good boy. On your way, now.
Hear, hear. The problem with all these protocol foundation is that way too much complexity has been put into them.
It goes with my theorem: if you put someone to work on something full time and for a long time, that thing will eventually acquire all the complexity that person is capable of.
XML, ASN.1 et al. are jut not modest enough. They should have a humble, serving role in the process, consuming as little developer- and CPU cycles as necessary.
We shouldn't try to make high-level structured documents (SGML) into a RPC protocol. We shouldn't try to have a complete language (ASN.1) for transmitting data types. We should just define what information we want in the structure, and what facilities we want minimum, and come up with an extensible scheme to do it.
To me, it sounds like a tree of attribute/value pairs of variable length is all that's needed, using 4 octet attributes and 4 octet length fields (e.g. the ILBM image format). You can nest blocks all the way you want, and applications can ignore blocks while still being able to parse the message.
It's no wonder people invent their own protocols all the time at the *application* layer, as that's by definition application specific. We may wonder why we haven't got a *simple* presentation layer yet for streams and reliable, ordered datagrams, but I think the answer is that each attempt tried to do *way* too much.
If you think about it for a minute, wouldn't you just ridicule the person to suggest SGML (XML) to solve this problem? The only reason is that it's the basis of HTML and people were looking at the RPC problem with a web-developer's mindset. That's all.
It seems Microsoft merely 'grants' Apple its current market share to play with, provided that they promise to make money by putting existing users in the upgrade-treadmill, just as Windows users are.
I'd say that Mac users are probably very happy that they don't get a upgrade forced down their throats every 2 years.
Sounds like a good strategy, Apple. Increase profits by getting more customers, not by squeezing the last penny from the existing ones. MS will complain, but your customers will be grateful. Making money by extorting unhappy customers only works if you're a monopoly.
Secondly, he doesn't say we won't reach our full potential, he says that he will send us to burn for all eternity. Huge difference.
... then God will punish you with ...", we're putting ourselves on his throne so to speak. I'd say (and Christ seems to agree there) that he's very well capable of deciding that for himself, thank you very much. Add to that the assumption of God always doing perfect justice (you couldn't have defended yourself better than he would do for you), and of his perfect compassion, and you'll see there's indeed little ground for such statements from the church. I reject them just as you do.
;-), but at least you trust yourself not to submit yourself to the system that *is* responsible for that evil: our tendency to want power over others. That's a good quality I'd say. Doesn't say much about God though.
Agreed. I don't believe that He said that himself. If even a human parent could be more loving and forgiving for a child, I find it impossible to think that our Creator could not.
I think that each time humanity (organized religion) says "If
The point is he made *all* the rules. So given the space of all possible rules, he made us in such a way as to naturally act against all of his rules and then says we'll burn if we don't follow them. Then to top it off, he picks and chooses exactly who will even be presented with the rules.
That may be what some churches have been telling, and indeed, probably in order to gather more power and control. But the self-righteousness contained in that kind of statement is so blatantly not Christian, I don't even know where to begin. Apparently lots of people fell for "your neighbor will burn, but *you* will be saved". Sadly.
To you it's a given that god exists I haven't chosen to accept this axiom seeing no need for it as it adds no new information.
This is an important one. To me, the existence of God is scientifically neutral; the only requirement science has is that a consistent mathematical model of our measurable perceptions be built. Apparently, we've been able so far to build a fairly decent mathematical model of the universe without having to introduce God into the equasion.
You are right, the assumption that God exists adds no information to the mathematical model, because its only requirement is describing measurements consistency, not describing life, truth, love, freedom, and so forth.
But that doesn't say a thing. It only says that God's universe is consistent enough for it to be described with mathematics to a large extent, or at least statistically when you consider fluid dynamics or quantum mechanics (it gets a bit difficult though when we want to predict what happens to an individual electron when presented with two identical choices; we're not able to calculate that, in a very fundamental sense. cf Heisenberg).
I've just chosen to think that there's life outside the mathematical model, as that purposedly stops at questions that are outside of its domain, such as what the reason of the universe's existence is, what life is, why we are here, and what our purpose is.
Apparently, you cannot answer these questions by merely modeling the measurable universe in a mathematical way.
Look at it for a second as if his existence wasn't a given. Further assume you control some primitive tribe. Can you come up with a better way to enslave the minds of the people under your rule?
Hardly. But if I assume God doesn't exist for a moment, that only tells me that we have the tendency to need power and control over others, and that we like to abuse religion for that because it is a powerful thing.
But the same statement holds if you *do* assume that God exists. It also doesn't say a thing about his nature, only about ours. He created us, you say, therefore our nature is his "fault"? That puts all responsibility for our "right of the jungle"-type of actions on God. I'm sure that to the extent that that's fair, God is able to "reason" the same way, and be even more forgiving than you are to yourself. However, I don't think that *all* human actions are *inevitable* in that sense, that we're enslaved by our animal side. I'd like to give the possibilities and freedom of the mind a bit more credit.
The only thing it liberates you from is the said religious laws in the second half of your sentence.
That's the most imporant part, but there's also other things, such as not suffering under the burden of guilt that we put upon ourselves and each other.
I see the concept as being able to realize that you can effortlessly choose to do differently tomorrow, if you truly realize what your current actions mean. It's very empowering; it does away with you having to justify yourself to yourself, finding reasons why it was inevitable that you did those things. Because *that* is slavery my friend, to nothing but fate.
Christ goes against fate, and says that you have choice. God went against fate when he created things, if he hadn't, the big bang wouldn't have occurred, according to the scientific models we derive from what we see in our universe today. The model sees no reason for Gods existance, but it sees no reason for the universe to exist either.
While similar religious laws existed prior to your god coming on the scene many of them were put into place as a result of your god. In fact, he created many of those repressive laws himself. I'm sure that you will say that he didn't and men did saying it was him.
Yes, that's my only way out of believing that he created people capable of mercy and compassion, without having those qualities himself. For me, *that's* impossible to believe.
So follow up on this thought. If perjury in a court of law is bad, then surely misrepresenting yourself as god is even worse. So these people are acting against the interests of god. Yet these are the people who wrote the bible.
Yes. I'm sure this has happened, and I don't view the bible as *just* the word of God. It's his inspiration mixed with our way of putting things, which can reflect our own agendas sometimes.
But that's no different when looking at the state the world itself in (a bit polluted here and there); the result is a mixture of God's creation and our own choices. To me, the bible is no different, and arguably it reflects even more of us and less of God than eg. a tree or a beautiful sky. But that doesn't say that there isn't a great deal wisdom to be found there.
So you have people who have completely discredited themselves in your eyes, and yet you ignore that when you accept even single word from the bible as true. That my friend is not liberation.
I accept it as words from people. Centuries worth of people thinking about God, experiencing God's proximity, who were inspired by him. How does that enslave my mind?
God is *all* powerful and *all* knowing. Christians generally have no problem saying this but they find it impossible to actually accept it and follow it to its conclusion.
I've seen that problem too, but chose to do otherwise, rejecting everything that contradicts with it, including God "changing is mind under our pressure" at times and so forth. But let's continue.
Since he made all the rules and everything else, he created it all in such a way as to send the people to hell who go there.
That's what my example about gravity was all about. Does he "send" you to the ground, painfully, if you step out of a window, or is that just a natural consequence of the way the universe works? I don't know. It's the same thing I guess. However, I do assume that he has better sense of justice than we are even capable of. If even we are capable of arguing why this is not doing these people justice, I'm sure God can do even better, as he knows those people more intimately than you and I do.
You can talk about free will all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that he knew before he even created the universe that Billy Joe Jim Bob over there would be condemned to burn forever.
Well, no, not if you assume perfect freedom to choose, then he *wouldn't* know in advance that BJJB would be "condemned" (whatever that means, I don't assume hell as literally as you seem to do - I'd like to imagine that when you die, there's a flash of realization of what your life meant. I'm sure that can be hell).
How does this relate with the concept that God is eternal, and knows the future, you ask? Well, I say that he encompasses *all possible futures* (I'm sure you know the many worlds theory from quantum mechanics). But that doesn't take away our freedom; it doesn't pre-determine what you and I will do.
In fact he created the rules in such a way as to ensure that. Yeah, yeah, I know, he (BJJB) could have chosen otherwise but that is the blind spot I'm talking about. God made the world and BJJB in such a way as to ensure that he wouldn't.
That last sentence implies that BJJB is a puppet on God string. If that were the case, then God cannot be forgiven for letting the holocaust or Pol Pot happen, to name a few things. I don't think that's the case. God didn't create us with a *necessity* to do this or that. We are created free. That's the only way out of it.
I was "created" in such a way as to make it impossible for me to submit myself to a belief system that has throughout its history been responsible for more evil than any other single entity in the history of the world.
Well, I think you underestimate your possibilities
Or, that people being what they are created the system to allow themselves to abuse it?
Yes, that's what I think too. Or at least we perverted it. I don't think that God created any religious laws, institutions, requirements, hate, whatever.
I think he creates life.
You believe that there is an all-powerful being who created everything, who had all possible information at his disposal. So he creates us with all of our desires as they are and specifically forbids us from acting on them.
:) However, if you look at it a little more closely, it's not as bad as you think.
Further, he provides with intellects that work in such a way as to require proof to accept something and then actively denies us that proof. Furthermore, he makes that blind acceptance of that unprovable thing the sole requirement for gaining salvation. So if you don't spend your entire life fighting against the nature that he put in you then you are bad?!?
You put it nicely
Essentially, you seem to think it's rather cruel of God to create us with the ability to do each other wrong, the ability to reject him and with the tendency to want simple, singular statements and binary proofs, while at the same time he says we won't realise our full potential when we don't choose *not* to do those things.
If you take this a bit further, it seems you think it's cruel of him to create you as a truly free man, who is responsible for his actions, which must be according to certain principles that are intrinsic to the way he has created things if we want to build on it further in a meaningful way.
As a nice example: he created gravity. Now, if you step out of a window, are you then "punished" for not honoring gravity as part of his creation, or are you just experiencing the natural consequence of your own decision?
To me, those two ways of saying it are completely interchangeable. You only have to accept that apparently God chooses not to stop you from doing things that do harm to you, your neighbor or the universe as a whole. Accepting freedom and the responsibility that comes with it is not too much to ask, is it? Or would you rather have someone else assume responsibility over you?
What Cristianity (or better, Christ) has to offer is to take this freedom one step further: it's not through a tedious process of self-realization that you can learn to act more in harmony with the rest of creation and the Creator himself; it's through mere choice. No matter what you did, you can always choose to do it differently tomorrow.
IMHO this is a very liberating concept, and the way I see it, this way he also frees you from all kinds of religious laws and obligations (sacrifice, paying money) that people force on each other and themselves: it's enough if you accept your freedom, your tendency to misuse it, and to start with the little things, being love of the Creator and your fellow (wo)man. That is the way to life in freedom, the way God intended it, he says.
It's not God's responsibility that we have suppressed and enslaved each other under religious laws, discrimination, and so on. It's ours. *We* have done that. Apparently we can be power hungry animals, and history displays an endless supply of examples of that.
But why would you think it's absurd that God, if he exists, apparently gives us freedom to do those things? It seems that he did, and he's willing to stick with it, even in the face of the worst evils we do. It's up to us to make our own choices, apparently.
It *does* matter. If the general populace believes that the GPL is more restrictive to publishers than it is, they'll be susceptible to proprietary software publishers' FUD about it.
And when the time comes that someone wants to use some GPL code for an in-house project, his boss will believe that FUD too, being a member of the general populace when it comes to anything other than running a business.
Going through something line-by-line is only done if it's already perceived as a serious option by the person with the budget to spend on that lawyer.
Don't forget that most decisions are made on emotion, not by going over things line by line. Decision makers are not any more careful than we are, rather the opposite: most believe that it's their intuition that makes them so good at decision making.
Very nice indeed. One thing though: the way you word it, it may frighten people into believing that if they combine a GPL program with their own stuff, they'll have to publish their stuff. That's a very common, and very unfortunate misconception about the GPL.
Perhaps a better second sentence would be:
"In return for this gift, I ask that if you improve our stuff and publish it, it remains our stuff."
You're free to combine a GPL program with something proprietary -- as long as you don't distribute the result. You're not violating copyright by doing that. The GPL only grants rights; it does not take any rights away (assuming copyright).