3. Resisting efforts to legally erradicate open source software requires popularity. If our numbers are small enough, our rights can be taken away.
Well, not according to the U.S. Constitution (if you happen to live in the U.S.A.),... But the point is a good one. Still, a small movement tends to be not worth the while to attack, and a large one is beyond legislative attack. [Many well said points snipped]
For the U.S. case, it takes roughly 51% of people in 51% of states to elect officials who can pass basic commercial legislation (e.g. forbidding the GPL and all similar licenses as "coercive") that can make a real mess. And, for all that people like to say that the constitution helps to protect the minority opinion from majority opinion, that Constitution is a maleable thing on its specs. With 51% of people in 75% of states, any part of the document can be altered. Of course, I don't think it's any more likely than you do that a constitutional amendment could be passed for a subject as boring to the general populace as copyright, but the mechanism exists.
Me, I'm more worried about how little $$ it takes to influence 51% of national legislators when the general populace isn't paying attention/ doesn't care. See DMCA, Bono Act, etc.
To quote the article: The result is . . . the rest of the world begins to associate "Open Source" with software that's only accessible to the technocratic elite.
I say, "What's wrong with that?"
Answer: nothing, if the software is not intended for use by anyone but its authors and the elite.
However, if we want "the rest of the world" to adopt and love an open source solution over an old proprietary one, then inaccessibility is bad. You cannot convert the world to the open source gospel if you water you give them to drink of leaves them thirstier than before. You must give them to drink of the water of eternal . . . no, wait -- that's a _different_ gospel.
But here's a point: Resisting efforts to legally erradicate open source software requires popularity. If our numbers are small enough, our rights can be taken away.
WHAT EXACTLY are they [Jackson's breast] saying that is being 'censored'?
They are saying that the moral tone of the United States is too conservative, and that there's nothing wrong with showing a nipple on television.
OK, seriously, that's pretty circular. On top of which, I doubt Jackson's breast was making any such political statement when she barred it. Much more likely, the breast just thought that being bared made sense as part of the dance being performed.
Whatever the breast may have thought, I commend to your listening pleasure the book-on-tape version of Big Trouble by Dave Barry. Don't rent the movie; listen to the tape in your car.
Random Caller: I'm a Gator fan, and you said no Gator fans would call, and here I am. DJ: You're calling me to tell me that you're calling me? Random Caller: Yes, because I'm a Gators fan....
But it's Clear Channel's freedom to not play Stern.
Clear Channel should feel free to play or not play Stern depending on things like (a) whether they think his show is good and (b) whether it has an audience and therefore makes money. However, CC has said that it pulled the show because CC was afraid of what Michael Powell and the FCC might do.
For fining CBS over the JJackson superbowl thing and scaring CC, Michael Powell and the FCC deserve a muzzle award. CC deserves a muzzle for fleeing the mere shadow of the FCC without a fight.
That's what I'd like to know. There's a premium to be had on just-released tunes and highly popular tunes. Has any online service yet started using some variant of auction pricing to let the price rise as demand rises and fall as demand falls?
I just KNOW there's going to be a hack out for it soon, that will enable to user to reverse the process and skip to just the naughty bits and swear words. =)
This could be great platform for all sorts of edits / recuts to DVDs. As those of us who RTFA know, this player depends on some one doing a by-hand appraisal of the DVD and creating a script of instructions to the player on what parts to skip. Excellent. Let's all do our own. Soon we'll be downloading scripts for: 1. No p0rn. 2. All p0rn. 3. Just the fight scenes. 4. No fight scenes -- the all-mush version. 5. Just the spaceship battle scenes (because who needs all that character development talking in the middle). 6. . ..
It's make your own adventure time! All that's left is to figure out the scripting commands to the RCA player anyone can hack up a remix of their favorite film.
OK, now I'm confused. I knew that the length of a Martian day (e.g. zenith to zenith) was longer than an Earth day by around 1/2 hour. But, if Earth's Sidereal Rotation Period is 23.93419 hours, why don't our clocks slip 3.9 minutes per day so that after about 15 days, our clocks say noon when true zenith is about an hour away?
This is what I get for trying to actualy read the sources referenced. Clearly, it's time for me to go back and take an astronomy course or three.
Jeremy Erwin quoted (#8642821): "Botanically speaking, tomatoes are the fruit of a vine, just as are cucumbers, squashes, beans, and peas. But in the common language of the people, whether sellers or consumers of provisions, all these are vegetables..." Nix v. Hedden, 149 U.S. 304 (1893). schtum wrote (#8641139): In 1981, Ronald Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, proposed classifying ketchup as a vegetable [for] school lunch programs... oshy wrote (#8642843): The EU reclasified carots as fruit. This was so that someone could make and sell "Carot Jam".
To be sure, it's amusing that these governmental bodies have made these odd classifications to serve the expediency of the moment. What's more amusing to me is watching slashdotters cite regulatory laws as a source of truth. Wouldn't we rather cite some international botanical union or another's standards?
I mean, if somebody's parliament passes a law punting Pluto from Planethood, are we actually going to accept that on their say-so? What would Galileo and Copernicus think of us if we did?
She wants "pretty", and I want it to be mechanically sound, and affordable
No "Troll" there, try "true".
Among the many wonderful things a woman can add to the typical geekguy's life are . . . [drumroll] . . . floral prints. Left to their own devices, geekguy home decor includes far, far too much chrome, black, burgundy, and midnight blue. C'mon! We've all been there. A few flowers liven up the place.
Form and function can be the best of partners. It's like wireless networking -- techically superior (mobility) AND esthetically pleasant.
(Which is not to say that all geekgirls are ignorant of function or that all geekguys have zero style -- we just do better together.)
This won't be any problem at all since the Project Gutenberg folks remembered to register their trademark.
If you support Project Gutenberg's right to protect its good name by means of a trademark, then perhaps you'll remember in the future that trademarks have at least one good and useful purpose.
Demos: People Krateo: Rule Democracy: Rule by the people Nothing about free speech.
Yup. Democracy just describes where power resides and, to some extend, how it is exercised.
The use of "true" and "pure" in these posts is somewhat confusing. Perhaps we should adopt a piece of jargon from economics. In ecomomics, a "perfect market" IIRC is one in which every participant knows all the prices at which goods are available. For instance, a supplier can charge higher prices when buyers are unaware of an alternate, cheaper supplier located elsewhere. Similarly, candidates can get elected despite having bad intentions if the voters are unaware.
Free speech is one method of attempting to get "perfect information" into the hands of voters in a democracy. (Most societies put limits on free speech to suppress bad information or for other less-laudable purposes, but I digress.)
If voters have complete information and can act on it, then we could call that a "perfect" democracy (by which we would mean a democracy operating on "perfect information"). Of course, nothing guarantees that those voters will do things with the information that you or I would like.
Re:I may be missing the legal point.
on
Pop Up Ads in Space
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Shouldn't this violate some sort of International Space Law?
Whether launching one would violate any law or not, the existence of this patent is a good thing. Why, you ask? Because the patent (1) allows him to prevent other people from launching one and (2) doesn't give him any license to launch one himself.
Patents are a right to exclude others, not a right for you to practice.
... the latest craze about social networks like Orkut or Friendster?
I'll offer a few.
1. People like to interact and to form groups. Anyone who's been to secondary school has ample (often painful) evidence of this. But, in the world, there are lots of reasons the connections don't form: distance, convenience, physical appearance, race, and relative wealth being just a few of them.
Online social networks ignore some of these physical world "dimensions of compatibility". The result is increased emphasis on commonality of interests, sense of humor, intellect, etc. Geeks tend to connect better in these ways anyway. As a bonus, connections formed on these basis are though by some to be "deeper" or more enduring, once they form.
2. Another explanation is that getting clique-y is something non-geeks enjoy/think that they're good at. Thus it's an online activity one can get the non-geek masses to do. Hence, popularity.
3. Finally, companies have an incentive to promote this stuff, since it draws customers to spend lots of time using their systems, which drives revenue.
I finally have proof that the world revolves around me. I made a social network diagram of all the people I know and all the people they know. Guess what? I'M at the center! Of course, I knew that all along, but no one would believe me.
For your next movie deal, don't just count the lines in your part. Instead, feed the script to PieSpy to see whether the universe really will revolve around you.
Well, actually, let your agent's geek assistant do it for you -- after all, you "have people" for that sort of thing, don't you?
Don't you just love pricing? Imagine what you or I would pay to acquire:
240 kilograms of fossil fuels
22 kilograms of chemicals
1,500 kilograms of water Far more than $250, right? But these corps can acquire all that, turn it into a 17-inch monitor, ship it to me, and make a profit. It boggles the mind.
Of course, while the movie company is always thinking about an expanded version, they often don't decide to make one until they see the sales numbers for version one.
Subscription (lump sum or monthly), while it would be convenient for us, has problems. If we pay up front for some DVD and the promise of 'all future versions', what incentive is there to make any future versions? There needs to be some money they don't get until we get the enhanced version.
Perhaps what we need is a software upgrade model. Have the price of the first version include a coupon to buy any later versions for 50% off the price of the later version. This encourages fans to spend $20 immediately and $10 later. (Of course, there is little reason a movie company would offer this deal, since they want us to spend $20 now and $25 later, but we can dream.)
The president cannot "fund" anything. The US Constitution expressly gives that power (funding) to Congress alone. Given that, perhaps you should write your congress-critter...
Indeed, I should. So should we all. In addition, I believe the president should ask the congress-critters to fund it. They will, one hopes, pay more attention to what he says than to what I say.
Plus, he has ready-made opportunities to do this. As I suspect you know, the U.S. budget process begins each year with the executive submitting his budget proposals to congress, where the respective budget committees debate them, negotiate them into bills, pass the bills through the houses, reconcile them into one, submit it to the executive, and then hope he doesn't veto it. (Somewhat oversimplified, but close enough for the moment.) In many respects, the budget is a congressional bill like any other -- i.e., it has the usual executive involvement. All of which leads to this: the executive "funds" something by proposing funding for it to congress. To announce a space initiative and then not to propose adequate funding is something of a hollow gesture.
Of course, the power to lay and collect taxes resides in congress (Art. I, Sec. 8) and such bills begin in the House of Representatives (Art. I, Sec. 7). However, the budget isn't a tax bill, and even tax bills require the usual executive interaction: signature, veto, or override. So they're not all that different.
Bush has got to be the worst cheerleader for the cause.
If he believed in it, he would fund it. A committed leader would have set a goal, given a timeline, and stated that we would spend whatever money and effort it takes to reach the goal. A believer in having a space program would not cut the funding to the work we've already begun in space on the promise that maybe, years from now, there might be some money for a Mars trip.
How bitter that the Mars rovers have succeeded so well, only to see the opportunity to pursue still greater goals being squandered!
Slashdot Mirror
3. Resisting efforts to legally erradicate open source software requires popularity. If our numbers are small enough, our rights can be taken away.
... But the point is a good one. Still, a small movement tends to be not worth the while to attack, and a large one is beyond legislative attack.
Well, not according to the U.S. Constitution (if you happen to live in the U.S.A.),
[Many well said points snipped]
For the U.S. case, it takes roughly 51% of people in 51% of states to elect officials who can pass basic commercial legislation (e.g. forbidding the GPL and all similar licenses as "coercive") that can make a real mess. And, for all that people like to say that the constitution helps to protect the minority opinion from majority opinion, that Constitution is a maleable thing on its specs. With 51% of people in 75% of states, any part of the document can be altered. Of course, I don't think it's any more likely than you do that a constitutional amendment could be passed for a subject as boring to the general populace as copyright, but the mechanism exists.
Me, I'm more worried about how little $$ it takes to influence 51% of national legislators when the general populace isn't paying attention/ doesn't care. See DMCA, Bono Act, etc.
Spock: "Jim, there is an historic opportunity here."
Kirk: "Don't trust them!"
Spock: "They are dying."
Kirk: "LET them die!"
You know, the moral of that movie was that Kirk was wrong and Spock was right. Hmmmmm.
What a Linsipid name.
Must we follow the years of win-anything software with a decade of lin-anything? Surely we have more style than that.
To quote the article: The result is . . . the rest of the world begins to associate "Open Source" with software that's only accessible to the technocratic elite.
I say, "What's wrong with that?"
Answer: nothing, if the software is not intended for use by anyone but its authors and the elite.
However, if we want "the rest of the world" to adopt and love an open source solution over an old proprietary one, then inaccessibility is bad. You cannot convert the world to the open source gospel if you water you give them to drink of leaves them thirstier than before. You must give them to drink of the water of eternal . . . no, wait -- that's a _different_ gospel.
But here's a point: Resisting efforts to legally erradicate open source software requires popularity. If our numbers are small enough, our rights can be taken away.
WHAT EXACTLY are they [Jackson's breast] saying that is being 'censored'?
They are saying that the moral tone of the United States is too conservative, and that there's nothing wrong with showing a nipple on television.
OK, seriously, that's pretty circular. On top of which, I doubt Jackson's breast was making any such political statement when she barred it. Much more likely, the breast just thought that being bared made sense as part of the dance being performed.
Whatever the breast may have thought, I commend to your listening pleasure the book-on-tape version of Big Trouble by Dave Barry. Don't rent the movie; listen to the tape in your car.
Random Caller: I'm a Gator fan, and you said no Gator fans would call, and here I am.
DJ: You're calling me to tell me that you're calling me?
Random Caller: Yes, because I'm a Gators fan....
But it's Clear Channel's freedom to not play Stern.
Clear Channel should feel free to play or not play Stern depending on things like (a) whether they think his show is good and (b) whether it has an audience and therefore makes money. However, CC has said that it pulled the show because CC was afraid of what Michael Powell and the FCC might do.
For fining CBS over the JJackson superbowl thing and scaring CC, Michael Powell and the FCC deserve a muzzle award. CC deserves a muzzle for fleeing the mere shadow of the FCC without a fight.
That's what I'd like to know. There's a premium to be had on just-released tunes and highly popular tunes. Has any online service yet started using some variant of auction pricing to let the price rise as demand rises and fall as demand falls?
I just KNOW there's going to be a hack out for it soon, that will enable to user to reverse the process and skip to just the naughty bits and swear words. =)
.
This could be great platform for all sorts of edits / recuts to DVDs. As those of us who RTFA know, this player depends on some one doing a by-hand appraisal of the DVD and creating a script of instructions to the player on what parts to skip. Excellent. Let's all do our own. Soon we'll be downloading scripts for:
1. No p0rn.
2. All p0rn.
3. Just the fight scenes.
4. No fight scenes -- the all-mush version.
5. Just the spaceship battle scenes (because who needs all that character development talking in the middle).
6. . .
It's make your own adventure time! All that's left is to figure out the scripting commands to the RCA player anyone can hack up a remix of their favorite film.
StarWars without Jar Jar anyone?
A complete, cogent answer and a link. Wonders never cease.
--Thanks
OK, now I'm confused. I knew that the length of a Martian day (e.g. zenith to zenith) was longer than an Earth day by around 1/2 hour. But, if Earth's Sidereal Rotation Period is 23.93419 hours, why don't our clocks slip 3.9 minutes per day so that after about 15 days, our clocks say noon when true zenith is about an hour away?
This is what I get for trying to actualy read the sources referenced. Clearly, it's time for me to go back and take an astronomy course or three.
Jeremy Erwin quoted (#8642821): "Botanically speaking, tomatoes are the fruit of a vine, just as are cucumbers, squashes, beans, and peas. But in the common language of the people, whether sellers or consumers of provisions, all these are vegetables..." Nix v. Hedden, 149 U.S. 304 (1893).
schtum wrote (#8641139): In 1981, Ronald Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, proposed classifying ketchup as a vegetable [for] school lunch programs...
oshy wrote (#8642843): The EU reclasified carots as fruit. This was so that someone could make and sell "Carot Jam".
To be sure, it's amusing that these governmental bodies have made these odd classifications to serve the expediency of the moment. What's more amusing to me is watching slashdotters cite regulatory laws as a source of truth. Wouldn't we rather cite some international botanical union or another's standards?
I mean, if somebody's parliament passes a law punting Pluto from Planethood, are we actually going to accept that on their say-so? What would Galileo and Copernicus think of us if we did?
You haven't seen squat until you've seen astronomers argue.
Actually, when I've watched astronomers argue, I've seen a lot more stretching and reaching than squatting.
She wants "pretty", and I want it to be mechanically sound, and affordable
No "Troll" there, try "true".
Among the many wonderful things a woman can add to the typical geekguy's life are . . . [drumroll] . . . floral prints. Left to their own devices, geekguy home decor includes far, far too much chrome, black, burgundy, and midnight blue. C'mon! We've all been there. A few flowers liven up the place.
Form and function can be the best of partners. It's like wireless networking -- techically superior (mobility) AND esthetically pleasant.
(Which is not to say that all geekgirls are ignorant of function or that all geekguys have zero style -- we just do better together.)
This won't be any problem at all since the Project Gutenberg folks remembered to register their trademark.
If you support Project Gutenberg's right to protect its good name by means of a trademark, then perhaps you'll remember in the future that trademarks have at least one good and useful purpose.
The interesting survey question will be:
Q: Which of the following most strongly influenced your decision to purchase a Colorio me: E-100?
A. It was designed for women.
B. It was designed by women.
C. Price and/or total cost of ownership.
D. Brand name.
E. Other.
Demos: People
Krateo: Rule
Democracy: Rule by the people
Nothing about free speech.
Yup. Democracy just describes where power resides and, to some extend, how it is exercised.
The use of "true" and "pure" in these posts is somewhat confusing. Perhaps we should adopt a piece of jargon from economics. In ecomomics, a "perfect market" IIRC is one in which every participant knows all the prices at which goods are available. For instance, a supplier can charge higher prices when buyers are unaware of an alternate, cheaper supplier located elsewhere. Similarly, candidates can get elected despite having bad intentions if the voters are unaware.
Free speech is one method of attempting to get "perfect information" into the hands of voters in a democracy. (Most societies put limits on free speech to suppress bad information or for other less-laudable purposes, but I digress.)
If voters have complete information and can act on it, then we could call that a "perfect" democracy (by which we would mean a democracy operating on "perfect information"). Of course, nothing guarantees that those voters will do things with the information that you or I would like.
Shouldn't this violate some sort of International Space Law?
Whether launching one would violate any law or not, the existence of this patent is a good thing. Why, you ask? Because the patent (1) allows him to prevent other people from launching one and (2) doesn't give him any license to launch one himself.
Patents are a right to exclude others, not a right for you to practice.
... the latest craze about social networks like Orkut or Friendster?
I'll offer a few.
1. People like to interact and to form groups. Anyone who's been to secondary school has ample (often painful) evidence of this. But, in the world, there are lots of reasons the connections don't form: distance, convenience, physical appearance, race, and relative wealth being just a few of them.
Online social networks ignore some of these physical world "dimensions of compatibility". The result is increased emphasis on commonality of interests, sense of humor, intellect, etc. Geeks tend to connect better in these ways anyway. As a bonus, connections formed on these basis are though by some to be "deeper" or more enduring, once they form.
2. Another explanation is that getting clique-y is something non-geeks enjoy/think that they're good at. Thus it's an online activity one can get the non-geek masses to do. Hence, popularity.
3. Finally, companies have an incentive to promote this stuff, since it draws customers to spend lots of time using their systems, which drives revenue.
I finally have proof that the world revolves around me. I made a social network diagram of all the people I know and all the people they know. Guess what? I'M at the center! Of course, I knew that all along, but no one would believe me.
For your next movie deal, don't just count the lines in your part. Instead, feed the script to PieSpy to see whether the universe really will revolve around you.
Well, actually, let your agent's geek assistant do it for you -- after all, you "have people" for that sort of thing, don't you?
240 kilograms of fossil fuels
22 kilograms of chemicals
1,500 kilograms of water
Far more than $250, right? But these corps can acquire all that, turn it into a 17-inch monitor, ship it to me, and make a profit. It boggles the mind.
Of course, while the movie company is always thinking about an expanded version, they often don't decide to make one until they see the sales numbers for version one.
Subscription (lump sum or monthly), while it would be convenient for us, has problems. If we pay up front for some DVD and the promise of 'all future versions', what incentive is there to make any future versions? There needs to be some money they don't get until we get the enhanced version.
Perhaps what we need is a software upgrade model. Have the price of the first version include a coupon to buy any later versions for 50% off the price of the later version. This encourages fans to spend $20 immediately and $10 later. (Of course, there is little reason a movie company would offer this deal, since they want us to spend $20 now and $25 later, but we can dream.)
The president cannot "fund" anything. The US Constitution expressly gives that power (funding) to Congress alone. Given that, perhaps you should write your congress-critter...
Indeed, I should. So should we all. In addition, I believe the president should ask the congress-critters to fund it. They will, one hopes, pay more attention to what he says than to what I say.
Plus, he has ready-made opportunities to do this. As I suspect you know, the U.S. budget process begins each year with the executive submitting his budget proposals to congress, where the respective budget committees debate them, negotiate them into bills, pass the bills through the houses, reconcile them into one, submit it to the executive, and then hope he doesn't veto it. (Somewhat oversimplified, but close enough for the moment.) In many respects, the budget is a congressional bill like any other -- i.e., it has the usual executive involvement. All of which leads to this: the executive "funds" something by proposing funding for it to congress. To announce a space initiative and then not to propose adequate funding is something of a hollow gesture.
Of course, the power to lay and collect taxes resides in congress (Art. I, Sec. 8) and such bills begin in the House of Representatives (Art. I, Sec. 7). However, the budget isn't a tax bill, and even tax bills require the usual executive interaction: signature, veto, or override. So they're not all that different.
Quick! Somebody figure out when the copyright on Gojira (1954) expires!
(Oh, that's right. That'd be "never, 20 years at a time". Oh well.)
Bush has got to be the worst cheerleader for the cause.
If he believed in it, he would fund it. A committed leader would have set a goal, given a timeline, and stated that we would spend whatever money and effort it takes to reach the goal. A believer in having a space program would not cut the funding to the work we've already begun in space on the promise that maybe, years from now, there might be some money for a Mars trip.
How bitter that the Mars rovers have succeeded so well, only to see the opportunity to pursue still greater goals being squandered!