This content is almost entirely their own, and they legitimately want some of the profit.
Phil
I don't buy it. The content is a licensed derivative work and the cost of the conversion is entirely on the Rockband/Guitar Hero crew. The receivable content that the consumer cares about is the datafile with the button clickies. All any particular song does is increase to slightly increase the market penetration of the core product. In Hollywood, if someone options your book for movie rights at 10% you feel lucky and have a party. That they want more than that for doing no work is myopic greed. No more, no less.
Honestly, If I ran the RockBand/Guitar Hero crew, I would cut out the music industry entirely. The datafile with the button clickies is only a derivative work because they include both the MP3 and the button clicky data in the same file. If they split the file format, they could say, "Here buy our datafile to play your previously purchased MP3's in RockBand!" The RIAA would then only get whatever pittance they can get from iTunes or Amazon. Rock Band/Guitar Hero could keep the entire profit for themselves, completely legally. I would bet that the only reason they don't do this now is that they don't want them to walk away entirely prohibiting Rock Band/Guitar Hero from being able to purchase the songs for the initial game disc. That and the technology for splitting out instruments still has a bit of a ways to go so being able to license the original masters does help.
But there isn't anything understandable about their complaints. It is just raw, short term greed with no focus on sustainability. It is an apt metaphor for the current state of the world, I think.
Vote counting is the most important component because it decides the "game". (Who wins and who loses) Other parts are important too, but we are discussion electronic vote counting, not how to set up a local voting precinct. Anyway, you have not formalized any of the notions that you have put forth. You haven't really said more than putting a few vague generalities together on this.
And you know perfectly well what I mean by a maximum rate of error of infinity. I mean that the error of the system can be as arbitrarily large as the memory of the vote counting machines. Don't regurgitate childish mathematics at me and pretend to not understand something that you do. Bring something more substantial to the table please.
Try to look at it this way, if you want to take a game theory approach to the problem.
The maximum error rate for a Human Hand Count is about 5%. The minimum is less than 1% if done properly. The maximum error rate for a Computer Count is infinity. The minimum is less than 1% if done properly.
In which game do you wish to play? In which game can you be more certain about your actions translating into results?
Well as Moran & Naor themselves say that more work need to be done on making their system secure. So I think the idea is "worthless for current practical implementation." The version they present in their paper is also bad because of your ability to select your own random key, which opens a coercion attack. They mention this as well.
It is also worthless in general because we will HAVE to trust the code that creates the receipts and we can NEVER trust ANY code! That's the bottom line for me with these systems. At some point, we have to trust a computer and we can never prove a computer secure.
I would like to lay out the fundamental argument against the use of computers anywhere in the chain of voting to vote counting. I don't take this from a luddite stance, but from a Information Theoretic stance. In Computer Science, we study what can and cannot be computed. We have found many limits in what computers can do. Unknown to most people, but there is no such thing as "verifying" a computer program. No process can detect all possible outputs from any sufficiently large computational system. Computer Scientists know this from very clever and fundamental arguments about how computation happens.
In "An Undetectable Computer Virus" David Chess and Steven White show that you can always create a vote changing program (called virus there) that no "verification software" can ever detect. They do this by a very clever argument which you can pursue in that paper, but the important thing to realize is that their results are not in doubt. You also should know that these arguments apply to every computer system that can ever be created. Therefore, if you use a computer anywhere in the vote counting process, you cannot be certain of the result.
I would like to point out that as much as I personally like open source software, it too falls victim to this very same argument. No computer is immune. No computer that ever will be constructed is immune. It is as impossible as traveling faster than the speed of light. Every computer system invented or YET TO BE INVENTED has this flaw. It can never work.
So, given that we can logically deduce that we can never trust computer voting, we are left with hand counting. We can use computers to double check our mathematics, but the marks should be on paper, counted by hand, tallied by hand, and only then added to a computer. It will be a chore, but it is the chore of representative rule.
I'm going to take a few seconds to lay out the math side of the argument really quick. I'll try to write it for a layman audience. This is how we know we can never make a perfect "verified voting software" system.
Let us say that we have a program called BadVoteCheck. When you run BadVoteCheck, you input a "system" (Like for example Diebold voting code, or any other code you want to test) for BadVoteCheck to test. BadVoteCheck will only return true if the "system" (like a Diebold system) rigs a vote.
So we have
BadVoteCheck(System): This is our program that takes in voting software and checks it. It returns TRUE if we have software that doesn't count votes correctly.
System: This is the particular system we want to test.
BadVoteCheck(Diebold_Gems_old_version) should return TRUE because there was a way to hack the memory cards. I hope everyone can understand this. We are making a system to TEST for "Voting Accuracy".
Now here is the magic... I'm going to make a new program SneakyVoteChanger that works as follows
SneakyVoteChanger is
If BadVoteCheck(SneakyVoteChanger) then exit the program. Otherwise fake_the_vote
So we run BadVoteCheck on this new program to see if it can "fake the vote" or change votes. However, doing this puts us into a bind.
If BadVoteCheck(SneakyVoteChanger) returns TRUE, this means that SneakyVoteChanger is a "bad voting program". However, if this does returns true then the SneakyVoteChanger program says "exit the program." Exiting the program is certainly not faking the vote. So then BadVoteCheck is not perfect this way, it makes mistakes.
Lets say BadVoteCheck(SneakyVoteChanger) returns FALSE. Then the SneakyVoteChanger says to "fake_the_vote". So BadVoteCheck isn't perfect on this side either. It doesn't get the right answer either way.
Obviously, we have covered both values for BadVoteCheck so the problem has to be in our assumption that we can create a BadVoteCheck. It is a contradicti
That is a worthless voting idea because it destroys the secret vote. Hence people can be coerced into voting or can sell their votes.
The solution is simple, we can use computers to "double check" our hand count as humans, but the HAND COUNT must be the final decision maker. And just so you know, hand counting isn't done by a single person. It requires a group of people from different parties to all watch and mark the votes to ensure that their tallies match. There is no "counter" that any one person can control. The group of people control the counter.
You cannot get them all to conspire against their own party interests.
The "fluoride" you are thinking of is Sodium Fluoride. The "ide" at the end of the word means that the fluorine has reacted with something. Remember your chemistry. *grin*
Hydrogen fluoride is what you would get if you put fluorine in your mouth. That would kill you much faster than the toothpaste "fluoride" ever could hope to.
If you are going to rebut an argument, you had best get your facts straight! *giggle* A slightly different amount of electrons is the reason you got that answer wrong! *laugh*
... basic tech news feeds and somewhat insightful analysis/gems posted by the commenters. Even after moderation was added and the site grew, you would still see a vast majority of commenters posting things like
"The Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it." or "The Internet is founded on peer sharing arrangements and it's technically difficult and economically impossible to implement a different system and have anything beyond Compuserve circa 1991."
But we didn't get that here. Instead, we got a bunch of people yelling at each other about things they simply have no understanding of. This goes for the lawmakers, the journalists, and almost every single comment posted here.
Unless you have a copy of W. Richard Steven's TCP/IP Illustrated on your shelf and understand the difference between a Tier 1 ISP and a Tier 2 ISP, it is simply impossible for you to understand what this supposed "debate" is about. Stop posting on here about it and do some basic RESEARCH! You know... the thing you do when you are reading something not written by a journalist or political hack from either US party?
To those rare comments that helped, keep up the good fight!
To the rest, know this. If you feel compelled to talk to a lawmaker, just tell them to stay out of these pissing matches that have been going on for a LOOOOOONG time now. Lawmakers are simply not smart enough to understand the problem or help in any meaningful way.
Microsoft has 10,000 employees making the NEXT version of Windows. Your current Windows OS is being maintained by the people who couldn't manage to get into the incredibly large "cool team doing fun stuff." Not a recipe for OS success, I think. Script Kiddies with code scanners find more bugs than the entire MS team does. What does that say to you?
But that plan does sell software well. The basic argument of the GNU people says that software monopoly has a fundamental, RIDICULOUSLY EVIL quality to it! (All caps makes it even more ridiculous and evil. *grin*) Few wish to face that fact.
But you have to eat too.
So we used to have this idea of a "natural monopoly." Anytime that you had to build a business around maintaining something that everyone needed, "we the people" would stop by and make sure you were not screwing "we the people". It typically ended up being a bit costly and slow, but the process worked better than the alternative. However, "we the people" made ourselves retarded by watching MTV and now we don't do this anymore.
So I think this brings up an interesting point. At what level do we require a company to submit to inspection because they control a "natural monopoly?" Microsoft has proven that it HAS to be at the level of the Operating System. But then we look at Microsoft Office and we find a "natural monopoly" based on the file format. So by reason, "we the people" must check out these companies as well. I think you can apply this argument inductively without invoking a slippery slope form.
All commercial software forms a natural monopoly by virtue that it "lays tracks" on the universal machine. And by "universal machine", I mean the laws of reason. Alien races, probably right now, infringe on many patents filed in our lovely Earth Patent Office. Computer Scientists really mean Universal Turning Machine. Tis no joke!
So I think it very reasonable for "we the people" to have the following on every proprietary software company. 1) Access to "track design" to ensure reasonable safety tolerances. (read no spy ware, permanent record of the source code, protection in special circumstances (Take the medical field for an example, though they do this already themselves.)) 2) Oversight of revenue 3) Oversight of business acquisition
And we pretty much have every law in place to set this up already, except "we the people" have to catch the next American Idol so we don't have time to set it up. It seems very beneficial to set up a new department for registering, tracking, and taxing software monopolies. It could fund itself via required processing fees or proportional taxes. And Free Software would be exempt, as it isn't a business, has no revenue, and comes with no warranty of purpose.
In short, it has nothing to do with "compatibility hacks." The system works that way for a universal reason. "We the people" should step in and stop these monopolies from screwing us, but we don't. Uncountable billions are lost and people endure great suffering to enrich a few. It seems very sad to me.
Apparently my *grins* and *laughs* were not enough to lead you to the fact that I too was posting tongue in cheek, though I do rate the intelligence of the average/. user higher than you.
And here I thought we were engaging in witty repartee. *lol*
From the GPL: For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable.
Obviously, since you cannot compile and install a full binary without the Trusted Key and scripts that sign the binary, distributed TC-system binaries cannot use GPLed code. I had an argument with Stallman about this when that company wanted to use Linux for a game console platform but wanted sign all the binaries. Stallman agreed that you could mount a successful legal argument against people who use GPLed code on a TC environment. This means that several lawsuits could be filed right now against companies using GPLed software on some of the rudimentary TC systems.
Stallman questioned the value of enforcing that clause because it locks out GPL code from TC environments. One, It doesn't matter because by the letter of the GPL, you cannot use it in TC environments. This is true regardless of Stallman's wishes. Two, given that TC systems will be the vehicle of ultimate perpetuation of pay-for-binary software, we should use the economic power of GPLed software to say "No!" to these monstrous systems.
The free software base continues to grow. In the future, it will become even more important. Even now, the global economy cannot function without GPLed software. We can shut down this entire fiasco by refusing to allow these TC environments to pollute our processing space. It won't matter how much Microsoft wants to kill off competing computing bases, two computing bases will have to exist. And the lack of TC hardware will mean that the non-TC systems will have an economic advantage over the other systems.
The GPL doesn't need a TC clause, it already has one. Let us begin to enforce it and laugh as that worthless idea falls from human consciousness.
I disagree that thinking about "service use GPL" has any worth at all. The GPL protects me by ensuring that I can modify any software I run on a machine I own. It doesn't, and shouldn't, protect me when those conditions have not been met. The developers have protection because if a service GPL gives the binary to anyone, they have to provide the source and the receiver can modify and distribute the code. If I want to take GPLed code, and modify it myself, and run it on my own machines, who the hell are you to say that I need to give it to someone because I have allowed "access" to my own stuff.
The GPL allows developers to ensure that their code can never become a for-profit, binary distribution only object. My GPLed code will never become part of the crappy pay-for-binaries economic model. But the pay-for-service model seems like a valid economic model that reflects the nature of computation, namely that it takes energy. Why would any GPL developer care if their software gets used to help develop that? Even IF I don't ever get to see the changes, my software still has not become part of that horrible system and thus the GPL has done its job.
The GPL needs updating to deal with patents, DMCA style laws and Trusted Computing. I certainly hope Stallman keeps a level head and ignores this sort of nonsense. Maybe you should recognize that your position comes from a deep want for the GPL to rain free stuff down from the sky. The GPL was meant to kill the "you-are-not-allowed-to-help-your-neighbor" style of software distribution. Stallman never intended to create a "you-have-to-help-your-neighbor-or-freaking-else" system that you seem to want.
Go make your own license and see what gets used more. No offense man, but do you see where I'm coming from on this?
I disagree that thinking about "service use GPL" has any worth at all. The GPL protects me by ensuring that I can modify any software I run on a machine I own. It doesn't, and shouldn't, protect me when those conditions have not been met. The developers have protection because if a service GPL gives the binary to anyone, they have to provide the source and the receiver can modify and distribute the code. If I want to take GPLed code, and modify it myself, and run it on my own machines, who the hell are you to say that I need to give it to someone because I have allowed "access" to my own stuff.
The GPL allows developers to ensure that their code can never become a for-profit, binary distribution only object. My GPLed code will never become part of the crappy pay-for-binaries economic model. But the pay-for-service model seems like a valid economic model that reflects the nature of computation, namely that it takes energy. Why would any GPL developer care if their software gets used to help develop that? Even IF I don't ever get to see the changes, my software still has not become part of that horrible system and thus the GPL has done its job.
The GPL needs updating to deal with patents, DMCA style laws and Trusted Computing. I certainly hope Stallman keeps a level head and ignores this sort of nonsense. Maybe you should recognize that your position comes from a deep want for the GPL to rain free stuff down from the sky. The GPL was meant to kill the "you-are-not-allowed-to-help-your-neighbor" style of software distribution. Stallman never intended to create a "you-have-to-help-your-neighbor-or-freaking-else" system that you seem to want.
Go make your own license and see what gets used more. No offense man, but do you see where I'm coming from on this?
Many of us have several questions about the level of incompetence displayed by these Linux Admins. From the choice of distros to the botched installation of glibc, they made egregious errors that would have sunk ANY startup that they were intended to help setup. And given your knowledge of Linux from your home use, I think you know this.
Do you see this as a credible challenge to your study?
Can we talk with these supposed "admins" to gain insight into why they behaved so incompetently?
And given that you don't have enough admins to be in adherence to the central limit theorem, how do you feel your study applies in a general way to anything at all?
We have many players and you can have a lot of fun trying to beat the market. These markets don't always get things correct though... The market bet a 20% chance that Gas would hit $3 per gallon in the US. I always thought the chance of that to be far higher.
Hence, these markets don't always predict things as well as people suspect. If the majority is wrong, the market will have a bias.
Some have given guessing ox weight as proof of the market's efficiency. But if the ox was made of rubber foam, everyone's guess would be incorrect. Markets, like people, can be wrong.
There ought to be a law that mandates that only one C&D per offence may be sent to any customer. Once that has been ignored for a certain amount of time, the offended party would either have to stop sending it or actually take the offender to court.
A law against letters. What will control freaks think of next?
Once we have automated tools that can verify a program as bug free (doubt that'll happen in my lifetime), then maybe it can become an engineering discipline.
With the assumption that your materials are within tolerances (and this can be determined for many), most engineering disciplines have very verifiable results. You can verify with mathematics that a bridge or building won't collapse, assuming your materials are verifiable. You can't do the equivalent with software.
Let me take a second to provide you with a bit of education because with this particular misconception you have because you miss out on an utterly fascinating bit of science. In fact, we cannot even create a program that determines if another program would ever stop or not. And by "we cannot" I mean, such a program is actually a logical contradiction. This entire notion that we can always create a well defined solution to any given problem has had itself disproven over 80 years ago. In fact, this entire notion can get expanded upon into some of the most mind blowing ideas in science, in my opinion. I would highly recommend you check out "Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas R. Hofstadter.
Linus has said that he will never stabalize the kernel interface for binary drivers because that would encourage companies to release more binary drivers instead of GPL drivers. So if you feel "sick of it" get another opperating system because Linux won't ever have that feature as long as Linus maintains the kernel.
Technology may swoop down out of the sky to save us with some yet as uninvented and unimplemented device, even given that we have several candidates. But if we put in 100 times the amount of money into research today, we still would have a hard time of implementing those solutions in time. The market cannot help us because it will only become economical to do said research after the economy goes into its predetermined downslide, exactly when we don't have the funds available to do so.
Oh, and
the US has cut billions out of research precisely when we need it most. So, government won't do it and the market cannot.
Maybe wealthy individuals will step up to the plate and start to invest in the needed research. But mostly, they seem content to pull out of the stock market and purchase oil companies. And a good plan too. As oil costs mount, these companies stand to make billions and billions as oil's ever escalating cost give them a bottom line that anyone would drool over.
So, yeah, 1 seems most likely. Who knows, maybe the first billion deaths will cause us to stop and re-evaluate our lives and goals. But those anmial husbandry skills probably won't go to waste.
Slashdot Mirror
This content is almost entirely their own, and they legitimately want some of the profit.
Phil
I don't buy it. The content is a licensed derivative work and the cost of the conversion is entirely on the Rockband/Guitar Hero crew. The receivable content that the consumer cares about is the datafile with the button clickies. All any particular song does is increase to slightly increase the market penetration of the core product. In Hollywood, if someone options your book for movie rights at 10% you feel lucky and have a party. That they want more than that for doing no work is myopic greed. No more, no less.
Honestly, If I ran the RockBand/Guitar Hero crew, I would cut out the music industry entirely. The datafile with the button clickies is only a derivative work because they include both the MP3 and the button clicky data in the same file. If they split the file format, they could say, "Here buy our datafile to play your previously purchased MP3's in RockBand!" The RIAA would then only get whatever pittance they can get from iTunes or Amazon. Rock Band/Guitar Hero could keep the entire profit for themselves, completely legally. I would bet that the only reason they don't do this now is that they don't want them to walk away entirely prohibiting Rock Band/Guitar Hero from being able to purchase the songs for the initial game disc. That and the technology for splitting out instruments still has a bit of a ways to go so being able to license the original masters does help.
But there isn't anything understandable about their complaints. It is just raw, short term greed with no focus on sustainability. It is an apt metaphor for the current state of the world, I think.
Vote counting is the most important component because it decides the "game". (Who wins and who loses) Other parts are important too, but we are discussion electronic vote counting, not how to set up a local voting precinct. Anyway, you have not formalized any of the notions that you have put forth. You haven't really said more than putting a few vague generalities together on this.
And you know perfectly well what I mean by a maximum rate of error of infinity. I mean that the error of the system can be as arbitrarily large as the memory of the vote counting machines. Don't regurgitate childish mathematics at me and pretend to not understand something that you do. Bring something more substantial to the table please.
Try to look at it this way, if you want to take a game theory approach to the problem.
The maximum error rate for a Human Hand Count is about 5%. The minimum is less than 1% if done properly.
The maximum error rate for a Computer Count is infinity. The minimum is less than 1% if done properly.
In which game do you wish to play? In which game can you be more certain about your actions translating into results?
Does this make more sense?
Well as Moran & Naor themselves say that more work need to be done on making their system secure. So I think the idea is "worthless for current practical implementation." The version they present in their paper is also bad because of your ability to select your own random key, which opens a coercion attack. They mention this as well.
It is also worthless in general because we will HAVE to trust the code that creates the receipts and we can NEVER trust ANY code! That's the bottom line for me with these systems. At some point, we have to trust a computer and we can never prove a computer secure.
Voting is too important to trust to a computer.
I would like to lay out the fundamental argument against the use of computers anywhere in the chain of voting to vote counting. I don't take this from a luddite stance, but from a Information Theoretic stance. In Computer Science, we study what can and cannot be computed. We have found many limits in what computers can do. Unknown to most people, but there is no such thing as "verifying" a computer program. No process can detect all possible outputs from any sufficiently large computational system. Computer Scientists know this from very clever and fundamental arguments about how computation happens.
In "An Undetectable Computer Virus" David Chess and Steven White show that you can always create a vote changing program (called virus there) that no "verification software" can ever detect. They do this by a very clever argument which you can pursue in that paper, but the important thing to realize is that their results are not in doubt. You also should know that these arguments apply to every computer system that can ever be created. Therefore, if you use a computer anywhere in the vote counting process, you cannot be certain of the result.
I would like to point out that as much as I personally like open source software, it too falls victim to this very same argument. No computer is immune. No computer that ever will be constructed is immune. It is as impossible as traveling faster than the speed of light. Every computer system invented or YET TO BE INVENTED has this flaw. It can never work.
So, given that we can logically deduce that we can never trust computer voting, we are left with hand counting. We can use computers to double check our mathematics, but the marks should be on paper, counted by hand, tallied by hand, and only then added to a computer. It will be a chore, but it is the chore of representative rule.
Check the paper out at:
http://www.research.ibm.com/antivirus/SciPapers/VB 2000DC.htm
I'm going to take a few seconds to lay out the math side of the argument really quick. I'll try to write it for a layman audience. This is how we know we can never make a perfect "verified voting software" system.
Let us say that we have a program called BadVoteCheck. When you run BadVoteCheck, you input a "system" (Like for example Diebold voting code, or any other code you want to test) for BadVoteCheck to test. BadVoteCheck will only return true if the "system" (like a Diebold system) rigs a vote.
So we have
BadVoteCheck(System): This is our program that takes in voting software and checks it. It returns TRUE if we have software that doesn't count votes correctly.
System: This is the particular system we want to test.
BadVoteCheck(Diebold_Gems_old_version) should return TRUE because there was a way to hack the memory cards. I hope everyone can understand this. We are making a system to TEST for "Voting Accuracy".
Now here is the magic... I'm going to make a new program SneakyVoteChanger that works as follows
SneakyVoteChanger is
If BadVoteCheck(SneakyVoteChanger) then exit the program.
Otherwise fake_the_vote
So we run BadVoteCheck on this new program to see if it can "fake the vote" or change votes. However, doing this puts us into a bind.
If BadVoteCheck(SneakyVoteChanger) returns TRUE, this means that SneakyVoteChanger is a "bad voting program". However, if this does returns true then the SneakyVoteChanger program says "exit the program." Exiting the program is certainly not faking the vote. So then BadVoteCheck is not perfect this way, it makes mistakes.
Lets say BadVoteCheck(SneakyVoteChanger) returns FALSE. Then the SneakyVoteChanger says to "fake_the_vote". So BadVoteCheck isn't perfect on this side either. It doesn't get the right answer either way.
Obviously, we have covered both values for BadVoteCheck so the problem has to be in our assumption that we can create a BadVoteCheck. It is a contradicti
That is a worthless voting idea because it destroys the secret vote. Hence people can be coerced into voting or can sell their votes.
The solution is simple, we can use computers to "double check" our hand count as humans, but the HAND COUNT must be the final decision maker. And just so you know, hand counting isn't done by a single person. It requires a group of people from different parties to all watch and mark the votes to ensure that their tallies match. There is no "counter" that any one person can control. The group of people control the counter.
You cannot get them all to conspire against their own party interests.
The "fluoride" you are thinking of is Sodium Fluoride. The "ide" at the end of the word means that the fluorine has reacted with something. Remember your chemistry. *grin*
Hydrogen fluoride is what you would get if you put fluorine in your mouth. That would kill you much faster than the toothpaste "fluoride" ever could hope to.
If you are going to rebut an argument, you had best get your facts straight! *giggle* A slightly different amount of electrons is the reason you got that answer wrong! *laugh*
... basic tech news feeds and somewhat insightful analysis/gems posted by the commenters. Even after moderation was added and the site grew, you would still see a vast majority of commenters posting things like
m ics.pdf
d fm yth_wp.html
"The Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it."
or
"The Internet is founded on peer sharing arrangements and it's technically difficult and economically impossible to implement a different system and have anything beyond Compuserve circa 1991."
Or perhaps some detailed links on why bandwidth restriction costs more. Like Andrew Odlyzko's paper...
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/privacy.econo
or these other ones which may also help people gain understanding of the issue.
http://www.sobco.com/presentations/ngn.09.12.05.p
http://www.f5.com/solutions/technology/bandwidth_
But we didn't get that here. Instead, we got a bunch of people yelling at each other about things they simply have no understanding of. This goes for the lawmakers, the journalists, and almost every single comment posted here.
Unless you have a copy of W. Richard Steven's TCP/IP Illustrated on your shelf and understand the difference between a Tier 1 ISP and a Tier 2 ISP, it is simply impossible for you to understand what this supposed "debate" is about. Stop posting on here about it and do some basic RESEARCH! You know... the thing you do when you are reading something not written by a journalist or political hack from either US party?
To those rare comments that helped, keep up the good fight!
To the rest, know this. If you feel compelled to talk to a lawmaker, just tell them to stay out of these pissing matches that have been going on for a LOOOOOONG time now. Lawmakers are simply not smart enough to understand the problem or help in any meaningful way.
Or maybe they mean Universal Turing Machines, with overzealous spellcheckers. Ha! Mocked myself first!
Nah.
Microsoft has 10,000 employees making the NEXT version of Windows. Your current Windows OS is being maintained by the people who couldn't manage to get into the incredibly large "cool team doing fun stuff." Not a recipe for OS success, I think. Script Kiddies with code scanners find more bugs than the entire MS team does. What does that say to you?
But that plan does sell software well. The basic argument of the GNU people says that software monopoly has a fundamental, RIDICULOUSLY EVIL quality to it! (All caps makes it even more ridiculous and evil. *grin*) Few wish to face that fact.
But you have to eat too.
So we used to have this idea of a "natural monopoly." Anytime that you had to build a business around maintaining something that everyone needed, "we the people" would stop by and make sure you were not screwing "we the people". It typically ended up being a bit costly and slow, but the process worked better than the alternative. However, "we the people" made ourselves retarded by watching MTV and now we don't do this anymore.
So I think this brings up an interesting point. At what level do we require a company to submit to inspection because they control a "natural monopoly?" Microsoft has proven that it HAS to be at the level of the Operating System. But then we look at Microsoft Office and we find a "natural monopoly" based on the file format. So by reason, "we the people" must check out these companies as well. I think you can apply this argument inductively without invoking a slippery slope form.
All commercial software forms a natural monopoly by virtue that it "lays tracks" on the universal machine. And by "universal machine", I mean the laws of reason. Alien races, probably right now, infringe on many patents filed in our lovely Earth Patent Office. Computer Scientists really mean Universal Turning Machine. Tis no joke!
So I think it very reasonable for "we the people" to have the following on every proprietary software company.
1) Access to "track design" to ensure reasonable safety tolerances. (read no spy ware, permanent record of the source code, protection in special circumstances (Take the medical field for an example, though they do this already themselves.))
2) Oversight of revenue
3) Oversight of business acquisition
And we pretty much have every law in place to set this up already, except "we the people" have to catch the next American Idol so we don't have time to set it up. It seems very beneficial to set up a new department for registering, tracking, and taxing software monopolies. It could fund itself via required processing fees or proportional taxes. And Free Software would be exempt, as it isn't a business, has no revenue, and comes with no warranty of purpose.
In short, it has nothing to do with "compatibility hacks." The system works that way for a universal reason. "We the people" should step in and stop these monopolies from screwing us, but we don't. Uncountable billions are lost and people endure great suffering to enrich a few. It seems very sad to me.
I'm sorry to hear about your condition. I hope they find a cure for your sake.
Apparently my *grins* and *laughs* were not enough to lead you to the fact that I too was posting tongue in cheek, though I do rate the intelligence of the average /. user higher than you.
And here I thought we were engaging in witty repartee. *lol*
Well, I'd say that you are the exception that proves the rule. *grin*
/. readers, we'd find an average IQ of at least 130.
His ID is WAY less than your. You just picked up that "new around here" meme from people like him. *grin*
I bet that if we took a random sample of daily
Not causative, I understand, but valid nevertheless. Now call me a n00b! *laugh*
I'm fond of the timestamp. *grin*
Only the ones with palindrome id's.
For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable.
Obviously, since you cannot compile and install a full binary without the Trusted Key and scripts that sign the binary, distributed TC-system binaries cannot use GPLed code. I had an argument with Stallman about this when that company wanted to use Linux for a game console platform but wanted sign all the binaries. Stallman agreed that you could mount a successful legal argument against people who use GPLed code on a TC environment. This means that several lawsuits could be filed right now against companies using GPLed software on some of the rudimentary TC systems.
Stallman questioned the value of enforcing that clause because it locks out GPL code from TC environments. One, It doesn't matter because by the letter of the GPL, you cannot use it in TC environments. This is true regardless of Stallman's wishes. Two, given that TC systems will be the vehicle of ultimate perpetuation of pay-for-binary software, we should use the economic power of GPLed software to say "No!" to these monstrous systems.
The free software base continues to grow. In the future, it will become even more important. Even now, the global economy cannot function without GPLed software. We can shut down this entire fiasco by refusing to allow these TC environments to pollute our processing space. It won't matter how much Microsoft wants to kill off competing computing bases, two computing bases will have to exist. And the lack of TC hardware will mean that the non-TC systems will have an economic advantage over the other systems.
The GPL doesn't need a TC clause, it already has one. Let us begin to enforce it and laugh as that worthless idea falls from human consciousness.
I disagree that thinking about "service use GPL" has any worth at all. The GPL protects me by ensuring that I can modify any software I run on a machine I own. It doesn't, and shouldn't, protect me when those conditions have not been met. The developers have protection because if a service GPL gives the binary to anyone, they have to provide the source and the receiver can modify and distribute the code. If I want to take GPLed code, and modify it myself, and run it on my own machines, who the hell are you to say that I need to give it to someone because I have allowed "access" to my own stuff.
The GPL allows developers to ensure that their code can never become a for-profit, binary distribution only object. My GPLed code will never become part of the crappy pay-for-binaries economic model. But the pay-for-service model seems like a valid economic model that reflects the nature of computation, namely that it takes energy. Why would any GPL developer care if their software gets used to help develop that? Even IF I don't ever get to see the changes, my software still has not become part of that horrible system and thus the GPL has done its job.
The GPL needs updating to deal with patents, DMCA style laws and Trusted Computing. I certainly hope Stallman keeps a level head and ignores this sort of nonsense. Maybe you should recognize that your position comes from a deep want for the GPL to rain free stuff down from the sky. The GPL was meant to kill the "you-are-not-allowed-to-help-your-neighbor" style of software distribution. Stallman never intended to create a "you-have-to-help-your-neighbor-or-freaking-else" system that you seem to want.
Go make your own license and see what gets used more. No offense man, but do you see where I'm coming from on this?
I disagree that thinking about "service use GPL" has any worth at all. The GPL protects me by ensuring that I can modify any software I run on a machine I own. It doesn't, and shouldn't, protect me when those conditions have not been met. The developers have protection because if a service GPL gives the binary to anyone, they have to provide the source and the receiver can modify and distribute the code. If I want to take GPLed code, and modify it myself, and run it on my own machines, who the hell are you to say that I need to give it to someone because I have allowed "access" to my own stuff.
The GPL allows developers to ensure that their code can never become a for-profit, binary distribution only object. My GPLed code will never become part of the crappy pay-for-binaries economic model. But the pay-for-service model seems like a valid economic model that reflects the nature of computation, namely that it takes energy. Why would any GPL developer care if their software gets used to help develop that? Even IF I don't ever get to see the changes, my software still has not become part of that horrible system and thus the GPL has done its job.
The GPL needs updating to deal with patents, DMCA style laws and Trusted Computing. I certainly hope Stallman keeps a level head and ignores this sort of nonsense. Maybe you should recognize that your position comes from a deep want for the GPL to rain free stuff down from the sky. The GPL was meant to kill the "you-are-not-allowed-to-help-your-neighbor" style of software distribution. Stallman never intended to create a "you-have-to-help-your-neighbor-or-freaking-else" system that you seem to want.
Go make your own license and see what gets used more. No offense man, but do you see where I'm coming from on this?
Many of us have several questions about the level of incompetence displayed by these Linux Admins. From the choice of distros to the botched installation of glibc, they made egregious errors that would have sunk ANY startup that they were intended to help setup. And given your knowledge of Linux from your home use, I think you know this.
Do you see this as a credible challenge to your study?
Can we talk with these supposed "admins" to gain insight into why they behaved so incompetently?
And given that you don't have enough admins to be in adherence to the central limit theorem, how do you feel your study applies in a general way to anything at all?
http://www.ideosphere.com/
We have many players and you can have a lot of fun trying to beat the market. These markets don't always get things correct though... The market bet a 20% chance that Gas would hit $3 per gallon in the US. I always thought the chance of that to be far higher.
Hence, these markets don't always predict things as well as people suspect. If the majority is wrong, the market will have a bias. Some have given guessing ox weight as proof of the market's efficiency. But if the ox was made of rubber foam, everyone's guess would be incorrect. Markets, like people, can be wrong.
There ought to be a law that mandates that only one C&D per offence may be sent to any customer. Once that has been ignored for a certain amount of time, the offended party would either have to stop sending it or actually take the offender to court. A law against letters. What will control freaks think of next?
Once we have automated tools that can verify a program as bug free (doubt that'll happen in my lifetime), then maybe it can become an engineering discipline.
With the assumption that your materials are within tolerances (and this can be determined for many), most engineering disciplines have very verifiable results. You can verify with mathematics that a bridge or building won't collapse, assuming your materials are verifiable. You can't do the equivalent with software.
Let me take a second to provide you with a bit of education because with this particular misconception you have because you miss out on an utterly fascinating bit of science. In fact, we cannot even create a program that determines if another program would ever stop or not. And by "we cannot" I mean, such a program is actually a logical contradiction. This entire notion that we can always create a well defined solution to any given problem has had itself disproven over 80 years ago. In fact, this entire notion can get expanded upon into some of the most mind blowing ideas in science, in my opinion. I would highly recommend you check out "Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas R. Hofstadter.
Read up on the "Halting Problem" here...h tml
http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/washington/halt.
Check out the /. Review of Gödel, Escher, Bach at
http://slashdot.org/books/99/04/23/147248.shtml
Linus has said that he will never stabalize the kernel interface for binary drivers because that would encourage companies to release more binary drivers instead of GPL drivers. So if you feel "sick of it" get another opperating system because Linux won't ever have that feature as long as Linus maintains the kernel.
Close.
R(x) = x is a raven
B(x) = x is black
All Ravens are black.
For All x, IF R(x) THEN B(x)
Contrapositive
For All x, IF ~B(x) THEN ~R(x)
So
All non black things are not ravens.
---
crulx
Technology may swoop down out of the sky to save us with some yet as uninvented and unimplemented device, even given that we have several candidates. But if we put in 100 times the amount of money into research today, we still would have a hard time of implementing those solutions in time. The market cannot help us because it will only become economical to do said research after the economy goes into its predetermined downslide, exactly when we don't have the funds available to do so. Oh, and the US has cut billions out of research precisely when we need it most. So, government won't do it and the market cannot.
Maybe wealthy individuals will step up to the plate and start to invest in the needed research. But mostly, they seem content to pull out of the stock market and purchase oil companies. And a good plan too. As oil costs mount, these companies stand to make billions and billions as oil's ever escalating cost give them a bottom line that anyone would drool over.
So, yeah, 1 seems most likely. Who knows, maybe the first billion deaths will cause us to stop and re-evaluate our lives and goals. But those anmial husbandry skills probably won't go to waste.
Thanks for the great post.
crulx