America is a solution to an optimization problem: maximum individual liberty.
This cannot be true with a straightforward interpretation, as this optimization problem is ill-defined. It is akin to asking to maximize function values f_i(x1, x2,...) for all i=1,2,.... Here x1 is individual 1's action and f1 is his payoff. The payoff can be "liberty" or whatever other utility one desires - It does not matter. What matters is the keyword "individual". The problem is ill-defined because the optimal value of (x1, x2,...) for f1 may not be optimal for f2. Search for Prisoner's Dilema for a classical example involving only two individuals.
Of course you didn't mean this silly interpretation. What are other reasonable meanings of this optimization problem? It could be one of the following:
A. Maximize f_i by changing x_i only, assuming all other x_j are fixed. This is still ill-defined, as the best direction to move x_i will depend on the values of all the other x_j. Maximizing one's individual liberty while assuming others stay put leads to actions usually considered as that of "leeches": jumping in front queues, using fraud to receive welfare benefits, evading taxes, etc. In what sense can you assume or demand others not changing their actions to maximize their payoffs?
B. Maximize f_1 by changing x1, while assuming at the same time the other x2, x3, etc are also obtained by maximizing f2, f3, etc. This interpretation is well defined, and can reach a stable state called a Nash equilibrium. But it is not what one normally want. In the Prisoner's Dilema example the Nash equilibrium is the situation where both fess up. In a real society with realistic definition of payoffs, such as liberty, quality of life, or whatever, the optimal solution would lead to everyone grab, steal, loot and rob as much as he can get away with. The outcome will be close to the society of Somalia.
C. Modify the conditions to include in available actions the formation of alliances and enacting of contracts. This will have no effect in a single instance, but it will have a profound effect in repeated experiences of similar situations. There will be solutions for groups that are better off for everyone in the group in the long run, solutions not available if everyone acts individually and only care about instant payoffs. Seach for Repeated Prisoner's Dilema for toy problem that illustrate this point. In the context of real societies, this possibility is why all modern societies converge to having money, markets, policing, governments, corporations, public roads, contracts, patents, copyrights, land ownership, etc. Think about each one of these concepts - none of them will function if one acts to maximize his own interest pretending other will not react to his action. The fundation of modern society is social contracts. If you actually use this interpretation, then you are accepting the social contract theory.
Many libertarians accepts social contracts that help guard their societal rights, such as policing to safeguard property ownership, while rejecting social contracts that help to pay for these safeguards, such as taxes that fund the police. The fundamental flaw here is in thinking that one can act alone and does not affect others nor bring reactions from others.
Selective memory is indeed one of the main factors driving all these debates. Innumeracy may be another.
What follows is a refresher for a memory that many have lost. It is not directly related to the subtle legal points in debate here, but it is very relevant to all these broad spectrum comparisons people make.
In the distant past, in the year of 2003, just before the start of Iraq War, the White House estimated the cost of war to be between 50 and 60 billion dollars. Some left-wing think tank made an estimate as high as 300 billion dollars. That was laughed at as being ridiculous and partisan. Bush got an approval for the war from Congress. It turned out to be costing for more than 1 trillion dollars. Members of Congress were not happy but they thought that there's nothing they could do.
In 2011, just before US involvement in Libya, many members of Congress from both parties blamed Obama for "inaction". After some hesitation he took some action for several weeks, and then reduced the involvement. He did not seek explicit approval from Congress. The total cost is estimated to be over 1 billion dollars if it continues for several more months. Some members of Congress were furious for his blatant disregard of Congressional authority.
Let's try to scale down the numbers in this story so that it is at a more intuitive level. Say you have two kids, aged 8 years apart. When the first kid went to high school, he asked for 50 to 60 dollars to go to a dinar party with classmates as it was of vital importance to high school life. Disregarding the warning that this may actually cost you three hundred dollars, you gave the approval to your kid to use your card. You eventually got a bill for over 1000 dollars. You were unhappy but thought that you can't really blame him as he sought your approval. Eight years later, your second kid went to high school. At your urge that he's not having enough fluid during the day, he took some change and bought some juice in school. You were furious that he spent over 1 dollar without your approval, as you have an explicit house rule that money for food needs to be approved. You think he should be punished.
Is this rational and responsible behavior? Do the members of congress behave as how adults should behave?
Here's an argument to show that gas tax beats the alternative forms of transportation tax by a big margin.
Following are three potential revenue sources for road transportation: 1. Vehicle registration. 2. Mileage tracking / toll 3. Fuel tax.
Which one is the best? What is a fair standard to compare them? I think we should examine why the tax is needed in the first place, and which aspects of driving are relevant to this need. Let's see:
1. Road construction and maintenance. It mainly depends on mileage driven and vehicle weight. 2. Pollution cost. It mainly depends on mileage driven and inefficiency of the vehicle. 3. Strategic cost of oil source (such as soldiers in foreign countries). It mainly depends on the amount of fuel consumed. 4. Paper work for ownership. It is essentially per vehicle. 5. Parking space. It is roughly proportional to number of trips and size of vehicle.
Item 4 is the only one that should be addressed by vehicle tax. All other items are nicely represented by gas tax. For these items, either per vehicle or per mile taxes would be grossly biased.
Are there more important reasons to tax road transportation? Are there fairer taxation methods?
This is a most interesting thought. Such surveys can provide a quite objective definition of "accurate and balanced".
Suppose someone takes three clear cases of liberal misperceptions of comparable scale and conduct a similar survey, it is likely that NPR audience get a 30/70 split, instead of the 23/77 split for conservative misperceptions. That would show NPR to be slightly left-leaning.
On the other hand, the fox audicence might get a 1/99 split on liberal misperceptions, compared with a 80/20 split on conservative misperceptions. That would show Fox News to be extremely right wing.
I would bet that the print media would have less than the 47/53 split on liberal misperceptions, but would be somewhat close. That would show the print media to be slightly right-leaning.
If two media sources are both balanced, the one with smaller rates of misperception is more accurate.
Of course the numbers can only come from real surveys. Such numbers would be extremely revealing.
Consciousness and intelligence are not that difficult to define, actually. If we examine how simple animals evolved into more complicated ones, it is easy to see what functionality (and higher survival probability) are added by the higher cognitive abilities. Here's a step by step definition. All these can be realized by using one or several neural networks (but the computational issues are immense).
Simple reflex. It is good to have simple reactions to stimuli. A learning process can improve the chance of getting positive rewards. This requires the brain to have a "pleasure center" that generates positive and negative rewards. That's where the "happy" and "sad" emotions come from.
Values. Most actions in most situations do not produce immediate reward. It is good to have an "evaluator" that take into account of future rewards. The learning process for the actions are geared toward such values instead of immediate rewards. This is similar to playing chess and other board games, where you not only learn how to make good moves, but also learn how to recognize good and bad positions.
Memory. The state of the environment surrounding the animal is not completely visible, but some of which can be deduced by what was observed in the past. It is good to have a memory. This is similar to playing bridge and other card games, where much of useful information can be deduced from what cards had been played (which are no longer visible).
Prediction. Things you do not see usually do not remain the same way you last saw it. Suppose you are crossing a road. You look left and right. See some cars coming from the distance. You feel that there is enough time to cross. Often you do not have to look at them constantly while crossing. Instead you maintain a dynamic mental model of where they should be now. Since this is very imprecise, this model is updated by the sensual inputs. For example, if you hear the cars coming much louder than expected, you'd realize it is closer than you thought. A dynamic model of the external world that is updated by sensual inputs is also called consciousness.
Attention. The senses of most animals are generally very limited. It is good to pay attention to the more important matters so that dynamic model called consciousness would not go wrong on these issues . The evaluation of importance for the purpose of directing attention is called interest. For a zebra grazing on an African plain, a nearby lion is very interesting. In fact, that's why people go to movies that provide thrill, violence, sex, emotion and other high drama.
Fear. The game of life is full of danger. If a life (at least for non-social animals) ends, all its accumulated wealth (nutrients and knowledge) are lost. Therefore it is good to have an internal alarm system that can predict danger. That prediction is called fear. The purpose of fear is to invoke immediate reaction. It is therefore different and in addition to the general feeling of happy and sad, which are used to enhance future actions. This also explains why some social animals may appear fearless in certain situations.
Self consciousness. For animals that are not very much fixed to their surroundings (unlike corals, for example), it is computationally more efficient to separate the dynamic model of the external world from a model of itself. The body of an animal is different from surroundings in the following ways: it is more important, it has different feeling system, it is relatively fixed to the senses instead of the ground. Space orientation is part of a model correlating the self consciousness with the consciousness about the external world.
Language. Social animals can sometimes derive benefit from coordination of their actions. Sound (or any other rich set of symbols) can be used for this purpose. If the combination of symbols can express a great deal of additional meaning, such a system is called a language.
Intelligence. For animals with language and other symbolic capabilities, it is possible to analyze a situation or even plan future actions using mental symbol manipulation dynamically. This provides a combinatorial explosion of mental capacity compared with static rules. This mental process is also called thinking. Humans benefit from this capacity, which makes them appear vastly more advanced than other animals. The Turing test was so designed that the variety of questions will overwhelm any system based on static rules, yet being in reach of some systems which can process semantic information.
This is an outline of natural intelligence. The needs and capabilities of computing machines are quite different. So it is possible that they may achieve some different kind of intelligence (in the sense that most people would agree it is intelligent) without being anywhere near natural intelligence. It is also remotely possible that Turing test could be passed without any kind of intelligence. But that would only be a testimony to how limited the communication capability is under the test as compared with human intelligence when it is used fully.
The translation is quite strange. The original is "world unique Chinese Linux operating system. More stable, more freedom".
It's mysterious where the "beat a drum" comes from. I thought it's somebody making fun. But then I tried just this sentence and Mr. Fish actually said so.
Since the slashdot crowd is not well known for following up citations, here's my summary after about 15 minutes reading.
1. If a bug has a mean time T to be found, the probability of it not being found in time t is exp(-t/T).
2. However, making a reasonable assumption about the scaling of all levels of bugs, the number of remaining bugs will only decrease as K/t. This is because over time, the remaining bugs will be dominated by harder bugs, those with larger T.
3. If a particular restriction (eg no access to source) reduces the efficiency of tester by a factor x less than 1, the overall bug rate would be K/xt.
4. For closed systems the alpha testers scale as K/t, beta testers scale as K/xt. But since the overall rate is dominated by beta testers, it is still K/xt overall.
For open systems all testers scale as K/t, which is also its overall rate.
Therefore closed systems will have more bugs than open systems by a factor 1/x.
5. For closed systems it is x times as efficient for attackers to find vulnerabilities as well, cancelling out the 1/x abundance of uncaught bugs.
Conclusion, the vulnerability of both systems only depend on K, a characteristic of the original system, but independent of x, a characteristic of the testing environment.
--
This is quite interesting. I could be wrong in reading it this way, as I spent less time reading it than typing it up.
One additional conclusion that can be drawn from this is that opening up a closed system will momentarily increase its vulnerability by a factor of 1/x, until its overall bug rate reduces to K/t.
This means each generation is half the size of the previous. Are you proposing an indefinite decline (aka extiction), or just until there are less than X billion of us?
Good math. Wrong application.
The Chinese population actually increases by over one percent every year under one child policy. It is expected to reach 1.6 billion in 2050 from current 1.3 billion, at that time the policy is projected to be scapped. (I hope I remembered these numbers correctly, but in any case the trend is basically like this.)
How can this be true? Just remember that not each generation have exactly the same number of people, on which your conclusion would be based.
Quiz: The life expectancy (near 70) is about three times the length of generation (20+). So if the three existing generations have sizes x, 2x, and 4x, respectively, (so the total is 7x) and each couple has two children, what will be the total population one generation later? (answer: 10x) two generation later? (answer: 12x) If there is a one child policy, when will the population come back to today's level? (answer: 50+ year later)
Further thinking: In the 1920s, 1930s and 1950s the Chinese population declined several times even when the average number of children per family was more than three. Figure out how that could have happened.
It'll be interesting to hear your explanation of how I can "take freedom from other people" by writing my own software and offering it under license terms of my own choosing.
The interesting part of the explanation lies in understanding the difference between what you and RMS considered as a single action.
You consider "writing my own software and offering it under my license terms" as an individual action. If that is the only thing you choose to do or not to do, with no other consequences, then RMS's claim would indeed seem bizarre.
In contrast, RMS regards the license as less connected with the action of writing the software than connected with the action of enforcing the license upon people using the software. It is placing a restriction, backed by the power of law, on top of your expression of thought. In that sense it is an expression of power.
A lame analogy would be the contrast between a friend saying "I don't like your doing that" and a police officer saying "If you do that I'll arrest you". The latter is not merely an expression of freedom of the officer, it is an expression of power.
Why do so many people not see RMS's point? Because they recognize that the power of license originates from copyright laws. The license itself does not generate that power, only express a will to use it.
But RMS is not talking about the origin of the power, only the fact that it is power and it is being used.
In the above analogy, the police officer may indeed be expressing his thought at that time, but that thought is relevant mostly because it is backed by the power granted whichever way to him. In this situation the expression is less important than its effect. This is why people whose only actions are "talking" (giving orders) could be found guilty of crimes. A speech that has power (people will suffer if they do not obey it) becomes action due to its effects.
Without copyright, your action (writing whatever in the license) and other people's action (using the software whichever way they want) can indeed exist freely independent of each other. But copyright laws bound them together, in the sense that your action (writing words on the license) has the primary effect of restricting actions other people can take.
If you agree that most people writing license (esp proprietary licenses) intend to have them enforced by law (or at least conceived to be so), you would see that RMS's view is much closer to the real world than yours is. A license with a disclaimer "This is my wish only and I hereby waiver any rights under copyright law to enforce it" would be closer to your view.
Considering that RMS does not see the power granted by copyright laws to holders of software copyright as just, we can see that he has been very consistent and logical on this issue, whether we agree with him or not.
The economic claim for trinary computation is bogus, because we do not know that the cost of building width w base r device is proportional to r*w. The cost is likely to increase more than linearly with the base. For example if it is r^k*w, the "optimal" base would be r=exp(1/k). For k=2, r=1.65, and for k=1.5, r=1.95. In these cases binary or a _smaller_ base is better.
However, there would be a real benefit in using trinary logic, as it can be used to represent true, false and unknown. In many real situations a lot of extra logic is devoted to dealing with unknowns because the binary system forces a decision. This would be cleaned up quite a bit in trinary system. In fact, the ease of rounding using trancation is a nice little demonstration of this property.
From a game theory perspective
on
SourceForge Drifting
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
For this discussion let us assume that everybody's preference can be specified by a utility function. This is not as restrictive as it might appear initially, but to explain it would lead us far into game theory.
In game theory it is well known that the optimal strategy for individuals (Nash equilibrium) is often not optimal for society. By this we mean that there are other strategies under which everyone is better off. Unfortunately the optimal solution for the society is often not equilibrium if each individual optimizes his own gain.
This is where Capitalism works brilliantly. If people can exchange their possessions in a market place, they can choose better strategies by dividing the profit of the exchange among them. If all information is complete and if all exchanges are instant with zero cost, the market would be the perfect arbitor of every action in life. The fact that advertising is a big business proves that this is not the case.
Many of the remaining problems can be remedied by having laws and taxes and other instruments of govmnt that alters the payoff functions of individuals. Copyright is one such example where government force is used to change the payoff's of individuals, as it is deemed to be beneficial to the society. Developed societies are getting better at this throughout the past century.
At the time of Karl Marx, the situation was much worse. Some intellectuals thought that the cause of the discrepency between individual optimization and society optimization lies in the difference between the utility functions. They thought that if private properties were banned and if the society owned everything, then everyone would make their decision on what is good for all.
This would not work for many reasons. The major reason is that decisions are based on marginals (what you can change) instead of totals (what you already have). Even if everything is owned by society, working for one's own profit is still more profittable than working for society. So Communism could never ever be a working solution, even if it were established without all the other negative associations it has had attached in practice.
Now back to Free Software. The mechanism invented by RMS has nothing to do with removing private property. It is a mechanism for altering the dynamics of individual exchange imposed by copyright laws. It is less intrusive to the market place than the copyright laws themselves. It is believed to have the effect of encouraging behavior that would benefit the whole society.
What we have seen in the poor financial performance of many Open Source companies is an indication that the exchange mechanism is still not good enough to reward behavior that is good for the commons, assuming we agree that OSS is good on its own right. It is merely a reflection on the fact that Nash equilibrium is generally not global optimum, unless the exchange mechanism is fine tuned in a very clever way.
The following dichotomy is false: Suppose some one writes software that does not pay enough, then either
1. The software is useless, or
2. The society needs radical change like banning markets.
What history has shown is that the best progress are not those that force people to change or even abandon their utility functions, but evolutionary progress in the mechanism of exchange that results in payoff functions that tends towards global optimization.
To equate GPL with communism is either naive, ignorant or worse. It is no more valid than associating copyright or social security or national defense with communism.
Now you think it is more appropriate to jail him because he writes spamware.
The funny thing is that the Congress has not even legislated to limit spam, let alone spamware.
Instead, it not only legislates against various copying, but also criminalize authors of tools to facilitate copying, even if the copying is for fair use.
Maybe you should lobby the Congress to repeal DMCA and legislate against spam.
Look at this carefully. Copy restriction is commercial entity trying to protect their assets by limiting consumer's abilities. Spam restriction is consumers trying to protect their assets by limiting commercial entity's abilities.
Wonder why one is adopted ensusiastically, while the other is put aside?
If I design a bomb
in Russia, where, for the sake of example we'll pretend it's perfectly legal, and I somehow get it past customs in the US, I can't very well sell it.
This is a very strange analogy, as you have chosen an object that presumably everybody would consider illegal, and assumed it legal in another country.
Any conclusion you can draw would be colored by the unrealistic assumptions.
A more realistic analogy is if you work for a US gun manufacturer, which is legal here, whose guns somehow get sold into a country that bans firearms. You travel to that country and tell people what you do for a living. And you get arrested.
Do you wish to take responsibility for your employer in this way, no matter what your view is concerning the relative merit of guns as a device to safeguard personal freedom or as a device to infringe on other people's freedom?
Note that in Russia it is legally required to allow users to backup contents to other formats as a way of consumer protection.
I came from China more than a decade ago. As far as I can tell from the
media reports here, China has become a much better place in most aspects.
So why do many people think that China is the worst place on earth?
One big problem for most people evaluating the situation in China from
outside is that it is difficult to recognize the vast range social
parameters can take. Even in the US, some laws are so good that people
constantly sing its praise (think First Amendment) while some are so bad
that they are considered national shame by many (think DMCA). Now take that
distance as unit. Starting at First Amendment, going in the direction of
DMCA for, say, between 0.5 and 5 units, you will cover perhaps most of
Chinese laws in terms of restriction of freedom. If you go still several
times further, you'll reach the range of some more terrible states existing
today, or the state of China when Nixon visited it. That state was not even
defined by the laws of that time, as there were essentially none.
So depending on what your reference point is, you could say that China has
made tremendous progress while at the same time it has a long way to go. If
you think these two are contradictory, you will have a long time to argue
which is right.
But there is a lesson to be learned. In the past century, apart from one
exception (South Africa), the best support for authoritarian regimes has
been the sanctions and blockades from democratic countries, and the biggest
initiator of reform comes from open exchange with democratic countries. It
was lucky for Chinese people that Nixon had the guts to visit it when it was
in such a miserable state (even though his motivation was largely to forge
an anti-Soviet alliance). Other nations still under sanctions now
unfortunately have to endure many more years of dictatorship.
What about the human rights situation in China now? Based on the media
report here, I would say it is so much better than it used to be. Those who
consider this as the worst situation that could be simply knows too little
about history, especially the darker side of history.
So is Olympics good for China? Of course it is. It is good for the Chinese
people. It might also be good for the Communist government, but I don't
care. I consider the Chinese people much more important than the Chinese
government.
When I left China, it was hard to imagine owning a telephone unless you are
an official, in that case you get it for free. It is now difficult for me
to contemplate the number of cell phones in Chinese cities, and it is an
eye-opener to see the prevalence of Internet cafes. We hated Bush Sr. then
when he sent envoys to China so soon after Tiananmen. But in retrospect
that might have done more to improve the lives of Chinese people than his
son is ever capable of.
Western countries like to use carrot and stick to induce democracy in other
countries. The problem is that the distance between carrot and stick is so
limited it does not cover even a tiny fraction of the possible range.
Static policies based on stereotype do not work. What will work is a
dynamic policy that actually reward changes in the positive direction.
The government has a moral imperative from the
people to take in not one dime more than needed for any given year, and if they did, to give it back to them immediately.
Why wouldn't you demand that gvnt balnace the sheet everyday? What? You say the ratio between income and expense fluctuate each day? Why do you think a year is a magic length of time?
We have a fairly
constant flow of revenue in that it will always be about a certain percent of the GDP. The costs of government should
flucuate with the costs of the GDP. In that way, if the costs of government are 10% of the GDP, then the taxes should amount
to 10% of the GDP. That works regardless of the change in the GDP, and it means that the income/expense ratio will be fairly
well set.
Maybe you have heard that due to demographic changes the ratio between GDP and SS payment will change dramatically in a few decades. So which is your thesis? That this wouldn't happen? Or that just let the system (or retirees) bankrupt when it happens? Either way, I don't see that follows logically from your moral stand. And if you really want to clear the budget at every year end, maybe the national debt should be paid as well?
Perhaps now you want to say you did not mean to exactly clear everything each year. Well, maybe you could examine your belief system to see if there is anything that led you to express such extreme conclusions without noticing it?
The challenge for any electronic voting system is to allow varification while keeping anonymity. A successful system is going to need a mechanism that is essentially like double-entry accounting: any amount of registration (income) corresponds to a vote (expense). However, traditional accounting practices like receipts and statements are not applicable here.
To do so electronicly requires some clever combination of traceability with non-traceability. Someone need to invent a method, no less remarkable than public key encryption, that allows a voter to trace that his vote is counted as it should be, to allow officials to trace that each vote did come from a voter, and that each voter only voted once, but does not allow anybody to match a voter with a vote.
Until this happens, electronic voting is not feasible.
The following quick calculation is likely to have an error, but it explains
the idea:
For black bodies, the radiation power is proportional to the fourth power of
temperature. The radiation received per unit area is inversely proportional
to the square of distance. Putting these together, if we assume the
radiation earth receives from the sun is in equilibrium with its own
radiation into the space, then
(T/t)^4 = 4 (R/r)^2
where T, t are the surface temperatures of sun and earth; R, r are the
earth-sun distance and the radius of earth. The factor of 4 is the ratio
between 4pi (in area of sphere) and pi (in cross section).
So this comes to
t = T / sqrt(2R/r) = 26.7 K,
given R=1.5e11 m, r=6.4e6 m, T = 5800 K.
This is far below 0 degC (off by a factor of 10). Why? Can this be explained
away by the deviation from blackness alone?
If the mysql.com guys didn't want other people being able to
distribute their code, they shouldn't have issued it under the GPL.
This is not about whether to allow distribution, it is about the ways of
distribution. Distributing derived work not under GPL as a whole is
forbidden by GPL.
If they didn't want people to be able to modify their software, and
distribute the modified versions, they shouldn't have issued it under the
GPL.
This is not about whether to allow modification, it is about whether
modified versions make it clear that it is not the original, to avoid
contaminate the reputation of the original author. This is required by
GPL.
If they didn't want to let other, possibly competing companies make
money out of packaging and selling their software, they shouldn't have
issued it under the GPL.
Why do you think that a competing company cannot make money when they comply
with GPL?
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, wrong with what mysql.org is
doing with the mysql software. MySQL AB granted them those rights when they
decided to release it under the GPL.
GPL does not give a blanket grant of any and every right. It grants specific rights with specific obligations. It is not public
domain.
There is no ethical, legal or moral reason why they should not fork
off a new code tree from the main distribution.
If they prominently state that their version is a fork, it is ok. If they
display prominently the reason for the fork, it is socially amicable. But
presenting a fork, even if it is GPLed, under the cover of the original
name, is unethical. If the fork is not GPLed and it is distributed, it is
illegal.
By the way, no license or law can regulate moral issues. There are many
ways to do immoral things while complying with licenses and laws. For
example, many people would regard grabbing a.org domain for commercial
variant of free software as unethical, even though is is allowed by law.
There is no ethical, legal or moral reason why they should not create
a web site to distribute their version of the software, and to try to earn
money from the product.
As above, they should clearly display they are not the original.
This isn't something going wrong, people - it's the GPL working
EXACTLY AS IT'S MEANT TO.
You have a very skewed view of GPL. There are many places on the web
providing information concerning the difference between GPL and public
domain. You might want to use some of them.
As to the trademark issue, I think it's clearly against the spirit of
Free Software to top other people using the name "mysql" if they excercise
the rights you gave them under the GPL.
The rights granted under GPL specifically exclude using original name for a
modification without prominent distinction. Read the GPL. It's on the
first page.
MySQL AB seem to have made a very bad judgement when they wen't
GPL... they don't care about Free Software at all.
No, they made a very good judgment. Had they released it under BSD, they
would be regretting the mistake by now. OTOH, I am not that knowledgeable to
judge whether they care about Free Software.
Free software is not public domain. GPL grants many generous rights to the
user. In a sense, one of the most precious rights reserved for the author
is the right to the name.
MS Windows coming pre-installed on a box and not requiring you to be a
geek is a feature
First, divide all computer buyers into two mutually exclusive set: geeks and
non-geeks.
Geeks: You must be able to buy all the hardware components and assemble them
together. You must be able to install any OS by yourself.
Non-geeks: You must accept whatever OS that is pre-installed. Your must be
glad that everything that is "wildly popular" has already been chosen.
(How did it become wildly popular for non-geeks in the first place, again?)
What? You want pre-assembled hardware without pre-installed software?! You
are nobody! Which law says you are entitled to such rights?
Personal note: I was a nobody. When I bought my first computer I had used
Unix for years and I wanted just Linux. Unfortunately I couldn't tell a
parallel port from an Ethernet connection, let alone that sound need a card.
So I had to pay the MS tax. I guess Windows deserve part of the price
for testing the hardware.
In one case, you are providing an idea. In the other case, you are providing a tool.
I doubt that someone who had a page encouraging music "piracy", but providing no tools, would be the target of a lawsuit.
So it's like Napster? Napster only provides the names and locations of songs, but does not provide a tool for you to copy it. It does not even encourage you to copy. Neither does it cheer when a song is copied.
Most packages are not useful for everybody, but they are useful for somebody. What would make everyone happy is a really good dependency model so that instead of making impossible choices at the beginning, it can be done whenever needed. Like
make install editor
!!! Three alternatives:
1) emacs: 40MB + 59MB (5 dependent pkg)
2) vi: 10MB + 30MB (3 depedent pkg)
3) pico: 12MB + 40MB (2 depedent pkg)
All) 62MB + 86MB (7 dependent pkg)
??? Go ahead with 1/2/3/All [A]?
!!! installed all.
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America is a solution to an optimization problem: maximum individual liberty.
...) for all i=1,2,.... Here x1 is individual 1's action and f1 is his payoff. The payoff can be "liberty" or whatever other utility one desires - It does not matter. What matters is the keyword "individual". The problem is ill-defined because the optimal value of (x1, x2, ...) for f1 may not be optimal for f2. Search for Prisoner's Dilema for a classical example involving only two individuals.
This cannot be true with a straightforward interpretation, as this optimization problem is ill-defined. It is akin to asking to maximize function values f_i(x1, x2,
Of course you didn't mean this silly interpretation. What are other reasonable meanings of this optimization problem? It could be one of the following:
A. Maximize f_i by changing x_i only, assuming all other x_j are fixed. This is still ill-defined, as the best direction to move x_i will depend on the values of all the other x_j. Maximizing one's individual liberty while assuming others stay put leads to actions usually considered as that of "leeches": jumping in front queues, using fraud to receive welfare benefits, evading taxes, etc. In what sense can you assume or demand others not changing their actions to maximize their payoffs?
B. Maximize f_1 by changing x1, while assuming at the same time the other x2, x3, etc are also obtained by maximizing f2, f3, etc. This interpretation is well defined, and can reach a stable state called a Nash equilibrium. But it is not what one normally want. In the Prisoner's Dilema example the Nash equilibrium is the situation where both fess up. In a real society with realistic definition of payoffs, such as liberty, quality of life, or whatever, the optimal solution would lead to everyone grab, steal, loot and rob as much as he can get away with. The outcome will be close to the society of Somalia.
C. Modify the conditions to include in available actions the formation of alliances and enacting of contracts. This will have no effect in a single instance, but it will have a profound effect in repeated experiences of similar situations. There will be solutions for groups that are better off for everyone in the group in the long run, solutions not available if everyone acts individually and only care about instant payoffs. Seach for Repeated Prisoner's Dilema for toy problem that illustrate this point. In the context of real societies, this possibility is why all modern societies converge to having money, markets, policing, governments, corporations, public roads, contracts, patents, copyrights, land ownership, etc. Think about each one of these concepts - none of them will function if one acts to maximize his own interest pretending other will not react to his action. The fundation of modern society is social contracts. If you actually use this interpretation, then you are accepting the social contract theory.
Many libertarians accepts social contracts that help guard their societal rights, such as policing to safeguard property ownership, while rejecting social contracts that help to pay for these safeguards, such as taxes that fund the police. The fundamental flaw here is in thinking that one can act alone and does not affect others nor bring reactions from others.
Selective memory is indeed one of the main factors driving all these debates. Innumeracy may be another.
What follows is a refresher for a memory that many have lost. It is not directly related to the subtle legal points in debate here, but it is very relevant to all these broad spectrum comparisons people make.
In the distant past, in the year of 2003, just before the start of Iraq War, the White House estimated the cost of war to be between 50 and 60 billion dollars. Some left-wing think tank made an estimate as high as 300 billion dollars. That was laughed at as being ridiculous and partisan. Bush got an approval for the war from Congress. It turned out to be costing for more than 1 trillion dollars. Members of Congress were not happy but they thought that there's nothing they could do.
In 2011, just before US involvement in Libya, many members of Congress from both parties blamed Obama for "inaction". After some hesitation he took some action for several weeks, and then reduced the involvement. He did not seek explicit approval from Congress. The total cost is estimated to be over 1 billion dollars if it continues for several more months. Some members of Congress were furious for his blatant disregard of Congressional authority.
Let's try to scale down the numbers in this story so that it is at a more intuitive level. Say you have two kids, aged 8 years apart. When the first kid went to high school, he asked for 50 to 60 dollars to go to a dinar party with classmates as it was of vital importance to high school life. Disregarding the warning that this may actually cost you three hundred dollars, you gave the approval to your kid to use your card. You eventually got a bill for over 1000 dollars. You were unhappy but thought that you can't really blame him as he sought your approval. Eight years later, your second kid went to high school. At your urge that he's not having enough fluid during the day, he took some change and bought some juice in school. You were furious that he spent over 1 dollar without your approval, as you have an explicit house rule that money for food needs to be approved. You think he should be punished.
Is this rational and responsible behavior? Do the members of congress behave as how adults should behave?
Here's an argument to show that gas tax beats the alternative forms of transportation tax by a big margin.
Following are three potential revenue sources for road transportation:
1. Vehicle registration.
2. Mileage tracking / toll
3. Fuel tax.
Which one is the best? What is a fair standard to compare them? I think we should examine why the tax is needed in the first place, and which aspects of driving are relevant to this need. Let's see:
1. Road construction and maintenance. It mainly depends on mileage driven and vehicle weight.
2. Pollution cost. It mainly depends on mileage driven and inefficiency of the vehicle.
3. Strategic cost of oil source (such as soldiers in foreign countries). It mainly depends on the amount of fuel consumed.
4. Paper work for ownership. It is essentially per vehicle.
5. Parking space. It is roughly proportional to number of trips and size of vehicle.
Item 4 is the only one that should be addressed by vehicle tax. All other items are nicely represented by gas tax. For these items, either per vehicle or per mile taxes would be grossly biased.
Are there more important reasons to tax road transportation? Are there fairer taxation methods?
This is a most interesting thought. Such surveys can provide a quite objective definition of "accurate and balanced".
Suppose someone takes three clear cases of liberal misperceptions of comparable scale and conduct a similar survey, it is likely that NPR audience get a 30/70 split, instead of the 23/77 split for conservative misperceptions. That would show NPR to be slightly left-leaning.
On the other hand, the fox audicence might get a 1/99 split on liberal misperceptions, compared with a 80/20 split on conservative misperceptions. That would show Fox News to be extremely right wing.
I would bet that the print media would have less than the 47/53 split on liberal misperceptions, but would be somewhat close. That would show the print media to be slightly right-leaning.
If two media sources are both balanced, the one with smaller rates of misperception is more accurate.
Of course the numbers can only come from real surveys. Such numbers would be extremely revealing.
Consciousness and intelligence are not that difficult to define, actually.
If we examine how simple animals evolved into more complicated ones, it is
easy to see what functionality (and higher survival probability) are added
by the higher cognitive abilities. Here's a step by step definition. All
these can be realized by using one or several neural networks (but the
computational issues are immense).
Simple reflex. It is good to have simple reactions to stimuli. A learning
process can improve the chance of getting positive rewards. This requires
the brain to have a "pleasure center" that generates positive and negative
rewards. That's where the "happy" and "sad" emotions come from.
Values. Most actions in most situations do not produce immediate reward. It
is good to have an "evaluator" that take into account of future rewards.
The learning process for the actions are geared toward such values instead
of immediate rewards. This is similar to playing chess and other board
games, where you not only learn how to make good moves, but also learn how
to recognize good and bad positions.
Memory. The state of the environment surrounding the animal is not
completely visible, but some of which can be deduced by what was observed in
the past. It is good to have a memory. This is similar to playing bridge
and other card games, where much of useful information can be deduced from
what cards had been played (which are no longer visible).
Prediction. Things you do not see usually do not remain the same way you
last saw it. Suppose you are crossing a road. You look left and right.
See some cars coming from the distance. You feel that there is enough time
to cross. Often you do not have to look at them constantly while crossing.
Instead you maintain a dynamic mental model of where they should be now.
Since this is very imprecise, this model is updated by the sensual inputs.
For example, if you hear the cars coming much louder than expected, you'd
realize it is closer than you thought. A dynamic model of the external
world that is updated by sensual inputs is also called consciousness.
Attention. The senses of most animals are generally very limited. It is
good to pay attention to the more important matters so that dynamic model
called consciousness would not go wrong on these issues . The evaluation of
importance for the purpose of directing attention is called interest. For a
zebra grazing on an African plain, a nearby lion is very interesting. In
fact, that's why people go to movies that provide thrill, violence, sex,
emotion and other high drama.
Fear. The game of life is full of danger. If a life (at least for
non-social animals) ends, all its accumulated wealth (nutrients and
knowledge) are lost. Therefore it is good to have an internal alarm system
that can predict danger. That prediction is called fear. The purpose of
fear is to invoke immediate reaction. It is therefore different and in
addition to the general feeling of happy and sad, which are used to enhance
future actions. This also explains why some social animals may appear
fearless in certain situations.
Self consciousness. For animals that are not very much fixed to their
surroundings (unlike corals, for example), it is computationally more
efficient to separate the dynamic model of the external world from a model
of itself. The body of an animal is different from surroundings in the
following ways: it is more important, it has different feeling system, it is
relatively fixed to the senses instead of the ground. Space orientation is
part of a model correlating the self consciousness with the consciousness
about the external world.
Language. Social animals can sometimes derive benefit from coordination of
their actions. Sound (or any other rich set of symbols) can be used for
this purpose. If the combination of symbols can express a great deal of
additional meaning, such a system is called a language.
Intelligence. For animals with language and other symbolic capabilities, it
is possible to analyze a situation or even plan future actions using mental
symbol manipulation dynamically. This provides a combinatorial explosion of
mental capacity compared with static rules. This mental process is also
called thinking. Humans benefit from this capacity, which makes them appear
vastly more advanced than other animals. The Turing test was so designed
that the variety of questions will overwhelm any system based on static
rules, yet being in reach of some systems which can process semantic
information.
This is an outline of natural intelligence. The needs and capabilities of
computing machines are quite different. So it is possible that they may
achieve some different kind of intelligence (in the sense that most people
would agree it is intelligent) without being anywhere near natural
intelligence. It is also remotely possible that Turing test could be passed
without any kind of intelligence. But that would only be a testimony to how
limited the communication capability is under the test as compared with
human intelligence when it is used fully.
Re:Actually, we should at least standardize...
by Anonymous Coward on 2002.07.04 20:31 (Score:0) (#3825031)
Anyone else ever notice that Slashdot articles and comments never indicate the year?
Did you post your article in the year 2002?
The translation is quite strange. The original is "world unique Chinese Linux operating system. More stable, more freedom".
It's mysterious where the "beat a drum" comes from. I thought it's somebody making fun. But then I tried just this sentence and Mr. Fish actually said so.
Since the slashdot crowd is not well known for following up citations, here's my summary after about 15 minutes reading.
1. If a bug has a mean time T to be found, the probability of it not being found in time t is exp(-t/T).
2. However, making a reasonable assumption about the scaling of all levels of bugs, the number of remaining bugs will only decrease as K/t. This is because over time, the remaining bugs will be dominated by harder bugs, those with larger T.
3. If a particular restriction (eg no access to source) reduces the efficiency of tester by a factor x less than 1, the overall bug rate would be K/xt.
4. For closed systems the alpha testers scale as K/t, beta testers scale as K/xt. But since the overall rate is dominated by beta testers, it is still K/xt overall.
For open systems all testers scale as K/t, which is also its overall rate.
Therefore closed systems will have more bugs than open systems by a factor 1/x.
5. For closed systems it is x times as efficient for attackers to find vulnerabilities as well, cancelling out the 1/x abundance of uncaught bugs.
Conclusion, the vulnerability of both systems only depend on K, a characteristic of the original system, but independent of x, a characteristic of the testing environment.
--
This is quite interesting. I could be wrong in reading it this way, as I spent less time reading it than typing it up.
One additional conclusion that can be drawn from this is that opening up a closed system will momentarily increase its vulnerability by a factor of 1/x, until its overall bug rate reduces to K/t.
"Investigators blamed the high death toll on locked emergency exits. " This is all there is to the story.
If that were so, the mayor should have shut down all businesses with locked emergency exits, regardless of what business it is.
Instead he shut down all internet cafes, regardless of what their fire safety conditions are.
This means each generation is half the size of the previous. Are you proposing an indefinite decline (aka extiction), or just until there are less than X billion of us?
Good math. Wrong application.
The Chinese population actually increases by over one percent every year under one child policy. It is expected to reach 1.6 billion in 2050 from current 1.3 billion, at that time the policy is projected to be scapped. (I hope I remembered these numbers correctly, but in any case the trend is basically like this.)
How can this be true? Just remember that not each generation have exactly the same number of people, on which your conclusion would be based.
Quiz: The life expectancy (near 70) is about three times the length of generation (20+). So if the three existing generations have sizes x, 2x, and 4x, respectively, (so the total is 7x) and each couple has two children, what will be the total population one generation later? (answer: 10x) two generation later? (answer: 12x) If there is a one child policy, when will the population come back to today's level? (answer: 50+ year later)
Further thinking: In the 1920s, 1930s and 1950s the Chinese population declined several times even when the average number of children per family was more than three. Figure out how that could have happened.
It'll be interesting to hear your explanation of how I can "take freedom from other people" by writing my own software and offering it under license terms of my own choosing.
The interesting part of the explanation lies in understanding the difference between what you and RMS considered as a single action.
You consider "writing my own software and offering it under my license terms" as an individual action. If that is the only thing you choose to do or not to do, with no other consequences, then RMS's claim would indeed seem bizarre.
In contrast, RMS regards the license as less connected with the action of writing the software than connected with the action of enforcing the license upon people using the software. It is placing a restriction, backed by the power of law, on top of your expression of thought. In that sense it is an expression of power.
A lame analogy would be the contrast between a friend saying "I don't like your doing that" and a police officer saying "If you do that I'll arrest you". The latter is not merely an expression of freedom of the officer, it is an expression of power.
Why do so many people not see RMS's point? Because they recognize that the power of license originates from copyright laws. The license itself does not generate that power, only express a will to use it.
But RMS is not talking about the origin of the power, only the fact that it is power and it is being used.
In the above analogy, the police officer may indeed be expressing his thought at that time, but that thought is relevant mostly because it is backed by the power granted whichever way to him. In this situation the expression is less important than its effect. This is why people whose only actions are "talking" (giving orders) could be found guilty of crimes. A speech that has power (people will suffer if they do not obey it) becomes action due to its effects.
Without copyright, your action (writing whatever in the license) and other people's action (using the software whichever way they want) can indeed exist freely independent of each other. But copyright laws bound them together, in the sense that your action (writing words on the license) has the primary effect of restricting actions other people can take.
If you agree that most people writing license (esp proprietary licenses) intend to have them enforced by law (or at least conceived to be so), you would see that RMS's view is much closer to the real world than yours is. A license with a disclaimer "This is my wish only and I hereby waiver any rights under copyright law to enforce it" would be closer to your view.
Considering that RMS does not see the power granted by copyright laws to holders of software copyright as just, we can see that he has been very consistent and logical on this issue, whether we agree with him or not.
The economic claim for trinary computation is bogus, because we do not know that the cost of building width w base r device is proportional to r*w. The cost is likely to increase more than linearly with the base. For example if it is r^k*w, the "optimal" base would be r=exp(1/k). For k=2, r=1.65, and for k=1.5, r=1.95. In these cases binary or a _smaller_ base is better.
However, there would be a real benefit in using trinary logic, as it can be used to represent true, false and unknown. In many real situations a lot of extra logic is devoted to dealing with unknowns because the binary system forces a decision. This would be cleaned up quite a bit in trinary system. In fact, the ease of rounding using trancation is a nice little demonstration of this property.
For this discussion let us assume that everybody's preference can be specified by a utility function. This is not as restrictive as it might appear initially, but to explain it would lead us far into game theory.
In game theory it is well known that the optimal strategy for individuals (Nash equilibrium) is often not optimal for society. By this we mean that there are other strategies under which everyone is better off. Unfortunately the optimal solution for the society is often not equilibrium if each individual optimizes his own gain.
This is where Capitalism works brilliantly. If people can exchange their possessions in a market place, they can choose better strategies by dividing the profit of the exchange among them. If all information is complete and if all exchanges are instant with zero cost, the market would be the perfect arbitor of every action in life. The fact that advertising is a big business proves that this is not the case.
Many of the remaining problems can be remedied by having laws and taxes and other instruments of govmnt that alters the payoff functions of individuals. Copyright is one such example where government force is used to change the payoff's of individuals, as it is deemed to be beneficial to the society. Developed societies are getting better at this throughout the past century.
At the time of Karl Marx, the situation was much worse. Some intellectuals thought that the cause of the discrepency between individual optimization and society optimization lies in the difference between the utility functions. They thought that if private properties were banned and if the society owned everything, then everyone would make their decision on what is good for all.
This would not work for many reasons. The major reason is that decisions are based on marginals (what you can change) instead of totals (what you already have). Even if everything is owned by society, working for one's own profit is still more profittable than working for society. So Communism could never ever be a working solution, even if it were established without all the other negative associations it has had attached in practice.
Now back to Free Software. The mechanism invented by RMS has nothing to do with removing private property. It is a mechanism for altering the dynamics of individual exchange imposed by copyright laws. It is less intrusive to the market place than the copyright laws themselves. It is believed to have the effect of encouraging behavior that would benefit the whole society.
What we have seen in the poor financial performance of many Open Source companies is an indication that the exchange mechanism is still not good enough to reward behavior that is good for the commons, assuming we agree that OSS is good on its own right. It is merely a reflection on the fact that Nash equilibrium is generally not global optimum, unless the exchange mechanism is fine tuned in a very clever way.
The following dichotomy is false: Suppose some one writes software that does not pay enough, then either
1. The software is useless, or
2. The society needs radical change like banning markets.
What history has shown is that the best progress are not those that force people to change or even abandon their utility functions, but evolutionary progress in the mechanism of exchange that results in payoff functions that tends towards global optimization.
To equate GPL with communism is either naive, ignorant or worse. It is no more valid than associating copyright or social security or national defense with communism.
That's what I thought initially - and the code is almost identical to yours (testment to the motto "there should be only one obvious way to do it")
...
:-)
#!/usr/bin/env python
line = raw_input().rstrip()
print line[0:1].upper() + line[1:]
Then I realized the Perl code was to concerned with the _first letter_, not the _first character_, so that requires import re
In any case, to me the Python code looks even more readable than the comments in Perl.
And it allows us to see clearly that they ARE devils.
Now you think it is more appropriate to jail him because he writes spamware.
The funny thing is that the Congress has not even legislated to limit spam, let alone spamware.
Instead, it not only legislates against various copying, but also criminalize authors of tools to facilitate copying, even if the copying is for fair use.
Maybe you should lobby the Congress to repeal DMCA and legislate against spam.
Look at this carefully. Copy restriction is commercial entity trying to protect their assets by limiting consumer's abilities. Spam restriction is consumers trying to protect their assets by limiting commercial entity's abilities.
Wonder why one is adopted ensusiastically, while the other is put aside?
This is a very strange analogy, as you have chosen an object that presumably everybody would consider illegal, and assumed it legal in another country. Any conclusion you can draw would be colored by the unrealistic assumptions.
A more realistic analogy is if you work for a US gun manufacturer, which is legal here, whose guns somehow get sold into a country that bans firearms. You travel to that country and tell people what you do for a living. And you get arrested.
Do you wish to take responsibility for your employer in this way, no matter what your view is concerning the relative merit of guns as a device to safeguard personal freedom or as a device to infringe on other people's freedom?
Note that in Russia it is legally required to allow users to backup contents to other formats as a way of consumer protection.
One big problem for most people evaluating the situation in China from outside is that it is difficult to recognize the vast range social parameters can take. Even in the US, some laws are so good that people constantly sing its praise (think First Amendment) while some are so bad that they are considered national shame by many (think DMCA). Now take that distance as unit. Starting at First Amendment, going in the direction of DMCA for, say, between 0.5 and 5 units, you will cover perhaps most of Chinese laws in terms of restriction of freedom. If you go still several times further, you'll reach the range of some more terrible states existing today, or the state of China when Nixon visited it. That state was not even defined by the laws of that time, as there were essentially none.
So depending on what your reference point is, you could say that China has made tremendous progress while at the same time it has a long way to go. If you think these two are contradictory, you will have a long time to argue which is right.
But there is a lesson to be learned. In the past century, apart from one exception (South Africa), the best support for authoritarian regimes has been the sanctions and blockades from democratic countries, and the biggest initiator of reform comes from open exchange with democratic countries. It was lucky for Chinese people that Nixon had the guts to visit it when it was in such a miserable state (even though his motivation was largely to forge an anti-Soviet alliance). Other nations still under sanctions now unfortunately have to endure many more years of dictatorship.
What about the human rights situation in China now? Based on the media report here, I would say it is so much better than it used to be. Those who consider this as the worst situation that could be simply knows too little about history, especially the darker side of history.
So is Olympics good for China? Of course it is. It is good for the Chinese people. It might also be good for the Communist government, but I don't care. I consider the Chinese people much more important than the Chinese government.
When I left China, it was hard to imagine owning a telephone unless you are an official, in that case you get it for free. It is now difficult for me to contemplate the number of cell phones in Chinese cities, and it is an eye-opener to see the prevalence of Internet cafes. We hated Bush Sr. then when he sent envoys to China so soon after Tiananmen. But in retrospect that might have done more to improve the lives of Chinese people than his son is ever capable of.
Western countries like to use carrot and stick to induce democracy in other countries. The problem is that the distance between carrot and stick is so limited it does not cover even a tiny fraction of the possible range. Static policies based on stereotype do not work. What will work is a dynamic policy that actually reward changes in the positive direction.
Why wouldn't you demand that gvnt balnace the sheet everyday? What? You say the ratio between income and expense fluctuate each day? Why do you think a year is a magic length of time?
We have a fairly constant flow of revenue in that it will always be about a certain percent of the GDP. The costs of government should flucuate with the costs of the GDP. In that way, if the costs of government are 10% of the GDP, then the taxes should amount to 10% of the GDP. That works regardless of the change in the GDP, and it means that the income/expense ratio will be fairly well set.
Maybe you have heard that due to demographic changes the ratio between GDP and SS payment will change dramatically in a few decades. So which is your thesis? That this wouldn't happen? Or that just let the system (or retirees) bankrupt when it happens? Either way, I don't see that follows logically from your moral stand. And if you really want to clear the budget at every year end, maybe the national debt should be paid as well?
Perhaps now you want to say you did not mean to exactly clear everything each year. Well, maybe you could examine your belief system to see if there is anything that led you to express such extreme conclusions without noticing it?
To do so electronicly requires some clever combination of traceability with non-traceability. Someone need to invent a method, no less remarkable than public key encryption, that allows a voter to trace that his vote is counted as it should be, to allow officials to trace that each vote did come from a voter, and that each voter only voted once, but does not allow anybody to match a voter with a vote.
Until this happens, electronic voting is not feasible.
For black bodies, the radiation power is proportional to the fourth power of temperature. The radiation received per unit area is inversely proportional to the square of distance. Putting these together, if we assume the radiation earth receives from the sun is in equilibrium with its own radiation into the space, then
(T/t)^4 = 4 (R/r)^2
where T, t are the surface temperatures of sun and earth; R, r are the earth-sun distance and the radius of earth. The factor of 4 is the ratio between 4pi (in area of sphere) and pi (in cross section).
So this comes to
t = T / sqrt(2R/r) = 26.7 K,
given R=1.5e11 m, r=6.4e6 m, T = 5800 K.
This is far below 0 degC (off by a factor of 10). Why? Can this be explained away by the deviation from blackness alone?
If the mysql.com guys didn't want other people being able to distribute their code, they shouldn't have issued it under the GPL.
This is not about whether to allow distribution, it is about the ways of distribution. Distributing derived work not under GPL as a whole is forbidden by GPL.
If they didn't want people to be able to modify their software, and distribute the modified versions, they shouldn't have issued it under the GPL.
This is not about whether to allow modification, it is about whether modified versions make it clear that it is not the original, to avoid contaminate the reputation of the original author. This is required by GPL.
If they didn't want to let other, possibly competing companies make money out of packaging and selling their software, they shouldn't have issued it under the GPL.
Why do you think that a competing company cannot make money when they comply with GPL?
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, wrong with what mysql.org is doing with the mysql software. MySQL AB granted them those rights when they decided to release it under the GPL.
GPL does not give a blanket grant of any and every right. It grants specific rights with specific obligations. It is not public domain.
There is no ethical, legal or moral reason why they should not fork off a new code tree from the main distribution.
If they prominently state that their version is a fork, it is ok. If they display prominently the reason for the fork, it is socially amicable. But presenting a fork, even if it is GPLed, under the cover of the original name, is unethical. If the fork is not GPLed and it is distributed, it is illegal.
By the way, no license or law can regulate moral issues. There are many ways to do immoral things while complying with licenses and laws. For example, many people would regard grabbing a .org domain for commercial
variant of free software as unethical, even though is is allowed by law.
There is no ethical, legal or moral reason why they should not create a web site to distribute their version of the software, and to try to earn money from the product.
As above, they should clearly display they are not the original.
This isn't something going wrong, people - it's the GPL working EXACTLY AS IT'S MEANT TO.
You have a very skewed view of GPL. There are many places on the web providing information concerning the difference between GPL and public domain. You might want to use some of them.
As to the trademark issue, I think it's clearly against the spirit of Free Software to top other people using the name "mysql" if they excercise the rights you gave them under the GPL.
The rights granted under GPL specifically exclude using original name for a modification without prominent distinction. Read the GPL. It's on the first page.
MySQL AB seem to have made a very bad judgement when they wen't GPL... they don't care about Free Software at all.
No, they made a very good judgment. Had they released it under BSD, they would be regretting the mistake by now. OTOH, I am not that knowledgeable to judge whether they care about Free Software.
Free software is not public domain. GPL grants many generous rights to the user. In a sense, one of the most precious rights reserved for the author is the right to the name.
First, divide all computer buyers into two mutually exclusive set: geeks and non-geeks.
Geeks: You must be able to buy all the hardware components and assemble them together. You must be able to install any OS by yourself.
Non-geeks: You must accept whatever OS that is pre-installed. Your must be glad that everything that is "wildly popular" has already been chosen.
(How did it become wildly popular for non-geeks in the first place, again?)
What? You want pre-assembled hardware without pre-installed software?! You are nobody! Which law says you are entitled to such rights?
Personal note: I was a nobody. When I bought my first computer I had used Unix for years and I wanted just Linux. Unfortunately I couldn't tell a parallel port from an Ethernet connection, let alone that sound need a card. So I had to pay the MS tax. I guess Windows deserve part of the price for testing the hardware.
I doubt that someone who had a page encouraging music "piracy", but providing no tools, would be the target of a lawsuit.
So it's like Napster? Napster only provides the names and locations of songs, but does not provide a tool for you to copy it. It does not even encourage you to copy. Neither does it cheer when a song is copied.
Most packages are not useful for everybody, but they are useful for somebody. What would make everyone happy is a really good dependency model so that instead of making impossible choices at the beginning, it can be done whenever needed. Like
make install editor
!!! Three alternatives:
1) emacs: 40MB + 59MB (5 dependent pkg)
2) vi: 10MB + 30MB (3 depedent pkg)
3) pico: 12MB + 40MB (2 depedent pkg)
All) 62MB + 86MB (7 dependent pkg)
??? Go ahead with 1/2/3/All [A]?
!!! installed all.