The concept of copyrighting HTML 'code' is rediculous... Copying the actual code is as easy as downloading the bloody page. Viewing HTML and using it for oneself is as easy as viewing it through the "View Page Source" feature in any browser. It's an open standard.
Um, I hope you do realize that the same is true of the displayed text, which is very definitely copyrighted. Go through your comment and replace every instance of 'HTML', and tell me you still don't see the problem.
BTW, HTML being and open standard is irrelevant. English is an open standard as well, but few people find that convincing grounds for fighting copyrights. Its the use of HTML that's as issue.
Agreed. As for bearing arms, isn't this basically what private security companies do anyway? IIRC they can offer their employees access to weapons that they otherwise couldn't, via special permits. I seem to recall that businesses have easier access to Class C permits, as well.
So why not give IBM a little army. Even better, General Dynamics. How many people are going to break in with M1's rumbling around the parking lot?
OK, OK, I get the hint -- I promise never to comment about a TLD without switching to my BSD box and hecking first.;-)
Anyway, I just thought it was odd that you so rarely see it referenced, considering the subject matter it covers. I could it just be a side-effect of it actually being run properly (no metoo.int, etc).
Jesus, I didn't know.int was a valid TLD anymore -- I'd never even seen it mentioned except in reference material from years back. Yet there it is. Oddly, almost all of the.int's that google found were European, including eu.int.
Seriously, there are people working on non-volitile analog memory (insofar as that's possible), and analog computers seem to be catching on again. That gives you an infinite number of bits per bit!;-)
Well, there's a rumor that Matrox is going to release a Mac version of the G400, and that there's a chance that Apple will take a look at dropping ATI. It's not exactly state-of-the-art, but it's a damn fine card and unquestioably a step up.
Quite likely, there are motor neurons in us which have no function.
Yes, and they're called 'dead neurons'. Neurons are eliminated (or rather, commit suicide) when they aren't used -- there's no reason to invest the resources needed to support them if they aren't doing anything. The only way to do this would be to reallocate neurons, which is certainly possible, in theory (the brain does it all the time), and accept the results. The problem is that if you choose a body part that is used for anything you run the risk that it will happily take back your interface neurons (which the brain also does all the time). Neural Darwinism in action.
Assuming you could do it, though, you still can't just use one neuron, or a small set. The dexterity needed to type requires lots of neurons. Neurons that your toe simply doesn't have. If you can't already type with your pinky-toes, don't expect to be able to just because you have a neural interface instead of a foot on one end of the nerve fibers.
AFAICT, the bottleneck on typing isn't finger speed, anyway; it's processing speed. I can make typing motions with my fingers a helluva lot faster that I can type, because I can't keep up with what it is that my fingers are doing.
Finally, while I'm doing my rain dance, reading brain waves -- by which I assume you mean all non-invasive technologies -- has already been demonstrated to work (poorly) as an interface. It's also non-invasive, meaning far less risk, and can be scaled down to work with small numbers of neurons.
One problem: I can move my fingers faster than I can type. Far faster, in fact; well in excess of what would be 100+ wpm, and with modest accuracy. Try ramping up your typing speed past your maximum. Your fingers don't slow down, you just aren't able to form the words quickly enough, and with enough control, to type. This implies that the problem -- to the extent that there is a problem -- is located in the brain, not the peripheral nerves.
Ah, but you still represent the Open Source community, regardless of whether you belong to it or agree with it's ideology. Remember, we're talking about the world as viewed through the eyes of the 'Free as in beer' crowd. Anything involving source -- GNU, BSD, HTML -- is going to be 'Open Source' in the minds of many people. As it turns out, most of them work for ZDNet.
While we're on the subject, I'm not sure that the apparent (possibly illusory, but still...) feud between the Open Source and Free Software movements is really going to be beneficial to either if it hits the mainstream press (which is to say, ZDNet). If you think we get FUD now....
Except that you can't copyright hardware, so you can't just slap a GPL on it and call it a day. Actually, there wouldn't be much point, anyway -- how many people are going distribute copies of their processor? Then there's the problem of the 'viral' GPL: if I put a GNUtel processor in my machine, have I just GPL'ed my motherboard? How about if I solder a GNUsound chipset in?
The American Civil Liberties Union. They're primarily known for suing the pants off anyone who looks at the First Amendment funny. More recently they've been gaining publicity for suing the pants off any gov't office/official that puts the word 'God' in a place they think is inappropriate. For the most part they do good work, but they are very definitely on the Left, politically speaking.
-jcl
Re:hasnt this been posted?
on
Who Owns Dmoz?
·
· Score: 1
It was. This is the second time (that I know of) in the last few weeks that a story has been moved to the top of the stack for no apparent reason.
Well, IANAL (the official/. slogan; someone should print T-shirts), but I'll take a shot at this.
Can I take 10% of a source file as "fair use"?
This is a really interesting idea, but I believe the GPL (or any license, for that matter) voids this sort of use. Most copyrighted material (i.e., !code) isn't licensed, so there's no problem. It had never really occurred to me though, so I'm not sure. I do know that there are restrictions on what you can do with material under fair use, and in all likelihood they would prevent people from using it a means to 'steal' code.
Two and three are pretty much the same question, and in both cases I'd say no. I could take a book from the library, scan it, change the main characters name to 'Bob', and claim it's an original work, but I doubt many people would show up in court for the book signing.
Can I look at the GPL'd code and work out the algorithms and write my new code based on that?
Absolutely. Algorithms can be described by code but are not code any more than the number 4 is the numeral '4'. The solution to this 'problem' is to patent algorithms, which is, IMO, insane, but I'm not so sure the Patent Office would agree.
Before anyone else accuses me of exaggerating the situation (which is probably true), I would like to say that two things in my defense, and in the interest of self-moderation.
I get my regional news from the local TV stations. Eugene stations, for the most part. If that doesn't explain some of the exaggeration, you obviously don't watch the KMTR. When the news broke I though the world was coming to an end.
I don't like the UO, and I really don't like UO fans. Thus any news which seems to imply difficulties for the UO makes me giddy and prone to celebration. At the same time, they do have some excellent programs, and as I said I was planning to attend. These two forces are interacting in such a way as to blur my perception of the situation a bit.
There. My small contribution to overcoming the stereotype that hackers are hard-headed, flamethrower wielding maniacs who can't accept their own faults and won't admit mistakes.
p.s. I'm curious -- what is(was) the University of Oregon's primary source of income?
Phil Knight, of Nike.
There have been protests there for several weeks concerning the production of the University of Oregon's apparel. Charges that it is being produced in sweatshops and whatnot. Predictably, some of this spilled over onto Nike, which is the primary provider of sports gear for the UO, and the local Evil Corporation.
The turning point was when the University agreed to join a watchdog group that monitors/opposes the use of low-wage Third World labor. Knight, as you might expect, reacted rather poorly to this news and announced that he would no longer donate money to University. Ever.
The problem is that Knight is the donor at the UO. Among other things he was putting up $30 million for a new $80 million stadium, which is already under construction (as in, 'can't be redesigned'). Basically, Phil Knight financed the UO, and without him things are looking grim. There have been reps from the administration on TV who are all but saying that the UO will be insolvent in a year or two. That would be a very bad thing. (Especially since I was planning to go there.)
Regardless of whether Nike is evil, or whether the University did the right thing, I suspect that in the minds of a lot of people here the lasting impact will simply be 'anarchists threatened the future of the UO'. Central Oregon is probably one of the most anarchist-friendly parts of NW, possibly the country, but things have been a bit tense with all of the riots in last few years, and this could be the event that turns the sympathetic-but-reserved portion of the public away. The UO is the major religion here, and it can sometimes suck a great deal to be a heretic.
Are you sure you really want to take credit for the Seattle and DC demonstrations? There are a lot of 'anarchists' in the NW who--even if they were, by some miracle, actually anarchists--are complete and utter idiots who do far, far, more harm than good to anarchism in general. I live an hour's drive from Eugene, OR--the Protesting Anarchist Capital of the World--and I can assure you that the anarchists that make the news here aren't the ones trying to change the world. They're mostly just trying to break windows at the Nike store and get on TV, though they did manage to destroy the University of Oregon's primary source of income, which will no doubt lead to some amusing financial difficulties in the future.
Oh please. No one is trying to imply that software pirates are anything like the pirates in the South China Sea. It's just a an old, convenient phrase that originated God knows where (not with software, though). Maybe we should call them 'software privateers'.
Anyway, I kinda like pirates--not all of them were evil, murderous bastards, you know. In fact, I think you're callously misrepresenting pirates. Where's my lawyer....
Would you mind enlightening me as to just what 'intellectual property' covers? Obviously patents--everyone on/. thinks patents are evil--but what, exactly, is evil about copyrights? I don't mean 'I'll sue you for quoting me' copyrights, but something like the BSD 'do what you want as long as I get credit' copyright.
Wow, someone finally agreed with me. I'm so happy!;-)
I actually don't object to 3Dfx or nVidia wanting to keep their {drivers,APIs} closed, or at least under their control. They're the best qualified to maintain their products, and being the BSD zealot I am I can't really wave the Free Software flag and declare them evil. I have to say, too, that I've been growing less enchanted with nVidia as time goes on. I still hate 3Dfx, for various silly reasons, but my next card is probably going to be a Matrox (the God of Quality;-), if and when they add geometry accel.
It's been a while since I last played Tribes, but I do recall that it looked quite nice. Quake III, UT, and some of the other recent 3D games look terrible without AA, though. Part of this is that those games are dripping with polygons and textures. I have a 19" monitor and usually play at around 960x720 (sweet spot for framerate and gamma on my card) and I'll occasionally see jaggies as much as an eighth on an inch wide (each step) on half the objects on screen. And that's width the maximum TNT2 AA level. It's really irritating, but there are a lot of games coming out that are all but unplayable on anything less than the most cutting edge cards. (QIII, for example, actually has levels that need >32MB on card texture memory to run at best quality, and even at medium quality texture/medium geometry stutter along at ~25 fps.)
As for DLS...I'm living in telco hell. The local USWest office is actually being sued by the state because they're so incompetent/evil. No DSL, only single channel ISDN ($150/mo, and metered), and even the telephone switch--the simplest possible ocomponent--is so hopelessly underpowered that I'm lucky to get an hour at 33.6k. Then we have the little problem of ~30% of the phone traffic being dropped, massive line noise....
NVidia does seems to be a bit schizoid on the Open Source issue. SGI is doing better, though, so hopefully it'll rub off a bit.
3Dfx has definitely screwed up quite a bit in the last few years, though. They really have built up a reputation from their insistence that gamers only care about frame rates, and image quality is a secondary concern, which lead to all sorts of fun technical decisions like the 'not-quite-16bit' color in the Voodoos. The T-buffer is, IMO, a crime against humanity, and utterly worthless. The Voodoo6 needs a direct connection to your power source. I can't express how wrong that sounds.
I hate proprietary APIs in theory, but I have to admit that Tribes, for instance, is just damn fun on a Voodoo card. More fun than Unreal Tourney or the Daikatana demo on the Matrox, at least...
Tribes is great; makes me wish I had DSL, though. I have a hard time believing that the Voodoo is responsible for that, however, beyond the little driver problem that plagued Tribes (i.e., nothing else worked). Unreal Tourney seems to take some getting used to, and Daikatana is...well, was what did you expect? (I'm a bit surprised UT runs on a G200 at all;-)
As for getting caught up in the specs, I'm not. I'm caught up in games looking the best they can without running like a slide show. 3Dfx has been calling their cards are the ultimate pixel pushers, and the benchmarks tend to agree. But I don't care about frame rates when the screen is covered with jaggies and I'm only getting 16bit color. I'd happily settle for a GeForce2 if it was half the speed of a Voodoo, because at least there's a chance I'll get full scene AA, 32bit color and decent lighting without killing my performance. It's quality that I'm concerned about, and 3Dfx has stated very clearly that their priority is quantity.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, I hope you do realize that the same is true of the displayed text, which is very definitely copyrighted. Go through your comment and replace every instance of 'HTML', and tell me you still don't see the problem.
BTW, HTML being and open standard is irrelevant. English is an open standard as well, but few people find that convincing grounds for fighting copyrights. Its the use of HTML that's as issue.
-jcl
So why not give IBM a little army. Even better, General Dynamics. How many people are going to break in with M1's rumbling around the parking lot?
-jcl
Anyway, I just thought it was odd that you so rarely see it referenced, considering the subject matter it covers. I could it just be a side-effect of it actually being run properly (no metoo.int, etc).
-jcl
Well, I guess you learn something new every day.
-jcl
Seriously, there are people working on non-volitile analog memory (insofar as that's possible), and analog computers seem to be catching on again. That gives you an infinite number of bits per bit! ;-)
-jcl
-jcl
Thus proving my point.
-jcl
Yes, and they're called 'dead neurons'. Neurons are eliminated (or rather, commit suicide) when they aren't used -- there's no reason to invest the resources needed to support them if they aren't doing anything. The only way to do this would be to reallocate neurons, which is certainly possible, in theory (the brain does it all the time), and accept the results. The problem is that if you choose a body part that is used for anything you run the risk that it will happily take back your interface neurons (which the brain also does all the time). Neural Darwinism in action.
Assuming you could do it, though, you still can't just use one neuron, or a small set. The dexterity needed to type requires lots of neurons. Neurons that your toe simply doesn't have. If you can't already type with your pinky-toes, don't expect to be able to just because you have a neural interface instead of a foot on one end of the nerve fibers.
AFAICT, the bottleneck on typing isn't finger speed, anyway; it's processing speed. I can make typing motions with my fingers a helluva lot faster that I can type, because I can't keep up with what it is that my fingers are doing.
Finally, while I'm doing my rain dance, reading brain waves -- by which I assume you mean all non-invasive technologies -- has already been demonstrated to work (poorly) as an interface. It's also non-invasive, meaning far less risk, and can be scaled down to work with small numbers of neurons.
-jcl
-jcl
While we're on the subject, I'm not sure that the apparent (possibly illusory, but still...) feud between the Open Source and Free Software movements is really going to be beneficial to either if it hits the mainstream press (which is to say, ZDNet). If you think we get FUD now....
-jcl
-jcl
-jcl
-jcl
This is a really interesting idea, but I believe the GPL (or any license, for that matter) voids this sort of use. Most copyrighted material (i.e., !code) isn't licensed, so there's no problem. It had never really occurred to me though, so I'm not sure. I do know that there are restrictions on what you can do with material under fair use, and in all likelihood they would prevent people from using it a means to 'steal' code.
Two and three are pretty much the same question, and in both cases I'd say no. I could take a book from the library, scan it, change the main characters name to 'Bob', and claim it's an original work, but I doubt many people would show up in court for the book signing.
Absolutely. Algorithms can be described by code but are not code any more than the number 4 is the numeral '4'. The solution to this 'problem' is to patent algorithms, which is, IMO, insane, but I'm not so sure the Patent Office would agree.
-jcl
Before anyone else accuses me of exaggerating the situation (which is probably true), I would like to say that two things in my defense, and in the interest of self-moderation.
- I get my regional news from the local TV stations. Eugene stations, for the most part. If that doesn't explain some of the exaggeration, you obviously don't watch the KMTR. When the news broke I though the world was coming to an end.
- I don't like the UO, and I really don't like UO fans. Thus any news which seems to imply difficulties for the UO makes me giddy and prone to celebration. At the same time, they do have some excellent programs, and as I said I was planning to attend. These two forces are interacting in such a way as to blur my perception of the situation a bit.
There. My small contribution to overcoming the stereotype that hackers are hard-headed, flamethrower wielding maniacs who can't accept their own faults and won't admit mistakes.© 2000 James Lanfear. All rights reserved.
Phil Knight, of Nike.
There have been protests there for several weeks concerning the production of the University of Oregon's apparel. Charges that it is being produced in sweatshops and whatnot. Predictably, some of this spilled over onto Nike, which is the primary provider of sports gear for the UO, and the local Evil Corporation.
The turning point was when the University agreed to join a watchdog group that monitors/opposes the use of low-wage Third World labor. Knight, as you might expect, reacted rather poorly to this news and announced that he would no longer donate money to University. Ever.
The problem is that Knight is the donor at the UO. Among other things he was putting up $30 million for a new $80 million stadium, which is already under construction (as in, 'can't be redesigned'). Basically, Phil Knight financed the UO, and without him things are looking grim. There have been reps from the administration on TV who are all but saying that the UO will be insolvent in a year or two. That would be a very bad thing. (Especially since I was planning to go there.)
Regardless of whether Nike is evil, or whether the University did the right thing, I suspect that in the minds of a lot of people here the lasting impact will simply be 'anarchists threatened the future of the UO'. Central Oregon is probably one of the most anarchist-friendly parts of NW, possibly the country, but things have been a bit tense with all of the riots in last few years, and this could be the event that turns the sympathetic-but-reserved portion of the public away. The UO is the major religion here, and it can sometimes suck a great deal to be a heretic.
© 2000 James Lanfear. All rights reserved.
That aside, my question still stands: what exactly are the wrongdoings we're addressing?
© 2000 James Lanfear. All rights reserved.
Really not helping the marketing campaign any.
© 2000 James Lanfear. All rights reserved.
Anyway, I kinda like pirates--not all of them were evil, murderous bastards, you know. In fact, I think you're callously misrepresenting pirates. Where's my lawyer....
© 2000 James Lanfear. All rights reserved.
© 2000 James Lanfear. All rights reserved.
© 2000 James Lanfear. All rights reserved.
I actually don't object to 3Dfx or nVidia wanting to keep their {drivers,APIs} closed, or at least under their control. They're the best qualified to maintain their products, and being the BSD zealot I am I can't really wave the Free Software flag and declare them evil. I have to say, too, that I've been growing less enchanted with nVidia as time goes on. I still hate 3Dfx, for various silly reasons, but my next card is probably going to be a Matrox (the God of Quality ;-), if and when they add geometry accel.
It's been a while since I last played Tribes, but I do recall that it looked quite nice. Quake III, UT, and some of the other recent 3D games look terrible without AA, though. Part of this is that those games are dripping with polygons and textures. I have a 19" monitor and usually play at around 960x720 (sweet spot for framerate and gamma on my card) and I'll occasionally see jaggies as much as an eighth on an inch wide (each step) on half the objects on screen. And that's width the maximum TNT2 AA level. It's really irritating, but there are a lot of games coming out that are all but unplayable on anything less than the most cutting edge cards. (QIII, for example, actually has levels that need >32MB on card texture memory to run at best quality, and even at medium quality texture/medium geometry stutter along at ~25 fps.)
As for DLS...I'm living in telco hell. The local USWest office is actually being sued by the state because they're so incompetent/evil. No DSL, only single channel ISDN ($150/mo, and metered), and even the telephone switch--the simplest possible ocomponent--is so hopelessly underpowered that I'm lucky to get an hour at 33.6k. Then we have the little problem of ~30% of the phone traffic being dropped, massive line noise....
-jcl
-jcl
3Dfx has definitely screwed up quite a bit in the last few years, though. They really have built up a reputation from their insistence that gamers only care about frame rates, and image quality is a secondary concern, which lead to all sorts of fun technical decisions like the 'not-quite-16bit' color in the Voodoos. The T-buffer is, IMO, a crime against humanity, and utterly worthless. The Voodoo6 needs a direct connection to your power source. I can't express how wrong that sounds.
Tribes is great; makes me wish I had DSL, though. I have a hard time believing that the Voodoo is responsible for that, however, beyond the little driver problem that plagued Tribes (i.e., nothing else worked). Unreal Tourney seems to take some getting used to, and Daikatana is...well, was what did you expect? (I'm a bit surprised UT runs on a G200 at all ;-)
As for getting caught up in the specs, I'm not. I'm caught up in games looking the best they can without running like a slide show. 3Dfx has been calling their cards are the ultimate pixel pushers, and the benchmarks tend to agree. But I don't care about frame rates when the screen is covered with jaggies and I'm only getting 16bit color. I'd happily settle for a GeForce2 if it was half the speed of a Voodoo, because at least there's a chance I'll get full scene AA, 32bit color and decent lighting without killing my performance. It's quality that I'm concerned about, and 3Dfx has stated very clearly that their priority is quantity.
-jcl
-jcl