I only have the answer to why they have investments. Because they have a significant amount of money on hand, and are holding it in the way that makes the most money for a project. When you put money in a bank, they invest it too. This way generally makes more money than interest from the bank.
What Central American/Caribbean securities or hedge funds does Mozilla invest in?
Don't know that either, but I can say why they do it. Diversification of your financial holdings over multiple currencies and over multiple national economies protects you from a crash in a single economy. The reliability of the US economy is no sure thing at the moment.
Why does the Foundation license its trademarks to Mozilla Corporation, its wholly-own subsidiary? Is that normal?
Yes. In this case I think it's a difference in tax status between the non-profit and the operating company. Sometimes it's done to keep the trademarks from being assets that could be placed in peril in a lawsuit. For-profit entities sometimes offshore the intellectual property rights as a tax shield, but I don't think that's happening here.
Usually in this sort of argument, if people start to curse you out that means you've beaten them. But who are you anyway? Should I care that you don't like my opinion?
It's not hypocrisy, nor is it either a safe space nor an echo chamber. That's silly rhetoric.
A CEO is the public face of your company. He or she has to represent your brand. Obviously Mozilla's brand was not to prevent Gay couples from having the right to marry.
It falls under participation in politics. Forcing out CEOs who publicly support policies repugnant to the organizations own membership and supporters is good politics. You have freedom of speech, but we have freedom to decline to be associated with you and your speech.
At first, less politics more code might sound productive. But in actuality, it's "keep your nose to the grindstone and don't stick your nose in the policies made by those above your pay grade". Of course, those policies will have tremendous effects on us, and we should have a say. All the code we can make won't necessarily change them.
The classical Greek definition of "idiot" is someone who declines to take part in democratic government. It is no less so today.
I've seen him around a few times (he travels as a speaker, so do I, but he gets paid to fly first class, I'm in coach). He looks pretty healthy for his age.
Owning my own company, I am not as tied down as many people and frequently make the 4-5 hour drive to Lompoc to see Vandenberg launches. Here's my last one.
At Lompoc, you have the choice of viewing ULA launches from Ocean Avenue (2.8 miles from Pad 3) or from Hawk's Nest, the official viewing spot 8 miles away which might be out of the fog when other spots aren't. I once went to a SpaceX launch where it was so foggy on Ocean Avenue that I only heard it.
At Kennedy Space Center, you have the option of viewing from the LC-39 Observation Gantry for $50, about the best launch viewing available, but Deleware North, the consession operating tours of KSC and Cape Canaveral, sometimes declines to open it for launches.
Company viewing is in an enclosed area a floor up from the peons on the LC-39 gantry. There have been times when I would have paid real money to view on the base rather than the 10-mile-away options on public land.
Also, besides the consequences of migration, you should count those who were not executed but died in prison or under torture. Which were probably around 100k.
The assertion that the Inquisition only killed 3000 can't take into account the repeated forced migrations of the oppressed populations. It's sort of like saying the Trail of Tears only moved people. And we need only look at the Syrian refugee crisis today. And please don't imply that it's no problem because Mao was worse.
If you look at the report, even at the start they state:
doctrinal concepts may come to be intrinsically rewarding and motivate behavior in religious individuals.
and at the end
Ultimately, the pairing of classical reward responses with abstract religious ideation may indicate a brain mechanism for attachment to doctrinal concepts and charismatic in-group religious leaders.
So, this is stated very carefully in scientific language, but what they are discussing is how religious ideation and the following of religious leaders can bypass rational centers of the brain and create a self-reward loop in which these acts become their own reward.
It doesn't seem to me that it's being a bully to be concerned with why religion leads some people to kill and prompts others to acts of violence and oppression. The study is a start toward an answer. One could connect this study, for example, with the Stanford Prison Experiment, and research whether the same reward mechanisms were activated. Leader-following and an in-group were involved in the Stanford student's behavior. Do self-rewarding loops of religious ideation and leader-following reinforce such behavior?
This reminds me of a prayer I've heard: "Oh Lord, protect me from your believers." Sure we should leave them alone, it's convincing them to leave others alone that can be a problem.
One conclusion that might come out of this is that it's sometimes appropriate to treat religion as an illness, as drug addictions are treated. Now, this is done today for some people in cults, generally by their relatives and against their will. It brings up all sorts of problems regarding freedom of belief. For some people, religion appears to be a beneficial part of their personality. When does it become an illness?
Before you dismiss this, consider how many people historically, and today, are killed for religious reasons or at least by people who use religion as an excuse. People of my ethnicity haven't forgotten the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust, etc.
The answer to this is that the functional parts of your software are not copyrightable, but the expressive parts are. So you can not copyright an algorithm or an API (complexity in Oracle v. Google ignored), or a data structure, or the names and definitions of constants and variables, or a function name and its arguments and return, or anything dictated by the need to inter-operate or physical law, but you can copyright your particular way of writing code where there is more than one choice of how you write it.
if you want to understand this, start by reading Judge Walker's finding in CAI v. Altai
if that road is not encumbered by patents about this kind of "gate layout", of course.
That's the project's main complication other than the actual hardware design. We know lots of gate-array patents are expired, it's been long enough. But the particular features modern developers are used to - for example a particular flavor of LUT or matrix of gates, or a way of programming the device, might still be under patents. So we'd have to do a patent study to inform the design.
It's still a great project to do and could get significant grants. If there are any EE's out there who are up to the task and want my help to evangelize and help get funding, it's yours.
You'll notice the FSF doesn't in general lobby for the increase in the strength of copyright law, even though it would make the GPL more enforceable. They lobby to weaken copyright law (and software patents, etc.) Because we'd lose too much, and the balance of better enforcement of the GPL would not be worth what we would lose. It's the same thing in this case.
I am glad my customers don't consider me a non-specialist as you do. They might stop paying $7.50/minute.
Andy Katz is reasonably well informed on these topics and I agree with him. It's an attack on 3D printing and I wonder how much public consultation there was before it happened.
Well, while you are on Earth, you are probably staying in a nation. Unless, of course, your spaceship is hidden underwater, in a cloud and shielded so that we ugly bags of mostly water can't see you, or you beamed it into a cave. I like the theory that you're living in a cave the most.
If you would like me to tell you what country you are visiting, I will tell you the exact laws regarding copyright of functional things. I've already given the one for the United States.
You appear to be conflating the term "hardware" with "hardware design", which weakens your argument and makes it hard to discern what your argument actually is.
I'm sorry. In general I work with lawyers and other specialists on this stuff and I guess I missed the level that a nonspecialist can understand.
Right now, all schematic designs and other designs of functional things, including schematic designs, mechanical engineering designs, shapes of 3D objects, typefaces, and a long list of others I won't get into, are not protected by copyright. So, we can use them all freely except to the extent that they are protected by patent, and patents have terms of 21 years (15 for design patents). Copyright has a term much longer than a human lifetime. So, if copyright applies to designs of functional things, that means it's effectively forever and is much worse than the mess we have with patents today.
The problem is that if a large number of people use copyright-based licenses on functional things and behave as if they work, we might convince courts that they do work, and then we lose a large swath of freedoms that we have now.
Yes, ethically you feel you should do what the licensor wants. However, consider that if the licensor acts as if you are restricted by law when you actually are not, and the licensor knows it, the licensor is deceiving you, and we could say that's fraud or unethical behavior.
Why should using copyright-protected hardware designs to produce physical hardware be any different from using copyright-protected software in a commercial enterprise? The object in either case should be to preserve the freedom of the user to use it for whatever purpose they wish.
The problem is that if we use copyright licenses on hardware, we actually endanger the freedom of the user. Currently, copyright does not apply to published schematic designs, and we have the freedom to reuse schematic designs with impunity. If we use copyright-based licenses on hardware, and the court finds them valid, creating case law, we must from that point on honor the copyright on all other schematic designs. So, some millions or billions of designs get made non-free by the court precedent.
We can create a new "normal" in our industry through our own actions, and if the court takes note of it, we can change the law by doing so. Courts do take note of new norms created as industries evolve. That's why use of copyright-based licenses on Open Hardware is actually dangerous to the user and the community.
So, we should act in a way that does not cause this to happen. So far, I can't think of anything better than placing Open Hardware designs in the public domain.
If you want hardware open to the transistor level and not just the microcode level, just use an FPGA
I think you mean the bitstream. Gate-array designs, including the design of this chip, are generally coded at a higher level than a single transistor. One can then compile them to the transistor level as part of the preparation for using a fab to create a chip rather than a gate-array program.
Actually, we would like an Open Hardware gate array. A big problem currently facing us is that the tool chain can't be entirely Open Source because gate-array manufacturers treat their bitstream format as trade-secret. So, we need an open bitstream.
The design of the board may be Open Source - I've not seen the license, etc., but the chips are very definitely not open. In general people who claim to make Open Hardware do use closed chips. Currently there is a RiscV chip which could claim to be Open but it doesn't have sufficient facilities like on-board program memory on-chip for most practical embedded implementations yet, and not the MMU, etc., required for desktops. I'm sure it will get there.
Slashdot Mirror
I only have the answer to why they have investments. Because they have a significant amount of money on hand, and are holding it in the way that makes the most money for a project. When you put money in a bank, they invest it too. This way generally makes more money than interest from the bank.
Don't know that either, but I can say why they do it. Diversification of your financial holdings over multiple currencies and over multiple national economies protects you from a crash in a single economy. The reliability of the US economy is no sure thing at the moment.
Yes. In this case I think it's a difference in tax status between the non-profit and the operating company. Sometimes it's done to keep the trademarks from being assets that could be placed in peril in a lawsuit. For-profit entities sometimes offshore the intellectual property rights as a tax shield, but I don't think that's happening here.
Well, all of the Nazis, the Klu Klux Klan, and oppressors of various sorts can count on you, then.
I'm going to keep standing up for my values, and I support the Mozilla users for standing up for theirs.
Usually in this sort of argument, if people start to curse you out that means you've beaten them. But who are you anyway? Should I care that you don't like my opinion?
It's not hypocrisy, nor is it either a safe space nor an echo chamber. That's silly rhetoric.
A CEO is the public face of your company. He or she has to represent your brand. Obviously Mozilla's brand was not to prevent Gay couples from having the right to marry.
It falls under participation in politics. Forcing out CEOs who publicly support policies repugnant to the organizations own membership and supporters is good politics. You have freedom of speech, but we have freedom to decline to be associated with you and your speech.
At first, less politics more code might sound productive. But in actuality, it's "keep your nose to the grindstone and don't stick your nose in the policies made by those above your pay grade". Of course, those policies will have tremendous effects on us, and we should have a say. All the code we can make won't necessarily change them.
The classical Greek definition of "idiot" is someone who declines to take part in democratic government. It is no less so today.
Geez, foiled by Slashdot's non-UTF8-ness again.
I can't ever see a story like this without thinking "O cursÃd spite".
Not unless Scientologists are anti-santa.
Buzz was on a tour. I think just a civilian one.
I've seen him around a few times (he travels as a speaker, so do I, but he gets paid to fly first class, I'm in coach). He looks pretty healthy for his age.
Owning my own company, I am not as tied down as many people and frequently make the 4-5 hour drive to Lompoc to see Vandenberg launches. Here's my last one.
At Lompoc, you have the choice of viewing ULA launches from Ocean Avenue (2.8 miles from Pad 3) or from Hawk's Nest, the official viewing spot 8 miles away which might be out of the fog when other spots aren't. I once went to a SpaceX launch where it was so foggy on Ocean Avenue that I only heard it.
At Kennedy Space Center, you have the option of viewing from the LC-39 Observation Gantry for $50, about the best launch viewing available, but Deleware North, the consession operating tours of KSC and Cape Canaveral, sometimes declines to open it for launches.
Company viewing is in an enclosed area a floor up from the peons on the LC-39 gantry. There have been times when I would have paid real money to view on the base rather than the 10-mile-away options on public land.
Also, besides the consequences of migration, you should count those who were not executed but died in prison or under torture. Which were probably around 100k.
The assertion that the Inquisition only killed 3000 can't take into account the repeated forced migrations of the oppressed populations. It's sort of like saying the Trail of Tears only moved people. And we need only look at the Syrian refugee crisis today. And please don't imply that it's no problem because Mao was worse.
If you look at the report, even at the start they state:
and at the end
So, this is stated very carefully in scientific language, but what they are discussing is how religious ideation and the following of religious leaders can bypass rational centers of the brain and create a self-reward loop in which these acts become their own reward.
It doesn't seem to me that it's being a bully to be concerned with why religion leads some people to kill and prompts others to acts of violence and oppression. The study is a start toward an answer. One could connect this study, for example, with the Stanford Prison Experiment, and research whether the same reward mechanisms were activated. Leader-following and an in-group were involved in the Stanford student's behavior. Do self-rewarding loops of religious ideation and leader-following reinforce such behavior?
This reminds me of a prayer I've heard: "Oh Lord, protect me from your believers." Sure we should leave them alone, it's convincing them to leave others alone that can be a problem.
One conclusion that might come out of this is that it's sometimes appropriate to treat religion as an illness, as drug addictions are treated. Now, this is done today for some people in cults, generally by their relatives and against their will. It brings up all sorts of problems regarding freedom of belief. For some people, religion appears to be a beneficial part of their personality. When does it become an illness?
Before you dismiss this, consider how many people historically, and today, are killed for religious reasons or at least by people who use religion as an excuse. People of my ethnicity haven't forgotten the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust, etc.
Perhaps, I've not read up on cases. Automated routing would not be sufficiently expressive.
The answer to this is that the functional parts of your software are not copyrightable, but the expressive parts are. So you can not copyright an algorithm or an API (complexity in Oracle v. Google ignored), or a data structure, or the names and definitions of constants and variables, or a function name and its arguments and return, or anything dictated by the need to inter-operate or physical law, but you can copyright your particular way of writing code where there is more than one choice of how you write it.
if you want to understand this, start by reading Judge Walker's finding in CAI v. Altai
That's the project's main complication other than the actual hardware design. We know lots of gate-array patents are expired, it's been long enough. But the particular features modern developers are used to - for example a particular flavor of LUT or matrix of gates, or a way of programming the device, might still be under patents. So we'd have to do a patent study to inform the design.
It's still a great project to do and could get significant grants. If there are any EE's out there who are up to the task and want my help to evangelize and help get funding, it's yours.
You'll notice the FSF doesn't in general lobby for the increase in the strength of copyright law, even though it would make the GPL more enforceable. They lobby to weaken copyright law (and software patents, etc.) Because we'd lose too much, and the balance of better enforcement of the GPL would not be worth what we would lose. It's the same thing in this case.
I am glad my customers don't consider me a non-specialist as you do. They might stop paying $7.50/minute.
Andy Katz is reasonably well informed on these topics and I agree with him. It's an attack on 3D printing and I wonder how much public consultation there was before it happened.
Well, while you are on Earth, you are probably staying in a nation. Unless, of course, your spaceship is hidden underwater, in a cloud and shielded so that we ugly bags of mostly water can't see you, or you beamed it into a cave. I like the theory that you're living in a cave the most.
If you would like me to tell you what country you are visiting, I will tell you the exact laws regarding copyright of functional things. I've already given the one for the United States.
I'm sorry. In general I work with lawyers and other specialists on this stuff and I guess I missed the level that a nonspecialist can understand.
Right now, all schematic designs and other designs of functional things, including schematic designs, mechanical engineering designs, shapes of 3D objects, typefaces, and a long list of others I won't get into, are not protected by copyright. So, we can use them all freely except to the extent that they are protected by patent, and patents have terms of 21 years (15 for design patents). Copyright has a term much longer than a human lifetime. So, if copyright applies to designs of functional things, that means it's effectively forever and is much worse than the mess we have with patents today.
The problem is that if a large number of people use copyright-based licenses on functional things and behave as if they work, we might convince courts that they do work, and then we lose a large swath of freedoms that we have now.
Yes, ethically you feel you should do what the licensor wants. However, consider that if the licensor acts as if you are restricted by law when you actually are not, and the licensor knows it, the licensor is deceiving you, and we could say that's fraud or unethical behavior.
The problem is that if we use copyright licenses on hardware, we actually endanger the freedom of the user. Currently, copyright does not apply to published schematic designs, and we have the freedom to reuse schematic designs with impunity. If we use copyright-based licenses on hardware, and the court finds them valid, creating case law, we must from that point on honor the copyright on all other schematic designs. So, some millions or billions of designs get made non-free by the court precedent.
We can create a new "normal" in our industry through our own actions, and if the court takes note of it, we can change the law by doing so. Courts do take note of new norms created as industries evolve. That's why use of copyright-based licenses on Open Hardware is actually dangerous to the user and the community.
So, we should act in a way that does not cause this to happen. So far, I can't think of anything better than placing Open Hardware designs in the public domain.
I think you mean the bitstream. Gate-array designs, including the design of this chip, are generally coded at a higher level than a single transistor. One can then compile them to the transistor level as part of the preparation for using a fab to create a chip rather than a gate-array program.
Actually, we would like an Open Hardware gate array. A big problem currently facing us is that the tool chain can't be entirely Open Source because gate-array manufacturers treat their bitstream format as trade-secret. So, we need an open bitstream.
The design of the board may be Open Source - I've not seen the license, etc., but the chips are very definitely not open. In general people who claim to make Open Hardware do use closed chips. Currently there is a RiscV chip which could claim to be Open but it doesn't have sufficient facilities like on-board program memory on-chip for most practical embedded implementations yet, and not the MMU, etc., required for desktops. I'm sure it will get there.