It sounds like you and slashdot would both have to agree before a copy from slashdot of your post could be used elsewhere, under this WIPO act. However, if you use a text editor, and keep a copy on your hard drive, and cut and paste from your hard drive into slashdot, then slashdot would have no rights over what you do with the copy on your hard drive. Crazy?
Basically, the U.S. or another country, enacts some stupid/ignorant/restrictive I.P. laws and then everyone else is expected to change their laws so that everyone is in "harmony."
Actually the idea is that there exists (in some countries) a "broadcaster's bill of rights" which grants copyright like rights to the company which broadcasts someone else's content. The "harmoney" is to harmonize the internet with this old-school, air-waves, one-way broadcast model.
I don't understand why you think it is "fair enough" that you would have any rights to public domain material that you put on your website, beyond normal copyright to the "work as a whole". You certainly don't have copyright rights to the snippet you placed on your website. You would have copyright to the collage you create of various public domain materials, and no one should copy enough of it that they would violate your copyright to the material you created. This doesn't apply, via copyright, to the public domain snippet, and I don't see why "broadcasting" public domain material should give you rights to it.
In terms of bittorrent, the only way I can see a problem is if they require written, signed permission. Then you'd recieve postcards, to which you'd have to reply. Likewise, as people get permisssion, and "piggybacking" starts, there would be a snailmail time delay, as postcards roundtrip signatures making it legal to proceed. But this does seem a stretch to me. The question remains, under a "signature requirement", could you grant the public blanket permission to use material that is to be distributed over the internet? But this is a stretch...
"Actually, writing open source software is one of the least expensive forms of entertainment for someone who needs to have a computer for other reasons already and has the necessary skills."
It beats the hell out of playing cards, or board games, or crossword puzzles, and is better than TV.
You focus on competition, and neglect cooperation. In nature, what do we call it when a cell "decides" to act in its own "economic interest", solely? Can you say CANCER? I knew you could:-) At higher levels, we also have Al Capones, and Sociopaths. I surely don't think we've evolved through natural processes to an unnatural state, but I do think that there are more fundamental (by which I mean orthoganal) forces than just the one (competition). Thus we evolve theough natural processes to a natural state, sure, just consider that there are more diverse states possible than those you profess.
Likewise, the author focuses on economics. "When a pickpocket meets a saint, all he sees are pockets." This doesn't mean that the saint is nothing more than a pocket to be picked, except to the pickpocket. In terms of the article, this is a chicken and egg dilema. Obviously the internet created the enviornment that allowed cooperation to emerge into this new pattern we call Free Software. No meaningful historical account that I've read has suggested otherwise. Does that mean that economic trends created Free Software, or did Free Software created the economic trends that have marginalized software?
I'd take that quote a step further and suggest that when a "software vendor" meets a Free Software Community, all the vendor sees are oppurtunites for exploitation. Does this mean there is no community, or that the vendor doesn't belong? As a disclaimer, I do think I agree that there is no Open Source community, although there are many communities within Open Source. There is a Free Software Community, for instance. Open Source is an umbrello that covers many, many different (and sometimes opposed) groups of people.
But in the case under question, the code has been OKed for use. It is a matter of OKing yet another person to use previously tested code. We aren't talking about deploying untested code, but rather deploying the JDK from SUN. Forcing the 2nd person and the 3rd person to undergo the same procedure that the very first person had to go through is insane.
I'm assuming your users don't have mount access, either, or they could just remount the drive w/o noexec. So does this mean they can't mount floppies or CDs?
Accept that I can download a GPL-licensed program and use it without agreeing to the terms of the license, because the license is indeed the legal means by which the author gives the distributor the right to distribute a copy of the software, and has nothing to say about what the user does. I am *not* "distributing" software when I recieve a CD in the mail.
Using your photography example: you are right that your permission is needed to copy your artwork, and indeed, after copying, your permission is needed to distribute your artwork. However, once you give Fred permission to copy and distribute your artwork, and using that permission, Fred distributes to me a copy of your artwork, I don't need to apply for permission from you to *use* your artwork (i.e., hang it on my wall). I of course would need permission to copy and distribute your work, I don't need your permission to use your work. Once Fred has permissionn to distribute your work, I don't need your permission to recieve it, because Fred is distributing it, not me. I am recieving it.
I would suggest that you are mistaking the de facto with the de jure. You don't have to "agree to a license" to use software. You probably have to agree to a license to distribute software, and some software comes with a EULA. Copyright law has to do with copying and distributing. What would be at issue would if the work were illegally distriubuted, then could I keep it and use it? But if it has been legally distributed, then what does copyright law say about use? Nothing that I've ever seen. Rather, use restrictions are associated with distribution as "add ons". As a counter example, the GPL specificly does not require you to accept the GPL in order to merely use GPLed software. You can't distribute or modify the software, however, without accepting the GPL.
As you yourself note, what you refer to is a disclaimer. How is the disclaimer granting you, the user, any rights under copyright? If it isn't granting rights, it isn't a license, is it? If it isn't a liscense, then it isn't a particular kind of license, such as an End User License Agreement. In fact the GPL states that you don't have to accept the GPL to use GPLed software, thereby making it even more obvious that it isn't in anyway an End User License Agreement, because it doesn't deal with mere use.
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.
So what is the limit to the throughput of the *entire* RF spectrum? How much data is actually be transmitted? Agreed that a given network will have limitations, but is this currently limited by the RF being fully utilized, or by the infrastructure in place? How about combining RF with IR and visable light? Lots and lots of access points that have high speed, short distance connections to fiber optics. I think the limits on bandwidth have more to do with how we think about using what is there, than hard physical limits on what can be done.
I see "fashion" in the GP post, but not "victim". Value engineering certainly includes a term for esthetics in determining value. Perhaps the GP has maximized value by not ignoring the impact of this dimension? Functionality is good, yes. Quality is good, yes. But value can't be determined solely from functionality and quality.
Your link went to the Cocoa-Java Integration Guide, where they state, "This document discusses issues that arise when writing Java applications with Cocoa, which is implemented in Objective-C." However, if you go to their Java Development site, you'll see that "Java developers can easily distribute their cross-platform J2SE applications as native Mac OS X applications, or they can take advantage of Mac OS X-specific Java versions of some Cocoa APIs." The fact that the Cocoa-Java integration is no longer 100% seems to mean that you write native Mac OS X applications in Java, now, rather than writing Cocoa Native with Java. You still have access to Core Foundation Classes (which are written in C, by the way) from Java. Is there any way to tell that an application is written in Java, even if it uses no Cocoa or Carbon bindings?
MatLab (and toolboxes, and associated 3rd party software) and Mathematica (and extensions, and 3rd party software) run native on OS X. Do a search. Don't forget GE's Visualization Tool Kit (VTK), or Open Visualization Data Explorer (OpenDX, based on IBM's Visualization Data Explorer), or Sandia Lab's Massively Parallel Quantum Computing (MPQC). Since it is unix, there are tons of software available if you want to take adavantage of the unix layer. Before people cry out, "but then I'd be stuck with a native X Window System, rather than the native OS X windowing system", ask yourself this, didn't you use to use X windows on that "real" Unix Workstation? I note that the chemist-to-be down the hall from me uses run-octave from emacs on his Mac for his numerical work.
Yes, the dept. chair is on sabbatical, and I want to check in with him to see what his sources and reasoning were, but after googling around it sure seems there is plenty of data that suggests to me I should recant my post.
It is interesting to note, in you second link, that
Today's PV industry generally recrystallizes any of several types of "off-grade" silicon from the microelectronics industry, and estimates for the energy used to purify and crystallize silicon vary widely. Because of these factors, energy payback calculations are not straight-forward.
and
To calculate payback, Dutch researcher Alsema reviewed previous energy analyses and did not include the energy that originally went into crystallizing microelectronics scrap.
It was easy to find results to quote, it was not so easy to find results where terms where clearly defined, and actual calculations were shown.
"Is the OSS cause materially harmed by not including the source itself in distributions?
They don't have to do that though. That's just normally the easy way.
What they do have to do is to provide the source code by some reasonable method when asked by someone who receives the software."
And if they do a binary only distribution, don't forget about the third parties who also have the right to the source code:-)
Isn't it only an infringement on Intel's logo if people could reasonably be expected to mistake the one for the other? It is hard to imagine someone seeing Linux Inside next to that *cute* xrayed tux, and think somehow that they were getting Intel. (Or I could be wrong:-))
Doesn't that total energy content come from one trip through a thermal reactor? You get about a 1000 kilowatt per gram, but you also produce plutonium.
octave:1> kw_per_gram=1000
kw_per_gram = 1000
octave:2> kw_per_metric_ton=kw_per_gram * 1000000
kw_per_metric_ton = 1000000000
octave:3> 3.4 * kw_per_metric_ton
ans = 3400000000
So 6 to 30 years becomes an estimate that ignores the energy content of the fuel produced, and also ignores thorium reserves. In fact, "recoverable" is based on current market prices. If you allow for the inevitable doubling of the market price,
Thus, while today's low uranium cost equates to about 50 years of assured resources (3.1 Mt) using conventional reactors at the current usage rate, a doubling of the market price increases this time roughly ten-fold. In all, conventional estimated resources account for about 250 years' supply (16.2 Mt) at the current consumption rate. This does not include advanced uranium-extraction scenarios (phosphate deposits accounting for 22 Mt, seawater accounting for up to 4000 Mt) that require 10-15 times the current market price.
Bottomline: there is a lot more to nuclear power than the numbers you sketched out.
Actually there are exponential decays. If the exponent is positive, you have an increasing exponential (growth) curve. If the exponent is negative, you have a decreasing exponential (decay) curve.
I had a physics prof. who went with solar hot water. He said that with the tax break, he expects to breakeven in the long term. Our physics dept. chair is less enthusiastic about solar, solar cells especially. He claims it takes more energy to create a solar cell than the cell generates over its useful lifetime. I understand that after their useful lifetime, new cells can be built recycling the old cells, and averaging over the original cycle and the first recycle, you break even. It is the third generation that has any net energy production.
Slashdot Mirror
It sounds like you and slashdot would both have to agree before a copy from slashdot of your post could be used elsewhere, under this WIPO act. However, if you use a text editor, and keep a copy on your hard drive, and cut and paste from your hard drive into slashdot, then slashdot would have no rights over what you do with the copy on your hard drive. Crazy?
Basically, the U.S. or another country, enacts some stupid/ignorant/restrictive I.P. laws and then everyone else is expected to change their laws so that everyone is in "harmony."
Actually the idea is that there exists (in some countries) a "broadcaster's bill of rights" which grants copyright like rights to the company which broadcasts someone else's content. The "harmoney" is to harmonize the internet with this old-school, air-waves, one-way broadcast model.
I don't understand why you think it is "fair enough" that you would have any rights to public domain material that you put on your website, beyond normal copyright to the "work as a whole". You certainly don't have copyright rights to the snippet you placed on your website. You would have copyright to the collage you create of various public domain materials, and no one should copy enough of it that they would violate your copyright to the material you created. This doesn't apply, via copyright, to the public domain snippet, and I don't see why "broadcasting" public domain material should give you rights to it.
In terms of bittorrent, the only way I can see a problem is if they require written, signed permission. Then you'd recieve postcards, to which you'd have to reply. Likewise, as people get permisssion, and "piggybacking" starts, there would be a snailmail time delay, as postcards roundtrip signatures making it legal to proceed. But this does seem a stretch to me. The question remains, under a "signature requirement", could you grant the public blanket permission to use material that is to be distributed over the internet? But this is a stretch...
"Actually, writing open source software is one of the least expensive forms of entertainment for someone who needs to have a computer for other reasons already and has the necessary skills."
It beats the hell out of playing cards, or board games, or crossword puzzles, and is better than TV.
You focus on competition, and neglect cooperation. In nature, what do we call it when a cell "decides" to act in its own "economic interest", solely? Can you say CANCER? I knew you could :-) At higher levels, we also have Al Capones, and Sociopaths. I surely don't think we've evolved through natural processes to an unnatural state, but I do think that there are more fundamental (by which I mean orthoganal) forces than just the one (competition). Thus we evolve theough natural processes to a natural state, sure, just consider that there are more diverse states possible than those you profess.
Likewise, the author focuses on economics. "When a pickpocket meets a saint, all he sees are pockets." This doesn't mean that the saint is nothing more than a pocket to be picked, except to the pickpocket. In terms of the article, this is a chicken and egg dilema. Obviously the internet created the enviornment that allowed cooperation to emerge into this new pattern we call Free Software. No meaningful historical account that I've read has suggested otherwise. Does that mean that economic trends created Free Software, or did Free Software created the economic trends that have marginalized software?
I'd take that quote a step further and suggest that when a "software vendor" meets a Free Software Community, all the vendor sees are oppurtunites for exploitation. Does this mean there is no community, or that the vendor doesn't belong? As a disclaimer, I do think I agree that there is no Open Source community, although there are many communities within Open Source. There is a Free Software Community, for instance. Open Source is an umbrello that covers many, many different (and sometimes opposed) groups of people.
But in the case under question, the code has been OKed for use. It is a matter of OKing yet another person to use previously tested code. We aren't talking about deploying untested code, but rather deploying the JDK from SUN. Forcing the 2nd person and the 3rd person to undergo the same procedure that the very first person had to go through is insane.
I'm assuming your users don't have mount access, either, or they could just remount the drive w/o noexec. So does this mean they can't mount floppies or CDs?
Accept that I can download a GPL-licensed program and use it without agreeing to the terms of the license, because the license is indeed the legal means by which the author gives the distributor the right to distribute a copy of the software, and has nothing to say about what the user does. I am *not* "distributing" software when I recieve a CD in the mail.
Using your photography example: you are right that your permission is needed to copy your artwork, and indeed, after copying, your permission is needed to distribute your artwork. However, once you give Fred permission to copy and distribute your artwork, and using that permission, Fred distributes to me a copy of your artwork, I don't need to apply for permission from you to *use* your artwork (i.e., hang it on my wall). I of course would need permission to copy and distribute your work, I don't need your permission to use your work. Once Fred has permissionn to distribute your work, I don't need your permission to recieve it, because Fred is distributing it, not me. I am recieving it.
I would suggest that you are mistaking the de facto with the de jure. You don't have to "agree to a license" to use software. You probably have to agree to a license to distribute software, and some software comes with a EULA. Copyright law has to do with copying and distributing. What would be at issue would if the work were illegally distriubuted, then could I keep it and use it? But if it has been legally distributed, then what does copyright law say about use? Nothing that I've ever seen. Rather, use restrictions are associated with distribution as "add ons". As a counter example, the GPL specificly does not require you to accept the GPL in order to merely use GPLed software. You can't distribute or modify the software, however, without accepting the GPL.
So what is the limit to the throughput of the *entire* RF spectrum? How much data is actually be transmitted? Agreed that a given network will have limitations, but is this currently limited by the RF being fully utilized, or by the infrastructure in place? How about combining RF with IR and visable light? Lots and lots of access points that have high speed, short distance connections to fiber optics. I think the limits on bandwidth have more to do with how we think about using what is there, than hard physical limits on what can be done.
I see "fashion" in the GP post, but not "victim". Value engineering certainly includes a term for esthetics in determining value. Perhaps the GP has maximized value by not ignoring the impact of this dimension? Functionality is good, yes. Quality is good, yes. But value can't be determined solely from functionality and quality.
Actually, no, Microsoft's margins are much fatter (more than 3x) than Apple's margins:
Profit Margin (ttm):
msft 31.90%
aapl 9.58%
What is really interesting is to compare their stock performance for the last couple of years
Your link went to the Cocoa-Java Integration Guide, where they state, "This document discusses issues that arise when writing Java applications with Cocoa, which is implemented in Objective-C." However, if you go to their Java Development site, you'll see that "Java developers can easily distribute their cross-platform J2SE applications as native Mac OS X applications, or they can take advantage of Mac OS X-specific Java versions of some Cocoa APIs." The fact that the Cocoa-Java integration is no longer 100% seems to mean that you write native Mac OS X applications in Java, now, rather than writing Cocoa Native with Java. You still have access to Core Foundation Classes (which are written in C, by the way) from Java. Is there any way to tell that an application is written in Java, even if it uses no Cocoa or Carbon bindings?
MatLab (and toolboxes, and associated 3rd party software) and Mathematica (and extensions, and 3rd party software) run native on OS X. Do a search. Don't forget GE's Visualization Tool Kit (VTK), or Open Visualization Data Explorer (OpenDX, based on IBM's Visualization Data Explorer), or Sandia Lab's Massively Parallel Quantum Computing (MPQC). Since it is unix, there are tons of software available if you want to take adavantage of the unix layer. Before people cry out, "but then I'd be stuck with a native X Window System, rather than the native OS X windowing system", ask yourself this, didn't you use to use X windows on that "real" Unix Workstation? I note that the chemist-to-be down the hall from me uses run-octave from emacs on his Mac for his numerical work.
It is interesting to note, in you second link, that and It was easy to find results to quote, it was not so easy to find results where terms where clearly defined, and actual calculations were shown.
"Is the OSS cause materially harmed by not including the source itself in distributions? They don't have to do that though. That's just normally the easy way. What they do have to do is to provide the source code by some reasonable method when asked by someone who receives the software."
:-)
And if they do a binary only distribution, don't forget about the third parties who also have the right to the source code
Isn't it only an infringement on Intel's logo if people could reasonably be expected to mistake the one for the other? It is hard to imagine someone seeing Linux Inside next to that *cute* xrayed tux, and think somehow that they were getting Intel. (Or I could be wrong :-))
octave:1> kw_per_gram=1000 kw_per_gram = 1000
octave:2> kw_per_metric_ton=kw_per_gram * 1000000
kw_per_metric_ton = 1000000000
octave:3> 3.4 * kw_per_metric_ton
ans = 3400000000
So this agrees with your calculation. But we aren't at this point "right back where we were before", because the "waste" is actually a fuel (which France's and Japan's breeder reactors make use of, and "actually produces more fuel than it consumes"). There are also thorium breeder reactors, with "thorium reserves estimated to be 5-6 times the known availability of uranium sources"
So 6 to 30 years becomes an estimate that ignores the energy content of the fuel produced, and also ignores thorium reserves. In fact, "recoverable" is based on current market prices. If you allow for the inevitable doubling of the market price, Bottomline: there is a lot more to nuclear power than the numbers you sketched out.
Actually there are exponential decays. If the exponent is positive, you have an increasing exponential (growth) curve. If the exponent is negative, you have a decreasing exponential (decay) curve.
I had a physics prof. who went with solar hot water. He said that with the tax break, he expects to breakeven in the long term. Our physics dept. chair is less enthusiastic about solar, solar cells especially. He claims it takes more energy to create a solar cell than the cell generates over its useful lifetime. I understand that after their useful lifetime, new cells can be built recycling the old cells, and averaging over the original cycle and the first recycle, you break even. It is the third generation that has any net energy production.
Opps, sorry: read "other" as "only"...please disregard previous post.
How is nuclear energy solar power?
Algae isn't an animal, so you would need to go somewhere besides PETA.
Actually burning coal releases considerably more radioactive material into the atmosphere than a nuclear power plant will.