banner advertising has reached incredibly low income for
websites. Websites cost money. Pop-under pay website more.
...until people ignore or filter pop-unders the way they ignore or filter banner ads. So ad designers will find another, more intrusive and annoying way to attempt to program your buying habits, and so it goes, round and round, until no physical or virtual surface, or audio channel, is free of a pitch for something.
Or...we can stop the "advertizing arms race", and agree to limit the place and manner of ads so that ad space becomes a valuable resource (good for content producers), and we are not so constantly bombarded with consumption-oriented memes that our perceptions have to dull in self-defense (good for us).
IM ever so HO, a good way to work towards such an agreement is to develop ad blocking technology.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
forced Japan to unilaterally surrender, preventing millions of American casaulties and tens of millions of Japanese casaulties (military and civilian).
Might be feeding a troll, but what the heck...
First, like many Allied actions in WWII, the nuking of Japan probably had more to do with scaring the Russians than anything else. (Along those lines, let me recommend Saving Private Power for a useful antidote to the usual WWII propaganda...some of the author's opinions are a bit far out there, but the facts he presents are a healthy lancing of the "good war" boil.)
Second, Little Boy used U-235. Fat Man was plutonium, but as Vonnegut said, "I know a single word that proves our democratic government is
capable of committing obscene, gleefully rabid, racist, yahooistic murder, of unarmed men, women, and children....the word is Nagasaki."
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
I carry my essentals - wallet, cellphone, PDA, multitool, Zippo, earplugs, keys, LED mini-flashlight - in, or on the belt of, a Jansport waistpack.
For carting papers and books to and from work and generally carrying stuff about town and countyside, I recently got a Crossover backpack, which I'm pretty happy with.
Got them both at Sunny's Surplus, the local camping-type place.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
How did we get from "I can't run the program" to "I can't link the library"?
Anyway, static linking most defintely makes your code derivative - you're including the object file in your program! If I write a book that include verbatim the text of another book, even if the footnotes in my work only refer to a fraction of the included book you can bet that that will count as derivative.
Linking is only an issue if it falls under "copying, distributing, or modifying" the code in question; static linking would imply copying and distributing, dynamic linking would not.
This is in contradiction to the GPL which says that I can't run the program as a subroutine...
Nonsense. You can have a subroutine that executes (via fork()/exec(), or system()) a GPLed program. You just can't create a subroutine that is a derivative of a GPLed program without GPLing that subroutine.
As far as I can tell, that's not enough to buy the bacon for the existing base of computer scientists/software engineers
Maybe. For the sake of argument, assume so. So what?
Is our goal quality software, or is our goal make-work jobs?
Sometimes I think that a large percentage of the existing base of computer scientists/software engineers probably shouldn't be in this field anyway...they'd be happier and more productive doing something else, but fell into this for the money.
but I think we blur the [free beer / free speech] distinction way too much.
1. If Stallman had his way, you'd be forced to give your neighbor your new recipe.
Oh, please. If you want to start shouting about force, you'll have to start with the fact the very notion of copyright relies on government force to create, define, and enforce "intellectual property".
The BSD license definitely offers freedom, the GPL clearly doesn't.
The BSD licence fails to maintain that freedom for future users. If I create a derived work from a GPLed work, I have the responsibility to ensure that others have the same freedom to make derivatives that I enjoyed. The BSD licence fails to do that.
The GPL offers freedom, but it demands that you take responsibility for protecting the freedom of others.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
We develop software for a very small niche market (~500 possible installations).
Let's look at what would be different if you released under the GPL:
A customer could purchase one copy and do multiple installations. You can adjust your pricing model and support plans to deal with that, no big deal.
A customer could purchase one copy and give copies away to other potential customers. But if your market is that small, your potential customers are probably all competitors with each other, so why would they help out the competition?
Ask yourself how likely such sharing is for your application.
A customer could fix bugs themselves. If you're competent and giving good value, though, it should be easier and cheaper for them to pay you to do so. The fact that they're not 100% locked in to your support should be viewed as an additional selling point.
If you're making something for other programmers to use, you're got a strong selling point in that code is the best documentation. (I wish we had source for the third party software I'm trying to work with now!)
I think that for custom development and niche markets, the GPL doesn't necessarily change things all that much, because you're naturally closer to the "software as service" model.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
You can't honestly tell me that the original Star Trek was that great. I mean, come on!. It was incredibly cheesy, and every single episode ended up with Kirk getting the hook-up with some freaky alien chick.
I don't recall cheese in episodes like Balance of Terror or City on the Edge of Forever.
Yes, there was the occasion Spock's Brain sort of episode. And if you're more into special effects and production values that plot, characterization, or meaning, then you'll want to go find something more eye-candyish. But it holds up after all these years because it was the smartest, most thought-provoking show of its time.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Re:My take on the death of the Trek series...
on
Voyager Eulogy
·
· Score: 2
The original Constitution class Enterprise was captained by Kirk senior, then to Pike, then to Kirk junior. So who the heck is this new guy?
I think there was a Captain April shown in the animated series, who was the first captain of the TOS Enterprise. The Kirk's father thing happened in a book. Which is more canon? (Or should I not even ask and go get a life?)
But the Enterprise of the new prequel show is not the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 we know from ST:TOS; the prequel takes place before the founding of the Federation or Starfleet, and this is an earlier ship that "just happens" to have the same name.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Re:Not physicaly possible to travel faster then li
on
Voyager Eulogy
·
· Score: 2
You can't physically travel faster then the speed of light.
It's not that simple. There are solutions to the equations of general relativity that allow for space to be "warped" in such a way that, locally, c is not exceeded, but that overall give FTL travel. However, it's not clear whether these equations have any real physical meaning; some of the possibilities include things like incredibly massive rotating cylinders that "drag" the time axis into a spatial one, or large amounts of negative energy.
Then there's quantum effects like tunneling, where a particle basically goes from one point to another without passing through the intervening space.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Most programmers just want to get their product finished, rather than zealously convert the world to open source, and so far there isn't a compelling argument to switch most people
Hmmm...do you think that most programmers have never had the experience of being stuck with some flaw in, or question about, a closed-source product that could be answered by looking at the source?
My current project involves a closed-source voice recognition package. We've got several questions about the exact behavior of some API calls that simply aren't answered in the documentation...so we get to shell out kilo-dollars in support costs to get to ask questions that we could answer ourselves in ten minutes given the source. That's why my manager is completely open to open source in other aspects of the project.
On my last project, I ended up writing a replacement IPC system for the closed-source middleware that they were never able to get working, and never able to get the vendor to fix. They could have saved several programmer-months if they'd gone with an open-source product that they could fix themselves, rather than getting dragged into a morass of unsupported software.
Are these experiences so unusual?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
...The PPM ["Portable People Meter"] works by detecting an inaudible code that can be
embedded in any broadcast signal. Fifty-four radio and TV stations in the Philadelphia market are
already including such codes in their broadcasts or are capable of doing so, and Arbitron hopes to
have more than 70 signed up by the time the test gets under way. By the end of February, there will
be 300 meters in use in Wilmington, Del., which Arbitron considers part of the Philly market. That
number will be expanded to 1,500 throughout the greater Philadelphia area by the end of the year,
company spokesperson Thom Mocarsky says.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
I wish all the neo-anarchists protesting humanity finally linking up around the world would understand this.
I don't know anyone who's protesting "humanity finally linking up around the world."
I know many people who protest control of the world's natural and economic resources falling into fewer and fewer hands; who protest multinational corporations exploiting workers in a race to the bottom; who protest the evaporation of national and locl sovereignty when they become inconvenient to corporate profits.
"Grassroots globalization" is a fine economic, political, and social concept, that can bring us a wonderful diversity of goods and ideas. I like being able to get imported beer at my corner store. (I just wish they had a wider selection of sake...) I like my palm leaf hat made by Guatemalan artisans. I like being able to share ideas on the net with people from around the world.
"Globalization" in the form of the growing hegemony of multinational corporations, however, sucks rocks; it seeks not to bring us diversity, but to put a McDonalds on every corner, a Coke in everyones hand, and the Backstreet Boys on everyone's radio.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
You might also consider a tankless water heater. Gas ones have been around for a long time and are, I understand, common in Europe; electric ones have recently come on the market.
There's a larger upfront cost, but they last a very long time and are quite efficient. (These guys claim a 50% energy savings.)
With a tankless heater, you can only draw n gallons per minute, but for as long as you desire; whereas a tank heater lets you draw pretty much unlimted hot water per minute - until you run out. I'm seriously considering junking my tank heater for a tankless one just so I never have to wait for hot water after someone else takes a shower.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Unfortunately, photovoltaics take more energy to produce than they will produce in their lifetime.
No, they don't. They pay back the energy required for manufacture in about two years.
PV's don't last forever, either, they break when things drop on them, they corrode, they get dirty.
Modern PV panels are rated for about a twenty year useful lifespan.
If your home is extremely isolated, then PVs start making more sense, because it can be very expensive to run power out to the middle of nowhere.
Doesn't even have to be in the middle of nowhere...the break-even point between running copper and a modest PV setup is, IIRC, on the order of 100 feet.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
I don't agree with some of the cost numbers he quotes for non-solar
houses. $400 worth of heating oil used in just 28 days???
Doesn't seem unreasonable to me...I can go through $200 worth of oil a month during the coldest months in Baltimore. (50 year old, three bedroom house, maybe 1800 square feet, moderate insulation (and that's upgraded...it was piss poor when I moved in, but some new windows and some foam blown into the walls have helped a lot.))
I could imagine that between regional price differences and a colder climate, a larger house in Maine could pay twice that much.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
No, the GPL is not viral. It does not leap from unwilling host to unwilling host; your code will not suddenly come down with GPLitis out of the blue.
If a genetic metaphor for creating a derived work is desired, consider the GPL as a dominant gene. It takes a deliberate propagative act to create a "child" that's GPLed; but having decided to "mate" your code with GPLed code you know the result will be GPLed - just as someone who carries
two recessive genes for a trait and mates with someone carrying two dominant genes knows that the child will inherit the dominant trait.
For example, if a blue-eyed woman mates with a man whose ancestors have been brown eyed for umpteen generations back, if I recall my biology correctly she's going to have a brown-eyed baby. (Barring mutation, crossover, etcetera, which is beyond the scope of this metaphor, okay?) If she doesn't want a brown-eyed kid, she's free to seek out another father. If you don't want your result to be GPL'd, you're free to seek out other code to derive your program from.
The metaphor is not perfect, in that such a child would still be a carrier of the recessive gene, however it's a damn sight closer than "viral".
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
That last link led to a page of 99.44% pure BS! That's rare stuff.
Indeed. Notice the use of the words "proactive", "proactively", and even (I've never seen this one before...dictionary.com denies any knowledge of it) "proactivity". Four varients in one short page. I think that I shall go and proactively retch, lest the concentrated marketroid speak poison my bloodstream.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
If I look at the code, then incorporate that code (via my memory, not cut+paste) into my closed source
project, I have violated the GPL.
Only if you do so to such an extent that your code constitutes a derivative work. I don't know how many lines of code you can hold literally in your head, but unless your memory is much better than mine, in any program of significant length the small bit I could recall would almost certainly be fair use.
The GPL does not prevent fair use. All it does is prevent you from creating a derivative work from a GPLed work without GPLing your derivative.
What constitutes a derivative work that falls outside of fair use? That is something of an open question, not just in software but all fields.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
You seem to be leaving out those of us that enjoy their work and take pride in it.
I (generally) enjoy my work and take pride in it too. But I also enjoy my karate training. And time spent making music and poetry. And the company of lovely women.
I even think that time spent on one of these things often develops skills that are useful in another. Poetry works the language skills, oh so important for writing documentation for the code I write in my day job. Martial arts training fosters the sort of defensive "what-if" thinking required for robust programming.
Spending all you time and effort on one task is ultimately self-defeating, as it limits intellectual cross-pollination. That's why the stereotypical hacker has multiple competencies.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Slashdot Mirror
...until people ignore or filter pop-unders the way they ignore or filter banner ads. So ad designers will find another, more intrusive and annoying way to attempt to program your buying habits, and so it goes, round and round, until no physical or virtual surface, or audio channel, is free of a pitch for something.
Or...we can stop the "advertizing arms race", and agree to limit the place and manner of ads so that ad space becomes a valuable resource (good for content producers), and we are not so constantly bombarded with consumption-oriented memes that our perceptions have to dull in self-defense (good for us).
IM ever so HO, a good way to work towards such an agreement is to develop ad blocking technology.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
I think you misspelled "Atlantic City."
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Might be feeding a troll, but what the heck...
First, like many Allied actions in WWII, the nuking of Japan probably had more to do with scaring the Russians than anything else. (Along those lines, let me recommend Saving Private Power for a useful antidote to the usual WWII propaganda...some of the author's opinions are a bit far out there, but the facts he presents are a healthy lancing of the "good war" boil.)
Second, Little Boy used U-235. Fat Man was plutonium, but as Vonnegut said, "I know a single word that proves our democratic government is capable of committing obscene, gleefully rabid, racist, yahooistic murder, of unarmed men, women, and children....the word is Nagasaki."
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
I carry my essentals - wallet, cellphone, PDA, multitool, Zippo, earplugs, keys, LED mini-flashlight - in, or on the belt of, a Jansport waistpack.
For carting papers and books to and from work and generally carrying stuff about town and countyside, I recently got a Crossover backpack, which I'm pretty happy with.
Got them both at Sunny's Surplus, the local camping-type place.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
How did we get from "I can't run the program" to "I can't link the library"?
Anyway, static linking most defintely makes your code derivative - you're including the object file in your program! If I write a book that include verbatim the text of another book, even if the footnotes in my work only refer to a fraction of the included book you can bet that that will count as derivative.
Linking is only an issue if it falls under "copying, distributing, or modifying" the code in question; static linking would imply copying and distributing, dynamic linking would not.
Dynaminc linking would be ok since you are not creating a derivative work, only making references. Note that the GPL does not say anything about linking in its conditions, and its "How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs" section mentions only "incorporating".
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Nonsense. You can have a subroutine that executes (via fork()/exec(), or system()) a GPLed program. You just can't create a subroutine that is a derivative of a GPLed program without GPLing that subroutine.
Say it with me now: Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Maybe. For the sake of argument, assume so. So what?
Is our goal quality software, or is our goal make-work jobs?
Sometimes I think that a large percentage of the existing base of computer scientists/software engineers probably shouldn't be in this field anyway...they'd be happier and more productive doing something else, but fell into this for the money.
Who does? RMS and the FSF are quite clear on it.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Oh, please. If you want to start shouting about force, you'll have to start with the fact the very notion of copyright relies on government force to create, define, and enforce "intellectual property".
The BSD licence fails to maintain that freedom for future users. If I create a derived work from a GPLed work, I have the responsibility to ensure that others have the same freedom to make derivatives that I enjoyed. The BSD licence fails to do that.
The GPL offers freedom, but it demands that you take responsibility for protecting the freedom of others.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Let's look at what would be different if you released under the GPL:
- A customer could purchase one copy and do multiple installations. You can adjust your pricing model and support plans to deal with that, no big deal.
- A customer could purchase one copy and give copies away to other potential customers. But if your market is that small, your potential customers are probably all competitors with each other, so why would they help out the competition?
Ask yourself how likely such sharing is for your application.
- A customer could fix bugs themselves. If you're competent and giving good value, though, it should be easier and cheaper for them to pay you to do so. The fact that they're not 100% locked in to your support should be viewed as an additional selling point.
- If you're making something for other programmers to use, you're got a strong selling point in that code is the best documentation. (I wish we had source for the third party software I'm trying to work with now!)
I think that for custom development and niche markets, the GPL doesn't necessarily change things all that much, because you're naturally closer to the "software as service" model.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Chakotay! Drop those coconuts!
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
I don't recall cheese in episodes like Balance of Terror or City on the Edge of Forever.
Yes, there was the occasion Spock's Brain sort of episode. And if you're more into special effects and production values that plot, characterization, or meaning, then you'll want to go find something more eye-candyish. But it holds up after all these years because it was the smartest, most thought-provoking show of its time.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
But the Enterprise of the new prequel show is not the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 we know from ST:TOS; the prequel takes place before the founding of the Federation or Starfleet, and this is an earlier ship that "just happens" to have the same name.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
It's not that simple. There are solutions to the equations of general relativity that allow for space to be "warped" in such a way that, locally, c is not exceeded, but that overall give FTL travel. However, it's not clear whether these equations have any real physical meaning; some of the possibilities include things like incredibly massive rotating cylinders that "drag" the time axis into a spatial one, or large amounts of negative energy.
Then there's quantum effects like tunneling, where a particle basically goes from one point to another without passing through the intervening space.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
While it hasn't happened in ages, it is entirely possible for a corporation to have its charter revoked. Activists have been trying to get California to do this to Unocal for the past few years,
No changes in law are needed, only a change in the attitude of the people and the state toward corporate criminals.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Hmmm...do you think that most programmers have never had the experience of being stuck with some flaw in, or question about, a closed-source product that could be answered by looking at the source?
My current project involves a closed-source voice recognition package. We've got several questions about the exact behavior of some API calls that simply aren't answered in the documentation...so we get to shell out kilo-dollars in support costs to get to ask questions that we could answer ourselves in ten minutes given the source. That's why my manager is completely open to open source in other aspects of the project.
On my last project, I ended up writing a replacement IPC system for the closed-source middleware that they were never able to get working, and never able to get the vendor to fix. They could have saved several programmer-months if they'd gone with an open-source product that they could fix themselves, rather than getting dragged into a morass of unsupported software.
Are these experiences so unusual?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
I don't know anyone who's protesting "humanity finally linking up around the world."
I know many people who protest control of the world's natural and economic resources falling into fewer and fewer hands; who protest multinational corporations exploiting workers in a race to the bottom; who protest the evaporation of national and locl sovereignty when they become inconvenient to corporate profits.
"Grassroots globalization" is a fine economic, political, and social concept, that can bring us a wonderful diversity of goods and ideas. I like being able to get imported beer at my corner store. (I just wish they had a wider selection of sake...) I like my palm leaf hat made by Guatemalan artisans. I like being able to share ideas on the net with people from around the world.
"Globalization" in the form of the growing hegemony of multinational corporations, however, sucks rocks; it seeks not to bring us diversity, but to put a McDonalds on every corner, a Coke in everyones hand, and the Backstreet Boys on everyone's radio.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
You might also consider a tankless water heater. Gas ones have been around for a long time and are, I understand, common in Europe; electric ones have recently come on the market.
There's a larger upfront cost, but they last a very long time and are quite efficient. (These guys claim a 50% energy savings.)
With a tankless heater, you can only draw n gallons per minute, but for as long as you desire; whereas a tank heater lets you draw pretty much unlimted hot water per minute - until you run out. I'm seriously considering junking my tank heater for a tankless one just so I never have to wait for hot water after someone else takes a shower.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
No, they don't. They pay back the energy required for manufacture in about two years.
Modern PV panels are rated for about a twenty year useful lifespan.
Doesn't even have to be in the middle of nowhere...the break-even point between running copper and a modest PV setup is, IIRC, on the order of 100 feet.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Doesn't seem unreasonable to me...I can go through $200 worth of oil a month during the coldest months in Baltimore. (50 year old, three bedroom house, maybe 1800 square feet, moderate insulation (and that's upgraded...it was piss poor when I moved in, but some new windows and some foam blown into the walls have helped a lot.))
I could imagine that between regional price differences and a colder climate, a larger house in Maine could pay twice that much.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
No, the GPL is not viral. It does not leap from unwilling host to unwilling host; your code will not suddenly come down with GPLitis out of the blue.
If a genetic metaphor for creating a derived work is desired, consider the GPL as a dominant gene. It takes a deliberate propagative act to create a "child" that's GPLed; but having decided to "mate" your code with GPLed code you know the result will be GPLed - just as someone who carries two recessive genes for a trait and mates with someone carrying two dominant genes knows that the child will inherit the dominant trait.
For example, if a blue-eyed woman mates with a man whose ancestors have been brown eyed for umpteen generations back, if I recall my biology correctly she's going to have a brown-eyed baby. (Barring mutation, crossover, etcetera, which is beyond the scope of this metaphor, okay?) If she doesn't want a brown-eyed kid, she's free to seek out another father. If you don't want your result to be GPL'd, you're free to seek out other code to derive your program from.
The metaphor is not perfect, in that such a child would still be a carrier of the recessive gene, however it's a damn sight closer than "viral".
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Indeed. Notice the use of the words "proactive", "proactively", and even (I've never seen this one before...dictionary.com denies any knowledge of it) "proactivity". Four varients in one short page. I think that I shall go and proactively retch, lest the concentrated marketroid speak poison my bloodstream.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Only if you do so to such an extent that your code constitutes a derivative work. I don't know how many lines of code you can hold literally in your head, but unless your memory is much better than mine, in any program of significant length the small bit I could recall would almost certainly be fair use.
The GPL does not prevent fair use. All it does is prevent you from creating a derivative work from a GPLed work without GPLing your derivative.
What constitutes a derivative work that falls outside of fair use? That is something of an open question, not just in software but all fields.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
I (generally) enjoy my work and take pride in it too. But I also enjoy my karate training. And time spent making music and poetry. And the company of lovely women.
I even think that time spent on one of these things often develops skills that are useful in another. Poetry works the language skills, oh so important for writing documentation for the code I write in my day job. Martial arts training fosters the sort of defensive "what-if" thinking required for robust programming.
Spending all you time and effort on one task is ultimately self-defeating, as it limits intellectual cross-pollination. That's why the stereotypical hacker has multiple competencies.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/