It's a false dichotomy. People make this argument ("You are not entitled to anyone's hard work without cost to you.") and invite you to argue the opposite. The problem is not a question of entitlement.. the problem is a question of control. By making this argument, people are trying to make the argument that they should be able to control the actions of everyone to protect their hard work. They are demanding that everyone be their agent in defending their work because it is impossible for them to defend it themselves. Not surprisingly, it seems the only people willing to do this are the people who are in the same boat.
In any case, this argument is easily seen as false.. just go out in public. You will find plenty of people doing hard work and not getting paid for it. You'll even find plenty of musicians.. playing a whole lot of music.. doing this supposed "hard work" that most people who make this argument are suggesting must be paid for. Do you feel you should give them money? Or do you just feel they are begging. How about those assholes at the lights who clean your windshield with a dirty squiggy? Do you feel you should give them money because they did a service for you.. even though you didn't ask them to? Even though it was useful because your windshield was dirty?
No. People who do work for hire without first securing someone to hire them are just confused.. or deliberately trying to invoke an obligation in others when none should exist.
Yes, you're right, but what the other guy said is true too. It is the stated intention of the FSF to make the GPL eventually be just like the BSD or Apache licenses. That is, without copyleft. Cause, eventually, copyleft won't be necessary.. so it will wither away. Hopefully, by then, the justification for the BSD license (idiots can sue you for defects in software they got for free) will go away.. maybe we'll get a law or international treaty passed. Any then, finally, the concept of copyright and patents on software will be dead.
Microsoft can't sue anyone cause they are violating patents themselves. If they sue some random open source developer, IBM through a couple of patent pooling organisations will step in and sue Microsoft. This is the whole mutually assured destruction thing.
So no-one really cares about Microsoft suing them.. except, ya know, a few fortune 500 companies who are afraid of what any announcement of a lawsuit will do to their stock. The problem is, these idiots are quite happy to fork Microsoft a few dollars for an assurance that they won't be sued. This means Microsoft feels bolder to pretend they are going to sue, which means they get more licenses, etc.
That's some great stuff. I really love listening to Eben Moglen.. he has such a great law professor tone. Unforutnately, the same tone puts many people to sleep before they hear what it is he is saying. Business people.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. Guess who's option it is.
I'm not sure everything that gets posted on Slashdot needs to be "formal english" but, at the same time, it wouldn't hurt to fix a few obvious spelling mistakes.
whoever marked this guy troll should be ashamed of themselves. This site could really do with stiffer punishments for people who do shit like this. It's like stuffing a ballot box.
In the future Microsoft will either have to trade in those coupons for software (which will be licensed to them under the GPLv3) or they will have to dump them in a sewer drain and forget about them. The article says what it will mean if Microsoft trades them in.
It really depends if it is just GNU who switch to GPL3 or a lot of other people.
Novell could conceivably continue development on the GPL2 versions of the GNU software.. they couldn't conceivably do the same for all the other free software in the world.
Friend of mine used to sell vacuum cleaners. Really, really expensive vacuum cleaners. He'd go into people's houses and pull a sack of dirt out of a small area of their carpet and ask "how can you put a price on your family's health?" and there ya go, instant sale. Every single person he sold a vacuum cleaner to believed they needed a industrial strength stainless steel vacuum cleaner, and they agreed to pay a fortune because of it. Once they signed those finance papers they were in debt for 10 or 20 years. And it's not like they could complain.. the vacuum cleaner did everything it was claimed to do. It did it for 30 years. Sure, you don't actually need a vacuum cleaner like this.. and it probably has a worse effect on your children's health than exposing them to a little dust, but you get what you pay for.
It's a big room. There's 20+ people in it. You're on the other side of the world. There is *no way* you are getting *any* information about the body language of the occupants of this room by controlling the web cam remotely. By the time you figure out who is talking you have less than a second to get the camera pointing at them. You can forget about facial expressions.
What you need is some smarts in the camera to look at what you would look at, if you were there. Now, this would probably be so fuckin' annoying that it would also be useless.. and besides, the camera can move a hell of a lot faster than an observer of the stream could tolerate it moving (that's why security cameras pan so damn slowly, if they panned faster the people watching the stream would go nuts). So why not let the camera move as fast as it can, aggregate together all this data and present it to you in a way that you can control.
Apart from the fact that it is a hell of a lot of research and development that is.. if/when the technology is invented for some profitable application, then maybe someone will slap it together on the weekend.
Absolutely. Typically, when someone is non-technical and asks me a technical question, I ask them why they want to know. When they tell me the problem, I tell them how to solve it. When they ask if there is another way to solve it, I say I wouldn't recommend any other way. Even if I have a few alternatives up my sleeve, I don't offer them.. it only confuses the non-technical person.
The worst is when the non-technical person asks a room full of technical people for a solution to a problem. You usually get a whole lot of really poorly thought out solutions. Sometimes, however, you will get one good solution.. and the non-technical person will ask a lot of questions about how this is going to effect business needs of some description. This is bad. If this is your solution, you should immediately suggest that you will follow up with the non-technical person at a later time.. or immediately take them out of the room.
Because you know what's coming? An alternative. Typically a worse alternative. This happens all the time. Technical people love to bring up poor solutions to problems and contrast them against the better solution. They think the non-technical person is going to see why the best solution is better if they can see the reasoning behind why the worse solutions are worse. They want to elevate the conversation out of talking about business needs and back into the technical realm. This is guarenteed to confuse the non-technical person.
The result of which will be the wrong decision. And who gets to clean up the mess? Yeah, we do.
Yep, all those researchers at Sun Labs should just get busy on fixing the problems at Sun Microsystems.. I mean, shit, are they too good to work on existing projects?
Or, ya know, maybe they have nothing to do with that stuff and we're just being a little unfair here.
Sun doesn't work like that. The corporate culture is not one of zero sum economics. They don't think they have to conquer the market like an effective short french general to somehow "win". Their bread and butter is making new markets and serving customer needs better in existing markets.
Can you do mo-cap without getting into a blue lycra suit with dots all over your body?
How about doing multiple humans at the same time?
Can it be done in real time?
Ok, great. How about making a system that can take a video feed from a web cam (with pivot and tilt) and map the body and facial movements of the humans it is look at onto models in a 3d environment?
Then I can collaborate with my co-workers on the other side of the world at the weekly meeting with more to go on than just their voice over the speaker phone.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a false dichotomy. People make this argument ("You are not entitled to anyone's hard work without cost to you.") and invite you to argue the opposite. The problem is not a question of entitlement.. the problem is a question of control. By making this argument, people are trying to make the argument that they should be able to control the actions of everyone to protect their hard work. They are demanding that everyone be their agent in defending their work because it is impossible for them to defend it themselves. Not surprisingly, it seems the only people willing to do this are the people who are in the same boat.
In any case, this argument is easily seen as false.. just go out in public. You will find plenty of people doing hard work and not getting paid for it. You'll even find plenty of musicians.. playing a whole lot of music.. doing this supposed "hard work" that most people who make this argument are suggesting must be paid for. Do you feel you should give them money? Or do you just feel they are begging. How about those assholes at the lights who clean your windshield with a dirty squiggy? Do you feel you should give them money because they did a service for you.. even though you didn't ask them to? Even though it was useful because your windshield was dirty?
No. People who do work for hire without first securing someone to hire them are just confused.. or deliberately trying to invoke an obligation in others when none should exist.
That's so cool. I can't wait until someone does something similar with an abandoned spacecraft.
Yes, you're right, but what the other guy said is true too. It is the stated intention of the FSF to make the GPL eventually be just like the BSD or Apache licenses. That is, without copyleft. Cause, eventually, copyleft won't be necessary.. so it will wither away. Hopefully, by then, the justification for the BSD license (idiots can sue you for defects in software they got for free) will go away.. maybe we'll get a law or international treaty passed. Any then, finally, the concept of copyright and patents on software will be dead.
No one said it was.
What are you talking about?
Or maybe the extensive cost of hunting down every contributor and getting them to sign a form will prevent it.
Ya think?
it's complicated dude.
Microsoft can't sue anyone cause they are violating patents themselves. If they sue some random open source developer, IBM through a couple of patent pooling organisations will step in and sue Microsoft. This is the whole mutually assured destruction thing.
So no-one really cares about Microsoft suing them.. except, ya know, a few fortune 500 companies who are afraid of what any announcement of a lawsuit will do to their stock. The problem is, these idiots are quite happy to fork Microsoft a few dollars for an assurance that they won't be sued. This means Microsoft feels bolder to pretend they are going to sue, which means they get more licenses, etc.
That's some great stuff. I really love listening to Eben Moglen.. he has such a great law professor tone. Unforutnately, the same tone puts many people to sleep before they hear what it is he is saying. Business people.
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version. Guess who's option it is.
That's great.
I'm not sure everything that gets posted on Slashdot needs to be "formal english" but, at the same time, it wouldn't hurt to fix a few obvious spelling mistakes.
whoever marked this guy troll should be ashamed of themselves. This site could really do with stiffer punishments for people who do shit like this. It's like stuffing a ballot box.
You do know that the new versions of GNU and many other projects will be GPLv3 only right?
If Novell chooses to distribute only old forks, good luck to them, they're dead in the water already.
In the future Microsoft will either have to trade in those coupons for software (which will be licensed to them under the GPLv3) or they will have to dump them in a sewer drain and forget about them. The article says what it will mean if Microsoft trades them in.
or stop using the term "editors".
It really depends if it is just GNU who switch to GPL3 or a lot of other people.
Novell could conceivably continue development on the GPL2 versions of the GNU software.. they couldn't conceivably do the same for all the other free software in the world.
Either they fixed that since you posted your comment or you're on crack.
Bug closed - WORKS FOR ME.
It's more women's preoccupation with each other's appearance that is the problem.
In fact, it's women's preoccupation with male appearance that makes men worry about baldness.
It's not like men give a shit what other men look like.
It's not a book, it's a paper, and you obviously didn't read it.
Friend of mine used to sell vacuum cleaners. Really, really expensive vacuum cleaners. He'd go into people's houses and pull a sack of dirt out of a small area of their carpet and ask "how can you put a price on your family's health?" and there ya go, instant sale. Every single person he sold a vacuum cleaner to believed they needed a industrial strength stainless steel vacuum cleaner, and they agreed to pay a fortune because of it. Once they signed those finance papers they were in debt for 10 or 20 years. And it's not like they could complain.. the vacuum cleaner did everything it was claimed to do. It did it for 30 years. Sure, you don't actually need a vacuum cleaner like this.. and it probably has a worse effect on your children's health than exposing them to a little dust, but you get what you pay for.
think.
It's a big room. There's 20+ people in it. You're on the other side of the world. There is *no way* you are getting *any* information about the body language of the occupants of this room by controlling the web cam remotely. By the time you figure out who is talking you have less than a second to get the camera pointing at them. You can forget about facial expressions.
What you need is some smarts in the camera to look at what you would look at, if you were there. Now, this would probably be so fuckin' annoying that it would also be useless.. and besides, the camera can move a hell of a lot faster than an observer of the stream could tolerate it moving (that's why security cameras pan so damn slowly, if they panned faster the people watching the stream would go nuts). So why not let the camera move as fast as it can, aggregate together all this data and present it to you in a way that you can control.
Apart from the fact that it is a hell of a lot of research and development that is.. if/when the technology is invented for some profitable application, then maybe someone will slap it together on the weekend.
Absolutely. Typically, when someone is non-technical and asks me a technical question, I ask them why they want to know. When they tell me the problem, I tell them how to solve it. When they ask if there is another way to solve it, I say I wouldn't recommend any other way. Even if I have a few alternatives up my sleeve, I don't offer them.. it only confuses the non-technical person.
The worst is when the non-technical person asks a room full of technical people for a solution to a problem. You usually get a whole lot of really poorly thought out solutions. Sometimes, however, you will get one good solution.. and the non-technical person will ask a lot of questions about how this is going to effect business needs of some description. This is bad. If this is your solution, you should immediately suggest that you will follow up with the non-technical person at a later time.. or immediately take them out of the room.
Because you know what's coming? An alternative. Typically a worse alternative. This happens all the time. Technical people love to bring up poor solutions to problems and contrast them against the better solution. They think the non-technical person is going to see why the best solution is better if they can see the reasoning behind why the worse solutions are worse. They want to elevate the conversation out of talking about business needs and back into the technical realm. This is guarenteed to confuse the non-technical person.
The result of which will be the wrong decision. And who gets to clean up the mess? Yeah, we do.
Yep, all those researchers at Sun Labs should just get busy on fixing the problems at Sun Microsystems.. I mean, shit, are they too good to work on existing projects?
Or, ya know, maybe they have nothing to do with that stuff and we're just being a little unfair here.
Sun doesn't work like that. The corporate culture is not one of zero sum economics. They don't think they have to conquer the market like an effective short french general to somehow "win". Their bread and butter is making new markets and serving customer needs better in existing markets.
Could have been worse I suppose.. you could have said it was based on LISP.
Go read The End Of History And The Last Programming Language.
Stop living in denial.
Can you do mo-cap without getting into a blue lycra suit with dots all over your body?
How about doing multiple humans at the same time?
Can it be done in real time?
Ok, great. How about making a system that can take a video feed from a web cam (with pivot and tilt) and map the body and facial movements of the humans it is look at onto models in a 3d environment?
Then I can collaborate with my co-workers on the other side of the world at the weekly meeting with more to go on than just their voice over the speaker phone.