99% of home improvements are done without permits and by idiots that buy crap at home depot after watching some bad TV show about remodeling for $1.99..
Really? So the Square-D QO circuit breakers I buy at Home Depot are crap, but the brand-X circuit breakers the electricians put in are fine. The Romex-brand 12/2 (with ground) wire I buy at Home Depot is crap, but the same stuff put in by an electrician is fine? The Schedule 40 PVC pipe from Home Depot is crap, the stuff the plumber uses is fine? The Armstrong tile I buy at Home Depot is crap, the same stuff put in by a flooring guy is fine?
That's why I think a different open-source licence is required that gives people free-reign to distribute binaries and/or source of both original and modified versions of the software, as long as they pay the original author any licence fee that the author has designated, which will require re-distributors to charge their customers at least this amount.
That's a different open-source license the way a camel is a different horse.
To resolve the QT code infringement lawsuit, as well as the look-n-feel lawsuit, MSFT agreed to give Apple $150M and continue to make Office for the Mac.
The best part of that was the Apple press event where Jobs pulled a Lando and revealed Apple's savior... Bill Gates (via satellite).
Some American said "But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." Don't judge or condemn political structure used in other country.
Tyranny is tyranny, and deserves condemnation whether the tyrant is named George, Kim, or Wu. Your quote speaks to toleration of religious belief by another individual, not cultural relativism.
and last American military campaigns toppled governments of two independent countries.
Indeed we do; we do not, however, have the power to change everything. And if we institute carbon-based power rationing (a.k.a cap-and-trade) now, we will quickly find we barely have the power (in the more concrete sense of the word) to survive; actually doing something useful will be beyond us.
If you take this attitude, then you are simply ceding your power to others.
I have not ceded it, it has been taken. My avenues for exercising power have been closed down by law and custom to the point that only those which are ineffective are available to me. No change in attitude will affect this; they will only result in my attitude being out of line with reality -- and, not merely coincidentally, making me more accepting of the situation.
Major change for good is happening in the U.S., though it sometimes flies under the radar of the general public.
If you believe that, then what you consider "good" I likely consider "evil".
I want a group like this. One that will protect you from $150,000 judgments for downloading 24 songs. However, I want a group that will do so in the courtroom, not in back-room settlements.
I've given up on the courtroom. Now I'm hoping for a group to arise (with no connection to me at all of course) which will do it in back-alley settlements.
Last winter every time it got cold or snowed Faux news idiot Sean Hannity would use the event as a demonstration of the non-existence of global warming.
And every time it gets hot there's a press release saying "GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL, DOOM IS IMMINENT, HOTTEST YEAR EVAH!"
Then someone checks the data and it turns out it was actually hotter in some much earlier year, and that's buried on page 10 (though it still makes the front page of Slashdot).
Generating biofuels will not take much of a chunk out of fossil fuel use, but it's needed to power large aircraft and ships if we're to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to below 20% of current levels.
You just did. CO2 is a proxy for power. The exceptions -- nuclear, wind, hydro, geothermal, and solar -- are infeasible to replace a huge share of power generation for one reason or another. So if you want to reduce CO2 emissions to below 20% of current levels, you have to reduce power generation by a rather extreme degree. That means rationing.
But there's no proposal to "change our entire civilization".
Global power rationing counts as a change to our entire civilization.
We can do this by increasing energy efficiency
There's only so much efficiency you can squeeze out of a system.
building nuclear power plants
Not going to happen for political reasons.
solar power plants
Also not going to happen in anything like the sufficient volume, again for political reasons.
manufacturing biofuels
There isn't the capacity to manufacture enough biofuels to take a significant chunk out of fossil fuel use. Look at total oil crop production versus petroleum usage.
If you don't care enough to get involved, you don't have much to complain about.
Oh, this old canard. Please. It doesn't matter how much I care, there's no amount of "involvement" I can engage in which will amount to a hill of beans. I have no influence; my skills don't lie in influencing people. If getting my interests represented depends on influence, it might as well depend on winning a barehanded no-holds-barred bout with Mike Tyson; I'm simply outclassed.
Many people are actively trying to improve things.
And failing hard. At best, a few groups whose self-interest happens to coincide with mine are preventing things from getting worse too much faster.
Engineering is a profession (a profession in the sense of being a lawyer, doctor, etc. with certification behind it -- as opposed to an occupation such as a plumber)
There were doctors, lawyers, and engineers before there were certifications for same. And certifications are required for plumbers in most jurisdictions. Being blessed by the bureaucracy doesn't make you an engineer, and not being so blessed doesn't make you not one.
Perhaps a bit of perspective is in order. Let's turn that the other way 'round and ask a related question: "Why should the non-Geeks cater to to your whims?"
Because I can code better than them, and coding skill is how issues are decided.
Oh, wait, that makes no sense... in a system where coding skill determined how issues were decided, non-geeks would lose every time. We'd have all decisions being made by geeks... why would the non-geeks accept such a thing?
You claim you understand, but I'm not sure you do. First off, you don't lose. Some, but not all of your interests are represented.
My interests are represented only where they happen to align with the interests of those who have influence. Whenever there is a conflict of interests, I automatically lose. I ask again, why should I accept the legitimacy of a system in which where there is a conflict, I automatically lose?
Unfortunately, geeks and nerds tend to not understand this fundamental political truth. It's not about what's objectively right. That has almost no worth in politics. It's about who you can influence.
We understand. It's just not where our skills lie. Which means our interests will go effectively unrepresented on every issue. Which in my mind calls into question the legitimacy of the whole process; why should I accept the legitimacy of a process where I automatically lose every time?
The very first step is to convince ordinary people that your position is in their self-interest and is important enough to spend time and money on. That in itself takes a rather large amount of skill, time and patience.
If you can pull that off, you're eligible for sainthood. Because it's not just hard; it requires a fucking miracle. Particularly when your opponents ARE the media.
ASCAP doesn't represent music industry executives. They're still asshats, but they're not THOSE asshats. They claim to represent songwriters and composers, but there's a persistent claim that only the top-played ones get anything, and the little guy can go piss up a rope when he wants his (admittedly small) share.
IIRC, the Odyssey and its many clones were all based on a special-purpose General Instruments Pong chip. Maybe that's only the later ones, and the earlier ones were discrete. (ah, a web search confirms this; the GI Pong chip came after the originals, which were discrete). There's no copyrighted code to extract, and if you were to clone the hardware for preservation purposes, nobody's going to bother suing you.
I also remember an electromechanical Pong game, but nobody seems to care about that one.
And if some of this stuff really is lost, it's no big deal.
Besides, it wasn't all bad; the anticircumvention part is pure bullshit but shielding service providers from responsibility of their users infringement was a pretty good idea.
It was, but it was not new; case law already existed (the Netcom decision, for instance) which shielded providers from users infringement. DMCA 512 gave the copyright owners the new bludgeon of the takedown (a.k.a self-service temporary restraining order), without really providing anything in return. And then of course they tried to go back on even that.
Exemptions are the new battle, and we need to get as many of them passed as we possibly can.
Exemptions are worthless because as they legitimize the act of circumvention, they do not legitimize the tools for doing so. There's no point in wasting effort fighting over worthless scraps. If the law is evil and can't be overturned or repealed, then the place to spend effort is in devising ways to violate it without getting caught.
Just require that all such software rigorously use formal methods to mathematically prove that it functions as intended. The manufacturer could then send their proofs to some regulatory/standards agency to verify.
Look, if you don't like the idea of implanted medical devices controlled by software, just say so.
Slashdot Mirror
Really? So the Square-D QO circuit breakers I buy at Home Depot are crap, but the brand-X circuit breakers the electricians put in are fine. The Romex-brand 12/2 (with ground) wire I buy at Home Depot is crap, but the same stuff put in by an electrician is fine? The Schedule 40 PVC pipe from Home Depot is crap, the stuff the plumber uses is fine? The Armstrong tile I buy at Home Depot is crap, the same stuff put in by a flooring guy is fine?
No, the grill is likely flat-out illegal according to requirements about the separation between grill and house.
New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971) says otherwise.
Search for "2010 hottest year ever". Note that 2010 has quite a ways to go. Then search for "1997 1934 hottest".
Yep, screw up, claim it was all an honest mistake, then pretend it never happened -- pretty much standard operating procedure for "warmists".
That's a different open-source license the way a camel is a different horse.
Unfortunately, the guns and chainsaws all face inward.
And what hurts about that is I immediately understood the "11H" in the format statement. Someone fit me for a walker.
The best part of that was the Apple press event where Jobs pulled a Lando and revealed Apple's savior... Bill Gates (via satellite).
Tyranny is tyranny, and deserves condemnation whether the tyrant is named George, Kim, or Wu. Your quote speaks to toleration of religious belief by another individual, not cultural relativism.
That was, after all, one of their objectives.
Indeed we do; we do not, however, have the power to change everything. And if we institute carbon-based power rationing (a.k.a cap-and-trade) now, we will quickly find we barely have the power (in the more concrete sense of the word) to survive; actually doing something useful will be beyond us.
I have not ceded it, it has been taken. My avenues for exercising power have been closed down by law and custom to the point that only those which are ineffective are available to me. No change in attitude will affect this; they will only result in my attitude being out of line with reality -- and, not merely coincidentally, making me more accepting of the situation.
If you believe that, then what you consider "good" I likely consider "evil".
I've given up on the courtroom. Now I'm hoping for a group to arise (with no connection to me at all of course) which will do it in back-alley settlements.
And every time it gets hot there's a press release saying "GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL, DOOM IS IMMINENT, HOTTEST YEAR EVAH!"
Then someone checks the data and it turns out it was actually hotter in some much earlier year, and that's buried on page 10 (though it still makes the front page of Slashdot).
You just did. CO2 is a proxy for power. The exceptions -- nuclear, wind, hydro, geothermal, and solar -- are infeasible to replace a huge share of power generation for one reason or another. So if you want to reduce CO2 emissions to below 20% of current levels, you have to reduce power generation by a rather extreme degree. That means rationing.
Global power rationing counts as a change to our entire civilization.
There's only so much efficiency you can squeeze out of a system.
Not going to happen for political reasons.
Also not going to happen in anything like the sufficient volume, again for political reasons.
There isn't the capacity to manufacture enough biofuels to take a significant chunk out of fossil fuel use. Look at total oil crop production versus petroleum usage.
Oh, this old canard. Please. It doesn't matter how much I care, there's no amount of "involvement" I can engage in which will amount to a hill of beans. I have no influence; my skills don't lie in influencing people. If getting my interests represented depends on influence, it might as well depend on winning a barehanded no-holds-barred bout with Mike Tyson; I'm simply outclassed.
And failing hard. At best, a few groups whose self-interest happens to coincide with mine are preventing things from getting worse too much faster.
There were doctors, lawyers, and engineers before there were certifications for same. And certifications are required for plumbers in most jurisdictions. Being blessed by the bureaucracy doesn't make you an engineer, and not being so blessed doesn't make you not one.
Because I can code better than them, and coding skill is how issues are decided.
Oh, wait, that makes no sense... in a system where coding skill determined how issues were decided, non-geeks would lose every time. We'd have all decisions being made by geeks... why would the non-geeks accept such a thing?
My interests are represented only where they happen to align with the interests of those who have influence. Whenever there is a conflict of interests, I automatically lose. I ask again, why should I accept the legitimacy of a system in which where there is a conflict, I automatically lose?
We understand. It's just not where our skills lie. Which means our interests will go effectively unrepresented on every issue. Which in my mind calls into question the legitimacy of the whole process; why should I accept the legitimacy of a process where I automatically lose every time?
If you can pull that off, you're eligible for sainthood. Because it's not just hard; it requires a fucking miracle. Particularly when your opponents ARE the media.
ASCAP doesn't represent music industry executives. They're still asshats, but they're not THOSE asshats. They claim to represent songwriters and composers, but there's a persistent claim that only the top-played ones get anything, and the little guy can go piss up a rope when he wants his (admittedly small) share.
Ah, so they should be based on who can control the literature.
IIRC, the Odyssey and its many clones were all based on a special-purpose General Instruments Pong chip. Maybe that's only the later ones, and the earlier ones were discrete. (ah, a web search confirms this; the GI Pong chip came after the originals, which were discrete). There's no copyrighted code to extract, and if you were to clone the hardware for preservation purposes, nobody's going to bother suing you.
I also remember an electromechanical Pong game, but nobody seems to care about that one.
And if some of this stuff really is lost, it's no big deal.
It was, but it was not new; case law already existed (the Netcom decision, for instance) which shielded providers from users infringement. DMCA 512 gave the copyright owners the new bludgeon of the takedown (a.k.a self-service temporary restraining order), without really providing anything in return. And then of course they tried to go back on even that.
Exemptions are worthless because as they legitimize the act of circumvention, they do not legitimize the tools for doing so. There's no point in wasting effort fighting over worthless scraps. If the law is evil and can't be overturned or repealed, then the place to spend effort is in devising ways to violate it without getting caught.
Look, if you don't like the idea of implanted medical devices controlled by software, just say so.