You seem to not understand why the GPL exists. If copyright didn't exist, I really don't think that the GPL would be needed at all.
Not so. There's a mechanism right now to distribute your works as though copyright didn't exist: release them as public domain. Sure, someone could take the copy you gave them and change it and redistribute it (even without source! gasp!) without giving you those changes for free, they could even demand money for the act of distributing anything. But you could do all those things in a copyright-free world too. About the only difference copyright law makes there is if they change a copy of something you made, you legally obtain a copy of their changed thing, and then distribute copies of their changed thing, they could sue you. That is a bad thing (in my opinion), but it doesn't keep you or anyone else from distributing copies of your original thing, and thus doesn't make it any less free.
The GPL relies on copyright as much as any other license does. To draw a political-economic analogy (and probably flames as well): A copyright-free world is like economic anarchy (aka anomie if you're a capital-A anarchist). No one can keep you from doing anything with anything, but no one can compel you to do anything with it either. Commercial licences and the GPL are like communist and corporatist states, respectively: both use the force of government to tell you what you cannot or must do with resources, for the benefit of The People or The Corporations, respectively.
The problem with copyright (GPL or commercial style) is that information is infinitely reproducible and thus there is no scarcity, and thus no need for regulations on it's fair distribution (for whatever value of "fair"). If there ever became scarcity because no one made anything, and there was still demand, those who needed it would be willing to pay for it's creation (ala bounties), after which there would again be an infinite fountain of copies of that information, no scarcity of it, and no need to regulate it's distribution.
If you disapprove of copyright, release your works public domain. If you can't afford to do so for free, and no one is willing to pay you for the initial creation, then you shouldn't be in the business of information production. If we had a just distribution of wealth, with our modern levels of prosperity people ought to have plenty of free time and money to produce art and science for art and science's sake. In addition, good artists and scientists would be hired as consultants to solve a specific problem or create a specific work, and paid for their labor in doing so, not for some illegitimate right to a monopoly on the distribution of the ephemeral products of that labor.
...most of the time you can forget that the so called Liberals (who are really the conservatives) are in power...
Not really on topic, just a pet peeve of mine: the antonym of "conservative" is not "liberal", it's "progressive". Neither "conservative" not "progressive" have any particular ties to liberty. During the emergence from medieval times to modern times the two were closely associated, but if now (in some places at least) the newer ways are less free than the old, then those who are still liberal become framed as conservatives. In the future, if socialism comes to be seen as old and stodgy, then modern "labour" parties may be considered conservative.
The association of "progressive" with "liberal" continues in America, despite our so-called "liberals" being little more concerned with liberty than our "conservatives" (who are not particularly liberal either). Mind you that personally, I'm not a huge fan of the nearly unrestrained liberty - or rather, lack of social responsibility- that classical liberals (now called libertarians) favor, any more than I'm a fan of the various flavors of authoritarianism that contemporary progressives and conservatives are both driving us toward.
Back on topic: I <3 Australia and would prefer to move there if for any reason things got nasty enough for me here that I felt it necessary to move.
While I agree with your point about constitutions becoming outdated and such, the rationale behind a perpetual, overriding document of law is to avoid the law become whatever-the-hell-the-masses-of-today want. It's to avoid the tyranny of the majority by restricting what the masses can do to the minority.
fscking wrong button clicking grr... I meant to add this:
If the masses can just change their own restrictions on a whim, then there are no effective restrictions. Then again, those restrictions only exist because the masses have faith in this piece of paper that says that doing certain things is wrong. So maybe the tyranny of the majority is inevitable, and the best we can hope for is a benevolent tyranny.
While I agree with your point about constitutions becoming outdated and such, the rationale behind a perpetual, overriding document of law is to avoid the law become whatever-the-hell-the-masses-of-today want. It's to avoid the tyranny of the majority by restricting what the masses can do to the minority.
I know, traditions and all, but after all, legal rulings are often called "opinions". Why does there need to be "interpretation"? When you make a law (or write a license), would it be so hard to tag a sentence or two in plain vernacular about the "intent"? Why wouldn't that have any weight, legally? I mean, if it is from the original author of the clause in question, why would it not have standing, even if clearly different from the exacting legalese? Seems like we have the author of GPLV3 explaining himself already! Couldn't the intent be part of the license?
To take a really off topic, but simple, example; When they said; A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. They knew what them meant. Would it have been so hard to add a sentence? Either By this we mean a well regulated militia is one that is under state control or The intention of this is to prevent the state from usurping the rights of individuals, so this to means all citizens of good standing can bear arms.?
Makes a big difference, and not subject to later interpretation.
In writing a philosophical essay, students are often advised to use as plain and simple English as possible to explain the claim that they are making, and to restate it several times in different ways, and include examples, to make sure that no reader is going to misunderstand them. I heard a good guideline the other week summarizing this: assume that your reader is "stupid, lazy, and mean". "Stupid" in that that they're not going to get your point very easily and need everything spelled out for them, "lazy" in that they're not going to to go to the effort of trying to understand what you mean and need everything spelled out for them, and "mean" in that they'll probably interpret what you say in the most negative way possible, so they need the actual intention of your point clearly spelled out for them.
It seems to me that, like you're saying, this would be a very good principle to apply to laws. Say what you're going to say - "P". Then say it, in a different way, "By P, we mean Q". Then say what you just said - "That is to say, R; or in other words, S." Give examples: "For example, this law prohibits X, Y, and Z; this law does not prohibit A, B, and C." And of course be clear that those are only examples and not the full extent of the law.
Someone else who responded to you already said that the symbols we use now to convey meaning (our language) do not retain the same meaning across generations. But it seems to me that you've got a good point: that by stating something in as many ways as possible, you're sort of giving several points of reference, to make sure that future generations understand that "P" meant the same thing as "Q" when we wrote this, so if what "P" means to you kids in the future isn't the same as what "Q" means to you, you're misunderstanding us somehow.
Video game movies are bad ideas. The game is made for interactive play with a story line usually tacked on out of obligation.
Bungie games are an exception. See here and here for proof. Halo is apparently even more well-integrated with it's fictional universe, with a "story bible" closely guarded. (Their earlier games had no such thing and were more ad-hoc, and yet STILL fleshed out rich and detailed fictional universes with interesting and complex characters and plotlines). If any game were to be good movie material, it'd be a Bungie game.
The italian reniassance was a revival of traditional greek and roman values among the social elite. It did not encourage diversity and it was not a time of great social change. Only a small minority of people in the renaissance would have noticed anything different from the middle ages.
I meant the renaissance in the more general sense, roughly synonymous with the early modern period, the enlightenment, the age of reason, the end of the Dark Ages. When science and reason became popular again, and traditional religious and cultural values were called into question. When notions of personal liberty and freedom of thought started getting a foothold, from which followed many leaps and bounds in science, technology, philosophy, and politics, and subsequently in the average quality of life for people throughout the western world. (I speak of the western world only because that was the scope of this particular revolution, not to privilege westerners over other peoples).
Yes, some of this did involve harkening back to Greek and Roman ideas of antiquity, but that was hardly the end of it. Many of those ancient ideas promoted notions of freedom (of thought at least, via the appointment of impartial reason as the only authority), and subsequently diversity, as people were no longer so strongly held into conformity. From that freedom flowed a wealth of new ideas that have since revolutionized the world.
I'm not saying that diversity is inherently good - that is, that if everyone were somehow all the same, voluntarily, that some people should have to be different just for the sake of being different. Only that restricting diversity is bad. I may like to eat the same dish for dinner over and over and over again. That's fine. Maybe everybody I know likes to eat that dish and that dish alone. That's fine too. But to say that everybody *has* to eat only that dish is wrong, and may cause many people to miss out on some great foods they might otherwise be eating, or keep them from creating some great new dishes that others might enjoy even more. To suppress diversity is to suppress all change and thus all progress, and lock your culture forever as what it is now. If you want to be a Luddite yourself that's fine (not you in particular, but the generic "you") - just don't hold everybody else back with you if they think they've found a better way and they want to follow that path.
I saw a quote in someone's sig here on Slashdot once that I love for situations like this. "Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you."
Can anyone come up with an example where having a diverse and rapidly changing set of ideas and values within a society made them stronger?
The renaissance?
Footnote: preserving or promoting your own culture does not require that you ban the influence of all other cultures, unless your "culture" has as an inextricable element of telling other people what they can and cannot do. My advice? Best not to define your culture in such a way. "Culture" in a diversity-respecting sense ought to include only voluntary, self-affecting or consensual matters: food, clothing, art, literature, hobbies, games, ceremonial traditions, etc. When you start to get into telling other people what they can or cannot do, you run into ethical or moral issues, and unless you want to be a moral relativist, there is some objective right answer to questions about such matters, and if your "culture" is inextricably tied to unethical practices, then sorry, your "culture" is doomed.
"Georg Greve, president of the Free Software Foundation Europe, said he had not seen the details of Microsoft's giveaway but cautioned against assuming it was motivated only by pragmatism or a new spirit of cooperation. 'If Microsoft were doing this for altruistic reasons, it would be a first,' Greve said. 'I think they are probably trying to get more machines on the Windows platform, and they may also be trying to improve relations in Brussels.'"
News flash: companies tend to do things only when they have some (however distantly) self-interested reason to do them. Film at 11.
The question to be asked here isn't "is Microsoft doing this because they think they have something to gain from it?". Of course they are. The question is "does Microsoft doing this harm or benefit (or both, or neither) the rest of us, and in what way?".
Corporations are never altruistic. That doesn't mean they can't be socially responsible, if those in charge of the company are sufficiently enlightened to see that doing so is, in the long run, in their own self-interest. (Though public corporations rarely are so enlightened). If a company wants to do something to get on good terms with some country or another, then "well of course they benefit from not being in trouble" is hardly a condemnation of their acts.
What we've got to ask is whether those acts are just hand-waving "look at us we're good guys" minimal placation of the government, or if they're really doing something decent. More practically, we (users and developers) just have to ask "are the licence and price on this a good deal for us?" and then act on the answer to that. That said, given Microsoft's history, I'm leaning on the side of "No" for the probable answer to that. But that doesn't make this a bad deal because it's good for MS. It's a bad deal just because it's bad for us.
I mostly agree with what you're saying here, but I think for clarity I should say that I mean "crime" in a moral sense, not a legal sense. That is to say, I mean a thing which you are morally obliged not to do and which would rightly warrant the use of force in it's prevention. Not just what the law says not to do and what the government will use force to prevent. Perhaps I should have said "sin", but that carries annoying religious connotations.
In that sense, murder by the state is still a crime/sin. Though not all killing is murder, as when necessary for defense of oneself or another; thus a cop shooting someone to prevent him from killing another, or a soldier shooting an enemy soldier invading our country, would not be murder, but the just use of force for purposes of defense.
I do get riled up about violent criminals. No, I don't want them on watch lists; I want them in prison.
And after they've had their punishment and been released from prison, should they still be watched like a hawk and deprived of some of their rights in perpetuity?
I'm not weighing in one way or another on the answer to that question here, other than to say that the answer to that shouldn't be "no" if the answer to the same question about sex offenders is "yes".
Are you trying to tell me a friendly bar brawl with a few broken noses is more violent than rape?
If by "friendly" you mean the two agreed beforehand to have a brawl as a means of settling something, and nobody kept going after the other said "stop!", then that's consensual and no crime has been committed. That's pretty much just informal boxing. But if some random guy comes and beats down some other random guy cause he looks funny / is the 'wrong' race / was flirting with 'his' woman / etc, that's a more violent crime on the part of the attacker than rape of the non-violent variety. (Perhaps "less violent" would be a better term, i.e. no beatings or cuttings, no diseases or pregnancy other real physical harm; just depriving someone of control of their body, which is a crime, but less than physically damaging someone's body).
So has murder, rape, robbery, torture, etc. Those things aren't any less evil just because they've been around for a long time.
Again, how does that imply it's not evil? Only things that kill, maim, or emotionally scar someone for life are truly evil?
I think the point he was making was NOT that child molestation isn't a bad thing; rather, that it's no different than murder, rape, etc. Possibly even less of a crime than murder or other violent assault. Murder deprives you of your life, and it is thus the highest of crimes. Assault deprives you, sometimes, of physical health and capabilities. Lesser forms of assault deprive you of your rightful control of your own body and leave nothing but psychological scarring; non-violent rape (e.g. the kind where you are not beaten or stabbed, etc) falls into this category. (Violent rape obviously falls into the former category, and nonviolent rape can segue into for former if STDs or unwanted pregnancy follows). Mind you, I'm not in any way saying that these lesser crimes are at all OK; I'm just saying, look at them in comparison to other, much greater crimes.
Child molestation is categorically no different than rape; the victim is just younger. Some "child molestation" (statutory "rape" of 16 or 17 year olds, who are biologically adult) is even less of a crime, since the act would by all objective standards be considered consensual if it weren't for the legal fiction that people younger than 18 are incapable of giving consent.
But we freak the hell out about child molesters and lose all sense of rationality when anything about them comes up. We don't freak out this much about murderers. We still *do something* about murderers; that's why we have police, and courts, and jails and such. We still do something about people who physically assault others, but you don't see this vigilanteism toward your run of the mill violent criminals around. You don't see people writing 1000-line perl scripts to try to identify known gang members on MySpace - particularly because there's not as convenient a list of known gang members to compare with. But a lot of those people are violent criminals guilty of much greater offenses than the pedophiles that every mom in America is terrified of.
Americans just get particularly worked up about sex, and particularly worked up about children; combine the two together and you get instant emotional frenzy, no rational thought involved. Pedophiles, rapists, witches, communists, terrorists... hell, the whole terrorist scare seems sane in comparison to the frenzy that people get into over sex offenders. At least terrorists actually murder people. Pedos and rapists are the next nearest the top on that little list I just gave, and at least they're a step up from just persecuting people with different beliefs (witches and communists). But next time you or anyone else starts to get riled up about sex offenders, ask yourself why you don't feel the same way about all the more violent criminals out there. Do you want them all on watch lists too? Every man who's ever gotten into so much as a fist fight, a much more violent act than rape? Are you constantly concerned about your children running into people like them on MySpace? If not, why not?
If so, well, at least you're consistent. I have to give you that.
My girlfriend works the polls in our little hometown out here in California every time there's an election, and during national elections, I hear no end to her (justified) complaining that the TV news programs are often calling the election on the evening news *before they've even closed the polls out here*. She's working in the polling place, and someone there is watching the live election coverage on TV, and while people are still in there voting, the talking heads are already saying who won.
Yes yes, I know... exit polls, time zones, statistical certainty, all sorts of good reasons why a news network could say without fear of error that the election will go such-and-such a way before the final tally is actually done. But it certainly adds to that sense of defeatism when a winner is declared on national TV before you've even voted.
Heck, despite it going against most of my political philosophy of government not interfering with the media, I might even support a law prohibiting such election reporting until after the final tally is done, at least not without lots of big, obvious disclaimers to the effect that "this is our prediction of how the election will turn out based on exit poll statistics".
Re:Your career doesn't define your divorce.
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IT and Divorce?
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The obvious solution, that I'm surprised that no other./'er has suggested, is to replace your Microsoft marriage with either OS/X or Linux. As a divorced IT professional with full custody of the kids, I fully plan to switch to Linux-based relationship OS before considering any future long-term relationship.:P
Are you saying you'd prefer your relationships to be, shall we say, open-source?
before Tony Blair every Prime Minister (both tory and labour) from about 1962 onwards (Wilson, Heath, Thatcher,.. and the leaders of the opposition, too) went to (state-funded) "grammar schools", the same sort of institution that I attended. In fact it's something held against Blair, that he went to the highly prestigious, expensive & "posh" public school, Fettes.
I'd like to point out for all of my fellow Americans here, who are not yet aware of it, that what the friendly chaps across the pond refer to as "public schools" are what we here in the States call "private schools", i.e. schools which are not tax-funded.
I'm curious though, OriginalArlen - what would the term "private school" refer to in England? The state-funded schools? (Doubtful). And how is it that something which is privately owned is called a "public school", in contrast to publicly (state) owned schools? This has always confused me. What does the "public" in that term refer to, and in contrast to what?
The best thing I can say about the portion of your reply that I didn't snip - is that its the least ignorant thing in four paragraphs. (And not by much.)
Ad hominiem attacks aside, I can't seem to make out what sort of position you're taking here. Are you agreeing, or disagreeing, that "citizens are born into their countries with no inherent rights besides whatever their government grants them at the time"? (I disagree with that statement) Or are you agreeing, or disagreeing, that that kind of conclusion follows from the bad logic of the post I was responding to? (I think it does).
You obviously don't think that I'm right, but what do you think is right?
One major difference: children are not adult workers entering into a consensual employee/employer relationship. Children are born into their families with no inherent rights except that to food, shelter, education and a decent upbringing to the best of their parents' ability. They do not have "rights" to privacy, speech, freedom of association or any of the basic civil rights adults enjoy. They live under the protection of their parents and therefore if the parents want to read their IM logs, that's their prerogative.
By that logic, citizens are born into their countries with no inherent rights besides whatever their government grants them at the time, and so long as they "choose" to live under the protection of that government (i.e. do not choose to uproot their entire lives and move somewhere else), it's the government's prerogative to meddle in the private affairs of it's citizens however it pleases. To anyone who supports the principles of liberty and constitutional democracy that most of the civilized world cherishes today, this is obviously wrong: people may have an obligation to obey their governments to some limited extent, but the governments conversely have an obligation to respect the rights and freedom of their citizens, and refrain from interfering except when absolutely necessary.
Our families are our models for government. The family is the most basic unit of society (i.e. the smallest and most primitive grouping of people). If we teach our kids that it's OK for their parents to monitor them constantly and meddle in their lives to whatever extent that they (the parents) see fit, then we're raising a generation of soon-to-be-adults who will not mind if their government does the same thing to them. If you wouldn't be happy with your government behaving a certain way toward you, you should seriously consider whether or not it's really OK for you to behave that way toward your kids. And vice versa: if it doesn't seem OK for a parent to do to their child, that raises some big red flags about whether it's OK for the government to do to it's citizens.
The role of parents is to use force only when necessary to keep their kids from *seriously* screwing something else up (i.e. punishing them for starting fights, vandalism, etc etc), and *educating* them about things which are dangerous to themselves. If those things really are bad for themselves, the kids will learn that yeah, mom and/or dad were right, that was a bad idea. If parents show a good track record of indicating bad things that the kids can verify with their own first-hand experience in the short-term, the kids will (rightly) be more inclined to trust them about the longer-term hazards that it takes years of experience to learn first-hand. But if the parents are full of shit and over-controlling, prohibiting things that don't really cause any harm, and meddling with and prying into their kids lives all the time, the kids will be less inclined to trust them about anything. Same way that the citizenry will learn to disregard the law entirely when the law is frequently baseless and unjust, but if the law is just and well-founded it will have many supporters.
Needless to say, all of this is solely regarding "children" of a conscious, verbal level of development, i.e. basically young impulsive inexperienced adults. When dealing with infants or toddlers who are actually incapable of really understanding what you tell them - not just perhaps inclined to disregard it - then obviously the same rules don't apply.
I don't think that there is a theory of gravity. We know gravity exists. We can quantify it. We have a law of gravity based on those observations. But laws are not theories. A theory of gravity would explain how gravity works. So far we have only hypothetical gravitons. When these and gravity waves are someday detected and quantified, then we may have a theory of gravity.
What we have evidence of is the apparent attraction between objects.
Aristotle explained a limited set of that evidence as the "natural motion" of various "elements" (i.e. the element of 'earth' naturally moves toward the center of the universe, which is the center of our planet Earth in his cosmology).
The Theory of Gravity (Newton's) explains this as the effect of some "spooky action at a distance". A lot of people early on didn't like it for that reason, because it was neither natural motion (which Newton showed to be straight lines) nor the mechanical application of force.
The Theory of General Relativity explains this as an effect of the geometry of space-time; objects once again just following their natural motion, straight lines, only now that we see space as curved, "straight" isn't really straight.
Various theories of quantum gravity attempt to explain this as the effect of the exchange of "gravitons", making gravity once again a "force" analogous to the electronuclear forces, facilitated through the exchange of quanta.
There are many explanations available for gravity. All of them are theories. Some of them are disproven. Others are well-tested and verified. Others aren't.
Oil companies claim the backers of Prop 87, some of them venture capitalists, would profit from state money flowing into the alternative-energy projects they are funding.
This just in: people who support proposed law think they somehow stand to benefit from said law. Film at 11.
Saying "yeah, of course YOU like that, it does good things for YOU!" is no argument against anything. You need to show that it also does bad things for someone else (or in the case of something tax-funded, where there's the automatic bad thing of costing us money, you need to show that it provides insufficient public benefit).
This is no more interesting than saying "Rich folk claim that welfare supporters, many of them poor, stand to benefit from such laws". Of COURSE they do. The question to the rest of us is, do WE benefit from THEIR benefit? If these VCs make money off of projects they fund which also benefit the rest of us, where's the loss?
The entire universe is "vacuum" if by "vacuum" you mean the absence of "solid, extended" matter.
Matter isn't solid. It's make of loosely bound atoms. Even atoms aren't solid. They're tiny nuclei surrounded by lots of "empty" space, filled only with infinitesimal electrons (i.e. point-particles, with a size of precisely zero) and the forces they exert. Those forces are what keep other atoms from occupying the same space, and what give the atoms the appearance of being solid. We all know that much around here.
But the nuclei themselves are composed of separate nucleons bound together by nuclear forces, and it's just those forces which keep nuclei from occupying the same space, same as the electromagnetic force keeps atoms "solid". Inside the nucleus is still more "empty" space.
But those nucleons themselves are just bundles of quarks held together by still different nuclear forces.
Quarks, however, are infinitesimal point-particles, just like electrons. They occupy no space; they're just points of zero extension.
Nothing in the universe is "extended", and things are only "solid" to the point that nothing below a certain energy threshold can overcome the forces keeping things out of a certain part of space, i.e. "solid" is relative. There's just infinitesimal point-particles and the interactions (forces) between them. The rest of it is "empty" space. Though as that space is universally permeated by the forces of those point-particles (there's electromagnetic fields, albiet sometimes very weak, everywhere in the universe), and has effects of it's own (e.g. gravity, which also permeates the entire universe), it can hardly be called empty.
Re:Macintosh "Unspeakable Items" folder.
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GUIs Get a Makeover
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Why do I get the feeling that some joke just went over my head?
Re:The Human Computer Interface
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GUIs Get a Makeover
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And all it does is integrate into the window manager. Why would I want to ask the computer to open a window if I just want to ask a question? For instance, say I want to know what time it is. I can't just ask the computer, "Computer, what time is it?" Instead, I have to say, "Computer, open clock" and then read the time.
I don't know much about the present speech systems in OS X, but the older one in classic Mac OS had a "speakable items" folder that was mostly filled with AppleScripts. Speaking the name of any item in that folder would launch that item; if it was an AppleScript, it would do various thing. The system shipped with a number of useful scripts already built in: one of them was called "What time is it?", and all it did was speak (via TTS aka MacInTalk): "It's [current time]", e.g. "It's five oh four pee em." (Then again, I don't find this very useful because I've got a menubar clock, as all Macs have by default for ages, so it's quicker just to glance up there).
There was one really impressive script in that that would tell a number of interactive knock-knock jokes, called "Tell me a joke". So you'd say "Tell me a joke", and it would speak (via TTS) "Knock knock". A response of "Who's there?" would prompt it to select from a number of responses, and it would then listen for "[previous response] who?" after which it would deliver the appropriate punchline.
I just looked, and there is a Speakable Items folder and it has all this same functionality still. Runs a lot faster than it used to, too. Sweet.
Ah, I see... I wasn't disagreeing at all with the point you were making in your post. I agree that someone isn't going to switch operating systems when it's possible and easier to {change a part of their existing "extended OS" | use a different program on their existing "core OS"}.
I was just harping on a related point that, really, CD ripping (copying raw audio data from a CD) is just I/O and should be handled by the same file manager that lets you copy from any other disk/disc. Transcoding is not necessary and should be optional and handled by another program. Whether such another program ships with the OS or not, and whether or not that other program can also rip the data itself in one step, the regular file manager (which is a part of the [extended] OS) should be able to rip the raw data. If it can't and instead relies on another bundled program to do that, and that bundled program does undesirable things (like DRM-encrypting everything), then that can legitimately be considered an [extended] OS problem.
And a lot of [extended] OS problems like that may discourage someone from adopting such an [extended] OS in the first place (since average users buy extended OS packages; they don't buy or download kernels and install their own desktop environments), and may eventually even encourage someone to switch away from that line when upgrading e.g. to Vista.
"In effect, if Windows by default presumes WMP to be there and offloads functionality to it, then WMP issues are Windows issues."
Huh? How is a file manager associating file types with programs part of the OS?
I'm not saying associating filetypes with programs makes those programs part of the OS.
I'm saying that if, for example, Windows offloads all it's CD-handling capabilities to WMP, that WMP has in effect been made a part of the OS. Mind you that I'm speaking of "OS" in today's common terms, which includes the desktop and file manager and such; not the older more restricted sense of just the kernel and file system and drivers and such. A decent definition off the top of my head might be "the software which the user uses to see what data and programs are available on their computer, and which enables the storage and organization of that data and the execution of those programs".
To the same extent that Explorer was made a part of the OS when it essentially became Windows' file manager, if Windows is unable to handle CDs by itself in the regular file manager (i.e. if there's no way of accessing the data on an audio CD just through Explorer), but has to offload that to another program, and such a program ships with the OS, then that program is fulfilling an OS function (and perhaps other functions as well). That you can replace that program with another is nice, but doesn't change the fact that the OS is relying on the first program by default to do something that ought to be handled by the OS itself, and if such a program ships with the OS, I'd say that makes it a part of the OS. Thus, problems with that program are problems with the OS.
Note that the above is fraught with conditional statements; I'm still not entirely clear by your description if Windows does in fact behave this way. I'm just say "if it does, then..."
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You seem to not understand why the GPL exists. If copyright didn't exist, I really don't think that the GPL would be needed at all.
Not so. There's a mechanism right now to distribute your works as though copyright didn't exist: release them as public domain. Sure, someone could take the copy you gave them and change it and redistribute it (even without source! gasp!) without giving you those changes for free, they could even demand money for the act of distributing anything. But you could do all those things in a copyright-free world too. About the only difference copyright law makes there is if they change a copy of something you made, you legally obtain a copy of their changed thing, and then distribute copies of their changed thing, they could sue you. That is a bad thing (in my opinion), but it doesn't keep you or anyone else from distributing copies of your original thing, and thus doesn't make it any less free.
The GPL relies on copyright as much as any other license does. To draw a political-economic analogy (and probably flames as well): A copyright-free world is like economic anarchy (aka anomie if you're a capital-A anarchist). No one can keep you from doing anything with anything, but no one can compel you to do anything with it either. Commercial licences and the GPL are like communist and corporatist states, respectively: both use the force of government to tell you what you cannot or must do with resources, for the benefit of The People or The Corporations, respectively.
The problem with copyright (GPL or commercial style) is that information is infinitely reproducible and thus there is no scarcity, and thus no need for regulations on it's fair distribution (for whatever value of "fair"). If there ever became scarcity because no one made anything, and there was still demand, those who needed it would be willing to pay for it's creation (ala bounties), after which there would again be an infinite fountain of copies of that information, no scarcity of it, and no need to regulate it's distribution.
If you disapprove of copyright, release your works public domain. If you can't afford to do so for free, and no one is willing to pay you for the initial creation, then you shouldn't be in the business of information production. If we had a just distribution of wealth, with our modern levels of prosperity people ought to have plenty of free time and money to produce art and science for art and science's sake. In addition, good artists and scientists would be hired as consultants to solve a specific problem or create a specific work, and paid for their labor in doing so, not for some illegitimate right to a monopoly on the distribution of the ephemeral products of that labor.
...most of the time you can forget that the so called Liberals (who are really the conservatives) are in power...
Not really on topic, just a pet peeve of mine: the antonym of "conservative" is not "liberal", it's "progressive". Neither "conservative" not "progressive" have any particular ties to liberty. During the emergence from medieval times to modern times the two were closely associated, but if now (in some places at least) the newer ways are less free than the old, then those who are still liberal become framed as conservatives. In the future, if socialism comes to be seen as old and stodgy, then modern "labour" parties may be considered conservative.
The association of "progressive" with "liberal" continues in America, despite our so-called "liberals" being little more concerned with liberty than our "conservatives" (who are not particularly liberal either). Mind you that personally, I'm not a huge fan of the nearly unrestrained liberty - or rather, lack of social responsibility- that classical liberals (now called libertarians) favor, any more than I'm a fan of the various flavors of authoritarianism that contemporary progressives and conservatives are both driving us toward.
Back on topic: I <3 Australia and would prefer to move there if for any reason things got nasty enough for me here that I felt it necessary to move.
While I agree with your point about constitutions becoming outdated and such, the rationale behind a perpetual, overriding document of law is to avoid the law become whatever-the-hell-the-masses-of-today want. It's to avoid the tyranny of the majority by restricting what the masses can do to the minority.
fscking wrong button clicking grr... I meant to add this:
If the masses can just change their own restrictions on a whim, then there are no effective restrictions. Then again, those restrictions only exist because the masses have faith in this piece of paper that says that doing certain things is wrong. So maybe the tyranny of the majority is inevitable, and the best we can hope for is a benevolent tyranny.
While I agree with your point about constitutions becoming outdated and such, the rationale behind a perpetual, overriding document of law is to avoid the law become whatever-the-hell-the-masses-of-today want. It's to avoid the tyranny of the majority by restricting what the masses can do to the minority.
I know, traditions and all, but after all, legal rulings are often called "opinions". Why does there need to be "interpretation"? When you make a law (or write a license), would it be so hard to tag a sentence or two in plain vernacular about the "intent"? Why wouldn't that have any weight, legally? I mean, if it is from the original author of the clause in question, why would it not have standing, even if clearly different from the exacting legalese? Seems like we have the author of GPLV3 explaining himself already! Couldn't the intent be part of the license?
To take a really off topic, but simple, example; When they said; A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. They knew what them meant. Would it have been so hard to add a sentence? Either By this we mean a well regulated militia is one that is under state control or The intention of this is to prevent the state from usurping the rights of individuals, so this to means all citizens of good standing can bear arms.?
Makes a big difference, and not subject to later interpretation.
In writing a philosophical essay, students are often advised to use as plain and simple English as possible to explain the claim that they are making, and to restate it several times in different ways, and include examples, to make sure that no reader is going to misunderstand them. I heard a good guideline the other week summarizing this: assume that your reader is "stupid, lazy, and mean". "Stupid" in that that they're not going to get your point very easily and need everything spelled out for them, "lazy" in that they're not going to to go to the effort of trying to understand what you mean and need everything spelled out for them, and "mean" in that they'll probably interpret what you say in the most negative way possible, so they need the actual intention of your point clearly spelled out for them.
It seems to me that, like you're saying, this would be a very good principle to apply to laws. Say what you're going to say - "P". Then say it, in a different way, "By P, we mean Q". Then say what you just said - "That is to say, R; or in other words, S." Give examples: "For example, this law prohibits X, Y, and Z; this law does not prohibit A, B, and C." And of course be clear that those are only examples and not the full extent of the law.
Someone else who responded to you already said that the symbols we use now to convey meaning (our language) do not retain the same meaning across generations. But it seems to me that you've got a good point: that by stating something in as many ways as possible, you're sort of giving several points of reference, to make sure that future generations understand that "P" meant the same thing as "Q" when we wrote this, so if what "P" means to you kids in the future isn't the same as what "Q" means to you, you're misunderstanding us somehow.
Video game movies are bad ideas. The game is made for interactive play with a story line usually tacked on out of obligation.
Bungie games are an exception. See here and here for proof. Halo is apparently even more well-integrated with it's fictional universe, with a "story bible" closely guarded. (Their earlier games had no such thing and were more ad-hoc, and yet STILL fleshed out rich and detailed fictional universes with interesting and complex characters and plotlines). If any game were to be good movie material, it'd be a Bungie game.
"The renaissance"? The italian renaissance?
The italian reniassance was a revival of traditional greek and roman values among the social elite. It did not encourage diversity and it was not a time of great social change. Only a small minority of people in the renaissance would have noticed anything different from the middle ages.
I meant the renaissance in the more general sense, roughly synonymous with the early modern period, the enlightenment, the age of reason, the end of the Dark Ages. When science and reason became popular again, and traditional religious and cultural values were called into question. When notions of personal liberty and freedom of thought started getting a foothold, from which followed many leaps and bounds in science, technology, philosophy, and politics, and subsequently in the average quality of life for people throughout the western world. (I speak of the western world only because that was the scope of this particular revolution, not to privilege westerners over other peoples).
Yes, some of this did involve harkening back to Greek and Roman ideas of antiquity, but that was hardly the end of it. Many of those ancient ideas promoted notions of freedom (of thought at least, via the appointment of impartial reason as the only authority), and subsequently diversity, as people were no longer so strongly held into conformity. From that freedom flowed a wealth of new ideas that have since revolutionized the world.
I'm not saying that diversity is inherently good - that is, that if everyone were somehow all the same, voluntarily, that some people should have to be different just for the sake of being different. Only that restricting diversity is bad. I may like to eat the same dish for dinner over and over and over again. That's fine. Maybe everybody I know likes to eat that dish and that dish alone. That's fine too. But to say that everybody *has* to eat only that dish is wrong, and may cause many people to miss out on some great foods they might otherwise be eating, or keep them from creating some great new dishes that others might enjoy even more. To suppress diversity is to suppress all change and thus all progress, and lock your culture forever as what it is now. If you want to be a Luddite yourself that's fine (not you in particular, but the generic "you") - just don't hold everybody else back with you if they think they've found a better way and they want to follow that path.
I saw a quote in someone's sig here on Slashdot once that I love for situations like this. "Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you."
Can anyone come up with an example where having a diverse and rapidly changing set of ideas and values within a society made them stronger?
The renaissance?
Footnote: preserving or promoting your own culture does not require that you ban the influence of all other cultures, unless your "culture" has as an inextricable element of telling other people what they can and cannot do. My advice? Best not to define your culture in such a way. "Culture" in a diversity-respecting sense ought to include only voluntary, self-affecting or consensual matters: food, clothing, art, literature, hobbies, games, ceremonial traditions, etc. When you start to get into telling other people what they can or cannot do, you run into ethical or moral issues, and unless you want to be a moral relativist, there is some objective right answer to questions about such matters, and if your "culture" is inextricably tied to unethical practices, then sorry, your "culture" is doomed.
"Georg Greve, president of the Free Software Foundation Europe, said he had not seen the details of Microsoft's giveaway but cautioned against assuming it was motivated only by pragmatism or a new spirit of cooperation. 'If Microsoft were doing this for altruistic reasons, it would be a first,' Greve said. 'I think they are probably trying to get more machines on the Windows platform, and they may also be trying to improve relations in Brussels.'"
News flash: companies tend to do things only when they have some (however distantly) self-interested reason to do them. Film at 11.
The question to be asked here isn't "is Microsoft doing this because they think they have something to gain from it?". Of course they are. The question is "does Microsoft doing this harm or benefit (or both, or neither) the rest of us, and in what way?".
Corporations are never altruistic. That doesn't mean they can't be socially responsible, if those in charge of the company are sufficiently enlightened to see that doing so is, in the long run, in their own self-interest. (Though public corporations rarely are so enlightened). If a company wants to do something to get on good terms with some country or another, then "well of course they benefit from not being in trouble" is hardly a condemnation of their acts.
What we've got to ask is whether those acts are just hand-waving "look at us we're good guys" minimal placation of the government, or if they're really doing something decent. More practically, we (users and developers) just have to ask "are the licence and price on this a good deal for us?" and then act on the answer to that. That said, given Microsoft's history, I'm leaning on the side of "No" for the probable answer to that. But that doesn't make this a bad deal because it's good for MS. It's a bad deal just because it's bad for us.
I mostly agree with what you're saying here, but I think for clarity I should say that I mean "crime" in a moral sense, not a legal sense. That is to say, I mean a thing which you are morally obliged not to do and which would rightly warrant the use of force in it's prevention. Not just what the law says not to do and what the government will use force to prevent. Perhaps I should have said "sin", but that carries annoying religious connotations.
In that sense, murder by the state is still a crime/sin. Though not all killing is murder, as when necessary for defense of oneself or another; thus a cop shooting someone to prevent him from killing another, or a soldier shooting an enemy soldier invading our country, would not be murder, but the just use of force for purposes of defense.
I do get riled up about violent criminals. No, I don't want them on watch lists; I want them in prison.
And after they've had their punishment and been released from prison, should they still be watched like a hawk and deprived of some of their rights in perpetuity?
I'm not weighing in one way or another on the answer to that question here, other than to say that the answer to that shouldn't be "no" if the answer to the same question about sex offenders is "yes".
Are you trying to tell me a friendly bar brawl with a few broken noses is more violent than rape?
If by "friendly" you mean the two agreed beforehand to have a brawl as a means of settling something, and nobody kept going after the other said "stop!", then that's consensual and no crime has been committed. That's pretty much just informal boxing. But if some random guy comes and beats down some other random guy cause he looks funny / is the 'wrong' race / was flirting with 'his' woman / etc, that's a more violent crime on the part of the attacker than rape of the non-violent variety. (Perhaps "less violent" would be a better term, i.e. no beatings or cuttings, no diseases or pregnancy other real physical harm; just depriving someone of control of their body, which is a crime, but less than physically damaging someone's body).
So has murder, rape, robbery, torture, etc. Those things aren't any less evil just because they've been around for a long time.
Again, how does that imply it's not evil? Only things that kill, maim, or emotionally scar someone for life are truly evil?
I think the point he was making was NOT that child molestation isn't a bad thing; rather, that it's no different than murder, rape, etc. Possibly even less of a crime than murder or other violent assault. Murder deprives you of your life, and it is thus the highest of crimes. Assault deprives you, sometimes, of physical health and capabilities. Lesser forms of assault deprive you of your rightful control of your own body and leave nothing but psychological scarring; non-violent rape (e.g. the kind where you are not beaten or stabbed, etc) falls into this category. (Violent rape obviously falls into the former category, and nonviolent rape can segue into for former if STDs or unwanted pregnancy follows). Mind you, I'm not in any way saying that these lesser crimes are at all OK; I'm just saying, look at them in comparison to other, much greater crimes.
Child molestation is categorically no different than rape; the victim is just younger. Some "child molestation" (statutory "rape" of 16 or 17 year olds, who are biologically adult) is even less of a crime, since the act would by all objective standards be considered consensual if it weren't for the legal fiction that people younger than 18 are incapable of giving consent.
But we freak the hell out about child molesters and lose all sense of rationality when anything about them comes up. We don't freak out this much about murderers. We still *do something* about murderers; that's why we have police, and courts, and jails and such. We still do something about people who physically assault others, but you don't see this vigilanteism toward your run of the mill violent criminals around. You don't see people writing 1000-line perl scripts to try to identify known gang members on MySpace - particularly because there's not as convenient a list of known gang members to compare with. But a lot of those people are violent criminals guilty of much greater offenses than the pedophiles that every mom in America is terrified of.
Americans just get particularly worked up about sex, and particularly worked up about children; combine the two together and you get instant emotional frenzy, no rational thought involved. Pedophiles, rapists, witches, communists, terrorists... hell, the whole terrorist scare seems sane in comparison to the frenzy that people get into over sex offenders. At least terrorists actually murder people. Pedos and rapists are the next nearest the top on that little list I just gave, and at least they're a step up from just persecuting people with different beliefs (witches and communists). But next time you or anyone else starts to get riled up about sex offenders, ask yourself why you don't feel the same way about all the more violent criminals out there. Do you want them all on watch lists too? Every man who's ever gotten into so much as a fist fight, a much more violent act than rape? Are you constantly concerned about your children running into people like them on MySpace? If not, why not?
If so, well, at least you're consistent. I have to give you that.
My girlfriend works the polls in our little hometown out here in California every time there's an election, and during national elections, I hear no end to her (justified) complaining that the TV news programs are often calling the election on the evening news *before they've even closed the polls out here*. She's working in the polling place, and someone there is watching the live election coverage on TV, and while people are still in there voting, the talking heads are already saying who won.
Yes yes, I know... exit polls, time zones, statistical certainty, all sorts of good reasons why a news network could say without fear of error that the election will go such-and-such a way before the final tally is actually done. But it certainly adds to that sense of defeatism when a winner is declared on national TV before you've even voted.
Heck, despite it going against most of my political philosophy of government not interfering with the media, I might even support a law prohibiting such election reporting until after the final tally is done, at least not without lots of big, obvious disclaimers to the effect that "this is our prediction of how the election will turn out based on exit poll statistics".
The obvious solution, that I'm surprised that no other ./'er has suggested, is to replace your Microsoft marriage with either OS/X or Linux. As a divorced IT professional with full custody of the kids, I fully plan to switch to Linux-based relationship OS before considering any future long-term relationship. :P
Are you saying you'd prefer your relationships to be, shall we say, open-source?
before Tony Blair every Prime Minister (both tory and labour) from about 1962 onwards (Wilson, Heath, Thatcher,.. and the leaders of the opposition, too) went to (state-funded) "grammar schools", the same sort of institution that I attended. In fact it's something held against Blair, that he went to the highly prestigious, expensive & "posh" public school, Fettes.
I'd like to point out for all of my fellow Americans here, who are not yet aware of it, that what the friendly chaps across the pond refer to as "public schools" are what we here in the States call "private schools", i.e. schools which are not tax-funded.
I'm curious though, OriginalArlen - what would the term "private school" refer to in England? The state-funded schools? (Doubtful). And how is it that something which is privately owned is called a "public school", in contrast to publicly (state) owned schools? This has always confused me. What does the "public" in that term refer to, and in contrast to what?
I say we just change the spelling and corresponding English pronunciation to the Greek version: Ouranos. Solves all your problems right there.
Alternatively, we could call it something like Urethra instead.
The best thing I can say about the portion of your reply that I didn't snip - is that its the least ignorant thing in four paragraphs. (And not by much.)
Ad hominiem attacks aside, I can't seem to make out what sort of position you're taking here. Are you agreeing, or disagreeing, that "citizens are born into their countries with no inherent rights besides whatever their government grants them at the time"? (I disagree with that statement) Or are you agreeing, or disagreeing, that that kind of conclusion follows from the bad logic of the post I was responding to? (I think it does).
You obviously don't think that I'm right, but what do you think is right?
One major difference: children are not adult workers entering into a consensual employee/employer relationship. Children are born into their families with no inherent rights except that to food, shelter, education and a decent upbringing to the best of their parents' ability. They do not have "rights" to privacy, speech, freedom of association or any of the basic civil rights adults enjoy. They live under the protection of their parents and therefore if the parents want to read their IM logs, that's their prerogative.
By that logic, citizens are born into their countries with no inherent rights besides whatever their government grants them at the time, and so long as they "choose" to live under the protection of that government (i.e. do not choose to uproot their entire lives and move somewhere else), it's the government's prerogative to meddle in the private affairs of it's citizens however it pleases. To anyone who supports the principles of liberty and constitutional democracy that most of the civilized world cherishes today, this is obviously wrong: people may have an obligation to obey their governments to some limited extent, but the governments conversely have an obligation to respect the rights and freedom of their citizens, and refrain from interfering except when absolutely necessary.
Our families are our models for government. The family is the most basic unit of society (i.e. the smallest and most primitive grouping of people). If we teach our kids that it's OK for their parents to monitor them constantly and meddle in their lives to whatever extent that they (the parents) see fit, then we're raising a generation of soon-to-be-adults who will not mind if their government does the same thing to them. If you wouldn't be happy with your government behaving a certain way toward you, you should seriously consider whether or not it's really OK for you to behave that way toward your kids. And vice versa: if it doesn't seem OK for a parent to do to their child, that raises some big red flags about whether it's OK for the government to do to it's citizens.
The role of parents is to use force only when necessary to keep their kids from *seriously* screwing something else up (i.e. punishing them for starting fights, vandalism, etc etc), and *educating* them about things which are dangerous to themselves. If those things really are bad for themselves, the kids will learn that yeah, mom and/or dad were right, that was a bad idea. If parents show a good track record of indicating bad things that the kids can verify with their own first-hand experience in the short-term, the kids will (rightly) be more inclined to trust them about the longer-term hazards that it takes years of experience to learn first-hand. But if the parents are full of shit and over-controlling, prohibiting things that don't really cause any harm, and meddling with and prying into their kids lives all the time, the kids will be less inclined to trust them about anything. Same way that the citizenry will learn to disregard the law entirely when the law is frequently baseless and unjust, but if the law is just and well-founded it will have many supporters.
Needless to say, all of this is solely regarding "children" of a conscious, verbal level of development, i.e. basically young impulsive inexperienced adults. When dealing with infants or toddlers who are actually incapable of really understanding what you tell them - not just perhaps inclined to disregard it - then obviously the same rules don't apply.
I don't think that there is a theory of gravity. We know gravity exists. We can quantify it. We have a law of gravity based on those observations. But laws are not theories. A theory of gravity would explain how gravity works. So far we have only hypothetical gravitons. When these and gravity waves are someday detected and quantified, then we may have a theory of gravity.
What we have evidence of is the apparent attraction between objects.
Aristotle explained a limited set of that evidence as the "natural motion" of various "elements" (i.e. the element of 'earth' naturally moves toward the center of the universe, which is the center of our planet Earth in his cosmology).
The Theory of Gravity (Newton's) explains this as the effect of some "spooky action at a distance". A lot of people early on didn't like it for that reason, because it was neither natural motion (which Newton showed to be straight lines) nor the mechanical application of force.
The Theory of General Relativity explains this as an effect of the geometry of space-time; objects once again just following their natural motion, straight lines, only now that we see space as curved, "straight" isn't really straight.
Various theories of quantum gravity attempt to explain this as the effect of the exchange of "gravitons", making gravity once again a "force" analogous to the electronuclear forces, facilitated through the exchange of quanta.
There are many explanations available for gravity. All of them are theories. Some of them are disproven. Others are well-tested and verified. Others aren't.
Oil companies claim the backers of Prop 87, some of them venture capitalists, would profit from state money flowing into the alternative-energy projects they are funding.
This just in: people who support proposed law think they somehow stand to benefit from said law. Film at 11.
Saying "yeah, of course YOU like that, it does good things for YOU!" is no argument against anything. You need to show that it also does bad things for someone else (or in the case of something tax-funded, where there's the automatic bad thing of costing us money, you need to show that it provides insufficient public benefit).
This is no more interesting than saying "Rich folk claim that welfare supporters, many of them poor, stand to benefit from such laws". Of COURSE they do. The question to the rest of us is, do WE benefit from THEIR benefit? If these VCs make money off of projects they fund which also benefit the rest of us, where's the loss?
Nature still abhors a vacuum. It's just that 0.000...0001% matter is the best she can do with the available resources.
I wrote a paper about this once.
The entire universe is "vacuum" if by "vacuum" you mean the absence of "solid, extended" matter.
Matter isn't solid. It's make of loosely bound atoms. Even atoms aren't solid. They're tiny nuclei surrounded by lots of "empty" space, filled only with infinitesimal electrons (i.e. point-particles, with a size of precisely zero) and the forces they exert. Those forces are what keep other atoms from occupying the same space, and what give the atoms the appearance of being solid. We all know that much around here.
But the nuclei themselves are composed of separate nucleons bound together by nuclear forces, and it's just those forces which keep nuclei from occupying the same space, same as the electromagnetic force keeps atoms "solid". Inside the nucleus is still more "empty" space.
But those nucleons themselves are just bundles of quarks held together by still different nuclear forces.
Quarks, however, are infinitesimal point-particles, just like electrons. They occupy no space; they're just points of zero extension.
Nothing in the universe is "extended", and things are only "solid" to the point that nothing below a certain energy threshold can overcome the forces keeping things out of a certain part of space, i.e. "solid" is relative. There's just infinitesimal point-particles and the interactions (forces) between them. The rest of it is "empty" space. Though as that space is universally permeated by the forces of those point-particles (there's electromagnetic fields, albiet sometimes very weak, everywhere in the universe), and has effects of it's own (e.g. gravity, which also permeates the entire universe), it can hardly be called empty.
Why do I get the feeling that some joke just went over my head?
And all it does is integrate into the window manager. Why would I want to ask the computer to open a window if I just want to ask a question? For instance, say I want to know what time it is. I can't just ask the computer, "Computer, what time is it?" Instead, I have to say, "Computer, open clock" and then read the time.
I don't know much about the present speech systems in OS X, but the older one in classic Mac OS had a "speakable items" folder that was mostly filled with AppleScripts. Speaking the name of any item in that folder would launch that item; if it was an AppleScript, it would do various thing. The system shipped with a number of useful scripts already built in: one of them was called "What time is it?", and all it did was speak (via TTS aka MacInTalk): "It's [current time]", e.g. "It's five oh four pee em." (Then again, I don't find this very useful because I've got a menubar clock, as all Macs have by default for ages, so it's quicker just to glance up there).
There was one really impressive script in that that would tell a number of interactive knock-knock jokes, called "Tell me a joke". So you'd say "Tell me a joke", and it would speak (via TTS) "Knock knock". A response of "Who's there?" would prompt it to select from a number of responses, and it would then listen for "[previous response] who?" after which it would deliver the appropriate punchline.
I just looked, and there is a Speakable Items folder and it has all this same functionality still. Runs a lot faster than it used to, too. Sweet.
Ah, I see... I wasn't disagreeing at all with the point you were making in your post. I agree that someone isn't going to switch operating systems when it's possible and easier to {change a part of their existing "extended OS" | use a different program on their existing "core OS"}.
I was just harping on a related point that, really, CD ripping (copying raw audio data from a CD) is just I/O and should be handled by the same file manager that lets you copy from any other disk/disc. Transcoding is not necessary and should be optional and handled by another program. Whether such another program ships with the OS or not, and whether or not that other program can also rip the data itself in one step, the regular file manager (which is a part of the [extended] OS) should be able to rip the raw data. If it can't and instead relies on another bundled program to do that, and that bundled program does undesirable things (like DRM-encrypting everything), then that can legitimately be considered an [extended] OS problem.
And a lot of [extended] OS problems like that may discourage someone from adopting such an [extended] OS in the first place (since average users buy extended OS packages; they don't buy or download kernels and install their own desktop environments), and may eventually even encourage someone to switch away from that line when upgrading e.g. to Vista.
"In effect, if Windows by default presumes WMP to be there and offloads functionality to it, then WMP issues are Windows issues."
Huh? How is a file manager associating file types with programs part of the OS?
I'm not saying associating filetypes with programs makes those programs part of the OS.
I'm saying that if, for example, Windows offloads all it's CD-handling capabilities to WMP, that WMP has in effect been made a part of the OS. Mind you that I'm speaking of "OS" in today's common terms, which includes the desktop and file manager and such; not the older more restricted sense of just the kernel and file system and drivers and such. A decent definition off the top of my head might be "the software which the user uses to see what data and programs are available on their computer, and which enables the storage and organization of that data and the execution of those programs".
To the same extent that Explorer was made a part of the OS when it essentially became Windows' file manager, if Windows is unable to handle CDs by itself in the regular file manager (i.e. if there's no way of accessing the data on an audio CD just through Explorer), but has to offload that to another program, and such a program ships with the OS, then that program is fulfilling an OS function (and perhaps other functions as well). That you can replace that program with another is nice, but doesn't change the fact that the OS is relying on the first program by default to do something that ought to be handled by the OS itself, and if such a program ships with the OS, I'd say that makes it a part of the OS. Thus, problems with that program are problems with the OS.
Note that the above is fraught with conditional statements; I'm still not entirely clear by your description if Windows does in fact behave this way. I'm just say "if it does, then..."