On the contrary, it's unfortunate that people have a religious or 'spiritual belief'. The rejection of reality for the teachings of the cult leaders is entirely self-consistent and internally logical. You're missing the point if you think that the particular flavour of hair-splitting rhetoric employed by one sect or another to reconcile reality with their particular flavour of insanity makes a difference. Know your enemy: ignorance and superstition.
I think you're saying something similar to a point I have made before about "figurative interpretation" of the Bible. If you're going to accept some book as fact, and use it as an authoritative source by which you justify your arguments and your behavior, then take the damn book as literal fact. To the word. Even if it makes you look like an idiot when it obviously contradicts reality. But if you're not gonna do that, and you think that what's in that book is somewhere between "utter bullshit" and "generally good but imperfect theories and advice", then great, no problem, say you agree or disagree with it for such-and-such reasons, but don't use it in itself to prove or justify anything. You can agree (to greater or lesser extent) with the Bible because you have good reasons for believing the things it says. Reasons other than "the Bible says so". If you've got such reasons, then state them and let people attack or defend them as they see fit and we'll all learn from it.
But for Pete's sake, don't try to do both things at once. You can't claim that this is the absolute infallible word of God, except you've got to ignore such-and-such part and understand the rest of it in this way in order to get to the REAL word of God. That just opens up tons of doors for claiming pretty much anything is the word of God, "cause see, it's written right here in the Bible, except it doesn't really mean what it looks like it says, it means this instead". Interpretation is great for historical reasons, studying the text to try to understand what the authors "really" meant, given the context they were writing in. Reading some such textual analysis with the history and context behind the writing has lead me to actually agree with many things in the Bible which, by how they're commonly read today, were so wrong that they had me downright anti-Christian earlier in my life. But such interpretation is never authoritative; it's always open to -[gasp]- interpretation. I like many of the analyses and interpretations I've seen because they let me see Christianity as something other than complete and utter hogwash, and understand why it got to popular in the first place, even amongst intellectuals of those times.
But I don't claim that those interpretations are authoritatively what the authors of the Bible *really* meant. I like to think it is, but maybe it's not. And it doesn't matter either way, because the facts about what the Bible "really" says have no effect on anything other than whether or not I agree with it. I hold my beliefs because I've got good reasons to hold them. Reasons other than that somebody else, or some book, said so. Reasons that could be challenged, and have been before. Those beliefs mesh well with what I think is the "true spirit" of the Bible, as it's authors originally meant it, but if that's not the "true spirit" of it then fine - turns out I don't really agree with that book then. Oh well. Unless this reinterpreted "correct" understanding presents some convincing new arguments (not just fiat statments, but real arguments, or at least angles I've not considered before), then I've got no reason to change my mind just because my understanding of some old book is now different than it was.
In short: if you're going to have blind faith, then keep the blindfold on and prepare to look like a blind fool with your inaccurate proclamations about the world you refuse to look at. Better still, take the blindfold off and come talk about this beautiful world we live in with the rest of us sighted folk. But don't walk around blindfolded, peeking just enough to keep from tripping over things, and proclaim that you really can see the world and you're no more blind than anyone else, while still babbling about the imaginary place in your head that bears little resemblance to the world we can all see.
"Terrorists" believe they are doing the right thing. We call them evil. They call us evil. It's easy to say that we're just right and they're just wrong, but they'd say the opposite. Really the truth lies in neither position since the concept of evil is both subjective and subject to proximity bias.
I'm wary about what you might mean by "the concept of evil is [...] subjective". Surely you're not making a claim of moral relativism here, i.e. that there is no single, universal, objective means of morally evaluating an action, and that morality is just an arbitrary social construct?
Certainly different people and cultures will think that different specific things are good or evil, but if "good" and "evil" have any real meaning then all of those claims must be either true or false. Thus if the opposing sides were to rationally discuss things critically and open-mindedly and clarify any confusion and misunderstanding between them, they would be able to agree on which of those statements are true and which are false, and thus, what is actually good or evil. Not that that is at all likely to happen, but you must admit that it would in principle be theoretically possible.
In such a discussion, one thing that would definitely need clarifying is what you mean by "us" and "them". The innocent civillians being blown up by terrorists certainly aren't evil (or better, put, haven't done evil deeds, since people aren't good or evil but rather their actions are). But then, neither are the vast majority of Arabs and other Middle-Eastern people (and hell, Americans as well) who are being adversely affected by the actions of the U.S. government. It's the people on both sides who are going around violently interfering with the lives of innocents who are "evil", and neither we (innocent Americans) nor they (innocent middle-easterners) deserve that violence.
Maybe, if people cared enough and were willing and able to communicate so well, all the innocents involved could join together to stop the criminals on both sides of this conflict. But as it is now, there's far too many people on both sides cheering on "their" respective team. That doesn't make them evil and deserving of death, but it's certainly a big road block in the resolution of any sort of conflict.
The reason this sort of "humans are naturally cruel" thinking disturbs me is that it justifies any sort of repressive behavior, in the name of "fixing" the cruelty of humans. In fact, the repressive behavior is what generates the cruelty, leading to a self perpetuating cycle.
Not only does repressive (I think you mean oppressive?) behavior generate cruelty, it does so because it *is* cruelty itself. All oppression is, deep down, is violence, or at least the threat of violence. And violence only breeds more violence. To some extent that reactive violence is OK: I can't rightly condemn fighting back in defense of yourself or others. But only to the extent that you match force for force; just enough fighting back, of the right kind, to stop the attack, and then no more. But the second you go beyond that into punitive or worse yet, preemptive violence, you're only perpetuating if not even escalating the cycle. There is of course need for preemption and punishment of violence, but the means to those ends ought not be more violence.
The whole thing reminds me of that bumper stick that reads "Why do we kill people who kill people to show them that killing people is wrong?"
This topic is particularly poignant to me today. I'm a 24 year old Philosophy major at UCSB with just over a year to go till my BA is done, an AA in Multimedia Arts and Technologies (MAT) already under my belt, and a (by now very outdated) Mac tech certification from Apple (I worked in a Mac shop before I decided to go to college). I had been planning to go into grad school to get a Master's in Education and be an elementary school teacher, but since I've been volunteering at schools I'm not so sure I want to work with little kids all my life, and (why this is poignant to me just now) I just found out that my grants aren't going to carry me through like I thought they would, and I'm not sure I really want to go into debt to go through grad school for a job that pays about as much as driving a truck for UPS does.
Before that, I had planned to be a video game designer (hence the AA in MAT), but good luck getting a job like that in this area, and I'm very attached to this part of the world.
As you can tell I'm all over the board, and definitely a generalist. I have no idea what I really want to do with my life. I want to do something creative (as in something where I can see progress in what I'm doing), I'm apparently very good at explaining things clearly (at least to people who want to listen), I'm very logical and organized and can write quite clearly and precisely, I'm very good at the mapping of one skill to another (which I've called "educated bullshitting"), and I love serving as a mediator or communications bridge between different people with different skills, objectives or opinions. But I hate trying to make people do things they don't want to (i.e. herding cats), I hate looking for busywork to do (though I love to keep on top of things and keep them clean and organized), I hate trying to sell (i.e. promote) myself, and I hate working under constant pressure (i.e. pervasive supervision and frequent status checkups). I want to fix problems as they come up, have people come to me with things that they need, and then be left alone to do them (unless I'm working with that person to help them). I especially hate the perverse incentive that I don't quite see a way to avoid, that if I work better and get stuff done I wind up with only more work to do, which escalates until I'm tired and stressed, giving me the incentive to take everything slowly instead, which just makes me bored.
In the capstone course for my MAT program, the dean of the department (who was the instructor for this class) acted as the "customer" for the class, who were to act as a design team and fulfill the "customer"'s requests. None of my particular skills were applicable to the projects that were assigned to us (I specialize in [still] graphic art and page layout, and the two projects were a promotional video project and the school's new internet radio station). But as other people on the projects would fail to get their parts done, I could half-ass something together from the skills I did have to fill in the gap that was left behind, and have it ready that day or the next. The dean told me at the end of class (much to my surprise!) that I was one of the most valuable people in there because I kept putting out the fires that came up, even though (at least so I thought) I wasn't really working nearly as hard as everyone else seemed to be.
So I'm at a place right now of trying to figure out what kind of job I can find that suits my skills and personality, and pays around $50k/yr so I can support a family. (I'm in a longterm relationship with the proverbial girl next door in my hometown nearby, which is largely why I'm so attached to this area). I'd love to fill the kind of role I did in that course, but I don't imagine there are a lot of job positions for that sort of thing. As a side-job right now, I help people with basic computer problems and teach them how to use various programs, but my expertise is mostly limited to Mac stuff and Adobe stuff because that's what I primarily use
It's basic sentence construction, yet they couln't manage it. And we wonder why they argument against the RIAA's tactics isn't being clearly heard.
There's a some complex verb and noun phrases there that are confusing you. Let me use parentheses to clarify:
"(the RIAA) has (wrought havoc) on (the lives of (many innocent Americans who, like Deborah Foster, have (been wrongfully prosecuted for illegal acts they did not commit))) for over a year".
Being-wrongly-prosecuted-for-illegal-acts-they-did -not-commit is the action that many-innocent-Americans-like-Deborah-Foster did, and is used to specify that group of people. The lives of those many-innocent-Americans are then the object of what the-RIAA did, which was wreaking-havoc; and the-RIAA did that for over a year.
Someone did something to (the things of (people who did something else) ) for over a year.
I see the point that you and a few other people are making. That it should be easier to get the majority to vote for change rather than stage an armed revolution. First I want to say, by revolution, I don't necessarily mean "armed" (even if I said it that way -don't think I did). It could just be sweeping reforms, constitutional ammendments (not a single proposed one in recent years is worthwhile though). Lastly... this is purely tongue-in-cheek. If the american people are truly indifferent like a heard of sheep, wouldn't it be easier kill the shepherd, then to try to convince the herd to come to a consensus on a new shepherd? You mention paralells between society and biology and evolution. When it comes to pack/herd leadership, isn't that normally the way? BTW I'm not advocating this, just saying. If some group came along and ousted the current government and it didn't have a negative impact on most people's lives (or even had a positive impact), I think they would remain just as indifferent. Wouldn't they?
Probably. This is why you can have coup after coup in some countries where the new leadership is just as bad as the old leadership, but it's "good enough" for the people (i.e. they're too indifferent to care) so nothing happens until a small armed group gets fed up and stages another coup. That's why I said that whatever eventually replaces the US probably won't be much better by design (by analogy, it's genetic [memetic?] code won't have changed much), it'll just be younger and fresher and look better for a while, until it starts dying of the same flaws that are bringing the US down.
I would be happy with a serious third party that addressed concerns important to me. Both parties are so entrenched and interested in really one thing keeping the status quo. I have this odd belief that the government that should have the most influence over my life should be the one closest to me (city/county), but I don't hold to the libertarian view that all government is evil. I like public parks, roads, schools etc. I believe somethings can be managed better at larger level (Networks, be it roads, electrical, information, and even insurance). I don't think government should get too involved what runs through the networks. It all seems like such common sense to me. Maybe some day soon I will author a manifesto, (er political platform) although I have not the least desire to be in politics.
Sounds like we've got similar political stances. I think "The Government" (which is really just "The People", so this is just a statement of ethics) should generally stay out of other people's business, aside from protecting them from each other and from emergencies, both personally and economically (this basically covers fire, medical, search and rescue, etc, as well as partial distribution of wealth for economic welfare). I envision an arrangement of minimally bureaucratic governmental units (one leader who is free to act on behalf of the group within constraint of the law, barring the disapproval of the rest of the group) starting with the very small (households or neighborhoods, which don't have a whole lot of governing to do), which then cluster into progressively larger federations on up to the global level (at which point it's a full time job), with jurisdiction falling to the lowest-level applicable group first (though you can appeal to higher-level groups in case you feel you've not met justice in the lower level group, or if are being abuse by it).
It also seems appropriate for networks (roads, power, data, etc) to be publicly owned and free for everyone to use, and I've been contemplating the concept of public banks and libraries/schools (the former store and transfer resources, the latter store and transfer information), but these are both a little hard to justify mandating from within my philosophical framework (though they could be optionally instituted within the system, and either way it doesn't rule out private networks, banks and libraries from operating).
Are you a US citizen? I don't mean to sound rude, but your post oozes with idealism and a certain lack in understanding of how US politics works. You seem to understand how its supposed to work, but it doesn't work this way. There are two political parties in power that for all intents and purposes might as well be one. They do a really good job of keeping all the power to themselves and locking out any independants/third parties. They both claim to have differing agendas (and to a small degree actually do), but when it comes to anyone proposing some real change it won't happen. The US is in need of a revolution something to streamline and open the government. You call american voters indifferent, wouldn't you be indifferent if your only choices were coke and pepsi and you really wanted something altogether different than a cola?
You are correct that we definitely need a more streamlined and open government, and you give good reason why the American people are indifferent. Certainly a different governmental structure could encourage more active political participation from the general population.
But I don't see how this makes the GP idealist. His point still stands - by far the easiest way to effect political change would be to do so by a simple vote. Consider that in order to effectively stage any sort of real revolution, you would still have to convince huge masses of people to get up off their asses and actually do something. Something that would probably pose a significantly greater risk of, at the very least, disrupting their comfortable lives in some way. It would be far, far easier to convince those swaths of people to just go to the polls and vote than to take up arms against their government or even stage a mass demonstration in protest of the government.
One way or another, you're going to need to motivate a lot of people to do something in order to get things changed. Some things are easier to motivate people to do than others. Of all the productive things you could try motivating people to do, voting is probably the easiest. But nothing's going to happen while the vast majority of Americans continue to lead fairly comfortable lives. The government's got to get a lot worse before it's worth people's time and efforts to change it rather than just deal with it.
Social evolution is a lot like biological evolution. There's a lot of species out there with some pretty significant design flaws, because there's no real environmental pressure for those flaws to be weeded out. They're good enough, they can survive, that's all evolution requires. Likewise, there's not enough social pressure for there to be significant change in the government, or rather, in the way government in general is done. Maybe we've got some critical flaw(s) in our society that will eventually destroy it, but I'll bet you that what comes after (it's offspring, by analogy) won't be significantly better by design. Just younger and less decrepit. But it'll get old and ugly eventually too.
Modern democracy and a mostly-capitalist mixed economy is a pretty good system of government. I could easily think of a better one, but the marginal benefits of such improvements aren't likely to be enough for such a system to supplant the modern democracy as the dominant species of government in the world, at least not until some new sort of pressure comes along to change the situation. Who knows, maybe this new "global terrorism" thing, or the proliferation of "weapons of mass destruction" in "rogue states", or some technological revolution, will apply that sort pressure. Only time will tell.
The key is that those fat, lazy, apathetic people who, like you apparently, don't feel their vote count, get up and vote out the incumbents. Once the incumbents are removed, if things don't improve, vote out the ones you just put in. Keep doing that until the message sinks in.
The problem here is that you can't simply vote someone out of office. You have to vote someone else IN.
I imagine you might get a much larger voter turnout if you were allowed to vote either FOR or AGAINST, rather than just FOR or not voting. It seems evident to me that people don't really care who's in charge if who's in charge doesn't fuck things up too much, which is largely why people don't research who is running and go out and vote for someone, but rather just sit around and bitch about why they don't like the guy who's running the show right now (or don't bitch if things are going well). Thus it seems people are much more likely to say either "I hate [incumbent] and want his ass out" or "everything is going fine", rather than "I like [challenger] and approve of his platform and strategies". The latter type of opinion takes too much work for the average person to bother forming one. The former type of opinion - a simple "things are fine" or "I don't like it" - is much easier for the average person to think, and so might motivate them to actually go out and vote their mind.
So if we had the option to cast either a positive or negative vote, I imagine you'd get a lot of negative votes for the two big parties (since many, though of course not all, supporters of the two big parties often define themselves by opposition to the other party, more than support of what their own party values). This would have a net effect of giving third parties a much better fighting chance. Just look at the whole "anybody but Bush" sentiment out there. Something like this could work and break the two-party oligarchy.
Which is precisely why you'll never see it implemented.
Just ask your self this question, which game would more likely entice a player who enjoys an expensive glass of wine while he/she plays video games.
I enjoy wine while gaming and I was the webmaster of Myth.Bungie.Org for most of it's existence. Myst, on the other hand, was pretty pictures and a novel story wrapped up in a boring game.
Please explain to me how the existence of the GPLv3 will prevent developers from licensing their software under the GPLv2.
Please explain to me how someone copying my code and using it in a closed-source project makes my original project less free. The issue here (with "v2 or later" licensed projects at least, where a project may be forked and re-licensed under v3) is the same.
If you want to free your code, then really free it - just declare it public domain. Sure, someone could take a copy of that and do something with it you don't want, including adding some changes and compiling a binary and selling that binary and then burning their copy of the code with the changes before anyone can see it. So? YOUR CODE IS STILL FREELY AVAILABLE. They didn't do anything to your code. You made it free, and someone else copying it, peppering some of their code own in and doing whatever they want with it doesn't make your original code any less free.
The whole point of the GPL is to control what people may or may not do with your code - to take away certain freedoms "for the greater good". GPLv3 is just taking that even further, as the GP said. And if your solution to these concerns is basically "what's the problem, your project is still GPLv2 licensed even if someone makes a GPLv3 fork", then by that same line of reasoning... what's the problem with non-copyleft licenses, your code is still public domain, even if someone else makes a closed source fork.
Capital rewards those who already have capital. That was the whole revolutionary idea behind it... use money to make money. While the "grow the pie" aspect of that is all fine and dandy in theory, in practice the problem that underlies both a patent-laden and patent-less capitalist economy is that the big guy (he who already has wealth) can use what he's already got to keep the little guy from getting anywhere.
Don't get me wrong, I'm highly against all sorts of "intellectual property" laws. There's no ethical justification behind applying force or coercion (which of course is what backs all laws) to control what information people are allowed to use. But the problems that both patents and copyright are trying to circumvent (trademarks are more of an anti-fraud thing really) are problems with raw, unadulterated capitalism. It seems to me that the proper solution to these problems is to patch the bugs in "pure" capitalism, rather than trying to apply ad-hoc solutions to particular economic problems like the funding of arts and sciences (which is theoretically what intellectual property right laws strive to do).
(And before some right-winger or anarcho-capitalist comes along and calls me a goddamned commie, please note that I'm not at all calling for the abolition of a free market economy, but rather for some of the sane checks and balances and caveats that the founders of what would come to be called capitalism, people like Smith and Locke, advocated all along).
...as soon as the sun collapses we'll get sucked into a blackhole...
Just a nitpick, but that's not how collapsing stars work. For one, our sun is too small to form a black hole upon it's death. For that to happen, a star must first collapse to a white dwarf, which then fades out to a brown dwarf, as fusion brings the elementary make-up of the star toward iron. Then, the mass of the star must still be great enough to overcome the fact that iron (and heavier elements) don't fuse, at least not in the normal sense: but if crushed together hard enough, it can fuse into neutronium, releasing massive amount of energy in a supernova and ejecting a lot of heavy elements with it. Then, if what's left over (a neutron star) is still massive enough, it will continue to collapse on itself into a black hole.
Our sun probably won't get past the brown dwarf stage. It'll just fizzle out.
But even if it did collapse to a black hole (and the Earth etc weren't destroyed by the red giant stage, much less the later supernova), things in orbit around it wouldn't suddenly spiral into the hole, because it still has the same mass as the original star (less actually, since the supernova ejects a lot of matter). If you could somehow forcibly crush the sun into a black hole right now, containing any subsequent novae and keeping all the mass that would normally be lost in the process, then Earth and all the other planets would keep orbiting just like they do now. It'd just be very dark.
Marathon is also from that era. You're just saying the same thing I am: portals trickery isn't new. But this particular new application of it is kinda neat.
No, you could even have a 360-degree flat loop that didn't intersect itself. And a hallway with a 270-degree bend *would* overlap itself; if you came down a real-world hall, and then it curved around 270 degrees, it would have to either dead-end when it hit the wall of it's earlier segment, or intersect that segment.
Bungie's Marathon series used a portals-based (though still "2.5D") engine way back in the day, and there were plenty of maps which used made use of what we called "5D space" (two different rooms occupying the same 3D space at the same time, yet not actually being the same room). I know this isn't precisely what the article is talking about, but it's still an application of portals technology for the purposes of interesting gameplay. One of the maps that shipped with the first game was even called "5D space", and was basically a maze that folded around and intersected itself. You could run around a 270-degree curve of hallway on level ground and not intersect the same bit of hallway you were travelling down before you hit the curve...
What does "center-seeking" mean? There is no "center" between being a Statist and being Anarcho-capitalist. Either you think freedom requires the State or it doesn't. There is no "center" there.
Statist is not the proper antonym for anarchist. One can fully support anarchistic ethics (that people ought to be free to do whatever they want so long as they're not doing unto others as those others don't want) and at the same time support any of a variety of methods of ENFORCING such ethics.
You could leave it up to each individual to defend his or her rights; that is, if someone is mugging you, nobody else is under any sort of obligation to help you, and if you fail to defend yourself, tough. This is the crazy kind of anarchy that just doesn't work, because it simply turns into a case of might-makes-right, and unless every single person in contact with this society adheres perfectly to anarchistic ethics, someone who doesn't adhere to such a system will eventually find it advantageous to coerse other people and then you'll wind up with tyranny. That's why this kind of anarchy doesn't work: it's unstable and self-defeating, the system incapable of defending itself against violations.
Alternatively, you could keep a powerful centralized state authority (appointed or elected by whatever means: monarchy, democracy, republic, whatever), and use that to enforce anarchist ethics. This, as I understand it, is basically what Libertarians advocate: keep a strong state in place, but have the laws that that state enforces be simply protection of people and property. This is fairly close to what the founders of the United States were going after too. The problem with this, as we have seen, is that the centralized state is basically in the same position as a powerful individual in the earlier kind of anarchy, and if it decides to diverge from anarchist ethics, it can start grabbing up power and you start moving toward tyranny again. This system too is eventually self-defeating.
Yet another method, which I advocate, is that the responsibility to enforce the law by left up to each and every individual, but that those individuals are not only responsible for their own defense, but for the defense of everyone else in their group as well. I basically hold that in order for freedom to exist, people must uphold not only the responsibility to respect each other, but also to defend each other. In short, coersive or violent force is only and always not only justified, but DEMANDED in response to others' force, even if the force of those others was directed at an individual other than yourself. To keep such a system managable on scales larger than a simple tribe, I advocate that people organize into self-selecting groups of managable size (this would be like a household or a neighborhood block) under a single leader, who is given the extra responsibility of being that group's dedicated peacekeeper (mediator, policeman, etc), and in exchange is given the right to act on behalf of the group as a whole (pending the approval of the group, i.e. the group can hold an approval vote on a prospective action or on a decision already made, and force the leader to do / not do something on their behalf). The leader is also responsibile for representing the group to other groups; these groups then forms larger groups of groups, with the leaders of those larger groups having the responsibility of mediating and policing inter-group conflicts (and coordinating the collective actions of the leaders of the sub-groups to that end). And so on and so on as far up as you need to go to have a managable number of members in all groups of all levels.
It may be useful to visualize not the typical two-dimensional Nolan chart of political orientation, but rather a three-dimensional one. Two dimensions are the standard interpersonal and economic axis of permissiveness/restrictiveness. The third axis regards who enforces the law: radically centralized, radically decentralized, or a more moderate system like the one I've just described. Fo
Not that it really matters for anything, but I can vouce that Spun and Dada are not the same person. Or at least, if they are it's an extremely well-constructed ruse. Dada has been on my Friends list since an interesting conversation I had with him a while back about theism, and as such, he gets +1 moderation in my preferences (not because I agree with him, which I often don't, but because he has some interesting ideas and tries to back them up well). Thus threads with a lot of him in them grab my attention, and I noticed the thread where he met Spun, who is also Friended.
So, if this is a ruse it's been well executed in public and it's been going on for a while. Parsimoniously, I'm inclined to conclude that Spun and Dada are actually separate people. And even if they're not... the one person behind it seems pretty interesting to me, and I'm curious what his actual position is, if any.
centerpedal.... No, it doesn't. You probably added it to the dictionary by accident.
Hmm... aha. This machine's spellcheck is set to "Multilingual". Apparently centerpedal is OK in Australian English, but not British, Canadian or American.
The C should go: the khurkh's wouldn't have khapels and we could buy everything real kheep?
Ch is a different sound than either Sh or Kh. Ch is more of an unvoiced J; a "Tsh" sound (where as J is a "Dzh" sound). So you'd be buying tsheep tshutsh thsapels instead. Kheep khurkh khaples are only available on Qonos and in Khazad-dum. But given that we do have a letter for the Dhz sound (J), I wouldn't too strongly object to keeping C around for use as a Tsh sound, ala "ceep curc capels".
Not hardly, if the c is removed, what about the q? kwik, I have an idea on this kwiz?
I agree. Q is another letter that must be done away with to get phonetic spelling. Same as X. All are phonetically redundant.
No thanks. The additional letters and strange exceptions to spelling rules help when writing. It helps clarify meanings when you have homonyms and homographs. If we could get rid of those two phenomena, then I would be happy with the idea of simplified spelling, but then you would also not be speaking English or any other language I know of.
Here you have a point. However, as others have suggested, it may be possible to distinguish homonyms in writing the same way as we do in speech: context. That's not an ideal situation though, and in response to it language would eventually shift to using different synonyms to avoid the use of confusing homonyms, and possibly the words themselves would be modified as well (either compounded with other words or changed in pronunciation) to no longer be homonyms at all. In fact I'd suggest that in some cases differences in spelling be preserved between what are now homonyms, particularly when those words used to be non-homonyms, and as a new generation grows up with phonetic spelling, our present homonym pronunciation will seem an incorrect but understandable older accent (the same way most English speakers don't consider "sauce" a homonym of "source", even though some accents pronounce it that way; and we can still understand such accents).
You're right though, the resulting language wouldn't quite be modern English. It would be some new dialect of English. And I don't think such a change can be practically forced, since there's no international standards body that keeps the English language spec up to date, and even if there were, not everyone would comply with it (witness the futility of some efforts of the French Academy, whose proper French name I won't even try to write). Nevertheless, some understandable phonetic shift is occurring in modern English (mostly the dropping of "gh", ala night -> nite, through -> thru, etc). And on the internet, the substitution of K for hard-C is prevalent as well. We jst hav 2 mak shur it duznt hapn in adhoc incnsistnt n incomprehensabl wayz k lolz, or goez in da rong direx1onz0rz wit xtra xex n sht lollercopter.:-D
But speliing somthiing laiik this is no problem for mii. Just meiik shuur yuu're konsistent abouut it - e.g. use double-vowels for proper long vowels and singles for shorts, diphthongs for sounds like "A" as in "bake" or "I" as in "bike", drop silent 'e's and doubled consonants since you no longer need them for vowel differentiation, and all those consonant changes we've been talking about. Of course, pronouncing that sentence the way I wrote it phonetically wouldn't be precisely the way that I personally pronounce things, e.g the "abouut" is a bit closer to a Canadian than my Californian accent, but I don't claim my accent to be the be-all end-all of pronunciation either.
I agree that such spelling makes more sense for appending prefixes and suffixes. However, shouldn't you then pronounce the word "sent-reh" instead of "sent-er"? Or is the trailing 'e' silent, and the 'er' sound just a vowel-less 'r'? Silent letters are evil.
A truly sensible language needs spelling that reflects pronunciation (or vice-versa, e.g. dictionary shouldn't be spelled 'dikshunary'; people should learn to dictate properly and articulate the 'tion' [ala 'tyon'] sound instead of slurring it into "shun". Though I agree that damn letter 'c' has to go - we already have 's' and 'k').
So back to your point, I'd say the words should either be spelled and pronounced "centerpedal", "centerfuge", etc, or the stem should be pronounced and spelled "sent-reh" instead.
(Incidentally, OS X's spellchecker thinks centerpedal is a real word).
Because the GPL doesn't say that you must distribute the source with every coppy. It just says that you must make it available. Putting a notice on your program that tell where you can download the source from is ok (it must be from some place that you control if you make commercial use of the software).
Alright, that makes sense. Same thing if I allow its inclusion in a CD somewhere... so long as some link says "download here", and "here" is a server I control, it's fine? New question then... what exactly is "control"? I've got FTP access to a web space that a friend is kind enough to grant me, and that's what I use for hosting this project's website. If he decides to be a dick and pull that from me, am I now violating the GPL?
Well, if you lost the source, and can't get it again, you can't distribute. All the code that you distributed without the source for the last 3 years is also ilegal, althougt it is hard that you get in trouble for that.
I'm not actually, pragmatically concerned about getting in trouble for anything. All the developers of this project are also friends of mine, as the Marathon community is very small and tightly knit (although the original source was contributed by the original authors of Marathon, Bungie, who are now owned my Microsoft... so hey, Microsoft does have a GPL'd product out there).
I'm just bothered academically that it is possible to get into legal trouble for something like that happening. It's not likely to affect me so I'm not really worried about it, but that I (or anyone) could, hypothetically, technically be liable for events like that is bothersome.
Well, "from SourceForge" is some quite apropriate description of how to get the source if they gave you the link to their project. You don't need to do something better on your project (see the first question). You can't really claim that the source is not available to you, because it is.
I'm not claiming that the source isn't available to me or that I would be technically unable to do anything with it. Just that, if I were to have it, I wouldn't know what to do with it - I wouldn't even know how to compile the program, I'm not even sure if I have the tools to do so on my machine - so I haven't even bothered to look up where exactly to get the code from. I'm not at all interested in the code, I haven't looked at the code, I haven't compiled binaries from the code, and I certainly haven't modified the code. I downloaded a binary of the program and I use it, unmodified (though I would like to rename the binary file and put custom icons on it for aesthetics sake), to run content that I'm giving away for free.
I don't want to be responsible for having to obtain a copy of the source and keep it around in case someone else that I'm giving free stuff to wants it. It seems reasonable that I should be able to say "I got this straight from here" (or rather, just keep the documentation that says "this came from here" with it), and leave it at that. If the GPL doesn't allow that, I see that as a fault. Not that there's anything I or even the current maintainers can do about that though, without getting all the contributors (including Bungie, who I hear are very busy with some Halo game or something) to relicense their code with such an exception.
Now, if you are selling their program bundled with your... you are selling their program. So you are responsible for it. If you are not commercialy redistributing their program, you don't need to redistribute the source, just point to their repository.
I'm not selling it. I'd be giving it away, packaged in the same zip file as other stuff of my own that I'm also giving away. There's not even ads on the site (Bungie.org is completely ad-free, funded entirely by our gracious host Claude, just because he's a die-hard old-school Bungie fan who happens to run a web design and hosting company). 100% not-for-profit art for the art's sake.
So given that that's the case, you think it's OK for me to distribute the u
No (I don't have to put copies of the application source on the common Marathon-mod sites as well).
Why not? How is that different from putting it up on my own web space or distributing it on a CD? (Whereas in both those cases I'm told I do have to include the source or at least a promise to share it upon request).
Ehm, since it is a GPLed game, in a case like this you can always get another copy of the source code from the original author.
And what if they're unavailable now? Or what if they go offline before I ask them for a copy of the source... am I now forbidden from distributing what I've got? Are they now in trouble for distributing a binary without the code being available?
They can distribute the binaries without having the source because they do not modify the software in any way.
That's what I'm doing as well. I *couldn't* modify it if wanted too. I haven't even seen the source. I don't know where to get it beyond "from SourceForge" somehow. I just downloaded the binary and put it, unmodified, in a folder with my stuff. (I'd like to rename that binary file and paste a custom icon on it, but I don't have to). I'm not compiling anything on my own system (hence why I'm not sure how I would "include the source to my changes" if I had renamed it and pasted a custom icon). So why must I be responsible for passing on code I've never seen and don't care to see, any more than the sites that host my files would be? (Though from other people's responses, it would seem that you're incorrect that they're not responsible, anyway).
Releasing the game content under GPL isn't my concern. I'm giving that away nearly public domain anyway.
My problem is with having to host the source code for a project that I'm only really a user of. I make content for use in this program, content without which the program is useless (and a program without which my content is useless), and which, if everything were unencumbered by licences, would rightly be bundled together with a copy of the program. How many commercial or even freeware games do you find that require you to first get a separate game engine from somewhere else? Not many; since game and content are useless without each other, they're pretty much always bundled. But the GPL puts an annoying burden on people who aren't developing software at all but want to include the needed software with their projects.
For a hobbyist like me, that could be quite annoying. I suppose I could host a copy of the source on my site, but then, I want to put the file up on the common Marathon-mod sites or other such sites too. Do I have to put copies of the application source on those sites as well? What if they don't have a category for "game engine source"? Then it's back to bundling the source files with the game, which is (as per my analogy) like handing instructions on the chemical composition of the plastic bottles I'm using to everyone I serve my fruit punch too. It's a hassle to me and the people I want to give things to. I'm not making any modifications to the code at all, I haven't even downloaded it, I just downloaded binaries so I could run the content I made. The original project is still there, with the code and the binaries where I got them from. It seems like in a case like this there should be some leeway for these such uses, and it's a problem with the GPL that there isn't.
And further, even if I were just to include a note with the project saying "I will post you a copy of the source on CD if you want it", how stringent must I be over here about making absolutely sure that I've got the source still backed up somewhere? If my HD dies and I don't have backups (which it almost did just recently... starting to keep some backups now), must I then stop all distribution of the project everywhere that it's online? Or since I've already put it up on a bunch of other people's websites (with this note), is that then in their hands? What if I could access the site through some web interface and remove the files, must I then do that? And if not, must I contact the site owners and tell THEM to stop distribution? Could they even have distributed it in the first place without first taking me up on my offer to send them a copy of the source? So I couldn't even upload it to such sites unless it was included in the same package, or the site agreed to host a copy of it themselves?
Wasn't the whole point of the GPL supposed to be freedom? This seems awfully restrictive to me.
I'm a hobbyist mod-maker for the ~10yo FPS game Marathon, the engine for which is now GPL'd, spawning the Aleph One project. I've got a near-total conversion mod in progress right now (don't worry about the "near" part, the original game content is also free game for such purposes now), and for the ease of my potential players, I'd really like to include the application program, renamed and with a custom icon (as has been traditional practice for Marathon mod-makers of the pre-Aleph days), in my download. Since Marathon was originally a Mac game, Aleph One requires no "installation" (at least on Mac and Windows); you just download a.zip of the program, put it in a folder with your choice of game files, and play. So including the app with my mod would mean players just download and go, no other downloads or installation necessary. (And yes, players of other Marathon mods do actually get confused by the three-step process of downloading the game, downloading the engine, and putting the two together).
However, I found out not long ago that I can't do that without distributing all the source, including that for my modifications. Nevermind how to distribute what little I modified in "source"; I renamed the files in the Finder and copied some icon graphics into the app package, what's the source to that? Nevermind that I couldn't code my way out of "hello world"; even if I wanted to ship a completely unmodified binary, I'm not even sure how to get the source to it, much less how to distribute it properly.
I'm basically a user of this software, but a developer of art content that is symbiotic with it. A game engine is useless without game content and vice versa; the two are really things that ought to be packaged together. But developers of game content, especially amateurs like me, are quite often not developers of software. They just use the software to present their content.
I think the GPL causes significant problems in cases like these. Another example I could imagine would be an open-source installer program or self-extracting archive maker (not that many things use these anymore, probably for this very reason): if you want to use that installer to ship your stuff, must you also distribute the source to the installer? Even if what you're shipping has nothing to do with the installer, other than that it installs whatever it is you're shipping? Must you ship an "installer package" and make people download the installer separately if they don't already have it? So, self-extracting archives are not feasible under the GPL, since everyone who used one would have to distribute the source to the archive-maker as well?
I'm sure this will probably get a lot of "that's what the license says, if you don't like it don't use it" responses, but I'm just trying to point out that the GPL as it stands is not appropriate for the distribution of all types of applications (like game engines or self-installer programs), even when it is otherwise appropriate for the projects that develop those programs, and thus I think the GPL could use some modifications to allow for such reasonable uses.
The GPL seems to assume that everyone is, or at least ought to be, a software developer and/or distributor. But I think I've shown that there are some cases where software is only incidentally distributed by people who have and want nothing to do with the development or distribution of software, but rather, things that use that software. An apt analogy might be if some bottle-maker distributed instructions on how to make such bottles (i.e. chemical ingredients and such) with every bottle, and insisted that anyone who make and sell copies of those bottles also include those instructions. Maybe you've got an ingenious bottle plastic formula and want it open to the world and not patented or exploited by Coca-Cola for profit; that's fine and dandy. But does that mean I can't serve
Another possible technical way to go would be for me to me to ask your provider for priority in exchange for a fee. That would allow me to video-conference with you on your current connection because your provider and mine have collaborated to provide end-to-end QoS for an additional fee.
But we have to have net neutrality, so that whole range of services is basically illegal.
That's my technical objection to network neutrality.
My objection to that sort of solution, from a consumer's point of view, is that I don't want anybody else out there determining what gets priority at my end of the connection. What if I want to tune in to your video conference feed but don't want it to have highest priority over my end of the network? What if I'm running a file server or something that I don't want squashed by the massive amount of bandwidth your video feed would take if it was given preemptive preference? But I still want to be able to see your video feed...
More in this vein is the concern everybody keeps raising that, for example, Cox customers (like me) might start getting crappy connections to YouTube because Google Video is paying more for priority over Cox's network, or vice versa. What if I think Google Video is shit and want YouTube to have higher priority? (All examples are fake, BTW - I'm not a big user of either). Both Google and YouTube are paying for a certain speed connection on their end and I'm paying for a certain speed connection on my end, and since both of their connections could easily saturate mine a hundred times over, I expect that if I'm doing nothing but looking at my preferred site, I will get it at full speed over my connection. I shouldn't get crappy speeds with YouTube because Google is Cox's Preferred Video Partner or any such.
Which is basically where the big concern comes from, with non-web services like VOIP or IPTV. People worry that Cox's preferred VOIP partner (or subsidiary) will get highest priority VOIP traffic over Cox's network, and thus people who want to use a competing service will get crap connections, allowing Cox to effectively leverage their near-monopoly power to get more near-monopoly power in a different market. Right now, cable and phone companies (Cox and Verizon in my area) have monopolies on phone and cable, respective, and almost complete power over internet connectivity, in that there's basically only those who options. But now, high-speed internet is opening up a lot of competition for both the phone and cable companies themselves with voice and video services over the Internet, and that worries both the phone companies and the cable companies, and yet at the same time makes them see dollar signs.
Imagine if Cox could create it's own VOIP service or partner with an existing VOIP provider, give it highest priority on their network, and effectively become another local phone company competing with, in my area, Verizon. Ka-ching, more power for Cox. Or if Verizon could create or partner with an IPTV or other internet video service, give them top priority on their network, and compete against Cox's TV business. Both cable and phone companies are trying to work this angle as "look, allowing us to tier the network will create more competition for phone and TV companies!", but what they mean is "it will allow us to be more competitive against our major competitor's other areas of business". But at the same time, while trying to gain competitive advantages for themselves against each other, they're squashing the ability for even more competition to flourish.
Which is what this is really all about. It's about consumer choice. I've no problem with Cox or Verizon or whoever giving VOIP or IPTV traffic higher priority than web or ftp traffic. It's more lag-sensitive, and it needs better throughput to give adequate quality results. What I object to is what is effectively monopoly bundling of services. Instead of being free to choose what VOIP or IPTV service I want, if I want decent quality I'll have to go with the one that pays
Slashdot Mirror
On the contrary, it's unfortunate that people have a religious or 'spiritual belief'. The rejection of reality for the teachings of the cult leaders is entirely self-consistent and internally logical. You're missing the point if you think that the particular flavour of hair-splitting rhetoric employed by one sect or another to reconcile reality with their particular flavour of insanity makes a difference. Know your enemy: ignorance and superstition.
I think you're saying something similar to a point I have made before about "figurative interpretation" of the Bible. If you're going to accept some book as fact, and use it as an authoritative source by which you justify your arguments and your behavior, then take the damn book as literal fact. To the word. Even if it makes you look like an idiot when it obviously contradicts reality. But if you're not gonna do that, and you think that what's in that book is somewhere between "utter bullshit" and "generally good but imperfect theories and advice", then great, no problem, say you agree or disagree with it for such-and-such reasons, but don't use it in itself to prove or justify anything. You can agree (to greater or lesser extent) with the Bible because you have good reasons for believing the things it says. Reasons other than "the Bible says so". If you've got such reasons, then state them and let people attack or defend them as they see fit and we'll all learn from it.
But for Pete's sake, don't try to do both things at once. You can't claim that this is the absolute infallible word of God, except you've got to ignore such-and-such part and understand the rest of it in this way in order to get to the REAL word of God. That just opens up tons of doors for claiming pretty much anything is the word of God, "cause see, it's written right here in the Bible, except it doesn't really mean what it looks like it says, it means this instead". Interpretation is great for historical reasons, studying the text to try to understand what the authors "really" meant, given the context they were writing in. Reading some such textual analysis with the history and context behind the writing has lead me to actually agree with many things in the Bible which, by how they're commonly read today, were so wrong that they had me downright anti-Christian earlier in my life. But such interpretation is never authoritative; it's always open to -[gasp]- interpretation. I like many of the analyses and interpretations I've seen because they let me see Christianity as something other than complete and utter hogwash, and understand why it got to popular in the first place, even amongst intellectuals of those times.
But I don't claim that those interpretations are authoritatively what the authors of the Bible *really* meant. I like to think it is, but maybe it's not. And it doesn't matter either way, because the facts about what the Bible "really" says have no effect on anything other than whether or not I agree with it. I hold my beliefs because I've got good reasons to hold them. Reasons other than that somebody else, or some book, said so. Reasons that could be challenged, and have been before. Those beliefs mesh well with what I think is the "true spirit" of the Bible, as it's authors originally meant it, but if that's not the "true spirit" of it then fine - turns out I don't really agree with that book then. Oh well. Unless this reinterpreted "correct" understanding presents some convincing new arguments (not just fiat statments, but real arguments, or at least angles I've not considered before), then I've got no reason to change my mind just because my understanding of some old book is now different than it was.
In short: if you're going to have blind faith, then keep the blindfold on and prepare to look like a blind fool with your inaccurate proclamations about the world you refuse to look at. Better still, take the blindfold off and come talk about this beautiful world we live in with the rest of us sighted folk. But don't walk around blindfolded, peeking just enough to keep from tripping over things, and proclaim that you really can see the world and you're no more blind than anyone else, while still babbling about the imaginary place in your head that bears little resemblance to the world we can all see.
"Terrorists" believe they are doing the right thing. We call them evil. They call us evil. It's easy to say that we're just right and they're just wrong, but they'd say the opposite. Really the truth lies in neither position since the concept of evil is both subjective and subject to proximity bias.
I'm wary about what you might mean by "the concept of evil is [...] subjective". Surely you're not making a claim of moral relativism here, i.e. that there is no single, universal, objective means of morally evaluating an action, and that morality is just an arbitrary social construct?
Certainly different people and cultures will think that different specific things are good or evil, but if "good" and "evil" have any real meaning then all of those claims must be either true or false. Thus if the opposing sides were to rationally discuss things critically and open-mindedly and clarify any confusion and misunderstanding between them, they would be able to agree on which of those statements are true and which are false, and thus, what is actually good or evil. Not that that is at all likely to happen, but you must admit that it would in principle be theoretically possible.
In such a discussion, one thing that would definitely need clarifying is what you mean by "us" and "them". The innocent civillians being blown up by terrorists certainly aren't evil (or better, put, haven't done evil deeds, since people aren't good or evil but rather their actions are). But then, neither are the vast majority of Arabs and other Middle-Eastern people (and hell, Americans as well) who are being adversely affected by the actions of the U.S. government. It's the people on both sides who are going around violently interfering with the lives of innocents who are "evil", and neither we (innocent Americans) nor they (innocent middle-easterners) deserve that violence.
Maybe, if people cared enough and were willing and able to communicate so well, all the innocents involved could join together to stop the criminals on both sides of this conflict. But as it is now, there's far too many people on both sides cheering on "their" respective team. That doesn't make them evil and deserving of death, but it's certainly a big road block in the resolution of any sort of conflict.
The reason this sort of "humans are naturally cruel" thinking disturbs me is that it justifies any sort of repressive behavior, in the name of "fixing" the cruelty of humans. In fact, the repressive behavior is what generates the cruelty, leading to a self perpetuating cycle.
Not only does repressive (I think you mean oppressive?) behavior generate cruelty, it does so because it *is* cruelty itself. All oppression is, deep down, is violence, or at least the threat of violence. And violence only breeds more violence. To some extent that reactive violence is OK: I can't rightly condemn fighting back in defense of yourself or others. But only to the extent that you match force for force; just enough fighting back, of the right kind, to stop the attack, and then no more. But the second you go beyond that into punitive or worse yet, preemptive violence, you're only perpetuating if not even escalating the cycle. There is of course need for preemption and punishment of violence, but the means to those ends ought not be more violence.
The whole thing reminds me of that bumper stick that reads "Why do we kill people who kill people to show them that killing people is wrong?"
You, sir, have just been Friended.
This topic is particularly poignant to me today. I'm a 24 year old Philosophy major at UCSB with just over a year to go till my BA is done, an AA in Multimedia Arts and Technologies (MAT) already under my belt, and a (by now very outdated) Mac tech certification from Apple (I worked in a Mac shop before I decided to go to college). I had been planning to go into grad school to get a Master's in Education and be an elementary school teacher, but since I've been volunteering at schools I'm not so sure I want to work with little kids all my life, and (why this is poignant to me just now) I just found out that my grants aren't going to carry me through like I thought they would, and I'm not sure I really want to go into debt to go through grad school for a job that pays about as much as driving a truck for UPS does.
Before that, I had planned to be a video game designer (hence the AA in MAT), but good luck getting a job like that in this area, and I'm very attached to this part of the world.
As you can tell I'm all over the board, and definitely a generalist. I have no idea what I really want to do with my life. I want to do something creative (as in something where I can see progress in what I'm doing), I'm apparently very good at explaining things clearly (at least to people who want to listen), I'm very logical and organized and can write quite clearly and precisely, I'm very good at the mapping of one skill to another (which I've called "educated bullshitting"), and I love serving as a mediator or communications bridge between different people with different skills, objectives or opinions. But I hate trying to make people do things they don't want to (i.e. herding cats), I hate looking for busywork to do (though I love to keep on top of things and keep them clean and organized), I hate trying to sell (i.e. promote) myself, and I hate working under constant pressure (i.e. pervasive supervision and frequent status checkups). I want to fix problems as they come up, have people come to me with things that they need, and then be left alone to do them (unless I'm working with that person to help them). I especially hate the perverse incentive that I don't quite see a way to avoid, that if I work better and get stuff done I wind up with only more work to do, which escalates until I'm tired and stressed, giving me the incentive to take everything slowly instead, which just makes me bored.
In the capstone course for my MAT program, the dean of the department (who was the instructor for this class) acted as the "customer" for the class, who were to act as a design team and fulfill the "customer"'s requests. None of my particular skills were applicable to the projects that were assigned to us (I specialize in [still] graphic art and page layout, and the two projects were a promotional video project and the school's new internet radio station). But as other people on the projects would fail to get their parts done, I could half-ass something together from the skills I did have to fill in the gap that was left behind, and have it ready that day or the next. The dean told me at the end of class (much to my surprise!) that I was one of the most valuable people in there because I kept putting out the fires that came up, even though (at least so I thought) I wasn't really working nearly as hard as everyone else seemed to be.
So I'm at a place right now of trying to figure out what kind of job I can find that suits my skills and personality, and pays around $50k/yr so I can support a family. (I'm in a longterm relationship with the proverbial girl next door in my hometown nearby, which is largely why I'm so attached to this area). I'd love to fill the kind of role I did in that course, but I don't imagine there are a lot of job positions for that sort of thing. As a side-job right now, I help people with basic computer problems and teach them how to use various programs, but my expertise is mostly limited to Mac stuff and Adobe stuff because that's what I primarily use
It's basic sentence construction, yet they couln't manage it. And we wonder why they argument against the RIAA's tactics isn't being clearly heard.
d -not-commit is the action that many-innocent-Americans-like-Deborah-Foster did, and is used to specify that group of people. The lives of those many-innocent-Americans are then the object of what the-RIAA did, which was wreaking-havoc; and the-RIAA did that for over a year.
There's a some complex verb and noun phrases there that are confusing you. Let me use parentheses to clarify:
"(the RIAA) has (wrought havoc) on (the lives of (many innocent Americans who, like Deborah Foster, have (been wrongfully prosecuted for illegal acts they did not commit))) for over a year".
Being-wrongly-prosecuted-for-illegal-acts-they-di
Someone did something to (the things of (people who did something else) ) for over a year.
Clear now?
I see the point that you and a few other people are making. That it should be easier to get the majority to vote for change rather than stage an armed revolution. First I want to say, by revolution, I don't necessarily mean "armed" (even if I said it that way -don't think I did). It could just be sweeping reforms, constitutional ammendments (not a single proposed one in recent years is worthwhile though). Lastly... this is purely tongue-in-cheek. If the american people are truly indifferent like a heard of sheep, wouldn't it be easier kill the shepherd, then to try to convince the herd to come to a consensus on a new shepherd? You mention paralells between society and biology and evolution. When it comes to pack/herd leadership, isn't that normally the way? BTW I'm not advocating this, just saying. If some group came along and ousted the current government and it didn't have a negative impact on most people's lives (or even had a positive impact), I think they would remain just as indifferent. Wouldn't they?
Probably. This is why you can have coup after coup in some countries where the new leadership is just as bad as the old leadership, but it's "good enough" for the people (i.e. they're too indifferent to care) so nothing happens until a small armed group gets fed up and stages another coup. That's why I said that whatever eventually replaces the US probably won't be much better by design (by analogy, it's genetic [memetic?] code won't have changed much), it'll just be younger and fresher and look better for a while, until it starts dying of the same flaws that are bringing the US down.
I would be happy with a serious third party that addressed concerns important to me. Both parties are so entrenched and interested in really one thing keeping the status quo. I have this odd belief that the government that should have the most influence over my life should be the one closest to me (city/county), but I don't hold to the libertarian view that all government is evil. I like public parks, roads, schools etc. I believe somethings can be managed better at larger level (Networks, be it roads, electrical, information, and even insurance). I don't think government should get too involved what runs through the networks. It all seems like such common sense to me. Maybe some day soon I will author a manifesto, (er political platform) although I have not the least desire to be in politics.
Sounds like we've got similar political stances. I think "The Government" (which is really just "The People", so this is just a statement of ethics) should generally stay out of other people's business, aside from protecting them from each other and from emergencies, both personally and economically (this basically covers fire, medical, search and rescue, etc, as well as partial distribution of wealth for economic welfare). I envision an arrangement of minimally bureaucratic governmental units (one leader who is free to act on behalf of the group within constraint of the law, barring the disapproval of the rest of the group) starting with the very small (households or neighborhoods, which don't have a whole lot of governing to do), which then cluster into progressively larger federations on up to the global level (at which point it's a full time job), with jurisdiction falling to the lowest-level applicable group first (though you can appeal to higher-level groups in case you feel you've not met justice in the lower level group, or if are being abuse by it).
It also seems appropriate for networks (roads, power, data, etc) to be publicly owned and free for everyone to use, and I've been contemplating the concept of public banks and libraries/schools (the former store and transfer resources, the latter store and transfer information), but these are both a little hard to justify mandating from within my philosophical framework (though they could be optionally instituted within the system, and either way it doesn't rule out private networks, banks and libraries from operating).
You should try writing t
Are you a US citizen? I don't mean to sound rude, but your post oozes with idealism and a certain lack in understanding of how US politics works. You seem to understand how its supposed to work, but it doesn't work this way. There are two political parties in power that for all intents and purposes might as well be one. They do a really good job of keeping all the power to themselves and locking out any independants/third parties. They both claim to have differing agendas (and to a small degree actually do), but when it comes to anyone proposing some real change it won't happen. The US is in need of a revolution something to streamline and open the government. You call american voters indifferent, wouldn't you be indifferent if your only choices were coke and pepsi and you really wanted something altogether different than a cola?
You are correct that we definitely need a more streamlined and open government, and you give good reason why the American people are indifferent. Certainly a different governmental structure could encourage more active political participation from the general population.
But I don't see how this makes the GP idealist. His point still stands - by far the easiest way to effect political change would be to do so by a simple vote. Consider that in order to effectively stage any sort of real revolution, you would still have to convince huge masses of people to get up off their asses and actually do something. Something that would probably pose a significantly greater risk of, at the very least, disrupting their comfortable lives in some way. It would be far, far easier to convince those swaths of people to just go to the polls and vote than to take up arms against their government or even stage a mass demonstration in protest of the government.
One way or another, you're going to need to motivate a lot of people to do something in order to get things changed. Some things are easier to motivate people to do than others. Of all the productive things you could try motivating people to do, voting is probably the easiest. But nothing's going to happen while the vast majority of Americans continue to lead fairly comfortable lives. The government's got to get a lot worse before it's worth people's time and efforts to change it rather than just deal with it.
Social evolution is a lot like biological evolution. There's a lot of species out there with some pretty significant design flaws, because there's no real environmental pressure for those flaws to be weeded out. They're good enough, they can survive, that's all evolution requires. Likewise, there's not enough social pressure for there to be significant change in the government, or rather, in the way government in general is done. Maybe we've got some critical flaw(s) in our society that will eventually destroy it, but I'll bet you that what comes after (it's offspring, by analogy) won't be significantly better by design. Just younger and less decrepit. But it'll get old and ugly eventually too.
Modern democracy and a mostly-capitalist mixed economy is a pretty good system of government. I could easily think of a better one, but the marginal benefits of such improvements aren't likely to be enough for such a system to supplant the modern democracy as the dominant species of government in the world, at least not until some new sort of pressure comes along to change the situation. Who knows, maybe this new "global terrorism" thing, or the proliferation of "weapons of mass destruction" in "rogue states", or some technological revolution, will apply that sort pressure. Only time will tell.
The key is that those fat, lazy, apathetic people who, like you apparently, don't feel their vote count, get up and vote out the incumbents. Once the incumbents are removed, if things don't improve, vote out the ones you just put in. Keep doing that until the message sinks in.
The problem here is that you can't simply vote someone out of office. You have to vote someone else IN.
I imagine you might get a much larger voter turnout if you were allowed to vote either FOR or AGAINST, rather than just FOR or not voting. It seems evident to me that people don't really care who's in charge if who's in charge doesn't fuck things up too much, which is largely why people don't research who is running and go out and vote for someone, but rather just sit around and bitch about why they don't like the guy who's running the show right now (or don't bitch if things are going well). Thus it seems people are much more likely to say either "I hate [incumbent] and want his ass out" or "everything is going fine", rather than "I like [challenger] and approve of his platform and strategies". The latter type of opinion takes too much work for the average person to bother forming one. The former type of opinion - a simple "things are fine" or "I don't like it" - is much easier for the average person to think, and so might motivate them to actually go out and vote their mind.
So if we had the option to cast either a positive or negative vote, I imagine you'd get a lot of negative votes for the two big parties (since many, though of course not all, supporters of the two big parties often define themselves by opposition to the other party, more than support of what their own party values). This would have a net effect of giving third parties a much better fighting chance. Just look at the whole "anybody but Bush" sentiment out there. Something like this could work and break the two-party oligarchy.
Which is precisely why you'll never see it implemented.
Just ask your self this question, which game would more likely entice a player who enjoys an expensive glass of wine while he/she plays video games.
I enjoy wine while gaming and I was the webmaster of Myth.Bungie.Org for most of it's existence. Myst, on the other hand, was pretty pictures and a novel story wrapped up in a boring game.
Please explain to me how the existence of the GPLv3 will prevent developers from licensing their software under the GPLv2.
Please explain to me how someone copying my code and using it in a closed-source project makes my original project less free. The issue here (with "v2 or later" licensed projects at least, where a project may be forked and re-licensed under v3) is the same.
If you want to free your code, then really free it - just declare it public domain. Sure, someone could take a copy of that and do something with it you don't want, including adding some changes and compiling a binary and selling that binary and then burning their copy of the code with the changes before anyone can see it. So? YOUR CODE IS STILL FREELY AVAILABLE. They didn't do anything to your code. You made it free, and someone else copying it, peppering some of their code own in and doing whatever they want with it doesn't make your original code any less free.
The whole point of the GPL is to control what people may or may not do with your code - to take away certain freedoms "for the greater good". GPLv3 is just taking that even further, as the GP said. And if your solution to these concerns is basically "what's the problem, your project is still GPLv2 licensed even if someone makes a GPLv3 fork", then by that same line of reasoning... what's the problem with non-copyleft licenses, your code is still public domain, even if someone else makes a closed source fork.
Capitalism rewards enterprise, not inventiveness.
Capital rewards those who already have capital. That was the whole revolutionary idea behind it... use money to make money. While the "grow the pie" aspect of that is all fine and dandy in theory, in practice the problem that underlies both a patent-laden and patent-less capitalist economy is that the big guy (he who already has wealth) can use what he's already got to keep the little guy from getting anywhere.
Don't get me wrong, I'm highly against all sorts of "intellectual property" laws. There's no ethical justification behind applying force or coercion (which of course is what backs all laws) to control what information people are allowed to use. But the problems that both patents and copyright are trying to circumvent (trademarks are more of an anti-fraud thing really) are problems with raw, unadulterated capitalism. It seems to me that the proper solution to these problems is to patch the bugs in "pure" capitalism, rather than trying to apply ad-hoc solutions to particular economic problems like the funding of arts and sciences (which is theoretically what intellectual property right laws strive to do).
(And before some right-winger or anarcho-capitalist comes along and calls me a goddamned commie, please note that I'm not at all calling for the abolition of a free market economy, but rather for some of the sane checks and balances and caveats that the founders of what would come to be called capitalism, people like Smith and Locke, advocated all along).
...as soon as the sun collapses we'll get sucked into a blackhole...
Just a nitpick, but that's not how collapsing stars work. For one, our sun is too small to form a black hole upon it's death. For that to happen, a star must first collapse to a white dwarf, which then fades out to a brown dwarf, as fusion brings the elementary make-up of the star toward iron. Then, the mass of the star must still be great enough to overcome the fact that iron (and heavier elements) don't fuse, at least not in the normal sense: but if crushed together hard enough, it can fuse into neutronium, releasing massive amount of energy in a supernova and ejecting a lot of heavy elements with it. Then, if what's left over (a neutron star) is still massive enough, it will continue to collapse on itself into a black hole.
Our sun probably won't get past the brown dwarf stage. It'll just fizzle out.
But even if it did collapse to a black hole (and the Earth etc weren't destroyed by the red giant stage, much less the later supernova), things in orbit around it wouldn't suddenly spiral into the hole, because it still has the same mass as the original star (less actually, since the supernova ejects a lot of matter). If you could somehow forcibly crush the sun into a black hole right now, containing any subsequent novae and keeping all the mass that would normally be lost in the process, then Earth and all the other planets would keep orbiting just like they do now. It'd just be very dark.
Marathon is also from that era. You're just saying the same thing I am: portals trickery isn't new. But this particular new application of it is kinda neat.
No, you could even have a 360-degree flat loop that didn't intersect itself. And a hallway with a 270-degree bend *would* overlap itself; if you came down a real-world hall, and then it curved around 270 degrees, it would have to either dead-end when it hit the wall of it's earlier segment, or intersect that segment.
Bungie's Marathon series used a portals-based (though still "2.5D") engine way back in the day, and there were plenty of maps which used made use of what we called "5D space" (two different rooms occupying the same 3D space at the same time, yet not actually being the same room). I know this isn't precisely what the article is talking about, but it's still an application of portals technology for the purposes of interesting gameplay. One of the maps that shipped with the first game was even called "5D space", and was basically a maze that folded around and intersected itself. You could run around a 270-degree curve of hallway on level ground and not intersect the same bit of hallway you were travelling down before you hit the curve...
What does "center-seeking" mean? There is no "center" between being a Statist and being Anarcho-capitalist. Either you think freedom requires the State or it doesn't. There is no "center" there.
Statist is not the proper antonym for anarchist. One can fully support anarchistic ethics (that people ought to be free to do whatever they want so long as they're not doing unto others as those others don't want) and at the same time support any of a variety of methods of ENFORCING such ethics.
You could leave it up to each individual to defend his or her rights; that is, if someone is mugging you, nobody else is under any sort of obligation to help you, and if you fail to defend yourself, tough. This is the crazy kind of anarchy that just doesn't work, because it simply turns into a case of might-makes-right, and unless every single person in contact with this society adheres perfectly to anarchistic ethics, someone who doesn't adhere to such a system will eventually find it advantageous to coerse other people and then you'll wind up with tyranny. That's why this kind of anarchy doesn't work: it's unstable and self-defeating, the system incapable of defending itself against violations.
Alternatively, you could keep a powerful centralized state authority (appointed or elected by whatever means: monarchy, democracy, republic, whatever), and use that to enforce anarchist ethics. This, as I understand it, is basically what Libertarians advocate: keep a strong state in place, but have the laws that that state enforces be simply protection of people and property. This is fairly close to what the founders of the United States were going after too. The problem with this, as we have seen, is that the centralized state is basically in the same position as a powerful individual in the earlier kind of anarchy, and if it decides to diverge from anarchist ethics, it can start grabbing up power and you start moving toward tyranny again. This system too is eventually self-defeating.
Yet another method, which I advocate, is that the responsibility to enforce the law by left up to each and every individual, but that those individuals are not only responsible for their own defense, but for the defense of everyone else in their group as well. I basically hold that in order for freedom to exist, people must uphold not only the responsibility to respect each other, but also to defend each other. In short, coersive or violent force is only and always not only justified, but DEMANDED in response to others' force, even if the force of those others was directed at an individual other than yourself. To keep such a system managable on scales larger than a simple tribe, I advocate that people organize into self-selecting groups of managable size (this would be like a household or a neighborhood block) under a single leader, who is given the extra responsibility of being that group's dedicated peacekeeper (mediator, policeman, etc), and in exchange is given the right to act on behalf of the group as a whole (pending the approval of the group, i.e. the group can hold an approval vote on a prospective action or on a decision already made, and force the leader to do / not do something on their behalf). The leader is also responsibile for representing the group to other groups; these groups then forms larger groups of groups, with the leaders of those larger groups having the responsibility of mediating and policing inter-group conflicts (and coordinating the collective actions of the leaders of the sub-groups to that end). And so on and so on as far up as you need to go to have a managable number of members in all groups of all levels.
It may be useful to visualize not the typical two-dimensional Nolan chart of political orientation, but rather a three-dimensional one. Two dimensions are the standard interpersonal and economic axis of permissiveness/restrictiveness. The third axis regards who enforces the law: radically centralized, radically decentralized, or a more moderate system like the one I've just described. Fo
Not that it really matters for anything, but I can vouce that Spun and Dada are not the same person. Or at least, if they are it's an extremely well-constructed ruse. Dada has been on my Friends list since an interesting conversation I had with him a while back about theism, and as such, he gets +1 moderation in my preferences (not because I agree with him, which I often don't, but because he has some interesting ideas and tries to back them up well). Thus threads with a lot of him in them grab my attention, and I noticed the thread where he met Spun, who is also Friended.
So, if this is a ruse it's been well executed in public and it's been going on for a while. Parsimoniously, I'm inclined to conclude that Spun and Dada are actually separate people. And even if they're not... the one person behind it seems pretty interesting to me, and I'm curious what his actual position is, if any.
centerpedal .... No, it doesn't. You probably added it to the dictionary by accident.
Hmm... aha. This machine's spellcheck is set to "Multilingual". Apparently centerpedal is OK in Australian English, but not British, Canadian or American.
The C should go: the khurkh's wouldn't have khapels and we could buy everything real kheep?
:-D
Ch is a different sound than either Sh or Kh. Ch is more of an unvoiced J; a "Tsh" sound (where as J is a "Dzh" sound). So you'd be buying tsheep tshutsh thsapels instead. Kheep khurkh khaples are only available on Qonos and in Khazad-dum. But given that we do have a letter for the Dhz sound (J), I wouldn't too strongly object to keeping C around for use as a Tsh sound, ala "ceep curc capels".
Not hardly, if the c is removed, what about the q? kwik, I have an idea on this kwiz?
I agree. Q is another letter that must be done away with to get phonetic spelling. Same as X. All are phonetically redundant.
No thanks. The additional letters and strange exceptions to spelling rules help when writing. It helps clarify meanings when you have homonyms and homographs. If we could get rid of those two phenomena, then I would be happy with the idea of simplified spelling, but then you would also not be speaking English or any other language I know of.
Here you have a point. However, as others have suggested, it may be possible to distinguish homonyms in writing the same way as we do in speech: context. That's not an ideal situation though, and in response to it language would eventually shift to using different synonyms to avoid the use of confusing homonyms, and possibly the words themselves would be modified as well (either compounded with other words or changed in pronunciation) to no longer be homonyms at all. In fact I'd suggest that in some cases differences in spelling be preserved between what are now homonyms, particularly when those words used to be non-homonyms, and as a new generation grows up with phonetic spelling, our present homonym pronunciation will seem an incorrect but understandable older accent (the same way most English speakers don't consider "sauce" a homonym of "source", even though some accents pronounce it that way; and we can still understand such accents).
You're right though, the resulting language wouldn't quite be modern English. It would be some new dialect of English. And I don't think such a change can be practically forced, since there's no international standards body that keeps the English language spec up to date, and even if there were, not everyone would comply with it (witness the futility of some efforts of the French Academy, whose proper French name I won't even try to write). Nevertheless, some understandable phonetic shift is occurring in modern English (mostly the dropping of "gh", ala night -> nite, through -> thru, etc). And on the internet, the substitution of K for hard-C is prevalent as well. We jst hav 2 mak shur it duznt hapn in adhoc incnsistnt n incomprehensabl wayz k lolz, or goez in da rong direx1onz0rz wit xtra xex n sht lollercopter.
But speliing somthiing laiik this is no problem for mii. Just meiik shuur yuu're konsistent abouut it - e.g. use double-vowels for proper long vowels and singles for shorts, diphthongs for sounds like "A" as in "bake" or "I" as in "bike", drop silent 'e's and doubled consonants since you no longer need them for vowel differentiation, and all those consonant changes we've been talking about. Of course, pronouncing that sentence the way I wrote it phonetically wouldn't be precisely the way that I personally pronounce things, e.g the "abouut" is a bit closer to a Canadian than my Californian accent, but I don't claim my accent to be the be-all end-all of pronunciation either.
I agree that such spelling makes more sense for appending prefixes and suffixes. However, shouldn't you then pronounce the word "sent-reh" instead of "sent-er"? Or is the trailing 'e' silent, and the 'er' sound just a vowel-less 'r'? Silent letters are evil.
A truly sensible language needs spelling that reflects pronunciation (or vice-versa, e.g. dictionary shouldn't be spelled 'dikshunary'; people should learn to dictate properly and articulate the 'tion' [ala 'tyon'] sound instead of slurring it into "shun". Though I agree that damn letter 'c' has to go - we already have 's' and 'k').
So back to your point, I'd say the words should either be spelled and pronounced "centerpedal", "centerfuge", etc, or the stem should be pronounced and spelled "sent-reh" instead.
(Incidentally, OS X's spellchecker thinks centerpedal is a real word).
Because the GPL doesn't say that you must distribute the source with every coppy. It just says that you must make it available. Putting a notice on your program that tell where you can download the source from is ok (it must be from some place that you control if you make commercial use of the software).
Alright, that makes sense. Same thing if I allow its inclusion in a CD somewhere... so long as some link says "download here", and "here" is a server I control, it's fine? New question then... what exactly is "control"? I've got FTP access to a web space that a friend is kind enough to grant me, and that's what I use for hosting this project's website. If he decides to be a dick and pull that from me, am I now violating the GPL?
Well, if you lost the source, and can't get it again, you can't distribute. All the code that you distributed without the source for the last 3 years is also ilegal, althougt it is hard that you get in trouble for that.
I'm not actually, pragmatically concerned about getting in trouble for anything. All the developers of this project are also friends of mine, as the Marathon community is very small and tightly knit (although the original source was contributed by the original authors of Marathon, Bungie, who are now owned my Microsoft... so hey, Microsoft does have a GPL'd product out there).
I'm just bothered academically that it is possible to get into legal trouble for something like that happening. It's not likely to affect me so I'm not really worried about it, but that I (or anyone) could, hypothetically, technically be liable for events like that is bothersome.
Well, "from SourceForge" is some quite apropriate description of how to get the source if they gave you the link to their project. You don't need to do something better on your project (see the first question). You can't really claim that the source is not available to you, because it is.
I'm not claiming that the source isn't available to me or that I would be technically unable to do anything with it. Just that, if I were to have it, I wouldn't know what to do with it - I wouldn't even know how to compile the program, I'm not even sure if I have the tools to do so on my machine - so I haven't even bothered to look up where exactly to get the code from. I'm not at all interested in the code, I haven't looked at the code, I haven't compiled binaries from the code, and I certainly haven't modified the code. I downloaded a binary of the program and I use it, unmodified (though I would like to rename the binary file and put custom icons on it for aesthetics sake), to run content that I'm giving away for free.
I don't want to be responsible for having to obtain a copy of the source and keep it around in case someone else that I'm giving free stuff to wants it. It seems reasonable that I should be able to say "I got this straight from here" (or rather, just keep the documentation that says "this came from here" with it), and leave it at that. If the GPL doesn't allow that, I see that as a fault. Not that there's anything I or even the current maintainers can do about that though, without getting all the contributors (including Bungie, who I hear are very busy with some Halo game or something) to relicense their code with such an exception.
Now, if you are selling their program bundled with your... you are selling their program. So you are responsible for it. If you are not commercialy redistributing their program, you don't need to redistribute the source, just point to their repository.
I'm not selling it. I'd be giving it away, packaged in the same zip file as other stuff of my own that I'm also giving away. There's not even ads on the site (Bungie.org is completely ad-free, funded entirely by our gracious host Claude, just because he's a die-hard old-school Bungie fan who happens to run a web design and hosting company). 100% not-for-profit art for the art's sake.
So given that that's the case, you think it's OK for me to distribute the u
No (I don't have to put copies of the application source on the common Marathon-mod sites as well).
Why not? How is that different from putting it up on my own web space or distributing it on a CD? (Whereas in both those cases I'm told I do have to include the source or at least a promise to share it upon request).
Ehm, since it is a GPLed game, in a case like this you can always get another copy of the source code from the original author.
And what if they're unavailable now? Or what if they go offline before I ask them for a copy of the source... am I now forbidden from distributing what I've got? Are they now in trouble for distributing a binary without the code being available?
They can distribute the binaries without having the source because they do not modify the software in any way.
That's what I'm doing as well. I *couldn't* modify it if wanted too. I haven't even seen the source. I don't know where to get it beyond "from SourceForge" somehow. I just downloaded the binary and put it, unmodified, in a folder with my stuff. (I'd like to rename that binary file and paste a custom icon on it, but I don't have to). I'm not compiling anything on my own system (hence why I'm not sure how I would "include the source to my changes" if I had renamed it and pasted a custom icon). So why must I be responsible for passing on code I've never seen and don't care to see, any more than the sites that host my files would be? (Though from other people's responses, it would seem that you're incorrect that they're not responsible, anyway).
Releasing the game content under GPL isn't my concern. I'm giving that away nearly public domain anyway.
My problem is with having to host the source code for a project that I'm only really a user of. I make content for use in this program, content without which the program is useless (and a program without which my content is useless), and which, if everything were unencumbered by licences, would rightly be bundled together with a copy of the program. How many commercial or even freeware games do you find that require you to first get a separate game engine from somewhere else? Not many; since game and content are useless without each other, they're pretty much always bundled. But the GPL puts an annoying burden on people who aren't developing software at all but want to include the needed software with their projects.
For a hobbyist like me, that could be quite annoying. I suppose I could host a copy of the source on my site, but then, I want to put the file up on the common Marathon-mod sites or other such sites too. Do I have to put copies of the application source on those sites as well? What if they don't have a category for "game engine source"? Then it's back to bundling the source files with the game, which is (as per my analogy) like handing instructions on the chemical composition of the plastic bottles I'm using to everyone I serve my fruit punch too. It's a hassle to me and the people I want to give things to. I'm not making any modifications to the code at all, I haven't even downloaded it, I just downloaded binaries so I could run the content I made. The original project is still there, with the code and the binaries where I got them from. It seems like in a case like this there should be some leeway for these such uses, and it's a problem with the GPL that there isn't.
And further, even if I were just to include a note with the project saying "I will post you a copy of the source on CD if you want it", how stringent must I be over here about making absolutely sure that I've got the source still backed up somewhere? If my HD dies and I don't have backups (which it almost did just recently... starting to keep some backups now), must I then stop all distribution of the project everywhere that it's online? Or since I've already put it up on a bunch of other people's websites (with this note), is that then in their hands? What if I could access the site through some web interface and remove the files, must I then do that? And if not, must I contact the site owners and tell THEM to stop distribution? Could they even have distributed it in the first place without first taking me up on my offer to send them a copy of the source? So I couldn't even upload it to such sites unless it was included in the same package, or the site agreed to host a copy of it themselves?
Wasn't the whole point of the GPL supposed to be freedom? This seems awfully restrictive to me.
I'm a hobbyist mod-maker for the ~10yo FPS game Marathon, the engine for which is now GPL'd, spawning the Aleph One project. I've got a near-total conversion mod in progress right now (don't worry about the "near" part, the original game content is also free game for such purposes now), and for the ease of my potential players, I'd really like to include the application program, renamed and with a custom icon (as has been traditional practice for Marathon mod-makers of the pre-Aleph days), in my download. Since Marathon was originally a Mac game, Aleph One requires no "installation" (at least on Mac and Windows); you just download a .zip of the program, put it in a folder with your choice of game files, and play. So including the app with my mod would mean players just download and go, no other downloads or installation necessary. (And yes, players of other Marathon mods do actually get confused by the three-step process of downloading the game, downloading the engine, and putting the two together).
However, I found out not long ago that I can't do that without distributing all the source, including that for my modifications. Nevermind how to distribute what little I modified in "source"; I renamed the files in the Finder and copied some icon graphics into the app package, what's the source to that? Nevermind that I couldn't code my way out of "hello world"; even if I wanted to ship a completely unmodified binary, I'm not even sure how to get the source to it, much less how to distribute it properly.
I'm basically a user of this software, but a developer of art content that is symbiotic with it. A game engine is useless without game content and vice versa; the two are really things that ought to be packaged together. But developers of game content, especially amateurs like me, are quite often not developers of software. They just use the software to present their content.
I think the GPL causes significant problems in cases like these. Another example I could imagine would be an open-source installer program or self-extracting archive maker (not that many things use these anymore, probably for this very reason): if you want to use that installer to ship your stuff, must you also distribute the source to the installer? Even if what you're shipping has nothing to do with the installer, other than that it installs whatever it is you're shipping? Must you ship an "installer package" and make people download the installer separately if they don't already have it? So, self-extracting archives are not feasible under the GPL, since everyone who used one would have to distribute the source to the archive-maker as well?
I'm sure this will probably get a lot of "that's what the license says, if you don't like it don't use it" responses, but I'm just trying to point out that the GPL as it stands is not appropriate for the distribution of all types of applications (like game engines or self-installer programs), even when it is otherwise appropriate for the projects that develop those programs, and thus I think the GPL could use some modifications to allow for such reasonable uses.
The GPL seems to assume that everyone is, or at least ought to be, a software developer and/or distributor. But I think I've shown that there are some cases where software is only incidentally distributed by people who have and want nothing to do with the development or distribution of software, but rather, things that use that software. An apt analogy might be if some bottle-maker distributed instructions on how to make such bottles (i.e. chemical ingredients and such) with every bottle, and insisted that anyone who make and sell copies of those bottles also include those instructions. Maybe you've got an ingenious bottle plastic formula and want it open to the world and not patented or exploited by Coca-Cola for profit; that's fine and dandy. But does that mean I can't serve
Another possible technical way to go would be for me to me to ask your provider for priority in exchange for a fee. That would allow me to video-conference with you on your current connection because your provider and mine have collaborated to provide end-to-end QoS for an additional fee.
But we have to have net neutrality, so that whole range of services is basically illegal.
That's my technical objection to network neutrality.
My objection to that sort of solution, from a consumer's point of view, is that I don't want anybody else out there determining what gets priority at my end of the connection. What if I want to tune in to your video conference feed but don't want it to have highest priority over my end of the network? What if I'm running a file server or something that I don't want squashed by the massive amount of bandwidth your video feed would take if it was given preemptive preference? But I still want to be able to see your video feed...
More in this vein is the concern everybody keeps raising that, for example, Cox customers (like me) might start getting crappy connections to YouTube because Google Video is paying more for priority over Cox's network, or vice versa. What if I think Google Video is shit and want YouTube to have higher priority? (All examples are fake, BTW - I'm not a big user of either). Both Google and YouTube are paying for a certain speed connection on their end and I'm paying for a certain speed connection on my end, and since both of their connections could easily saturate mine a hundred times over, I expect that if I'm doing nothing but looking at my preferred site, I will get it at full speed over my connection. I shouldn't get crappy speeds with YouTube because Google is Cox's Preferred Video Partner or any such.
Which is basically where the big concern comes from, with non-web services like VOIP or IPTV. People worry that Cox's preferred VOIP partner (or subsidiary) will get highest priority VOIP traffic over Cox's network, and thus people who want to use a competing service will get crap connections, allowing Cox to effectively leverage their near-monopoly power to get more near-monopoly power in a different market. Right now, cable and phone companies (Cox and Verizon in my area) have monopolies on phone and cable, respective, and almost complete power over internet connectivity, in that there's basically only those who options. But now, high-speed internet is opening up a lot of competition for both the phone and cable companies themselves with voice and video services over the Internet, and that worries both the phone companies and the cable companies, and yet at the same time makes them see dollar signs.
Imagine if Cox could create it's own VOIP service or partner with an existing VOIP provider, give it highest priority on their network, and effectively become another local phone company competing with, in my area, Verizon. Ka-ching, more power for Cox. Or if Verizon could create or partner with an IPTV or other internet video service, give them top priority on their network, and compete against Cox's TV business. Both cable and phone companies are trying to work this angle as "look, allowing us to tier the network will create more competition for phone and TV companies!", but what they mean is "it will allow us to be more competitive against our major competitor's other areas of business". But at the same time, while trying to gain competitive advantages for themselves against each other, they're squashing the ability for even more competition to flourish.
Which is what this is really all about. It's about consumer choice. I've no problem with Cox or Verizon or whoever giving VOIP or IPTV traffic higher priority than web or ftp traffic. It's more lag-sensitive, and it needs better throughput to give adequate quality results. What I object to is what is effectively monopoly bundling of services. Instead of being free to choose what VOIP or IPTV service I want, if I want decent quality I'll have to go with the one that pays