You can't have copyright and trade secret at the same time. Which is exactly why companies aren't so willing to jump on the open source bandwagon, because copyright won't protect them, unless you want to allow copyright of specific algorithms, and then you're really in for a hell of a time. In the end, there are 3 choices for anyone that wants to advance FOSS or Linux to the main stream:
1) Deal only with FOSS and be regulated to second class status for the foreseeable future.
2) Allow binary blobs, but prefer (and promote) FOSS as the primary and first choice.
3) Figure out some way to allow for open source while still protecting comercial interests. You personaly may not care about their business or their business model but they do, and the loss from not supporting FOSS is less than from changing their business model for you. Remember, in the end you're the one that wants to use their product.
Currently, most FOSS / Linux proponents are chosing 1, which is perfectly fine, but it's what ESR is arguing will eventualy break FOSS and Linux because too much time and effort is being spent reinventing the wheel.
3 is the optimal alternative, but will require considerable effort on the parts of the FOSS / Linux communities, which means being willing to negotiate and talk.
And 2 is the easiest solution and the one most likely to lead to 3 given the current software environment.
And just why would the source have to include redistribution rights?
It shouldn't have too, but the FOSS comunity (or at least the vocal ones) would demand it, and anything less would be derided as half assed. Further more, you still have to account for the fact that many companies have competition and sometimes a big trick to do something that's hidden away because you don't have the source is their upper hand for the moment.
America, a first-world country where many of us realize that slaving your life away at a menial job is not the end all and be all of existence.
Or conversely, America, a first-world country where many of us don't believe that any job is worth putting serious effort and time into and no one has any pride in the work they do any more because their material toys have become the end all and be all of existance.
Did it ever occur to you that 8 hours of work per day might be affecting her performance at school? That they might be tranding off her long-term success and happiness for a short term financial gain?
Without knowing any more of the situation, but knowing similar people I would lay very good odds that no only is she at the top of her class but she will be far more wildly succesful by the time she graduates college (assuming she goes) than 85% of her class mates.
Well to a degree, that's the only way to succeede in life. It is impossible for everyone to win. If you make everyone perfectly equal you will make everyone equaly miserable. There will alway be poor and there will always be downtrodden, but the poor and down trodden of today are like kings to the poor and downtroden of yesteryear preciesely because the rich fat cats always want and desire new toys and so the old toys become comodities. Computers used to be the play things of the very rich and the very high and mighty, now we have a movement to provide free laptops to third world countries. If that isn't progress I don't know what is.
To a degree I think they might be right. Or at least that the vendors mght be on the right track. While I relize that slashdot is not a representative sample of computer users, it probably contains a high portion of open/free software users, and somehow I don't see a positive reaction to either of the following senarios:
A linux version with closed source, just like the companies mac / windows / what have you version.
or
A linux version with source, but A) you have to pay for it and B) you're not allowed to distribute/share source or even more restrictive the source is under an NDA.
both of which are the most likely commercial releases of a linux product. I think the only release that would be welcomed with open arms (no pun intended) would be a release that while paid for, still releases the source code and rights to use and distribute it. Unfortunately, to a comercial company, even if the initial software is paid for, that's still very much like giving their product away for free.
What honestly needs to happen is that FOSS and the general Linux distributions (the one's looking to make headway in the home market) need to become seperate causes. FOSS has a goal and a noble goal at that to have all free and open software, but most comercial vendors don't see that as viable, and the FOSS tie in with Linux is keeping many from even trying linux. So in the end, you can't even begin to get companies to see the benefits because you can't get them to take that first step.
Anyone can be at the right place and the right time. But it's those smart enough to see the oportunity in front of them that succeede. Ask anyone and almost everyone will tell you of a time that if they had done one thing differently they could be much better off than they are now.
Actualy, it's not the privacy you should be protecting, it's the access to the recorded information. Think about it, the best defense an innocent person has against a false accusation is the truth. If everything is recorded and the accused can have full access to everything recorded about them, the truth can be known. Privacy and private information leads to lies and succesful false alegations
You're right, we do predict what they do, and account for it. Have you ever seen the security systems they use for those types of people? Airport security is much more convenient (lax).
Actualy this sort of reasoning is used more often than you think to justify many laws and other legal things. Federal money goes all sorts of places and there are many places (like religious places) it can't go because that is seen as government endorsement. Likewise, potential for tavelers on state borders and the money flow between states in that case is justification for almost the entire set of federal anti discrimination laws. Do some research into cases involving federal funding or interstate commerce and you'll find this sort of reasoning much more common than you would think. Theres a reason why many libertarians oppose federal involvement in what should be state programs, and this is exactly one of those reasons.
It's all about making it more difficult. If there are 50 thiefs in my area and only 10 of them can break the really expensive lock compared to 30 of them being able to break the cheap lock, I've reduced my overall chance of getting robbed. Airbags don't save everyone's life, nor do seatbelts, or fire extinguishers. Are these then all wastes of time and money? Any security system can be broken. There is no such thing as a fool proof system.
you mean data can be copied? Holy fuck! Stop the presses and halt the manufacturing this is clearly useless because data can be copied. Seriously why is this a big deal? Was it any real suprise that data could be cloned? The purpose at least as far as I understand it is an additional measure of security, not the only measure. Yes, if you only go off the chip, you're screwed, but hey, that's why you don't only go off the chip. No one is saying this will stop forgeries, just that it will make it more difficult. It's one more thing that needs to be done and done right which means it's one more way to possibly catch a forgery. Surely no one thinks the new coloring on new money is going to stop forgery but it will hopefuly make it more difficult and time consuming. Is the coloring worthless because forgery can still happen?
And what freedom of the press has been violated here? The right to comit a crime? If you hear about the FBI planning on raiding Scam Co. offices tomorrow and you tip them off and allow them to destroy evidence you have comitted a crime. As a normal citizen you can be compelled to give up your phone records. What freedom of the press allows them to be above a normal citizen?
Number 2 would be the biggest reason that comes to mind for me. Basicaly what I'm saying is that because of the nature of government contracts the work is almost invariably of lower quality than a private venture, mostly because many times it's lowest qualified bidder, and qualifications are less than what a private company would have. It's not always the case, but in general a government sanctioned project is of lower quality than the equivilent private venture.
To part A, my point is that voters are stupid, they won't check the paper trail and the paper trail is no more reliable than any other voting system. A look at the butterfly ballot fiasco should tell you this. Anyone who can read should have been able to double check their ballot then but they still failed. And if paper ballots are so hard to forge and skew election votes why is it that voting fraud is as old as voting itself and not just limited to electronic machines?
No, they're trying to fit the most information in a single page. Because of the alternating layout, name boxes can be large print and obvious (a design requirement) and you can still fit all the presidential candidates on the same page. How can it be easy to misinterperate where the arrow is pointing. The arrow is right next to the hole, pointing directly at it.
I should clarify I wasn't talking about public and private school buildings, I was more referring to a building built for public schools (a government mandated controlled and requested building, vs say and office building built for Acme Co. or something similar.
I can prove that the voter got to see the name of the person they voted for.
Can you? Can you say for certain that every voter actualy double checked their record instead of just grabbing little piece of paper A and putting it in box B like they were told to? Can you prove the form was printed out in the proper language for the particular voter? Can you prove the voter was literate enough to read and understand what the form was?
It doesn't take a bunch of untrustworthy people to make a paper ballot vote skew, it just takes one skilled person. No more skill than a $30 / hour programmer, just a different skill.
Well I can go with another example. The it takes about a half hour to go to the DMV and have the adress on your license changed. By contrast you can walk into a McDonalds and walk out with a full meal in less than 5 minutes. I'll bet a whole lot of money that any one McDonalds does more business than any one DMV, but the difference is the DMV is government run and thus runs under a different set of operations and guildelines than a McDonalds.
The same holds true for anything. Do one thing for a private company and do the same thing for the government and I guarantee the end result will be very different. It's not neccesarily bad or good, it's just different priorities. No one in the government (or the general public for that matter) really and truely cares about the vote system, and equaly no one's ass is on the line (except maybe the low level grunt manning the machine). By contrast, your bank's whole business is on the line with their ATMs. They care very much.
A) have you seen a butterfly ballot, it's very very straight forward and even has arrows telling you exactly where you put your vote for each group. And example is here:
B) You are assuming that your voter is intelligent enough to a) read their vote correctly (see butterfly ballots) and b) actualy double check their vote before they submit it (see butterfly ballots). Furthermore, what prevents a technician from canceling out votes without an error?
C) can you guarantee the physical security of anything?
Butterfly ballots are not a valid analogy for scantrons - a simple correctly printed grid scantron can be read by a 4 year old.
Butterfly ballots are a perfect example. Each ballot has a hole, each hole has an arrow next to it. Each arrow indicates which names go with that hole. It's no more difficult to understand a butterfly ballot than any other grid of information.
And the key words in your statement are "simple correctly printed". Think about that as it pertains to any government created form.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't have copyright and trade secret at the same time. Which is exactly why companies aren't so willing to jump on the open source bandwagon, because copyright won't protect them, unless you want to allow copyright of specific algorithms, and then you're really in for a hell of a time. In the end, there are 3 choices for anyone that wants to advance FOSS or Linux to the main stream:
1) Deal only with FOSS and be regulated to second class status for the foreseeable future.
2) Allow binary blobs, but prefer (and promote) FOSS as the primary and first choice.
3) Figure out some way to allow for open source while still protecting comercial interests. You personaly may not care about their business or their business model but they do, and the loss from not supporting FOSS is less than from changing their business model for you. Remember, in the end you're the one that wants to use their product.
Currently, most FOSS / Linux proponents are chosing 1, which is perfectly fine, but it's what ESR is arguing will eventualy break FOSS and Linux because too much time and effort is being spent reinventing the wheel.
3 is the optimal alternative, but will require considerable effort on the parts of the FOSS / Linux communities, which means being willing to negotiate and talk.
And 2 is the easiest solution and the one most likely to lead to 3 given the current software environment.
And just why would the source have to include redistribution rights?
It shouldn't have too, but the FOSS comunity (or at least the vocal ones) would demand it, and anything less would be derided as half assed. Further more, you still have to account for the fact that many companies have competition and sometimes a big trick to do something that's hidden away because you don't have the source is their upper hand for the moment.
America, a first-world country where many of us realize that slaving your life away at a menial job is not the end all and be all of existence.
Or conversely, America, a first-world country where many of us don't believe that any job is worth putting serious effort and time into and no one has any pride in the work they do any more because their material toys have become the end all and be all of existance.
Did it ever occur to you that 8 hours of work per day might be affecting her performance at school? That they might be tranding off her long-term success and happiness for a short term financial gain?
Without knowing any more of the situation, but knowing similar people I would lay very good odds that no only is she at the top of her class but she will be far more wildly succesful by the time she graduates college (assuming she goes) than 85% of her class mates.
Well to a degree, that's the only way to succeede in life. It is impossible for everyone to win. If you make everyone perfectly equal you will make everyone equaly miserable. There will alway be poor and there will always be downtrodden, but the poor and down trodden of today are like kings to the poor and downtroden of yesteryear preciesely because the rich fat cats always want and desire new toys and so the old toys become comodities. Computers used to be the play things of the very rich and the very high and mighty, now we have a movement to provide free laptops to third world countries. If that isn't progress I don't know what is.
To a degree I think they might be right. Or at least that the vendors mght be on the right track. While I relize that slashdot is not a representative sample of computer users, it probably contains a high portion of open/free software users, and somehow I don't see a positive reaction to either of the following senarios:
A linux version with closed source, just like the companies mac / windows / what have you version.
or
A linux version with source, but A) you have to pay for it and B) you're not allowed to distribute/share source or even more restrictive the source is under an NDA.
both of which are the most likely commercial releases of a linux product. I think the only release that would be welcomed with open arms (no pun intended) would be a release that while paid for, still releases the source code and rights to use and distribute it. Unfortunately, to a comercial company, even if the initial software is paid for, that's still very much like giving their product away for free.
What honestly needs to happen is that FOSS and the general Linux distributions (the one's looking to make headway in the home market) need to become seperate causes. FOSS has a goal and a noble goal at that to have all free and open software, but most comercial vendors don't see that as viable, and the FOSS tie in with Linux is keeping many from even trying linux. So in the end, you can't even begin to get companies to see the benefits because you can't get them to take that first step.
Which leads to the question of what claims is microsoft making?
Anyone can be at the right place and the right time. But it's those smart enough to see the oportunity in front of them that succeede. Ask anyone and almost everyone will tell you of a time that if they had done one thing differently they could be much better off than they are now.
Actualy, it's not the privacy you should be protecting, it's the access to the recorded information. Think about it, the best defense an innocent person has against a false accusation is the truth. If everything is recorded and the accused can have full access to everything recorded about them, the truth can be known. Privacy and private information leads to lies and succesful false alegations
Mod parent +60, Graduated College and Thinks Criticaly Rather Than Assuming Everything is a Government Plot to Get His Weed
You're right, we do predict what they do, and account for it. Have you ever seen the security systems they use for those types of people? Airport security is much more convenient (lax).
Actualy this sort of reasoning is used more often than you think to justify many laws and other legal things. Federal money goes all sorts of places and there are many places (like religious places) it can't go because that is seen as government endorsement. Likewise, potential for tavelers on state borders and the money flow between states in that case is justification for almost the entire set of federal anti discrimination laws. Do some research into cases involving federal funding or interstate commerce and you'll find this sort of reasoning much more common than you would think. Theres a reason why many libertarians oppose federal involvement in what should be state programs, and this is exactly one of those reasons.
It's all about making it more difficult. If there are 50 thiefs in my area and only 10 of them can break the really expensive lock compared to 30 of them being able to break the cheap lock, I've reduced my overall chance of getting robbed. Airbags don't save everyone's life, nor do seatbelts, or fire extinguishers. Are these then all wastes of time and money? Any security system can be broken. There is no such thing as a fool proof system.
you mean data can be copied? Holy fuck! Stop the presses and halt the manufacturing this is clearly useless because data can be copied. Seriously why is this a big deal? Was it any real suprise that data could be cloned? The purpose at least as far as I understand it is an additional measure of security, not the only measure. Yes, if you only go off the chip, you're screwed, but hey, that's why you don't only go off the chip. No one is saying this will stop forgeries, just that it will make it more difficult. It's one more thing that needs to be done and done right which means it's one more way to possibly catch a forgery. Surely no one thinks the new coloring on new money is going to stop forgery but it will hopefuly make it more difficult and time consuming. Is the coloring worthless because forgery can still happen?
And what freedom of the press has been violated here? The right to comit a crime? If you hear about the FBI planning on raiding Scam Co. offices tomorrow and you tip them off and allow them to destroy evidence you have comitted a crime. As a normal citizen you can be compelled to give up your phone records. What freedom of the press allows them to be above a normal citizen?
Maybe microsoft realizes a computer to people these days is more than just a box and some software?
Don't you think an Athlon64/Opteron PC with PCIe/PCI slots would be a better solution than a Core Duo Mac for video game development?
No, but then again, I'm one of those people who think that not every game has to push the bleeding edge of technology.
Number 2 would be the biggest reason that comes to mind for me. Basicaly what I'm saying is that because of the nature of government contracts the work is almost invariably of lower quality than a private venture, mostly because many times it's lowest qualified bidder, and qualifications are less than what a private company would have. It's not always the case, but in general a government sanctioned project is of lower quality than the equivilent private venture.
To part A, my point is that voters are stupid, they won't check the paper trail and the paper trail is no more reliable than any other voting system. A look at the butterfly ballot fiasco should tell you this. Anyone who can read should have been able to double check their ballot then but they still failed. And if paper ballots are so hard to forge and skew election votes why is it that voting fraud is as old as voting itself and not just limited to electronic machines?
No, they're trying to fit the most information in a single page. Because of the alternating layout, name boxes can be large print and obvious (a design requirement) and you can still fit all the presidential candidates on the same page. How can it be easy to misinterperate where the arrow is pointing. The arrow is right next to the hole, pointing directly at it.
So the problem is then Americans not McDonald's evil food science.
I should clarify I wasn't talking about public and private school buildings, I was more referring to a building built for public schools (a government mandated controlled and requested building, vs say and office building built for Acme Co. or something similar.
Well in this case I was assuming incessant whining rather than a
"Can we have McDonalds?"
"no"
"buy WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?"
kind of senario.
I can prove that the voter got to see the name of the person they voted for.
Can you? Can you say for certain that every voter actualy double checked their record instead of just grabbing little piece of paper A and putting it in box B like they were told to? Can you prove the form was printed out in the proper language for the particular voter? Can you prove the voter was literate enough to read and understand what the form was?
It doesn't take a bunch of untrustworthy people to make a paper ballot vote skew, it just takes one skilled person. No more skill than a $30 / hour programmer, just a different skill.
Well I can go with another example. The it takes about a half hour to go to the DMV and have the adress on your license changed. By contrast you can walk into a McDonalds and walk out with a full meal in less than 5 minutes. I'll bet a whole lot of money that any one McDonalds does more business than any one DMV, but the difference is the DMV is government run and thus runs under a different set of operations and guildelines than a McDonalds.
The same holds true for anything. Do one thing for a private company and do the same thing for the government and I guarantee the end result will be very different. It's not neccesarily bad or good, it's just different priorities. No one in the government (or the general public for that matter) really and truely cares about the vote system, and equaly no one's ass is on the line (except maybe the low level grunt manning the machine). By contrast, your bank's whole business is on the line with their ATMs. They care very much.
A) have you seen a butterfly ballot, it's very very straight forward and even has arrows telling you exactly where you put your vote for each group. And example is here:
t terfly_ballot.jpg
h p1_intro/scantron815-E.jpg
http://www.newsweekeducation.com/extras/images/bu
by contrast this is your average looking scantron sheet:
http://geography.sierra.cc.ca.us/booth/cultural/c
B) You are assuming that your voter is intelligent enough to a) read their vote correctly (see butterfly ballots) and b) actualy double check their vote before they submit it (see butterfly ballots). Furthermore, what prevents a technician from canceling out votes without an error?
C) can you guarantee the physical security of anything?
Butterfly ballots are not a valid analogy for scantrons - a simple correctly printed grid scantron can be read by a 4 year old.
Butterfly ballots are a perfect example. Each ballot has a hole, each hole has an arrow next to it. Each arrow indicates which names go with that hole. It's no more difficult to understand a butterfly ballot than any other grid of information.
And the key words in your statement are "simple correctly printed". Think about that as it pertains to any government created form.