I think this is a Good Thing. Linux needs a dose of standardization, so that idiots like me don't have to go nuts trying out a Jesus-load of different distros just to see if there actually is a significant difference. (Gosh-darn it, Toto, we *are* still in Kansas after all!)
I don't know how typical I am, but I'm basically a non-coder (i.e. I "code" in very industry-specific languages but couldn't C++ my way out of a hardcopy) who has gradually gotten po'd_w/_M$ over the years. I know how to install a driver, which makes me a guru to my co-workers, and I've always wanted to recommend Linux to them, but until this last year or so I couldn't honestly recommend it to any of them. I still can't recommend it to most, but there's three of us at work now!
I want to use my computer for the most part, and all I really ask of a Linux distro is that a) I can do pretty much everything I do under Windows, which is nothing exotic, b) I don't have to spend a whole lot of time learning new ways to do the same thing I did before, and c) I don't have to study up for weeks before installing.
Red Hat has always installed pretty easily for me, and I haven't found RH's way of doing things too totally foreign. SuSe didn't install so easily but was far superior in terms of usability once I got it in. The others I tried either failed utterly to install, had no attractive interface (hey CLI fanatics, this matters!), or lacked flexibility.
I'm hoping and believing that a union of several major distros will provide a degree of uniformity which is sadly needed (damn it, shift-f1 and left-click-and-drag should do at least roughly similar things !), without leaving all decision-making for a particular interface in the hands of a single organization.
The dolphins escaped the destruction of the Earth in Douglas Adams' "So Long and Thanks For All The Fish" by escaping to another quantum continuum. The pickaxe is obviously for quantum tunnelling across barriers...
by Spider Robinson is probably the one you're thinking of. It was a Senator she was approaching, the one with the deciding vote on the eternal copyright law (interestingly, in the story the eternal copyright law would be replacing one which only gave copyright for 50 years).
Tragically, the Senator once convinced by her argument (that there's actually only a limited number of original tunes, plots, etc.) has to ruin his political career by returning the bribe he'd already accepted.
The translation of the Dr. Villanueva-Nuñez is so elegant, and the machine translations of the original MicroSoft letter so fish-fuddled, I decided to make a clean copy of the original letter (mostly by cutting and pasting from the good Congressman's reply).
My hope is that this way the apparent brain-deadedness of the babelfished text can be flensed away, revealing the true brain-deadedness of the arguments themselves in all their glory.;)
San Isidro, March 21st 2002
Mr: Edgar Villanueva Nuñez Congressman of the
Republic of Peru
Present.-
Dear sir:
First of all, we want to thank you for the chance you gave us to
inform you about our work in this country for benefit of the public
sector, always looking for the best ways to implement programs that
will let us consolidate the initiatives of modernization and
transparency in the State.
In fact, thanks to our meeting today you are aware of our global
achievements at the international level in the design of new services
for the citizen, within the framework of a model State that respects
and protects intellectual property.
The actions we talked about are part of a global initiative, and
today there exist several experiences which have let us collaborate
with programs supporting the State and community in the adoption of
technology as a strategic element impacting the quality of life of
the citizens.
Furthermore, as arranged in this meeting, we assisted the forum
organized in the Congress on March 6th regarding the law project that
you are leading, wherein we got the chance to listen to several
presentations which lead us now to explain our position so you have a
wider grasp of the real situation.
The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only
free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches
the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination
and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of
contract, protected by the constitution.
The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory,
would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the
contracting and purchasing by public bodies, violating the base
principles of the "Law of State Contracting and Aquisitions"
(Number 26850)
So, by compelling the State to favour a business model based
entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and
international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which
really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number
of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as
opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an
ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the
service sector.
The bill imposes the use of open source software without
considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of
security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual
property rights of third parties.
The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly,
since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of
zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State
savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position.
It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge.
Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the
technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the
cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is
only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a
rational and truely beneficial use of the technology. The other 92%
consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance,
administration, and down-time.
One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from
costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial
software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types
of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State,
as has happened in other countries.
In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (i) is clearly
more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (ii)
puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms
within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given
the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market.
The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of
service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high
productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public
organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source
software solution and to use commercial software in its place.
The bill demotivates the creativity of the peruvian software
industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$
(10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than
handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a
law that incentivates the use of open source, software programmers
lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of
payment.
Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge,
does not allow the generation of income for its developers through
exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software
to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the
industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate
local industry.
In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was
discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this
initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State
employees who founded the project now state that open source software
did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in
the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national
level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software
did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration
that now exist in schools.
If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State
bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market
which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?
I really want to thank you for your attention to this letter, and
we want to reiterate our interest in meeting you to explain to you in
more detail our point of view about the bill you have presented, and
to be at your complete disposal to share experiences and information
which we are sure can help better analyse and implement an initiative
looking to modernization and transparency of the State for the
benefit of the citizen.
It's simple and cheap enough for a student or even a layman to perform (a light source, a baffle with a couple of slits, and a screen; I don't know of a kindergartner who can't get that level of equipment), objectifies not one but two paradigm shifts, one arguably unequalled in the history of scientific endeavor (first particular light vs. wave light, & upon deeper examination classical vs. quantum physics; how fundamental do you want to get?), and as if that weren't enough, it provides a romantic light to spoon with your lover by...:)
Why is it that there's such tremendous opposition to standardizing voting methods, which has obvious practical advantages and almost no potential for abuse, and yet there's always another proposal to make my personal identification nationally "transparent", which has few really practical advantages but huge potential for abuse?
Yes, you are. Section 1 of the "Terms for Copying, Distribution and Modification":
1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.
Reselling a Red Hat CD-Rom as recieved would most certainly meet all those conditions.
I more or less agree with the point, but the analogy is faulty. It's not actually illegal to sell a coverless used book; if you bought it with a cover and the cover fell off through wear (as recently happened to my third or fourth copy of Stranger in a Strange Land) you could still sell it, assuming anyone wanted to buy it.
If you're a book retailer you'll get in trouble selling books without covers because of the peculiar way publishers and book retailers operate. Publishers send the retailers a load of books on spec, and the retailer tries to sell them all. Any that don't get sold can be returned to the publisher, but to save costs the retailer only ships back the covers and destroys the book itself. A book sold without its cover has therefore probably not been paid for.
Since a requirement of accepting the GPL is that you don't distribute the binary without making the source available, doing so means you're either a) in violation of the license you accepted, or b) in violation of the copyright laws protecting the software whose license you didn't accept.
I'm not sure which you'd be charged with, or who would have standing to sue you, though - can anyone clear this up for me? IANAL, in case that wasn't obvious.
There is 'negotiation'. I cross out all the terms I don't agree with, and the click to agree to what is left, just as I would do with a written contract.
So this script would at least save you erasing all the ink off the monitor...;)
... and any number of other organizations who are looking for a decent test case.
If nothing else, bringing these organizations into the fray, even if only by name, puts the intimidation shoe on the other foot. How much does the BSA want a big, public court battle against a university backed by organizations full of lawyers dying to sink their teeth into multiple Bill of Rights issues?
How hard could it be to encrypt the stream? I'm no expert in this area, but I'll bet neutrinos to nuggets (chicken or gold) that it'd be a cakewalk to someone who is, at least to the point where it's as secure as a modern cellphone.
Frederick Pohl wrote a whole series of satirical stories based on this McGuffin. The essence of it was that only the rich could afford not to own huge mansions, fur coats, enormous banquets at every meal... and the only people making enough money to become rich were people who provided personal service and artists, since they were the only ones producing something the machines couldn't.
Check out http://www.baen.com/library where you'll see a publisher essentially doing just that, with the full cooperation of both big name and new authors, in the expectation that they'll end up making more money in the end due to the exposure.
Spineless would be to roll over and simply accept that they couldn't link to the Clambake site. Instead, Google have used the provisions of the DMCA against itself, by linking to the very documents which try to censor Google.
I call that a clever legal hack. It is legal and imagistic judo at its finest; the more the CoS tries to chill free speech about their actions, the better this technique works (using your enemy's strength against your enemy) and it is all specifically allowed under the current DMCA rules.
Furthermore, it is a technique which even the least-funded pointer site can use. If and when challenges to this method of fighting for free (linking) speech hit the higher courts, I have no doubt that Google will contribute financially as well to the cause, if only through self-interest.
IANAL, but TRIPS and most other international treaties tend to agree only to the bare minimum. The US may prefer that patents and copyrights be extended forever and a day, but TRIPS obligates member countries to honor patents only for 20 years I think.
After a quick check of the WTO web site to verify that number, I see that the WTO prefers to cover code under copyright. I wonder if using one of these standards to enable a Web page would be covered under "fair use" doctrine (in the EC I mean, the US barely recognizes the concept any more it seems)?
Not in the US, and not at this time. Given enough abuse, perhaps legislators in one or more of the major markets will change the law. There are only piddlin' little gaps now, but I wonder what would happen if there was a really serious rift in IP law between the US and the EC, or China?
If Europe, especially, were to declare that IBM & Microsoft couldn't charge Europe-based companie for use of these types of standards (i.e. ones that become standard because they're free at first), there'd be a competitive edge to basing your Webusiness in the EC vs. the US.
The US Justice Department revealed today that chemical formulae for recreational drugs have been illegally encrypted into digital images of child pornography in order to support fundraising by Al-Quaeda.
Senator Hollings (D-SC) will introduce new legislation mandating the use of fuzzy monochrome monitors on all new personal computers "to prevent sicko perverts from enjoying themselves."
The legislation, which will be known as the "God Bless our Beloved USA Bill", originallly outlawed monitors altogether, but was modified by Sen. Hollings in an attempt to "work with the tech sector".
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know how typical I am, but I'm basically a non-coder (i.e. I "code" in very industry-specific languages but couldn't C++ my way out of a hardcopy) who has gradually gotten po'd_w/_M$ over the years. I know how to install a driver, which makes me a guru to my co-workers, and I've always wanted to recommend Linux to them, but until this last year or so I couldn't honestly recommend it to any of them. I still can't recommend it to most, but there's three of us at work now!
I want to use my computer for the most part, and all I really ask of a Linux distro is that a) I can do pretty much everything I do under Windows, which is nothing exotic, b) I don't have to spend a whole lot of time learning new ways to do the same thing I did before, and c) I don't have to study up for weeks before installing.
Red Hat has always installed pretty easily for me, and I haven't found RH's way of doing things too totally foreign. SuSe didn't install so easily but was far superior in terms of usability once I got it in. The others I tried either failed utterly to install, had no attractive interface (hey CLI fanatics, this matters!), or lacked flexibility.
I'm hoping and believing that a union of several major distros will provide a degree of uniformity which is sadly needed (damn it, shift-f1 and left-click-and-drag should do at least roughly similar things !), without leaving all decision-making for a particular interface in the hands of a single organization.
The $100 is exclusive of lawyer's fees. The NYT article states:
Goren, who predicted ``months or years'' of litigation, is seeking attorney's fees plus damages of at least $100 per day for every Comcast subscriber.
I think... ;)
The dolphins escaped the destruction of the Earth in Douglas Adams' "So Long and Thanks For All The Fish" by escaping to another quantum continuum. The pickaxe is obviously for quantum tunnelling across barriers...
"'Twas King Billy's shilling, sair, 'as paid for yer ale, and ye're now a sailor o' the good ship 'Portholes EggsPee', ahar, har, har!!!"
"Darth Gates, the more you tighten your grip, the more school systems will slip through your fingers!"
Tragically, the Senator once convinced by her argument (that there's actually only a limited number of original tunes, plots, etc.) has to ruin his political career by returning the bribe he'd already accepted.
Eerie, ain't it?
Title says it all, really. I realize the /. crew would have to come up with a translator, but I'd bet that that wouldn't be a problem...
The translation of the Dr. Villanueva-Nuñez is so elegant, and the machine translations of the original MicroSoft letter so fish-fuddled, I decided to make a clean copy of the original letter (mostly by cutting and pasting from the good Congressman's reply).
My hope is that this way the apparent brain-deadedness of the babelfished text can be flensed away, revealing the true brain-deadedness of the arguments themselves in all their glory. ;)
San Isidro, March 21st 2002
Mr:
Edgar Villanueva Nuñez
Congressman of the Republic of Peru
Present.-
Dear sir:
First of all, we want to thank you for the chance you gave us to inform you about our work in this country for benefit of the public sector, always looking for the best ways to implement programs that will let us consolidate the initiatives of modernization and transparency in the State.
In fact, thanks to our meeting today you are aware of our global achievements at the international level in the design of new services for the citizen, within the framework of a model State that respects and protects intellectual property.
The actions we talked about are part of a global initiative, and today there exist several experiences which have let us collaborate with programs supporting the State and community in the adoption of technology as a strategic element impacting the quality of life of the citizens.
Furthermore, as arranged in this meeting, we assisted the forum organized in the Congress on March 6th regarding the law project that you are leading, wherein we got the chance to listen to several presentations which lead us now to explain our position so you have a wider grasp of the real situation.
The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution.
The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies, violating the base principles of the "Law of State Contracting and Aquisitions" (Number 26850)
So, by compelling the State to favour a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector.
The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties.
The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position.
It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truely beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time.
One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries.
In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (i) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (ii) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market.
The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place.
The bill demotivates the creativity of the peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that incentivates the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment.
Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry.
In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools.
If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?
I really want to thank you for your attention to this letter, and we want to reiterate our interest in meeting you to explain to you in more detail our point of view about the bill you have presented, and to be at your complete disposal to share experiences and information which we are sure can help better analyse and implement an initiative looking to modernization and transparency of the State for the benefit of the citizen.
Sincerely,
Juan Alberto González
General Manager
Microsoft Perú
It's simple and cheap enough for a student or even a layman to perform (a light source, a baffle with a couple of slits, and a screen; I don't know of a kindergartner who can't get that level of equipment), objectifies not one but two paradigm shifts, one arguably unequalled in the history of scientific endeavor (first particular light vs. wave light, & upon deeper examination classical vs. quantum physics; how fundamental do you want to get?), and as if that weren't enough, it provides a romantic light to spoon with your lover by... :)
Why is it that there's such tremendous opposition to standardizing voting methods, which has obvious practical advantages and almost no potential for abuse, and yet there's always another proposal to make my personal identification nationally "transparent", which has few really practical advantages but huge potential for abuse?
1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.
Reselling a Red Hat CD-Rom as recieved would most certainly meet all those conditions.
I more or less agree with the point, but the analogy is faulty. It's not actually illegal to sell a coverless used book; if you bought it with a cover and the cover fell off through wear (as recently happened to my third or fourth copy of Stranger in a Strange Land) you could still sell it, assuming anyone wanted to buy it.
If you're a book retailer you'll get in trouble selling books without covers because of the peculiar way publishers and book retailers operate. Publishers send the retailers a load of books on spec, and the retailer tries to sell them all. Any that don't get sold can be returned to the publisher, but to save costs the retailer only ships back the covers and destroys the book itself. A book sold without its cover has therefore probably not been paid for.
Since a requirement of accepting the GPL is that you don't distribute the binary without making the source available, doing so means you're either a) in violation of the license you accepted, or b) in violation of the copyright laws protecting the software whose license you didn't accept.
I'm not sure which you'd be charged with, or who would have standing to sue you, though - can anyone clear this up for me? IANAL, in case that wasn't obvious.
So this script would at least save you erasing all the ink off the monitor... ;)
http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/source/build_64 1d/index.html#binaries
If nothing else, bringing these organizations into the fray, even if only by name, puts the intimidation shoe on the other foot. How much does the BSA want a big, public court battle against a university backed by organizations full of lawyers dying to sink their teeth into multiple Bill of Rights issues?
How hard could it be to encrypt the stream? I'm no expert in this area, but I'll bet neutrinos to nuggets (chicken or gold) that it'd be a cakewalk to someone who is, at least to the point where it's as secure as a modern cellphone.
Frederick Pohl wrote a whole series of satirical stories based on this McGuffin. The essence of it was that only the rich could afford not to own huge mansions, fur coats, enormous banquets at every meal... and the only people making enough money to become rich were people who provided personal service and artists, since they were the only ones producing something the machines couldn't.
Check out http://www.baen.com/library where you'll see a publisher essentially doing just that, with the full cooperation of both big name and new authors, in the expectation that they'll end up making more money in the end due to the exposure.
And if he weighs as much as a duck, will he say "It's a fair cop"?
I call that a clever legal hack. It is legal and imagistic judo at its finest; the more the CoS tries to chill free speech about their actions, the better this technique works (using your enemy's strength against your enemy) and it is all specifically allowed under the current DMCA rules.
Furthermore, it is a technique which even the least-funded pointer site can use. If and when challenges to this method of fighting for free (linking) speech hit the higher courts, I have no doubt that Google will contribute financially as well to the cause, if only through self-interest.And so will I, through the EFF.
IIRC, didn't those cameras help police catch some neo-Nazis (called the White Wolves or some such) planting bombs in London a couple of years ago?
After a quick check of the WTO web site to verify that number, I see that the WTO prefers to cover code under copyright. I wonder if using one of these standards to enable a Web page would be covered under "fair use" doctrine (in the EC I mean, the US barely recognizes the concept any more it seems)?
If Europe, especially, were to declare that IBM & Microsoft couldn't charge Europe-based companie for use of these types of standards (i.e. ones that become standard because they're free at first), there'd be a competitive edge to basing your Webusiness in the EC vs. the US.
Senator Hollings (D-SC) will introduce new legislation mandating the use of fuzzy monochrome monitors on all new personal computers "to prevent sicko perverts from enjoying themselves."
The legislation, which will be known as the "God Bless our Beloved USA Bill", originallly outlawed monitors altogether, but was modified by Sen. Hollings in an attempt to "work with the tech sector".