Zeno's theories are pretty well-established, you know "Man is walking across a road, if you keep on dividing the time intervals, he'll never get there." This Lynds seems to just be restating the theory with some fancy terms.
It isn't a theory, rather a paradox. If you keep dividing the time & distance intervals, the two objects never pass each other. They just get infinitely closer. Hence the paradox. The paradox (and most of science for that matter) makes the assumption that time can be measured in finite bits.
What this guy is saying that there are no moments in time (or rather, there is no basic/smallest unit of time), which is why the two objects pass each other.
When you think about it for a little bit, it makes sense. It's kind of like PI... you can try and mark an instant in time, but that instant still represents an interval. The more precise your equipment, the smaller the interval, but the interval can get infinitely smaller.
The problem is when the copyrighted code is written to solve a problem similar to what you're solving.
If I looked at some code, then 2 months or later I work on a problem similar to what that code solved, and my solution looks an aweful lot like that code I looked at (ala SCO v IBM), I'm in trouble -- it doesn't matter if I came with it up on my own -- I've been tainted. If that did happen for real, do you honestly think that one person here would believe MS if they said that the code wasn't copied? No, OSS advocates would lynch 'em and demand that they release their source.
Now, you might disagree with it, but if you were in the position MS is in, would you have a different policy?
if you put GPL code in your software that you release as a binary, you have to release the source, no exceptions IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO VIOLATE COPYRIGHT
And if you do violate copyright, you get sued and one of the possible remedies is "release the source". Which is a more likely remedy when the "value" of the copyright is zero like it is for OSS projects.
Yes you are in trouble if you violate the GPL, but not much more than many other ways a company can get in trouble. Last I heard Microsoft is full of xerox machines and CD burners that can be used to violate copyright, and it does not seem to be making them panic.
Yup. And how much you do want to bet it's against company policy to xerox a book verbatim or copy music cd's?
They're not afraid they'll lose their source for their entire product line. They ARE however afraid that they will lose the source for a single product.
Your interpretation of the GPL also differs quite a bit from the way most people here interpret it. The typical interpretation I read is "if you put GPL code in your software that you release as a binary, you have to release the source, no exceptions." Since nobody has taken it to court yet, nobody knows if it can be enforced that strictly -- and likely, as you suggest, nobody would force MS to release the source code for, say, Office.
However the risk IS there, and they'd be incredibly stupid if they did have a policy that allowed a single employee to open MS up to that kind of damage.
The quality of dealerships varies widely, as does the quality of independent shops.
I've been fortunate to find a dealership for my car that does excellent work, and prices that work roughly at levels you'd pay at a good independent shop (their quotes are usually within 5% of the other places I've checked). The other advantage is that dealerships usually give you a free loaner car while they work on your vehicle. So far I've only had general maintenance done... might be a different story when stuff starts to break.
A good independent shop is hard to find. In fact, in my life I have one been to one independent shop that did work I was satisfied with.
While you could add a digital signature so you would know I modified the data, short of equipping every police officer, bouncer, etc with digital readers to validate the signature - every high/college school student in the country would instantly become legal drinking age as they alter the human readable data printed on the license. It looks like someone isn't thinking this through completely.
You might not have noticed, but most driver's liscenses these days have barcodes or magnetic stripes on them (hawaii liscenses have a 2d barcode on the front, my missouri liscense has a mag stripe on the back; remains to be seen what my wa license will have). The average squad car these days has a computer of some sort in it which would be more than capable of "reading" the data. Add to that how cheap barcode scanners and magnetic strip readers are, and it isn't as far fetched as you'd think.
The whole point is that a lot of systems cannot be bought without the operating system. That's the deal Microsoft has roped hardware vendors into. So this is an attempt to undo that.
Because we all know that the vast majority of consumers out there want to spend hours installing and configuring software on their new computer instead of being able to turn it on and have something that works...
So, in short, BuyMusic.com has only one viable business plan: get bought out by Microsoft! They'd fit right in...
Microsoft doesn't need to buy another company to do a crap clone of an Apple product...I think they've proven that they can do a much better job of it on their own.;)
SCO's lawsuit with IBM relates to a contract IBM signed. The language in the constract (at least, as it's been published on news sites and whatnot) states that IBM can not take technologies it develops from using the SCO liscense and put it into a competing product (aka Linux). It has nothing to do with ownership.
Most people here are trying to make a stawman arguement, saying that the contract doesn't apply to any product that was made from that first product. Which would be an interesting arguement to make, but at this point it's an academic one.
However, that arguement isn't even relevent to the case at hand, because IBM is not addressing it. IBM isn't saying "you don't own our code", they're saying "you distributed the code -- even though you may not have known it, it doesn't matter who because the GPL 'took' ownership from you" -- which is even worse on two counts.
1) because it implies that SCO might be right in derrivative works area. 2) because it will adversly effect OSS adoption among corporate groups if IBM wins on that arguement.
What would be disturbing me at this point is that IBM's response isn't one denying any wrongdoing -- rather they're playing the "you distributed the code too" card.
If IBM wins on that argument in court, I'd say the effects would be far more damaging to the open source movement than if SCO wins their lawsuit -- if SCO wins, all you have to do is remove the offending portions. If IBM wins on this logic, it will make it difficult for any company to justify the risk of contributing + distributing code to any project which is remotely close to any IP they may own.
The implication I was attempting to make is as follows:
There are no large successfull companies that haven't tried to screw over customers, employees, or other companies.
A large successfull company once upon a time had to have been a small company.
A small company didn't become a large successfull company and suddenly become evil.
Which implies that in order for a small company to become a large successfull company that they must screw over customers, employees, or other companies.
The best company I ever worked for was run by a couple of people who tried their best to always do the right thing. The company was never very successfull, even though the quality of the work we produced was pretty good. They got screwed by a company trying to do the wrong thing. Guess which company went out of business, and which one is still around?
The fact that MS did this so early during the life of their company, and their size now, underscores how much of an advantage being utterly ruthless can be.
Playing "dirty" is a relative word. In the world of business, what you or I would consider "dirty" is standard rules for the game. Which is a sad statement, but a true one.
Businesses can make money without fucking over people at every possible opportunity
But they don't. I can't think of any large successfull company that hasn't tried to screw over customers, employees, or other companies during it's lifetime.
Of course I exagerate about how grey the sky usually is. But 90% of the time when you have free time it's pretty murky outside. Or dark....;)
The Calc III teacher I had actually stated that his goal was a 50% average on the tests. He made half of the test stuff that everyone should know, and the other half of the test hard stuff -- just to see how well people would do on them (probably to get some feedback on how he was teaching). If you did all of the (ungraded) homework, odds are you'd do really well on the tests.
Of course, he graded on a curve -- if you made a 50% on a test you'd usually end up with a B. But it didn't stop people from complaining about how the test was hard. I personally thought the tests were awesome (when was the last time you had FUN taking a test?:)), and that was probably the best math class I'd ever taken...
Actually, the biggest challenge the solar racers experience is how to plan/cope with NOT having sun.
Ie: How hard do you push the car to have enough juice in the batteries to start off at full power the next day?
A more efficient car helps out somewhat, but good judgement (and luck) plays a much greater role than you'd think. And that good judgement comes from experience/practice.
I'm trying to remember the details, but it was quite awhile ago, so I'm bound to get some of it wrong.
Basically, what happened is I forgot the root password to the machine and had to reset it.
If I remember right, I was able to put the drive in a different machine that I could login as root, mount it, edit the passwd file, and bam problem solved.
I seem to recall having more problems once when I had actually moved over to a shaddow password file (I think if I edited it nobody could login, but I'm not sure), but in the end I could just remove the "*" and replace it with a password hash and...:).
Distros these days are set up a tad bit better than they were a decade ago.
Slashdot Mirror
Zeno's theories are pretty well-established, you know "Man is walking across a road, if you keep on dividing the time intervals, he'll never get there." This Lynds seems to just be restating the theory with some fancy terms.
... you can try and mark an instant in time, but that instant still represents an interval. The more precise your equipment, the smaller the interval, but the interval can get infinitely smaller.
It isn't a theory, rather a paradox. If you keep dividing the time & distance intervals, the two objects never pass each other. They just get infinitely closer. Hence the paradox. The paradox (and most of science for that matter) makes the assumption that time can be measured in finite bits.
What this guy is saying that there are no moments in time (or rather, there is no basic/smallest unit of time), which is why the two objects pass each other.
When you think about it for a little bit, it makes sense. It's kind of like PI
The problem is when the copyrighted code is written to solve a problem similar to what you're solving.
If I looked at some code, then 2 months or later I work on a problem similar to what that code solved, and my solution looks an aweful lot like that code I looked at (ala SCO v IBM), I'm in trouble -- it doesn't matter if I came with it up on my own -- I've been tainted. If that did happen for real, do you honestly think that one person here would believe MS if they said that the code wasn't copied? No, OSS advocates would lynch 'em and demand that they release their source.
Now, you might disagree with it, but if you were in the position MS is in, would you have a different policy?
if you put GPL code in your software that you release as a binary, you have to release the source, no exceptions IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO VIOLATE COPYRIGHT
And if you do violate copyright, you get sued and one of the possible remedies is "release the source". Which is a more likely remedy when the "value" of the copyright is zero like it is for OSS projects.
Yes you are in trouble if you violate the GPL, but not much more than many other ways a company can get in trouble. Last I heard Microsoft is full of xerox machines and CD burners that can be used to violate copyright, and it does not seem to be making them panic.
Yup. And how much you do want to bet it's against company policy to xerox a book verbatim or copy music cd's?
Yet there are a lot of people on slashdot who disagree with you. I'm not one of them mind you, but why take the chance?
They're not afraid they'll lose their source for their entire product line. They ARE however afraid that they will lose the source for a single product.
Your interpretation of the GPL also differs quite a bit from the way most people here interpret it. The typical interpretation I read is "if you put GPL code in your software that you release as a binary, you have to release the source, no exceptions." Since nobody has taken it to court yet, nobody knows if it can be enforced that strictly -- and likely, as you suggest, nobody would force MS to release the source code for, say, Office.
However the risk IS there, and they'd be incredibly stupid if they did have a policy that allowed a single employee to open MS up to that kind of damage.
The quality of dealerships varies widely, as does the quality of independent shops.
... might be a different story when stuff starts to break.
I've been fortunate to find a dealership for my car that does excellent work, and prices that work roughly at levels you'd pay at a good independent shop (their quotes are usually within 5% of the other places I've checked). The other advantage is that dealerships usually give you a free loaner car while they work on your vehicle. So far I've only had general maintenance done
A good independent shop is hard to find. In fact, in my life I have one been to one independent shop that did work I was satisfied with.
While you could add a digital signature so you would know I modified the data, short of equipping every police officer, bouncer, etc with digital readers to validate the signature - every high/college school student in the country would instantly become legal drinking age as they alter the human readable data printed on the license. It looks like someone isn't thinking this through completely.
You might not have noticed, but most driver's liscenses these days have barcodes or magnetic stripes on them (hawaii liscenses have a 2d barcode on the front, my missouri liscense has a mag stripe on the back; remains to be seen what my wa license will have). The average squad car these days has a computer of some sort in it which would be more than capable of "reading" the data. Add to that how cheap barcode scanners and magnetic strip readers are, and it isn't as far fetched as you'd think.
...why do people use cell phones -- I mean, 99% of the time you're within 10 seconds of a phone...
I think the "bowl" idea, while pretty useless, is also pretty cool. But then again, I thought cell phones were pretty useless when they came out too.
The concept actually makes me think of the clock in the Harry Potter books which has hands that tells you where everyone is at...
Because you didn't say "at your request". You just made a statement stating that computers should come without an os.
The whole point is that a lot of systems cannot be bought without the operating system. That's the deal Microsoft has roped hardware vendors into. So this is an attempt to undo that.
Because we all know that the vast majority of consumers out there want to spend hours installing and configuring software on their new computer instead of being able to turn it on and have something that works...
So, in short, BuyMusic.com has only one viable business plan: get bought out by Microsoft! They'd fit right in...
;)
Microsoft doesn't need to buy another company to do a crap clone of an Apple product...I think they've proven that they can do a much better job of it on their own.
SCO's lawsuit with IBM relates to a contract IBM signed. The language in the constract (at least, as it's been published on news sites and whatnot) states that IBM can not take technologies it develops from using the SCO liscense and put it into a competing product (aka Linux). It has nothing to do with ownership.
Most people here are trying to make a stawman arguement, saying that the contract doesn't apply to any product that was made from that first product. Which would be an interesting arguement to make, but at this point it's an academic one.
However, that arguement isn't even relevent to the case at hand, because IBM is not addressing it. IBM isn't saying "you don't own our code", they're saying "you distributed the code -- even though you may not have known it, it doesn't matter who because the GPL 'took' ownership from you" -- which is even worse on two counts.
1) because it implies that SCO might be right in derrivative works area.
2) because it will adversly effect OSS adoption among corporate groups if IBM wins on that arguement.
What would be disturbing me at this point is that IBM's response isn't one denying any wrongdoing -- rather they're playing the "you distributed the code too" card.
If IBM wins on that argument in court, I'd say the effects would be far more damaging to the open source movement than if SCO wins their lawsuit -- if SCO wins, all you have to do is remove the offending portions. If IBM wins on this logic, it will make it difficult for any company to justify the risk of contributing + distributing code to any project which is remotely close to any IP they may own.
No, it's not. The lawsuit accuses IBM of doing it intentionally, not accidentally.
There have been other discussions unrelated to the lawsuit criticizing Linus for not paying much attention to the IP side of things.
The implication I was attempting to make is as follows:
There are no large successfull companies that haven't tried to screw over customers, employees, or other companies.
A large successfull company once upon a time had to have been a small company.
A small company didn't become a large successfull company and suddenly become evil.
Which implies that in order for a small company to become a large successfull company that they must screw over customers, employees, or other companies.
The best company I ever worked for was run by a couple of people who tried their best to always do the right thing. The company was never very successfull, even though the quality of the work we produced was pretty good. They got screwed by a company trying to do the wrong thing. Guess which company went out of business, and which one is still around?
The fact that MS did this so early during the life of their company, and their size now, underscores how much of an advantage being utterly ruthless can be.
Playing "dirty" is a relative word. In the world of business, what you or I would consider "dirty" is standard rules for the game. Which is a sad statement, but a true one.
The yahoo messenger thing and the outdated version of gaim is a bit of pain in the ass for a newbie but not a sysadmin.
Your average desktop user is not a sysadmin. Nor should you have to be in order to figure out how to install something like that.
Businesses can make money without fucking over people at every possible opportunity
But they don't. I can't think of any large successfull company that hasn't tried to screw over customers, employees, or other companies during it's lifetime.
If a different band tries to sing the song, they can't without paying someone some cash.
If you change an instrument you play the song with, you still have to pay cash.
Change the temp, you still have to pay cash.
Hell, it applies to plays too. Use a different backdrop or set of costumes and you have to pay somebody some cash.
Intellectual Property is IDEAS, not implementation.
No, it's more like "if you want the next version of media player, fork over some cash."
They didn't say what kind of updates that they're considering charging money for. I suspect that they won't charge for security/bug updates.
Now, if you consider going from one rev of a product to another a "bug" update, that's another ball of wax alltogether...
Of course I exagerate about how grey the sky usually is. But 90% of the time when you have free time it's pretty murky outside. Or dark....;)
:)), and that was probably the best math class I'd ever taken ...
The Calc III teacher I had actually stated that his goal was a 50% average on the tests. He made half of the test stuff that everyone should know, and the other half of the test hard stuff -- just to see how well people would do on them (probably to get some feedback on how he was teaching). If you did all of the (ungraded) homework, odds are you'd do really well on the tests.
Of course, he graded on a curve -- if you made a 50% on a test you'd usually end up with a B. But it didn't stop people from complaining about how the test was hard. I personally thought the tests were awesome (when was the last time you had FUN taking a test?
UMR ... where the men are men, the women are men, and the sheep are scared...
(class of 5/2000)
Actually, the biggest challenge the solar racers experience is how to plan/cope with NOT having sun.
Ie: How hard do you push the car to have enough juice in the batteries to start off at full power the next day?
A more efficient car helps out somewhat, but good judgement (and luck) plays a much greater role than you'd think. And that good judgement comes from experience/practice.
When is there sun in Rolla? When I went there 90% of the time all you got was a murky grey in the sky. And cold.
:)
But I never stayed for a summer session -- just long enough to get pissed at the reslife people for not turning on the AC soon enough.
My college is actually good for something other than taking my money and giving me a diploma! :)
I'm trying to remember the details, but it was quite awhile ago, so I'm bound to get some of it wrong.
... :).
Basically, what happened is I forgot the root password to the machine and had to reset it.
If I remember right, I was able to put the drive in a different machine that I could login as root, mount it, edit the passwd file, and bam problem solved.
I seem to recall having more problems once when I had actually moved over to a shaddow password file (I think if I edited it nobody could login, but I'm not sure), but in the end I could just remove the "*" and replace it with a password hash and
Distros these days are set up a tad bit better than they were a decade ago.