How many of the return the drive? How many of them sue the manufacturer for false advertising? Bottom line: they don't care. Proof: I don't know anybody who uses 1024x1024 bytes for megabyte when selling hard drives today.
You need to understand where people are today. To put it simply, they might use Firefox if somebody helps them install it. They understand that it's free (beer). They're unlikely to install Linux, because it's too disruptive, and if the application really matters to them (think Word and Photoshop), they do not hesitate to pay for closed source software. No qualms, no sleepless nights.
It would seem to me that the first step is to introduce and move people to open source software. There are practical and philosophical advantages, and advocates can use one or both to form a convincing argument depending on the audience. Once open source software distinguishes itself as the superior solution, then it becomes important to determine which branch of open source should further be promoted.
Yes, you can lecture them on and on, but in my experience, nobody cares yet. Remember they still happily (yes, happily) pay hundreds of dollars for closed source software right now. It simply doesn't seem useful to make distinctions within open source software today.
Now I didn't say it never will be, and I'm not asking anybody to give up their cause. The point is that you want to raise the issue at the right time and place in the right way if you want to be effective.
My answer is quite simple. I am not asking anybody to "back down" on their cause. I am merely stating that insisting on precise terminology doesn't always advance the cause. What I don't understand is the necessity to refer to software freedom by the specific term "free software", for example. Just because it was concocted by luminaries doesn't mean it's a good name, and certainly doesn't mean that the usefulness of the name is not up for debate.
An extremist, by the way, is somebody who holds an extreme opinion. Basically, we can lay your opinion out on a chosen spectrum and see whose are on the very ends of the spectrum. Extremist opinions are not necessarily wrong, or even unreasonable.
Don't we owe their lifelong efforts some sort of respect? Next time you use GCC, Emacs, glibc, etc think about how little is asked of you in return for what you are using. Just one little term... why not support it?
Because you fight the battles that you can win.
For example, some people might not be ready for the concept that women should be equal to men in every way. However, they might be okay with sending their daughters to school to learn something. What would an extremist feminist accomplish by yelling at the man for not seeing the inherent rights of every person? Probably not even getting the girls to school, which is at least one step in the right direction.
Point is, effective communication requires the encoder to build a message that will be understood by the decoder. That message will differ in various ways depending on the decoder.
You're introducing yet more terms. We started with "intelligent" and "dumb", I added "stupid", and now you've added "ignorant".
But you've inadvertently pointed out the crux of the issue when you say:
I wouldn't object to him calling me ignorant if I was.
This is because you understand the difference between "dumb", "stupid", and "ignorant". Many people don't or don't care to, and will take offense. Ignoring this is counterproductive to communication, even if you are using the right words according to the dictionary.
It's those who maintain the general population are irremediably confused when faced with "free" and "open source" who are the true elitists.
You've misstated my position. It's not that the general populace is too stupid to understand, but that they are mostly unaffected by the details. I would happily explain the differences to somebody who expresses an interest. I'm saying it is not necessarily important for them to be interested, and that it's counterproductive to insist on the highest level of precision for every occasion.
The megabyte example is not meant to show that the populace is stupid. It's meant to show that they don't care, and the world hasn't ended because of that, however it irks the technical purists.
Let me know when you convert the world back to accepting that a megabyte is 1024 * 1024 bytes.
Your position is fundamentally elitist, using words like "intelligent" and "dumb", and that is not a recipe for effective communication. How would you like it if your doctor called you stupid when you can't precisely tell him what is hurting?
Geeks of all kinds like jargon. It makes them feel special, and it excludes others from the little club. The problem occurs when you confuse such language with effective communication, which requires encoding your thoughts in a way that the decoder will actually understand, or even care to understand.
We were comparing the commercial viability of free software -vs- open source. Closed source is an entirely different ballgame.
You did not understand my point at all.
Let's assume that party B writes a cool app, and releases it under a BSD license. Party G writes a similar app, and releases it under GPL.
It is possible for party A to make a living off of either. A can sell CD-ROMs with app B or app G, or offer services based on them.
Now, if A chooses to make minor changes to either product, another party C can come along and make the same changes easily. It doesn't really matter whether the app was based on B (in which case the few changes might have to be rewritten at worst) or G (in which A is required to publish the modified source).
However, if A chooses to significantly improve the app, A can close the final product if it was based on B, but not if it was based on G. This means that party C can save a lot of development effort and undersell party A if the product was based on G.
Therefore, if you want to take a free software product and sell a greatly improved version of it, BSD is more viable a solution because it lets you avoid freeloading competitors. If you just want to sell CD-ROMs or offer servies, then it doesn't really matter.
Note also that there are at least five parties here: A, B, C, G, and the end users. Each party derives different benefits, and would have different perspectives on the question. I'm just pointing out the view from A's corner.
Planesdragon is most likely referring to the ability to incorporate BSD license software into a closed source product. Obviously, unless you make major changes, somebody else will still come along and eat your lunch. The only way to make a living off of somebody else's BSD license code is to add significant value, such as Apple has, putting Aqua on top of BSD Unix.
With GPL, however, it's harder to do that, because somebody else can eat your lunch no matter how big or small your modifications are.
There are many perspectives other than that of the original author.
Just because there are exceptions doesn't mean that human languages always have to be precise. For example, for the gross majority of users, there is no effective difference between GPL, BSD, or even closed source freeware. Most of them will never even want to download any source code. There are people for whom it matters a great deal how the software is licensed, but it doesn't mean everybody should have to use precise but confusing terminology all the time.
I do understand that technical people like to be precise in their speech. The problem is using the right level of precision when talking to people who care a lot less.
Think more like prescription drugs on the controlled substance schedules. Should worse come to worst, that's how compilers and especially debuggers will be.
So let's not let worse come to worst. However, neither should we let the worst case scenario frighten us into not ever doing anything.
The founding fathers of the US were wary of a central government that could not be reined in. But instead of just fighting the British as 13 separate entities, they looked for ways to limit the powers of the federal government and still got most of the job done. It's obviously not perfect, but it was workable.
We need a workable patent system, and we might need a workable license system. We don't need to throw away patents and licenses altogether, just because the worst could happen.
The U.S. Congress has already shown willingness to throw the baby (fair use) out with the bathwater [...]. I'll consider certifications for programmers as long as the government doesn't make it unlawful to program without a license.
Your position is quite confusing. Seems to me either you are (collectively) powerful enough to ensure that the government makes good laws (in which case I suggest that course of action), or you're powerless and your "consideration" is hardly required. You appear to be assuming both positions.
The fear is that enforcing licensure may require that people who aren't licensed and bonded software engineers may be forbidden from having access to a compiler or even from having access to a machine's root password.
Indeed. I'm not a licensed civil engineer, so I haven't been able to buy a drafting table due to government restrictions. Not being a board-certified doctor, nobody would even sell me white pants except that shady dealer in the alley...
Yes, we need thoughtfully-written laws that are enforceable and fair. What I don't understand is why the non-zero possibility of abuse - which is common to any human system - is repeatedly used as an excuse to just throw something out, baby and bathwater alike?
No amount of buffering will help a source that cannot generate information as quickly as it is consumed. With a decoder running at 80% of real time, it needs to buffer at least 20% before starting to play (assuming that the UI and playback consumes no CPU power at all) to avoid gaps during a song. If all your songs are each 3 minutes long, you'll wait at least 36 seconds in between songs.
The iPod lovers who are modding this down need to think about it for a second. 6000 yen is about $55.
The write-up isn't completely clear, but judging from the price, I don't think the JPY6000 price includes the hard disk yet. Adding even a 10 GB disk to that should send the price well above $100, which is more than the Belkin iPod peripherals cost.
In other words, as most reviews point out, the Belkin solution is meant for people who already have iPods.
Just for those who care, Belkin has two different accessories for the iPod to address that need. The first one to market was the media reader, where you had to remove the memory card from the camera and insert into the reader. The second one was a direct link, where you transferred data directly from a supported camera via USB.
I own the latter, and I've used it to transfer about a dozen "rolls" totalling over 400 shots with no problems. The major drawback is battery consumption on the iPod (the connector doesn't allow you to power the iPod via AC), where a 128 MB transfer can consume about half a 3G iPod's battery. The second drawback is the slow USB connection. However, it does work, today.
Yeah, that will work until these people with "ordinary skill in the art" get bribes and kickbacks or get pressure from a superior to grant a patent to $BIG_CORP.
Honesty among civil servants is not a new requirement. For laws to work, people have to obey the law, or be made to. I don't see what you're arguing against.
Additionally, it can be made similar to a jury system. Software engineers can be licensed, and as a corresponding duty to that license be asked randomly to serve on a patent "jury". There are many ideas to explore before we throw the whole thing away.
You are quoting how the patent office _should_ be, not how it currently is. Are you familiar with these _current_ issues? Or do you just assume the system is functioning as it should?
I'm saying that the system can be made to function as it should, and should not be thrown away wholesale. It is your position - which seems to be that we can't get the system to work, so let's not protect any software algorithm invention however worthwhile - that I am objecting to.
You probably think the RSA algorithm is OK to patent because it is a little complex to you. Well it is not complex to everyone.
It only needs to be non-obvious to somebody with "ordinary skill in the art". To require only absolutely unique inventions for a patent is the same as abolishing the system.
Exactly who gets to pick which set of software instructions are "complex" vs. "non-complex"? As it is now, it is a non-technical patent examiner. To him, _all_ software instructions are complex.
So use people (with "ordinary skill in the art") who can more accurately judge what deserves patent protection. There's still no need to throw everything out.
Can I patent the instructions to cook chicken soup? How about the instructions to brush your teeth? If I were allowed to patent those, I would be a very rich man!
The first one probably has prior art, so it's not "novel". The second one is probably "obvious". Even mechanical devices have to be "novel" and "non-obvious" to be patentable.
it doesn't matter if the people pirating the software are not able to aford it, or never would have bought it anyway, it is still a person using adobe's software without paying for it. had that person paid for it adobe would have gained however much adobe charges for photoshop. so it indeed is a loss for adobe.
There are two ways Adobe can be hurt. Its sales can be decreased, or its costs can be increased. Copying their software without permission would not increase their costs, unless they maintain an unusually large legal department to deal with this. Let's ignore costs for now.
You can only argue that it decreased their sales if there was a reasonable belief under which the sale would have been completed. A seven-year old would probably not have $700 to buy Photoshop, so the hypothetical transaction could not have occurred.
Does Adobe have the right to stop the young pirate from using their software without paying the amount they want? Absolutely. This is why we invented copyright in the first place.
Did Adobe suffer a loss or get hurt in this case? No. For Adobe to suffer a loss, the money that would've compensated them must have existed somewhere at some point in time.
In other words, it is a intellectually-dishonest overstatement to simply multiply the number of illegal copies by its list price to arrive at "losses". If you still have trouble with this concept, consider a poor third world country where virtually all copies of Windows are pirated. Imagine if the "losses" exceed their GDP, according to this formula. How can Microsoft possibly lose more money than that entire country has to pay? If I write a song, charge US$1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, and somebody copies it illegally, did I just lose more money than the world has to pay? Clearly that can't be.
This is not to say software companies don't suffer actual losses to piracy. This is just asking for a more honest accounting of such losses.
I don't know who you talk to, and I don't think that catastrophes should be ranked so that we can grieve only about the "worst" ones.
However, consider that some of those you've spoken to might have been comparing the amount of grief shown for the 9/11 attack in contrast to the perceived apathy for other (worse or otherwise) catastrophes. It's not that you're not allowed to grieve for 9/11, but that (in their perception) you've ignored all others. There's some truth to that, if you measure concern by media coverage or charitable donations.
If victimhood and sense of loss cannot bring out our common humanity, what would?
"In many ways, my only gripe with the GPL has been how many words it seems to need to say something very simple. That seems to be a common theme in any legal situation."
Similarly, if he didn't have to write code to deal with all sorts of exceptional and rare conditions, then Linux would be much smaller than it is today. Legal contracts are long because they have to be comprehensive.
offer a few million bucks to whoever builds the first mecha that can go a half mile, pick up a Dodge Neon and move it in the air for 50 feet, then return to the starting line.
Interesting idea, but how would you differentiate a "mecha" from a forklift in this contest?
It seems to me that a "mecha", like its human inspiration, is most useful as a creature for general purposes, unlike a spaceship which is meant to carry a specific load to a specific location. Thus, the contest should be designed to prove flexibility and generality, rather than competence at a specific task. Lots of industrial robots can already do very specific things very well. The human hand, on the other hand, is so useful because it can lift a hundred pounds as well as pick up an egg.
Slashdot Mirror
How many of the return the drive? How many of them sue the manufacturer for false advertising? Bottom line: they don't care. Proof: I don't know anybody who uses 1024x1024 bytes for megabyte when selling hard drives today.
Why would you need a distinct name?
You need to understand where people are today. To put it simply, they might use Firefox if somebody helps them install it. They understand that it's free (beer). They're unlikely to install Linux, because it's too disruptive, and if the application really matters to them (think Word and Photoshop), they do not hesitate to pay for closed source software. No qualms, no sleepless nights.
It would seem to me that the first step is to introduce and move people to open source software. There are practical and philosophical advantages, and advocates can use one or both to form a convincing argument depending on the audience. Once open source software distinguishes itself as the superior solution, then it becomes important to determine which branch of open source should further be promoted.
Yes, you can lecture them on and on, but in my experience, nobody cares yet. Remember they still happily (yes, happily) pay hundreds of dollars for closed source software right now. It simply doesn't seem useful to make distinctions within open source software today.
Now I didn't say it never will be, and I'm not asking anybody to give up their cause. The point is that you want to raise the issue at the right time and place in the right way if you want to be effective.
An extremist, by the way, is somebody who holds an extreme opinion. Basically, we can lay your opinion out on a chosen spectrum and see whose are on the very ends of the spectrum. Extremist opinions are not necessarily wrong, or even unreasonable.
Because you fight the battles that you can win.
For example, some people might not be ready for the concept that women should be equal to men in every way. However, they might be okay with sending their daughters to school to learn something. What would an extremist feminist accomplish by yelling at the man for not seeing the inherent rights of every person? Probably not even getting the girls to school, which is at least one step in the right direction.
Point is, effective communication requires the encoder to build a message that will be understood by the decoder. That message will differ in various ways depending on the decoder.
But you've inadvertently pointed out the crux of the issue when you say:
I wouldn't object to him calling me ignorant if I was.
This is because you understand the difference between "dumb", "stupid", and "ignorant". Many people don't or don't care to, and will take offense. Ignoring this is counterproductive to communication, even if you are using the right words according to the dictionary.
You've misstated my position. It's not that the general populace is too stupid to understand, but that they are mostly unaffected by the details. I would happily explain the differences to somebody who expresses an interest. I'm saying it is not necessarily important for them to be interested, and that it's counterproductive to insist on the highest level of precision for every occasion.
The megabyte example is not meant to show that the populace is stupid. It's meant to show that they don't care, and the world hasn't ended because of that, however it irks the technical purists.
Your position is fundamentally elitist, using words like "intelligent" and "dumb", and that is not a recipe for effective communication. How would you like it if your doctor called you stupid when you can't precisely tell him what is hurting?
Geeks of all kinds like jargon. It makes them feel special, and it excludes others from the little club. The problem occurs when you confuse such language with effective communication, which requires encoding your thoughts in a way that the decoder will actually understand, or even care to understand.
You did not understand my point at all.
Let's assume that party B writes a cool app, and releases it under a BSD license. Party G writes a similar app, and releases it under GPL.
It is possible for party A to make a living off of either. A can sell CD-ROMs with app B or app G, or offer services based on them.
Now, if A chooses to make minor changes to either product, another party C can come along and make the same changes easily. It doesn't really matter whether the app was based on B (in which case the few changes might have to be rewritten at worst) or G (in which A is required to publish the modified source).
However, if A chooses to significantly improve the app, A can close the final product if it was based on B, but not if it was based on G. This means that party C can save a lot of development effort and undersell party A if the product was based on G.
Therefore, if you want to take a free software product and sell a greatly improved version of it, BSD is more viable a solution because it lets you avoid freeloading competitors. If you just want to sell CD-ROMs or offer servies, then it doesn't really matter.
Note also that there are at least five parties here: A, B, C, G, and the end users. Each party derives different benefits, and would have different perspectives on the question. I'm just pointing out the view from A's corner.
With GPL, however, it's harder to do that, because somebody else can eat your lunch no matter how big or small your modifications are.
There are many perspectives other than that of the original author.
I do understand that technical people like to be precise in their speech. The problem is using the right level of precision when talking to people who care a lot less.
So let's not let worse come to worst. However, neither should we let the worst case scenario frighten us into not ever doing anything.
The founding fathers of the US were wary of a central government that could not be reined in. But instead of just fighting the British as 13 separate entities, they looked for ways to limit the powers of the federal government and still got most of the job done. It's obviously not perfect, but it was workable.
We need a workable patent system, and we might need a workable license system. We don't need to throw away patents and licenses altogether, just because the worst could happen.
The U.S. Congress has already shown willingness to throw the baby (fair use) out with the bathwater [...]. I'll consider certifications for programmers as long as the government doesn't make it unlawful to program without a license.
Your position is quite confusing. Seems to me either you are (collectively) powerful enough to ensure that the government makes good laws (in which case I suggest that course of action), or you're powerless and your "consideration" is hardly required. You appear to be assuming both positions.
Indeed. I'm not a licensed civil engineer, so I haven't been able to buy a drafting table due to government restrictions. Not being a board-certified doctor, nobody would even sell me white pants except that shady dealer in the alley...
Yes, we need thoughtfully-written laws that are enforceable and fair. What I don't understand is why the non-zero possibility of abuse - which is common to any human system - is repeatedly used as an excuse to just throw something out, baby and bathwater alike?
No amount of buffering will help a source that cannot generate information as quickly as it is consumed. With a decoder running at 80% of real time, it needs to buffer at least 20% before starting to play (assuming that the UI and playback consumes no CPU power at all) to avoid gaps during a song. If all your songs are each 3 minutes long, you'll wait at least 36 seconds in between songs.
How many AA batteries (the 2.5" version already requires four) do suppose the 3.5" desktop drives would need?
It can even destroy software engineering itself. Do you have a non-obvious point beyond the general observation that we need a good system of laws?
Be asked to uphold the DMCA, the CBDTPA, [...]
Without licensing, you are already required to obey laws. What's your point?
The write-up isn't completely clear, but judging from the price, I don't think the JPY6000 price includes the hard disk yet. Adding even a 10 GB disk to that should send the price well above $100, which is more than the Belkin iPod peripherals cost.
In other words, as most reviews point out, the Belkin solution is meant for people who already have iPods.
I own the latter, and I've used it to transfer about a dozen "rolls" totalling over 400 shots with no problems. The major drawback is battery consumption on the iPod (the connector doesn't allow you to power the iPod via AC), where a 128 MB transfer can consume about half a 3G iPod's battery. The second drawback is the slow USB connection. However, it does work, today.
Honesty among civil servants is not a new requirement. For laws to work, people have to obey the law, or be made to. I don't see what you're arguing against.
Additionally, it can be made similar to a jury system. Software engineers can be licensed, and as a corresponding duty to that license be asked randomly to serve on a patent "jury". There are many ideas to explore before we throw the whole thing away.
You are quoting how the patent office _should_ be, not how it currently is. Are you familiar with these _current_ issues? Or do you just assume the system is functioning as it should?
I'm saying that the system can be made to function as it should, and should not be thrown away wholesale. It is your position - which seems to be that we can't get the system to work, so let's not protect any software algorithm invention however worthwhile - that I am objecting to.
That can tell you what is actually happening, but not what the original programmer wanted to happen, or why he needs it to happen.
when the comments are unhelpful or wrong, it can be much more useful than reading the code.
Not to be facetious, but how do you know it's the comments, not the code, that are wrong?
It only needs to be non-obvious to somebody with "ordinary skill in the art". To require only absolutely unique inventions for a patent is the same as abolishing the system.
Exactly who gets to pick which set of software instructions are "complex" vs. "non-complex"? As it is now, it is a non-technical patent examiner. To him, _all_ software instructions are complex.
So use people (with "ordinary skill in the art") who can more accurately judge what deserves patent protection. There's still no need to throw everything out.
Can I patent the instructions to cook chicken soup? How about the instructions to brush your teeth? If I were allowed to patent those, I would be a very rich man!
The first one probably has prior art, so it's not "novel". The second one is probably "obvious". Even mechanical devices have to be "novel" and "non-obvious" to be patentable.
Are you actually familiar with these issues?
There are two ways Adobe can be hurt. Its sales can be decreased, or its costs can be increased. Copying their software without permission would not increase their costs, unless they maintain an unusually large legal department to deal with this. Let's ignore costs for now.
You can only argue that it decreased their sales if there was a reasonable belief under which the sale would have been completed. A seven-year old would probably not have $700 to buy Photoshop, so the hypothetical transaction could not have occurred.
Does Adobe have the right to stop the young pirate from using their software without paying the amount they want? Absolutely. This is why we invented copyright in the first place.
Did Adobe suffer a loss or get hurt in this case? No. For Adobe to suffer a loss, the money that would've compensated them must have existed somewhere at some point in time.
In other words, it is a intellectually-dishonest overstatement to simply multiply the number of illegal copies by its list price to arrive at "losses". If you still have trouble with this concept, consider a poor third world country where virtually all copies of Windows are pirated. Imagine if the "losses" exceed their GDP, according to this formula. How can Microsoft possibly lose more money than that entire country has to pay? If I write a song, charge US$1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, and somebody copies it illegally, did I just lose more money than the world has to pay? Clearly that can't be.
This is not to say software companies don't suffer actual losses to piracy. This is just asking for a more honest accounting of such losses.
However, consider that some of those you've spoken to might have been comparing the amount of grief shown for the 9/11 attack in contrast to the perceived apathy for other (worse or otherwise) catastrophes. It's not that you're not allowed to grieve for 9/11, but that (in their perception) you've ignored all others. There's some truth to that, if you measure concern by media coverage or charitable donations.
If victimhood and sense of loss cannot bring out our common humanity, what would?
Is there jewelry of some sort that we can drop into Mount St. Helens for all this to end?
Similarly, if he didn't have to write code to deal with all sorts of exceptional and rare conditions, then Linux would be much smaller than it is today. Legal contracts are long because they have to be comprehensive.
Interesting idea, but how would you differentiate a "mecha" from a forklift in this contest?
It seems to me that a "mecha", like its human inspiration, is most useful as a creature for general purposes, unlike a spaceship which is meant to carry a specific load to a specific location. Thus, the contest should be designed to prove flexibility and generality, rather than competence at a specific task. Lots of industrial robots can already do very specific things very well. The human hand, on the other hand, is so useful because it can lift a hundred pounds as well as pick up an egg.