And they can show it to the world, and you can't possibly force them not to, because it's GPLed. You can _ask_ them not to. That's different... and very likely they have no vested interest in distributing your rewrite... but they could because that's the license you're using. Now if you care about your little grep rewrite, what do you think when a team of salaried Corel programmers starts altering and debugging _your_ program to make it work seamlessly with their distribution- and you say, "Hey, cool, can I see that?" and they say "NO! You'll see it when it's done! We're forking your program, buddy- keep developing your version, and you can see _finished_ snapshots of _our_ version, but don't submit any changes, you're not seeing the real state of development and your change doesn't apply to the current (concealed) snapshot..." Are you seriously saying you _can't_ see the problem with this?
If I had GPLed code in the distribution (I have GPLed code but not in their distribution), and I learned that Corel was changing and modifying _MY!_ code but refused to let me or anybody else see what they were doing to it until the time that they released it with a big fanfare, I would be quite justifiably infuriated. This not only breaks the GPL outright, but there is another negative consequence: to the extent that the changes are major and substantial, this causes a forking of the GPLed code into that maintained by the original authors, and that which is maintained in secrecy by corporate programmers and only released in completed states. As this continues, it will become a major rivalry between the original authors who are publically allowing distribution of interim releases- and the 'beta guys' whose only visible output is (in theory) bugfixed. The end result could be loss of control of many Open Source packages to this corporate entity, which would then proceed to only develop under wraps and secrecy, and then release source to only completed works. If you had changes to contribute it would be difficult because the actual moving target of the development is _not_ visible, it is 'beta' and you don't get to see it until it's done. The original authors would be pressed to conceal _their_ development process, or to be seen as 'releasing bugware' while the corporate distributors hide theirs. End result could be widespread concealment of code under the GPL, by both corporates and individual developers. This is intolerable. This has to be stopped cold. It's not just a courtesy issue. Which programs are being modified (effectively 'forked') by Corel? Exactly which people are losing control of the development of their own software due to this power play by Corel? There is just no way that the separate, concealed, destined-for-commercial-distribution development of such programs _wouldn't_ result in forking of the programs' codebase, and there is no reason to believe the concealed-development forks wouldn't _keep_ being forked and developed in more 'beta' concealment. This is a very, very serious problem, potentially. Unless Corel is stopped, the original authors have no recourse, and their only consolation is that Red Hat or most other distributions will run the real snapshots of their programs- which might be buggy! So, _if_ Corel has a bunch of programmers so good that they can debug GPLed code, then they could be setting up a situation where their distributions always release debugged code, compared to other dists which might be found releasing code that is only a dev-snapshot and buggier. This will tend to make Corel's dist seem better (if their programmers are actually that good at debugging), causing them to take over, outdo RedHat, leading to a state where Linux is basically controlled by a corporation because the codebase is forked, and versions under constant secret development are known to be the most bugfree ones. You could still extend off the code Corel writes- but you can't get it accepted into their workflow because they're already three months ahead of you in secret, and can't integrate changes based on such an older version of their product. This mustn't be allowed to happen...
Sorry: unless you can say that the beta testers are paid employees, they _are_ the public. They happen to be a picked subgroup of the public but they are certainly not employees, not insiders. Eventually this breaks down- are temps insiders? What about people who've only worked for the company for a short while? Eventually you get to people who are definitely insiders. (You could make an argument that, even so, those people have a right to the GPLed source!) However, making a public announcement fishing for members of the public to do beta testing is, well, public- there's no way that's an inside release. It's not intended to stay an inside release, it's not being tested on the inside anymore- it's distribution to the public, just on a smaller scale. Again, they ought to select beta testers and then decide to only pay _attention_ to their own choices for beta testers, while allowing the testers to redistribute. Do you realise that such a tester would, under Corel's original idea, be confronted with a whole _Linux_ distribution that hopefully is a good synthesis of lots of opensource software from all over- and yet the tester would be forbidden to distribute any of it through that channel? That's just not right- there's no reason such conditions have to cover the whole distribution. They can cover the proprietary bits, hopefully not for too long.:P
"I don't agree with you on that. Why would a company invest millions of dollars in research if anything they discover can be taken by some open source hippy who gives it away for free." This is in error. Since when is an 'open source hippy' going to be able to market and distribute his product as effectively as a company with millions of dollars for research? It's a ridiculous suggestion. Something like, say, Linux, took _years_ to get into the mainstream, with thousands, _millions_ of 'open source hippies' pushing. A single person wanting to romp off with somebody's IP is going to be quickly clobbered by inability to execute his plan, or deliver on his promises of product and distribution. Since it isn't going to substantially affect the big companies anyhow, why _shouldn't_ patents be abolished?
They are behaving as if 'beta' testing 'doesn't count' somehow. The contract does not support them in this mistaken assumption, so they either need to not beta test with outside people, or to follow the GPL, _or_ simply this: they can beta test with only selected people, and simply place NO RESTRICTION on those people. Then those people can redistribute all they want, but nobody is forcing Corel to _listen_ to anyone but their selected beta testers. They can select only the people they wish to have feedback from, and ignore anyone else for the beta stages. This fully complies with the GPL, because all the GPL cares about is getting the information out unrestrictedly (except by the GPL itself). The GPL contract nowhere states that the dist compiler _must_ listen to bug reports or work with whoever comes along- it only says that you _must_ give the work to anybody who wants it.
If they want to control the process, they can damned well write their own operating system and see how far that gets them! They do not have permission to control distribution in this manner. Who cares if they'd be getting tons of bug reports? That's beside the point: to the extent that they follow through on this daft licensing notion they are breaking the contract (the GPL), which says NOTHING about number of bug reports or whether you're calling the software or distribution a release, a beta, an alpha or a _Studebaker_. I'm glad Bruce Perens has taken it upon himself to try and correct them. It's good to negotiate, but we (GPL using authors of which I am one, though my stuff isn't in their dist) have no ground to give. GPL means GPL. Don't like it, go somewhere else or make up a different license or use BSD instead of Linux. There is no flexibility in what you might call the 'freedom of information' aspects of the GPL. Everything else comes in second to this, it's the whole point of the license in the first place. It is _not_ _encouraging_ to see Corel, even temporarily, thinking "Let's use the GPL, except that we will need to control the information and regulate it for our convenience!". Even though this is evidently a mistake it has to be stopped cold- and it's not delightful to see people arguing that they should be allowed to do it for 'practical' reasons. Again: if you want practical go use BSD licensing- the GPL has an agenda, one that I personally agree with and support and contribute to. The convenience of Corel is beside the point! They need to fix this mistake immediately, either by not having beta testing from the outside at all, or by fixing the licensing. Their choice:P
Not sure _quite_ why I am bothering to reply to a sociopathic loony when nobody else was bothering to, but:
we are talking about _STATE_ schools. _State_ schools shouldn't get government support?
if you think prevalence of Unix constitutes 'monopolistic practices' you're seriously out of your mind. One fellow did a study and learned that out of five commercial Unices NO TWO were compatible for nontrivial programs. Unix is, and has always been, so fragmented as to be _shattered_, and this is both its weakness and its greatest strength. Linux merely accelerates this process, and will stay fluid as long as Red Hat doesn't get too dominant.
The people will decide, and Microsoft is still cheating. Regrettably, everybody does _not_ think as you do- your great failure is that your thought does not take into consideration the reality of a heterogenous society.
If everyone _did_ act as a proper Randite, you'd be right. That doesn't happen- you guys are so far off in right field that getting Joe Average to buy what you're selling is really very comparable to getting Joe Average to learn to write a Makefile from scratch. He's gonna go, "Well, I dunno..." and you lose. This is made obvious by your very emotional reaction to the GPL (btw, in the interests of fairness, note that I have released software more than once under the GPL, though I copyrighted it to myself- I'm more concerned with disseminating my ideas than I am with legal recourse through the FSF in case somebody hijacks them). The normal person has no such hatred and fear of the GPL- if anything, it might be thought of as nice and rather naive, a sort of harmless liberal-commie thing people do, like Greenpeace. There will be people who are already fiercely dedicated to collective action who would instantly understand and support the GPL- for instance, explain it to any union by saying "this is how we develop collective strength, only with this anyone who gives their software to our society also gets to keep it themselves and doesn't 'lose' it". They'll think it's terrific, they'll support it. Naturally, there will also be people like you who flip out- and that's okay- we don't need _everybody_, cooperation is self-sustaining. I think that's the key problem here: your concept can't live in a heterogenous environment. If your world was real, Linux would never have started in the first place... the Randite belief system can only survive in a plastic bubble protected against nasty cooperators and socialists. (net-pseudo-Randite? Note I'm not saying 'libertarian' as I've seen libertarians _pissed_ at Microsoft for _breaking_ the functioning of the free market. That, I can understand) This is because cooperation and socialism and collective effort is far more damaging to the Randite world than Randites are to our current, heterogenous world. You see the problem- if everybody _has_ to fight alone for greed and victory, it's even, but what if people cheat? The GPL is cheating this- it's letting people pool their efforts and achieve more than you could have by yourself. People deciding that they want to 'benefit society' and actually donating their effort, time and work to such projects are even worse, because that effort isn't accounted for in the Randite world at all! It's not supposed to happen. If it does, there's a very good chance that such cooperation can produce an advantage over the Randite way (see Linux as an example- not dead yet is it? See the Red Hat IPO), and you have no defense against this because _your_ ethic prohibits socialism efforts for the common good- therefore anyone agreeing with you will refuse to help you in any way unless they can get an advantage over you by so doing. Your only option is attack (as you are, indeed, doing), because in order for your Randite world to give you a fair chance at winning, other people need to not cheat. They need to not collude in collective action, they need to not gang together in large numbers and donate 90% of their effort in order to waste some of it, but come up with a cooperatively built monster that'll have you for lunch, that is beyond anything your selfish little efforts can produce. In order for your Randite world to work, people have to be stopped from doing that. It gets in the way. By comparison, you can run around being as selfish (and I mean that in the Rand way) as you like, and it doesn't make a bit of difference to me or the people I share GPLed code with. I am happy when I put out code under the GPL. I know other people are, too, when they do it. There might be a time when I need to take big chunks of code from something out there and build a new thing- with the GPL, not only is the code out there, but it costs me nothing because I'm part of the same culture, the same society. You can even fight as hard as you like to convince everybody in the world that they _shouldn't_ cooperate with me. Be my guest. The trick is, the world is heterogenous. It's much, much harder for _you_ to stop everybody in the world from GPLing than it is for me to find a few other people GPLing and cooperate with them. If you can't stop everybody, then your whole ethic is ruined- those people will collude and _will_ produce a risk that they can beat you simply by being willing to 'undersell' you- because they are donating effort, forming a cooperative society, and it's cheaper to go with them, you lose. They 'take a loss' in passing up chances to hock their work at market rates, in order to participate in the society where 'market rates' no longer look particularly appealing- doesn't 'free beer' sound like a promising offer? And 'free speech' comes in when you realise that you're dealing with very technical stuff- that a 'Randite' guy could easily have you in a hammerlock and extort anything they like from you by building in boobytraps in their products and getting you dependent on their stuff- but if you go with the GPL stuff, the whole culture and concept makes it pretty ludicrous to do that sort of thing, as all the information is out there to be audited... yet another way in which the Randite way is a poor competitor... you have to take an extra effort to con people into _trusting_ you while at the same time you pointedly disclaim trust and consider 'caveat emptor' the best and only advice. On the one hand you put all responsibility on the buyer (claiming grandly that the buyer has Deity-like judgemental powers and can't be conned, trapped or tricked), and then you still have to get 'em to trust you... Well, cooperation will just have to go on without you. It will, you know: the world is heterogenous. Since the existence of cooperation and collusion is poison to the pure Randite approach, and since (the world being heterogenous) there's always going to be lots of cooperation, doesn't that tend to suggest that your 'power of pure freedom' is a Microsoft-like vaporware promise, and that believing in you and doing things your way will prove to be a substantial handicap? Join us... or continue on, always slightly handicapped, starving in the midst of plenty due to your own stubborn pride. Personally, I'd be delighted for you to get your head straight and start thinking cooperatively, but I have no problem sharing a world with you if you don't. You pose no threat to me. I'm sorry we GPL hordes pose a threat to you, but you knew you might lose the game when you set out to win it, didn't you?
Don't be silly. You've been listening to the wrong FUD. The Macintosh is not more secure because it is more obscure. It is more secure because it is not multiuser, does not have an interactive command layer, is not remotely adminnable- in other words, it is utterly hobbled and limited as a server. That's what they wanted. There _are_ no secrets to getting root on a Mac because the concept doesn't even apply. If you can use it at all you're 'root', but you have to be sitting in front of the box mouseclicking- that's the way it was designed, and that's the way it is. MacOS as 'security through obscurity' is the stupidest concept I've ever heard. 'security through inability' is more like it- and that is exactly, exactly, what they want.
The trouble with this is that the same people with no direction other than to make more and more money, with nothing else in their lives, are also typically fooling with stock options which are not vested immediately. It's a recipe for an entire industry full of people solely dedicated to pissing in everybody else's punchbowls so nothing interferes with their option vesting. I'm surprised there isn't more outright sabotage going on. Of course, who could tell? Hmmmm. It's an empty enough goal even _without_ the mechanism of vesting.
"Make more money!" "To do what?" "To, uh, make more money!" "Yes, but what are you going to do when you have it?" "Er, make more of it!"
The trouble is, once 'options' get involved in the equation, the logical (amoral) answer becomes,
"Hire away the competition's best brains and set them to knitting just to keep them from producing anything that might hurt us, buy good reviews in ZDnet publications (;) ), pay off some senators and legislators to pass legislation letting us hire some more people easily locked into this mode of life, for that matter let's allocate some money to seeding government and the military with our stuff so we can lock 'em down good and tight, oh and while we're at it, company X is really firing on all cylinders so we'll buy that, take their best people and assign them to debugging Excel macros and lay off the rest of the cylinders." "And now that you have effectively gutted the market economy and done an end run around the theoretical capacity of people to exert selfwill, how about sharing with us the purpose for which you've caused all this destruction?" "To make more money!" "Why?" "So we can do it all even more."
Sorry: this is pathological and destructive. It's cancer as applied to sociology and the computer industry instead of the usual application to biology. It will end in the competitors getting so much better at destroying than creating, that the result becomes stagnation and even fallback, the loss of what usefulness used to exist in the face of competitive pressure gone awry. In order for it to truly run amok certain changes have to be made, such as it becoming a crime to investigate exactly what the software is doing, and for the software company living according to this creed to be immune to any form of accountability for its actions. However, these exact changes _are_ being made, so we can expect an absolute scorched earth policy of commercial software. With luck Linux can be relatively immune to this stuff- it will be immune to the exact degree that it can disdain interoperability with the amok commercial stuff. Strategically, control of the internet backbones and most ISPs must remain either with free software or with commercial Unices that aren't too worried about seizing the mainstream. Tactically, it depends on how willing people are to take no for an answer. In general, commercial software is willing to _promise_ anything to win: it often can't deliver, but something like Linux cannot effectively take on a purely reactive role, constantly trying to achieve feature parity or match grandiose claims with grandiose claims. The result would be 'everybody lies and nothing works, only with Windows there's more software to not work, and sometimes it does stuff for you without screwing it up'. It's better tactically for Linux to set its own terms for growth, and not be too quick to lie or hype for the sake of a temporary win.
How does that relate to the Cringely article? Well, the secret here is that Silicon Valley _can't_ be honest at this point. The biggest gorilla (MS, but it could just as well have been any of them) sets the tone for all of them, and if you are playing the same game you have to play by the same rules or you're just roadkill, fast.
There is a possibility of changing the rules without telling them. It has everything to do with staying within reality, plodding along trying to produce genuinely helpful stuff even if it's not glamorous, and above all by not being frightened into accepting 'silicon valley time' in which you never do anything right, only FAST and buggy and temporary.
Doing this, Linux people and slashdotters and free software programmers can ensure that they are laughed at and always out-hyped... and, in the end, not taken seriously enough. It's a stealth tactic, an infiltrate and assimilate tactic, because there will always be a percentage of people who will accept being inconvenienced for even whimsical or personal reasons. Eventually, the stealth maneuver pays off as you become an accepted part of the landscape, just part of the scenery with a reputation widely known through word of mouth.
Linux can endure any amount of 'tough, geeky, iconoclastic' reputation as long as it doesn't develop a reputation for lies and deception. Claiming to be userfriendly doesn't count as nobody believes that;) however, the claim of being solid and not overfragile must continue to be a reasonable one.
Definitely;) In all seriousness, it's _great_ that there's a form of human endeavor where the quirks we're stuck with are considered 'par for the course'. I think part of this may simply be availability- lots of people can take MCSE courses (*shudder*) but the fact is that most of them simply will not be able to organise the information system that is a personal computer into a coherent and well working whole. Those who can, can write their own ticket- and among them have always been the serious 'nerds' who just plain were from Mars, so a precedent keeps being set: the weirdo is kept around or even enticed to stay because he is the one who can save everyone's butt when the problem gets particularly hard. There are tests for some of these things, though not always for the exact capacity you're interested in- my personal favorite test story was for part of a test called the 'GATB', a sort of vocational aptitude test. One part of it involved looking at a drawing of a 3D shape and picking the 2D cutout that could be folded into that shape. I loved it, it was so much fun I wheedled the testgiver into letting me look at the rest of the problems in that category after the time period stopped (just to _see_ them, to do the hard ones, to finish them). I tore through those problems with geeky glee, and it turned out that I'd set a TEN YEAR peak for that particular test. I don't think it's at all an accident that I enjoyed it so much... it was cranking up what Temple Grandin calls 'the Sun workstation in your head'. I have Asperger's Syndrome. I'd never had an example quite so obvious to give me confidence in the face of my other obvious lacks and liabilities, to show me that I was good for something. Finally, the truth- I need to go into origami;) No, seriously- what that test revealed was this: although my brain is a very balky and inconvenient instrument, there are some things it can do that your average person just can't. Ever since, I've been trying to figure out how to actually put it in gear, as it were: I can predict trends about stuff I'm interested in (I tend to be interested in the computer industry, and have called many shots accurately, didn't gain by it though- my current hunch is that MS is breaking free of its dependence on government in general and the US government in particular). I design stuff. I'd like to give as much of it away as possible- of course if you just give something away nobody notices so you have to build it up a bit first. I'm glad the tech world has a place for people like me- and I wish people were as enlightened as you are, back when I was growing up. Back then nobody had a clue, and I was sort of Skinner-avoidance-response trained to look people in the eye and not rock, in a remedial school. It didn't change me, it only made me decide that the world was a very hostile place where you had to act certain ways or be punished. It feels good to think that your daughter doesn't have to go through that...
It's not so much lacking a sense of rhythm, or being unmusical- for autistic people it's kind of 'all or nothing'. There's a similar situation with Parkinsonians- their rhythm and flow of movement can be totally, totally screwed up, but put on music and they can dance as if there was nothing unusual about them at all- sometimes. And that's the trick- the 'sometimes'. I've played music at times when I was 'on', and I've also tried to play music when my 'rhythm' was just not there. It can be pretty frustrating to have a thing like that not be under your control. There has to be a flow somewhere to latch onto, or you're toast- you can play _with_ anything no matter how tough, the stronger the groove the better you can contribute to it, but you get screwed up by bad grooves or unsteadiness. I've done some OK work with sequencers- it's possible to make sequencers 'drive' the beat but still preserve the artificial perfection of it, and that can produce some very strong performances. Quick precis: Autistic people can _too_ keep time and perform music. The question is, to what extent is this a facade? What is the 'soul' of autistic music? A lot of my stuff suffers from this paradox- the more commercial it is, the more likely it is that some element of posturing was involved. When I just make music for me, it tends to be very very abstract- I'm capable of listening for hours to the shortwave 3-meter band (there's a satellite broadcasting there, sounds like bionic white-noise). I've made music with a chaotic-equations program (MidiChaos, a little Mac hack from the 68K days) that I enjoy, but which is so abstract that most people would hurl:) I guess it's just a matter of taste, and how much you're willing to sell out... because apart from an ability to play blues guitar and write the occasional pop song, 'my music' is really damn inaccessible to most normal people o_O *g*
I have some personal experience on this one. There was a time when I became homeless and ended up in a psych ward on the assumption that I was depressed. I didn't mind admitting that I didn't see what good I was to the world, and that it would be much easier if I offed myself, though I wasn't going to do it as I knew people who would be hurt by such an act. I now understand that depressed people would say such things from a position of great anguish, like living in a state of just-having-gotten-terrible-news ALL the time without relief, and so they'd be hurting enough to override their usual instinct of self-preservation. I wasn't in that kind of anguish- was reacting kind of dispassionately to the way the world seemed to be shaping up- but what throws people is this, I don't really have much of a self, never have. I mean that literally- it's a part of the human mainspring and in me it's not really there... People have mentioned Spock, but think Data, instead. Data is a bit of an icon for a lot of autistic people. That level of disconnection is damned tough for a normal person to understand, and to make matters worse, either Data or an autistic person _can_ learn to mimic regular human emotions quite convincingly, which happens as a matter of course. Perhaps this is what irritates me about certain belief systems such as Ayn Rand disciples;) when the clarion call is 'All For The SELF!' my reaction tends to be 'for the what?' and I don't understand. To me, that is such an empty motivation, so hollow... there needs to be more, not for any grand emotional reason but simply because Self, to me, seems like a pathetically feeble thing to base a worldview and belief system around. Hence, other belief systems, notably the GNU strain of Free Software, seem a lot more suitable- to me, a person with very low priority on Self, the notion of Cooperation or Society seems significantly more useful. And if something like the GPL really _bugs_ people whose ethic is Self primarily, I find I have no sympathy whatsoever, which is my bias, not considering the Self important or useful. Maybe the popularity of the GPL and such cooperation-forcing situations is particularly strong among those of us who are autistic and do not have a strong emotional bias towards the Self? What sort of person finds it easy and harmonious to 'sell out' the Self and contribute to society?
How about Server and GUI for the identifiers? It's kind of silly to have X running on a serious server, and it's quite unnecessary as you can admin it remotely and it needn't even have a _monitor_. Conversely, what could be more attractive and appropriate to the lusermentality than choosing between 'unpretty' and 'GUI'? No way would most of them pick 'light' or 'restricted' but give them a choice between 'server' and 'GUI' and they will _leap_ on 'GUI' uttering cries of delight. It's all in how you phrase it. Problem solved.
I don't mind saying I'm 'legally autistic'- as in 'on disability w. Asperger's Syndrome'. I understand even making such an admission exposes me to frantic hateful attacks from Randites going 'there's nothing the matter with you! just try harder you lazy bastard!', but I thought it was a useful context to say some things I thought needed saying. Asperger's is incurable. It's like trying to cure being six foot tall, or trying to cure bipedal locomotion. What Asperger's really is about to me (and I make use of some resources I have to learn more about this) is "what rules do I need to live by in order to survive?". Neglecting this or trying to deny it with stubborn willpower damn near killed me- at one point I got sent to an emergency room with internal bleeding from ulcers (typically, I sort of ignored the pain of it, having decided that 'willpower' and my goals were more important). One of my needs is for the flow of my attention to flow naturally. I cannot handle derailment- even if I force myself to permit it, I take an absurd amount of damage from it in stress, and get driven farther into autistic defenses. For instance, I've managed to work out ways to do computer repair work and maintain it without burning out or flaking out. One of these ways is this: my boss is totally aware of who I am and where I'm coming from, and from day one I have arranged that I do not answer the telephone. (heh- I'm picturing a lot of heads nodding out there in slashdotland;) ) Seems awfully trivial- but when the dislocation of changing your train of thought and answering the phone really _hurts_ and undercuts the little oasis of stability you've built for yourself, sometimes you have to ask for what you need. I did. I also show up whenever I like and stay as late as I want, because I cannot control when I'm going to be able to sleep, so I can't keep regular hours either- that's another one I learned through rough experience. (reminds me of childhood and routinely getting 2 hours sleep before school because my head wouldn't quit processing). Again, I got this through being honest and also willing to _stay_ late if needed- I go into work with the understanding that it has permission to switch my 'track' over to computer repair for however many hours it takes. My boss considers it his job to tell me and the other (equally obsessive) computer tech to go _home_ when we're threatening to spend 12 hours on the same intractable problem! It's bad to behave like some types of geekiness are diseases to be stamped out- but it's worse to behave like these differences, these different needs, don't exist. I don't know how many other autistic geeks (include 'Asperger.h') are out there- I've seen a couple touching posts from people who felt really crappy about themselves- and it's not OK for me to shut up about it anymore. I WILL be heard from- as much as I can communicate, and not a bit more;) because autism/asperger's may not be a 'disease' in the sense of 'fix meeee!' but by GOD it's different, and ignoring that kills people slowly. Those of us who are autistic geeks generally cannot go on grand crusades to define and protect our image, establish our identity as a worthy thing, prove our value. We typically have a hell of a job keeping our own boats steady and no attention to spare for PR. Even when a Slashdot article shines a beam of light on us, the comments are mostly people arguing ABOUT us, arguing we don't exist or don't count OR arguing that we are totally normal, really, and must be treated as regular guys! Well- we're out there, we are the worst stereotypes and the fondest rationalizations all rolled into one, and we certainly are not going away. (That would be change- ew! Find another line of work? yuck!) So people had better get used to the idea. It's not new- ever read 'The Hacker FAQ'? It's practically a tutorial on 'how to give an autistic person a work environment that is nurturing and let them perform optimally'. The fact is, for many of us this is NECESSARY. We aren't as adaptable as your regular Joe- to really be kick-ass productive members of society we _need_ our quirks to be respected and understood, otherwise it's like having a track star run a race with both hands tied together behind his back. ("You run with your legs, right? Shouldn't matter."). To explore that simile a bit, in running arms are used for _balance_ and if you did that to a track star they'd be totally uncomfortable and slowed down, running very unnaturally. It's the same thing for autistic people working and being expected to maintain regular-folks social interactions- the balance is off, it's exhausting and unproductive, and as inappropriate as tying a track star's hands behind his back. We don't need cures, we don't need help faking normal societal attitudes- we need the proper context. It's not so much to ask. There are pluses and minuses to this- the most important point is, this is not an option. Treat us like Joe Sixpack, and you lose, we lose, everybody loses out on the potential harmony that is there for the taking, for anyone willing to make a bit of an effort to accept what they don't understand.
The NSA did not do this: Microsoft did this. It did it to cause fear, uncertainty and doubt about the U.S. Government in foreign markets. Microsoft wishes the world to put pressure on the USA to back off on Microsoft. On the one hand there's the antitrust case (GEE, DO YOU SUPPOSE DISTRUST OF GOVERNMENT WOULD PLAY IN THEIR FAVOR?), and on the other hand there is encryption restrictions, and in order to be in a position to effectively fight Unices and Linux internationally, Microsoft has to be allowed to ship encryption anywhere they like, including to enemies of the USA. After all, those enemies can use Linux: stopping Microsoft from doing business with enemies of the USA means getting in their way and impeding their business. This is a trial balloon for a new geopolitics: it says in BIG RED LETTERS, "hands off Microsoft, USA". It's not a message for America- it is a message for the rest of the world. "Look! Unless something is done, the worldwide monopoly on computers and communications will be a tool of the USA! Wouldn't you rather it was just a worldwide monopoly beholden to nobody, with no loyalties at all?" I must say I've been expecting this: I've been certain for some time that MS had no loyalty to the USA at all, and that they would find a way to cut the apron strings. It's typically ruthless MS marketing that the way turns out to be casting fear, uncertainty and doubt at the NSA by a childishly transparent ploy. Nothing that I've ever heard about the NSA suggests that they would tell MS to build in a key for them, allow it to be named 'NSAKEY', not _check_ to see if MS did it right etc etc etc. That's ludicrous- competent or incompetent they are too _paranoid_ to allow themselves to be betrayed that stupid way, therefore it's not them (and they probably have YA-key that nobody knows about, knowing them). Since it's not the NSA which laid that carefully planted clue, and since it came from somewhere inside Microsoft, the question becomes "Why would Microsoft produce such a clue to cause fear of the NSA?" and I think what with the antitrust case and the blocks against exporting encryption, it should be quite obvious why Microsoft now sees fit to backstab the U.S. Government itself.
The proper response to statements like 'Microsoft has never made a bad product' is to burst out laughing. The more people out there 'feeding that meme' the better- it's one thing to make a big argument, but laughter is a wonderful deflator of empty hype, and it's fun, too! Here, I'll show you: "Windows 2000 will ship in the year 2000 and deliver great benefits to IT professionals everywhere." *ROTFL*:) In extreme cases you might want to go with the Daffy Duck sort of over-the-top Hysterical Laughter... it all depends on just how funny the statement really is, and how serious the person stating it seems:)
No book publisher ever made an effective website? http://www.oreilly.com/. The Yankees have a site worth spotlighting on Slashdot? I'm sorry, I'll go with the professionals who checked it out and reported their findings: over-the-top sites are Web pollution, and I'm told they don't even get decent cross-platform results. Is Jon Katz getting kickbacks or something? First Apple, now this. Lastly, 'shovelware' is more accurately a relic of the CD-Rom boom days, when people thought anything on a CD-Rom was instant riches. CD-Roms are capacious, especially back in those days, so it was indeed like 'shovelling' data onto them, and there were a lot of disks made that were total garbage to cash in on the (hypothetical) boom- hence, shovelware. Isn't there anybody who could at least _edit_ Jon Katz and stop certain articles like this from being run as articles? Sometimes it's awfully obvious that he's blown it again. I use a Mac and really like it and think Apple's doing great things, but I still think his lovefest of Apple was _also_ inappropriate for Slashdot. Stop The Madness... (str)
I think the G4's 128-bit registers are a serious breakthrough, and that Apple in the corporate sense is not to be underestimated (they still keeping inventory lowest in the industry?), but Katz still talked a lot of nonsense. To be expected. The interesting thing is this: given an article that is _so_ much of a troll, and makes it _so_ difficult for any selfrespecting geek to agree, it's expected that the anti-Apple folks are out in force with burning torches, aggravated beyond tolerance. That said, there are still slashdot geeks willing to stick up for Apple despite Katz's shenanigans! That says a lot. ObSlashdotCred: regarding Altivec vs. MMX: two words for you- context switches. >:)
You're as bad as the fellow saying 'LPs aren't as good, do they even have stereo capability?' The fact is, LPs can substantially outperform CDs in certain ways and decidedly not in other ways. In order to so blatantly outperform CDs, you have to completely overhaul your system- in particular, the playback system has to do something to get a handle on the low frequency inadequacy of 99% of turntables, and it has to have high frequency extension to waaaaay over 20K because among the additive distortion in that region is important information. Finally, you have to play a suitable record- it is very easy to find records that push the extreme high end, but much more difficult to find ones that attempt to present low end accurately, and half the time you're better off looking for the minimalist recording techniques of the 50s and 60s. Does this go some way toward explaining why you don't know what you're talking about? It's very unlikely that you have ever experienced an analog playback system worth listening to. Have you listened to openreel tape playback at 15 or 30 ips, or is your experience with tape likewise limited to cassettes? ObCompression: I can get better results out of mp3 than I've heard from any other codec including the Quicktime Qdesign codec. That's not to say I always _have_... I need to make some more equipment to do this... but IMHO as a hardcore highend system designer audiogeek mp3 is as good as anything. To maximize its audio quality, feed it an enhanced analog signal that precompensates for the known losses in the process: give it the analog over heavy cables with good equipment, you want to be giving it the hottest transients possible and not softening and blurring them. Doing this means the transients can be glossed over by the compresssion losses without coloring the rest of the sound- using shoddy cables for your analog paths is a really _horrible_ idea especially if you mean to record only 128k: as compression quality goes down, you have to feed the software a _purer_ signal to try and compensate for it. Finally, in order to deal with the known losses of codec compression, you need to give the analog source a minor amount of _audio_ compression because details like faint high frequency sounds are going to be lost in the codec. Ideally you want to be giving it multiband compression. Don't expect comparable results from digitally effecting CD audio- the point of this is to bring more of the original source into the 16bit 44K range of digital audio, and then to leave it alone in purist fashion. I'm not talking consumer level here, or CD ripping (just use the bits from the CD), I'm talking digital audio mastering especially for producing mp3s. Hopefully some other people who are not too easily pleased will also take to mp3 mastering as a serious artform comparable to the old vinyl mastering. Going 'it's already perfect' is NOT enough.
This is very interesting to read about, but I am of the opinion that you can't make people into scientists by giving them classes. It's just not going to happen. I've always had an amazing shock of recognition when reading stories about scientists like Conway (inventor of the cellular automata Life) and the value systems of these people. It amazes me that there are so many people who _don't_ want to sit around thinking about interesting things- that there are so many people more interested in answers than questions. I'm designing a game- been working on aspects of it for years now. It'll have to happen at its own pace, there's too much of it to rush and I cannot simply opensource it and expect anything useful to happen- most people want quick fixes, not real answers. I _do_ intend to release the result under the GPL, I just don't think open source is going to magically be _creative_ for me. In designing this game, I have often had to soak up lots of information from various places. A form of player-codable AI in it (halfcompleted) derives from assembly language, but in a bizarre way tailored (CS) to allow as many AIs running simultaneously as possible, and to face people with realworld consequences behind buzzwords- for instance, you could get the AIs to preemptively multitask, but as they are for embedded (imaginary) systems, there are arguments for doing a cooperative arrangement and handling timeslicing on a routine-by-routine basis. Genetic algorithms could (and will) be used to devise different sorts of AIs- which imposes its own constraints on the design of the AI. I've even downloaded and printed (in 4-up tinyprint) a massive online textbook on astronomy and cosmology just to get my game-universe convincingly plausible- and at the same time, CS fights with this to strike a balance between that which would satisfy scientific accuracy (for instance, spiral galaxies) and that which would execute fast enough to make all this reasonable to attempt (simple spherical galaxies, power-of-two divides) in the particular way it's being attempted. A lot of people wouldn't even bother, and a lot of commercial developers would never have the opportunity to fart around playing with galaxy distribution. To some extent, science is about truth over convenience- and it's very easy to cheat and shortchange truth. There's even a level where it's like artistic truth- subjective, but recognizable. I only know that I've always devoured scientific information just for fun, out of curiosity- and that it has affected the way I implement things. It's sort of like buzzword compliance versus really pulling things together- my secret weapon in this (besides having the time to do it, and being willing to _take_ the time to do it right) is that implementing well is just plain better- it's like well-crafted art- having a scientific backing (or learning enough of one to cover for your lack) can make a project like my game a hit rather than a failure. It's a lot of work, but when enough goes right, untutored users begin getting a sense of rightness even when they don't understand what they are seeing. Science is worth it, but it's like being a (benevolent) hacker: it's not something you take classes in, a lot of people wouldn't even want to. Those who want that have a _hunger_ that can't be deflected even by lack of schooling- give them information and stand back.
Most of this, as usual, is confused and useless, but there are still aspects of ethical programming that are worth attention. Almost anybody trying to make a list ends up dumping all kinds of personal vendettas into it, so I'd suggest something simpler:
Do not do anything criminal
Do not do anything irresponsible
Do not assist anyone else in doing anything criminal or irresponsible
Do not behave like apathy and laziness is equivalent to being criminal and irresponsible: it's better for uncaring people to learn to care without assuming 'original sin' and a burden of guilt for choices they made when they were not competent to decide rationally for themselves.
This basically covers most ethical problems, hopefully in a useful way. For instance, Microsoft are often irresponsible and sometimes illegal. Simply being a luser and using their stuff is not ethically wrong, but it begins to enter the picture as the consumer stops being an idiot. There is a level where 'I want MS to win and destroy everything else because that is the best thing for the world's innovation and progress!' can't be considered ethically wrong because it is simply insane- psychotic, because of the major areas of reality that this viewpoint flatly contradicts. Hence, such a person would need help rather than censure, and hopefully could learn a more sensible worldview, one that was grounded in reality. Finally, someone who was thinking, "I am aware that Microsoft behaves irresponsibly and sometimes in a criminal manner, but I want them to keep doing this because _I_ have invested in their stuff/their stock, so I would like them to commit crimes on behalf of my self-interest" would be ethically in the wrong, along the lines of sociopathy: it is normal to have a little more public interest than that. Maybe not a _lot_, but it is neither normal or healthy to be _that_ hostile to the needs and concerns of others. This is the primary value of ethics: it is a defense against sociopathy. It's usually possible for single individuals to gain greatly at the expense of others, but if this goes unchecked, the overall quality of society declines, even for the person trying to gain at the expense of society. There are healthy levels of gain that don't weaken society, and unhealthy levels that blight society. Ethics is the codification of guidelines that place society first and the individual second, so they are always likely to be relative. You could easily make an argument that mp3s are ethical because what is really being dealt with is a means of mass communication: though mp3s are widely used to violate existing intellectual property laws, they themselves are a mechanism for communication which is under attack by other mechanisms with major ethical problems (i.e. particular companies owning the means of communication, planned obsolescence, the auto-destruction of means of conveying information), and so advocacy of mp3s is a substantially ethical thing to do for society, arguably even at the expense of the intellectual property being violated- something that might not be reasonable to protect forever, in the same sense that books ceased to be highly valuable items when substantially cheaper means arose to copy _them_. You can't make a living as a scribe these days... Information is changing in significance, and the most important thing to keep in mind is to protect the new freedoms from being legislated out of existence. Any code of ethics for the computer industry would have to place communication of information above all else- that is the single most revolutionary change the computer era has brought us. Productivity? Ha. Ease of use? *ROFL*. Adding to the wisdom of the common man? *AOL*. But! How many of you have a friend in a country you don't live in? How many people _ten_ _years_ ago had a friend in a country they didn't live in? This is the new vision of society- it's McLuhan's wet dream of global locality, and it's immediately accessible, and for those with a willingness to expend effort, it is accessible at virtually _no_ cost. Almost anything will run 'telnet', and if you have that you are off and running, reading man pages and getting access to that information. Just because inner cities and third world countries do not _want_ 286es doesn't mean it's not a resource- anyone who's 'gotten by' with telnet knows how accessible the world's information is. Hence, it is ethically imperative to do everything possible to keep this connectivity from being taken away by entities with a vested interest in limiting it.
"I have seen the future of the PC and it is a"...
on
The Ottoman PC
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· Score: 2
"...toilet." Words _fail_ me o_O Short Intel, now!
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And they can show it to the world, and you can't possibly force them not to, because it's GPLed. You can _ask_ them not to. That's different... and very likely they have no vested interest in distributing your rewrite... but they could because that's the license you're using.
Now if you care about your little grep rewrite, what do you think when a team of salaried Corel programmers starts altering and debugging _your_ program to make it work seamlessly with their distribution- and you say, "Hey, cool, can I see that?" and they say "NO! You'll see it when it's done! We're forking your program, buddy- keep developing your version, and you can see _finished_ snapshots of _our_ version, but don't submit any changes, you're not seeing the real state of development and your change doesn't apply to the current (concealed) snapshot..."
Are you seriously saying you _can't_ see the problem with this?
If I had GPLed code in the distribution (I have GPLed code but not in their distribution), and I learned that Corel was changing and modifying _MY!_ code but refused to let me or anybody else see what they were doing to it until the time that they released it with a big fanfare, I would be quite justifiably infuriated.
This not only breaks the GPL outright, but there is another negative consequence: to the extent that the changes are major and substantial, this causes a forking of the GPLed code into that maintained by the original authors, and that which is maintained in secrecy by corporate programmers and only released in completed states. As this continues, it will become a major rivalry between the original authors who are publically allowing distribution of interim releases- and the 'beta guys' whose only visible output is (in theory) bugfixed. The end result could be loss of control of many Open Source packages to this corporate entity, which would then proceed to only develop under wraps and secrecy, and then release source to only completed works. If you had changes to contribute it would be difficult because the actual moving target of the development is _not_ visible, it is 'beta' and you don't get to see it until it's done. The original authors would be pressed to conceal _their_ development process, or to be seen as 'releasing bugware' while the corporate distributors hide theirs. End result could be widespread concealment of code under the GPL, by both corporates and individual developers.
This is intolerable.
This has to be stopped cold. It's not just a courtesy issue. Which programs are being modified (effectively 'forked') by Corel? Exactly which people are losing control of the development of their own software due to this power play by Corel? There is just no way that the separate, concealed, destined-for-commercial-distribution development of such programs _wouldn't_ result in forking of the programs' codebase, and there is no reason to believe the concealed-development forks wouldn't _keep_ being forked and developed in more 'beta' concealment. This is a very, very serious problem, potentially. Unless Corel is stopped, the original authors have no recourse, and their only consolation is that Red Hat or most other distributions will run the real snapshots of their programs- which might be buggy!
So, _if_ Corel has a bunch of programmers so good that they can debug GPLed code, then they could be setting up a situation where their distributions always release debugged code, compared to other dists which might be found releasing code that is only a dev-snapshot and buggier. This will tend to make Corel's dist seem better (if their programmers are actually that good at debugging), causing them to take over, outdo RedHat, leading to a state where Linux is basically controlled by a corporation because the codebase is forked, and versions under constant secret development are known to be the most bugfree ones. You could still extend off the code Corel writes- but you can't get it accepted into their workflow because they're already three months ahead of you in secret, and can't integrate changes based on such an older version of their product.
This mustn't be allowed to happen...
Sorry: unless you can say that the beta testers are paid employees, they _are_ the public. They happen to be a picked subgroup of the public but they are certainly not employees, not insiders. :P
Eventually this breaks down- are temps insiders? What about people who've only worked for the company for a short while? Eventually you get to people who are definitely insiders. (You could make an argument that, even so, those people have a right to the GPLed source!) However, making a public announcement fishing for members of the public to do beta testing is, well, public- there's no way that's an inside release. It's not intended to stay an inside release, it's not being tested on the inside anymore- it's distribution to the public, just on a smaller scale.
Again, they ought to select beta testers and then decide to only pay _attention_ to their own choices for beta testers, while allowing the testers to redistribute. Do you realise that such a tester would, under Corel's original idea, be confronted with a whole _Linux_ distribution that hopefully is a good synthesis of lots of opensource software from all over- and yet the tester would be forbidden to distribute any of it through that channel? That's just not right- there's no reason such conditions have to cover the whole distribution. They can cover the proprietary bits, hopefully not for too long.
"I don't agree with you on that. Why would a company invest millions of dollars in research if anything they discover can be taken by some open source hippy who gives it away for free."
This is in error. Since when is an 'open source hippy' going to be able to market and distribute his product as effectively as a company with millions of dollars for research? It's a ridiculous suggestion. Something like, say, Linux, took _years_ to get into the mainstream, with thousands, _millions_ of 'open source hippies' pushing. A single person wanting to romp off with somebody's IP is going to be quickly clobbered by inability to execute his plan, or deliver on his promises of product and distribution.
Since it isn't going to substantially affect the big companies anyhow, why _shouldn't_ patents be abolished?
It's that simple.
They are behaving as if 'beta' testing 'doesn't count' somehow. The contract does not support them in this mistaken assumption, so they either need to not beta test with outside people, or to follow the GPL, _or_ simply this: they can beta test with only selected people, and simply place NO RESTRICTION on those people. Then those people can redistribute all they want, but nobody is forcing Corel to _listen_ to anyone but their selected beta testers. They can select only the people they wish to have feedback from, and ignore anyone else for the beta stages. This fully complies with the GPL, because all the GPL cares about is getting the information out unrestrictedly (except by the GPL itself). The GPL contract nowhere states that the dist compiler _must_ listen to bug reports or work with whoever comes along- it only says that you _must_ give the work to anybody who wants it.
If they want to control the process, they can damned well write their own operating system and see how far that gets them! They do not have permission to control distribution in this manner. Who cares if they'd be getting tons of bug reports? That's beside the point: to the extent that they follow through on this daft licensing notion they are breaking the contract (the GPL), which says NOTHING about number of bug reports or whether you're calling the software or distribution a release, a beta, an alpha or a _Studebaker_. :P
I'm glad Bruce Perens has taken it upon himself to try and correct them. It's good to negotiate, but we (GPL using authors of which I am one, though my stuff isn't in their dist) have no ground to give. GPL means GPL. Don't like it, go somewhere else or make up a different license or use BSD instead of Linux. There is no flexibility in what you might call the 'freedom of information' aspects of the GPL. Everything else comes in second to this, it's the whole point of the license in the first place. It is _not_ _encouraging_ to see Corel, even temporarily, thinking "Let's use the GPL, except that we will need to control the information and regulate it for our convenience!". Even though this is evidently a mistake it has to be stopped cold- and it's not delightful to see people arguing that they should be allowed to do it for 'practical' reasons. Again: if you want practical go use BSD licensing- the GPL has an agenda, one that I personally agree with and support and contribute to. The convenience of Corel is beside the point! They need to fix this mistake immediately, either by not having beta testing from the outside at all, or by fixing the licensing. Their choice
- we are talking about _STATE_ schools. _State_ schools shouldn't get government support?
- if you think prevalence of Unix constitutes 'monopolistic practices' you're seriously out of your mind. One fellow did a study and learned that out of five commercial Unices NO TWO were compatible for nontrivial programs. Unix is, and has always been, so fragmented as to be _shattered_, and this is both its weakness and its greatest strength. Linux merely accelerates this process, and will stay fluid as long as Red Hat doesn't get too dominant.
- The people will decide, and Microsoft is still cheating. Regrettably, everybody does _not_ think as you do- your great failure is that your thought does not take into consideration the reality of a heterogenous society.
If everyone _did_ act as a proper Randite, you'd be right. That doesn't happen- you guys are so far off in right field that getting Joe Average to buy what you're selling is really very comparable to getting Joe Average to learn to write a Makefile from scratch. He's gonna go, "Well, I dunno..." and you lose.This is made obvious by your very emotional reaction to the GPL (btw, in the interests of fairness, note that I have released software more than once under the GPL, though I copyrighted it to myself- I'm more concerned with disseminating my ideas than I am with legal recourse through the FSF in case somebody hijacks them). The normal person has no such hatred and fear of the GPL- if anything, it might be thought of as nice and rather naive, a sort of harmless liberal-commie thing people do, like Greenpeace. There will be people who are already fiercely dedicated to collective action who would instantly understand and support the GPL- for instance, explain it to any union by saying "this is how we develop collective strength, only with this anyone who gives their software to our society also gets to keep it themselves and doesn't 'lose' it". They'll think it's terrific, they'll support it.
Naturally, there will also be people like you who flip out- and that's okay- we don't need _everybody_, cooperation is self-sustaining.
I think that's the key problem here: your concept can't live in a heterogenous environment. If your world was real, Linux would never have started in the first place... the Randite belief system can only survive in a plastic bubble protected against nasty cooperators and socialists. (net-pseudo-Randite? Note I'm not saying 'libertarian' as I've seen libertarians _pissed_ at Microsoft for _breaking_ the functioning of the free market. That, I can understand)
This is because cooperation and socialism and collective effort is far more damaging to the Randite world than Randites are to our current, heterogenous world. You see the problem- if everybody _has_ to fight alone for greed and victory, it's even, but what if people cheat? The GPL is cheating this- it's letting people pool their efforts and achieve more than you could have by yourself. People deciding that they want to 'benefit society' and actually donating their effort, time and work to such projects are even worse, because that effort isn't accounted for in the Randite world at all! It's not supposed to happen. If it does, there's a very good chance that such cooperation can produce an advantage over the Randite way (see Linux as an example- not dead yet is it? See the Red Hat IPO), and you have no defense against this because _your_ ethic prohibits socialism efforts for the common good- therefore anyone agreeing with you will refuse to help you in any way unless they can get an advantage over you by so doing.
Your only option is attack (as you are, indeed, doing), because in order for your Randite world to give you a fair chance at winning, other people need to not cheat. They need to not collude in collective action, they need to not gang together in large numbers and donate 90% of their effort in order to waste some of it, but come up with a cooperatively built monster that'll have you for lunch, that is beyond anything your selfish little efforts can produce.
In order for your Randite world to work, people have to be stopped from doing that. It gets in the way.
By comparison, you can run around being as selfish (and I mean that in the Rand way) as you like, and it doesn't make a bit of difference to me or the people I share GPLed code with. I am happy when I put out code under the GPL. I know other people are, too, when they do it. There might be a time when I need to take big chunks of code from something out there and build a new thing- with the GPL, not only is the code out there, but it costs me nothing because I'm part of the same culture, the same society.
You can even fight as hard as you like to convince everybody in the world that they _shouldn't_ cooperate with me. Be my guest. The trick is, the world is heterogenous. It's much, much harder for _you_ to stop everybody in the world from GPLing than it is for me to find a few other people GPLing and cooperate with them. If you can't stop everybody, then your whole ethic is ruined- those people will collude and _will_ produce a risk that they can beat you simply by being willing to 'undersell' you- because they are donating effort, forming a cooperative society, and it's cheaper to go with them, you lose. They 'take a loss' in passing up chances to hock their work at market rates, in order to participate in the society where 'market rates' no longer look particularly appealing- doesn't 'free beer' sound like a promising offer? And 'free speech' comes in when you realise that you're dealing with very technical stuff- that a 'Randite' guy could easily have you in a hammerlock and extort anything they like from you by building in boobytraps in their products and getting you dependent on their stuff- but if you go with the GPL stuff, the whole culture and concept makes it pretty ludicrous to do that sort of thing, as all the information is out there to be audited... yet another way in which the Randite way is a poor competitor... you have to take an extra effort to con people into _trusting_ you while at the same time you pointedly disclaim trust and consider 'caveat emptor' the best and only advice. On the one hand you put all responsibility on the buyer (claiming grandly that the buyer has Deity-like judgemental powers and can't be conned, trapped or tricked), and then you still have to get 'em to trust you...
Well, cooperation will just have to go on without you. It will, you know: the world is heterogenous. Since the existence of cooperation and collusion is poison to the pure Randite approach, and since (the world being heterogenous) there's always going to be lots of cooperation, doesn't that tend to suggest that your 'power of pure freedom' is a Microsoft-like vaporware promise, and that believing in you and doing things your way will prove to be a substantial handicap?
Join us... or continue on, always slightly handicapped, starving in the midst of plenty due to your own stubborn pride. Personally, I'd be delighted for you to get your head straight and start thinking cooperatively, but I have no problem sharing a world with you if you don't. You pose no threat to me.
I'm sorry we GPL hordes pose a threat to you, but you knew you might lose the game when you set out to win it, didn't you?
Don't be silly. You've been listening to the wrong FUD. The Macintosh is not more secure because it is more obscure. It is more secure because it is not multiuser, does not have an interactive command layer, is not remotely adminnable- in other words, it is utterly hobbled and limited as a server. That's what they wanted. There _are_ no secrets to getting root on a Mac because the concept doesn't even apply. If you can use it at all you're 'root', but you have to be sitting in front of the box mouseclicking- that's the way it was designed, and that's the way it is.
MacOS as 'security through obscurity' is the stupidest concept I've ever heard. 'security through inability' is more like it- and that is exactly, exactly, what they want.
The trouble with this is that the same people with no direction other than to make more and more money, with nothing else in their lives, are also typically fooling with stock options which are not vested immediately.
;) ), pay off some senators and legislators to pass legislation letting us hire some more people easily locked into this mode of life, for that matter let's allocate some money to seeding government and the military with our stuff so we can lock 'em down good and tight, oh and while we're at it, company X is really firing on all cylinders so we'll buy that, take their best people and assign them to debugging Excel macros and lay off the rest of the cylinders."
;) however, the claim of being solid and not overfragile must continue to be a reasonable one.
It's a recipe for an entire industry full of people solely dedicated to pissing in everybody else's punchbowls so nothing interferes with their option vesting. I'm surprised there isn't more outright sabotage going on. Of course, who could tell? Hmmmm.
It's an empty enough goal even _without_ the mechanism of vesting.
"Make more money!"
"To do what?"
"To, uh, make more money!"
"Yes, but what are you going to do when you have it?"
"Er, make more of it!"
The trouble is, once 'options' get involved in the equation, the logical (amoral) answer becomes,
"Hire away the competition's best brains and set them to knitting just to keep them from producing anything that might hurt us, buy good reviews in ZDnet publications (
"And now that you have effectively gutted the market economy and done an end run around the theoretical capacity of people to exert selfwill, how about sharing with us the purpose for which you've caused all this destruction?"
"To make more money!"
"Why?"
"So we can do it all even more."
Sorry: this is pathological and destructive. It's cancer as applied to sociology and the computer industry instead of the usual application to biology. It will end in the competitors getting so much better at destroying than creating, that the result becomes stagnation and even fallback, the loss of what usefulness used to exist in the face of competitive pressure gone awry.
In order for it to truly run amok certain changes have to be made, such as it becoming a crime to investigate exactly what the software is doing, and for the software company living according to this creed to be immune to any form of accountability for its actions. However, these exact changes _are_ being made, so we can expect an absolute scorched earth policy of commercial software.
With luck Linux can be relatively immune to this stuff- it will be immune to the exact degree that it can disdain interoperability with the amok commercial stuff. Strategically, control of the internet backbones and most ISPs must remain either with free software or with commercial Unices that aren't too worried about seizing the mainstream. Tactically, it depends on how willing people are to take no for an answer. In general, commercial software is willing to _promise_ anything to win: it often can't deliver, but something like Linux cannot effectively take on a purely reactive role, constantly trying to achieve feature parity or match grandiose claims with grandiose claims. The result would be 'everybody lies and nothing works, only with Windows there's more software to not work, and sometimes it does stuff for you without screwing it up'. It's better tactically for Linux to set its own terms for growth, and not be too quick to lie or hype for the sake of a temporary win.
How does that relate to the Cringely article? Well, the secret here is that Silicon Valley _can't_ be honest at this point. The biggest gorilla (MS, but it could just as well have been any of them) sets the tone for all of them, and if you are playing the same game you have to play by the same rules or you're just roadkill, fast.
There is a possibility of changing the rules without telling them. It has everything to do with staying within reality, plodding along trying to produce genuinely helpful stuff even if it's not glamorous, and above all by not being frightened into accepting 'silicon valley time' in which you never do anything right, only FAST and buggy and temporary.
Doing this, Linux people and slashdotters and free software programmers can ensure that they are laughed at and always out-hyped... and, in the end, not taken seriously enough. It's a stealth tactic, an infiltrate and assimilate tactic, because there will always be a percentage of people who will accept being inconvenienced for even whimsical or personal reasons. Eventually, the stealth maneuver pays off as you become an accepted part of the landscape, just part of the scenery with a reputation widely known through word of mouth.
Linux can endure any amount of 'tough, geeky, iconoclastic' reputation as long as it doesn't develop a reputation for lies and deception. Claiming to be userfriendly doesn't count as nobody believes that
Definitely ;) ;)
In all seriousness, it's _great_ that there's a form of human endeavor where the quirks we're stuck with are considered 'par for the course'. I think part of this may simply be availability- lots of people can take MCSE courses (*shudder*) but the fact is that most of them simply will not be able to organise the information system that is a personal computer into a coherent and well working whole.
Those who can, can write their own ticket- and among them have always been the serious 'nerds' who just plain were from Mars, so a precedent keeps being set: the weirdo is kept around or even enticed to stay because he is the one who can save everyone's butt when the problem gets particularly hard.
There are tests for some of these things, though not always for the exact capacity you're interested in- my personal favorite test story was for part of a test called the 'GATB', a sort of vocational aptitude test. One part of it involved looking at a drawing of a 3D shape and picking the 2D cutout that could be folded into that shape. I loved it, it was so much fun I wheedled the testgiver into letting me look at the rest of the problems in that category after the time period stopped (just to _see_ them, to do the hard ones, to finish them). I tore through those problems with geeky glee, and it turned out that I'd set a TEN YEAR peak for that particular test. I don't think it's at all an accident that I enjoyed it so much... it was cranking up what Temple Grandin calls 'the Sun workstation in your head'. I have Asperger's Syndrome. I'd never had an example quite so obvious to give me confidence in the face of my other obvious lacks and liabilities, to show me that I was good for something. Finally, the truth- I need to go into origami
No, seriously- what that test revealed was this: although my brain is a very balky and inconvenient instrument, there are some things it can do that your average person just can't. Ever since, I've been trying to figure out how to actually put it in gear, as it were: I can predict trends about stuff I'm interested in (I tend to be interested in the computer industry, and have called many shots accurately, didn't gain by it though- my current hunch is that MS is breaking free of its dependence on government in general and the US government in particular). I design stuff. I'd like to give as much of it away as possible- of course if you just give something away nobody notices so you have to build it up a bit first.
I'm glad the tech world has a place for people like me- and I wish people were as enlightened as you are, back when I was growing up. Back then nobody had a clue, and I was sort of Skinner-avoidance-response trained to look people in the eye and not rock, in a remedial school. It didn't change me, it only made me decide that the world was a very hostile place where you had to act certain ways or be punished. It feels good to think that your daughter doesn't have to go through that...
It's not so much lacking a sense of rhythm, or being unmusical- for autistic people it's kind of 'all or nothing'. There's a similar situation with Parkinsonians- their rhythm and flow of movement can be totally, totally screwed up, but put on music and they can dance as if there was nothing unusual about them at all- sometimes. And that's the trick- the 'sometimes'. :) I guess it's just a matter of taste, and how much you're willing to sell out... because apart from an ability to play blues guitar and write the occasional pop song, 'my music' is really damn inaccessible to most normal people o_O *g*
I've played music at times when I was 'on', and I've also tried to play music when my 'rhythm' was just not there. It can be pretty frustrating to have a thing like that not be under your control. There has to be a flow somewhere to latch onto, or you're toast- you can play _with_ anything no matter how tough, the stronger the groove the better you can contribute to it, but you get screwed up by bad grooves or unsteadiness. I've done some OK work with sequencers- it's possible to make sequencers 'drive' the beat but still preserve the artificial perfection of it, and that can produce some very strong performances.
Quick precis: Autistic people can _too_ keep time and perform music. The question is, to what extent is this a facade? What is the 'soul' of autistic music? A lot of my stuff suffers from this paradox- the more commercial it is, the more likely it is that some element of posturing was involved. When I just make music for me, it tends to be very very abstract- I'm capable of listening for hours to the shortwave 3-meter band (there's a satellite broadcasting there, sounds like bionic white-noise). I've made music with a chaotic-equations program (MidiChaos, a little Mac hack from the 68K days) that I enjoy, but which is so abstract that most people would hurl
I have some personal experience on this one. There was a time when I became homeless and ended up in a psych ward on the assumption that I was depressed. I didn't mind admitting that I didn't see what good I was to the world, and that it would be much easier if I offed myself, though I wasn't going to do it as I knew people who would be hurt by such an act. ;) when the clarion call is 'All For The SELF!' my reaction tends to be 'for the what?' and I don't understand. To me, that is such an empty motivation, so hollow... there needs to be more, not for any grand emotional reason but simply because Self, to me, seems like a pathetically feeble thing to base a worldview and belief system around. Hence, other belief systems, notably the GNU strain of Free Software, seem a lot more suitable- to me, a person with very low priority on Self, the notion of Cooperation or Society seems significantly more useful. And if something like the GPL really _bugs_ people whose ethic is Self primarily, I find I have no sympathy whatsoever, which is my bias, not considering the Self important or useful.
I now understand that depressed people would say such things from a position of great anguish, like living in a state of just-having-gotten-terrible-news ALL the time without relief, and so they'd be hurting enough to override their usual instinct of self-preservation.
I wasn't in that kind of anguish- was reacting kind of dispassionately to the way the world seemed to be shaping up- but what throws people is this, I don't really have much of a self, never have. I mean that literally- it's a part of the human mainspring and in me it's not really there... People have mentioned Spock, but think Data, instead. Data is a bit of an icon for a lot of autistic people. That level of disconnection is damned tough for a normal person to understand, and to make matters worse, either Data or an autistic person _can_ learn to mimic regular human emotions quite convincingly, which happens as a matter of course.
Perhaps this is what irritates me about certain belief systems such as Ayn Rand disciples
Maybe the popularity of the GPL and such cooperation-forcing situations is particularly strong among those of us who are autistic and do not have a strong emotional bias towards the Self? What sort of person finds it easy and harmonious to 'sell out' the Self and contribute to society?
How?
And why is it that suddenly, people who cannot be social are no longer part of the EVERYONE needed to make the world go around?
How about Server and GUI for the identifiers? It's kind of silly to have X running on a serious server, and it's quite unnecessary as you can admin it remotely and it needn't even have a _monitor_. Conversely, what could be more attractive and appropriate to the lusermentality than choosing between 'unpretty' and 'GUI'? No way would most of them pick 'light' or 'restricted' but give them a choice between 'server' and 'GUI' and they will _leap_ on 'GUI' uttering cries of delight. It's all in how you phrase it. Problem solved.
I don't mind saying I'm 'legally autistic'- as in 'on disability w. Asperger's Syndrome'. I understand even making such an admission exposes me to frantic hateful attacks from Randites going 'there's nothing the matter with you! just try harder you lazy bastard!', but I thought it was a useful context to say some things I thought needed saying. ;) ) Seems awfully trivial- but when the dislocation of changing your train of thought and answering the phone really _hurts_ and undercuts the little oasis of stability you've built for yourself, sometimes you have to ask for what you need. I did. I also show up whenever I like and stay as late as I want, because I cannot control when I'm going to be able to sleep, so I can't keep regular hours either- that's another one I learned through rough experience. (reminds me of childhood and routinely getting 2 hours sleep before school because my head wouldn't quit processing). Again, I got this through being honest and also willing to _stay_ late if needed- I go into work with the understanding that it has permission to switch my 'track' over to computer repair for however many hours it takes. My boss considers it his job to tell me and the other (equally obsessive) computer tech to go _home_ when we're threatening to spend 12 hours on the same intractable problem! ;) because autism/asperger's may not be a 'disease' in the sense of 'fix meeee!' but by GOD it's different, and ignoring that kills people slowly.
Asperger's is incurable. It's like trying to cure being six foot tall, or trying to cure bipedal locomotion. What Asperger's really is about to me (and I make use of some resources I have to learn more about this) is "what rules do I need to live by in order to survive?". Neglecting this or trying to deny it with stubborn willpower damn near killed me- at one point I got sent to an emergency room with internal bleeding from ulcers (typically, I sort of ignored the pain of it, having decided that 'willpower' and my goals were more important).
One of my needs is for the flow of my attention to flow naturally. I cannot handle derailment- even if I force myself to permit it, I take an absurd amount of damage from it in stress, and get driven farther into autistic defenses. For instance, I've managed to work out ways to do computer repair work and maintain it without burning out or flaking out. One of these ways is this: my boss is totally aware of who I am and where I'm coming from, and from day one I have arranged that I do not answer the telephone. (heh- I'm picturing a lot of heads nodding out there in slashdotland
It's bad to behave like some types of geekiness are diseases to be stamped out- but it's worse to behave like these differences, these different needs, don't exist. I don't know how many other autistic geeks (include 'Asperger.h') are out there- I've seen a couple touching posts from people who felt really crappy about themselves- and it's not OK for me to shut up about it anymore. I WILL be heard from- as much as I can communicate, and not a bit more
Those of us who are autistic geeks generally cannot go on grand crusades to define and protect our image, establish our identity as a worthy thing, prove our value. We typically have a hell of a job keeping our own boats steady and no attention to spare for PR. Even when a Slashdot article shines a beam of light on us, the comments are mostly people arguing ABOUT us, arguing we don't exist or don't count OR arguing that we are totally normal, really, and must be treated as regular guys!
Well- we're out there, we are the worst stereotypes and the fondest rationalizations all rolled into one, and we certainly are not going away. (That would be change- ew! Find another line of work? yuck!) So people had better get used to the idea. It's not new- ever read 'The Hacker FAQ'? It's practically a tutorial on 'how to give an autistic person a work environment that is nurturing and let them perform optimally'. The fact is, for many of us this is NECESSARY. We aren't as adaptable as your regular Joe- to really be kick-ass productive members of society we _need_ our quirks to be respected and understood, otherwise it's like having a track star run a race with both hands tied together behind his back. ("You run with your legs, right? Shouldn't matter."). To explore that simile a bit, in running arms are used for _balance_ and if you did that to a track star they'd be totally uncomfortable and slowed down, running very unnaturally. It's the same thing for autistic people working and being expected to maintain regular-folks social interactions- the balance is off, it's exhausting and unproductive, and as inappropriate as tying a track star's hands behind his back.
We don't need cures, we don't need help faking normal societal attitudes- we need the proper context. It's not so much to ask. There are pluses and minuses to this- the most important point is, this is not an option. Treat us like Joe Sixpack, and you lose, we lose, everybody loses out on the potential harmony that is there for the taking, for anyone willing to make a bit of an effort to accept what they don't understand.
The NSA did not do this: Microsoft did this. It did it to cause fear, uncertainty and doubt about the U.S. Government in foreign markets. Microsoft wishes the world to put pressure on the USA to back off on Microsoft. On the one hand there's the antitrust case (GEE, DO YOU SUPPOSE DISTRUST OF GOVERNMENT WOULD PLAY IN THEIR FAVOR?), and on the other hand there is encryption restrictions, and in order to be in a position to effectively fight Unices and Linux internationally, Microsoft has to be allowed to ship encryption anywhere they like, including to enemies of the USA. After all, those enemies can use Linux: stopping Microsoft from doing business with enemies of the USA means getting in their way and impeding their business.
This is a trial balloon for a new geopolitics: it says in BIG RED LETTERS, "hands off Microsoft, USA". It's not a message for America- it is a message for the rest of the world. "Look! Unless something is done, the worldwide monopoly on computers and communications will be a tool of the USA! Wouldn't you rather it was just a worldwide monopoly beholden to nobody, with no loyalties at all?"
I must say I've been expecting this: I've been certain for some time that MS had no loyalty to the USA at all, and that they would find a way to cut the apron strings. It's typically ruthless MS marketing that the way turns out to be casting fear, uncertainty and doubt at the NSA by a childishly transparent ploy. Nothing that I've ever heard about the NSA suggests that they would tell MS to build in a key for them, allow it to be named 'NSAKEY', not _check_ to see if MS did it right etc etc etc. That's ludicrous- competent or incompetent they are too _paranoid_ to allow themselves to be betrayed that stupid way, therefore it's not them (and they probably have YA-key that nobody knows about, knowing them).
Since it's not the NSA which laid that carefully planted clue, and since it came from somewhere inside Microsoft, the question becomes "Why would Microsoft produce such a clue to cause fear of the NSA?" and I think what with the antitrust case and the blocks against exporting encryption, it should be quite obvious why Microsoft now sees fit to backstab the U.S. Government itself.
They should halve or quarter the port's bandwidth and make sure the product has to be delayed another year?
;P
Will that help?
The proper response to statements like 'Microsoft has never made a bad product' is to burst out laughing. The more people out there 'feeding that meme' the better- it's one thing to make a big argument, but laughter is a wonderful deflator of empty hype, and it's fun, too! :) :)
Here, I'll show you: "Windows 2000 will ship in the year 2000 and deliver great benefits to IT professionals everywhere." *ROTFL*
In extreme cases you might want to go with the Daffy Duck sort of over-the-top Hysterical Laughter... it all depends on just how funny the statement really is, and how serious the person stating it seems
No book publisher ever made an effective website? http://www.oreilly.com/.
The Yankees have a site worth spotlighting on Slashdot? I'm sorry, I'll go with the professionals who checked it out and reported their findings: over-the-top sites are Web pollution, and I'm told they don't even get decent cross-platform results. Is Jon Katz getting kickbacks or something? First Apple, now this.
Lastly, 'shovelware' is more accurately a relic of the CD-Rom boom days, when people thought anything on a CD-Rom was instant riches. CD-Roms are capacious, especially back in those days, so it was indeed like 'shovelling' data onto them, and there were a lot of disks made that were total garbage to cash in on the (hypothetical) boom- hence, shovelware.
Isn't there anybody who could at least _edit_ Jon Katz and stop certain articles like this from being run as articles? Sometimes it's awfully obvious that he's blown it again. I use a Mac and really like it and think Apple's doing great things, but I still think his lovefest of Apple was _also_ inappropriate for Slashdot. Stop The Madness... (str)
I think the G4's 128-bit registers are a serious breakthrough, and that Apple in the corporate sense is not to be underestimated (they still keeping inventory lowest in the industry?), but Katz still talked a lot of nonsense. To be expected.
The interesting thing is this: given an article that is _so_ much of a troll, and makes it _so_ difficult for any selfrespecting geek to agree, it's expected that the anti-Apple folks are out in force with burning torches, aggravated beyond tolerance. That said, there are still slashdot geeks willing to stick up for Apple despite Katz's shenanigans! That says a lot.
ObSlashdotCred: regarding Altivec vs. MMX: two words for you- context switches. >:)
You're as bad as the fellow saying 'LPs aren't as good, do they even have stereo capability?'
The fact is, LPs can substantially outperform CDs in certain ways and decidedly not in other ways. In order to so blatantly outperform CDs, you have to completely overhaul your system- in particular, the playback system has to do something to get a handle on the low frequency inadequacy of 99% of turntables, and it has to have high frequency extension to waaaaay over 20K because among the additive distortion in that region is important information. Finally, you have to play a suitable record- it is very easy to find records that push the extreme high end, but much more difficult to find ones that attempt to present low end accurately, and half the time you're better off looking for the minimalist recording techniques of the 50s and 60s.
Does this go some way toward explaining why you don't know what you're talking about? It's very unlikely that you have ever experienced an analog playback system worth listening to. Have you listened to openreel tape playback at 15 or 30 ips, or is your experience with tape likewise limited to cassettes?
ObCompression: I can get better results out of mp3 than I've heard from any other codec including the Quicktime Qdesign codec. That's not to say I always _have_... I need to make some more equipment to do this... but IMHO as a hardcore highend system designer audiogeek mp3 is as good as anything. To maximize its audio quality, feed it an enhanced analog signal that precompensates for the known losses in the process: give it the analog over heavy cables with good equipment, you want to be giving it the hottest transients possible and not softening and blurring them. Doing this means the transients can be glossed over by the compresssion losses without coloring the rest of the sound- using shoddy cables for your analog paths is a really _horrible_ idea especially if you mean to record only 128k: as compression quality goes down, you have to feed the software a _purer_ signal to try and compensate for it. Finally, in order to deal with the known losses of codec compression, you need to give the analog source a minor amount of _audio_ compression because details like faint high frequency sounds are going to be lost in the codec. Ideally you want to be giving it multiband compression. Don't expect comparable results from digitally effecting CD audio- the point of this is to bring more of the original source into the 16bit 44K range of digital audio, and then to leave it alone in purist fashion. I'm not talking consumer level here, or CD ripping (just use the bits from the CD), I'm talking digital audio mastering especially for producing mp3s.
Hopefully some other people who are not too easily pleased will also take to mp3 mastering as a serious artform comparable to the old vinyl mastering. Going 'it's already perfect' is NOT enough.
This is very interesting to read about, but I am of the opinion that you can't make people into scientists by giving them classes. It's just not going to happen.
I've always had an amazing shock of recognition when reading stories about scientists like Conway (inventor of the cellular automata Life) and the value systems of these people. It amazes me that there are so many people who _don't_ want to sit around thinking about interesting things- that there are so many people more interested in answers than questions.
I'm designing a game- been working on aspects of it for years now. It'll have to happen at its own pace, there's too much of it to rush and I cannot simply opensource it and expect anything useful to happen- most people want quick fixes, not real answers. I _do_ intend to release the result under the GPL, I just don't think open source is going to magically be _creative_ for me.
In designing this game, I have often had to soak up lots of information from various places. A form of player-codable AI in it (halfcompleted) derives from assembly language, but in a bizarre way tailored (CS) to allow as many AIs running simultaneously as possible, and to face people with realworld consequences behind buzzwords- for instance, you could get the AIs to preemptively multitask, but as they are for embedded (imaginary) systems, there are arguments for doing a cooperative arrangement and handling timeslicing on a routine-by-routine basis. Genetic algorithms could (and will) be used to devise different sorts of AIs- which imposes its own constraints on the design of the AI. I've even downloaded and printed (in 4-up tinyprint) a massive online textbook on astronomy and cosmology just to get my game-universe convincingly plausible- and at the same time, CS fights with this to strike a balance between that which would satisfy scientific accuracy (for instance, spiral galaxies) and that which would execute fast enough to make all this reasonable to attempt (simple spherical galaxies, power-of-two divides) in the particular way it's being attempted.
A lot of people wouldn't even bother, and a lot of commercial developers would never have the opportunity to fart around playing with galaxy distribution. To some extent, science is about truth over convenience- and it's very easy to cheat and shortchange truth. There's even a level where it's like artistic truth- subjective, but recognizable.
I only know that I've always devoured scientific information just for fun, out of curiosity- and that it has affected the way I implement things. It's sort of like buzzword compliance versus really pulling things together- my secret weapon in this (besides having the time to do it, and being willing to _take_ the time to do it right) is that implementing well is just plain better- it's like well-crafted art- having a scientific backing (or learning enough of one to cover for your lack) can make a project like my game a hit rather than a failure. It's a lot of work, but when enough goes right, untutored users begin getting a sense of rightness even when they don't understand what they are seeing.
Science is worth it, but it's like being a (benevolent) hacker: it's not something you take classes in, a lot of people wouldn't even want to. Those who want that have a _hunger_ that can't be deflected even by lack of schooling- give them information and stand back.
- Do not do anything criminal
- Do not do anything irresponsible
- Do not assist anyone else in doing anything criminal or irresponsible
- Do not behave like apathy and laziness is equivalent to being criminal and irresponsible: it's better for uncaring people to learn to care without assuming 'original sin' and a burden of guilt for choices they made when they were not competent to decide rationally for themselves.
This basically covers most ethical problems, hopefully in a useful way. For instance, Microsoft are often irresponsible and sometimes illegal. Simply being a luser and using their stuff is not ethically wrong, but it begins to enter the picture as the consumer stops being an idiot. There is a level where 'I want MS to win and destroy everything else because that is the best thing for the world's innovation and progress!' can't be considered ethically wrong because it is simply insane- psychotic, because of the major areas of reality that this viewpoint flatly contradicts. Hence, such a person would need help rather than censure, and hopefully could learn a more sensible worldview, one that was grounded in reality. Finally, someone who was thinking, "I am aware that Microsoft behaves irresponsibly and sometimes in a criminal manner, but I want them to keep doing this because _I_ have invested in their stuff/their stock, so I would like them to commit crimes on behalf of my self-interest" would be ethically in the wrong, along the lines of sociopathy: it is normal to have a little more public interest than that. Maybe not a _lot_, but it is neither normal or healthy to be _that_ hostile to the needs and concerns of others.This is the primary value of ethics: it is a defense against sociopathy. It's usually possible for single individuals to gain greatly at the expense of others, but if this goes unchecked, the overall quality of society declines, even for the person trying to gain at the expense of society. There are healthy levels of gain that don't weaken society, and unhealthy levels that blight society. Ethics is the codification of guidelines that place society first and the individual second, so they are always likely to be relative.
You could easily make an argument that mp3s are ethical because what is really being dealt with is a means of mass communication: though mp3s are widely used to violate existing intellectual property laws, they themselves are a mechanism for communication which is under attack by other mechanisms with major ethical problems (i.e. particular companies owning the means of communication, planned obsolescence, the auto-destruction of means of conveying information), and so advocacy of mp3s is a substantially ethical thing to do for society, arguably even at the expense of the intellectual property being violated- something that might not be reasonable to protect forever, in the same sense that books ceased to be highly valuable items when substantially cheaper means arose to copy _them_.
You can't make a living as a scribe these days...
Information is changing in significance, and the most important thing to keep in mind is to protect the new freedoms from being legislated out of existence. Any code of ethics for the computer industry would have to place communication of information above all else- that is the single most revolutionary change the computer era has brought us. Productivity? Ha. Ease of use? *ROFL*. Adding to the wisdom of the common man? *AOL*. But! How many of you have a friend in a country you don't live in? How many people _ten_ _years_ ago had a friend in a country they didn't live in?
This is the new vision of society- it's McLuhan's wet dream of global locality, and it's immediately accessible, and for those with a willingness to expend effort, it is accessible at virtually _no_ cost. Almost anything will run 'telnet', and if you have that you are off and running, reading man pages and getting access to that information. Just because inner cities and third world countries do not _want_ 286es doesn't mean it's not a resource- anyone who's 'gotten by' with telnet knows how accessible the world's information is.
Hence, it is ethically imperative to do everything possible to keep this connectivity from being taken away by entities with a vested interest in limiting it.
"...toilet."
Words _fail_ me o_O
Short Intel, now!