One of the most difficult obstacles to constucting a [true, self-replicating] Von Neumann machine is the materials science aspect - how to turn raw collected mass into the extremely complex list of processed materials needed for subsequent production of new machines (and their control systems).
Currently, genetic enginnering and nanotechnology together form the leading contender for the systems needed to fabricate such complex systems from raw materials.
Remember, a Von Neumann machine is not a simple exploration robot - its a robot that carries aroud with it a refinery, smelting plant, forge, machine shops, semiconductor equipment (crystal growth, deposition, die stepper, tester, ATE) ect. ad nauseum.
While I don't agree with some of your other extrapolations (meat sacks may be around for quite a long time, the nature of consciousness seems more complicated that we suspected just a few decades ago...), nanotech is likely to be the only practical technology to build these machines for the next century or two...
Your arguments are interesting but devoid of a clue.
The servers are worthless compared to the community created by the players.
This is an interesting position, and in some abstract, morality in a vacuum, GPL-ish sense, its probably true.
However, all the "community" in the world doesn't pay the bills for the T3, the electricity for the server farm, the IT expenses to maintain the server farm, and it certainly doesn't provide any funding for extension of the online content.
Running an online gameing servers represents a signifigant, ongoing expense. It can run from tens of thousands a month to hundreds of thousands a month. Box sales may provide an infusion of several million in net profits over an initial 6 months or so, but part of that goes to repay initial development, and the remaining is quickly eaten by recurring server expenses.
Do you know why the recurring expenses are so low? Because extensive research (Jupiter, ect.) has established that users wont't pay much more than that $10/month. Do you know why the technology in these games is so archaic? Because users won't pay much more than that $10/month.
The only free hosting model that has survived are matching servers and some limited online data stores, as the recurring cost to run those can be under $2k/month. (I wrote these while in the online games industry, so I know what the hell I'm talking about... But many companies consider even that ammount too high!)
You sound like a true believer in the principles of the GPL. However, please be aware that in the real world, if a room full of servers is needed for that "free speech" application to work, someone has to pay the bill. Even boxed sales are not enough, or the servers go offline within six months without some other major subsidy.
Attitudes like yours are why online games are being held back.
If you want a legal notice delivered, there are several options. Deliver it yourself, have a friend deliver it, pay a total stranger to deliver it, hire a process server, or hire a sheriff, ect.
All that matters is that the delivery person fills out the notice of service properly. Using a sheriff can cost more, but carries no legal signifigance in and of itself.
If a sheriff knocks on your door and yells that he has some papers to give you, you _can_ ignore him. If he yells he has a _warrant_, thats quite different - open the door (or run out the back).
There is a catch, of course - a corrupt LEO can invent a "reasonable belief" that a crime is happening and kick the door open, then "realize" there is none and give you the papers. Us citizens and process servers go to jail for this, and while LEO's should, they get away with it 99.999%+ of the time (thank you supreme court!)
The reason behind this architecture has been mentioned in a number of trade journals. Encrypted monitors and speakers are coming, to better "protect" digital content. A stream cipher on a serial bus does not degrade the signal quality, and so is the preferred technical means to acomplish this protection (Especially for video.)
It allows encrypted DVD's and broadband streams to be sent directly to the output devices without an easily accessable decrypt stage in the general purpose processer.
So next it'll require an e-beam prober or another key management 'accident' to expose the raw digital content to the immoral ravages of fair use, all subject to felony charges courtesy of DMCA.
JINI is not part of the Java SDK given away for free - its part of their enterprise suite, and they charge a 5+ digit licensing fee to redistribute it in a commercial product.
Furthermore, unlike other API's in the enterprise suite, JINI is not provided as an interface that anyone may implement. Sun has patented some critical aspects of it, and has stated they will defend that patent.
There exists at least one open source JINI clone that is being held by the authors until the patent issue is resolved.
Until something changes, JINI is for corporate use only.
OK, I did state "artic cap", and my 10-100m was wildly incorrect for just the artic ice "cap". Having so many nasty responses, I took a quick peek to dig up at least one reference for that number.
If I stated "artic ice" instead of "cap", then the figure from "U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1386-A" is 73.44 meters, given the conditions:
"Sea level rise potential (in meters) [defined as the maximum sea level rise
expected if all glacier ice were to melt in a specified geographic region
based on a density of 0.9 for glacier ice (Robin, 1967), an ocean area of
362X106km2 (National Geographic Society, 1996) and 400 km3 of glacier ice
melted to raise sea level 1mm]."
and
"The total volume of glacier ice in Antarctica is 30,109,800 km3. For
the calculation of sea level rise potential, only the grounded-ice volume
of 29,377,800 km3 was used. The total grounded ice volume includes 25,921,700 km3
for East Antarctica, 3,222,700 km3 for West Antarctic, and 183,700 km3
for the Antarctic Peninsula. The volume of ice rises on the Ross Ice Shelf and
the Ronne-Filchner ice shelves are 5,100 km3 and 44,600 km3, respectively."
So while the "artic ice cap" melting has little impact, that constitutes only ~0.5% of the ice at the poles. And before blasting back anything about how stable Antartic ice is, do some homework on the collapse mechanisms for the West Anatartic ice sheet, cross reference that with weather reports from the Ross Ice shelf, as well as the Wordie, Larsen, Wilkins, and George VI.
I've seen dire predictions for ice cap melt off, in the form of every x percent (single digit) of ice cap melt means global sea level rise of y (single digit to low double digit) meters.
If the artic cap has thinned 45% (!!!!), then according to global warming models, the sea should have risen ~10-100 meters, depending on the model!
Instead, its up a few cm. Now why am I skeptical of these models?
Not to mention their abysymal handling of other extremely critical factors, like our STILL not understanding the feedback effect of cloud albedo change, or oceanic phytoplankton(sp), or several other factors that throw the model off 2-3 orders of magnitude in EITHER direction.
I still have meterological textbooks from a few decades ago warning of the impending ice age. Our arrogance in the face of these complex systems continues to amuse me.
I will accept that I should have clarified my comment more carefully, here goes: "Inventor derivation for VRML was first and arguably most signifigant step in making adoption of VRML difficult, which let to its current zombie-like state". But then that wouldn't fit on a subject line, eh?
I agree that ultimately "utter lack of demand at that time for 3D on the web" was the ultimate problem. But VRML came out at a time when, if implemented properly (i.e. high-speed plugins), it could have stimulated that demand. Those in the community continue to becry the need for "the killer app", without realising that games continue to distract the 3d mass market, and hold a bar far past the 'academic' (i.e. more accurate color model but 1/10 the frame rate) rendering pipelines available for VRML.
Also, there is a relationship to Fahrenheit here: SGI invested a great deal of time and resources on this new scene graph model, only to have Microsoft steal some of their best people and introduce the platform restriction. Releasing OpenInventor as OpenSource is an attempt to regain mindshare in the scene graph API space that they lost when Fahrenheit was dumped back to MS.
I'm not attributing bad motives to SGI, the LGPL Inventor release was a "good thing" (although I'd like to see a less encumbered license.) I also still remember quite vividly that they promised for SEVERAL YEARS!!!!! to make the VRML grammer available for unemcumbered use, and never did, and ultimately sold it to a corportion that merely sat on it.
Inventor is a good scene graph, albeit overly complicated. The problem is that its scene graph file format is not trivially (left-right) parsable.
When the early VRML specification was derived from Inventor, (the spec writers used several other open source specs including one I contributed to), they based the file format on Inventor. This was good for them, as they worked at SGI and had access to the parser source.
However, nobody ELSE had access to the parser source, and the complexity of its recreation, along with critical ambiguities in the original spec, made recreation a many man month ordeal. Until recently, those parties that did go through this ordeal chose to sell their implementations under somewhat expensive commercial licenses.
This is why so many applications could export VRML, but few could read it back in. This led to the spec remaining in the hands of a few commercial entities, where it has remained despite claiming an "open" consortium (that you must purchase a seat on.)
The new X3D spec is an interesting mapping of older VRML onto XML, but instead of simplifying things they chose (surprise) to map directly, retaining much of the original problem.
Inventors source release probably has more to do with Fahrenheight(sp).
Anyone doing serious work in these fields could write this. It's just a matter of time before one is released into the wild. Genies, bottles, and all that.
On a related note, the potential impact of this class of worm is probably responsible for funding approval to the new "Infrastructure Protection" the USGOV is deploying to protect us from ourselves. Amusing, considering that this is one class of worm that will likely evolve to a point where it can't be eradicated from the net, at least as long as a few insecure systems are still online.
The phrase "well regulated", at the time the bill of rights was written, meant 'in good working order.' There are advertisments from the period offering "re-regulation" of your rifle, which meant barrel/sight adjustments. Timepieces from the period (and some still today) were also stamped "regulated", in that they were calibrated.
Today "regulated" means tons of paperwork and laws controlling and limiting a privelage. Claiming this applied to firearms in the late 1700's could get you lynched. It would also be innacurate. Lawmakers who apply the modern definition are in criminal violation of their oath of office to uphold the constitution.
As for the types of weapons, the purpose of the second ammendment was to preserve the citizens ability to retain arms, so they could throw off an opressive government if the need arose again. Anyone disputing this needs to read 'the Fedralist Papers'.
By that standard, a correct application of the second ammendment is: I should be able to own Abrams M1 Tank, Stinger antiaircraft missiles, weapons with silencers and night vision, grenade launchers, body armor, and the equipment to service and repair them. Anything less means the citizenry cannot overthrow an oppresive government, and would therefore not be meeting the measure of the ammendment.
To claim otherwise is nieve or ignorant, political correctness aside. If you don't like it, repeal the 2nd ammendment - otherwise you're practicing revisionism.
I greatly admire the work of the ACLU in all but one area - they refuse to take any action to defend the second ammendment, and have on occasion supported unconstitutional positions in relation to it.
I don't think it is appropriate to pick and choose which entries on the Bill of Rights are "good" and which are "bad". Reasonable exceptions have been made when necessary by the courts, but the ACLU's "unofficial" position that the 2nd ammendment does not exist or apply is unnaceptable. This is hypocracy, despite whatever other good they have done.
As a bumper sticker once said, "What part of 'Shall Not Infringe' don't you understand?"
The article is exactly correct to draw attention to the language and supporting commentary on Article I. A balance needs to exist between the producers of Intellectual Property's needs to acheive some return on their investment which allows them to produce more Intellectual Property in the future, and in exchange for this "limited" period of protection the public has the right to use this IP without restrictions upon expiration of copyright. A good law, a balanced law, and locked into the Constitution itself.
Congress does not care. Copyright law is just yet another aspect of the Constitution being illegally circumvented by crooked politicians to save the nation from crime and itself, while bending over for law enforcement and industry.
The people have no say, for the most part they are sheep who only care that they have cable television and beer. The Constitution is just a old piece of parchment to play fun legal games and reinterpret the meaning of key words and intents, of course without consulting those pesky "Fedralist Papers" that would prevent such circumvention.
Copyright law, gun control, taxes, mineral/water rights, patent protections, privacy, state vs. federal powers. The entire bill of rights has been augmented with tens of thousands of laws and 'findings' expanding federal control all over areas deemed sancrosanct in that pesky old Constitution.
This is where the hypocracy of "open" license restrictions cuts both ways.
By using my license terms, proprietary vendors will benefit as MUCH as the open source community - that is the portion of the open source community that is willing to accept my code with an unrestricted license, as opposed to a heavily restrictive license.
I can argue that my terms are no more restrictive than the GPL, in which (insert qualifier here) redistributed GPL application (there, happy?) community benefits infinitely more than then everyone else, where "everone else" includes not only proprietary vendors, but anyone using a different open source license, including the LGPL!
Contributors who entertain the "proprietary applications are evil" mindset will of course think twice - since I endorse "commercial" use (in the traditional meaning of the term), my license is inherently evil - I dare allow people to make real money!
On the other hand, for contributors who would like to share source code freely, and be able to use it in personal projects or in projects at work (where most of us professional programmers do the majority of our coding), these terms are perfect.
Look, this all boils down to commercial vs. non-commercial use. The GPL was _designed_ to virally convert software into effectively non-commercial works, under the guise of protecting programmers from being taken advantage of by evil corporations. While this is a real problem, I think the cure is worse than the disease.
Not all corporations are evil. And some of us code for a living at companies who require their software divisions to cover their own expenses plus a reasonable margin. We would like to use open source code, and are perfectly happy to contribute back to the community. Well, unless we're willing to release code just to have a public fork created that we cannot use, the GPL is unacceptable.
Licenses like the BSD allow us to use and share code for use at home or at work. All "proprietary applications are evil" rhetoric aside, I don't think there is anything wrong with this.
GPL defenders need to spend more time justifying their license for what it is, instead of deflecting criticism through semantics or rhetoric.
1. Yes, they've been around a long time, I've been using RedHat since version 4 something. Are you implying they paid their bills in the past off CD sales? With respects CD sales, without other funding sources they could do little more than bundle distributions.
2. I was not using socialism as a perjorative. I've read propoganda / literature on both sides of many political fences. In a GPL community, software isn't a "property" to be abused or hoarded, it is held by the people, and anyone (who subscribes to the terms) can use it, and the license even helps force them to use it only for the collective good. Am I misapplying the term here? I don't think so.
OK, you got me on some symantec issues, as is often the crux of GPL defenses. (sarcastic sigh)
r/e use in "commercial product", w/r/t "Red Hat, SuSE, and Caldera, to name but a few". These products sell for little more than costs of goods. This is not a "commercial product" in any traditional sense, in that it is impossible to cover expenses other than production - no development, no growth, no reinvestment, nothing but a few tens of thousands of dollars in CD sales a month for companies burning hundreds of thousands a month in overhead. Without a 100% subsidy (such as IPO), these companies do not exist. These "products" may "sell" in commercial channels, but they are not "commercial products" in any real sense of the word.
w/r/t use of GPL code with non-GPL code for non-distribution: Yes, this is done, I've done it myself, but it is only tertiary to the issue at hand. A pencil may be a deadly weapon if used [im]properly, that is insifficient justification to classify it a weapon under normal circumstances. The primary issue are conditions to reuse and redistribute.
w/r/t GPL imposing a non-commercial business model: See comment above w/r/t selling price imposed by GPL. Any entity redistributing GPL is either a non-profit, or receives a 100% subsidy from somewhere else. I stand by my comments.
w/r/t BSD overtaking GPL via corporate sponsership: I agree that to date this has not been the case, but I believe it will be soon. I work at a Fortune <very small number> company, and we're going to be releasing code soon under BSD type terms as well. A large percentage of people I know at other companies are moving there.
w/r/t "competitors" being _able_ to use GPL code: Uh, I'll get pedantic about the symantecs here. If party A releases code as GPL, and party B integrates it into their application, then party B's application must be GPL. Therefore B is a competitor only in a non-financial sense w/r/t the application, as B can't sell the application for enough money to fund development (or anything else). If you mean they are competing for installed base in a GPL software niche, then yes. However, the use of the term "competitor" has implied connotations when used in reference to "companies" that can not apply to subsidized software development that is given away at cost of goods.
w/r/t use of BSD code in GPL applications: I'm seeing more and more BSD style licenses have terms prohibiting license conversion, to prevent the FSF from creating a GPL fork which is then closed to the original developers. My projects contain this clause. I personally consider rolling my BSD code under GPL to be as invasive as what M$ did with Kerberos, as it prevents me from taking advantage of open source improvements without my resigning to use the GPL. There are a number of reasons why some code must remain proprietary, at least until everyone in the world decides that software (and technical specifications) should always be free (in the socialist definition of that term.) Until then, BSD lets code be used in both closed and open projects. Barring GPL conversion is at least no more evil than the viral aspect of GPL.
w/r/t corporate BSD code: What I see happening is me and my peers at other software companies wanting to share libraries of reusable code. We're doing this by convincing our management hierarachy to release these components under BSD as a cross-licensing scheme that EVERYONE gets to take advantage of. I see it as a win-win for most people, except for GPL people vs. non-GPL clauses in said licenses, which frankly I go to great lengths to make sure are encorporated.
Yes they do - Linux distributions like RedHat are commercial GPL works. And they sell for $30 at Fry's, and $2-3 at your average swap meet. If RedHat did not have IPO funding, they would have gone out of business before they could have picked up the keys to their first office.
As the VC community realizes there is little to no money to be made in GPL software, the spigot will close. The phenominom occuring w/r/t insane stock valuations allowing these startups to purchase "brick and mortar" companies with actual profits cannot last.
To the best of my knowledge, Cyclic is the ONLY company that turned a "real" profit on GPL software. After many years in market leadership and a huge installed base, they finally managed to make more money selling support than they were spending. 'Course, they sold CVS shortly thereafter. If other companies larger than garage scale have sustained positive income-expense ratios, I'd really like to hear about it.
Use of the term "proprietary" as a purjorative is the core of GPL's intent. To prevent open source from being used in a closed source application, GPL takes the position that ALL applications must be open source. Of course, this has the side effect of making it impossible to fund a development team (except during this IPO window so often pointed to innacurately by GPL proponents.)
The FSF has been pursuing an interesting goal of making as many enabling technologies as possible available under the GPL license, in at attempt to bootstrap further GPL development. I do think this is a good thing for GPL developers, but its also exclusionary and elitist (certainly not open, without placing amusing restrictions on what "open" means.) At the individual scale, I can completely understand why a programmer would want do donate code for free use and prevent companies like M$ from "stealing" it. However, at the larger level it forces developers to choose between non-commercial (GPL) and "free" source (as in freedom, as opposed to socialism.)
At the same time, however, those of us who program for a living are developing a code base that can be used by anyone. I think that truly open code while living with some abuses will have more positive benefit than trying to force the world into a non-profit business model - which is the core platform of the GPL license community.
The debate is academic, as normal evolutionary rules will prevail, its just a matter of time. Since the GPL locks itself out from all development not done under the GPL, I believe the long term result is a foregone conclusion - corporate open source will trivially overtake GPL restricted/viral source - the resources available behind it make this simple. Look at what's happening at companies like IBM (to name just one), and you can see where the GPL is going.
All politics, posturing, and ranting aside, the most significant difference between licenses is best exemplified by GPL vs. BSD. (I prefer BSD, but I'll try and keep my bias down...:)
GPL can never be used in a commercial product without negotiating for a special license to a forked version from the authors, this is rarely done, and the price demanded is usually obscene (I've been quoted $100k and up.) Also, GPL code can never be used in any application that is not also 100% GPL code - code it is integrated with "becomes" GPL, which has led some to call the GPL a "viral" license. Finally, any mods made to GPL code must be made public - you must post the source, or provide it on request.
BSD can be used by anybody, for anything. The license generally requires some sort of credit be given to the authors, like about box line or manual entry.
The proponents of GPL feel that imposing a non-commercial business model is the best way to keep software "free" - the required source mod release certainly helps. Detractors feel it is unreasonably restrictive in a world where there is insufficient income from selling support or manual to make a living for all but a very small niche of apps. IPO funding should not count in this argument without also taking into consideration the "actual" income of these IPO money pits.
Proponents of BSD feel it is the only "free" license, as it doesn't require you to become a non-profit to use the code, and you can integrate it into proprietary apps as well as release some (or all!) of your libs/code as open source for others to use - its a nice middle ground. Detractors generally take the position that all proprietary applications are evil, and I have yet to hear a reasonable counter to the middle ground other than "proprietary applications are evil". (sigh)
Personally, I think that corporate subsidized BSD-type development WILL easily surpass GPL's contributions - as more and more corporations realize the value of releasing open source. Some corps release their work as GPL to prevent competitors from being able to benefit from it, which does makes sense in some strategically important areas. This is one place where non-profit restrictions make sense, although "viral" terms are another matter...
In any case, I see more corps moving towards BSD type licenses - its the only way corps can freely share code, and the entire open source community can benefit, not just "proprietary applications are evil" fanatics. Of course, there are problems using BSD code in GPL applications, as GPL demands that the code become GPL. In most of these cases, the BSD authors have allowed GPL forks of the code.
In the end, I think corporate subsidized BSD has to win. It actually has financial backing, so programmers can earn a paycheck for their work, instead of working as a waiter to subsidize your coding as one of the GPL authors recommended.
As someone who supports my family writing software, I have a vested interest in obtaining financial compensation for my work. At the same time, I like to make the code I write available for reuse by as many people as possible.
The best way I have found to do both is to get commercial companies to pay me to write code for them, under terms that allow me to release said work as open source. I think this will be how an increasingly significant percentage of open source code is produced.
The sponsors of the released code need to recoup their development costs, most commonly by selling a proprietary application - service works only in niche areas, and IPO games are not the only business model.
However, unless we significantly complicate matters by releasing under multiple licenses which cannot trivially share subsequent work, I don't see where the GPL fits into this picture at all.
I would argue that as more commercial houses release code as open source, and more contractors negotiate for the rights to release, I think that GPL is destined to become marginalized.
I see and understand GNU's efforts to recreate every reusable library under GPL right now, but I think that will inevitably be surpassed by the efforts of independent and resources of commercial groups wishing to make actual money off of libraries, using licenses like LGPL and BSD.
I am very curious as to your comments on this subject - to date all I've heard are religious arguments from either side.
Kerry L. Bonin Sr. Engineer, Security/Cryptography & Advanced Visualization, Cisco Systems. VScape lead architect - Adaptive secure clustering for multiuser VR.
I'll admit I was being somewhat facetious in my use of the term "impossible". However, many advancements of the previous century were made by trying random things. And nearly every signifigant breakthrough of this century had a long and respectable list of scientists who considered it a waste of time.
The progress of technology lies in finding practical applications of our current understanding of science.
I take strong exception to this statement.
Focusing on practical applications means ignoring those deemed "impractical", which means you drop into niches of "practical" science - semiconductors, microbiology, genetics, some materials science areas, expensive high-energy physics, and a few other fields. Countless other areas aren't practical (i.e. profitable ) enough to devote signifigant resources to.
No offense, but your statement perfectly sums up my problem with modern science - it means little fundamental research is done outside of profitable niche areas, and it means that the scientist becomes more and more of a narrow specialist, unable to recognize important anomolies outside of their area of expertise. This is exactly what has happened over the last few decades.
I agree. Comments like so many I see here are to me the most signifigant reason why progress in fundamental research has slowed to a crawl outside of a few niche or applied areas.
The scientific method says you develop a hypothesis, then develop experiments to prove or disprove said hypothesis. The theory being tested could range from "frogs legs grow faster when raised in the presence of Barry Manilow music" to "argon plasma fields in a tomahawk subjected to containment field weakly modulated at 2.34567 kHz in the presence of Barry Manilow music causes an electron spin configuration which appears to distort the local space time continuoum and produce a thrust without the ejection of a working fluid."
It doesn't matter how "stupid" or "patently impossible" the theory is. The WHOLE POINT of the scientific method is to allow you to find out if something _is_ possible in a framework designed to minimize error in making the determination, and to maximize the possibility that another scientist (and eventually engineer) can reproduce it and support the discovery.
To proclaim based on what we know today that something _must_ be "impossible" and therefore a waste of time to pursue is arrogant, ignorant, and the reason so many basic technologies in our world have been stalled for 50+ years.
The list of fundamental and "impossible" advances in the last century is staggering. A favorite quote regarding the progress of science: "Old scientists never change their mind. But they do die."
Well, the first few millionths of a second. In a multi-stage device you may have 3+ seperate fission and fusion reactions triggering each other at exponentially greater yields.
Simple devices use primary with plutonium core compression fisson device with tritium core. X-rays escaping the primary tamper are focused via beryllium into plastic/foam/explosive waveguides to generate enough energy in second detonation to heat lithium-6 deuteride or other fussion fuel sufficiently, and outer bomb casing is often made of fissile material for free extra bang (and higher burn efficiency of lithium). An extremely complex system. I always thought it was cool how in "dial-a-yield" by simply varying the tritium in the primary core "pit", you can change the final yield by a good order of magnitude or two - for tactical situations vs. simple inventory.
Handling propogation of energy between stages introduces signifigant aspects of materials sciences, and is one of the more interesting problems with maintaining a stockpile - how things change after sitting and bombarding itself with low level radiaition for years on end. Lots of trace isotopes appearing, opacity to x-rays changing [the internal power exchange medium - "high temperature photon gas"), _very_ neat stuff.
As an aside, the utilities to work through these exchanges are what Dr. Lee is accused of losing his backup tapes of. Rather important stuff, as higher efficiency means more yield per launch platform.
IMHO, accountability is the most serious problem in modern law enforcement. It exists across the board, from the beat cop hassling minorities, district attorneys practicing selective enforcement based on policies and media exposure, and an Attorney General who refuses to appoint Independent Counsels when clear conflicts of interest exists. (Yes, I know the Independent Counsel system is screwed up too, but thats another topic.)
Members of law enforcement agencies simply have no significant accountability for their actions. As the poster mentioned, the worst thing is that some of the taxpayers money is returned to them. Look at a random sample of officers or supervisors responsible for heinous acts, and the majority of the time nothing happens. If one is suspended, they are quickly rehired by another office, often at a pay raise. The checks and balances (oversight committees) are underfunded, politicized, and have little real power.
And on top of all that is a Supreme Court that is systematically eviscerating the bill of rights in the name of supporting law enforcement.
The saddest thing is these generally only effect people with limited means (i.e. limited to nonexistent legal budgets.) It is rare that anyone who can hire a decent firm is hassled, despite the scope of crime(frauds, mostly) perpetrated by that same "white collar"/upper tax bracket segment of society.
The list of cases that have received significant media exposure pale besides the tons of cases that are buried. Worst are the increasing number of home invasions accidental shootings (home owners who tried to defend themselves from armed thugs storming bedroom at 2am) based on the incorrect tip of a confidential informant.
I hate politics, but knowing what a cop/fed can do and get away with makes me sick.
All the whining about MP3's is primarily an attempt to prepare the legal grounds for supression of the format later, when they can force hardware manufacturers to suspend MP3 playback capability in favor of SDMI and/or its latest flavor.
The industry needs to make sure that when digital music is deployed (i.e. when _they_ deploy it), it goes out with the ability to be rented (which they prefer), instead of just bought. They also want the full suite of digital copy protections, such as tying it to the device its stored on so you can't share it. To do this they have to supress MP3.
Since Goebbels was right about telling a big enough lie often enough will eventually make it believable, that is what is happening. The media in this country is pretty much controlled by the same corporations that own the music, so you'll hear numbers like this alot, no matter how absurd they are when you apply basic arithmetic to them.
Essentially, the end of "fair use" as it's been known in copyright law for the last century or so is approaching - UCITA and DMCO are other aspects of this erosion of rights.
I stated clearly: "GPL prevents the use of any traditional business model (other than VC/IPO fed burn rate games)" and I stand by this statement. The companies you see in the paper making money off GPL code do so by selling technical support contracts, or in stock valuation games (distribution sales don't count, see stock valuation games). Cygnus is a great example - do you know how many years they were in business before actually turning a profit selling CVS support?
The GPL CANNOT be considered an an open and unemcumbered license, unless you twist signifigantly the meaning of unemcumbered to mean "it doesn't prevent you from doing anything it doesn't prevent you from doing." Again, semantic games.
GPL is an open source license. It also has the most viral, invasive and cumbersome terms of any "open source" license I've seen. The only place I've seen the license terms of the GPL be truly appropriate is when competing entities wish to collaborate - by making it impossible for either party to benefit _directly_ from the other parties contributions outside of the open collaboration.
GPL is protrayed as having a noble intent, but it ignores the basic fact that programmers do occasionally need to eat. It is possible to have open source and still make money through traditional means. This is why other licenses such as the LGPL and BSD exist, and professional coders like myself will consider the GPL a niche license.
As for commercial developers wishing to use, and to contribute code back into open source, this is EXACTLY my damn point. I work at Cisco, and my department _is_ releasing code into open source. But to make sure that people who use it can freely exchange modifications with each other and ourselves, we use a simple BSD (you agree not to sue us if it doesn't work) license. The GPL is inappropriate, as it would introduce myriad cross-license problems with the mod exchange. GPL 's infective nature means hassles that aren't worth the trouble.
I look at it this way - I give away thousands of lines of code a year - some posted to lists, some on web sites, some to peers at other companies. I've looked at the GPL, and unless me and all my peers convince the front office to stop charging for our products, we aren't using the GPL.
This fundamental problem is why this debate still exists. It works in some areas, it obviously worked great in an OS. But if applications wish to share open source code, and be placed on store shelves, GPL doesn't work.
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One of the most difficult obstacles to constucting a [true, self-replicating] Von Neumann machine is the materials science aspect - how to turn raw collected mass into the extremely complex list of processed materials needed for subsequent production of new machines (and their control systems).
Currently, genetic enginnering and nanotechnology together form the leading contender for the systems needed to fabricate such complex systems from raw materials.
Remember, a Von Neumann machine is not a simple exploration robot - its a robot that carries aroud with it a refinery, smelting plant, forge, machine shops, semiconductor equipment (crystal growth, deposition, die stepper, tester, ATE) ect. ad nauseum.
While I don't agree with some of your other extrapolations (meat sacks may be around for quite a long time, the nature of consciousness seems more complicated that we suspected just a few decades ago...), nanotech is likely to be the only practical technology to build these machines for the next century or two...
The servers are worthless compared to the community created by the players.
This is an interesting position, and in some abstract, morality in a vacuum, GPL-ish sense, its probably true.
However, all the "community" in the world doesn't pay the bills for the T3, the electricity for the server farm, the IT expenses to maintain the server farm, and it certainly doesn't provide any funding for extension of the online content.
Running an online gameing servers represents a signifigant, ongoing expense. It can run from tens of thousands a month to hundreds of thousands a month. Box sales may provide an infusion of several million in net profits over an initial 6 months or so, but part of that goes to repay initial development, and the remaining is quickly eaten by recurring server expenses.
Do you know why the recurring expenses are so low? Because extensive research (Jupiter, ect.) has established that users wont't pay much more than that $10/month. Do you know why the technology in these games is so archaic? Because users won't pay much more than that $10/month.
The only free hosting model that has survived are matching servers and some limited online data stores, as the recurring cost to run those can be under $2k/month. (I wrote these while in the online games industry, so I know what the hell I'm talking about... But many companies consider even that ammount too high!)
You sound like a true believer in the principles of the GPL. However, please be aware that in the real world, if a room full of servers is needed for that "free speech" application to work, someone has to pay the bill. Even boxed sales are not enough, or the servers go offline within six months without some other major subsidy.
Attitudes like yours are why online games are being held back.
If you want a legal notice delivered, there are several options. Deliver it yourself, have a friend deliver it, pay a total stranger to deliver it, hire a process server, or hire a sheriff, ect.
All that matters is that the delivery person fills out the notice of service properly. Using a sheriff can cost more, but carries no legal signifigance in and of itself.
If a sheriff knocks on your door and yells that he has some papers to give you, you _can_ ignore him. If he yells he has a _warrant_, thats quite different - open the door (or run out the back).
There is a catch, of course - a corrupt LEO can invent a "reasonable belief" that a crime is happening and kick the door open, then "realize" there is none and give you the papers. Us citizens and process servers go to jail for this, and while LEO's should, they get away with it 99.999%+ of the time (thank you supreme court!)
The reason behind this architecture has been mentioned in a number of trade journals. Encrypted monitors and speakers are coming, to better "protect" digital content. A stream cipher on a serial bus does not degrade the signal quality, and so is the preferred technical means to acomplish this protection (Especially for video.)
It allows encrypted DVD's and broadband streams to be sent directly to the output devices without an easily accessable decrypt stage in the general purpose processer.
So next it'll require an e-beam prober or another key management 'accident' to expose the raw digital content to the immoral ravages of fair use, all subject to felony charges courtesy of DMCA.
JINI is not part of the Java SDK given away for free - its part of their enterprise suite, and they charge a 5+ digit licensing fee to redistribute it in a commercial product.
Furthermore, unlike other API's in the enterprise suite, JINI is not provided as an interface that anyone may implement. Sun has patented some critical aspects of it, and has stated they will defend that patent.
There exists at least one open source JINI clone that is being held by the authors until the patent issue is resolved.
Until something changes, JINI is for corporate use only.
OK, I did state "artic cap", and my 10-100m was wildly incorrect for just the artic ice "cap". Having so many nasty responses, I took a quick peek to dig up at least one reference for that number.
If I stated "artic ice" instead of "cap", then the figure from "U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1386-A" is 73.44 meters, given the conditions:
"Sea level rise potential (in meters) [defined as the maximum sea level rise
expected if all glacier ice were to melt in a specified geographic region
based on a density of 0.9 for glacier ice (Robin, 1967), an ocean area of
362X106km2 (National Geographic Society, 1996) and 400 km3 of glacier ice
melted to raise sea level 1mm]."
and
"The total volume of glacier ice in Antarctica is 30,109,800 km3. For
the calculation of sea level rise potential, only the grounded-ice volume
of 29,377,800 km3 was used. The total grounded ice volume includes 25,921,700 km3
for East Antarctica, 3,222,700 km3 for West Antarctic, and 183,700 km3
for the Antarctic Peninsula. The volume of ice rises on the Ross Ice Shelf and
the Ronne-Filchner ice shelves are 5,100 km3 and 44,600 km3, respectively."
So while the "artic ice cap" melting has little impact, that constitutes only ~0.5% of the ice at the poles. And before blasting back anything about how stable Antartic ice is, do some homework on the collapse mechanisms for the West Anatartic ice sheet, cross reference that with weather reports from the Ross Ice shelf, as well as the Wordie, Larsen, Wilkins, and George VI.
Would you like more references?
I've seen dire predictions for ice cap melt off, in the form of every x percent (single digit) of ice cap melt means global sea level rise of y (single digit to low double digit) meters.
If the artic cap has thinned 45% (!!!!), then according to global warming models, the sea should have risen ~10-100 meters, depending on the model!
Instead, its up a few cm. Now why am I skeptical of these models?
Not to mention their abysymal handling of other extremely critical factors, like our STILL not understanding the feedback effect of cloud albedo change, or oceanic phytoplankton(sp), or several other factors that throw the model off 2-3 orders of magnitude in EITHER direction.
I still have meterological textbooks from a few decades ago warning of the impending ice age. Our arrogance in the face of these complex systems continues to amuse me.
I will accept that I should have clarified my comment more carefully, here goes: "Inventor derivation for VRML was first and arguably most signifigant step in making adoption of VRML difficult, which let to its current zombie-like state". But then that wouldn't fit on a subject line, eh?
I agree that ultimately "utter lack of demand at that time for 3D on the web" was the ultimate problem. But VRML came out at a time when, if implemented properly (i.e. high-speed plugins), it could have stimulated that demand. Those in the community continue to becry the need for "the killer app", without realising that games continue to distract the 3d mass market, and hold a bar far past the 'academic' (i.e. more accurate color model but 1/10 the frame rate) rendering pipelines available for VRML.
Also, there is a relationship to Fahrenheit here: SGI invested a great deal of time and resources on this new scene graph model, only to have Microsoft steal some of their best people and introduce the platform restriction. Releasing OpenInventor as OpenSource is an attempt to regain mindshare in the scene graph API space that they lost when Fahrenheit was dumped back to MS.
I'm not attributing bad motives to SGI, the LGPL Inventor release was a "good thing" (although I'd like to see a less encumbered license.) I also still remember quite vividly that they promised for SEVERAL YEARS!!!!! to make the VRML grammer available for unemcumbered use, and never did, and ultimately sold it to a corportion that merely sat on it.
Inventor is a good scene graph, albeit overly complicated. The problem is that its scene graph file format is not trivially (left-right) parsable.
When the early VRML specification was derived from Inventor, (the spec writers used several other open source specs including one I contributed to), they based the file format on Inventor. This was good for them, as they worked at SGI and had access to the parser source.
However, nobody ELSE had access to the parser source, and the complexity of its recreation, along with critical ambiguities in the original spec, made recreation a many man month ordeal. Until recently, those parties that did go through this ordeal chose to sell their implementations under somewhat expensive commercial licenses.
This is why so many applications could export VRML, but few could read it back in. This led to the spec remaining in the hands of a few commercial entities, where it has remained despite claiming an "open" consortium (that you must purchase a seat on.)
The new X3D spec is an interesting mapping of older VRML onto XML, but instead of simplifying things they chose (surprise) to map directly, retaining much of the original problem.
Inventors source release probably has more to do with Fahrenheight(sp).
"I don't think I really love you", or writting internet worms for fun and profit
Anyone doing serious work in these fields could write this. It's just a matter of time before one is released into the wild. Genies, bottles, and all that.
On a related note, the potential impact of this class of worm is probably responsible for funding approval to the new "Infrastructure Protection" the USGOV is deploying to protect us from ourselves. Amusing, considering that this is one class of worm that will likely evolve to a point where it can't be eradicated from the net, at least as long as a few insecure systems are still online.
The phrase "well regulated", at the time the bill of rights was written, meant 'in good working order.' There are advertisments from the period offering "re-regulation" of your rifle, which meant barrel/sight adjustments. Timepieces from the period (and some still today) were also stamped "regulated", in that they were calibrated.
Today "regulated" means tons of paperwork and laws controlling and limiting a privelage. Claiming this applied to firearms in the late 1700's could get you lynched. It would also be innacurate. Lawmakers who apply the modern definition are in criminal violation of their oath of office to uphold the constitution.
As for the types of weapons, the purpose of the second ammendment was to preserve the citizens ability to retain arms, so they could throw off an opressive government if the need arose again. Anyone disputing this needs to read 'the Fedralist Papers'.
By that standard, a correct application of the second ammendment is: I should be able to own Abrams M1 Tank, Stinger antiaircraft missiles, weapons with silencers and night vision, grenade launchers, body armor, and the equipment to service and repair them. Anything less means the citizenry cannot overthrow an oppresive government, and would therefore not be meeting the measure of the ammendment.
To claim otherwise is nieve or ignorant, political correctness aside. If you don't like it, repeal the 2nd ammendment - otherwise you're practicing revisionism.
I greatly admire the work of the ACLU in all but one area - they refuse to take any action to defend the second ammendment, and have on occasion supported unconstitutional positions in relation to it.
I don't think it is appropriate to pick and choose which entries on the Bill of Rights are "good" and which are "bad". Reasonable exceptions have been made when necessary by the courts, but the ACLU's "unofficial" position that the 2nd ammendment does not exist or apply is unnaceptable. This is hypocracy, despite whatever other good they have done.
As a bumper sticker once said, "What part of 'Shall Not Infringe' don't you understand?"
The article is exactly correct to draw attention to the language and supporting commentary on Article I. A balance needs to exist between the producers of Intellectual Property's needs to acheive some return on their investment which allows them to produce more Intellectual Property in the future, and in exchange for this "limited" period of protection the public has the right to use this IP without restrictions upon expiration of copyright. A good law, a balanced law, and locked into the Constitution itself.
Congress does not care. Copyright law is just yet another aspect of the Constitution being illegally circumvented by crooked politicians to save the nation from crime and itself, while bending over for law enforcement and industry.
The people have no say, for the most part they are sheep who only care that they have cable television and beer. The Constitution is just a old piece of parchment to play fun legal games and reinterpret the meaning of key words and intents, of course without consulting those pesky "Fedralist Papers" that would prevent such circumvention.
Copyright law, gun control, taxes, mineral/water rights, patent protections, privacy, state vs. federal powers. The entire bill of rights has been augmented with tens of thousands of laws and 'findings' expanding federal control all over areas deemed sancrosanct in that pesky old Constitution.
It will get far worse before it gets any better.
This is where the hypocracy of "open" license restrictions cuts both ways.
By using my license terms, proprietary vendors will benefit as MUCH as the open source community - that is the portion of the open source community that is willing to accept my code with an unrestricted license, as opposed to a heavily restrictive license.
I can argue that my terms are no more restrictive than the GPL, in which (insert qualifier here) redistributed GPL application (there, happy?) community benefits infinitely more than then everyone else, where "everone else" includes not only proprietary vendors, but anyone using a different open source license, including the LGPL!
Contributors who entertain the "proprietary applications are evil" mindset will of course think twice - since I endorse "commercial" use (in the traditional meaning of the term), my license is inherently evil - I dare allow people to make real money!
On the other hand, for contributors who would like to share source code freely, and be able to use it in personal projects or in projects at work (where most of us professional programmers do the majority of our coding), these terms are perfect.
Look, this all boils down to commercial vs. non-commercial use. The GPL was _designed_ to virally convert software into effectively non-commercial works, under the guise of protecting programmers from being taken advantage of by evil corporations. While this is a real problem, I think the cure is worse than the disease.
Not all corporations are evil. And some of us code for a living at companies who require their software divisions to cover their own expenses plus a reasonable margin. We would like to use open source code, and are perfectly happy to contribute back to the community. Well, unless we're willing to release code just to have a public fork created that we cannot use, the GPL is unacceptable.
Licenses like the BSD allow us to use and share code for use at home or at work. All "proprietary applications are evil" rhetoric aside, I don't think there is anything wrong with this.
GPL defenders need to spend more time justifying their license for what it is, instead of deflecting criticism through semantics or rhetoric.
1. Yes, they've been around a long time, I've been using RedHat since version 4 something. Are you implying they paid their bills in the past off CD sales? With respects CD sales, without other funding sources they could do little more than bundle distributions.
2. I was not using socialism as a perjorative. I've read propoganda / literature on both sides of many political fences. In a GPL community, software isn't a "property" to be abused or hoarded, it is held by the people, and anyone (who subscribes to the terms) can use it, and the license even helps force them to use it only for the collective good. Am I misapplying the term here? I don't think so.
OK, you got me on some symantec issues, as is often the crux of GPL defenses. (sarcastic sigh)
r/e use in "commercial product", w/r/t "Red Hat, SuSE, and Caldera, to name but a few". These products sell for little more than costs of goods. This is not a "commercial product" in any traditional sense, in that it is impossible to cover expenses other than production - no development, no growth, no reinvestment, nothing but a few tens of thousands of dollars in CD sales a month for companies burning hundreds of thousands a month in overhead. Without a 100% subsidy (such as IPO), these companies do not exist. These "products" may "sell" in commercial channels, but they are not "commercial products" in any real sense of the word.
w/r/t use of GPL code with non-GPL code for non-distribution: Yes, this is done, I've done it myself, but it is only tertiary to the issue at hand. A pencil may be a deadly weapon if used [im]properly, that is insifficient justification to classify it a weapon under normal circumstances. The primary issue are conditions to reuse and redistribute.
w/r/t GPL imposing a non-commercial business model: See comment above w/r/t selling price imposed by GPL. Any entity redistributing GPL is either a non-profit, or receives a 100% subsidy from somewhere else. I stand by my comments.
w/r/t BSD overtaking GPL via corporate sponsership: I agree that to date this has not been the case, but I believe it will be soon. I work at a Fortune <very small number> company, and we're going to be releasing code soon under BSD type terms as well. A large percentage of people I know at other companies are moving there.
w/r/t "competitors" being _able_ to use GPL code: Uh, I'll get pedantic about the symantecs here. If party A releases code as GPL, and party B integrates it into their application, then party B's application must be GPL. Therefore B is a competitor only in a non-financial sense w/r/t the application, as B can't sell the application for enough money to fund development (or anything else). If you mean they are competing for installed base in a GPL software niche, then yes. However, the use of the term "competitor" has implied connotations when used in reference to "companies" that can not apply to subsidized software development that is given away at cost of goods.
w/r/t use of BSD code in GPL applications: I'm seeing more and more BSD style licenses have terms prohibiting license conversion, to prevent the FSF from creating a GPL fork which is then closed to the original developers. My projects contain this clause. I personally consider rolling my BSD code under GPL to be as invasive as what M$ did with Kerberos, as it prevents me from taking advantage of open source improvements without my resigning to use the GPL. There are a number of reasons why some code must remain proprietary, at least until everyone in the world decides that software (and technical specifications) should always be free (in the socialist definition of that term.) Until then, BSD lets code be used in both closed and open projects. Barring GPL conversion is at least no more evil than the viral aspect of GPL.
w/r/t corporate BSD code: What I see happening is me and my peers at other software companies wanting to share libraries of reusable code. We're doing this by convincing our management hierarachy to release these components under BSD as a cross-licensing scheme that EVERYONE gets to take advantage of. I see it as a win-win for most people, except for GPL people vs. non-GPL clauses in said licenses, which frankly I go to great lengths to make sure are encorporated.
Yes they do - Linux distributions like RedHat are commercial GPL works. And they sell for $30 at Fry's, and $2-3 at your average swap meet. If RedHat did not have IPO funding, they would have gone out of business before they could have picked up the keys to their first office.
As the VC community realizes there is little to no money to be made in GPL software, the spigot will close. The phenominom occuring w/r/t insane stock valuations allowing these startups to purchase "brick and mortar" companies with actual profits cannot last.
To the best of my knowledge, Cyclic is the ONLY company that turned a "real" profit on GPL software. After many years in market leadership and a huge installed base, they finally managed to make more money selling support than they were spending. 'Course, they sold CVS shortly thereafter. If other companies larger than garage scale have sustained positive income-expense ratios, I'd really like to hear about it.
Use of the term "proprietary" as a purjorative is the core of GPL's intent. To prevent open source from being used in a closed source application, GPL takes the position that ALL applications must be open source. Of course, this has the side effect of making it impossible to fund a development team (except during this IPO window so often pointed to innacurately by GPL proponents.)
The FSF has been pursuing an interesting goal of making as many enabling technologies as possible available under the GPL license, in at attempt to bootstrap further GPL development. I do think this is a good thing for GPL developers, but its also exclusionary and elitist (certainly not open, without placing amusing restrictions on what "open" means.) At the individual scale, I can completely understand why a programmer would want do donate code for free use and prevent companies like M$ from "stealing" it. However, at the larger level it forces developers to choose between non-commercial (GPL) and "free" source (as in freedom, as opposed to socialism.)
At the same time, however, those of us who program for a living are developing a code base that can be used by anyone. I think that truly open code while living with some abuses will have more positive benefit than trying to force the world into a non-profit business model - which is the core platform of the GPL license community.
The debate is academic, as normal evolutionary rules will prevail, its just a matter of time. Since the GPL locks itself out from all development not done under the GPL, I believe the long term result is a foregone conclusion - corporate open source will trivially overtake GPL restricted/viral source - the resources available behind it make this simple. Look at what's happening at companies like IBM (to name just one), and you can see where the GPL is going.
All politics, posturing, and ranting aside, the most significant difference between licenses is best exemplified by GPL vs. BSD. (I prefer BSD, but I'll try and keep my bias down... :)
GPL can never be used in a commercial product without negotiating for a special license to a forked version from the authors, this is rarely done, and the price demanded is usually obscene (I've been quoted $100k and up.) Also, GPL code can never be used in any application that is not also 100% GPL code - code it is integrated with "becomes" GPL, which has led some to call the GPL a "viral" license. Finally, any mods made to GPL code must be made public - you must post the source, or provide it on request.
BSD can be used by anybody, for anything. The license generally requires some sort of credit be given to the authors, like about box line or manual entry.
The proponents of GPL feel that imposing a non-commercial business model is the best way to keep software "free" - the required source mod release certainly helps. Detractors feel it is unreasonably restrictive in a world where there is insufficient income from selling support or manual to make a living for all but a very small niche of apps. IPO funding should not count in this argument without also taking into consideration the "actual" income of these IPO money pits.
Proponents of BSD feel it is the only "free" license, as it doesn't require you to become a non-profit to use the code, and you can integrate it into proprietary apps as well as release some (or all!) of your libs/code as open source for others to use - its a nice middle ground. Detractors generally take the position that all proprietary applications are evil, and I have yet to hear a reasonable counter to the middle ground other than "proprietary applications are evil". (sigh)
Personally, I think that corporate subsidized BSD-type development WILL easily surpass GPL's contributions - as more and more corporations realize the value of releasing open source. Some corps release their work as GPL to prevent competitors from being able to benefit from it, which does makes sense in some strategically important areas. This is one place where non-profit restrictions make sense, although "viral" terms are another matter...
In any case, I see more corps moving towards BSD type licenses - its the only way corps can freely share code, and the entire open source community can benefit, not just "proprietary applications are evil" fanatics. Of course, there are problems using BSD code in GPL applications, as GPL demands that the code become GPL. In most of these cases, the BSD authors have allowed GPL forks of the code.
In the end, I think corporate subsidized BSD has to win. It actually has financial backing, so programmers can earn a paycheck for their work, instead of working as a waiter to subsidize your coding as one of the GPL authors recommended.
As someone who supports my family writing software, I have a vested interest in obtaining financial compensation for my work. At the same time, I like to make the code I write available for reuse by as many people as possible.
The best way I have found to do both is to get commercial companies to pay me to write code for them, under terms that allow me to release said work as open source. I think this will be how an increasingly significant percentage of open source code is produced.
The sponsors of the released code need to recoup their development costs, most commonly by selling a proprietary application - service works only in niche areas, and IPO games are not the only business model.
However, unless we significantly complicate matters by releasing under multiple licenses which cannot trivially share subsequent work, I don't see where the GPL fits into this picture at all.
I would argue that as more commercial houses release code as open source, and more contractors negotiate for the rights to release, I think that GPL is destined to become marginalized.
I see and understand GNU's efforts to recreate every reusable library under GPL right now, but I think that will inevitably be surpassed by the efforts of independent and resources of commercial groups wishing to make actual money off of libraries, using licenses like LGPL and BSD.
I am very curious as to your comments on this subject - to date all I've heard are religious arguments from either side.
Kerry L. Bonin
Sr. Engineer, Security/Cryptography & Advanced Visualization, Cisco Systems.
VScape lead architect - Adaptive secure clustering for multiuser VR.
I'll admit I was being somewhat facetious in my use of the term "impossible". However, many advancements of the previous century were made by trying random things. And nearly every signifigant breakthrough of this century had a long and respectable list of scientists who considered it a waste of time.
The progress of technology lies in finding practical applications of our current understanding of science.
I take strong exception to this statement.
Focusing on practical applications means ignoring those deemed "impractical", which means you drop into niches of "practical" science - semiconductors, microbiology, genetics, some materials science areas, expensive high-energy physics, and a few other fields. Countless other areas aren't practical (i.e. profitable ) enough to devote signifigant resources to.
No offense, but your statement perfectly sums up my problem with modern science - it means little fundamental research is done outside of profitable niche areas, and it means that the scientist becomes more and more of a narrow specialist, unable to recognize important anomolies outside of their area of expertise. This is exactly what has happened over the last few decades.
I agree. Comments like so many I see here are to me the most signifigant reason why progress in fundamental research has slowed to a crawl outside of a few niche or applied areas.
The scientific method says you develop a hypothesis, then develop experiments to prove or disprove said hypothesis. The theory being tested could range from "frogs legs grow faster when raised in the presence of Barry Manilow music" to "argon plasma fields in a tomahawk subjected to containment field weakly modulated at 2.34567 kHz in the presence of Barry Manilow music causes an electron spin configuration which appears to distort the local space time continuoum and produce a thrust without the ejection of a working fluid."
It doesn't matter how "stupid" or "patently impossible" the theory is. The WHOLE POINT of the scientific method is to allow you to find out if something _is_ possible in a framework designed to minimize error in making the determination, and to maximize the possibility that another scientist (and eventually engineer) can reproduce it and support the discovery.
To proclaim based on what we know today that something _must_ be "impossible" and therefore a waste of time to pursue is arrogant, ignorant, and the reason so many basic technologies in our world have been stalled for 50+ years.
The list of fundamental and "impossible" advances in the last century is staggering. A favorite quote regarding the progress of science: "Old scientists never change their mind. But they do die."
Well, the first few millionths of a second. In a multi-stage device you may have 3+ seperate fission and fusion reactions triggering each other at exponentially greater yields.
Simple devices use primary with plutonium core compression fisson device with tritium core. X-rays escaping the primary tamper are focused via beryllium into plastic/foam/explosive waveguides to generate enough energy in second detonation to heat lithium-6 deuteride or other fussion fuel sufficiently, and outer bomb casing is often made of fissile material for free extra bang (and higher burn efficiency of lithium). An extremely complex system. I always thought it was cool how in "dial-a-yield" by simply varying the tritium in the primary core "pit", you can change the final yield by a good order of magnitude or two - for tactical situations vs. simple inventory.
Handling propogation of energy between stages introduces signifigant aspects of materials sciences, and is one of the more interesting problems with maintaining a stockpile - how things change after sitting and bombarding itself with low level radiaition for years on end. Lots of trace isotopes appearing, opacity to x-rays changing [the internal power exchange medium - "high temperature photon gas"), _very_ neat stuff.
As an aside, the utilities to work through these exchanges are what Dr. Lee is accused of losing his backup tapes of. Rather important stuff, as higher efficiency means more yield per launch platform.
IMHO, accountability is the most serious problem in modern law enforcement. It exists across the board, from the beat cop hassling minorities, district attorneys practicing selective enforcement based on policies and media exposure, and an Attorney General who refuses to appoint Independent Counsels when clear conflicts of interest exists. (Yes, I know the Independent Counsel system is screwed up too, but thats another topic.)
Members of law enforcement agencies simply have no significant accountability for their actions. As the poster mentioned, the worst thing is that some of the taxpayers money is returned to them. Look at a random sample of officers or supervisors responsible for heinous acts, and the majority of the time nothing happens. If one is suspended, they are quickly rehired by another office, often at a pay raise. The checks and balances (oversight committees) are underfunded, politicized, and have little real power.
And on top of all that is a Supreme Court that is systematically eviscerating the bill of rights in the name of supporting law enforcement.
The saddest thing is these generally only effect people with limited means (i.e. limited to nonexistent legal budgets.) It is rare that anyone who can hire a decent firm is hassled, despite the scope of crime(frauds, mostly) perpetrated by that same "white collar"/upper tax bracket segment of society.
The list of cases that have received significant media exposure pale besides the tons of cases that are buried. Worst are the increasing number of home invasions accidental shootings (home owners who tried to defend themselves from armed thugs storming bedroom at 2am) based on the incorrect tip of a confidential informant.
I hate politics, but knowing what a cop/fed can do and get away with makes me sick.
All the whining about MP3's is primarily an attempt to prepare the legal grounds for supression of the format later, when they can force hardware manufacturers to suspend MP3 playback capability in favor of SDMI and/or its latest flavor.
The industry needs to make sure that when digital music is deployed (i.e. when _they_ deploy it), it goes out with the ability to be rented (which they prefer), instead of just bought. They also want the full suite of digital copy protections, such as tying it to the device its stored on so you can't share it. To do this they have to supress MP3.
Since Goebbels was right about telling a big enough lie often enough will eventually make it believable, that is what is happening. The media in this country is pretty much controlled by the same corporations that own the music, so you'll hear numbers like this alot, no matter how absurd they are when you apply basic arithmetic to them.
Essentially, the end of "fair use" as it's been known in copyright law for the last century or so is approaching - UCITA and DMCO are other aspects of this erosion of rights.
I stated clearly: "GPL prevents the use of any traditional business model (other than VC/IPO fed burn rate games)" and I stand by this statement. The companies you see in the paper making money off GPL code do so by selling technical support contracts, or in stock valuation games (distribution sales don't count, see stock valuation games). Cygnus is a great example - do you know how many years they were in business before actually turning a profit selling CVS support?
The GPL CANNOT be considered an an open and unemcumbered license, unless you twist signifigantly the meaning of unemcumbered to mean "it doesn't prevent you from doing anything it doesn't prevent you from doing." Again, semantic games.
GPL is an open source license. It also has the most viral, invasive and cumbersome terms of any "open source" license I've seen. The only place I've seen the license terms of the GPL be truly appropriate is when competing entities wish to collaborate - by making it impossible for either party to benefit _directly_ from the other parties contributions outside of the open collaboration.
GPL is protrayed as having a noble intent, but it ignores the basic fact that programmers do occasionally need to eat. It is possible to have open source and still make money through traditional means. This is why other licenses such as the LGPL and BSD exist, and professional coders like myself will consider the GPL a niche license.
As for commercial developers wishing to use, and to contribute code back into open source, this is EXACTLY my damn point. I work at Cisco, and my department _is_ releasing code into open source. But to make sure that people who use it can freely exchange modifications with each other and ourselves, we use a simple BSD (you agree not to sue us if it doesn't work) license. The GPL is inappropriate, as it would introduce myriad cross-license problems with the mod exchange. GPL 's infective nature means hassles that aren't worth the trouble.
I look at it this way - I give away thousands of lines of code a year - some posted to lists, some on web sites, some to peers at other companies. I've looked at the GPL, and unless me and all my peers convince the front office to stop charging for our products, we aren't using the GPL.
This fundamental problem is why this debate still exists. It works in some areas, it obviously worked great in an OS. But if applications wish to share open source code, and be placed on store shelves, GPL doesn't work.