I should point out that if you RTFA it says that they need access to relatives out-country (presumably to get money in from them) and also to determine prices for their crops - which doesn't seem like porn surfing to me...
Also note that Asians generally supply porn - I doubt they have much use for it themselves since most of them aren't Christians...
No one, it seems, has any idea what the GPL was intended to accomplish.
1) Insure that software source code was distributed?
2) Prevent such source code from being used in proprietary (i.e., source code NOT distributed) applications?
3) "Prevent people from profiting" from source code (distributed or not)?
4) Use copyright to subvert copyright?
Clearly, there is no definitive answer here or anywhere else. I read through the GPL and still don't understand the nuances. I do understand that it says they have no problem with people charging money for software. That would seem to let out all the "don't profit" or "free as in beer" people...
What isn't clear is why, having said they don't care if people profit from code, they set it up so that apparently people CAN'T profit from code even if they distribute the code (of the GPL'd source, not the proprietary souce).
I submit that the GPL is a contradictory piece of crap like everything else in the law and that the goal of using copyright to subvert copyright has merely reinforced copyright by making it too hard for people who might otherwise use open-source code to use it.
This restricts open source's applications and conflicts with the whole point of open source which is, IMHO, to better software technology and its uses by people by allowing source code to be obtained, analyzed, modified, and used by anyone.
Distinguishing between "anyone" and proprietary companies makes no sense. Who cares if Microsoft uses GPL'd code in their products as long as the GPL'd code source is provided by them (but not their proprietary code - unless they want to).
If the goal is to REPLACE proprietary code with open source code everywhere by using a licensing "trick", then fine - a lot of people simply won't use GPL code. Which will restrict GPL code's penetration in the market, which is obviously counter to the idea that it should replace proprietary code. So the "trick" has failed...
Which again demonstrates why reliance on a coercive process like the law does not serve the cause of freedom...
Open source code should compete with proprietary code on the basis of technical and economic superiority and nothing more. Therefore the GPL and all such licenses are no different than patents and copyrights - unnecessary interventions in the free market by the state.
If you want freedom, pursue the path of freedom - don't rely on coercive "tricks" like a new form of copyright...
And there are 267 comments arguing about America and the antitrust trial and the GPL, etc. ad nauseum......
And I can't even find the place to change my sig...
And when Slashdot loaded originally, the scroll bars were missing...
Can't ANYBODY in IT do something right?
Re:I don't think it's wishfull thinking
on
Christmas in 2050
·
· Score: 1
-Flying autos aren't technologicaly impossible, - -they're just not too smart of an idea. I'd hate to -see the type of accidents people could accomplish -given all three dimensions to move through..
Flying is not the problem - plenty of space for cars to maneuver - very few airplanes crash in midair. The problem is parking (as usual) - when all those flying cars come into the parking lot at Safeway, does Safeway need ground control radar and air traffic controllers?
The answer of course is every rooftop needs to be a parking lot for just a few cars - that is efficient use of ground space...
Better, every building needs to be underground, so the aboveground space is available for parking...or whatever other use is desired.
And of course it would help if the vehicles are VTOL...
I agree. IBM's OS/2 was superior to Windows but it died because IBM had to play catchup to Windows and all they could market it with was the idea that it would run Windows programs as well as Windows. Corporate America said, "Well, if it's the same as Windows, let's cut out the middle man and buy Windows..."
If you mention your competitor in every line of your advertising, soon you wll no longer be a competitor of your competitor...
OTOH, you DO have to be able to DO everything your competitor does - even if you don't do it the same way. I have never understood why companies introduce software which is supposedly "new" - AND IT DOESN'T DO EVERYTHING THEIR COMPETITORS DO! That is stupid! And I have seen it for twenty years in the software business. That is one major reason Windows is a success - they add features - hell, they *steal* features!
Dvorak is right on that point. If your OS cannot do what the existing OS does and do it better, you cannot compete. And your OS has to do MORE than the existing OS or it cannot compete.
IOW, you need NEW technology to compete! But the new technology has to do EVERYTHING the old one does! (Except where the new makes the old irrelevant, of course.)
And by "new technology", I do NOT mean a different startup menu...
-Application should save in the system -Application Data so the path is always the same
NO! I do NOT want all my data to be on the damn C: drive under the OS! The application data should be saved where it CONCEPTUALLY BELONGS - which depends on the CONCEPTUAL ORGANIZATION of my storage media...
- If you shut down with Explorer open, the - windows restore when you repower. Application - should detect if OS is shutting down when it - receives the close command (winapi allows this) - and add itself to startup
NO! I do NOT want applications to force themselves on me. I may not WANT to see the same organization the next time. I should be able to specify whether I want them to come back in the same order - or any order I want (my work process may change on next startup).
As an example, when something locks up the machine while I am browsing with Opera, so I have to hit the button, Opera comes back up on the next startup of Opera (NOT the OS startup) which an option to go back to where it was or start with a blank window. That is okay - if it automatically started up on boot, I would be annoyed because I don't necessarily want to have an app open then - I may want to fix whatever locked up the machine first and not want ANY apps in the way...
Otherwise, I agree with the posters complaints - there is a lot of nonsense involved in Windows AND Linux AND the UNIX CLI. And plenty of room for improvement...
Interesting comment - I agree with most of it - but what's really interesting is that UNIX started out without the concept of "files" - the intention was that everything would be a string of bytes handled anyway you wanted (as long as you could use pipes and filters...) A dumb metaphor compared to objects (and still more so compared with conceptual processing) but it was at least general enough that something might have come of it in time...
Then they went to files and directories and everything since has been a nightmare of finding anything anywhere...
Whoever wins will eventually use the patents to close down everything geeks care about...
The only solution is to rigorously demonstrate that patents, copyrights, and all other government interference in the free market inevitably produces distortions and coercion...
Of course, such a demonstration will be ignored, anyway... No human in a position to use coercion to his advantage EVER turns down that advantage...
As usual, humans have set up a no-win situation...
Unfortunately for humans, Transhumans will not be playing by human rules...
That's because content is NOT big business - at least not in comparison with big business itself (i.e., GM, GE, Phillips, Exxon, etc.). The music industry is what, less than $20 billion, the movie industry is even smaller... Contrast that with industry in general which is trillions and trillions world-wide...
Flesh, right? Stone-age bozos chipping flint so they could cut the meat off animals they killed with...oh, wait..."tiger pits"? Running them off cliffs like Amerinds did the buffalo (incidentally wasting tons of buffalos they didn't need...)
That's it - Bye-Bye Internet... A couple years after they monitor all the porn and political criticism, they will call for "regulation" of the Internet...
Hackers, better get those crypto P2P schemes up and running... And you better use codes, not crypto, because crypto will be banned and anything LOOKING like crypto going over the Net will be tracked and reported...
Wireless folks, better get that one nationwide, too...
Yup... City College of San Francisco was using SSN for student ID up until this (or maybe last) semester. They have now changed over to a system-assigned ID number - but the SSN for all past students (those that had them) are still in the system. Students (such as international ones) that did not have an SSN were assigned a number in the past, and that procedure is now done for all students.
I do my work-study in Non-Credit Admissions and Records at CCSF.
Yeah, and that software they tout breaks Windows 98 - when I got my DSL line, I tried the standard install and it broke Windows so it would'nt boot - which has never happened on my system before. So I called SBC support, and after restoring my registry (at my suggestion), I told the guy I didn't really want the Yahoo crap. So he said he could not by contract walk me through it, but he could tell me how to install the EnterNet connection client, which is all you need to access the service. I did that, and no Yahoo crap is on my machine...
Yup - those ads are all over the place here in San Francisco and painted on their trucks, too.
And every time I see one, I instinctively think, "I DON'T WANT an Internet that 'logs onto me'!"
BTW, I am in a Yahoo Group set up by the teacher of one of my City College classes, and when I logged into it yesterday, I got one of those full-page ads which recognized that I am a SBC Yahoo DSL line customer.
No, he's not. He knows exactly what he is doing - shutting down civil liberties for Americans and making the Net secure from free access for his corporate paymasters...
You can walk into CompUSA here in San Francisco and (after waiting in line for half an hour) access any of their Macs or PCs set up for Net access so you can see how wonderful their machines are - and you can do so totally as an anonymous customer that I assure you NO clerk will remember five minutes after you leave - if they even noticed you at all when you came in...
Of course, you only get 15 minutes at the machine - plenty of time to send your "commit" message to your team to set off the nuke...
*Public libraries - usually requires library card with name and address on record. otherwise the person at the loans desk will have seen you. That's part of how they caught that big identity theft guy.*
Really - and if "you" are actually three other people who come in at various times with phony ID?
Or you just hack the library computer on the spot? Not all of them are visible from the loan desk - not at City College of San Francisco...
*hotel room - the clerk saw you, and would probably identify you in a line up. Happens to people all the time.*
And he's going to ID you six months later - that does not happen to people all the time... Or someone else rented the room and left the key for you to pick up so the clerk never saw YOU...
Terrorists have their ways, pal. Your simplistic notions of security have been circumvented a million times.
I haven't actually looked but I don't recall noticing any security cameras in the lab at City College of San Francisco...
And their Linux boxes are running unpatched Red Hat 6.2 - I know because my UNIX Sys Admin teacher told me that when I suggested my extra-credit project be a talk on Linux security...
See all you terrorists at the lab...
Oh, wait, I log in from home - or maybe through the wireless at Chevy's...
Slashdot Mirror
This is insightful?
RTFA - it says they need this among other things to determine prices for their crops - an obviously directly practical application.
I should point out that if you RTFA it says that they need access to relatives out-country (presumably to get money in from them) and also to determine prices for their crops - which doesn't seem like porn surfing to me...
Also note that Asians generally supply porn - I doubt they have much use for it themselves since most of them aren't Christians...
No one, it seems, has any idea what the GPL was intended to accomplish.
1) Insure that software source code was distributed?
2) Prevent such source code from being used in proprietary (i.e., source code NOT distributed) applications?
3) "Prevent people from profiting" from source code (distributed or not)?
4) Use copyright to subvert copyright?
Clearly, there is no definitive answer here or anywhere else. I read through the GPL and still don't understand the nuances. I do understand that it says they have no problem with people charging money for software. That would seem to let out all the "don't profit" or "free as in beer" people...
What isn't clear is why, having said they don't care if people profit from code, they set it up so that apparently people CAN'T profit from code even if they distribute the code (of the GPL'd source, not the proprietary souce).
I submit that the GPL is a contradictory piece of crap like everything else in the law and that the goal of using copyright to subvert copyright has merely reinforced copyright by making it too hard for people who might otherwise use open-source code to use it.
This restricts open source's applications and conflicts with the whole point of open source which is, IMHO, to better software technology and its uses by people by allowing source code to be obtained, analyzed, modified, and used by anyone.
Distinguishing between "anyone" and proprietary companies makes no sense. Who cares if Microsoft uses GPL'd code in their products as long as the GPL'd code source is provided by them (but not their proprietary code - unless they want to).
If the goal is to REPLACE proprietary code with open source code everywhere by using a licensing "trick", then fine - a lot of people simply won't use GPL code. Which will restrict GPL code's penetration in the market, which is obviously counter to the idea that it should replace proprietary code. So the "trick" has failed...
Which again demonstrates why reliance on a coercive process like the law does not serve the cause of freedom...
Open source code should compete with proprietary code on the basis of technical and economic superiority and nothing more. Therefore the GPL and all such licenses are no different than patents and copyrights - unnecessary interventions in the free market by the state.
If you want freedom, pursue the path of freedom - don't rely on coercive "tricks" like a new form of copyright...
The article is /.'ed and I can't read it.
...
And there are 267 comments arguing about America and the antitrust trial and the GPL, etc. ad nauseum...
And I can't even find the place to change my sig...
And when Slashdot loaded originally, the scroll bars were missing...
Can't ANYBODY in IT do something right?
-Flying autos aren't technologicaly impossible, -
-they're just not too smart of an idea. I'd hate to
-see the type of accidents people could accomplish
-given all three dimensions to move through..
Flying is not the problem - plenty of space for cars to maneuver - very few airplanes crash in midair. The problem is parking (as usual) - when all those flying cars come into the parking lot at Safeway, does Safeway need ground control radar and air traffic controllers?
The answer of course is every rooftop needs to be a parking lot for just a few cars - that is efficient use of ground space...
Better, every building needs to be underground, so the aboveground space is available for parking...or whatever other use is desired.
And of course it would help if the vehicles are VTOL...
in real-time, it would be slow as people are complaining about.
But, like soap operas, on the Net, you could log in, check out what's happening, get alerts when something interesting is goining on...
And while you're online, with streaming video, you can watch the hot babes (call them "Hacker Hooters Girls"!) while nothing else is going on...
Get your porn and your hacking at the same place!
Look at it like Survivor - who woulda thought something that stupid would take off?
This could be interesting if "done right" - unfortunately nothing is ever "done right"...
I agree. IBM's OS/2 was superior to Windows but it died because IBM had to play catchup to Windows and all they could market it with was the idea that it would run Windows programs as well as Windows. Corporate America said, "Well, if it's the same as Windows, let's cut out the middle man and buy Windows..."
If you mention your competitor in every line of your advertising, soon you wll no longer be a competitor of your competitor...
OTOH, you DO have to be able to DO everything your competitor does - even if you don't do it the same way. I have never understood why companies introduce software which is supposedly "new" - AND IT DOESN'T DO EVERYTHING THEIR COMPETITORS DO! That is stupid! And I have seen it for twenty years in the software business. That is one major reason Windows is a success - they add features - hell, they *steal* features!
Dvorak is right on that point. If your OS cannot do what the existing OS does and do it better, you cannot compete. And your OS has to do MORE than the existing OS or it cannot compete.
IOW, you need NEW technology to compete! But the new technology has to do EVERYTHING the old one does! (Except where the new makes the old irrelevant, of course.)
And by "new technology", I do NOT mean a different startup menu...
-Application should save in the system
-Application Data so the path is always the same
NO! I do NOT want all my data to be on the damn C: drive under the OS! The application data should be saved where it CONCEPTUALLY BELONGS - which depends on the CONCEPTUAL ORGANIZATION of my storage media...
- If you shut down with Explorer open, the
- windows restore when you repower. Application
- should detect if OS is shutting down when it
- receives the close command (winapi allows this)
- and add itself to startup
NO! I do NOT want applications to force themselves on me. I may not WANT to see the same organization the next time. I should be able to specify whether I want them to come back in the same order - or any order I want (my work process may change on next startup).
As an example, when something locks up the machine while I am browsing with Opera, so I have to hit the button, Opera comes back up on the next startup of Opera (NOT the OS startup) which an option to go back to where it was or start with a blank window. That is okay - if it automatically started up on boot, I would be annoyed because I don't necessarily want to have an app open then - I may want to fix whatever locked up the machine first and not want ANY apps in the way...
Otherwise, I agree with the posters complaints - there is a lot of nonsense involved in Windows AND Linux AND the UNIX CLI. And plenty of room for improvement...
Interesting comment - I agree with most of it - but what's really interesting is that UNIX started out without the concept of "files" - the intention was that everything would be a string of bytes handled anyway you wanted (as long as you could use pipes and filters...) A dumb metaphor compared to objects (and still more so compared with conceptual processing) but it was at least general enough that something might have come of it in time...
Then they went to files and directories and everything since has been a nightmare of finding anything anywhere...
I agree with the Situationists - art has been superceded. The only art worth creating is one's own live.
That said, I still like comic books and movies and the Tori Amos concert I went to Friday night (go, Tori!)...
Next week by Tuesday before lunch?
Whoever wins will eventually use the patents to close down everything geeks care about...
The only solution is to rigorously demonstrate that patents, copyrights, and all other government interference in the free market inevitably produces distortions and coercion...
Of course, such a demonstration will be ignored, anyway... No human in a position to use coercion to his advantage EVER turns down that advantage...
As usual, humans have set up a no-win situation...
Unfortunately for humans, Transhumans will not be playing by human rules...
That's because content is NOT big business - at least not in comparison with big business itself (i.e., GM, GE, Phillips, Exxon, etc.). The music industry is what, less than $20 billion, the movie industry is even smaller... Contrast that with industry in general which is trillions and trillions world-wide...
Cut what?
Flesh, right? Stone-age bozos chipping flint so they could cut the meat off animals they killed with...oh, wait..."tiger pits"? Running them off cliffs like Amerinds did the buffalo (incidentally wasting tons of buffalos they didn't need...)
The Internet That Logs On To YOU!
That's it - Bye-Bye Internet... A couple years after they monitor all the porn and political criticism, they will call for "regulation" of the Internet...
Hackers, better get those crypto P2P schemes up and running... And you better use codes, not crypto, because crypto will be banned and anything LOOKING like crypto going over the Net will be tracked and reported...
Wireless folks, better get that one nationwide, too...
Let's see...
Porn, porn, porn, XXX porn, XXXXX porn...
Yup... City College of San Francisco was using SSN for student ID up until this (or maybe last) semester. They have now changed over to a system-assigned ID number - but the SSN for all past students (those that had them) are still in the system. Students (such as international ones) that did not have an SSN were assigned a number in the past, and that procedure is now done for all students.
I do my work-study in Non-Credit Admissions and Records at CCSF.
by sitting in my chair for hours reading Slashdot posts...
This also simulates senility and Alzheimer's...
Bad for my diet, too...
And you should see what it does to my love life... Does the word "virtual" ring a bell (as in "virtually none")?
Yeah, and that software they tout breaks Windows 98 - when I got my DSL line, I tried the standard install and it broke Windows so it would'nt boot - which has never happened on my system before. So I called SBC support, and after restoring my registry (at my suggestion), I told the guy I didn't really want the Yahoo crap. So he said he could not by contract walk me through it, but he could tell me how to install the EnterNet connection client, which is all you need to access the service. I did that, and no Yahoo crap is on my machine...
Yup - those ads are all over the place here in San Francisco and painted on their trucks, too.
And every time I see one, I instinctively think, "I DON'T WANT an Internet that 'logs onto me'!"
BTW, I am in a Yahoo Group set up by the teacher of one of my City College classes, and when I logged into it yesterday, I got one of those full-page ads which recognized that I am a SBC Yahoo DSL line customer.
clark is a dumbass...
No, he's not. He knows exactly what he is doing - shutting down civil liberties for Americans and making the Net secure from free access for his corporate paymasters...
Yeah, and I suppose the clerks at each one just happened to remember all the terrorists, too...
This is in response to the idiot claiming that clerks will remember you (assuming of course that you get caught at all...).
You can walk into CompUSA here in San Francisco and (after waiting in line for half an hour) access any of their Macs or PCs set up for Net access so you can see how wonderful their machines are - and you can do so totally as an anonymous customer that I assure you NO clerk will remember five minutes after you leave - if they even noticed you at all when you came in...
Of course, you only get 15 minutes at the machine - plenty of time to send your "commit" message to your team to set off the nuke...
*Public libraries - usually requires library card with name and address on record. otherwise the person at the loans desk will have seen you. That's part of how they caught that big identity theft guy.*
Really - and if "you" are actually three other people who come in at various times with phony ID?
Or you just hack the library computer on the spot? Not all of them are visible from the loan desk - not at City College of San Francisco...
*hotel room - the clerk saw you, and would probably identify you in a line up. Happens to people all the time.*
And he's going to ID you six months later - that does not happen to people all the time... Or someone else rented the room and left the key for you to pick up so the clerk never saw YOU...
Terrorists have their ways, pal. Your simplistic notions of security have been circumvented a million times.
Security camera?
I haven't actually looked but I don't recall noticing any security cameras in the lab at City College of San Francisco...
And their Linux boxes are running unpatched Red Hat 6.2 - I know because my UNIX Sys Admin teacher told me that when I suggested my extra-credit project be a talk on Linux security...
See all you terrorists at the lab...
Oh, wait, I log in from home - or maybe through the wireless at Chevy's...