Without IP people would be free to use GPL code any way they want, without contributing back. Is this what you want>
Yes. I guess it is. I would like to think that there are better reasons for contributing back to the community than the threat of law. Guess I must be a commie.
Just lost me. IP is a tax on people who use an idea to benefit the person who first brought it to public attention. It is useful only insomuch as it encourages the USE of new and better ideas. Discovering an idea, having an idea, these are not a benefit to society in and of themselves. The benefit of a good idea is measured in how broadly it is utilized compared to conflicting inferior ideas. Having the idea in the first place is a prerequisite, but only that.
So why is it a given that IP is good? Creating an inclination to have ideas by creating a disinclination to use them is NOT the open-shut case that the author or anyone else makes it out to be.
If we're really interesting in furthering society, we should be setting up a system that creates motivation to create new ideas and ALSO creates motivation to USE those ideas. How that should work is open to debate, but the fundamental premise is not. It is an obvious and incontestable fact that motivating people not to use good ideas hurts society to some degree or another. If a mechanism that has that as an effect is considered at all, it should be the last option that is considered when all others have been exhausted.
Also, with regards to testing, those of us who use it daily are testing all the time. I know it's not structured QA, but still, it's a lot of testing.
Isn't that the essence of Microsoft's QA? Should we be doing what we rightly criticise them for?
Say what you want about Microsoft and the stability/reliability/security of their software, but they have many full time (and paid) people devoted exclusively to testing and trying to break their software so that it can be fixed.
He's saying that they DON'T test their product enough, and that they DO ship it broken and have the community test it, and that the open source projects that are so critical of MS for doing this should aspire to something better.
I'm not a bigot. I'm trying to offer an explanation for the writings in the bible that are the basis for current western morality.
If you're going to understand another persons thinkings or writings, you need to leave your own opinions aside and try to understand THEIR internal logic within the framework of THEIR experiences. Which is what I'm doing. Kind of the opposite of bigotry. Kind of resembles open-mindedness and an attempt to understand anothers point of view.
And I didn't say that gay people were sexually promiscuous, I tried to offer an explanation for the very broad sexual boundaries laid down in the bible. Why are you so goddamned determined to interpret comments with blinders on and cannons at the ready?
Try to stand up for other peoples rights to engage in a lifestyle you have no personal interest in engaging in yourself and get called a bigot. Nice job.
Nobody is being harmed by the existance of a gay couple.
Not now, but at the time that these laws were enshrined into popular morality thousands of years ago, there was little medicine and no protection. Sexual promiscuity and homosexuality are both vectors for disease, which placed the entire community at risk.
Considering the social situations of the time, it was actually a sensible rule to make. If it weren't for condoms, it would remain so.
Doesn't really change anything, but looking at it that way makes it a lot easier to discuss things like this with people without getting pissed off at each other... they're rules that were sensible at the time they were created who's time has arguably passed, not simply rules created by prudes to cause harm to minorities, not rules handed down by the creator god.
And if you can sway the religious right to recognize this, you can move the argument to a framework where you can win. As long as they think those rules came down from god, you're not going to convince them.
You program yourself every day. And so does everyone else. And you can program some pretty strange things into yourself if you're indiscriminant. That was the point I was trying to make.
I was replying to someone who made the blanket statement that homosexually had been scientifically proven to be an inate characteristic. My statements may not be ALL of the truth, but they pretty effectively demonstrate why I believe the post I replied to was false.
But of course, I get jumped on by everyone with an ax to grind who just reads the controversial words and goes on a tear, rather than actually digesting what I said in my post. Typical.... guess they don't make nerds like they used to.
Did they try esctacy, heroin, a hooker trained in social work on a long term contract and isolation from other homosexuals? Psychotherapy administered by a member of the opposite sex combined with cuddling and skilled oral administered by the therapist?
The whole gist of extinction therapy in altering behavior is that you need to provide an alternate path to achieving the gratification that the former path achieved. Which means lots of sexual gratification. Not shock therapy and prayer, all that's going to do is teach you to hate doctors, priests and yourself.
If you're talking about things like love, respect, caring, friendship, bonding, etc, then I personally don't think sex or sexual orientation have anything to do with it. That's just my opinion though.
I've formed loving relationships with lots of people of both sexes. I love some of my old buddies from high school more than most of the girlfriends I've had, and some of the women I love most in the world I have never and will never have a sexual relationship with because we're not attracted to each other. Those feelings don't have anything to do with my sexual orientation.
I think of sexual orientation and attraction as a barrier. It's a filter that says "Of all these people that I see at the bar, I will pursue a sexual relationship with only those. Of all the people that I love, I will consider a marriage with only these."
I think at the end of the day the link between love and sex in the individual is about as strong as the link between the sound of a bell and having to pee. Which is to say, as strong as their decisions and experiences have caused it to be; and from what I can see in most people out there that's not very strong at all. Color me cynical.
I'm not "proving" my assertion, I'm giving some examples to illustrate the fundamental assumptions that underpin my assertion. What the hell do you want, this is slashdot. I'm not writing a thesis paper here.
People like you are really annoying. If you think my logic is flawed, why don't you at least put up some sort of rebuttal. I'm not an expert on the subject matter, but at least I can put together the rational behind my opinion and provoke some discussion. Which is a hell of a lot more than your post manages to do.
Ahh, but if you, at whatever tender age you started having sex, had hooked up with a hot sexy woman and had a few crazy weekends involving lots of booze, esctacy and mind blowing sex before ever interacting sexually with another guy, you might be a very different person today.
If you're talking marriage, then that's a different animal. Explain to me why 3 men and a cat can't get married but 2 men can? Marriage is either a social and evolutionary construct between each sex or it's just a club. I support equal rights as far as survivor's beneifts, insurance, etc, but not changing the definition of a 4-thousand+ year institution simply because some of my fellow americans are stupid and hurt gay people.
The problem I see with the whole thing, and this perspective generally pisses off ppl from both camps, is this:
A healthy society needs to care for the next generation. If it doesn't, it ceases to be, barring the existance of another society that young can be leeched from (which is why north america has such a push for immigration, it's a desparation brought on by previous generations choosing money and over family and the only thing that can prevent a collapse).
Historically speaking, anything that supported the married couple supported the family. So the societal need to support procreation is partially filled by supporting married couples in a multitude of different ways across a multitude of different legal jurisdictions, ranging from taxation to insurance and far beyond.
Fast forward through time, and you see the rise of the DINKs (Double Income No Kids). This is a situation where resources are being misallocated, people who are not having families are accumulating wealth far beyond their neighbours because they're recieving benefits that they really shouldn't, but they're in the minority, so they don't drive corrective action.
Fast forward some more. The DINKs are the majority and don't want to give up their gravy train, reform where marriage is concerned is desparately needed, and you have a minority group that is GUARANTEED not to naturally procreate that wants in. It's just making a bad thing worse.
The answer as I see it is to implement the reforms that are needed where marriage is concerned and find some way to reallocate resources to parents rather than wedded couples. Stop systematically making DINKs with no ties to society beyond their own death richer than their peers. Call me a cynic, but marriage nowadays seems to be more concerned with how to fairly dissolve one than anything else.
Once this is done, there's no longer any logical reason not to allow marriage between anyone who's decided to couple, and the society will actually be healthier and have more of the political and economic clout allocated to those with a biologically driven motivation to look at the bigger picture. And gays and lesbians won't have to take the law into their own hands when it comes to determining who gets the car, who gets the jeep, and who keeps the house.
That's how I see it anyways. I'll leave the discussion on how to handle adoption of children by gay and lesbian couples to those with a better understanding of child psychology.
Something creepy to think about: If gay and lesbian marriages ARE morally acceptable, is there any logical or moral reason why two sisters or two brothers shouldn't get married? What a can of worms....
Homosexuality is neither a choice (that's long ago been proven scientifically), nor is it particularly a disability.
That's not really true. Human beings are patterned to pursue things that cause them pleasure the same as Pavlov's dogs. And nothing causes more pleasure than sex. Indulge your new girlfriends fetish for spanking for a while, and you'll start involuntarially associating spanking with pleasure. Get into a routine of burning the same incense in your bedroom every time you have sex and you'll start seeing a physiological response when you burn it even if you're by yourself.
You could turn a heterosexual into a homosexual and back into a heterosexual against their will by laying down situations and forcing a sexual response from them if you were immoral and ruthless enough to choose to do so. Read some of the horror stories out there about how women abducted by those in the sex trade are programmed some time.
You can thus deduce that it's something that you can choose to enter into and leave, not to say that leaving something you've been taught to associate with pleasure will always be easy. You'll have these patterns laid into your brain forever, similar to a former smoker who will feel cravings out of the blue years later, but the new ones will supplant them with enough time if you change your routines.
None of which justifies discrimination against homosexuals of course.
Oh, and ask someone who suffers from infertility if they think it's a disability, see what they say.
I think Adobe did it because they're just good people, and they saw what was going on with the Flash, so they've decided to destroy it for the good of humanity!
Seriously though, I wonder what effect this purchase will have on SVG. I had always hoped they would throw more weight behind it to provide an adobe branded alternative to Flash.
You sir, are a motherfucker whois making things worse for the rest of us
Tough shit.
Want to know my take on intellectual property? If it's in my head, it's mine.
The first song I danced to? That's part of my identity and part of our culture, and it's mine.
The book I read that made an impact on my world view? That's part of my identity and part of our culture and so it's mine.
The code I read that made a lightbulb go off over my head and changed the way I think about my work? That's part of my identity and so it's mine.
I don't give two flying fucks about who wrote it or what ultimatums they try to give me as to how I might make future use of it. It's in my head, it's mine. And it's also my childrens. And my grandchildrens.
I recognize no authority over what resides in my head, nor any authority over what I do with what resides in my head. I will actively fight to prevent anyone on earth from attempting to enforce such an authority over me or anyone else.
As far as I'm concerned, the moment you try to interfere with my intrinsic right to learn and use what I have learned, you're committing a violent act against me, and I will do whatever I can to destroy your capacity to do so to me or anyone else. And possibly extract a pound of flesh from you for having been enough of a bastard to treat other people that way in the first place.
If you're one of those people then YOU are a motherfucker, and I'll screw you anyway I can.
Seriously though... I'd never buy an iPod. They look nice and all, but I'm not down with supporting the iTunes business model in any way shape or form.
Release under Creative Commons style license for me to download and I will buy your t-shirt and tickets to your show. Otherwise I'll copy it, keep it on my HD and share it even if I don't like it just so that people who might be inclined to listen to it don't pay you.
I'm not doing it for myself, I'm doing it for the children!
Slashdot Mirror
Without IP people would be free to use GPL code any way they want, without contributing back. Is this what you want>
Yes. I guess it is. I would like to think that there are better reasons for contributing back to the community than the threat of law. Guess I must be a commie.
The GPL needs to exist because of IP.
Otherwise people would wonder what the hell kind of vehicle class a BSD license allows you to drive.
Let me be clear. IP is a good thing.
Just lost me. IP is a tax on people who use an idea to benefit the person who first brought it to public attention. It is useful only insomuch as it encourages the USE of new and better ideas. Discovering an idea, having an idea, these are not a benefit to society in and of themselves. The benefit of a good idea is measured in how broadly it is utilized compared to conflicting inferior ideas. Having the idea in the first place is a prerequisite, but only that.
So why is it a given that IP is good? Creating an inclination to have ideas by creating a disinclination to use them is NOT the open-shut case that the author or anyone else makes it out to be.
If we're really interesting in furthering society, we should be setting up a system that creates motivation to create new ideas and ALSO creates motivation to USE those ideas. How that should work is open to debate, but the fundamental premise is not. It is an obvious and incontestable fact that motivating people not to use good ideas hurts society to some degree or another. If a mechanism that has that as an effect is considered at all, it should be the last option that is considered when all others have been exhausted.
Can any intelligent human being really deny this?
Ad Hominem
What? My ears are ringing... can you repeat that?
Also, with regards to testing, those of us who use it daily are testing all the time. I know it's not structured QA, but still, it's a lot of testing.
Isn't that the essence of Microsoft's QA? Should we be doing what we rightly criticise them for?
Say what you want about Microsoft and the stability/reliability/security of their software, but they have many full time (and paid) people devoted exclusively to testing and trying to break their software so that it can be fixed.
He's saying that they DON'T test their product enough, and that they DO ship it broken and have the community test it, and that the open source projects that are so critical of MS for doing this should aspire to something better.
You totally missed the point.
In a society that values laws, isn't the demonizing of whistleblowers something that should be frowned upon?
Yes, that's true. What can you deduce about the common mans opinion of these laws from this "demonizing of the whistleblowers"?
I'm not a bigot. I'm trying to offer an explanation for the writings in the bible that are the basis for current western morality.
If you're going to understand another persons thinkings or writings, you need to leave your own opinions aside and try to understand THEIR internal logic within the framework of THEIR experiences. Which is what I'm doing. Kind of the opposite of bigotry. Kind of resembles open-mindedness and an attempt to understand anothers point of view.
And I didn't say that gay people were sexually promiscuous, I tried to offer an explanation for the very broad sexual boundaries laid down in the bible. Why are you so goddamned determined to interpret comments with blinders on and cannons at the ready?
Try to stand up for other peoples rights to engage in a lifestyle you have no personal interest in engaging in yourself and get called a bigot. Nice job.
Nobody is being harmed by the existance of a gay couple.
Not now, but at the time that these laws were enshrined into popular morality thousands of years ago, there was little medicine and no protection. Sexual promiscuity and homosexuality are both vectors for disease, which placed the entire community at risk.
Considering the social situations of the time, it was actually a sensible rule to make. If it weren't for condoms, it would remain so.
Doesn't really change anything, but looking at it that way makes it a lot easier to discuss things like this with people without getting pissed off at each other... they're rules that were sensible at the time they were created who's time has arguably passed, not simply rules created by prudes to cause harm to minorities, not rules handed down by the creator god.
And if you can sway the religious right to recognize this, you can move the argument to a framework where you can win. As long as they think those rules came down from god, you're not going to convince them.
You program yourself every day. And so does everyone else. And you can program some pretty strange things into yourself if you're indiscriminant. That was the point I was trying to make.
I was replying to someone who made the blanket statement that homosexually had been scientifically proven to be an inate characteristic. My statements may not be ALL of the truth, but they pretty effectively demonstrate why I believe the post I replied to was false.
But of course, I get jumped on by everyone with an ax to grind who just reads the controversial words and goes on a tear, rather than actually digesting what I said in my post. Typical.... guess they don't make nerds like they used to.
Did they try esctacy, heroin, a hooker trained in social work on a long term contract and isolation from other homosexuals? Psychotherapy administered by a member of the opposite sex combined with cuddling and skilled oral administered by the therapist?
The whole gist of extinction therapy in altering behavior is that you need to provide an alternate path to achieving the gratification that the former path achieved. Which means lots of sexual gratification. Not shock therapy and prayer, all that's going to do is teach you to hate doctors, priests and yourself.
All I know is that it's a whole lot more complicated than people on both sides tend to make it out to be.
This at least we agree on.
If you're talking about things like love, respect, caring, friendship, bonding, etc, then I personally don't think sex or sexual orientation have anything to do with it. That's just my opinion though.
I've formed loving relationships with lots of people of both sexes. I love some of my old buddies from high school more than most of the girlfriends I've had, and some of the women I love most in the world I have never and will never have a sexual relationship with because we're not attracted to each other. Those feelings don't have anything to do with my sexual orientation.
I think of sexual orientation and attraction as a barrier. It's a filter that says "Of all these people that I see at the bar, I will pursue a sexual relationship with only those. Of all the people that I love, I will consider a marriage with only these."
I think at the end of the day the link between love and sex in the individual is about as strong as the link between the sound of a bell and having to pee. Which is to say, as strong as their decisions and experiences have caused it to be; and from what I can see in most people out there that's not very strong at all. Color me cynical.
I'm not "proving" my assertion, I'm giving some examples to illustrate the fundamental assumptions that underpin my assertion. What the hell do you want, this is slashdot. I'm not writing a thesis paper here.
People like you are really annoying. If you think my logic is flawed, why don't you at least put up some sort of rebuttal. I'm not an expert on the subject matter, but at least I can put together the rational behind my opinion and provoke some discussion. Which is a hell of a lot more than your post manages to do.
Ahh, but if you, at whatever tender age you started having sex, had hooked up with a hot sexy woman and had a few crazy weekends involving lots of booze, esctacy and mind blowing sex before ever interacting sexually with another guy, you might be a very different person today.
Try to be a little more open minded.
If you're talking marriage, then that's a different animal. Explain to me why 3 men and a cat can't get married but 2 men can? Marriage is either a social and evolutionary construct between each sex or it's just a club. I support equal rights as far as survivor's beneifts, insurance, etc, but not changing the definition of a 4-thousand+ year institution simply because some of my fellow americans are stupid and hurt gay people.
The problem I see with the whole thing, and this perspective generally pisses off ppl from both camps, is this:
A healthy society needs to care for the next generation. If it doesn't, it ceases to be, barring the existance of another society that young can be leeched from (which is why north america has such a push for immigration, it's a desparation brought on by previous generations choosing money and over family and the only thing that can prevent a collapse).
Historically speaking, anything that supported the married couple supported the family. So the societal need to support procreation is partially filled by supporting married couples in a multitude of different ways across a multitude of different legal jurisdictions, ranging from taxation to insurance and far beyond.
Fast forward through time, and you see the rise of the DINKs (Double Income No Kids). This is a situation where resources are being misallocated, people who are not having families are accumulating wealth far beyond their neighbours because they're recieving benefits that they really shouldn't, but they're in the minority, so they don't drive corrective action.
Fast forward some more. The DINKs are the majority and don't want to give up their gravy train, reform where marriage is concerned is desparately needed, and you have a minority group that is GUARANTEED not to naturally procreate that wants in. It's just making a bad thing worse.
The answer as I see it is to implement the reforms that are needed where marriage is concerned and find some way to reallocate resources to parents rather than wedded couples. Stop systematically making DINKs with no ties to society beyond their own death richer than their peers. Call me a cynic, but marriage nowadays seems to be more concerned with how to fairly dissolve one than anything else.
Once this is done, there's no longer any logical reason not to allow marriage between anyone who's decided to couple, and the society will actually be healthier and have more of the political and economic clout allocated to those with a biologically driven motivation to look at the bigger picture. And gays and lesbians won't have to take the law into their own hands when it comes to determining who gets the car, who gets the jeep, and who keeps the house.
That's how I see it anyways. I'll leave the discussion on how to handle adoption of children by gay and lesbian couples to those with a better understanding of child psychology.
Something creepy to think about: If gay and lesbian marriages ARE morally acceptable, is there any logical or moral reason why two sisters or two brothers shouldn't get married? What a can of worms....
Homosexuality is neither a choice (that's long ago been proven scientifically), nor is it particularly a disability.
That's not really true. Human beings are patterned to pursue things that cause them pleasure the same as Pavlov's dogs. And nothing causes more pleasure than sex. Indulge your new girlfriends fetish for spanking for a while, and you'll start involuntarially associating spanking with pleasure. Get into a routine of burning the same incense in your bedroom every time you have sex and you'll start seeing a physiological response when you burn it even if you're by yourself.
You could turn a heterosexual into a homosexual and back into a heterosexual against their will by laying down situations and forcing a sexual response from them if you were immoral and ruthless enough to choose to do so. Read some of the horror stories out there about how women abducted by those in the sex trade are programmed some time.
You can thus deduce that it's something that you can choose to enter into and leave, not to say that leaving something you've been taught to associate with pleasure will always be easy. You'll have these patterns laid into your brain forever, similar to a former smoker who will feel cravings out of the blue years later, but the new ones will supplant them with enough time if you change your routines.
None of which justifies discrimination against homosexuals of course.
Oh, and ask someone who suffers from infertility if they think it's a disability, see what they say.
I think Adobe did it because they're just good people, and they saw what was going on with the Flash, so they've decided to destroy it for the good of humanity!
Seriously though, I wonder what effect this purchase will have on SVG. I had always hoped they would throw more weight behind it to provide an adobe branded alternative to Flash.
Not legally we couldn't. It was a huge international incident at the time, if you're portuguese I'm suprised you didn't hear about it.
We've fired across the bow of portuguese violating the fishing ban on the grand banks further out than 200 nautical miles up here in Canada.
Being outside the laws of the country means there's no one to protect you too. And it sounds like a very nice boat....
Sounds like a business opportunity to me. Set up SeaWhores and park it close by.
That's easy. Mod them offtopic.
You sir, are a motherfucker whois making things worse for the rest of us
Tough shit.
Want to know my take on intellectual property? If it's in my head, it's mine.
The first song I danced to? That's part of my identity and part of our culture, and it's mine.
The book I read that made an impact on my world view? That's part of my identity and part of our culture and so it's mine.
The code I read that made a lightbulb go off over my head and changed the way I think about my work? That's part of my identity and so it's mine.
I don't give two flying fucks about who wrote it or what ultimatums they try to give me as to how I might make future use of it. It's in my head, it's mine. And it's also my childrens. And my grandchildrens.
I recognize no authority over what resides in my head, nor any authority over what I do with what resides in my head. I will actively fight to prevent anyone on earth from attempting to enforce such an authority over me or anyone else.
As far as I'm concerned, the moment you try to interfere with my intrinsic right to learn and use what I have learned, you're committing a violent act against me, and I will do whatever I can to destroy your capacity to do so to me or anyone else. And possibly extract a pound of flesh from you for having been enough of a bastard to treat other people that way in the first place.
If you're one of those people then YOU are a motherfucker, and I'll screw you anyway I can.
Suck it up.
Seriously though... I'd never buy an iPod. They look nice and all, but I'm not down with supporting the iTunes business model in any way shape or form.
Release under Creative Commons style license for me to download and I will buy your t-shirt and tickets to your show. Otherwise I'll copy it, keep it on my HD and share it even if I don't like it just so that people who might be inclined to listen to it don't pay you.
I'm not doing it for myself, I'm doing it for the children!
160kbps? Yeah, and I download them on KaZaA too...
EAC and --alt-preset extreme all the way. I don't listen to no steenkin 160kbps mp3s.