I don't think people who object to laws which limit free speech, whether in the US, China, Turkey, India, or elsewhere, always do so from a paternalistic standpoint. I'm from the US, and I think that the law in question is oppressive, but that doesn't mean I think there are no oppressive US laws. Indeed, I apply a universal standard: its wrong to criminalize opinions about the policy of your country. Its wrong everywhere.
If we were to pass a law in the US criminalizing expressions of support for Al-Qaeda, believe me I would protest it.
Good point. I'm not sure, however, "crying" describes what they are doing. I don't think getting on the committee is easy, and even then its hard to make changes. Apache (a member) has not found it easy to bring in additions: hence our two logging systems.
They aren't talking about the language specification, but the core libraries that ship with the JVM. They are interested in improving and augmenting the core implementation classes. However, I happen to think building a hedge around Java is the right thing. Since you can always ship these extra libraries with your product, the need for including these v. managing the stability and interoperability of Java just isn't compelling enough.
I guess I don't see any problem with the fact that they benefit from this decision, nor am I surprised. The most powerful argument for open source is not a political one, but a business one: cheaper, more secure, fewer bugs. Since IBM has moved its business into service, open-sourcing their tools makes good sense. And, they only get "free geek labor" if the tool is actually useful to people, in which case its a win-win.
Hmm...a very strange argument you have here. A touch of the Victorian, and a dash of the Fascist. Smells of Ayn Rand. Most of us no longer believe that the traits of a civilization (if any such thing exists) are carried in the genes of the "race," and thus subject to natural selection. Sounds a little loopy to me.
Although I'm sure you're right: the Creative patent will lead to the downfall of civilization.
I don't think you are right about this. The American public was pretty annoyed/bored by Bush's plan for a manned mission to Mars (which he has not mentioned again). I think we want better bang for our buck, and not just neat-o space adventures. I'm not sure how popular the Mars Rovers missions were, but dollar for dollar, I think we got more science and even entertainment from them than from the International Space Station.
Of course, the reason you don't get paid royalties is because you are salaried. There is nothing stopping you from creating your own work, at your own risk, and charging royalties. Just like an artist. You have chosen a different (lower risk, lower gain) career. If you want to start paying salaries to artists, then the situation would be comparable. It does happen, by the way: its called advertising.
I guess my main point is that its not unreasonable for artists to get paid, period. Something for their work. If you are a principled person, then you act in a manner that would suit all people. So, if you pirate, you should expect all to pirate, and only can have a principle to stand on if you think no artists should get paid, Which is a very sad principle.
Artists are not entitled to money, but they are entitled to charge. You don't have to pay, but you don't get the art. This right is the same as your own at your job.
In a sane world, artists would either live on whatever they can make on performances (including street-corner ones) and donations, or get a real job too.
All of the artists I know have other jobs. It just doesn't pay well. There is a hint of disdain in your post for art as not being "real." Artists have it tough, be a little sympathetic.
But for people who do this full-time, they need to eat. They are not trying to get rich, just to get by. Not so unreasonable. What if you want to have kids? Own a home? A computer? Retire someday to something more than poverty?
The problem here is the same old one: the effort of an artist (as anyone's effort) should be rewarded. But currently there is no sane upper limit on collecting. The answer to all the questions above is then "yes", and you should pay for every use, every view, and maybe even for a review of the painting that you wrote and got paid for, since it can be argued that your work is based on the painting.
The last is, of course, covered by fair-use laws, and so is perfectly legal.
I really do not understand the mania on Slashdot for not paying for intangibles. Artists are famously poor (musicians, writers, visual artists). Those who don't believe this, don't know any artists. For physical objects, we readily accept that every time one of them is used or consumed, a fee is reasonable. Art should, somehow, be exempt from this. You do pay to go into museums and look at a painting, and you do pay for a copy of the painting (book, catalogue, poster), and these fees go to many things but some of it to the creator of the work you so admire.
If you want to change anything, change the payment structuring so more money goes to artists, so they don't have to wait tables and teach in community colleges. Don't just selfishly try and justify stealing from people who are just trying to make beautiful things/music/books and get by.
Lamarck was wrong in terms of biological evolution, but cultural evolution is quite Lamarckian: we do indeed pass on learned traits to our offspring. This particular example seems specious, even pointless, however. There is no evidence of anything being passed on at all. If there is, it would point to culture in the monkeys, not Lamarckian evolution.
Re:Hard work doesn't necessitate a return on inves
on
Black Hat
·
· Score: 1
Hard work doesn't necessitate a return on investment
This just won't work. Maybe you should try out this system with your boss: give them your work for free, and make it easy for them to make donations to you. It is very reasonable to try and charge people for your work, even if it is intangible.
There is a precedent with literature and art (in the past), one that much of science currently uses: grants. If these intangible works are in the public good, then the public should sponsor them. In Mexico, artists are allowed to pay their taxes in art. We should up funding for individual artists, not cut off their paychecks.
I'm not sure you understand what this is. It doesn't install Linux, or any part of it. It installs Unix apps, many of which are also included in Linux distributions. By far most of them are command-line. I need these (Perl libs, graphviz,etc.). If you don't need them, or don't know what they are, then don't use them.
I agree that developers should not run the show, but you need more than input from a non-technical person: you need a team of professionals. When building a significant system, usually there is a person or team in charge of each interface (database, services, etc.) The UI is another interface, and demands the same number of professionals dedicated to it as any other. I mean people experienced in design and functionality, just like any other layer. I have seen very very few projects that take this the heart, and certainly precious few open source ones.
The projects I have worked on where there was such a dedicated team, it worked wonderfully.
Really, go to Jakarta and take a look around. Tomcat, Struts, Log4j... the list goes on of fantastic Java software. They are one of the major players in Java, next to IBM and Sun, and a great gadfly in the Community Process.
And whilst I'm forming a wishlist, I'd also like Java applications to have greater integration with the system, not on the desktop, but in the way that multiple invocations might have less of a memory penalty (like a Java subsystem).
Then you might want Mac OS X. Library memory is shared across VMs. I think this is coming in Java 5 (1.5) for everyone, but I forget. Maybe its 1.6 (6?).
...complicit in the mass murder of thousands of people.
Excuse my ignorance, but what mass murder are you talking about exactly? I think the match was in Yugoslavia, which while communist was not, in fact, an ally of the Soviet Union (so not complicit in their murder of millions). I'm no apologist for Tito (my girlfriend's family was expelled by him), I simply cannot figure out what you are referring to.
I'm not a Python person, but I agree with your skepticism about the UI cross-platform possibilities. For instance, GTK# is not an option on a Mac for application deployment. You can't ask people to install the Dev Tools, install Fink, and apt-get the gtk+ libraries, just to run your program whose UI looks like nothing they have ever seen.
The decision to wrap WinForms around Wine also gets nowhere beyond an x86, and just shows how difficult chasing Microsoft.NET is going to be.
I am, however, really jazzed about the ability to compile tons of other real languages down into bytecode and have them all communicate inside Mono. Now that is cool.
I prefer compile-time errors to runtime errors, which I guess is the purpose of enforced exception handling: you get told what might happen while you are coding, not later.
Not so scandalous, in my opinion. Someone took their trademarked logos to use in a KDE theme. Now, they may have been wrong not to allow that, but I can understand why they did. They don't want people tagging all sorts of things with their logos: their logo refers to them. It's a brand. If they don't defend it now, then later they can't do so. This is not fair use either: its not a commentary on the logo, but an appropriation of it. There might be ways around this, but it is a far cry from a "scandal."
Be reasonable, folks. I agree with the free software movement, but that doesn't mean I think everything anyone ever does should be available for anyone to use under any conditions.
The call for these extensions is not coming from graphic designers, but UI designers. They are different. Their job is as difficult as any other layer, and in HTML it is extremely difficult. The idea is to make is easier to write good, rich UIs for web applications, not just "eye-candy".
Take a look at Daring Fireball's essay about how the web app has won over the consumer (very interesting!). We have a real opportunity for creating truly portable web apps.
And to those of you who respond "But web apps suck!", well, I guess that's my point: one reason they suck is ecause we don't have the right UI tools yet. Let's make the tools.
They are not "bullshit." The the only way for regular people to get justice from a huge company is to band together. You could rightly say that not enough money gets to the plantiffs, and perhaps we should pass laws limiting attorney's fees in class action cases, but there is no other reasonable mechanism, so you can't just write it off. Lawsuits are just too expensive for regular people, or even small companies, to pursue by themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think people who object to laws which limit free speech, whether in the US, China, Turkey, India, or elsewhere, always do so from a paternalistic standpoint. I'm from the US, and I think that the law in question is oppressive, but that doesn't mean I think there are no oppressive US laws. Indeed, I apply a universal standard: its wrong to criminalize opinions about the policy of your country. Its wrong everywhere.
If we were to pass a law in the US criminalizing expressions of support for Al-Qaeda, believe me I would protest it.
Good point. I'm not sure, however, "crying" describes what they are doing. I don't think getting on the committee is easy, and even then its hard to make changes. Apache (a member) has not found it easy to bring in additions: hence our two logging systems.
They aren't talking about the language specification, but the core libraries that ship with the JVM. They are interested in improving and augmenting the core implementation classes. However, I happen to think building a hedge around Java is the right thing. Since you can always ship these extra libraries with your product, the need for including these v. managing the stability and interoperability of Java just isn't compelling enough.
I guess I don't see any problem with the fact that they benefit from this decision, nor am I surprised. The most powerful argument for open source is not a political one, but a business one: cheaper, more secure, fewer bugs. Since IBM has moved its business into service, open-sourcing their tools makes good sense. And, they only get "free geek labor" if the tool is actually useful to people, in which case its a win-win.
Hmm...a very strange argument you have here. A touch of the Victorian, and a dash of the Fascist. Smells of Ayn Rand. Most of us no longer believe that the traits of a civilization (if any such thing exists) are carried in the genes of the "race," and thus subject to natural selection. Sounds a little loopy to me.
Although I'm sure you're right: the Creative patent will lead to the downfall of civilization.
I don't think you are right about this. The American public was pretty annoyed/bored by Bush's plan for a manned mission to Mars (which he has not mentioned again). I think we want better bang for our buck, and not just neat-o space adventures. I'm not sure how popular the Mars Rovers missions were, but dollar for dollar, I think we got more science and even entertainment from them than from the International Space Station.
Of course, the reason you don't get paid royalties is because you are salaried. There is nothing stopping you from creating your own work, at your own risk, and charging royalties. Just like an artist. You have chosen a different (lower risk, lower gain) career. If you want to start paying salaries to artists, then the situation would be comparable. It does happen, by the way: its called advertising.
I guess my main point is that its not unreasonable for artists to get paid, period. Something for their work. If you are a principled person, then you act in a manner that would suit all people. So, if you pirate, you should expect all to pirate, and only can have a principle to stand on if you think no artists should get paid, Which is a very sad principle.
You are absolutely right: artists chose their path, and do not get to complain.
However, there is nothing wrong with their asking to get paid something. The demand that they should create for free just seemed silly to me.
Artists are not entitled to money, but they are entitled to charge. You don't have to pay, but you don't get the art. This right is the same as your own at your job.
In a sane world, artists would either live on whatever they can make on performances (including street-corner ones) and donations, or get a real job too.
All of the artists I know have other jobs. It just doesn't pay well. There is a hint of disdain in your post for art as not being "real." Artists have it tough, be a little sympathetic.
But for people who do this full-time, they need to eat. They are not trying to get rich, just to get by. Not so unreasonable. What if you want to have kids? Own a home? A computer? Retire someday to something more than poverty?
The problem here is the same old one: the effort of an artist (as anyone's effort) should be rewarded. But currently there is no sane upper limit on collecting. The answer to all the questions above is then "yes", and you should pay for every use, every view, and maybe even for a review of the painting that you wrote and got paid for, since it can be argued that your work is based on the painting.
The last is, of course, covered by fair-use laws, and so is perfectly legal.
I really do not understand the mania on Slashdot for not paying for intangibles. Artists are famously poor (musicians, writers, visual artists). Those who don't believe this, don't know any artists. For physical objects, we readily accept that every time one of them is used or consumed, a fee is reasonable. Art should, somehow, be exempt from this. You do pay to go into museums and look at a painting, and you do pay for a copy of the painting (book, catalogue, poster), and these fees go to many things but some of it to the creator of the work you so admire.
If you want to change anything, change the payment structuring so more money goes to artists, so they don't have to wait tables and teach in community colleges. Don't just selfishly try and justify stealing from people who are just trying to make beautiful things/music/books and get by.
Lamarck was wrong in terms of biological evolution, but cultural evolution is quite Lamarckian: we do indeed pass on learned traits to our offspring. This particular example seems specious, even pointless, however. There is no evidence of anything being passed on at all. If there is, it would point to culture in the monkeys, not Lamarckian evolution.
Hard work doesn't necessitate a return on investment
This just won't work. Maybe you should try out this system with your boss: give them your work for free, and make it easy for them to make donations to you. It is very reasonable to try and charge people for your work, even if it is intangible.
There is a precedent with literature and art (in the past), one that much of science currently uses: grants. If these intangible works are in the public good, then the public should sponsor them. In Mexico, artists are allowed to pay their taxes in art. We should up funding for individual artists, not cut off their paychecks.
I'm not sure you understand what this is. It doesn't install Linux, or any part of it. It installs Unix apps, many of which are also included in Linux distributions. By far most of them are command-line. I need these (Perl libs, graphviz,etc.). If you don't need them, or don't know what they are, then don't use them.
I agree that developers should not run the show, but you need more than input from a non-technical person: you need a team of professionals. When building a significant system, usually there is a person or team in charge of each interface (database, services, etc.) The UI is another interface, and demands the same number of professionals dedicated to it as any other. I mean people experienced in design and functionality, just like any other layer. I have seen very very few projects that take this the heart, and certainly precious few open source ones.
The projects I have worked on where there was such a dedicated team, it worked wonderfully.
Really, go to Jakarta and take a look around. Tomcat, Struts, Log4j... the list goes on of fantastic Java software. They are one of the major players in Java, next to IBM and Sun, and a great gadfly in the Community Process.
And whilst I'm forming a wishlist, I'd also like Java applications to have greater integration with the system, not on the desktop, but in the way that multiple invocations might have less of a memory penalty (like a Java subsystem).
Then you might want Mac OS X. Library memory is shared across VMs. I think this is coming in Java 5 (1.5) for everyone, but I forget. Maybe its 1.6 (6?).
My bad: I thought this took place a while back. This refers to the massacres in 1992. Call me stupid.
Excuse my ignorance, but what mass murder are you talking about exactly? I think the match was in Yugoslavia, which while communist was not, in fact, an ally of the Soviet Union (so not complicit in their murder of millions). I'm no apologist for Tito (my girlfriend's family was expelled by him), I simply cannot figure out what you are referring to.
Please school me.
I'm not a Python person, but I agree with your skepticism about the UI cross-platform possibilities. For instance, GTK# is not an option on a Mac for application deployment. You can't ask people to install the Dev Tools, install Fink, and apt-get the gtk+ libraries, just to run your program whose UI looks like nothing they have ever seen.
The decision to wrap WinForms around Wine also gets nowhere beyond an x86, and just shows how difficult chasing Microsoft.NET is going to be.
I am, however, really jazzed about the ability to compile tons of other real languages down into bytecode and have them all communicate inside Mono. Now that is cool.
I prefer compile-time errors to runtime errors, which I guess is the purpose of enforced exception handling: you get told what might happen while you are coding, not later.
Not so scandalous, in my opinion. Someone took their trademarked logos to use in a KDE theme. Now, they may have been wrong not to allow that, but I can understand why they did. They don't want people tagging all sorts of things with their logos: their logo refers to them. It's a brand. If they don't defend it now, then later they can't do so. This is not fair use either: its not a commentary on the logo, but an appropriation of it. There might be ways around this, but it is a far cry from a "scandal."
Be reasonable, folks. I agree with the free software movement, but that doesn't mean I think everything anyone ever does should be available for anyone to use under any conditions.
The call for these extensions is not coming from graphic designers, but UI designers. They are different. Their job is as difficult as any other layer, and in HTML it is extremely difficult. The idea is to make is easier to write good, rich UIs for web applications, not just "eye-candy".
Take a look at Daring Fireball's essay about how the web app has won over the consumer (very interesting!). We have a real opportunity for creating truly portable web apps.
And to those of you who respond "But web apps suck!", well, I guess that's my point: one reason they suck is ecause we don't have the right UI tools yet. Let's make the tools.
They are not "bullshit." The the only way for regular people to get justice from a huge company is to band together. You could rightly say that not enough money gets to the plantiffs, and perhaps we should pass laws limiting attorney's fees in class action cases, but there is no other reasonable mechanism, so you can't just write it off. Lawsuits are just too expensive for regular people, or even small companies, to pursue by themselves.