Re:Sci-fi has already taught us the answer.
on
AI Going Nowhere?
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· Score: 1
If you recall from the film, everyone there was against the idea of launching the nukes, but the computer was going to do it anyway. If the computer was incapable of launching nukes, there would have been no danger.
Putting stupid humans in charge of the nukes is something we don't need sci-fi to tell us is a bad idea.:)
You're comparing the posession of knowledge to intelligence (what we can do with knowledge)
I'm comparing posession of data with posession of knowledge. Data is just a fact that can be repeated. Knowledge is data abstracted so that it can be used in other cirucmstances.
The cheating student merely posesses data. The data doesn't help them answer any other questions. The student that knows the material can answer any question based on the material.
"Ask it something it's never heard, and it will choke"
this is different from almost all humans, how?
Humans can use the abstracted knowledge they have learned from other sources to craft a response. You mileage may vary on the quality of the response, but that's not because the human can't do it. However, you can never teach an Aibo a new trick.
The conclusion a lot of people have been coming to is that intelligence is something very different that what we been thinking it is.
Yes, but that doesn't mean producing the data stored in a lookup table is intelligence.
Sci-fi has already taught us the answer.
on
AI Going Nowhere?
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· Score: 1
The "what would happen if we made 'real' AI?" has been explored countless times. And the lesson is simple: Don't put the computer in charge. Especially don't give your computer control of your nuclear arsenal.
Every sci-fi disaster involving AI has been a result of giving the AI too much control. How dangerous would the computer in Wargames have been if all it could do was turn on a green light that said "launch nukes now, please!"
Don't give your AI a bunch of nukes, a space ship, or sharp pointy things and you'll be just fine.
Besides, how the heck are you going to research the consequences of creating something when we have no idea what form the creation would even take?
Re:What's the difference?
on
AI Going Nowhere?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
What's the difference between thinking and fooling people into believing you're thinking?
The same difference between cheating on a test in a subject you've never taken and actually knowing the material: as soon as you're asked a question that isn't on your crib sheet, the charade is over.
An AIBO has a pre-programmed set of behaviors, and any stimulus it isn't programmed to respond to will not have a realistic effect. The same is true of Loebner Prize winner Alice -- the only difference is the size of the pre-programmed response database. Ask it something it's never heard, and it will choke.
When these AIs are able to produce convincing responses to new stimuli, then I'll say that the difference between "fooling" and actually thinking has become irrelevent.
Beauty and the Beast, Tarzan, Pocahontas, Treasure Planet, the Atlantis one... I'm sure there are other examples, but the point is that Disney has made millions taking old material and redoing it (usually with the interesting parts taken out and replaced with a singing spork). I'd be willing to bet that they've made more from Disney-fying old works than they have from their original animated films. But damned if they're going to let their originals be used in turn.
As you and everyone else freely admits, Linux users have already bought the game. The windows version. So any money that was going to be made likely already has. Some argue that Bioware promised a Linux client. Fair enough, but generally I have no sympathy for people who buy a box expecting to get something that is not in the box.
And I have very little sympathy for companies that promise something and then get a lot of shit for not delivering. If on release day, it had turned out that the -Windows- version was the one that was on ice, would all the people who pre-ordered the game assuming it would run under Windows get your sympathy? I didn't buy the game (I didn't trust them), but a lot of people did based on a lot of statements by the company that they were going to be supported. And when you pre-order, you don't get to peruse the box.
And I'm counting those sales as "profits from the Linux port" regardless. Profiting from the promise of a port or the actual port -- either way, that's the amount of money the port made them. Yes, the bean counters will see "Windows sale" and end up concluding that porting to Linux isn't worth much, but they'll be wrong.
Don't forget the hassle of trying to find a publisher (I doubt infogrames would ship a Linux port) and you have a very low possibility of success.
It's a free download, like a lot of Linux ports. Tux Games is going to package the Windows version with the game and the download and the Linux installer (like they've done for a lot of ports). Tux Games is owned by the same person as Linux Game Publishing, which both ports games and publishes ports of games. I think the search for a publisher has just ended.
Possibly. All the more reason why Bioware is done with their experiment with non-windows ports.
No, all the more reason why KOTOR proves nothing. If their next start-from-mostly-scratch project is done correctly, they can get the port done much more easily.
Bioware might decide Linux isn't worth it, but obviously it is a flawed experiment. All they found out is what happens when you lead Linux gamers on with lies. If they can't stop lying, then maybe they should stop "experimenting" with Linux. If they can, then they might discover the next experiment comes out different.
My point was that Bioware is not porting KOTOR to Linux, even though a lot of the work has already been done for NWN.
Bioware wont make the same mistake twice by trying to port games to Linux. It's a money-losing proposition.
While you may be right about future porting, how is it a money-losing proposition? Bioware has probably already made money on porting to Linux. Many Linux gamers have already bought the game, and Bioware obviously hasn't spent a lot of money on the port. And if they apply what they learned this time, the port won't cost any more the next time.
KOTOR might not be that easy, though. If the code base changed enough, they might have to redo everything they did with NWN.
Fair enough. But it's also abundantly clear that they scrapped those plans at some point, salvaging them only after the success of the game on PC.
True, it is abundantly clear they didn't have those plans, and had done essentially no work on Linux or Mac ports even at the time of release. That makes them liars. Since a lot of Linux gamers pre-ordered the game based on those lies, they made money off of those lies.
Again I say that making an attempt at a port is a step in the right direction. You've got a right to be pissed, however. Maybe they'll learn their lesson when they release their shitty port to lackluster sales--and try to do it better next time.
Maybe. Or maybe the suits will say Linux ports are unjustified because they don't sell, nevermind the real reasons why.
They are. That's what profit means. The R&D cost includes the failures. They have 18% profit in spite of those failures, so they are obviously not as big a deal as the companies make them out to be!
Developing drugs is an extremely expensive business and as much as you'd like to believe in human goodness, medicine has never been done, is not done and will not be done in charity.
You mean marketing drugs is expensive. Pharmaceuticals spend two to three times as much on marketing as on research.
And as much as you'd like to believe that everyone is solely profit-driven, medicine has frequently been done, is being done, and will continue to be done in charity. Sorry, but isn't that easy to whitewash the concept of altruism from peoples' minds.
Though speaking of profit, the pharmaceutical industry remains one of the most profitable in the world. It was before the crash, and remains so after. You argue that drugs are expensive to develop, but how does that argument play into an industry reporting returns several times higher than the next most profitable industry?
You can talk about how expensive it is to make drugs all you want -- the fact is that the pharmaceuticals are meeting that cost and then some to the tune of an 18% profit. The argument that the drug companies need to make a profit is a red herring, because they are more than making a profit. The argument that drug prices can't be lowered or that cheap generics for 3rd world countries can't be made is a lie, because they are operating nowhere near break-even.
The brutal truth is: no profit, no research, no new drugs and much, much more dead people.
No. The brutal truth is that the pharmaceuticals are making too much profit, and the result of their greed is many, many more dead people.
"The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program)."
When you visit Sourceforge, what you see is a web page, which is the output of their content software. The web page is not a derivative work of that software, therefore not covered.
Which is just common sense: The copyright covers the Program, and the output of the Program isn't the Program, unless of course it is.:)
You still have to take the machine offline for all practical purposes. You cant upgrade samba or apache in place, without interrupting service.
So who cares if the downtime is for a reboot or a recompile? From the users point of view the machine is inaccessable.
Holy specious reasoning, Batman!
First, you don't need to take down the service while you're recompiling, only when you're done and want to use the new version. Second, obviously restarting apache is faster than rebooting windows, so your downtime is smaller (a second instead of... however long it takes to boot windows).
Re:This is scary, or is it just over-reaction?
on
Brain Privacy
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· Score: 1
People put up with random/compulsery drug tests because they have been brainwashed by the whole "War on Drugs" debacle that it is a Good Thing to test people with no Probable Cause whatsoever.
Um... No, I put up with the bullshit drug test because it was a requirement for employment.
If they 'mandate' OSS, then they can use that same purchasing principal to hiring people to work on those systems- at very low wages (hell, maybe even internships). Doesn't make sense, right? Well, it appears that in the business world, if they purchase a very expensive system, companies think they need high end good IT people to work on them. Our industry benefits from this by getting just wages. But if the system is dirt cheap or free, then they look at that and think 'well, we cut costs in IT here, let's keep our costs low and bring in a qualified person at a lower wage'. They hire at a lower wage.
So, what you're saying is that Open Source shouldn't be mandated because the people doing the mandating are too stupid to realize that Software Libre still requires IT No Gratis?
Despite being plausible, I'm not sure that's true. Given that these things are usually budgeted, you'd think that they'd spend a lesser amount of the IT budget on software licenses, and thus more money on IT workers. Or look at it this way -- a company or government trying to save money is going to cut budgets. If the budget can be reduced by saving money on licenses, then there is a lesser need to save money by axing jobs.
Besides, I work at a large business, and we pay good money to IT workers to maintain our Linux systems. Or at least we did, before the massive riffs.:(
If you have a system that is old,closed source but works for months on end then why should you change it?
Because when the company stops supporting that system, you don't get important security fixes (woe betide those using NT 4), you're basically forced to change anyway, but without a guarantee that you will still be able to access your old data.
Remember guys, it's all about decision - and the ability to use the best tool for the job.
And the job is to ensure that government data remains available and accessible to the government and its citizens regardless of the whims or fortunes of private enterprise.
As engineers, it is easy to forget that there is more to a "job" than just the specific operations you want the computer to perform. There's the licensing terms -- are you allowed to do what you need? Maintainability, support, cost, etc etc. A government also has a responsibility to the public, adding even more constraints to the job.
Think of it this way: You wouldn't buy a house that couldn't be repaired if the company that built it went out of business, would you? Yet the house could otherwise be perfectly suitable.
I've got a Windows workstation, a Linux server, and a Mac laptop on my desk.
Now, which of those systems do you think is best for providing transparent operation and permanence of data that any citizen can access? Which one is more likely to still have readable data on it in twenty years?
Fully informed decision making is far from mandatory policies.
Well, aside from it not being mandatory... If the mandatory policy was made through fully informed decision making, then no, it isn't far. Recognizing that as a government your job has certain additional requirements that only free software can meet is a decision.
Deciding to never consider buying a house that can only be repaired by its original manufacturers isn't uninformed, it is in fact fully informed -- its recognizing that you have a requirement, and no house of that kind can meet it.
True, but there would be very little incentive to do so. I could just decompile your version and compare it to the stock kernel, incorporate those changes if I wanted, and distribute it.
Remember, the GPL is designed to grant you the rights copyright takes away -- the right to share useful programs, and to modify those programs to be more useful (and to share those modifications). It is designed to prevent others from taking those rights away once they have been granted. But without copyright, you always have those rights.
So no need for the GPL, even though it's convenient to get the source code with programs. Still, in a world in which copyright has been banished, I'd think not releasing source would be frowned upon as a vestige of the old "I don't want to share" mentality.:)
right. so the christians hijacked the holidays from the pagans, and now the corps. are hijacking them from the christians. the difference is that the pagans didn't follow along.:)
Well, I'm a Christian, and while I dislike my fellow Christians wallowing in the secular aspects these holidays have acrued, the truth is they weren't originally Christian holidays. Easter was a fertility celebration -- that's where the eggs and bunnies come from. Remember, kids, the Easter Bunny is a sex symbol!:)
Kinda sad if people didn't already realize this...
Still, for those just catching up, this is Non-Humanitarian Reason #47 for invading Iraq: More or less the same thing that Nicaragua and Guatemala did: Prosper while simultaneously giving the U.S. the finger.
Right. Just like how the threat of being buried in taxi cab fares will make most people take the bus.
Most people can afford a cab. Therein lies the crucial difference. Well, that and one is riding a cab and the other is Free Speech.
Bottom line is that you seem to feel this is some kind of threat to free speech, and I don't. Can't afford to hire lawyers to protect your business (making comic strips)? The other comic strip people win. It's sad, but that's the way it goes -- just like how the rich guy gets better product distribution, gets better product placement, gets higher quality advertising, has access to better tools and materials to produce his product, etc., etc.
Free Speech is a right given and protected by the Constitution. The First Ammendment. A supposed cornerstone of our culture. None of those other things are. We aren't talking about driving a Mercedes. We're talking about free speech. But you're going to sit here and tell me that free speech wasn't threatened because they could have spoken freely if they were rich?
There's no lack of access to the courts here. These guys can defend themselves just like the next guy -- provided they can afford the lawyers who will win the case for them
"Provided they can afford the lawyers..." You've got every point right there. Where's the disconnect?
I agree with you that defending themselves would be stupid. But they don't want to pay a lawyer. What conclusion should I draw?
That the high costs of legal representation have allowed a large corporation to stifle free speech through the threat of a lawsuit. Duh.
You keep saying "Yes, I know that they cannot actually afford to defend themselves and thus are forced to capitulate, yet I don't see how their speech was restricted". Or "I understand that the numbers we are summing are two and two, but I don't see how you get four." Do I have to draw you a diagram?
Freeping Jeebus, don't get so tied up in specifics. The whole gun thing was simply to point out the obvious: reality is always more important than theory. In theory, you could disarm the gunman. Or shoot him first. Or duck for cover. But in reality, a loaded gun pointed at you is going to make you do whatever the guy holding the gun says.
Similarly, the threat of being buried in legal costs is going to make most people pause. I can't see why this is so hard to understand.
Whether or not it's because they can't afford a lawyer doesn't really figure into it.
Of course it does -- if you can't afford representation, you can't afford to go to court. If you can't afford to go to court, you can't afford to get sued, hence you do what the person threatening to sue for wants.
Technically, they could represent themselves -- but they won't, because they know they can't argue the law well enough to do so.
Please tell me you're not suggesting they represent themselves. As in, be their own lawyers. Like, have two guys whose only law qualifications were reading about the DMCA and thinking it really sucked go up against the swarm of corporate attack lawyers A.G. is going to have lined up to argue nuances of corporate trademark law, when they aren't even going to know the procedures?
And you talk about dodging bullets being ridiculous?
Surely the "truth" of the matter would be as plain to a judge as to a Slashdot reader?
Sorry, but only a fool thinks they are ever walking in on a "sure thing" in court. Who would have thought that the Supreme Court would rule that unlimited limited extensions doesn't violate the "limited" clause of copyright in the constitution? No, I'm sorry, but reality dictates that you have to consider the possibility of losing in court, no matter how much you "believe" you are right. If an individual could determine whether or not they'd win, we wouldn't need lawyers!
The fact that you have yet to describe where and how this picture actually parodies is not supportive of your argument, really.
My argument was that requiring paradies to be explicit about what they are a parody of is unnecessarily restrictive. I don't really care if you can see how it is a parody or not; I'm saying why must it be made plain before parody protection is invoked?
Slashdot Mirror
If you recall from the film, everyone there was against the idea of launching the nukes, but the computer was going to do it anyway. If the computer was incapable of launching nukes, there would have been no danger.
:)
Putting stupid humans in charge of the nukes is something we don't need sci-fi to tell us is a bad idea.
Are you saying that a real human never hits a blank spot? That you couldn't be put in a situation or asked a question which leaves you at a loss?
Of course not. Capability isn't the same as always succeeding.
You're comparing the posession of knowledge to intelligence (what we can do with knowledge)
I'm comparing posession of data with posession of knowledge. Data is just a fact that can be repeated. Knowledge is data abstracted so that it can be used in other cirucmstances.
The cheating student merely posesses data. The data doesn't help them answer any other questions. The student that knows the material can answer any question based on the material.
"Ask it something it's never heard, and it will choke"
this is different from almost all humans, how?
Humans can use the abstracted knowledge they have learned from other sources to craft a response. You mileage may vary on the quality of the response, but that's not because the human can't do it. However, you can never teach an Aibo a new trick.
The conclusion a lot of people have been coming to is that intelligence is something very different that what we been thinking it is.
Yes, but that doesn't mean producing the data stored in a lookup table is intelligence.
The "what would happen if we made 'real' AI?" has been explored countless times. And the lesson is simple: Don't put the computer in charge. Especially don't give your computer control of your nuclear arsenal.
Every sci-fi disaster involving AI has been a result of giving the AI too much control. How dangerous would the computer in Wargames have been if all it could do was turn on a green light that said "launch nukes now, please!"
Don't give your AI a bunch of nukes, a space ship, or sharp pointy things and you'll be just fine.
Besides, how the heck are you going to research the consequences of creating something when we have no idea what form the creation would even take?
What's the difference between thinking and fooling people into believing you're thinking?
The same difference between cheating on a test in a subject you've never taken and actually knowing the material: as soon as you're asked a question that isn't on your crib sheet, the charade is over.
An AIBO has a pre-programmed set of behaviors, and any stimulus it isn't programmed to respond to will not have a realistic effect. The same is true of Loebner Prize winner Alice -- the only difference is the size of the pre-programmed response database. Ask it something it's never heard, and it will choke.
When these AIs are able to produce convincing responses to new stimuli, then I'll say that the difference between "fooling" and actually thinking has become irrelevent.
Beauty and the Beast, Tarzan, Pocahontas, Treasure Planet, the Atlantis one... I'm sure there are other examples, but the point is that Disney has made millions taking old material and redoing it (usually with the interesting parts taken out and replaced with a singing spork). I'd be willing to bet that they've made more from Disney-fying old works than they have from their original animated films. But damned if they're going to let their originals be used in turn.
And I have very little sympathy for companies that promise something and then get a lot of shit for not delivering. If on release day, it had turned out that the -Windows- version was the one that was on ice, would all the people who pre-ordered the game assuming it would run under Windows get your sympathy? I didn't buy the game (I didn't trust them), but a lot of people did based on a lot of statements by the company that they were going to be supported. And when you pre-order, you don't get to peruse the box.
And I'm counting those sales as "profits from the Linux port" regardless. Profiting from the promise of a port or the actual port -- either way, that's the amount of money the port made them. Yes, the bean counters will see "Windows sale" and end up concluding that porting to Linux isn't worth much, but they'll be wrong.
Don't forget the hassle of trying to find a publisher (I doubt infogrames would ship a Linux port) and you have a very low possibility of success.
It's a free download, like a lot of Linux ports. Tux Games is going to package the Windows version with the game and the download and the Linux installer (like they've done for a lot of ports). Tux Games is owned by the same person as Linux Game Publishing, which both ports games and publishes ports of games. I think the search for a publisher has just ended.
Possibly. All the more reason why Bioware is done with their experiment with non-windows ports.
No, all the more reason why KOTOR proves nothing. If their next start-from-mostly-scratch project is done correctly, they can get the port done much more easily.
Bioware might decide Linux isn't worth it, but obviously it is a flawed experiment. All they found out is what happens when you lead Linux gamers on with lies. If they can't stop lying, then maybe they should stop "experimenting" with Linux. If they can, then they might discover the next experiment comes out different.
I agree.
My point was that Bioware is not porting KOTOR to Linux, even though a lot of the work has already been done for NWN.
Bioware wont make the same mistake twice by trying to port games to Linux. It's a money-losing proposition.
While you may be right about future porting, how is it a money-losing proposition? Bioware has probably already made money on porting to Linux. Many Linux gamers have already bought the game, and Bioware obviously hasn't spent a lot of money on the port. And if they apply what they learned this time, the port won't cost any more the next time.
KOTOR might not be that easy, though. If the code base changed enough, they might have to redo everything they did with NWN.
Fair enough. But it's also abundantly clear that they scrapped those plans at some point, salvaging them only after the success of the game on PC.
True, it is abundantly clear they didn't have those plans, and had done essentially no work on Linux or Mac ports even at the time of release. That makes them liars. Since a lot of Linux gamers pre-ordered the game based on those lies, they made money off of those lies.
Again I say that making an attempt at a port is a step in the right direction. You've got a right to be pissed, however. Maybe they'll learn their lesson when they release their shitty port to lackluster sales--and try to do it better next time.
Maybe. Or maybe the suits will say Linux ports are unjustified because they don't sell, nevermind the real reasons why.
These costs also have to be recouped.
They are. That's what profit means. The R&D cost includes the failures. They have 18% profit in spite of those failures, so they are obviously not as big a deal as the companies make them out to be!
Developing drugs is an extremely expensive business and as much as you'd like to believe in human goodness, medicine has never been done, is not done and will not be done in charity.
You mean marketing drugs is expensive. Pharmaceuticals spend two to three times as much on marketing as on research.
And as much as you'd like to believe that everyone is solely profit-driven, medicine has frequently been done, is being done, and will continue to be done in charity. Sorry, but isn't that easy to whitewash the concept of altruism from peoples' minds.
Though speaking of profit, the pharmaceutical industry remains one of the most profitable in the world. It was before the crash, and remains so after. You argue that drugs are expensive to develop, but how does that argument play into an industry reporting returns several times higher than the next most profitable industry?
You can talk about how expensive it is to make drugs all you want -- the fact is that the pharmaceuticals are meeting that cost and then some to the tune of an 18% profit. The argument that the drug companies need to make a profit is a red herring, because they are more than making a profit. The argument that drug prices can't be lowered or that cheap generics for 3rd world countries can't be made is a lie, because they are operating nowhere near break-even.
The brutal truth is: no profit, no research, no new drugs and much, much more dead people.
No. The brutal truth is that the pharmaceuticals are making too much profit, and the result of their greed is many, many more dead people.
Another easy one, answered by the GPL:
:)
"The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program)."
When you visit Sourceforge, what you see is a web page, which is the output of their content software. The web page is not a derivative work of that software, therefore not covered.
Which is just common sense: The copyright covers the Program, and the output of the Program isn't the Program, unless of course it is.
You still have to take the machine offline for all practical purposes. You cant upgrade samba or apache in place, without interrupting service.
So who cares if the downtime is for a reboot or a recompile? From the users point of view the machine is inaccessable.
Holy specious reasoning, Batman!
First, you don't need to take down the service while you're recompiling, only when you're done and want to use the new version. Second, obviously restarting apache is faster than rebooting windows, so your downtime is smaller (a second instead of... however long it takes to boot windows).
People put up with random/compulsery drug tests because they have been brainwashed by the whole "War on Drugs" debacle that it is a Good Thing to test people with no Probable Cause whatsoever.
Um... No, I put up with the bullshit drug test because it was a requirement for employment.
If they 'mandate' OSS, then they can use that same purchasing principal to hiring people to work on those systems- at very low wages (hell, maybe even internships). Doesn't make sense, right? Well, it appears that in the business world, if they purchase a very expensive system, companies think they need high end good IT people to work on them. Our industry benefits from this by getting just wages. But if the system is dirt cheap or free, then they look at that and think 'well, we cut costs in IT here, let's keep our costs low and bring in a qualified person at a lower wage'. They hire at a lower wage.
:(
So, what you're saying is that Open Source shouldn't be mandated because the people doing the mandating are too stupid to realize that Software Libre still requires IT No Gratis?
Despite being plausible, I'm not sure that's true. Given that these things are usually budgeted, you'd think that they'd spend a lesser amount of the IT budget on software licenses, and thus more money on IT workers. Or look at it this way -- a company or government trying to save money is going to cut budgets. If the budget can be reduced by saving money on licenses, then there is a lesser need to save money by axing jobs.
Besides, I work at a large business, and we pay good money to IT workers to maintain our Linux systems. Or at least we did, before the massive riffs.
If you have a system that is old,closed source but works for months on end then why should you change it?
Because when the company stops supporting that system, you don't get important security fixes (woe betide those using NT 4), you're basically forced to change anyway, but without a guarantee that you will still be able to access your old data.
Do I get a cookie? I like cookies.
Remember guys, it's all about decision - and the ability to use the best tool for the job.
And the job is to ensure that government data remains available and accessible to the government and its citizens regardless of the whims or fortunes of private enterprise.
As engineers, it is easy to forget that there is more to a "job" than just the specific operations you want the computer to perform. There's the licensing terms -- are you allowed to do what you need? Maintainability, support, cost, etc etc. A government also has a responsibility to the public, adding even more constraints to the job.
Think of it this way: You wouldn't buy a house that couldn't be repaired if the company that built it went out of business, would you? Yet the house could otherwise be perfectly suitable.
I've got a Windows workstation, a Linux server, and a Mac laptop on my desk.
Now, which of those systems do you think is best for providing transparent operation and permanence of data that any citizen can access? Which one is more likely to still have readable data on it in twenty years?
Fully informed decision making is far from mandatory policies.
Well, aside from it not being mandatory... If the mandatory policy was made through fully informed decision making, then no, it isn't far. Recognizing that as a government your job has certain additional requirements that only free software can meet is a decision.
Deciding to never consider buying a house that can only be repaired by its original manufacturers isn't uninformed, it is in fact fully informed -- its recognizing that you have a requirement, and no house of that kind can meet it.
True, but there would be very little incentive to do so. I could just decompile your version and compare it to the stock kernel, incorporate those changes if I wanted, and distribute it.
:)
Remember, the GPL is designed to grant you the rights copyright takes away -- the right to share useful programs, and to modify those programs to be more useful (and to share those modifications). It is designed to prevent others from taking those rights away once they have been granted. But without copyright, you always have those rights.
So no need for the GPL, even though it's convenient to get the source code with programs. Still, in a world in which copyright has been banished, I'd think not releasing source would be frowned upon as a vestige of the old "I don't want to share" mentality.
That's not ironic. If there wasn't copyright, there would be no need for the GPL.
right. so the christians hijacked the holidays from the pagans, and now the corps. are hijacking them from the christians. the difference is that the pagans didn't follow along. :)
Well, I'm a Christian, and while I dislike my fellow Christians wallowing in the secular aspects these holidays have acrued, the truth is they weren't originally Christian holidays. Easter was a fertility celebration -- that's where the eggs and bunnies come from. Remember, kids, the Easter Bunny is a sex symbol! :)
Kinda sad if people didn't already realize this...
Still, for those just catching up, this is Non-Humanitarian Reason #47 for invading Iraq: More or less the same thing that Nicaragua and Guatemala did: Prosper while simultaneously giving the U.S. the finger.
Right. Just like how the threat of being buried in taxi cab fares will make most people take the bus.
Most people can afford a cab. Therein lies the crucial difference. Well, that and one is riding a cab and the other is Free Speech.
Bottom line is that you seem to feel this is some kind of threat to free speech, and I don't. Can't afford to hire lawyers to protect your business (making comic strips)? The other comic strip people win. It's sad, but that's the way it goes -- just like how the rich guy gets better product distribution, gets better product placement, gets higher quality advertising, has access to better tools and materials to produce his product, etc., etc.
Free Speech is a right given and protected by the Constitution. The First Ammendment. A supposed cornerstone of our culture. None of those other things are. We aren't talking about driving a Mercedes. We're talking about free speech. But you're going to sit here and tell me that free speech wasn't threatened because they could have spoken freely if they were rich?
There's no lack of access to the courts here. These guys can defend themselves just like the next guy -- provided they can afford the lawyers who will win the case for them
"Provided they can afford the lawyers..." You've got every point right there. Where's the disconnect?
I agree with you that defending themselves would be stupid. But they don't want to pay a lawyer. What conclusion should I draw?
That the high costs of legal representation have allowed a large corporation to stifle free speech through the threat of a lawsuit. Duh.
You keep saying "Yes, I know that they cannot actually afford to defend themselves and thus are forced to capitulate, yet I don't see how their speech was restricted". Or "I understand that the numbers we are summing are two and two, but I don't see how you get four." Do I have to draw you a diagram?
Freeping Jeebus, don't get so tied up in specifics. The whole gun thing was simply to point out the obvious: reality is always more important than theory. In theory, you could disarm the gunman. Or shoot him first. Or duck for cover. But in reality, a loaded gun pointed at you is going to make you do whatever the guy holding the gun says.
Similarly, the threat of being buried in legal costs is going to make most people pause. I can't see why this is so hard to understand.
Whether or not it's because they can't afford a lawyer doesn't really figure into it.
Of course it does -- if you can't afford representation, you can't afford to go to court. If you can't afford to go to court, you can't afford to get sued, hence you do what the person threatening to sue for wants.
Technically, they could represent themselves -- but they won't, because they know they can't argue the law well enough to do so.
Please tell me you're not suggesting they represent themselves. As in, be their own lawyers. Like, have two guys whose only law qualifications were reading about the DMCA and thinking it really sucked go up against the swarm of corporate attack lawyers A.G. is going to have lined up to argue nuances of corporate trademark law, when they aren't even going to know the procedures?
And you talk about dodging bullets being ridiculous?
Surely the "truth" of the matter would be as plain to a judge as to a Slashdot reader?
Sorry, but only a fool thinks they are ever walking in on a "sure thing" in court. Who would have thought that the Supreme Court would rule that unlimited limited extensions doesn't violate the "limited" clause of copyright in the constitution? No, I'm sorry, but reality dictates that you have to consider the possibility of losing in court, no matter how much you "believe" you are right. If an individual could determine whether or not they'd win, we wouldn't need lawyers!
The fact that you have yet to describe where and how this picture actually parodies is not supportive of your argument, really.
My argument was that requiring paradies to be explicit about what they are a parody of is unnecessarily restrictive. I don't really care if you can see how it is a parody or not; I'm saying why must it be made plain before parody protection is invoked?