> So the laws get worked out between the politicians who have made a career of convincing us that they are the only choices we have for representation and the monied interests who have cleaned up by convincing us they're the only game in town.
Unfortunately, it's even nastier than that. As Jessica Litman points out in her book "Digital Copyright", the "monied interests" work out legislation among themselves with no input from the government, and then hand it off to be made into law.
Since it's usually much too complex and arcane for lawmakers to understand, they generally just make sure all interests are happy and sign it into law.
> I'm sure that the majority of multiple-PC families have been buying a single copy of each
> version of Windows and installing it on all their PCs.
Not to support MSFT, but this just isn't true. Most people buy home machines with Windows already installed, and pay for it with the Microsoft tax buried in the price of the machine.
This is one of his central arguments, and it doesn't make sense.
Scientific faith is different than religious faith
on
Heredity and Humanity
·
· Score: 1
> I'm a scientist and not at all religious, but I can recognize that quite a lot of faith goes on in science, just like any other field.
There's a huge difference though - hypotheses in science, initially taken on faith, CAN BE TESTED AND DISPROVED.
Not true of religious beliefs supported by faith - they can never be tested.
Which doesn't invalidate them, of course. It just makes them something different that scientific beliefs.
> In some situations this might be a bad thing. But in a great many situations it is actually a good thing.
What?! Defending difficulty of installation because it makes being a sysadmin easier?! Why not just avoid giving your users root access, but make installation easy for the who can/should do it?
My early professional programming experience was with VB, and when I switched to Linux I was quite disappointed with the lack of any similar IDE.
However, after I learned the standardized Makefile syntax, I found the unix style much more satisfying. It's much easier to share code, etc, because everyone has the same tools. It is a bit of a learning curve, but one worth following.
Another thing - while the VB style of drag 'n' drop GUI design is often extremely useful, it's also somewhat constraining. For example, you can't easily do "dynamic" GUIs, where you create a new element and bind it to a form at runtime (or, at least you couldn't in VB5:). This capability in, say, QT has been most useful for me, and changes the way you think about GUI design.
> The system provides download speeds 16 times faster than a regular phone line
... and...
> Miles himself lives in the countryside and his Internet access at home is the basic, slow dial-up service. He recently downloaded a big file that took more than two hours, tying up his phone line and his patience.
> He downloaded the same size of file using the satellite system in 20 seconds.
>> It's just one more lesson from history where being open is better than being closed.
> Better for whom?
Umm.... better for the consumer?
Re:A Simple Business Model
on
GPL FAQ
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· Score: 1
> But all it takes is one developer to remove the nag box, then everyone gets the program from that developer.
In principle, yes, but in practise people will still want to get a program directly from its (relatively) trusted developers, not some random ftp site.
The people who'd download it from that one developer are probably the same people who could hack the nag box out of the code anyway.
> They certainly must honor the GPL for their software that is already under it
Not necessarily. They absolutely do have to keep anything they've released so far under the GPL, but new versions could be released under a new license, even a proprietary one.
They can only do this with the permission of all the copyright holders (of which there might be many if there are a lot of developers), but for stuff they own the copyrights for, they can do whatever they want.
Re:Everybody's not above average!
on
IT Unions?
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· Score: 1
> So sure, unions are designed around the average, but given that half of all employers are below average in how they treat their employees, maybe the protections a union can offer are useful.
This is absurd. Say I put together a group of the top ten best programmers in the world. Roughly half of them are below their average - do those lower 50% of the top ten best programmers need special protection?!
Just because some people in an elite group do worse than others doesn't mean that the lower half are in desperate need of unionization.
And programmers, as a whole, are an elite group that can direct their own careers without the help of a trade union. Not that trade unions are bad in principle - just in practise the way they have exercised their power has stifled creativity.
How do you do the support? You can choose! That's the cool thing. You can stipulate that you only support unmodified versions, or you can take on a bigger challenge and say that you'll support customized versions as well.
But there's nothing to say that you *have* to support customizations, or even releases after some release you specify.
The more flexible you are the more your customers like you; the more flexible you are, the more you have to pay your employees. There's a happy balance somewhere for any given company, and the balance point may be different for different companies.
The ease of copying and distributing data, such as MP3's, has caused quite a stir recently. One of your articles talks about how this essentially makes the value of some intellectual property zero.
What are your views on how this will affect producers of intellectual property? For example, what will replace the current recording industry model?
The thing I'd be most concerned about if I were to go to your clinic is on-line security.
If my medical files are accessible by me on-line, they're going to be accessible to crackers as well unless you do a *lot* of work on security.
I suggest you hire a decent computer security firm - don't just use regular computer consultants, because they generally don't have a clue about on-line security.
You need to build this into your systems from the ground up if you're going to do it right.
brittanica.com tells me that the distance from Earth to Mars is between 56M km and 400M km, depending on the relative position of the orbits.
Assuming constant +ve accn for the first half of the journey and constant -ve accn for the second half, and a two-week journey in total, this means an acceleration of between 0.15 m/s^2 and 1.1 m/s^2.
Since 1g = 9.8 m/s^2, these accelerations are tiny, and you'd safely avoid being pureed.
What's to stop people from grabbing this new music from the pay site, then posting it to the free one? All it takes is a few people to do this, then the ball is rolling.
It'll be interesting to see how Napster handles this.
The idea of being a software company that releases its source isn't that revolutionary. Sure, the projects may be boring, but that doesn't necessarily matter. The "many eyes" advantage of open source is just one of the advantages; if the only developers working on a project are ones working at the company, you can still make a business case for releasing source. For example, if the government contracts out for a piece of software, they might want to make sure they can still get the code if the company goes under.
Any given project might still be controlled by a small group of people in this business model - different projects would be parcelled out to different developers in the company. This happens in a normal software company too.
Remember, the developers working for this company are paid employees (/owners), not volunteer developers.
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect you meant Kandinsky the abstract artist, not Kadinsky, the Amsterdam coffee shop that the link points to... :)
We can see signs of life from unintelligent life too. Oxygen in the atmosphere, for example, is highly unlikely without life (like we know it).
> So the laws get worked out between the politicians who have made a career of convincing us that they are the only choices we have for representation and the monied interests who have cleaned up by convincing us they're the only game in town.
Unfortunately, it's even nastier than that. As Jessica Litman points out in her book "Digital Copyright", the "monied interests" work out legislation among themselves with no input from the government, and then hand it off to be made into law.
Since it's usually much too complex and arcane for lawmakers to understand, they generally just make sure all interests are happy and sign it into law.
Note that "interests" don't include the public.
When the original announcement came out, there was a big deal made of the fact that humans have a small number of genes relative to other species.
But do the uncertainties in counting affect the gene counts for other species as well?
> I'm sure that the majority of multiple-PC families have been buying a single copy of each
> version of Windows and installing it on all their PCs.
Not to support MSFT, but this just isn't true. Most people buy home machines with Windows already installed, and pay for it with the Microsoft tax buried in the price of the machine.
This is one of his central arguments, and it doesn't make sense.
> I'm a scientist and not at all religious, but I can recognize that quite a lot of faith goes on in science, just like any other field.
There's a huge difference though - hypotheses in science, initially taken on faith, CAN BE TESTED AND DISPROVED.
Not true of religious beliefs supported by faith - they can never be tested.
Which doesn't invalidate them, of course. It just makes them something different that scientific beliefs.
> In some situations this might be a bad thing. But in a great many situations it is actually a good thing.
What?! Defending difficulty of installation because it makes being a sysadmin easier?! Why not just avoid giving your users root access, but make installation easy for the who can/should do it?
My early professional programming experience was with VB, and when I switched to Linux I was quite disappointed with the lack of any similar IDE.
:). This capability in, say, QT has been most useful for me, and changes the way you think about GUI design.
However, after I learned the standardized Makefile syntax, I found the unix style much more satisfying. It's much easier to share code, etc, because everyone has the same tools. It is a bit of a learning curve, but one worth following.
Another thing - while the VB style of drag 'n' drop GUI design is often extremely useful, it's also somewhat constraining. For example, you can't easily do "dynamic" GUIs, where you create a new element and bind it to a form at runtime (or, at least you couldn't in VB5
> The system provides download speeds 16 times faster than a regular phone line
... and...
> Miles himself lives in the countryside and his Internet access at home is the basic, slow dial-up service. He recently downloaded a big file that took more than two hours, tying up his phone line and his patience.
> He downloaded the same size of file using the satellite system in 20 seconds.
So that's 120*60/20 = 360!
Somehow 16X faster became > 360X faster!
This guy's taking math lessons from Gore.
>> It's just one more lesson from history where being open is better than being closed.
> Better for whom?
Umm.... better for the consumer?
> But all it takes is one developer to remove the nag box, then everyone gets the program from that developer.
In principle, yes, but in practise people will still want to get a program directly from its (relatively) trusted developers, not some random ftp site.
The people who'd download it from that one developer are probably the same people who could hack the nag box out of the code anyway.
> They certainly must honor the GPL for their software that is already under it
Not necessarily. They absolutely do have to keep anything they've released so far under the GPL, but new versions could be released under a new license, even a proprietary one.
They can only do this with the permission of all the copyright holders (of which there might be many if there are a lot of developers), but for stuff they own the copyrights for, they can do whatever they want.
> So sure, unions are designed around the average, but given that half of all employers are below average in how they treat their employees, maybe the protections a union can offer are useful.
This is absurd. Say I put together a group of the top ten best programmers in the world. Roughly half of them are below their average - do those lower 50% of the top ten best programmers need special protection?!
Just because some people in an elite group do worse than others doesn't mean that the lower half are in desperate need of unionization.
And programmers, as a whole, are an elite group that can direct their own careers without the help of a trade union. Not that trade unions are bad in principle - just in practise the way they have exercised their power has stifled creativity.
How do you do the support? You can choose! That's the cool thing. You can stipulate that you only support unmodified versions, or you can take on a bigger challenge and say that you'll support customized versions as well.
But there's nothing to say that you *have* to support customizations, or even releases after some release you specify.
The more flexible you are the more your customers like you; the more flexible you are, the more you have to pay your employees. There's a happy balance somewhere for any given company, and the balance point may be different for different companies.
> But you don't have to accept GPL to run the program, so the warranty disclaimer does not apply.
But you *do* have to agree to it if you want to redistribute the code or change it.
> Most readers don't care if Windows supports XYZ 1.7 functionality,
> just as long as their favorite distro of Linux does.
Hardware makers listen to Microsoft, since they have the lions share of the desktop market. That means everyone who uses hardware cares.
The ease of copying and distributing data, such as MP3's, has caused quite a stir recently. One of your articles talks about how this essentially makes the value of some intellectual property zero.
What are your views on how this will affect producers of intellectual property? For example, what will replace the current recording industry model?
The thing I'd be most concerned about if I were to go to your clinic is on-line security.
If my medical files are accessible by me on-line, they're going to be accessible to crackers as well unless you do a *lot* of work on security.
I suggest you hire a decent computer security firm - don't just use regular computer consultants, because they generally don't have a clue about on-line security.
You need to build this into your systems from the ground up if you're going to do it right.
Programming is tonnes of fun, and you create stuff while you're at it.
Not a terribly social game (normally), but it can be very rewarding.
The G-force isn't that bad, actually.
brittanica.com tells me that the distance from Earth to Mars is between 56M km and 400M km, depending on the relative position of the orbits.
Assuming constant +ve accn for the first half of the journey and constant -ve accn for the second half, and a two-week journey in total, this means an acceleration of between 0.15 m/s^2 and 1.1 m/s^2.
Since 1g = 9.8 m/s^2, these accelerations are tiny, and you'd safely avoid being pureed.
What's to stop people from grabbing this new music from the pay site, then posting it to the free one? All it takes is a few people to do this, then the ball is rolling.
It'll be interesting to see how Napster handles this.
I don't think it's so easy to dismiss this.
The idea of being a software company that releases its source isn't that revolutionary. Sure, the projects may be boring, but that doesn't necessarily matter. The "many eyes" advantage of open source is just one of the advantages; if the only developers working on a project are ones working at the company, you can still make a business case for releasing source. For example, if the government contracts out for a piece of software, they might want to make sure they can still get the code if the company goes under.
Any given project might still be controlled by a small group of people in this business model - different projects would be parcelled out to different developers in the company. This happens in a normal software company too.
Remember, the developers working for this company are paid employees (/owners), not volunteer developers.