Right, because we all know ex-con's get a fair shake in the job market. As for getting educated, I am not willing to pay for con's to get a free ride. I would rather invest that money in the younger generation.
"so their only option is to go back to crime"
You can argue until you are blue in the face. The current system results in almost every convict going back to crime. In fact, the crimes they commit usually escalate after doing time. It would be tough to come up with a system that fails to reform prisons at the rate of the current system of pooling all the bad guys together to learn from one another for years. Then sending them back on the streets after 20 years of crime-ed
"Never mind the whole suspended animation would leave them that nice crime committing age they went in as."
That is a legitimate point. Although I think being slapped in the face with all the repercussions of losing 20 years will reform at the same rate we have now or better. In this way at least the criminals are coming out at an age where they can work and contribute something to society. Cons that come out too old to do any harm also come out too old to do any good. In fact, they come out old enough to retire and continue to leech from the working citizens.
For the most part those who are already in prison are lost causes. Even if they reform their best chance at the American dream rests in a lottery ticket. I say cut the expense of maintaining these people as much as possible. Cut out the ridiculous drug laws that make criminals out of misbehaving children and you will eliminate 60% of the prison population. Take all the money saved by not providing free housing, health care, and education to cons and use it to provide the same for poor citizens of this country. Hell, that would probably reduce crime and improve the quality of life for your average American.
"Actually, that is not the way I prefer to work. Only after the work has been done and you are confident of your results do you go to the scientific press, then the popular press."
That is an honest enough response. But first consider a possibility and understand I propose the possibility without even beginning to look at the researchers to see if it might apply in this specific case. You are working on promising research that could well have a large range of almost immediately implementable applications that will benefit mankind and save lives. Your project is about to turn to vapor because your backer heard someone point out that you are proposing to have humans breath toxic gas. Would you consider going to the court of public opinion then? Would the ethical thing to do be to let the project die at the cost of human lives? On the other hand, this may have been nothing more than a sneaky move to steal funding from the competition.
Regardless of the answer, nobody can put the genie back in the bottle. Hopefully this research gets the attention it deserves based upon merit, and not based upon the manner it was released.
"We need to keep gym class in the schools so kids get and learn the value of regular exercise."
Keeping gym class in school is nice, but keeping gym class mandatory is ridiculous. By their very nature kids will get more exercise if you let them out of school an hour earlier and skip the gym class. Especially the students who have no interest in sports. Perhaps gym wouldn't be as bad if it were expanded beyond sports (in fact, sports should be eliminated from schools altogether), letting those who did not want to participate in sports participate in Yoga or similar exercises. As time goes on the Yoga gets more advanced and progresses to additional forms. At least then you can maintain the farce that you are teaching something. School is for education after all, not physical fitness.
Students shouldn't be required to dress in open locker rooms or shower in open locker rooms. Since the class would be optional then participation would be a requirement and tests could be administered to show how much the students have learned (although knowledge of a movement is what you would test, not physical ability to perform them). Being fit should never give a student an edge in any aspect of school.
"Geeks would get more out of figuring out how to bypass the device to make the computer think it is pedaling rather than actually work out."
True enough. Perhaps we should put geeks to work on figuring out how to bypass the effort required to work out. Perhaps a system that sent signals to the brain that initiated exercises and physical activity without conscious control. Of course pain signals would have to be inhibited at the same time. It isn't enough to prevent me from having to summon the strength to make those last few reps, I don't want to feel the burn either. We can live with the after effects since they are temporary and go away.
Yes. So you slept for 20 years and aged 5 while in prison. But your wife aged 20 years, your mother and father died. Your friends and family aged 20 years. That is still a punishment, everything you know is gone or changed and you lost 5 years of the only resource you can't get back. Believe it or not the worst parts of prison are things that AREN'T supposed to happen, being gang raped in the shower or worrying about being killed for an extra helping of mashed potatoes is not part of the punishment you are being given. Those things are failures in the current prison system, not the way things are supposed to be.
Actually in a way it is a greater punishment. Many prisoners are able to make gains in prison, they work out and get physically fit, they get diplomas and degrees (things that are basically time sinks). This way the time spent was a complete waste for them, they gained absolutely nothing from it.
Better yet, it avoids the biggest problem with prisons. When you group petty criminals with serious criminals or even serious criminals with other serious criminals they exchange information about committing crime and become hardened from struggling with one another. This way a white collar criminal wouldn't be turned into a thug by the hard life in prison.
"and one should not do this kind of science in the popular press."
Especially when one is competing for the same funding as you? Whether they excite the press or not has no impact on the validity or lack thereof of the study or the results. Your other points do, although they are all additional research and tests to be performed, nothing you said actually detracts from the work that has already been done.
Stoking the press is entirely about funding, and all is fair in love and funding. After all, if your results are exciting enough to make headlines, they are exciting enough to pay for.
"I don't disagree; but I think that the whole notion of innate rights is misguided. We don't need that myth to justify the fact that we place these things above all our other laws."
Actually I happen to agree with you but my views are hardly popular ones. I find that morals, good and evil, god, the sanctity of life, and the sanctity of human life are all mythical concepts used to justify romantic but illogical notions.
Without question, our legal system and the system of philosophy that the founding principles of our nation is based on requires this concept. Perhaps it is because people like you and I do not believe in this philosophy that "god given" rights are eroding and being trampled on?
"When you bake a loaf of bread, the bread belongs to you. You have a right to your property."
This is the founding principle of capitalism. The big animal taking from the small animal does not discount this idea (and is arguably another tenet of capitalism). The core idea isn't that nobody can take your property away from you, the core idea is that the only right that is sure in nature is the spoils of conquest. The little animal has no right to property, the big animal does. It would wrong for 50 small animals to form a coalition to take away the big animals food simply because small animals were starving and the big animal had several times over what he needs.
In other words, this philosophy protects the right of the wealthy to greed and hoarding.
Whether you agree that the right to free speech is an innate right or not is another matter. Those who framed our constitution did. Or at least they said they did in public. The constitution acknowledged rights that were believed to have been granted by god. This is consistent with the branches of philosophy that formed the foundation of politics in America.
Rights are supposed to be things that you are innately entitled to and the law exists to protect the rights that are yours by nature. When you bake a loaf of bread, the bread belongs to you. You have a right to your property. Your right to your property would exist even if there were no laws against stealing it.
Intellectual property laws like copyright are not innate rights. Ideas are not unique and are build upon countless layers of ideas that lead up to them. Merely mentioning an idea to another copy's the idea. Ideas innately are meant to be shared and spread like wildfire. The laws concerning copyright are not protections of rights you innately have, they exist to grant you the privilege of copyright.
I am not sure I agree. I took a look for myself, searching for a Terry Goodkind book and google only shows a couple of pages from the middle of the book. And they give full accredation.
That definately qualifies as an excerpt last I checked and falls squarely within the realm of fair use.
They did show the cover art though, and that might violate copyright.
"For some reason Microsoft seems to think its somehow above the law or that the laws aren't supposed to apply to them."
Microsoft looks at the laws just like they look at a contract. If they have gained a greater profit than the total of the fines and penalties levied against them, then breaking the law is just good business.
The problem is that governments are unwilling to bankrupt companies as punishment for offenses like anti-competitive behavior. The penalties for anti-competitive actions should equal the gains from taking those actions at a minimum. Whether those penalties put a company out of business or not is irrelevant. Yes there are 'innocent' stockholders that would be affected and every one of them choose to invest in a company blatantly taking underhanded tactics. Companies go under and investments aren't guaranteed.
Microsoft should have never made it out of the states trials. The company should have been bankrupted and its operating system + office suite released to the public domain.
"I was rather young when SIerra had it's Shadows of Yserbius online version, Realm was before that?"
No. Shadows appears to have an earlier release date but it is only a graphical mud. Realm is not just a mud with pictures on top, it is an actual MMORPG.
If there was something before Realm I don't know of it, and Realm continues to operate (with about 300 simultaneous players at peak) so it is definately the longest lived.
None of the winners really seem to belong on the list. The honorable mentions are probably better candidates than anything on the winners list.
Of course EQ is really given credit that belongs to Sierra's "The Realm" (which is still kept around by loyal players to this day). EQ basically latched onto this idea and made it run in 3D. The realm did have a much more fully developed social system and economy than EQ but it was hardly a social experiment. It contains a fully developed magic and combat system, dozens of magical items and spells, several races, and PVP.
If the realm were revamped with a modern graphics system and revamped idea of PVP that allowed for large scale combat then it would probably the best MMORPG today.
"If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works."
Apparently separate works are exempt. Lets clarify though, this sounds like you would have to distribute the GPL'd lib separately if left by itself.
"But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License"
Turns out the GPL only applies if you not only distribute the lib with the app but the app is actually "a work based on the Program" as opposed to an app that merely utilizes a lib.
In other words, independent works that merely utilize GPL'd code are not subject to the GPL.
But maybe I am missing or ignoring the intent of the clause? Okay, fortunately the GPL tells us the intent of the clause.
"Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program."
The intent is NOT to claim rights to work written entirely by you, only to control distribution of works that are derivatives of a GPL'd app.
Here is a hint, its common wisdom that the LGPL is needed to protect programs that use GPL'd libs from being subject to the GPL. As a rule, common wisdom usually contains no more than a grain of truth. In this case the common wisdom is FUD. The worry with the GPL is not that using a GPL'd library will make your app GPL'd, the worry is that merely segregating your modifications to a GPL'd app into a library is not enough to prevent you from being subject to the GPL. For instance, a kernel module would be subject to the GPL since it is merely a modification of the collective work that is the Linux kernel and merely separating it into a lib or module does not let it bypass the GPL (that would be the reason for the exception).
"The GPL would be meaningless if it didn't apply to linked code. People would just segregate all the GPL stuff into a library."
It isn't seperating the code into a library that makes the GPL not apply, it is creating a work that can be considered independent of the GPL'd code. A program that uses GPL'd code to render gifs but has a function above and beyond rendering gifs would be an independent work whether you put the code in a library or not. A postscript interpreter that uses the ghostscript libraries would just be a wrapper and not an independent work and the GPL would apply regardless of how you linked.
The GPL applies only to derivatives, not to complete works. Instead of listening to common wisdom I recommend reading the GPL.
"I'm afraid it's been covered quite heavily in sci-fi, so you're idea's not totally original"
Ideas never are. I always concentrated my reading on Fantasy rather than Sci-Fi so I guess I missed the beamed solar power thing.
"The main problem has always been getting power from there to here, since standard methods of transmission would result in so high a loss of energy as to make the idea impractical."
Hopefully this new method would resolve the problem since it does not require beaming. My limited understanding of the technology that would be involved is that loss in this scenerio would only be the power required to convert heat/radiation/light to electricity (including inefficiency) and to power the entanglement process. Since no matter actually moves and the quantum state is duplicated instantly there would be no actual loss in transmission.
"The GPL requires all linked code be released under the GPL."
False. Someone presented this idea and it prompted debate. The result was an exemption clause in the Linux kernel version of the GPL and the LGPL. That doesn't mean that the idea that linked code could not be an independent work was ever legitimate.
You've just given me a great idea. We place heavily shielded pods as close to the sun as we are able, this allows us to collect energy being radiated closer to the source where it is much more concentrated. Then we use a counterpart here on earth to recieve the energy.
It doesn't even have to be particularly efficient since the energy collected is insignificant on a cosmic scale and is going to waste anyway.
Nonsense, you hold the rights to anything you develop that uses QT or is based on any GPL'd source. First, something using QT is probably an independent rather than derivative work since QT is just a blackbox library. The GPL explicitly exempts independent works and its 'same restrictions' clauses only apply to derivatives. Claiming the GPL would apply to the main app due to a linked library is like claiming that Photoshop should be GPL'd if it were distributed with a GPL'd filter. The linking thing started as FUD, then some people were overly greedy and embraced the FUD thinking it would lead to more code being opened.
Even if the GPL provisions applied to what you were writing, the GPL does not take away the author's rights. You still hold the copyright to your own work.
"I just don't agree with the pro-gun "It's for a Revolution" line. Gun-owners have had a very bad track-records with actually protecting our freedoms, with exactly 0 examples after 1800. Even if you had the right to buy rocket launchers and tanks there's still the money issue."
I could make an argument about pooling resources combined with the dramatically lower prices you would see with increased demand and an elimination of gun regulation and licensing (Handguns could go from $550 to $50, less popular arms would see less dramatic drops). But, viability really isn't the point. Whether the use of guns to overcome government corruption in modern times is viable or not does not change the spirit of the amendment. The amendment clearly demonstrates that leaving the citizens a way to depose the government or part of the government by force is part of the fundamental principles of the nation. If guns aren't viable then not only should restrictions on the guns be removed but any additional rights and protections that need to be added to make sure the citizens of the nation have this ability should be granted.
"And yet, the US has the largest prison population per capita of any country in the world."
The US has very strict gun laws that need serious relaxing. You are actually supporting my position not fighting it. In fact, strict laws create longer prison sentences and create additional criminals because people are arrested for breaking those laws. That is logically sound but still isn't really why US prison populations are so large. The reason US prison populations are so high is because of silly drug laws. 60% (if I recall correctly) of the population in US prisons are black males convicted of drug offenses.
Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Guns don't protect people, people protect people.
Yup, passes the logic tests. Guns are just a tool that augments our ability to fight. Of course there are others who would harm us that have tools for the same purpose. Those others have no scruples that prevent them from using outlawed tools. The result of this is that the outlawing the best tools takes them out of the hands of law abiding citizens while leaving them in the hands of those who have no respect for the law. The only way this wouldn't be true is law enforcement were effective and any wild teen who breaks the law daily can tell you how many crimes out of a thousand the police even know occurred, let alone catch the bad guy.
There are plenty of bad guys to worry about. The government of course is number one. Leaving citizens the ability to repel the powers at be was the reason that the rebels who just repelled the powers at be thought it was important that citizens be allowed to bear arms. In the modern day this should mean tanks and rocket launchers are protected. Criminals are the more PC opponent of the day and very real. Countries with mandatory possession have much lower crime rates than countries with strict gun laws. Terrorism in particular is widespread in countries with strict gun laws (I say this as someone who is entirely opposed to the war on terror, this just happens to be a legitimate reference to terrorism).
About this time someone brings out a ridiculous reference to a three year old with an Uzi. After all, lets bring children into an argument that has nothing to do with children.
Unless the two party system is a way of exploiting the masses the division on this issue doesn't even make sense. Regulating guns is a huge step in the direction of a police state. That seems to be more in line with the right wing agenda. The result is that we get a weakened constitution (both parties) police powers that trample rights (right) and gun control laws that increase crime and eliminate the peoples ability to defend themselves against threats (like violent criminals and terrorists) (left) and the end result is a people that are powerless to resist the corrupt forces that run the nation.
Laugh as you will but I have drastically improved firefox usage over merely preinstalling it if I renamed the shortcut to "Internet". Evolution is a terrible name, programming languages aren't intended for use by people who have never heard of the language, and Dreamweaver is not a program intended for people who have never heard of Dreamweaver either. A web browser is a free application that was probably installed by someone else.
I can't see where renaming Firefox can be bad since it is the stupidest name for a web browser you can imagine. How about a name that in some way is at least vaguely associated with what the program does? My god what a concept. A name that would give reasonably intelligent people who have never heard of the program the ability to guess that they should click on that to browse the web!
"If you think that murder is a joke, then we are operating on two completely planes of reality."
Come now, anything can be a joke. Murder, rape, tax evasion, and piracy can all be joke material. You take life too seriously.
Personally I think the death penalty should apply to far reaching white collar corruption like that commited by executives and heavy shareholders at the RIAA + associated studios.
Slashdot Mirror
"like get educated and get a job"
Right, because we all know ex-con's get a fair shake in the job market. As for getting educated, I am not willing to pay for con's to get a free ride. I would rather invest that money in the younger generation.
"so their only option is to go back to crime"
You can argue until you are blue in the face. The current system results in almost every convict going back to crime. In fact, the crimes they commit usually escalate after doing time. It would be tough to come up with a system that fails to reform prisons at the rate of the current system of pooling all the bad guys together to learn from one another for years. Then sending them back on the streets after 20 years of crime-ed
"Never mind the whole suspended animation would leave them that nice crime committing age they went in as."
That is a legitimate point. Although I think being slapped in the face with all the repercussions of losing 20 years will reform at the same rate we have now or better. In this way at least the criminals are coming out at an age where they can work and contribute something to society. Cons that come out too old to do any harm also come out too old to do any good. In fact, they come out old enough to retire and continue to leech from the working citizens.
For the most part those who are already in prison are lost causes. Even if they reform their best chance at the American dream rests in a lottery ticket. I say cut the expense of maintaining these people as much as possible. Cut out the ridiculous drug laws that make criminals out of misbehaving children and you will eliminate 60% of the prison population. Take all the money saved by not providing free housing, health care, and education to cons and use it to provide the same for poor citizens of this country. Hell, that would probably reduce crime and improve the quality of life for your average American.
"Actually, that is not the way I prefer to work. Only after the work has been done and you are confident of your results do you go to the scientific press, then the popular press."
That is an honest enough response. But first consider a possibility and understand I propose the possibility without even beginning to look at the researchers to see if it might apply in this specific case. You are working on promising research that could well have a large range of almost immediately implementable applications that will benefit mankind and save lives. Your project is about to turn to vapor because your backer heard someone point out that you are proposing to have humans breath toxic gas. Would you consider going to the court of public opinion then? Would the ethical thing to do be to let the project die at the cost of human lives? On the other hand, this may have been nothing more than a sneaky move to steal funding from the competition.
Regardless of the answer, nobody can put the genie back in the bottle. Hopefully this research gets the attention it deserves based upon merit, and not based upon the manner it was released.
"We need to keep gym class in the schools so kids get and learn the value of regular exercise."
Keeping gym class in school is nice, but keeping gym class mandatory is ridiculous. By their very nature kids will get more exercise if you let them out of school an hour earlier and skip the gym class. Especially the students who have no interest in sports. Perhaps gym wouldn't be as bad if it were expanded beyond sports (in fact, sports should be eliminated from schools altogether), letting those who did not want to participate in sports participate in Yoga or similar exercises. As time goes on the Yoga gets more advanced and progresses to additional forms. At least then you can maintain the farce that you are teaching something. School is for education after all, not physical fitness.
Students shouldn't be required to dress in open locker rooms or shower in open locker rooms. Since the class would be optional then participation would be a requirement and tests could be administered to show how much the students have learned (although knowledge of a movement is what you would test, not physical ability to perform them). Being fit should never give a student an edge in any aspect of school.
"Geeks would get more out of figuring out how to bypass the device to make the computer think it is pedaling rather than actually work out."
True enough. Perhaps we should put geeks to work on figuring out how to bypass the effort required to work out. Perhaps a system that sent signals to the brain that initiated exercises and physical activity without conscious control. Of course pain signals would have to be inhibited at the same time. It isn't enough to prevent me from having to summon the strength to make those last few reps, I don't want to feel the burn either. We can live with the after effects since they are temporary and go away.
"These are things in their infancy but with our economy as it is, I'll bet there's a few early adopters out there for this technology."
I am not sure where you are from. But here in the US the economy sucks.
"Prison is a PUNISHMENT."
Yes. So you slept for 20 years and aged 5 while in prison. But your wife aged 20 years, your mother and father died. Your friends and family aged 20 years. That is still a punishment, everything you know is gone or changed and you lost 5 years of the only resource you can't get back. Believe it or not the worst parts of prison are things that AREN'T supposed to happen, being gang raped in the shower or worrying about being killed for an extra helping of mashed potatoes is not part of the punishment you are being given. Those things are failures in the current prison system, not the way things are supposed to be.
Actually in a way it is a greater punishment. Many prisoners are able to make gains in prison, they work out and get physically fit, they get diplomas and degrees (things that are basically time sinks). This way the time spent was a complete waste for them, they gained absolutely nothing from it.
Better yet, it avoids the biggest problem with prisons. When you group petty criminals with serious criminals or even serious criminals with other serious criminals they exchange information about committing crime and become hardened from struggling with one another. This way a white collar criminal wouldn't be turned into a thug by the hard life in prison.
"and one should not do this kind of science in the popular press."
Especially when one is competing for the same funding as you? Whether they excite the press or not has no impact on the validity or lack thereof of the study or the results. Your other points do, although they are all additional research and tests to be performed, nothing you said actually detracts from the work that has already been done.
Stoking the press is entirely about funding, and all is fair in love and funding. After all, if your results are exciting enough to make headlines, they are exciting enough to pay for.
"I don't disagree; but I think that the whole notion of innate rights is misguided. We don't need that myth to justify the fact that we place these things above all our other laws."
Actually I happen to agree with you but my views are hardly popular ones. I find that morals, good and evil, god, the sanctity of life, and the sanctity of human life are all mythical concepts used to justify romantic but illogical notions.
Without question, our legal system and the system of philosophy that the founding principles of our nation is based on requires this concept. Perhaps it is because people like you and I do not believe in this philosophy that "god given" rights are eroding and being trampled on?
"When you bake a loaf of bread, the bread belongs to you. You have a right to your property."
This is the founding principle of capitalism. The big animal taking from the small animal does not discount this idea (and is arguably another tenet of capitalism). The core idea isn't that nobody can take your property away from you, the core idea is that the only right that is sure in nature is the spoils of conquest. The little animal has no right to property, the big animal does. It would wrong for 50 small animals to form a coalition to take away the big animals food simply because small animals were starving and the big animal had several times over what he needs.
In other words, this philosophy protects the right of the wealthy to greed and hoarding.
Whether you agree that the right to free speech is an innate right or not is another matter. Those who framed our constitution did. Or at least they said they did in public. The constitution acknowledged rights that were believed to have been granted by god. This is consistent with the branches of philosophy that formed the foundation of politics in America.
Rights are supposed to be things that you are innately entitled to and the law exists to protect the rights that are yours by nature. When you bake a loaf of bread, the bread belongs to you. You have a right to your property. Your right to your property would exist even if there were no laws against stealing it.
Intellectual property laws like copyright are not innate rights. Ideas are not unique and are build upon countless layers of ideas that lead up to them. Merely mentioning an idea to another copy's the idea. Ideas innately are meant to be shared and spread like wildfire. The laws concerning copyright are not protections of rights you innately have, they exist to grant you the privilege of copyright.
I am not sure I agree. I took a look for myself, searching for a Terry Goodkind book and google only shows a couple of pages from the middle of the book. And they give full accredation.
That definately qualifies as an excerpt last I checked and falls squarely within the realm of fair use.
They did show the cover art though, and that might violate copyright.
"For some reason Microsoft seems to think its somehow above the law or that the laws aren't supposed to apply to them."
Microsoft looks at the laws just like they look at a contract. If they have gained a greater profit than the total of the fines and penalties levied against them, then breaking the law is just good business.
The problem is that governments are unwilling to bankrupt companies as punishment for offenses like anti-competitive behavior. The penalties for anti-competitive actions should equal the gains from taking those actions at a minimum. Whether those penalties put a company out of business or not is irrelevant. Yes there are 'innocent' stockholders that would be affected and every one of them choose to invest in a company blatantly taking underhanded tactics. Companies go under and investments aren't guaranteed.
Microsoft should have never made it out of the states trials. The company should have been bankrupted and its operating system + office suite released to the public domain.
"Saying EQ had PvP is a pretty big stretch."
Actually I was saying that Realm had PvP.
"I was rather young when SIerra had it's Shadows of Yserbius online version, Realm was before that?"
No. Shadows appears to have an earlier release date but it is only a graphical mud. Realm is not just a mud with pictures on top, it is an actual MMORPG.
If there was something before Realm I don't know of it, and Realm continues to operate (with about 300 simultaneous players at peak) so it is definately the longest lived.
None of the winners really seem to belong on the list. The honorable mentions are probably better candidates than anything on the winners list.
Of course EQ is really given credit that belongs to Sierra's "The Realm" (which is still kept around by loyal players to this day). EQ basically latched onto this idea and made it run in 3D. The realm did have a much more fully developed social system and economy than EQ but it was hardly a social experiment. It contains a fully developed magic and combat system, dozens of magical items and spells, several races, and PVP.
If the realm were revamped with a modern graphics system and revamped idea of PVP that allowed for large scale combat then it would probably the best MMORPG today.
bzzt... try again. Since I am feeling generous.
"If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program,
and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in
themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those
sections when you distribute them as separate works."
Apparently separate works are exempt. Lets clarify though, this sounds like you would have to distribute the GPL'd lib separately if left by itself.
"But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based
on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of
this License"
Turns out the GPL only applies if you not only distribute the lib with the app but the app is actually "a work based on the Program" as opposed to an app that merely utilizes a lib.
In other words, independent works that merely utilize GPL'd code are not subject to the GPL.
But maybe I am missing or ignoring the intent of the clause? Okay, fortunately the GPL tells us the intent of the clause.
"Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest
your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to
exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or
collective works based on the Program."
The intent is NOT to claim rights to work written entirely by you, only to control distribution of works that are derivatives of a GPL'd app.
Here is a hint, its common wisdom that the LGPL is needed to protect programs that use GPL'd libs from being subject to the GPL. As a rule, common wisdom usually contains no more than a grain of truth. In this case the common wisdom is FUD. The worry with the GPL is not that using a GPL'd library will make your app GPL'd, the worry is that merely segregating your modifications to a GPL'd app into a library is not enough to prevent you from being subject to the GPL. For instance, a kernel module would be subject to the GPL since it is merely a modification of the collective work that is the Linux kernel and merely separating it into a lib or module does not let it bypass the GPL (that would be the reason for the exception).
"The GPL would be meaningless if it didn't apply to linked code. People would just segregate all the GPL stuff into a library."
It isn't seperating the code into a library that makes the GPL not apply, it is creating a work that can be considered independent of the GPL'd code. A program that uses GPL'd code to render gifs but has a function above and beyond rendering gifs would be an independent work whether you put the code in a library or not. A postscript interpreter that uses the ghostscript libraries would just be a wrapper and not an independent work and the GPL would apply regardless of how you linked.
The GPL applies only to derivatives, not to complete works. Instead of listening to common wisdom I recommend reading the GPL.
"I'm afraid it's been covered quite heavily in sci-fi, so you're idea's not totally original"
Ideas never are. I always concentrated my reading on Fantasy rather than Sci-Fi so I guess I missed the beamed solar power thing.
"The main problem has always been getting power from there to here, since standard methods of transmission would result in so high a loss of energy as to make the idea impractical."
Hopefully this new method would resolve the problem since it does not require beaming. My limited understanding of the technology that would be involved is that loss in this scenerio would only be the power required to convert heat/radiation/light to electricity (including inefficiency) and to power the entanglement process. Since no matter actually moves and the quantum state is duplicated instantly there would be no actual loss in transmission.
"The GPL requires all linked code be released under the GPL."
False. Someone presented this idea and it prompted debate. The result was an exemption clause in the Linux kernel version of the GPL and the LGPL. That doesn't mean that the idea that linked code could not be an independent work was ever legitimate.
You've just given me a great idea. We place heavily shielded pods as close to the sun as we are able, this allows us to collect energy being radiated closer to the source where it is much more concentrated. Then we use a counterpart here on earth to recieve the energy.
It doesn't even have to be particularly efficient since the energy collected is insignificant on a cosmic scale and is going to waste anyway.
Nonsense, you hold the rights to anything you develop that uses QT or is based on any GPL'd source. First, something using QT is probably an independent rather than derivative work since QT is just a blackbox library. The GPL explicitly exempts independent works and its 'same restrictions' clauses only apply to derivatives. Claiming the GPL would apply to the main app due to a linked library is like claiming that Photoshop should be GPL'd if it were distributed with a GPL'd filter. The linking thing started as FUD, then some people were overly greedy and embraced the FUD thinking it would lead to more code being opened.
Even if the GPL provisions applied to what you were writing, the GPL does not take away the author's rights. You still hold the copyright to your own work.
"I just don't agree with the pro-gun "It's for a Revolution" line. Gun-owners have had a very bad track-records with actually protecting our freedoms, with exactly 0 examples after 1800. Even if you had the right to buy rocket launchers and tanks there's still the money issue."
I could make an argument about pooling resources combined with the dramatically lower prices you would see with increased demand and an elimination of gun regulation and licensing (Handguns could go from $550 to $50, less popular arms would see less dramatic drops). But, viability really isn't the point. Whether the use of guns to overcome government corruption in modern times is viable or not does not change the spirit of the amendment. The amendment clearly demonstrates that leaving the citizens a way to depose the government or part of the government by force is part of the fundamental principles of the nation. If guns aren't viable then not only should restrictions on the guns be removed but any additional rights and protections that need to be added to make sure the citizens of the nation have this ability should be granted.
"And yet, the US has the largest prison population per capita of any country in the world."
The US has very strict gun laws that need serious relaxing. You are actually supporting my position not fighting it. In fact, strict laws create longer prison sentences and create additional criminals because people are arrested for breaking those laws. That is logically sound but still isn't really why US prison populations are so large. The reason US prison populations are so high is because of silly drug laws. 60% (if I recall correctly) of the population in US prisons are black males convicted of drug offenses.
Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
Guns don't protect people, people protect people.
Yup, passes the logic tests. Guns are just a tool that augments our ability to fight. Of course there are others who would harm us that have tools for the same purpose. Those others have no scruples that prevent them from using outlawed tools. The result of this is that the outlawing the best tools takes them out of the hands of law abiding citizens while leaving them in the hands of those who have no respect for the law. The only way this wouldn't be true is law enforcement were effective and any wild teen who breaks the law daily can tell you how many crimes out of a thousand the police even know occurred, let alone catch the bad guy.
There are plenty of bad guys to worry about. The government of course is number one. Leaving citizens the ability to repel the powers at be was the reason that the rebels who just repelled the powers at be thought it was important that citizens be allowed to bear arms. In the modern day this should mean tanks and rocket launchers are protected. Criminals are the more PC opponent of the day and very real. Countries with mandatory possession have much lower crime rates than countries with strict gun laws. Terrorism in particular is widespread in countries with strict gun laws (I say this as someone who is entirely opposed to the war on terror, this just happens to be a legitimate reference to terrorism).
About this time someone brings out a ridiculous reference to a three year old with an Uzi. After all, lets bring children into an argument that has nothing to do with children.
Unless the two party system is a way of exploiting the masses the division on this issue doesn't even make sense. Regulating guns is a huge step in the direction of a police state. That seems to be more in line with the right wing agenda. The result is that we get a weakened constitution (both parties) police powers that trample rights (right) and gun control laws that increase crime and eliminate the peoples ability to defend themselves against threats (like violent criminals and terrorists) (left) and the end result is a people that are powerless to resist the corrupt forces that run the nation.
That is an excellent idea. I think you should suggest that to the Debian team.
Laugh as you will but I have drastically improved firefox usage over merely preinstalling it if I renamed the shortcut to "Internet". Evolution is a terrible name, programming languages aren't intended for use by people who have never heard of the language, and Dreamweaver is not a program intended for people who have never heard of Dreamweaver either. A web browser is a free application that was probably installed by someone else.
I can't see where renaming Firefox can be bad since it is the stupidest name for a web browser you can imagine. How about a name that in some way is at least vaguely associated with what the program does? My god what a concept. A name that would give reasonably intelligent people who have never heard of the program the ability to guess that they should click on that to browse the web!
"If you think that murder is a joke, then we are operating on two completely planes of reality."
Come now, anything can be a joke. Murder, rape, tax evasion, and piracy can all be joke material. You take life too seriously.
Personally I think the death penalty should apply to far reaching white collar corruption like that commited by executives and heavy shareholders at the RIAA + associated studios.