"The parasites don't seem to be causing all that much trouble..."
And how could we presume to know what damage to attribute to the parasites? They do not present an obvious and immediate direct health hazard but what actions have been taken as a result of altered brain chemistry? Can religion be attributed to them to perhaps? Anti-abortion? War? Greed? Who knows what atrocities can be attributed to the parasites.
ok, Schizo inducing parasites carried by cats have infected over half of mankind. Plague infections this century.. virtually nill. Not that I'm keeping score or anything.
"As much as the extinction of the common house cat would fill me with wonderous joy, I cannot bring myself to encourage it so that members of our species can continue to propogate."
So you're saying that if it's us or the cats, you vote for the cats?
"I do understand that the chance of becoming infected is low."
Lets try this again, the most conservative estimates show over 50% of humans are infected. Quite frankly I wouldn't consider extinction of felines altogether out of the question if it is the only completely effective solution. That certainly would not be the first choice, especially for a cat lover like myself. But really, PETA nuts aside, even the lowest examples of my own animal species trump all other creatures on Earth. It's called rooting for the home team.
"Someone's background is a valid means of assessing their credibility, and everyone (including yourself) uses those criteria."
Certainly, it is a valid way of assessing HIS credibility. But it is NOT a valid way of assessing the validity of his arguments. I certainly do not use those criteria in that sense if I can help it.
"Furthermore, as for his actual physics, I gave several reasons why his claims were dodgy."
That is true enough. My comment was more for the masses who are more likely to pay attention to your claims that he lacks credibility than to the objective points against him. There are certainly no shortage of valid points that are sweeped under the table and/or outright ignored because of ad hominem attacks. While we are all guilty of it, it is likely we have all also experienced it at some point.
If this guy is correct then the anti-gravity field ahead of us would push objects out of the way. The problem would come in when we slowed below 57.7% of the speed of light and stopped generating the anti-gravity field.
Sounds like he surpasses the qualifications of the last patent clerk who revolutionized physics... Attacking the man is not a valid way to disprove his conclusions.
One of the fundemental principles of logic is that you can not reduce the credibility of an argument by reducing the credibility of the one posing it.
In other words, 2+2 is not any more valid when posed by the pope than by Hitler. Or to go less concrete, Relativity would have been no more or less likely if Hitler has proposed it rather than Einstein.
Judge the good doctors ideas on their merits rather than on his merits.
Last I checked intellectual property is a way of misnaming limited privilage grants gifted by the public to make it seem as if copyright/patent holders owned the material rather than the public. Further, the companies in question (namely ATI and NVIDIA) make and sell hardware and not software. Since the software really does not reveal much about the product and can easily be reverse engineered by any 13 year old (let alone their competitors) there is actually no benefit to the companies or to the users in keeping the drivers closed.
The primary purpose for closing the drivers is to hide the dirty hacks used to boost scores on popular benchmarks and that does NOT help keep the market competitive. Lets call a cat a cat shall we?
X will use memory the same as it does now, but X will think the memory it's using is video memory. The processing overhead for desktop rendering will still be offloaded from the cpu to the gpu.
Wrong. You do not patent ideas. You patent inventions. You could patent your toaster (the blueprints are merely evidence of having invented it, the patent office used to require you send the prototype toaster) but not the idea of a toaster or heating bread. Ideas do not and should not have any form of protection.
The patent office granting patents for what amount to ideas instead of actual inventions is why reform is needed.
Patents cover implementations, copyrights cover implementations. Both cover different mediums with different properties and therefore grant different controls.
"One of the really good things about patents is they require publishing your work."
Yes, that is what the public gets in exchange for granting patent protections. By default everything is public domain. In the case of software this benefit does not exist and that is one of the fundemental reasons patents should not apply to software (aside from the blantant fact that mathmatics should never be patentable). Software can be disassembled and therefore there is no need to give the author anything in exchange for revealing how it works. Further, software authors are not inventing anything, nobody can invent mathmatical algorithms.
Last but certainly not least. Copyright and Patent should NEVER apply to the same work. You can either copyright something or patent it but should NEVER gain the protections of both. The reason patents and copyright offer different controls is because they cover different mediums. The concepts of patent protections when applied to copyrightable media serve to stiffle innovation rather than promote it.
"Copyrights aren't a substitute for patents. Copyrights protect the effort you spent implementing an algorithm. Patents protect the algorithm itself."
It is true that copyrights and patents do not work the same way. They are also never supposed to apply to the same work. Software falls under the domain of copyright as it should. Patents are NOT intended to cover algorithms. Mathmatical algorithms are NOT supposed to be patentable at all! The problem is that software companies want the virtual monopolies you speak of and as a result pretend that software is not simply an abstract term for math and logic.
Further, software patents typically outline functions of the application without disclosing the details of implementation. Therefore implementations are STILL left only to those who reverse engineer the algorithm. Because software patents are crafted in the way they are a completely unique implementation to accomplish the same task is barred.
This is not how physical patents work! If you invent and patent a toaster then I also am supposed to be allowed to invent a unique devices that functions in another manner but accomplishes the same end... toasting bread.
Some of us believe that COPYRIGHT and the profits reaped from copyrighting your software are enough and that wanting more is simple greed. Mathmatical formulas and algorithms should not be patentable. No matter how many layers of abstraction you throw on top of them.
Software is covered under copyright and has no legitimate place in the world of patents. Patents only serve the purpose of blocking the competition from developing competing products that function in a similar way. This hinders progress.
There is no particular reason a company should be able to sit back and collect residual income because the competition is artificially impeded from developing a unique implementation in the same market. The world of technology is at it's best when company b implements company a's idea as soon as it is able and both are forced to rush to innovate new and improved technology to maintain their lead. Competition is a the lifeblood of a free market.
I seem to remember a 5000 year old date palm seed being sprouted not long ago.
The big question is, how would the tattered remnants fo man (or any other intelligent being that happens along) know where to find the seeds even if they were viable.
I wonder if anyone who even consider consuming poisons like alcohol if pot were cheap and legal (if legal, it would cheaper than most crops to produce per acre).
I can print copies of the binary and wallpaper my house with them without copyright law entering into the equation. For software and multimedia on cd's they explicitly allowed a backup copy but that doesn't mean you weren't allowed to have additional copies without that clause.
Read my lips, you need no permission from a copyright holder for any form of personal copying/use. Copying for the purpose of distribution is where copyright gives the holder their limited rights.
These days the Entertainment industry has brainwashed society to the point where the average joe thinks a copyright holder owns the content instead of having a grant of limited control from the REAL owner.. the public. That real owner (me and you) retain all rights not explicitly granted to the copyright holder.
"In other words, you don't need to agree to the GPL because there is no counterpart agreement on your part as far as usage is concerned, but you need to be aware that the software that you are using is in fact Free to use."
Copyright law does not restrict usage. If I find a book laying on the ground I have every right to read it by default. Just because you wrote the book does not give you the right to restrict my usage beyond copying and distribution.
Like most slashdotters I haven't read the article yet. But if the summary is any indicator this sounds like a message to corporations that they shouldn't contribute and FUD that trys to proclaim that corporate interests do all the work anyway.
This is complete nonsense. There IS a community and if corporations want the community to maintain their projects than they will have to contribute commercial grade code. If you don't have commercial grade code you would like the community to maintain for you (either a project or feature additions to a project) then don't contribute them and they won't be maintained. It really is that simple.
Slashdot Mirror
"The parasites don't seem to be causing all that much trouble..."
And how could we presume to know what damage to attribute to the parasites? They do not present an obvious and immediate direct health hazard but what actions have been taken as a result of altered brain chemistry? Can religion be attributed to them to perhaps? Anti-abortion? War? Greed? Who knows what atrocities can be attributed to the parasites.
This from the AC who hurls slanderous attacks with no premise to back his conclusion.
ok, Schizo inducing parasites carried by cats have infected over half of mankind. Plague infections this century.. virtually nill. Not that I'm keeping score or anything.
"As much as the extinction of the common house cat would fill me with wonderous joy, I cannot bring myself to encourage it so that members of our species can continue to propogate."
So you're saying that if it's us or the cats, you vote for the cats?
"I do understand that the chance of becoming infected is low."
Lets try this again, the most conservative estimates show over 50% of humans are infected. Quite frankly I wouldn't consider extinction of felines altogether out of the question if it is the only completely effective solution. That certainly would not be the first choice, especially for a cat lover like myself. But really, PETA nuts aside, even the lowest examples of my own animal species trump all other creatures on Earth. It's called rooting for the home team.
"Someone's background is a valid means of assessing their credibility, and everyone (including yourself) uses those criteria."
Certainly, it is a valid way of assessing HIS credibility. But it is NOT a valid way of assessing the validity of his arguments. I certainly do not use those criteria in that sense if I can help it.
"Furthermore, as for his actual physics, I gave several reasons why his claims were dodgy."
That is true enough. My comment was more for the masses who are more likely to pay attention to your claims that he lacks credibility than to the objective points against him. There are certainly no shortage of valid points that are sweeped under the table and/or outright ignored because of ad hominem attacks. While we are all guilty of it, it is likely we have all also experienced it at some point.
If this guy is correct then the anti-gravity field ahead of us would push objects out of the way. The problem would come in when we slowed below 57.7% of the speed of light and stopped generating the anti-gravity field.
Sounds like he surpasses the qualifications of the last patent clerk who revolutionized physics... Attacking the man is not a valid way to disprove his conclusions.
One of the fundemental principles of logic is that you can not reduce the credibility of an argument by reducing the credibility of the one posing it.
In other words, 2+2 is not any more valid when posed by the pope than by Hitler. Or to go less concrete, Relativity would have been no more or less likely if Hitler has proposed it rather than Einstein.
Judge the good doctors ideas on their merits rather than on his merits.
Sorry but you are alone on this one. Fonts have looked beautiful in linux for a long time on my screen.
Last I checked intellectual property is a way of misnaming limited privilage grants gifted by the public to make it seem as if copyright/patent holders owned the material rather than the public. Further, the companies in question (namely ATI and NVIDIA) make and sell hardware and not software. Since the software really does not reveal much about the product and can easily be reverse engineered by any 13 year old (let alone their competitors) there is actually no benefit to the companies or to the users in keeping the drivers closed.
The primary purpose for closing the drivers is to hide the dirty hacks used to boost scores on popular benchmarks and that does NOT help keep the market competitive. Lets call a cat a cat shall we?
Congratulations, you year for a hardware accelerated win 3.11
X will use memory the same as it does now, but X will think the memory it's using is video memory. The processing overhead for desktop rendering will still be offloaded from the cpu to the gpu.
Wrong. You do not patent ideas. You patent inventions. You could patent your toaster (the blueprints are merely evidence of having invented it, the patent office used to require you send the prototype toaster) but not the idea of a toaster or heating bread. Ideas do not and should not have any form of protection.
The patent office granting patents for what amount to ideas instead of actual inventions is why reform is needed.
Patents cover implementations, copyrights cover implementations. Both cover different mediums with different properties and therefore grant different controls.
"One of the really good things about patents is they require publishing your work."
Yes, that is what the public gets in exchange for granting patent protections. By default everything is public domain. In the case of software this benefit does not exist and that is one of the fundemental reasons patents should not apply to software (aside from the blantant fact that mathmatics should never be patentable). Software can be disassembled and therefore there is no need to give the author anything in exchange for revealing how it works. Further, software authors are not inventing anything, nobody can invent mathmatical algorithms.
Last but certainly not least. Copyright and Patent should NEVER apply to the same work. You can either copyright something or patent it but should NEVER gain the protections of both. The reason patents and copyright offer different controls is because they cover different mediums. The concepts of patent protections when applied to copyrightable media serve to stiffle innovation rather than promote it.
"Copyrights aren't a substitute for patents. Copyrights protect the effort you spent implementing an algorithm. Patents protect the algorithm itself."
It is true that copyrights and patents do not work the same way. They are also never supposed to apply to the same work. Software falls under the domain of copyright as it should. Patents are NOT intended to cover algorithms. Mathmatical algorithms are NOT supposed to be patentable at all! The problem is that software companies want the virtual monopolies you speak of and as a result pretend that software is not simply an abstract term for math and logic.
Further, software patents typically outline functions of the application without disclosing the details of implementation. Therefore implementations are STILL left only to those who reverse engineer the algorithm. Because software patents are crafted in the way they are a completely unique implementation to accomplish the same task is barred.
This is not how physical patents work! If you invent and patent a toaster then I also am supposed to be allowed to invent a unique devices that functions in another manner but accomplishes the same end... toasting bread.
Some of us believe that COPYRIGHT and the profits reaped from copyrighting your software are enough and that wanting more is simple greed. Mathmatical formulas and algorithms should not be patentable. No matter how many layers of abstraction you throw on top of them.
Software is covered under copyright and has no legitimate place in the world of patents. Patents only serve the purpose of blocking the competition from developing competing products that function in a similar way. This hinders progress.
There is no particular reason a company should be able to sit back and collect residual income because the competition is artificially impeded from developing a unique implementation in the same market. The world of technology is at it's best when company b implements company a's idea as soon as it is able and both are forced to rush to innovate new and improved technology to maintain their lead. Competition is a the lifeblood of a free market.
We could use nuclear waste to make a big neon sign that could be put in a stable orbit and seen from most of earth.
Here in the states less than an ounce is generally a $100ish (varies from state to state) fine. At least for a first offense.
I seem to remember a 5000 year old date palm seed being sprouted not long ago.
The big question is, how would the tattered remnants fo man (or any other intelligent being that happens along) know where to find the seeds even if they were viable.
I wonder if anyone who even consider consuming poisons like alcohol if pot were cheap and legal (if legal, it would cheaper than most crops to produce per acre).
I can print copies of the binary and wallpaper my house with them without copyright law entering into the equation. For software and multimedia on cd's they explicitly allowed a backup copy but that doesn't mean you weren't allowed to have additional copies without that clause.
Read my lips, you need no permission from a copyright holder for any form of personal copying/use. Copying for the purpose of distribution is where copyright gives the holder their limited rights.
These days the Entertainment industry has brainwashed society to the point where the average joe thinks a copyright holder owns the content instead of having a grant of limited control from the REAL owner.. the public. That real owner (me and you) retain all rights not explicitly granted to the copyright holder.
After every major new feature being pulled from each new windows os before it hits the shelves this is flamebait??!!??
"In other words, you don't need to agree to the GPL because there is no counterpart agreement on your part as far as usage is concerned, but you need to be aware that the software that you are using is in fact Free to use."
Copyright law does not restrict usage. If I find a book laying on the ground I have every right to read it by default. Just because you wrote the book does not give you the right to restrict my usage beyond copying and distribution.
Like most slashdotters I haven't read the article yet. But if the summary is any indicator this sounds like a message to corporations that they shouldn't contribute and FUD that trys to proclaim that corporate interests do all the work anyway.
This is complete nonsense. There IS a community and if corporations want the community to maintain their projects than they will have to contribute commercial grade code. If you don't have commercial grade code you would like the community to maintain for you (either a project or feature additions to a project) then don't contribute them and they won't be maintained. It really is that simple.