All we can say is that man and whatever fossil shared a common ancestor. Well, no kidding! All animals share a common ancestor, even if was microscopic and swam in some muddy pool. For that matter, we have not found a fossil or even a species that is a direct ancestor to any other species.
What exactly do you mean by this? Do you mean that because it's not possible to trace a direct lineage from a given fossil bone to yourself, that you have doubts that any of it happened?
That's not to say I don't believe evolution. I just get really offended when someone tells me I can bring up questions about it.
CAN'T CAN'T CAN'T
Sorry, pet hate. Also, nobody's telling you that you can't question it. What you actually can't do is make shit up that seems to be a hole (when it isn't), tell your followers that this proves evolution is all lies, exclaim that as a result it is now 100% certain that god did it, and then (and this is the bit that gets people like me really upset) demand to use my tax money to spread your dumbass beliefs to everyone else's children.
Hell, if you have legitimate concerns about specific areas of evolutionary theory then I'm sure people would be glad to hear 'em. At this stage it's highly unlikely that they would derail the whole thing, because it matches reality so well. But it would be really cool if there was a Einsteinian relativity -> Quantum physics style leap at some point that allowed us to understand the whole thing in a new way. (The Newton->Einstein jump, IMHO, was the discovery of DNA and how it works, though of course this knowledge is still incomplete).
"In the grand scheme of your daily life, and continued existence on this planet, how has the knowledge that humans evolved from monkeys, and so on and so forth down to single celled whatnot, been an important factor in your continued success as a person?"
Biological and medical science wouldn't be where they are without knowledge of evolution and DNA, part of the whole picture is our evolutionary pattern.
BTW, not descended from monkeys. We share a common ancestor with monkeys several million years ago.
Sure, it may be ignorance, but I can be ignorant about a lot of things, and live a perfectly healthy and normal life.
Teaching ignorance of life sciences to an entire generation is a recipe for total scientific failure later on, not to mention that teaching blind faith over critical thinking in general is a terrible idea.
What one person believes is irrelevant. What is taught to entire generations of children will have an impact on the future of the country.
Settlers II in the late 90s subtly broke the game economy if it detected it had been copied, making iron foundries turn iron-ore into pigs instead of pig iron, which were then taken to the butcher and turned into ham. You couldn't make metals so you couldn't raise an army, but everyone was very well fed....
Took me ages to figure out what was going on, and I LOL'd.
I trust my friends, and maybe their judgement in friends. Beyond that, why would I trust anyone to verify anything?
The CA system for HTTPS is hopelessly broken, this much is clear, but I genuinely don't get how a wb of trust is any better. An extended group of people vouching for each other is not my idea of trustworthy either.
Came here to say this. Shame most people won't get the difference.
The problem is with the trust infrastructure around HTTPS. SSL the protocol is not at issue here.
Moxie Marlinspike is clearly a great security analyst and a pretty good writer, but it would be nice if he had mentioned the difference. SSL has far wider uses than the web, many of which make no use of public trust infrastructure, do not use http (so do not suffer from SSLStrip attacks), are limited to good ciphersuites that don't use out of date hashes or weak encryption methods and are generally A Good Thing (tm).
There are some known problems with SSL/TLS, I believe there was a data-injection flaw discovered some time ago. But it's not hopelessly broken. HTTPS is may be hopelessly broken. SSL is not.
I live in Australia, I don't listen to 'popular' music stations on the radio, only the alternative ones or the ones that play a mix of everything from the 50s/60s onwards.
I am old (32) and therefore these things pass me by. There was no judgement of the particular act there, I've never heard it, I'm just suspicious of things that get wildly popular, especially all of a sudden.
"The fact that I am writing a Free Software application, and the GPL specifically prohibits me from incorporating code released under that license is precisely the issue of relevance."
But how many theoretical people get to use your proposed output is not relevant. At all.
The GPL is a mechanism where I, the writer of your awkward component, ensure that anyone who ever gets it from anywhere, altered, adapted, binary, whatever, gets to enjoy open source. That's not true of any of the other licences.
To be honest I don't usually like it when people use dictionary definitions in internet arguments, but it helped me to clarify whether it was right or not. First definition from a google search on "zealot definition":
. A person who is fanatical and uncompromising in pursuit of their religious, political, or other ideals.
He is uncompromising, most certainly, and will not use closed systems to the extent of seriously inconveniencing himself. Fanatical? Well, unsure. I might have to look at another definition there. So perhaps he is and perhaps he isn't.
He certainly displays zeal for his FOSS ideals, he is at the least an idealist rather than a pragmatist. not something I have a problem with necessarily. I don't buy into all of his arguments though.
"The answer, of course, is the BSDL one. Why? Because if I pick the GPL'd one then I do not have the right to distribute the complete program to anyone.
Which library you end up using is irrelevant. Utilisation rates may be higher (and probably are) for many closed source programs. They are irrelevant to a discussion on source code freedoms and rights.
So tell me, what freedom did the GPL'd code give me, or people downstream from me, that the BSDL didn't give?"
You are not the the recipient of the freedoms, just someone using a whole mess of licenses to try to stitch together some software.
I'm writing Free Software, but if I incorporate GPL'd code then I am no longer allowed to distribute my work.
Yes, you've come up with a cocktail of incompatible licenses, most of which allow for binary-only redistribution, something the GPL does not allow you to do. "AHA!" I hear you say, I'm not allowed to do that, so I have lost a freedom!
But wait, if that is allowed then it is possible that users lose freedoms later. The person writing the original GPL component though that that was *more* important than you being able to use it.
"Who benefitted from this? According to your argument, the people I distribute my code to, except that with the GPL, there aren't any of these people."
Again, irrelevant.
If I could only include GPL source code in my proprietary application then I could benefit all sorts of people, charge them for the privilege and never give them the source. But the GPL prevents this and the original author thought that the continuing openness of derived and redistributed versions of their code was more important than the ability for a wider audience to reuse it.
Exactly the same applies with the GPL. The binary distributor only has to provide an offer, good for three years, to provide the source. If no one requests it (in writing), or if no one who requested it publishes it, then it's lost.
All true, but still irrelevant because the 3 years is 3 years more than the promise of source from someone that hands you a binary from BSD sources.
Some folks who consider that your pragmatic stance is more important than having the entire ecosystem under GPL-like source code availabilty conditions will use the LGPL precisely to help folks like you out. Others won't. It's their freedom to choose I guess....
Because so far 9 people have replied to my original post.
"but you obviously haven't actually read the BSDL"
I've read the BSD license several times before. The copyright notice and BSD license must be reproduced when binaries are distributed. Likely on page 400 of a manual that's probably online somewhere or on a cd rather than printed anywhere with the device.
It doesn't mandate telling you where the guy giving you the binary got it from, just a namecheck on the copyright holder. Neither does it give the right to ask for source.
So what exactly did I get wrong in my post?
"I suggest that before you argue about the merits of various licenses, you actually try reading them..."
And I suggest that before you interject you have something to say.
BSD - As someone handed a binary blob of stuff, the guy that gave it to me doesn't even have to tell me where he got it from, let alone provide me with the source
GPL - As someone handed a binary blob of stuff, I have the freedom to explore and alter the source of that program
GPL is more free.
(Yes, this is simplistic, but I'm responding to your stupid argument with an equally dumb one. Anyone saying either one is inherently more free is wrong. They provide different freedoms to different peopel)
Fork it off. Close the branch, modify some of the loading code, sell you a closed device running it with no way for you to alter it or even really figure out what's going on inside. Original project drops off the 'net... what now?
As an (infrequent) FOSS contributor, I believe in granting freedoms to the consumer (i.e. also me) rather than the manufacturer (Sony, cisco, WD etc etc). This is the BSD/GPL freedom trade off.
How is it less free for third parties? Is there an inherent right to source code?
That's a freedom granted to all future recipients of GPL software that is not granted by BSD software, yes.
you do not (unless the license specifies it, such as GPL does) have any right - and therefor loose no freedom
It doesn't matter if it's an "inherent" or "natural" right, and good luck defining those by the way. It doesn't have to be.
It is an additional freedom or right of code recipients that is granted by the GPL that is not there in the BSD license. It comes directly at the price of the right of intermediate parties to use the code without opening it.
Much like intolerance of intolerant behaviour is not evidence of a lack of tolerance in general, I don't see someone's right or freedom to deprive others of that same right or freedom to be something I consider worth protecting.
The GPL is not less free for all users of the code. It is less free for the immediate consumer of the code. It is far more free for others. The GPL guarantees those freedoms down the line, where BSD does not.
And BTW, the original BSD code may well go away, there's no guarantee it's going to be available forever. Making the binary distributor responsible for providing access to the source is a way to work around this.
Someone taking BSD code and marrying it with their own proprietary code doesn't do anything to the original code, that code is still there and free to be tinkered with and learned from.
Not when it comes on a closed up device, with no way of running it on that device and likely not even an indication that there's even any BSD code in there.
So, I as a recipient of BSD code in binary form - I might not know it's BSD, the original project could have disappeared or gone offline, all sorts of stuff. To say it *never* goes away is simplistic. The GPL grants this right, BSD does not. RMS would term this right one of his "fundamental freedoms", but then he does talk out of his fundament quite a lot:)
GPL just forces everyone else who wants to use that code into that way of thinking.
That's a fair point, but in truth the bit you want to tinker with is the proprietary code, the BSD code is still free. So you want them to release their code under a free license as well.
Actually it's neither. As a consumer I want to tinker with my device. As a FOSS developer (very small scale hobby) I want people who receive my code and things derived from my code, usually itself minor additions to other projects, to have the same rights I did. The right to ask the binary distributor for the source, and usually also the infrastructure (build systems etc, if not the software tools) to play around with it. It's not that I demand the right to use other people's code, it's that they have to play ball if they want the right to use mine.
I respect that the BSD author's wishes are to release code the way they do, so I'm not going to give you a list of "They should have done it my way!" items because that's nonsense.
I don't think either is necessarily superior in terms of freedom. The GPL just suits the freedoms I want for myself better than BSD does. If you like to think of BSD as more altruistic as a result then that's up to you, but if you look at the software ecosystem (particularly consumer devices with embedded operating systems) you'll see that the GPL often opens up a lot of areas of cool hobby-type stuff that would have stayed closed if there was no publishing requirement for linux. Not because companies are necessarily 'evil' or closed, but because it's at least a minor hassle and a minor cost to pull together that source tarball and shove it on your website, so nless you have to, why would you?
More free for the first party that gets the code, much less free for third parties that are given binaries later.
RMS is a zealot on this, it's true. But I applaud people who release GPL code because they are giving everyone the continuing right to learn and to tinker with the fruits of their labour, not just the first party. I also applaud people that release BSD code as it is very generous, but as an end user it is frequently less useful.
I am not free to tinker with my playstation 3, but there is BSD code in there.
Come on now, on a big tv the Wii does look a bit inadequate.
It could do with higher res (720p?) output and some anti-aliasing. Not a lot, just a bit of polish. Simple, cartoony graphics are good enough for a lot of things, and it's clearly capable of doing more than that on the non cartoon-y games. Smooth out the toons, up the res just a little, done.
What I find funny is that Dolphin can do things waaaaay better than the wii itself at the moment!
Since the HBGary affair, and other things. There are a bunch of disgruntled hackers and an army of script kiddies. This 'campaign' seems to be more to do with the script kiddie side of things.
Slashdot Mirror
All we can say is that man and whatever fossil shared a common ancestor. Well, no kidding! All animals share a common ancestor, even if was microscopic and swam in some muddy pool. For that matter, we have not found a fossil or even a species that is a direct ancestor to any other species.
What exactly do you mean by this?
Do you mean that because it's not possible to trace a direct lineage from a given fossil bone to yourself, that you have doubts that any of it happened?
That's not to say I don't believe evolution. I just get really offended when someone tells me I can bring up questions about it.
CAN'T
CAN'T
CAN'T
Sorry, pet hate. Also, nobody's telling you that you can't question it. What you actually can't do is make shit up that seems to be a hole (when it isn't), tell your followers that this proves evolution is all lies, exclaim that as a result it is now 100% certain that god did it, and then (and this is the bit that gets people like me really upset) demand to use my tax money to spread your dumbass beliefs to everyone else's children.
Hell, if you have legitimate concerns about specific areas of evolutionary theory then I'm sure people would be glad to hear 'em. At this stage it's highly unlikely that they would derail the whole thing, because it matches reality so well. But it would be really cool if there was a Einsteinian relativity -> Quantum physics style leap at some point that allowed us to understand the whole thing in a new way. (The Newton->Einstein jump, IMHO, was the discovery of DNA and how it works, though of course this knowledge is still incomplete).
"In the grand scheme of your daily life, and continued existence on this planet, how has the knowledge that humans evolved from monkeys, and so on and so forth down to single celled whatnot, been an important factor in your continued success as a person?"
Biological and medical science wouldn't be where they are without knowledge of evolution and DNA, part of the whole picture is our evolutionary pattern.
BTW, not descended from monkeys. We share a common ancestor with monkeys several million years ago.
Sure, it may be ignorance, but I can be ignorant about a lot of things, and live a perfectly healthy and normal life.
Teaching ignorance of life sciences to an entire generation is a recipe for total scientific failure later on, not to mention that teaching blind faith over critical thinking in general is a terrible idea.
What one person believes is irrelevant. What is taught to entire generations of children will have an impact on the future of the country.
Hmmm, maybe it was S3, and maybe it was a virus after all!
Settlers II in the late 90s subtly broke the game economy if it detected it had been copied, making iron foundries turn iron-ore into pigs instead of pig iron, which were then taken to the butcher and turned into ham. You couldn't make metals so you couldn't raise an army, but everyone was very well fed....
Took me ages to figure out what was going on, and I LOL'd.
Why should I trust a web of trust?
I trust my friends, and maybe their judgement in friends. Beyond that, why would I trust anyone to verify anything?
The CA system for HTTPS is hopelessly broken, this much is clear, but I genuinely don't get how a wb of trust is any better. An extended group of people vouching for each other is not my idea of trustworthy either.
Came here to say this. Shame most people won't get the difference.
The problem is with the trust infrastructure around HTTPS. SSL the protocol is not at issue here.
Moxie Marlinspike is clearly a great security analyst and a pretty good writer, but it would be nice if he had mentioned the difference. SSL has far wider uses than the web, many of which make no use of public trust infrastructure, do not use http (so do not suffer from SSLStrip attacks), are limited to good ciphersuites that don't use out of date hashes or weak encryption methods and are generally A Good Thing (tm).
There are some known problems with SSL/TLS, I believe there was a data-injection flaw discovered some time ago. But it's not hopelessly broken. HTTPS is may be hopelessly broken. SSL is not.
I live in Australia, I don't listen to 'popular' music stations on the radio, only the alternative ones or the ones that play a mix of everything from the 50s/60s onwards.
I am old (32) and therefore these things pass me by. There was no judgement of the particular act there, I've never heard it, I'm just suspicious of things that get wildly popular, especially all of a sudden.
I just wonder how much money he made when he put his soul up for auction.
"Given that she was "discovered" after posting songs on MySpace"
Genuinely, or "I've got relatives in the business" discovered like Lily Allen?
Or "let's pretend this is a grass roots movement but really it's just marketing" discovered?
Extra buttons. For someone with motor control problems.
Grand idea.
"The fact that I am writing a Free Software application, and the GPL specifically prohibits me from incorporating code released under that license is precisely the issue of relevance."
But how many theoretical people get to use your proposed output is not relevant. At all.
The GPL is a mechanism where I, the writer of your awkward component, ensure that anyone who ever gets it from anywhere, altered, adapted, binary, whatever, gets to enjoy open source. That's not true of any of the other licences.
Don't like it, don't use it.
To be honest I don't usually like it when people use dictionary definitions in internet arguments, but it helped me to clarify whether it was right or not. First definition from a google search on "zealot definition":
. A person who is fanatical and uncompromising in pursuit of their religious, political, or other ideals.
He is uncompromising, most certainly, and will not use closed systems to the extent of seriously inconveniencing himself. Fanatical? Well, unsure. I might have to look at another definition there. So perhaps he is and perhaps he isn't.
He certainly displays zeal for his FOSS ideals, he is at the least an idealist rather than a pragmatist. not something I have a problem with necessarily. I don't buy into all of his arguments though.
"The answer, of course, is the BSDL one. Why? Because if I pick the GPL'd one then I do not have the right to distribute the complete program to anyone.
Which library you end up using is irrelevant. Utilisation rates may be higher (and probably are) for many closed source programs. They are irrelevant to a discussion on source code freedoms and rights.
So tell me, what freedom did the GPL'd code give me, or people downstream from me, that the BSDL didn't give?"
You are not the the recipient of the freedoms, just someone using a whole mess of licenses to try to stitch together some software.
I'm writing Free Software, but if I incorporate GPL'd code then I am no longer allowed to distribute my work.
Yes, you've come up with a cocktail of incompatible licenses, most of which allow for binary-only redistribution, something the GPL does not allow you to do. "AHA!" I hear you say, I'm not allowed to do that, so I have lost a freedom!
But wait, if that is allowed then it is possible that users lose freedoms later. The person writing the original GPL component though that that was *more* important than you being able to use it.
"Who benefitted from this? According to your argument, the people I distribute my code to, except that with the GPL, there aren't any of these people."
Again, irrelevant.
If I could only include GPL source code in my proprietary application then I could benefit all sorts of people, charge them for the privilege and never give them the source. But the GPL prevents this and the original author thought that the continuing openness of derived and redistributed versions of their code was more important than the ability for a wider audience to reuse it.
Exactly the same applies with the GPL. The binary distributor only has to provide an offer, good for three years, to provide the source. If no one requests it (in writing), or if no one who requested it publishes it, then it's lost.
All true, but still irrelevant because the 3 years is 3 years more than the promise of source from someone that hands you a binary from BSD sources.
Some folks who consider that your pragmatic stance is more important than having the entire ecosystem under GPL-like source code availabilty conditions will use the LGPL precisely to help folks like you out. Others won't. It's their freedom to choose I guess....
"You've posted in this thread a load of times"
Because so far 9 people have replied to my original post.
"but you obviously haven't actually read the BSDL"
I've read the BSD license several times before. The copyright notice and BSD license must be reproduced when binaries are distributed. Likely on page 400 of a manual that's probably online somewhere or on a cd rather than printed anywhere with the device.
It doesn't mandate telling you where the guy giving you the binary got it from, just a namecheck on the copyright holder. Neither does it give the right to ask for source.
So what exactly did I get wrong in my post?
"I suggest that before you argue about the merits of various licenses, you actually try reading them..."
And I suggest that before you interject you have something to say.
GPL - you can freely use my code as long as you pass that freedom on
BSD - you can freely use my code including denying the downstream people the same freedom.
It's not about forcing anyone to do it your way, it's about maintaining freedom and openness.
BSD - As someone handed a binary blob of stuff, the guy that gave it to me doesn't even have to tell me where he got it from, let alone provide me with the source
GPL - As someone handed a binary blob of stuff, I have the freedom to explore and alter the source of that program
GPL is more free.
(Yes, this is simplistic, but I'm responding to your stupid argument with an equally dumb one. Anyone saying either one is inherently more free is wrong. They provide different freedoms to different peopel)
Fork it off. Close the branch, modify some of the loading code, sell you a closed device running it with no way for you to alter it or even really figure out what's going on inside. Original project drops off the 'net... what now?
As an (infrequent) FOSS contributor, I believe in granting freedoms to the consumer (i.e. also me) rather than the manufacturer (Sony, cisco, WD etc etc). This is the BSD/GPL freedom trade off.
How is it less free for third parties? Is there an inherent right to source code?
That's a freedom granted to all future recipients of GPL software that is not granted by BSD software, yes.
you do not (unless the license specifies it, such as GPL does) have any right - and therefor loose no freedom
It doesn't matter if it's an "inherent" or "natural" right, and good luck defining those by the way. It doesn't have to be.
It is an additional freedom or right of code recipients that is granted by the GPL that is not there in the BSD license. It comes directly at the price of the right of intermediate parties to use the code without opening it.
Much like intolerance of intolerant behaviour is not evidence of a lack of tolerance in general, I don't see someone's right or freedom to deprive others of that same right or freedom to be something I consider worth protecting.
I guess it depends on your mindset.
The GPL is not less free for all users of the code. It is less free for the immediate consumer of the code. It is far more free for others. The GPL guarantees those freedoms down the line, where BSD does not.
And BTW, the original BSD code may well go away, there's no guarantee it's going to be available forever. Making the binary distributor responsible for providing access to the source is a way to work around this.
Someone taking BSD code and marrying it with their own proprietary code doesn't do anything to the original code, that code is still there and free to be tinkered with and learned from.
Not when it comes on a closed up device, with no way of running it on that device and likely not even an indication that there's even any BSD code in there.
So, I as a recipient of BSD code in binary form - I might not know it's BSD, the original project could have disappeared or gone offline, all sorts of stuff. To say it *never* goes away is simplistic. The GPL grants this right, BSD does not. RMS would term this right one of his "fundamental freedoms", but then he does talk out of his fundament quite a lot :)
GPL just forces everyone else who wants to use that code into that way of thinking.
That's a fair point, but in truth the bit you want to tinker with is the proprietary code, the BSD code is still free. So you want them to release their code under a free license as well.
Actually it's neither. As a consumer I want to tinker with my device. As a FOSS developer (very small scale hobby) I want people who receive my code and things derived from my code, usually itself minor additions to other projects, to have the same rights I did. The right to ask the binary distributor for the source, and usually also the infrastructure (build systems etc, if not the software tools) to play around with it. It's not that I demand the right to use other people's code, it's that they have to play ball if they want the right to use mine.
I respect that the BSD author's wishes are to release code the way they do, so I'm not going to give you a list of "They should have done it my way!" items because that's nonsense.
I don't think either is necessarily superior in terms of freedom. The GPL just suits the freedoms I want for myself better than BSD does. If you like to think of BSD as more altruistic as a result then that's up to you, but if you look at the software ecosystem (particularly consumer devices with embedded operating systems) you'll see that the GPL often opens up a lot of areas of cool hobby-type stuff that would have stayed closed if there was no publishing requirement for linux. Not because companies are necessarily 'evil' or closed, but because it's at least a minor hassle and a minor cost to pull together that source tarball and shove it on your website, so nless you have to, why would you?
That book sucks.
He spends almost every second sentence trying to cram his politics down your throat. It's like a story and a lecture spoken over each other.
Not to mention that the full-on libertarian-paradise chubby he has going is as much a loner fantasy as any other libertarian philosophy.
And those some would be wrong.
More free for the first party that gets the code, much less free for third parties that are given binaries later.
RMS is a zealot on this, it's true. But I applaud people who release GPL code because they are giving everyone the continuing right to learn and to tinker with the fruits of their labour, not just the first party. I also applaud people that release BSD code as it is very generous, but as an end user it is frequently less useful.
I am not free to tinker with my playstation 3, but there is BSD code in there.
Come on now, on a big tv the Wii does look a bit inadequate.
It could do with higher res (720p?) output and some anti-aliasing. Not a lot, just a bit of polish. Simple, cartoony graphics are good enough for a lot of things, and it's clearly capable of doing more than that on the non cartoon-y games. Smooth out the toons, up the res just a little, done.
What I find funny is that Dolphin can do things waaaaay better than the wii itself at the moment!
Since the HBGary affair, and other things. There are a bunch of disgruntled hackers and an army of script kiddies. This 'campaign' seems to be more to do with the script kiddie side of things.
Sure you can keep it.
In exchange for loss of access to the online services and not playing any games released after the firmware was updated.
Major loss of functionality, either way. Also irrelevant to the general right to hack what I own.