Their view, and I have to say I agree, is that its more important to get people a communication network (mobile phones) than it is to get them a computer.
The best thing is that the cell phone can double as a (simple) computer. Address books, games, calculators; essentially all the technological benefits of living in a first world economy despite the poor economy. My guess is that the trend will only speed up, and at the far end third world countries will be getting nano-assemblers the same time (or before, due to fewer regulations/NIMBY) as the first world.
In the present, I also think that third world countries will be among the first to be fully ipv6 networked. How can you handle 3 billion cell phones on standard ipv4 hardware without massive NATs which make them almost useless? The cell network really needs to be recognized as an extension of the Internet, and not just a bunch of clients behind some phone company's NAT box. That will only happen in countries where the infrastructure is new and there aren't the huge vested interests of western phone companies...
After relativity and E=Mc^2, physicists have preferred to measure mass in terms of energy rather than silly units like grams and ounces. In short, we give the energy equivalent for the particle if it was somehow completely annihilated. 1 electron volt refers to the energy of one electron under an electric field at a point of 1 volt of potential difference.
Silly units like V = m^2 * kg * s^(-3)* A^(-1)? You can't separate the description of energy from that of matter, since they're equivalent and interdependant. The real reason electron volts are used is that it's a small enough unit that elementary particles have small fractions or multiples of its charge.
It was called "Find a computer, modem, connector cable, and communications software that worked with all three, find a BBS, fidonet node, or ISP with a local phone number, dial it, sign up, and then learn how to use it over a 2400 baud terminal connection." It was a good test, and it worked for quite a few years.
This isn't a "minor issue", this is turning the most experienced, and often wisest segment of our population into second class citizens. Look at the average ages of our Supreme Court Justices. Now tell me that they can't handle signing up "all on their own" for a damn cell-phone because they might get "confused," because it's so darn "complicated."
Yes, just LOOK at the decisions they've been cranking out recently... Time for some young blood! Just imagine, say, the honorable Ted Stevens trying to sign up for Internet service: "Yes, when can you come lay the pipes then? Will you have to dig up my yard? Is a 1 mega-inch pipe big enough for sending internets?"
Who said anything about putting publically available information online? It might, for example, be private information about a building that makes it easier to blow it up. "Our new death star has a state of the art venting port, located for easy access at..."
Frankly, anything that has been posted on the Internet should not be considered private anymore. There are too many search engines and archives and caches that can keep it around. If damaging information is ever made available on the Internet, then whatever the information was about has to be changed to prevent that information from being damaging anymore. Like closing the venting port (or putting a grille in it) after lots of Bothans have been dying for some vague but important goal recently.
It's funny that you accuse me of bad faith, since you're lumping me in with the Bush administration's crazy attempts to control information. I didn't say anything about censorship. I simply pointed out that a web site can have legitimate reasons for wanting to withdraw information that was previously on its site.
I'm sorry, it's just that when the terrorists are used in an argument about preventing access to information, it's usually information that any private citizen could discover within a few hours of searching in the right places. I'm sure there are plenty of state secrets that shouldn't be on the Internet, but that was my point: If it's illegal for Secret or Top Secret information to be on some web site, it's equally illegal on the Wayback machine and can be removed through the normal legal process. For secrets that websites wish hadn't been published, perhaps they should reevaluate their security if simple information can make them vulnerable. For instance guard schedules and routes can be changed, security codes can be changed, cameras can be added to cover dead spots in coverage, etc. If the entire security of some building or resource depends on some vulnerability that can't be remedied if it's disclosed, then it was never secure to begin with.
Nice try, but that's not how its working. If you want to make use of GPL code, you are then restricted to GPLing your software. Please explain how that's a choice for the developer.
First, you are wrong that software developers must GPL their software. That's only if they distribute it. Second, developers *always* have a choice of what code to include in their own software. As I've repeatedly pointed out before, the choice for a software developer in releasing GPL code is that they are guaranteeing that any improvements to it will be available to them as well. It's a contract for the betterment of the code, for everyone, instead of just being advantageous to one group or individual.
Actually I'd think in a totally free society you COULD sell yourself into slavery if you choose to do so. In your free software environment though you're taking away developers freedom if they choose to use GPL code. The result is that some developers end up re-inventing the wheel.
Again, our definition of freedom differs. To me, freedom is the assumption of human rights as a constant. Any other society is not free, merely convenient for those in power.
The code itself can be copied infinitely, sure. Does that mean the time I spent in creating it is worthless? I do all the work, I put in the effort and investment, and you come along and say 'thanks, well take that!' and walk off. Wow, do I feel appreciated. Next time instead of writing code to the benefit of everyone, I guess I'll go build houses for a living..
If you go build houses for a living, let me know how information flows in that business. I'll be surprised if you can find any example other than blueprints where information about housebuilding is hoarded and paid for like software. But in the end, isn't the information needed to build a house just software for people? The complexity of a modern house is at least as complex as some major programming projects when fire, water, plumbing, electical, and engineering codes are all taken into consideration. In case you are wondering, I have personally built a house as well. All the people we worked with were happy to share experience and advice (e.g. information) as we paid them for the service of manual labor or even information processing (in the case of our structural engineer). Almost everyone in the real world realizes that sharing information is beneficial, and its only those in the artifically created "intellectual property" markets that think otherwise. In terms of me taking your software when it's finished, I'd like to know when you planned on compensating Knuth, Dijkstra, Turing, or any other big names of computer science? They have contributed far more than you or I probably ever will, and they did it almost entirely for their salaries at universities.
No, I think you're clearly in the minority. Sharing knowledge is helpful yes, but at the end of the day people need motivation to invest the time and effort required to create great software. How can I spend time creating something good if I'm worried about paying for my house? The answer is that I likely won't.
I write software because I like to, not because anyone pays me for it. In my job I do a mix of system administration and programming, but those are purely service activites for the company I work for. They don't necessarily care if I GPL my code or not, because it's specific to their business and most of what I write are either highly custom changes or generic utilities to make things faster. My reward for creating software on my own time is simply that it's what I like doing, so it gives me pleasure. Most open source programmers are the same way, the programming itself is both the ends and the means to pleasure in their lives. My entire point throughout this thread is that there are enough of these programmers that commercial software is mostly unnecessary. There will always have to be programmers paid to do unhappy jobs like maintaining old code bases or doing highly specific tasks,
Here's a nasty possibility. Suppose somebody unintentionally publishes information useful to terrorists. DHS drops by and points out the error, and the information is withdrawn. Does Wayback Machine have a right to keep the information online?
Why don't you just play the child pornography card instead? At least that's *illegal*, unlike putting publicly available information online instead of hidden in some dusty library gaurded against terr'ists by a librarian.
The fact is, if something is actually illegal to posess, the Internet Archive can't possess it either. That said, hopefully no DHS flunky notices this case and subpoenas the whole archive to make sure it's clean of terrorist helping information...
In other words, GPLed software is no more free than closed source software. I thought the point was to offer freedom and openness. That doesn't sound very open or free at all.
If you don't mind equating freedom with slavery, then sure. My comparison between GPL and closed source software was purely in terms of how they both propogate themselves. Closed source design leads to more and more closed source, but free software design leads to more and more free software. If one did not grow, it would stagnate and die and the other would fill its place. Perhaps you are mistaking the Freedom to use and modify software with the freedom to enslave others by restricting their use of software. In a free society, no one has the freedom to own slaves. In a free software environment, no one has the right to restrict other's use of software.
It is fundamentally a different model from either capitalism or socialism, because both assume limited resources and a means to fairly distribute them. Software, and knowledge in general, is fundamentally different. Material resourses, at the lowest level matter and energy, are fundamentally limited to at best a constant (so far as we know). Material resources must be divided between entities in some way. On the other hand, information is limited only by the material available to encode it. There is an infinite supply of information, and it is virtually free to replicate and create. While material resorces must be divided up for the greatest good, information must be muliplied out for the greatest good. Everyone should have the best information available, since that translates into the highest possibly efficiency for use of material resources, effectively maximizing the material resources available.
Just don't try and claim that GPL code is somehow gives more freedom than closed source code.
If you don't agree, too bad. In my opinion, you're outnumbered by those who realize that sharing knowledge openly will maximize the good in our universe. Don't worry, the free sharing of information won't restrict your ability to discover and invent things, so unless you have a vested interest in controlling others for your own benefit, nothing will change to your disadvantage.
Stated with the absolute assurity of one providing no proof. Bravo.
You're entitled to that opinion but there's no way you can defend it. Releasing under the GPL doesn't automatically make software "the best tools for the job" and the ability to modify software is often of no use whatsoever. On the other hand, there are many cases where the GPL restricts contributors from releasing their software at all.
Obviously if someone wants to use GPL software it's because it is the best choice for one reason or another.
If the ability to modify software is of no use whatsoever, then what's the point of not releasing it under the GPL? If there's no need to modify software, then that means the GPL can't possibly harm it because no one will take advantage of the extra rights the GPL grants.
The GPL cannot restrict developers from releasing their software unless they are already entangled in some legal issues regarding the software they've written and merged with GPL software. In most cases they would be unable to release the code as BSD or public domain either.
Another absurd statement. Quite a bit of GPL software is, itself, commercially developed. Who do you think foots the bill for many of the most successful OSS projects?
Free software is paid for by other free software, period. There are several traditional businesses that write open source and free software, but it is impossible to separate the service related and software related income. When someone buys a support contract from Red Hat, the money pays for traditional IT services as well as some amortized software development costs. However, you could also ask how Red Hat pays for the GPL software they use. The answer is simply that they contribute back to the base of GPL software. Red Hat would not make money without GPL code, and they would not survive without making improvements to the GPL software that benefit everyone but also give them an advantage because they are the most knowledgable about it and can support it easier. I realize they also have purely commercial closed source software as well, but that is mimimal compared to the GPL codebase. The fact that Fedora Core can do everything Red Hat can is proof of this. Red Hat essentially makes money *and* creates GPL software by selling service contracts. There are plenty of other ways to get GPL software developed, like code bounties or just directly hiring programmers to write what you need.
You aren't a programmer obviously.
Are you? Can you formalize a turing machine using set theory? If so, you should know why programming is equivalent to mathematics, or rather a branch of finite set theory. There is nothing that programmers can know or do that cannot equally be done purely with mathematics. My point was not that computer science was easy, since mathematics is not easy, my point was that almost everything in computer science today is easily derivable from the knowledge that we already have. Do you know how to write compilers? Well, you don't have to because 50 years of research have built very good compilers. Is the compiler you use more complex than most of the projects you will ever write in your lifetime? Probably. Combining the compiler, operating system, standard libraries, and general computer science knowledge that is in the public domain vastly outweighs anything even a large team of programmers can generate in a lifetime. I believe that AI will surpass human intelligence within the next 50 years, and that simply will result in mathematics understanding itself. That will effectively be the end to the myth of godly programmers, which only exists due to the limitation of our human minds and the complexity of modern mathematics and computer science. I have no hubris as a programmer, I realize that I am just exploring a landscape of turing machines or lambda expressions that to an AI will simply be called home.
I think the problem is that many developers USE the GPLed code, but don't extend it in anyway. They'd like to be able to use the library as is, without forcing THEIR project open. I find the GPL attitude kind of arrogant. I can understand if you extended some GPL code wanting those changes to come back, I don't have a problem witht that. But if the GPL code is just used by my code, I don't think its fair they tell me how I have to license my own software.
So I suppose that to play DVDs, RAs, and WM[AV]s on Linux or BSD, we should be able to just copy (but not modify) the pieces out of the media players to do so, and Wine should be able to just copy (but not modify) all the Windows DLLs that are too much of a pain to rewrite, and OpenOffice should be able to just copy the user interface and file format code for Office for better interoperability.
If closed source people want to use GPL software, they need to feel exactly the same way about free software people taking any piece of their commercial software and using it for GPL software. Don't forget that the same copyright laws that protect your commercial interests protect the community interests of the GPL. I highly doubt any commercial software company would let their code be used in a GPL project. They would require NDAs and commercial licenses for the finished project. So there you go, commercial software is just as viral as the GPL.
It would be nice if the FSF actually noticed trends that damage people's understanding of the GPL and did something about them. For example, many programs place the GPL in the role of a click-through license. This makes no sense whatsoever, and leads people to think that the GPL is a EULA and that it applies to *users* of GPL'd sofware. On top of that, it lends credence to the notion that click-through licenses are worth something.
Actually, it would be much better to present the GPL as a license, but with new buttons: "I accept, and can modify and redistribute this software in accordance with the GPL" and "I decline, but am free to run the software on my computer". Both buttons would allow installation. You can't beat advertizing like that, and my guess is installers for Firefox and other popular open source applications would follow suit. Even better to flaunt the fact that they can modify it and redistribute it if they want, or just use it even if they don't agree to the GPL. If nothing else, it's a slap in the face of EULA's in the mind of the public; "Hey, Firefox and GIMP don't require me to agree to any license to run the software, why should Office?"
My guess is that including the GPL as a click-through license arose because of the GPL's requirement for interactive programs to display the copyright notice and optionally the text of the GPL license at the user's request.
Does this mean any manjack can walk in off the street and ask for the source? Or is it meant for re-distribution or further on sales? Not entirely clear and I know it only applies to the 'offer' mentioned in point 7.
Sure, just charge them the $50 it costs in contractor time to burn a CD for them. The GPL does not prevent charging for distribution. Unreasonble demands like walking in off the street can be met with an equal request for payment. However, if you charge more for the source than for the binaries (unless the source takes up gobs more space than the binaries), you might have a problem with charging unreasonable prices.
I don't think most folks have an issue with giving a customer the source, but giving the source away on a project seems inane.
The customer must legally have the same right to distribute the GPL program and source that you do, so they could just give it to the man on the street as easily as you. The GPL prevents you from taking that right away from the customer.
If I use any GPL code in my application, even one line, I have to release my application under the GPL license. Throw all the pointless qualifications you want around it, like only if I release the application to the public, and I can still release it under other licenses, and all the related conditions that likely apply to 1% of real world cases.
And if I took one line of code from your commercial project, you would sue me. Basically, you're looking for a free lunch. BSD style licenses offer a free lunch, and it's admirable of them to be so generous. Unfortunately, generosity does not always pay off, especially when it's unconditional in the face of things like copyright and patent law.
As a developer, I believe that developers have a right to make a living from their code. I also know that so few people donate for free software that most developers who rely on donations have to do something else to pay the bills. At the same time, I like to release 95% of my work as open source, so other developers can use it, some of which may also be trying to make a living as a developer. The Apache, BSD, even LGPL licenses handle that just fine.
Consider how you make a living by writing commercial software: You write some code, test it, and then it's yours and your children's for 90 years after you die. If you don't do that, it likely means you assign your copyright to the company you work for, and they keep it forever, and just pay you for the time you worked on it. In either case, it's the long lasting copyright that is at odds with the spirit of the GPL. The GPL assumes that software is essentially mathematics, that sharing it is worth more to everybody than trying to monopolise mathematical expressions, and that if you want to make use of GPL'd code, you have to put your additions back in the pot. It's just a simple contract: Use GPL software, make your modifications GPL. If the GPL code is worth enough that it's infeasable to write your own to do the same thing, then probably your software required less work than the GPL code you want to use, making it kind of silly to want ownership of the result. The future of software development is service. If you think companies will not pay for the development of zero marginal cost software, just look at IBM and RedHat. Just because everyone knows how you did something and can duplicate your work does not make it worthless, it just means that the next big thing can build directly on your work and you can have it for free, too. It's a longer term investment, but most big companies (like IBM) are used to making long term investments profitable. At some point in the (perhaps not so) distant future, strong AI will write software and humanity will simply benefit. Investment in open source is an investment that will pay off in the long run in unimaginably good ways.
Trying to spin the GPL as non-viral is foolish - the free software community should at least be honest about their agenda. I'm not saying its a bad agenda, it just happens to be incompatible with mine.
If the GPL is viral, then commercial software development is a bloated cancer consuming vast amounts of talent and utterly wasting it, slowly killing innovation and scientific research with eternal copyrights and fraudulent patents. GPL software is not viral, it simply exposes the sham of modern commercial software development. You are essentially claiming that the ability to find GPL software and integrate it into commercial projects harms you because then your commercial project has to be GPL. I claim exactly the opposite: By not making your software GPL you are harming your customers by not using the best tools for the job and allowing them the freedom to change and modify the software they buy. Not only that, but the existance of GPL software proves that most commercial software development and purchases are a waste of money. That, I think, is what you're really rejecting, the idea that software is simply a mathematical expression, easily derivable given the proper tools, and not subject to arbitrary laws of artificial scarcity. It's a failing business model you're defending, nothing more.
By a developer making his libraries "free" only under the GPL (and not a more free license like the MIT/BSD or even LGPL), then he's forcing anyone that wants to use this shiny tool to also make their software free under the same restrictions. That is why the GPL is "viral" -- not because it "infects" any software that it is stored next to -- but rather because GPL code is useless unless you're working on other GPL'd code.
The GPL is perfect for entire systems of code, since that's exactly what you want. If you're extending GPL software, the extensions should remain GPL. Your last claim is false, because almost every GPL compiler does not apply the GPL to its output. You can compile non-GPL software with gcc, and so long as you don't actually incorporate GPL libraries into your work, it's yours to do with as you please. There are two possibilities if you want to use GPL code in a non-GPL work: The GPL code makes up a small portion of the overall work and you can just rewrite the functionality yourself, or the GPL code is a large enough portion that you can't feasably rewrite it. In the latter case, you have to ask yourself whether it would be fair to the authors of the GPL code to release a non-GPL work that consists mostly of their work.
I've always been amazed at the fact that people consider their programs to be their own special property when in reality they are building on 60 years of research in computer science into compilers, languages, operating systems, and algorithms that is completely freely available to them. My opinion is that we are now at the point in computer science where any software development short of strong AI is merely a small incremental improvement on those years of research, and that it's absurd to assign ownership of a software project to the last person to tack something on to it. Can anyone claim that they have put more time and effort into their own software projects than the collective work done in building all the GPL software that's available? Even the biggest commercial software projects in history are beginning to be dwarfed by the total contributions to GPL software.
Sometimes the GPL feels about as enjoyable as enforced communism to me.
If you don't like it, lobby for reasonable copyrights and patents. If the law was reasonable, the GPL would be unnecessary. As it is, the BSD style licenses are abused by companies who take open work, modify it and copyright (or patent) it so no one else can use the simple incremental improvements for 95+ years. Make software equivalent to mathematics like it should be, so that every improvement can be freely shared. This doesn't mean that commercial software must fail, it simply means that data structures and algorithms should be recognized as mathematics. Windows won't suddenly be freely available or unmarketable because they have invested time in creating actual copyrightable works like images, documentation, fonts, etc.
It's just that something more along the lines of the LGPL would be my license of choice when creating a tool that I want to be available and free and useful to others for many years to come.
The LGPL is specifically for libraries because it makes sense to allow people who may not have a choice in development licences to be able to use it. The reason it arose is mostly a technicality of how modern compilers and software development work. Technically, you can use any GPL program you want within your non-GPL software, but you have to do it without actually linking against it (which pulls copyrighted macros and inline functions from header files). Feel free to run a Linux system full of GPL software in a closed virtual machine and control all the input and output to the system so that it appears the VM is completely your software, but you'll still have to distribute the whole Linux system and source along with it.
I still think the GPL is proper for any stand-alone application simply because it prevents companies from building an interface around the
I have wondered whether it would make sense to generate ray lists and sort those by the objects they intersect, and then process the intersections sorted by object in separate threads, thus keeping the cache coherancy. It's just a mixture of rasterization and raytracing, with the only real difference that only intersections would be computed on the first pass, and then the raytracing would take over and only stick the nearest intersection for each ray into a queue for shading and generation of new rays for reflections, shadows, and refractions which would go back into the intersection queue. I guess now I need to try it out.
50. On or about August 10, 2002, members of the conspiracy, including defendant LAUREN GAZZOLA, assembled outside the home of RH, an employee of M. Corp. and, using a megaphone, threatened RH, his wife and family with burning down their home.
In Alaska, deadly force is authorized in AS 11.81.350 to prevent arson. I wonder if there are similar laws where this professor lives.
Moving to a "sustainable" use of resources would solve this problem. It would require a moderate reduction in population to something like 200 or 250 million people - about the population in 1800 to 1850. That would be a level of resource consumption and waste generation that would be sustainable. Natural processes would then reprocess waste products into resources ready to be used.
Would it be wrong to kidnap humans to do experiments on? Why is this not okay but it's okay to capture other primates to experiment on? Is the lack of ability to speak mean that it's okay to cage a primate and perform experiments on them?
Silly, that's what Wars are for!
And if it's not wrong to experiment on primates I suppose it's also wrong to abort fetuses and end the life of terminal patients and prisoners and Terry Schaivo. After all, what's the difference between a bunch of humans, primates, deviants, and injured or brain dead animals? Some people may have a problem with ending the life of healthy animals, but predators and diseases in the wild sure don't have any problem with it...
Personally, I think the animals that get expiremented on have it pretty good: Clean cages, good food, a pleasant social environment, etc. The only catch is they end up dying at some point, possibly a little earlier than they would have in the wild. Almost never are they subjected to extensive pain and suffering, and if they could hold the concept in their minds they would probably be glad they're not out in the jungle battling predators, parasites, and disease.
Perhaps the problem is that some people are not associated with the basic facts of the natural world; namely that death and suffering are the norm, and have been since the beginning. Only now are humans approaching the ability to transend death and suffering, but until we have a thorough understanding of biology, death and suffering are a necessary evil. We limit it as much as we can.
Is it so hard to understand that some people do things just because they love to, and don't like the burdens that come with fame?
Like Pearleman said, everyone knows the fields medal isn't the important thing, it's the Poincare conjecture. It's afaik the first millenium problem to be solved, it's over 100 years old, and it's a very useful problem to solve in mathematics. Just the pride of solving an open problem like that is enough.
Huh? Do you honestly think that if you take away the incentives to *get rich and famous* that there will be better movies and albums? Do you really believe that? Were you not paying attention during the last 50 years as one centrally-managed economy after another failed? Did you not notice that the products produced in those countries were orders of magnitude worse than those produced in free market economies - and losing ground with each passing decade? Did you notice that virtually all innovation sprung from countries with free market economies? Incentive breeds competition, which leads to dramatic product improvements and innovations. If you take away the incentive, everything stagnates.
The incentive to get rich and famous only works for the smart people, and they will inevitably realize that the true way to get rich and famous is to control the works of others. There's really no other way, talent is only worth so much and fame only lasts so long. But the ability to control other people with laws and contracts can be indefinitely extended (How long are copyrights now? Patents?), providing an exponentially increasing revenue base. So, if you're smart, and you don't mind controlling other people to make money, the choice is clear. Create arbitrary laws that allow you to provide exclusive access to information, and literally make money out of thin air. Music especially is a zero cost endeavor for the industry. Artists do all the hard work with money on loan from the record company, and only if they're massively successful do they even make enough money to pay off those loans. The record company wins every time, unless the artists default on their loans and go bankrupt. The record companies don't search for bleeding edge, meaningful art. Art of that calibre causes reactions in people that's bad for marketing. Instead, the record companies control the ratio of bad-band image to generic pop appeal to market to the largest consumer groups it can think up. There is nothing creative or artistic about what the people actually making money from art do. They are pure businessmen, and as such it makes no sense to defend them on the basis of artistic expression or any other social ideal.
A command economy fails for exactly the same reasons: production is commoditized and restricted to fit within a given worldview, just like the pop music charts. There is a very real and very valid reason that the music and movie industries are struggling, and that reason is very obvious to most people. By artificially restricting their production domain to a 80 year old business model, the *AA's are being completely left in the dust by new art forms and markets. They only maintain their current position by weilding their current economic power to further restrict the free market to their production domain. They are a virus replicating with the money produced by hard working artists and the well trained consumer market they created. Everyone works for their entertainment, but it doesn't make sense for all the money to flow through a single industry before getting to the actual entertainers who get a pittance. The music industry today perfectly matches the description of a command economy. Ask yourself what that means for their future and the quality of their products.
We have tested tablets (and flipscreen laptops) from Motion, Acer, Fujitsu, and IBM. Very few people like tablet mode. Handwriting recognition works, but unless you are incredibly fast it's slower than keyboarding. I imagine you would not appreciate its shell command writing abilities (basically, using the onscreen keyboard to "type"). Logging on with anything other than a simple password is a pain (although many come with fingerprint readers if you don't mind the insecurity). You really can't use the system one handed due to its weight, and then you can't set it down and read it because of glare from lights and the poor viewing angle. They have stands, but they're clumsy and flimsy. You can get docking stations, but they're large enough to make laptops desirable again. The pure tablets also tend to get very hot when running for a while. If anything, I recommend you buy a flip-screen laptop so that when you get sick and tired of pen input you can just switch to the keyboard, and the base doubles as a stand when you're tired of holding it.
You might be referring to time shifting devices, which were ruled legal decades ago.
Personally, I just timeshift everything. If someone loans me a CD for a week, I timeshift it into the future so I can listen to it for all 168 hours that I actually had it. Same with rented movies. What's the difference with "pirating" music? Just consider it timeshifting for the time the uploader is sleeping and can't use the media. Libraries do the exact same thing with physical copies, so why shouldn't digital works behave exactly the same? The real problem with "piracy" is that the media distribution model is currently very broken. There are more than enough copies of digital works for everyone in the world to share them while never actually using more than the number of copies at any given time. In the past, the problem of physical distribution made it too costly (although libraries are an obvious counter-example of this), but with digital distribution it is incredibly cheap. Even the marginal cost of sharing a DVD quality MPEG4 movie (2 or 3 GB) is only a little over 1% of a 1MB DSL connection per month. Even at $50 a month, that's 50 cents a movie, cheaper than you can rent them anywhere I know of. Music is even cheaper. There is absolutely no point in continuing the artifical scarcity of digital media.
Is is sad to see that this insightful post is even considered troll by some.
Indeed there is a difference between theft and infringement. But you don't need to be brainwashed to understand that this difference is of no real importance in case you are depriving someone of income by 'taking' their product. As it is, some products (e.g. a chair) are material whereas others (e.g. music) are content-related. A CD store is not selling plastic/alu discs, they are selling content and the plastic is only a bearer.
Would you feel embarrassed to go to your favourite artist (assuming she/he is with a major label) and tell you copied their latest CD? If so, you know something is not ok, regardless of the difference between infringement and theft.
The only people I see taking profit from artists are the big media companies.
If I actually met my favorite artist, I'd just give them $100 or something and tell them to keep up the good work. What would *you* do? Slobber all over the fact that you'll keep buying every CD they make, and giving them $.25 each time? Woohoo, you might as well throw change in their guitar cases.
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Their view, and I have to say I agree, is that its more important to get people a communication network (mobile phones) than it is to get them a computer.
The best thing is that the cell phone can double as a (simple) computer. Address books, games, calculators; essentially all the technological benefits of living in a first world economy despite the poor economy. My guess is that the trend will only speed up, and at the far end third world countries will be getting nano-assemblers the same time (or before, due to fewer regulations/NIMBY) as the first world.
In the present, I also think that third world countries will be among the first to be fully ipv6 networked. How can you handle 3 billion cell phones on standard ipv4 hardware without massive NATs which make them almost useless? The cell network really needs to be recognized as an extension of the Internet, and not just a bunch of clients behind some phone company's NAT box. That will only happen in countries where the infrastructure is new and there aren't the huge vested interests of western phone companies...
After relativity and E=Mc^2, physicists have preferred to measure mass in terms of energy rather than silly units like grams and ounces. In short, we give the energy equivalent for the particle if it was somehow completely annihilated. 1 electron volt refers to the energy of one electron under an electric field at a point of 1 volt of potential difference.
Silly units like V = m^2 * kg * s^(-3)* A^(-1)? You can't separate the description of energy from that of matter, since they're equivalent and interdependant. The real reason electron volts are used is that it's a small enough unit that elementary particles have small fractions or multiples of its charge.
It was called "Find a computer, modem, connector cable, and communications software that worked with all three, find a BBS, fidonet node, or ISP with a local phone number, dial it, sign up, and then learn how to use it over a 2400 baud terminal connection." It was a good test, and it worked for quite a few years.
This isn't a "minor issue", this is turning the most experienced, and often wisest segment of our population into second class citizens. Look at the average ages of our Supreme Court Justices. Now tell me that they can't handle signing up "all on their own" for a damn cell-phone because they might get "confused," because it's so darn "complicated."
Yes, just LOOK at the decisions they've been cranking out recently... Time for some young blood! Just imagine, say, the honorable Ted Stevens trying to sign up for Internet service: "Yes, when can you come lay the pipes then? Will you have to dig up my yard? Is a 1 mega-inch pipe big enough for sending internets?"
Yeah, so they'd shoot everyone.
What's your point?
Who said anything about putting publically available information online? It might, for example, be private information about a building that makes it easier to blow it up. "Our new death star has a state of the art venting port, located for easy access at ..."
Frankly, anything that has been posted on the Internet should not be considered private anymore. There are too many search engines and archives and caches that can keep it around. If damaging information is ever made available on the Internet, then whatever the information was about has to be changed to prevent that information from being damaging anymore. Like closing the venting port (or putting a grille in it) after lots of Bothans have been dying for some vague but important goal recently.
It's funny that you accuse me of bad faith, since you're lumping me in with the Bush administration's crazy attempts to control information. I didn't say anything about censorship. I simply pointed out that a web site can have legitimate reasons for wanting to withdraw information that was previously on its site.
I'm sorry, it's just that when the terrorists are used in an argument about preventing access to information, it's usually information that any private citizen could discover within a few hours of searching in the right places. I'm sure there are plenty of state secrets that shouldn't be on the Internet, but that was my point: If it's illegal for Secret or Top Secret information to be on some web site, it's equally illegal on the Wayback machine and can be removed through the normal legal process. For secrets that websites wish hadn't been published, perhaps they should reevaluate their security if simple information can make them vulnerable. For instance guard schedules and routes can be changed, security codes can be changed, cameras can be added to cover dead spots in coverage, etc. If the entire security of some building or resource depends on some vulnerability that can't be remedied if it's disclosed, then it was never secure to begin with.
Nice try, but that's not how its working. If you want to make use of GPL code, you are then restricted to GPLing your software. Please explain how that's a choice for the developer.
First, you are wrong that software developers must GPL their software. That's only if they distribute it. Second, developers *always* have a choice of what code to include in their own software. As I've repeatedly pointed out before, the choice for a software developer in releasing GPL code is that they are guaranteeing that any improvements to it will be available to them as well. It's a contract for the betterment of the code, for everyone, instead of just being advantageous to one group or individual.
Actually I'd think in a totally free society you COULD sell yourself into slavery if you choose to do so. In your free software environment though you're taking away developers freedom if they choose to use GPL code. The result is that some developers end up re-inventing the wheel.
Again, our definition of freedom differs. To me, freedom is the assumption of human rights as a constant. Any other society is not free, merely convenient for those in power.
The code itself can be copied infinitely, sure. Does that mean the time I spent in creating it is worthless? I do all the work, I put in the effort and investment, and you come along and say 'thanks, well take that!' and walk off. Wow, do I feel appreciated. Next time instead of writing code to the benefit of everyone, I guess I'll go build houses for a living..
If you go build houses for a living, let me know how information flows in that business. I'll be surprised if you can find any example other than blueprints where information about housebuilding is hoarded and paid for like software. But in the end, isn't the information needed to build a house just software for people? The complexity of a modern house is at least as complex as some major programming projects when fire, water, plumbing, electical, and engineering codes are all taken into consideration. In case you are wondering, I have personally built a house as well. All the people we worked with were happy to share experience and advice (e.g. information) as we paid them for the service of manual labor or even information processing (in the case of our structural engineer). Almost everyone in the real world realizes that sharing information is beneficial, and its only those in the artifically created "intellectual property" markets that think otherwise. In terms of me taking your software when it's finished, I'd like to know when you planned on compensating Knuth, Dijkstra, Turing, or any other big names of computer science? They have contributed far more than you or I probably ever will, and they did it almost entirely for their salaries at universities.
No, I think you're clearly in the minority. Sharing knowledge is helpful yes, but at the end of the day people need motivation to invest the time and effort required to create great software. How can I spend time creating something good if I'm worried about paying for my house? The answer is that I likely won't.
I write software because I like to, not because anyone pays me for it. In my job I do a mix of system administration and programming, but those are purely service activites for the company I work for. They don't necessarily care if I GPL my code or not, because it's specific to their business and most of what I write are either highly custom changes or generic utilities to make things faster. My reward for creating software on my own time is simply that it's what I like doing, so it gives me pleasure. Most open source programmers are the same way, the programming itself is both the ends and the means to pleasure in their lives. My entire point throughout this thread is that there are enough of these programmers that commercial software is mostly unnecessary. There will always have to be programmers paid to do unhappy jobs like maintaining old code bases or doing highly specific tasks,
Here's a nasty possibility. Suppose somebody unintentionally publishes information useful to terrorists. DHS drops by and points out the error, and the information is withdrawn. Does Wayback Machine have a right to keep the information online?
Why don't you just play the child pornography card instead? At least that's *illegal*, unlike putting publicly available information online instead of hidden in some dusty library gaurded against terr'ists by a librarian.
The fact is, if something is actually illegal to posess, the Internet Archive can't possess it either. That said, hopefully no DHS flunky notices this case and subpoenas the whole archive to make sure it's clean of terrorist helping information...
In other words, GPLed software is no more free than closed source software. I thought the point was to offer freedom and openness. That doesn't sound very open or free at all.
If you don't mind equating freedom with slavery, then sure. My comparison between GPL and closed source software was purely in terms of how they both propogate themselves. Closed source design leads to more and more closed source, but free software design leads to more and more free software. If one did not grow, it would stagnate and die and the other would fill its place. Perhaps you are mistaking the Freedom to use and modify software with the freedom to enslave others by restricting their use of software. In a free society, no one has the freedom to own slaves. In a free software environment, no one has the right to restrict other's use of software.
It is fundamentally a different model from either capitalism or socialism, because both assume limited resources and a means to fairly distribute them. Software, and knowledge in general, is fundamentally different. Material resourses, at the lowest level matter and energy, are fundamentally limited to at best a constant (so far as we know). Material resources must be divided between entities in some way. On the other hand, information is limited only by the material available to encode it. There is an infinite supply of information, and it is virtually free to replicate and create. While material resorces must be divided up for the greatest good, information must be muliplied out for the greatest good. Everyone should have the best information available, since that translates into the highest possibly efficiency for use of material resources, effectively maximizing the material resources available.
Just don't try and claim that GPL code is somehow gives more freedom than closed source code.
If you don't agree, too bad. In my opinion, you're outnumbered by those who realize that sharing knowledge openly will maximize the good in our universe. Don't worry, the free sharing of information won't restrict your ability to discover and invent things, so unless you have a vested interest in controlling others for your own benefit, nothing will change to your disadvantage.
If you say so. The GPL is viral though.
Stated with the absolute assurity of one providing no proof. Bravo.
You're entitled to that opinion but there's no way you can defend it. Releasing under the GPL doesn't automatically make software "the best tools for the job" and the ability to modify software is often of no use whatsoever. On the other hand, there are many cases where the GPL restricts contributors from releasing their software at all.
Obviously if someone wants to use GPL software it's because it is the best choice for one reason or another.
If the ability to modify software is of no use whatsoever, then what's the point of not releasing it under the GPL? If there's no need to modify software, then that means the GPL can't possibly harm it because no one will take advantage of the extra rights the GPL grants.
The GPL cannot restrict developers from releasing their software unless they are already entangled in some legal issues regarding the software they've written and merged with GPL software. In most cases they would be unable to release the code as BSD or public domain either.
Another absurd statement. Quite a bit of GPL software is, itself, commercially developed. Who do you think foots the bill for many of the most successful OSS projects?
Free software is paid for by other free software, period. There are several traditional businesses that write open source and free software, but it is impossible to separate the service related and software related income. When someone buys a support contract from Red Hat, the money pays for traditional IT services as well as some amortized software development costs. However, you could also ask how Red Hat pays for the GPL software they use. The answer is simply that they contribute back to the base of GPL software. Red Hat would not make money without GPL code, and they would not survive without making improvements to the GPL software that benefit everyone but also give them an advantage because they are the most knowledgable about it and can support it easier. I realize they also have purely commercial closed source software as well, but that is mimimal compared to the GPL codebase. The fact that Fedora Core can do everything Red Hat can is proof of this. Red Hat essentially makes money *and* creates GPL software by selling service contracts. There are plenty of other ways to get GPL software developed, like code bounties or just directly hiring programmers to write what you need.
You aren't a programmer obviously.
Are you? Can you formalize a turing machine using set theory? If so, you should know why programming is equivalent to mathematics, or rather a branch of finite set theory. There is nothing that programmers can know or do that cannot equally be done purely with mathematics. My point was not that computer science was easy, since mathematics is not easy, my point was that almost everything in computer science today is easily derivable from the knowledge that we already have. Do you know how to write compilers? Well, you don't have to because 50 years of research have built very good compilers. Is the compiler you use more complex than most of the projects you will ever write in your lifetime? Probably. Combining the compiler, operating system, standard libraries, and general computer science knowledge that is in the public domain vastly outweighs anything even a large team of programmers can generate in a lifetime. I believe that AI will surpass human intelligence within the next 50 years, and that simply will result in mathematics understanding itself. That will effectively be the end to the myth of godly programmers, which only exists due to the limitation of our human minds and the complexity of modern mathematics and computer science. I have no hubris as a programmer, I realize that I am just exploring a landscape of turing machines or lambda expressions that to an AI will simply be called home.
I think the problem is that many developers USE the GPLed code, but don't extend it in anyway. They'd like to be able to use the library as is, without forcing THEIR project open. I find the GPL attitude kind of arrogant. I can understand if you extended some GPL code wanting those changes to come back, I don't have a problem witht that. But if the GPL code is just used by my code, I don't think its fair they tell me how I have to license my own software.
So I suppose that to play DVDs, RAs, and WM[AV]s on Linux or BSD, we should be able to just copy (but not modify) the pieces out of the media players to do so, and Wine should be able to just copy (but not modify) all the Windows DLLs that are too much of a pain to rewrite, and OpenOffice should be able to just copy the user interface and file format code for Office for better interoperability.
If closed source people want to use GPL software, they need to feel exactly the same way about free software people taking any piece of their commercial software and using it for GPL software. Don't forget that the same copyright laws that protect your commercial interests protect the community interests of the GPL. I highly doubt any commercial software company would let their code be used in a GPL project. They would require NDAs and commercial licenses for the finished project. So there you go, commercial software is just as viral as the GPL.
It would be nice if the FSF actually noticed trends that damage people's understanding of the GPL and did something about them. For example, many programs place the GPL in the role of a click-through license. This makes no sense whatsoever, and leads people to think that the GPL is a EULA and that it applies to *users* of GPL'd sofware. On top of that, it lends credence to the notion that click-through licenses are worth something.
Actually, it would be much better to present the GPL as a license, but with new buttons: "I accept, and can modify and redistribute this software in accordance with the GPL" and "I decline, but am free to run the software on my computer". Both buttons would allow installation. You can't beat advertizing like that, and my guess is installers for Firefox and other popular open source applications would follow suit. Even better to flaunt the fact that they can modify it and redistribute it if they want, or just use it even if they don't agree to the GPL. If nothing else, it's a slap in the face of EULA's in the mind of the public; "Hey, Firefox and GIMP don't require me to agree to any license to run the software, why should Office?"
My guess is that including the GPL as a click-through license arose because of the GPL's requirement for interactive programs to display the copyright notice and optionally the text of the GPL license at the user's request.
Does this mean any manjack can walk in off the street and ask for the source? Or is it meant for re-distribution or further on sales? Not entirely clear and I know it only applies to the 'offer' mentioned in point 7.
Sure, just charge them the $50 it costs in contractor time to burn a CD for them. The GPL does not prevent charging for distribution. Unreasonble demands like walking in off the street can be met with an equal request for payment. However, if you charge more for the source than for the binaries (unless the source takes up gobs more space than the binaries), you might have a problem with charging unreasonable prices.
I don't think most folks have an issue with giving a customer the source, but giving the source away on a project seems inane.
The customer must legally have the same right to distribute the GPL program and source that you do, so they could just give it to the man on the street as easily as you. The GPL prevents you from taking that right away from the customer.
If I use any GPL code in my application, even one line, I have to release my application under the GPL license. Throw all the pointless qualifications you want around it, like only if I release the application to the public, and I can still release it under other licenses, and all the related conditions that likely apply to 1% of real world cases.
And if I took one line of code from your commercial project, you would sue me. Basically, you're looking for a free lunch. BSD style licenses offer a free lunch, and it's admirable of them to be so generous. Unfortunately, generosity does not always pay off, especially when it's unconditional in the face of things like copyright and patent law.
As a developer, I believe that developers have a right to make a living from their code. I also know that so few people donate for free software that most developers who rely on donations have to do something else to pay the bills. At the same time, I like to release 95% of my work as open source, so other developers can use it, some of which may also be trying to make a living as a developer. The Apache, BSD, even LGPL licenses handle that just fine.
Consider how you make a living by writing commercial software: You write some code, test it, and then it's yours and your children's for 90 years after you die. If you don't do that, it likely means you assign your copyright to the company you work for, and they keep it forever, and just pay you for the time you worked on it. In either case, it's the long lasting copyright that is at odds with the spirit of the GPL. The GPL assumes that software is essentially mathematics, that sharing it is worth more to everybody than trying to monopolise mathematical expressions, and that if you want to make use of GPL'd code, you have to put your additions back in the pot. It's just a simple contract: Use GPL software, make your modifications GPL. If the GPL code is worth enough that it's infeasable to write your own to do the same thing, then probably your software required less work than the GPL code you want to use, making it kind of silly to want ownership of the result. The future of software development is service. If you think companies will not pay for the development of zero marginal cost software, just look at IBM and RedHat. Just because everyone knows how you did something and can duplicate your work does not make it worthless, it just means that the next big thing can build directly on your work and you can have it for free, too. It's a longer term investment, but most big companies (like IBM) are used to making long term investments profitable. At some point in the (perhaps not so) distant future, strong AI will write software and humanity will simply benefit. Investment in open source is an investment that will pay off in the long run in unimaginably good ways.
Trying to spin the GPL as non-viral is foolish - the free software community should at least be honest about their agenda. I'm not saying its a bad agenda, it just happens to be incompatible with mine.
If the GPL is viral, then commercial software development is a bloated cancer consuming vast amounts of talent and utterly wasting it, slowly killing innovation and scientific research with eternal copyrights and fraudulent patents. GPL software is not viral, it simply exposes the sham of modern commercial software development. You are essentially claiming that the ability to find GPL software and integrate it into commercial projects harms you because then your commercial project has to be GPL. I claim exactly the opposite: By not making your software GPL you are harming your customers by not using the best tools for the job and allowing them the freedom to change and modify the software they buy. Not only that, but the existance of GPL software proves that most commercial software development and purchases are a waste of money. That, I think, is what you're really rejecting, the idea that software is simply a mathematical expression, easily derivable given the proper tools, and not subject to arbitrary laws of artificial scarcity. It's a failing business model you're defending, nothing more.
By a developer making his libraries "free" only under the GPL (and not a more free license like the MIT/BSD or even LGPL), then he's forcing anyone that wants to use this shiny tool to also make their software free under the same restrictions. That is why the GPL is "viral" -- not because it "infects" any software that it is stored next to -- but rather because GPL code is useless unless you're working on other GPL'd code.
The GPL is perfect for entire systems of code, since that's exactly what you want. If you're extending GPL software, the extensions should remain GPL. Your last claim is false, because almost every GPL compiler does not apply the GPL to its output. You can compile non-GPL software with gcc, and so long as you don't actually incorporate GPL libraries into your work, it's yours to do with as you please. There are two possibilities if you want to use GPL code in a non-GPL work: The GPL code makes up a small portion of the overall work and you can just rewrite the functionality yourself, or the GPL code is a large enough portion that you can't feasably rewrite it. In the latter case, you have to ask yourself whether it would be fair to the authors of the GPL code to release a non-GPL work that consists mostly of their work.
I've always been amazed at the fact that people consider their programs to be their own special property when in reality they are building on 60 years of research in computer science into compilers, languages, operating systems, and algorithms that is completely freely available to them. My opinion is that we are now at the point in computer science where any software development short of strong AI is merely a small incremental improvement on those years of research, and that it's absurd to assign ownership of a software project to the last person to tack something on to it. Can anyone claim that they have put more time and effort into their own software projects than the collective work done in building all the GPL software that's available? Even the biggest commercial software projects in history are beginning to be dwarfed by the total contributions to GPL software.
Sometimes the GPL feels about as enjoyable as enforced communism to me.
If you don't like it, lobby for reasonable copyrights and patents. If the law was reasonable, the GPL would be unnecessary. As it is, the BSD style licenses are abused by companies who take open work, modify it and copyright (or patent) it so no one else can use the simple incremental improvements for 95+ years. Make software equivalent to mathematics like it should be, so that every improvement can be freely shared. This doesn't mean that commercial software must fail, it simply means that data structures and algorithms should be recognized as mathematics. Windows won't suddenly be freely available or unmarketable because they have invested time in creating actual copyrightable works like images, documentation, fonts, etc.
It's just that something more along the lines of the LGPL would be my license of choice when creating a tool that I want to be available and free and useful to others for many years to come.
The LGPL is specifically for libraries because it makes sense to allow people who may not have a choice in development licences to be able to use it. The reason it arose is mostly a technicality of how modern compilers and software development work. Technically, you can use any GPL program you want within your non-GPL software, but you have to do it without actually linking against it (which pulls copyrighted macros and inline functions from header files). Feel free to run a Linux system full of GPL software in a closed virtual machine and control all the input and output to the system so that it appears the VM is completely your software, but you'll still have to distribute the whole Linux system and source along with it.
I still think the GPL is proper for any stand-alone application simply because it prevents companies from building an interface around the
Cache coherence for ray-tracers suck.
I have wondered whether it would make sense to generate ray lists and sort those by the objects they intersect, and then process the intersections sorted by object in separate threads, thus keeping the cache coherancy. It's just a mixture of rasterization and raytracing, with the only real difference that only intersections would be computed on the first pass, and then the raytracing would take over and only stick the nearest intersection for each ray into a queue for shading and generation of new rays for reflections, shadows, and refractions which would go back into the intersection queue. I guess now I need to try it out.
50. On or about August 10, 2002, members of the conspiracy, including defendant LAUREN GAZZOLA, assembled outside the home of RH, an employee of M. Corp. and, using a megaphone, threatened RH, his wife and family with burning down their home.
In Alaska, deadly force is authorized in AS 11.81.350 to prevent arson. I wonder if there are similar laws where this professor lives.
Moving to a "sustainable" use of resources would solve this problem. It would require a moderate reduction in population to something like 200 or 250 million people - about the population in 1800 to 1850. That would be a level of resource consumption and waste generation that would be sustainable. Natural processes would then reprocess waste products into resources ready to be used.
That seems like a modest proposal to me.
Would it be wrong to kidnap humans to do experiments on? Why is this not okay but it's okay to capture other primates to experiment on? Is the lack of ability to speak mean that it's okay to cage a primate and perform experiments on them?
Silly, that's what Wars are for!
And if it's not wrong to experiment on primates I suppose it's also wrong to abort fetuses and end the life of terminal patients and prisoners and Terry Schaivo. After all, what's the difference between a bunch of humans, primates, deviants, and injured or brain dead animals? Some people may have a problem with ending the life of healthy animals, but predators and diseases in the wild sure don't have any problem with it...
Personally, I think the animals that get expiremented on have it pretty good: Clean cages, good food, a pleasant social environment, etc. The only catch is they end up dying at some point, possibly a little earlier than they would have in the wild. Almost never are they subjected to extensive pain and suffering, and if they could hold the concept in their minds they would probably be glad they're not out in the jungle battling predators, parasites, and disease.
Perhaps the problem is that some people are not associated with the basic facts of the natural world; namely that death and suffering are the norm, and have been since the beginning. Only now are humans approaching the ability to transend death and suffering, but until we have a thorough understanding of biology, death and suffering are a necessary evil. We limit it as much as we can.
Is it so hard to understand that some people do things just because they love to, and don't like the burdens that come with fame?
Like Pearleman said, everyone knows the fields medal isn't the important thing, it's the Poincare conjecture. It's afaik the first millenium problem to be solved, it's over 100 years old, and it's a very useful problem to solve in mathematics. Just the pride of solving an open problem like that is enough.
Huh? Do you honestly think that if you take away the incentives to *get rich and famous* that there will be better movies and albums? Do you really believe that? Were you not paying attention during the last 50 years as one centrally-managed economy after another failed? Did you not notice that the products produced in those countries were orders of magnitude worse than those produced in free market economies - and losing ground with each passing decade? Did you notice that virtually all innovation sprung from countries with free market economies? Incentive breeds competition, which leads to dramatic product improvements and innovations. If you take away the incentive, everything stagnates.
The incentive to get rich and famous only works for the smart people, and they will inevitably realize that the true way to get rich and famous is to control the works of others. There's really no other way, talent is only worth so much and fame only lasts so long. But the ability to control other people with laws and contracts can be indefinitely extended (How long are copyrights now? Patents?), providing an exponentially increasing revenue base. So, if you're smart, and you don't mind controlling other people to make money, the choice is clear. Create arbitrary laws that allow you to provide exclusive access to information, and literally make money out of thin air. Music especially is a zero cost endeavor for the industry. Artists do all the hard work with money on loan from the record company, and only if they're massively successful do they even make enough money to pay off those loans. The record company wins every time, unless the artists default on their loans and go bankrupt. The record companies don't search for bleeding edge, meaningful art. Art of that calibre causes reactions in people that's bad for marketing. Instead, the record companies control the ratio of bad-band image to generic pop appeal to market to the largest consumer groups it can think up. There is nothing creative or artistic about what the people actually making money from art do. They are pure businessmen, and as such it makes no sense to defend them on the basis of artistic expression or any other social ideal.
A command economy fails for exactly the same reasons: production is commoditized and restricted to fit within a given worldview, just like the pop music charts. There is a very real and very valid reason that the music and movie industries are struggling, and that reason is very obvious to most people. By artificially restricting their production domain to a 80 year old business model, the *AA's are being completely left in the dust by new art forms and markets. They only maintain their current position by weilding their current economic power to further restrict the free market to their production domain. They are a virus replicating with the money produced by hard working artists and the well trained consumer market they created. Everyone works for their entertainment, but it doesn't make sense for all the money to flow through a single industry before getting to the actual entertainers who get a pittance. The music industry today perfectly matches the description of a command economy. Ask yourself what that means for their future and the quality of their products.
Free markets do not need artifical restrictions.
We have tested tablets (and flipscreen laptops) from Motion, Acer, Fujitsu, and IBM. Very few people like tablet mode. Handwriting recognition works, but unless you are incredibly fast it's slower than keyboarding. I imagine you would not appreciate its shell command writing abilities (basically, using the onscreen keyboard to "type"). Logging on with anything other than a simple password is a pain (although many come with fingerprint readers if you don't mind the insecurity). You really can't use the system one handed due to its weight, and then you can't set it down and read it because of glare from lights and the poor viewing angle. They have stands, but they're clumsy and flimsy. You can get docking stations, but they're large enough to make laptops desirable again. The pure tablets also tend to get very hot when running for a while. If anything, I recommend you buy a flip-screen laptop so that when you get sick and tired of pen input you can just switch to the keyboard, and the base doubles as a stand when you're tired of holding it.
I expect the Bush administration to object to this technique on the basis that each separate cell bundle from the embryo is an "individual".
In the interest of science: Ssshhhhhh!
You might be referring to time shifting devices, which were ruled legal decades ago.
Personally, I just timeshift everything. If someone loans me a CD for a week, I timeshift it into the future so I can listen to it for all 168 hours that I actually had it. Same with rented movies. What's the difference with "pirating" music? Just consider it timeshifting for the time the uploader is sleeping and can't use the media. Libraries do the exact same thing with physical copies, so why shouldn't digital works behave exactly the same? The real problem with "piracy" is that the media distribution model is currently very broken. There are more than enough copies of digital works for everyone in the world to share them while never actually using more than the number of copies at any given time. In the past, the problem of physical distribution made it too costly (although libraries are an obvious counter-example of this), but with digital distribution it is incredibly cheap. Even the marginal cost of sharing a DVD quality MPEG4 movie (2 or 3 GB) is only a little over 1% of a 1MB DSL connection per month. Even at $50 a month, that's 50 cents a movie, cheaper than you can rent them anywhere I know of. Music is even cheaper. There is absolutely no point in continuing the artifical scarcity of digital media.
Is is sad to see that this insightful post is even considered troll by some.
Indeed there is a difference between theft and infringement. But you don't need to be brainwashed to understand that this difference is of no real importance in case you are depriving someone of income by 'taking' their product. As it is, some products (e.g. a chair) are material whereas others (e.g. music) are content-related. A CD store is not selling plastic/alu discs, they are selling content and the plastic is only a bearer.
Would you feel embarrassed to go to your favourite artist (assuming she/he is with a major label) and tell you copied their latest CD? If so, you know something is not ok, regardless of the difference between infringement and theft.
The only people I see taking profit from artists are the big media companies.
If I actually met my favorite artist, I'd just give them $100 or something and tell them to keep up the good work. What would *you* do? Slobber all over the fact that you'll keep buying every CD they make, and giving them $.25 each time? Woohoo, you might as well throw change in their guitar cases.