I've seen a lot about how "But what about what they did in Fallujah!"
What was done in Fallujah was the work of an angry lynch mob of young men in a dusty desert town. At least the mutilation part. Also I think Fallujah has suffered enough for the crime already. 600 Iraqis died and I don't think that mob was 600 strong. Besides many of those 600 were civilians and much of the town itself is now in ruins.
What was done in the prisons was not the work of a few rogue soldiers but a systematic problem with torture which even if the specific orders didn't come from the very top, the attitudes that led to it did. As it is, the soldiers were given orders by their immediate superiors to torture the prisoners. That is what happened with the prisons is a problem with the very institution of the US army. Both the army's own report and the Red Cross believe the problem was systematic.
The two are not comparable. Crimes done by institutions and the state are a different order of crimes done by individuals or small groups. What do you think is worse? A small lynch mob, acting illegally to lynch a black, for which the authorities punish them, or the government army being given the orders to herd all blacks into little enclosures because the government believes blacks are inferior?
But hey, compare Fallujah and what happened in the prisons if you like. Then I can say that you think that the insitution of the US army is no better than a lynch mob.
One thing I heard is that they were told by military intelligence and civilian contractors who seem to have been their bosses in the prison, to take the photos to show to incoming Iraqi prisoners to scare them. It's well known that anticipation of torture is part and parcel of the psychological aspect. Then, I guess they decided to keep copies of the photos as "trophies".
Actually recording lines separately is common practice in the US dubbing industry, at least for anime. I think it's supposed to be cheaper and the technical quality is better.
In Japan however, it is common practice to have all the voice actors in the scene in the same room at the same time. You can see them sometimes in extra clips in the recording room, cracking jokes with each other. Some of them become pretty good friends (or at least they seem to become good friends).
China's attitudes to homosexuality are interesting. For much of China's history, homosexuality was treated fairly leniently. One vast difference with the West is that homosexuality has *never* been considered a religious sin. The major forces of Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism and Buddhism have never said in any terms that homosexuality was wrong. Note, this is *male* homosexuality as the vast majority of Chinese history and literature focuses on guys. This passed onto Japan as well, well I think in the 17th century, a Japanese samurai wrote a book basically saying "It must be good. The Chinese do it!" The attitude was more to do with "As long as you marry a good girl and get children to carry on the family line, who cares what you do?" Also male homosexuality was strongly connected with the whole brotherhood concept so beloved of Chinese. Male/male friendships were considered the ultimate in human relationships. There is a saying that to lose a wife is like losing a piece of clothing. To lose a brother/friend is like losing a limb. For example in one Chinese province there were gay "marriages" where the "older brother" is obliged to protect the younger one and later on, help him find a wife. Buddhist temples in China and Japan also were bastions of homosexual relations and Japanese samurai had a common sort of homosexual "mentor and student" relationship. Starting during the Manchurian rule (who were foreigners) and then continuing into modern times, however, homosexuality was treated far less leniently. However many of the earlier emperors had gay lovers, and the stories are the source of famous euphamisms like the "Passion of the Cut Sleeve" and "The half-eaten peach". What disgust existed for homosexuality was for men who dressed like women. That was giving up one's manhood and honour. I suppose one could say that most homosexual men in China/Japan were actually bisexual.
A big change occurred with the influx of Western culture into China, esp. science. A lot of science at the time said homosexuality was a mental illness and many modern Chinese,eager to grasp Western ideas took this to heart. Homosexuality as well as old Confucian ideas became part of the "old" way and many young revolutionaries were eager to get rid of the "old ways". There's this story about this young revolutionary staring at disgust at his grandfather who came back drunk from a night of debauchery with young male opera stars. Actually the Communists were pretty much against overt romanticism even between males and females as well and even tender parental feelings for your children. You were supposed to be a worker for the state. Women who gave their children to their parents to raise so they could devote themselves to their work were praised (where do you think 1984 got these ideas from?). I'm not sure what the bias against homosexuality is like nowadays. My parents are very conservative religious Chinese who are not very up with PC (eg. they are openly hostile to people with dark skin) and grew up in Communist China. They don't act like they know anything about homosexuality, but then again, they don't act as if they know anything about sex at all. But when I mention something about two teachers possibly being in a homosexual relationship, they just titter rather than act disgusted. They seem to treat it more as something funny than repulsive. I guess I could test it by introducing them to a gay guy...Other people have mentioned that many modern Chinese refuse to admit homosexuals exist at all. It could be because we're from the south (and according to very ancient stereotypes which I'm not sure of the truth of), the south was always supposed to be more liberal about male/male relations (there's extremely old jokes about how "man" and "south" sound a lot alike). And my impression is the far south (Guangdong in my case) was always less influenced by Communist doctrine than further north. Anyway, I see the Communist attitude against homosexuality more similar to their attitude against religion (they banned all
One has to ask why IT workers don't form a union or if they don't like the idea of a union, at least a Professional Organisation like doctors and lawyers have to fight for their rights? Right now, the only IT lobby groups represent your employers ie. the big IT companies. Remember, government doesn't hear anyone who doesn't have a big enough lobby group. Government is a matter of give and take between different interest groups and since there's a finite money to go around (yes, even with the heavy government debt) if you're not one of the winners, you're one of the losers. It was fine to be free-wheelers during the dot-com boom, but now in the down-turn you need to really have an organised voice.
I am not American and generally I agree with the statement that a lot of the complaining about outsourcing is rather hypocritical and self-serving. However I sense a bad confluence of circumstances in America.
1. Outsourcing. Technological know-how, knowledge and IP going overseas. Even worse, even new "emerging" fields that would traditionally create new jobs seem to be getting into the outsourcing game early. 2. New harsher security measures are making US firms, universities and labs much less attractive to foreign researchers. This is quite a big topic in major science journals like Science. Right now enough research money is in the US that it can still attract talent, but people are believing that the balance is tipping (esp. if the US government makes things even harsher, which is fairly likely). 3. IP laws strangling innovation in the US. This is a pretty contentious assertion. But the US patent system is very obviously broken. The worse case scenario are large companies using their defensive patent portfolios to stop smaller companies enter their field (is that already happening?) But already the legal burdern amongst small companies are quite high. 4. Microsoft. Once again a very contentious assertion. But as a recent slashdot article put it, a lot of investment money is growing wary of software business because of the "Netscape effect" ie. if you are successful in carving out a new niche, if MS wants in too (and given their "We want to own everything" nature there is a good chance that they will), you are in big trouble. None of the law suits have done anything to check the MS juggernaut. 5. This should be up above - but from lectures from scientists from countries like China, it seems that a lot of countries, esp. in Asia are taking a huge interest in research. The Chinese scientist (who was the head of some university or committee) was boasting about all the incentives they offer to Chinese scientists to stay in China to work instead of going overseas. Emerging countries like China *really* want their scientists to stay exactly where they are, and are willing to pay to keep them there (as opposed to in the Cultural Revolution where they used to arrest them and send them to work in the fields). Combined with harsh security measures to get into the US and an increasing number of US companies outsourcing research to places like China anyway (ie. research money is going increasingly out of the US), why bother going to the US? Asian countries also want to start producing "world-class" journals (in English) to challenge the dominant US and British ones.
All in all, it seems that innovation in technical fields in America is seeming to be either outsourced out of existence, not allowed in because of overly harsh security (or not wanting to go at all after experiencing said harsh security), litigated out of existence or stiffled by huge economic oligarchs. Also foreign governments like China seem to take much more personal interest in futhering science in their countries, than the US government. To them the very future and prosperity of their country depends on it (not to mention national pride) and so they really put a lot of personal effort, time and money into encouraging research.
Previous Ice Ages
on
A New Ice Age?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I'm not sure how bunk the notion of Global Warming causing an ice age is (esp. since the article seems to be slashdotted so I can't read it) nor have I watched the movie. I remember when we were studying planetary science, one of the chief questions was what caused ice ages, esp. connections with the Earth's orbit and rotation. Mind you this was some years back, but if I recall correctly, one of the things we focused heavily on was the fact that the geological evidence shows that just before Ice Ages, the Artic regions have record peaks in their temperatures. It seemed that no-one was too sure about why this was the case but what seemed to be popular was how very high Artic temperatures affected the percentage of the ocean covered by ice and the different amounts of heat that land and water absorb (and also how the Southern Hemisphere was different because of its different ratio of land to water). This seemed to be pretty established physics at the time and no-one mentioned anything about global warming. Though the question of just exactly how this all worked was still up in the air. It just seems that people are applying what is known about past Ice Ages and theorising that if record high temperatures in the Artic Circle which preceded previous Ice Ages played a direct role in the Ice Ages (and you have to admit, it's pretty reasonable to assume this), global warming may eventually result in an Ice Age as well due to the same conditions that caused previous Ice Ages.
I think people have not yet realised the company's plan of profit.
1. Make genetically modified grass. 2. Wait until it is accidentally spread to rest of town's/city's lawns eg. wind. 3. Sue whole town/city for patent violation because there is no way their intellectual property aka the grass could have got into people's lawns without them stealing the seed. This is because mankind can control nature with pinpoint control. If we say the grass won't spread because we cut it short enough, then damn it, nature will fall in place whether it likes it or not. 4. Profit!
The sad part is given past court cases they would actually have a very good chance of winning their case in court...
Cringely makes some good comments. One thing I can think of though, if as he says MS manages to kill off its competitors in the US (or bashes them to tame submission) and the software industry in the US as a whole is paralysed because investors are afraid of the "Netscape effect" when MS notices your niche and decides to compete with you - it may be possible that the next leap in innovation he thinks that will kill MS may come outside of the US. If MS suffocates the US software industry the next big innovation will have to come outside of the US. Which means that the hub of the software industry may end up moving out of the US into probably Asia - maybe China or India. And then the job losses we see in the US IT industry now would be nothing compared to what would happen then...
You keep on insisting suicide bombers are stupid because they allow other people to convince them to do horrible things. If this is true, then obviously the very smart, very organised bureaucrats of the Nazi machine were people with sub-IQs because they were indoctrinated into believing that the Final Solution was great. Not to mention the pilots who dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were stupid idiots. All the Chinese and Japanese generals and scholars who committ suicide before dishonour because that is what their culture indoctrinated in them obviously must have failed IQ tests. Richard the Lionheart obviously had an IQ little above an ape because he believed that killing innocent heathens in the Holy Land was the right thing to do because the church told him to. The feared Shi'ite assassins of the Old Man on the Mountain who even Saladin was afraid of, and who went on suicide missions were obviously brain-damaged (well they were doped up I suppose...). The Romans who ordered Cathage to be razed to the ground.
There is a very big difference between being indoctrinated that doing bad deeds or believing committing suicide in certain circumstances is the right thing to do and stupidity. Stupidity means the inability to reason and think. Basically there is no relationship between the ability to do evil, the ability to kill yourself and your IQ level. We may like to *think* that there is so that we can say that we are intelligent educated moral people so that we would never advocate the acceptability of blowing up civilians as a means to an end - wait a second...It's nice to believe that people who do bad things are somehow fundamentally different from us, maybe brain-damaged, maybe possessed by the devil, but that's not how the world works. Maybe you feel uncomfortable with the idea that people with normal or even high intelligence could do horrible things because it means that have something in common with you.
And really if you've studied how propaganda works, you'll soon come to the realisation that *most* people are easily led sheep. The existence of religion alone shows that people are very willing to believe in something of which they have absolutely no proof exists. Not only that they are willing to die for it and even kill for it. Every ideology and even patriotism can be seen in this light. It is very easy to manipulate masses of people to believe in what you want them to believe. It's done all the time today to sell cleaning products. It's known as advertising. I'm pretty sure even you could easily be convinced to blow up a boatful of innocent civilians. You just need time and the right argument. Look at what the "good" sides did in WWII and Vietnam? We can knowingly kill civilians quite well without feeling much remorse (though not as well as the bad guys). Suicide attacks are nothing special. Neither are attacks specifically aimed at terrorising civilians. Both have been done many times throughout history by many different cultures for various reasons. I mean the modern codification of terrorism as a political tool was by the French in the defence of democracy during the Reign of Terror. This is about as different from Osama bin Ladin as you can get.
And even if suicide bombers are stupid, they managed to outsmart the FBI and CIA and all the other American security apparatus, not to mention the European security apparatus for years as they planned 9/11. This is something I doubt that you could do. They are smarter than the flight instructors that taught them, the visa officials who let them in, the FBI who didn't pull them up, their Western friends and girlfriends who never suspected what they were up to, the airline company they bought their tickets from, the people who organised the security for airlines, etc. They don't need to be geniuses. They just need to be smarter than the "ordinary" people around them (and this includes most slashdotters including you) and the security forces who never suspected a thing.
Actually, if you look at the Palestinian suicide bombers a lot of them are well-educated and middle class (by Palestinian standards). Some were not even particularly religious. In fact I believe some of them were even university students studying subjects like law. The 9/11 suicide bombers - quite a few of them were well educated and came from relatively rich families. Despite the hatred they nutured for the West they spent years studying in Western universities, getting Western friends and even girlfriends. This takes as much intelligence as any good spy in a foreign country. To hide your true self, blend in, become one of the enemy. They even learnt how to fly planes. A suicide bomber has to be smart to succeed. They have to be someone who can act on their own. Once they are set loose they are on their own. They have to negotiate their way to the target. They have to be able to act well enough to blend in to the crowd to do the maximum damage. If something goes wrong they have to negotiate the obstacles by themselves with no one to help them. Of course there is a lot of psychological preparation as well (brainwashing) but that's nowhere near the same thing as stupidity.
Of course there are stupid ones as well but that's true for everything.
In "The Age" article at http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/03/25/10799 39782633.html
the former head of antitrust in the DOJ under Clinton disagrees with the current head of antitrust.
"But Douglas Melamed, chief of the DoJ's antitrust division in the Clinton administration, said the EU's order made perfect sense.
"The commission did nothing that strikes me as outrageous or foolish," he said. The fine was appropriate; a good deterrent that "enables you to focus yourself on deterring wrongful conduct rather than trying to regulate it after you find it.""
The opposing reactions of the two heads of antitrust lends strong credence to the theory that Bush's election did lead to a dramatic change in the DOJ antitrust operations and was the reason why stronger action against MS was dropped.
Also, Senate Republican leader Bill Frist has hinted at sanctions and a trade war with the EU over Microsoft. According to the article in "The Age" he is quoted as saying:
"I fear that the US and the EU are heading towards a new trade war and that the commission's ruling against Microsoft is the first shot." and
"If the US Government does not make a clear and strong objection to the EU actions, we will lose influence and credibility for years to come, to the detriment of the US economy and US consumers,"
So I guess now support for MS has become intertwined with patriotism and national pride. Yay. I guess for all your Americans out there, remember, according to your beloved Republican Senate leader, the reputation of the US as a nation is now intertwined with that of MS...
To put it simply, in a way a lot of Slashdotters would understand is that the way a lot of the world sees America, is the way a lot of us see Microsoft.
To add to your comment, there are current debates going on, at least in Australia, and I imagine in other Western nations on whether it is feasible to try to give the best medical treatment possible to everyone. Of course they are only talking about government funds here, not private treatment.
The points being raised is there is only X amount of dollars available in the government for health. Yet with the ever increasing sophistication of medical treatment, the cost of treatments is going up. People who before would have died rather rapidly are now hanging on with new treatments. Ailments that were not life threatening but affected quality of life are now curable or much more treatable. And of course everyone wants the best treatments available. Also people are living longer and of course elderly people require more treatments. Add to this the ever increasing imbalance between the elderly and working tax paying members of society and some people think that we could be heading to a budgetary catastrophe in the future.
This raises the question of whether every medical treatment should be available to everyone. Whether or not we should ration our public health dollars to give the best return ie. bumping up the queue those who have the best chance of survival, who require the least money to treat, treat working age citizens and reasonably healthy children before the elderly and those who are very sick etc.
This of course is a controversial topic. The idea of having a committee choose who will live or who will die or telling someone that they can't get treatment because they are too old and no longer working and therefore no longer useful to society or I guess in this case, telling parents their kid will die because those 7 organs could be used to treat and cure 7 kids rather than just one, is very emotive and raises a lot of uneasy feelings and questions about the criteria to be used not to mention the uncomfortable closeness to eugenics and euthanasia. However it might be possible that in the future, if the public health $$ starts running out, we may be forced into this type of system.
The best thing is, if there is a terrorist attack, the government will say it is because the system isn't draconian enough and make it even more unfair, invasive and tougher.
If there isn't a terrorist attack, the government will say "hey it's working" and to make it work better we need to make it more draconian and even more unfair, invasive and tougher.
It's a win-win situation for the government either way.
Has anyone in government thought about, if the terrorists stated aims really *are* to "destroy freedom and democracy", if we give up "essential liberties" for a little "temporary safety" or state heading down the path of a police state, or Fortress America, that the terrorists will in fact, have won.
I think a lot of people are getting the issues confused. What seems to be happening is not an evil corporation hijacking the name of an innocent open source project, it is the head of said project being personally involved in a corporation called PG2 run by a good mate offering the paid options. I have to snigger at all the declarations of evil corporations and telling Michael Hart about this and calling up the lawyer attack dogs, because the article plainly states that he is behind all this. All these statements show is that people really don't read articles on slashdot and have knee-jerk reactions.
What this is, is if Linus (who I think personally owns the Linux trademark) starting up a company with some good mates, which takes the current Linux source, close-sources it and sells it for a profit with the name Linux 2 and takes the domain name, www.linux.com as his company's front. Not only that said company heavily promotes propietry closed-source formats and programs.
Basically, has Michael Hart sold out?
1. There is no trademark issue, because Michael Hart, the founder of PG, who *personally* owns the trademark "Project Gutenberg" is personally involved with the commercial entity called "Project Gutenburg 2" which is run by a good friend of his. The people running PG2 seem to have *permission* from Michael to use the trademark. They are NOT co-opting the name illegally. They have the full permission of the right holder. Calling lawyers to sue in this case is stupid. The issue seems to boil down to a lot of PG people disagreeing with Michael this is an appropriate use of the name, not that they can do anything about it legally. The issue the article raises is whether a single person should have the right to the name and hopes that this incident will lead to a more formal control structure for the project (eg. a committee) which is independent of any single person's control.
(2) There seems to be some problem with the license. Not sure about this. I think the license on the PG2 website asserts copyright over the contents of the public domain books as well.
(3) There is the question over whether Michael is personally profiting from PG2. Whether or not you think he should is another issue, but it is one of the issues the original author of the article is pressing Michael to explain.
(4) In relation to (1). The issue is not whether or not you should be able to repackage and profit from PG's work as this is allowed. The issue is the name PG2 seems to indicate that this is the successor to PG. And also the association with the PG name with closed, propietry formats.
People are saying that these computers are likely to be hacked very quickly.
I agree.
I also predict the reaction of the companies will be to (1) make it even *more* draconian. (2) Whine that the entire computer industry as we know it will be destroyed (and the terrorists will win!) unless Congress enacts laws that will make it illegal to break into "Trusted" computers which given the way Congress usually drafts laws will probably be so vague and broad that merely open the case of any computer (w/o a government sanctioned license) will count as infringement worthy of 5 years jail. (Maybe we should call this the Patriot Computing Act?) And if they are really good, enact laws force everyone to upgrade to Trusted computing within say 5 years or else via legislating that within 5 years every new computer sold in the US has to be a "Trusted" computer.
Remember, in the field of "intellectual property" and anything associated with "computers" or "digital" or "internet", if something fails, it's not because it's a technological impossibility, your business model is failing or your customers plain don't want it or even hate it. It's because you just haven't made it draconian enough, your customers are your enemies who need to be punished and made to toe the line and you need draconian broad-based legislation otherwise the economy will collapse, WWIII will happen and of course, the terrorists will win.
Besides the privacy, police-state implications that I'm sure other people will point out, here are several points:
Firstly, if there is a easily available backdoor for everything, what's to stop criminals and terrorists from using it as well? People don't seriously think that they are not going to be able to get the technical information easily. Especially if *every* software program that allows communication the way they describe requires these backdoors. There's no-way you can keep all those civilian mouths shut. These backdoors will be built-in security holes. Just like mandating only low-level encryption may mean that it is easier for the US government to break into your data, but it also makes it easier for criminals to do so as well. The likely ease with which the technical information will spread will mean that hackers will probably make versions of the programs w/o the backdoors and spread them through the underground. Real (smart) criminals and terrorists will use these backdoorless programs leaving the American government to spy on harmless citizens and the inept.
Secondly, I can see governments like China rejecting any protocol or programs which has these backdoors installed. They are already paranoid enough about rumoured backdoors. If they are sure they exist (say through a FCC mandate) they are going to drop American software like a hot stone. While the Chinese government is a police state and would love the ability to spy on their *own* people, the last thing they want is to allow the American government to spy on *them*. Other countries, like the EU, UK might have a few qualms of letting the US government spy on *them*, though I wouldn't put it past them (esp. the UK ie. Blunkett) to start thinking of mandating their own spyware for their citizens....Say goodbye to the American software export industry...
I also wonder how these things would work in conjunction with Trusted Computing?
The last thing is, I presume that all rules and regulations will apply to open source software as well. So I guess all open source developers of the mentioned program types will have to submit their programs to the US government for approval before they can release it. And how does this affect the open source nature of development if you need government oversight *every* time you want to release any sort of new code?
Further vertical integration with other MS products. You see the bonds are quite tight enough yet. Now it is possible to escape MS once you are in its clutches (though maybe quite painful). They want to make it impossible.
This doesn't even match the US government's definition of terrorism.
From a Science article:
According to the U.S. Department of State report Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001 (1), no single definition of terrorism is universally accepted; however, for purposes of statistical analysis and policy-making: "The term `terrorism' means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience." Of course, one side's "terrorists" may well be another side's "freedom fighters" (Fig. 1). For example, in this definition's sense, the Nazi occupiers of France rightly denounced the "subnational" and "clandestine" French Resistance fighters as terrorists. During the 1980s, the International Court of Justice used the U.S. Administration's own definition of terrorism to call for an end to U.S. support for "terrorism" on the part of Nicaraguan Contras opposing peace talks.
For the U.S. Congress, "`act of terrorism' means an activity that--(A) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life that is a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State; and (B) appears to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by assassination or kidnapping." (2). When suitable, the definition can be broadened to include states hostile to U.S. policy....The concept of "terror" as systematic use of violence to attain political ends was first codified by Maximilien Robespierre during the French Revolution. He deemed it an "emanation of virtue" that delivers "prompt, severe, and inflexible" justice, as "a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country's most pressing needs."
But Nature also seems to be good at counter-balancing its viruses so that they don't wipe out everything (thus ending up killing the virus as well - it needs something to spread to).
For example many of the most deadly viruses which you have practically no chance of surviving such as Ebola are not airborne. Syphilis used to be much more deadly but gradually evolved into a less potent form.
Also you forget that a lot of the diseases we survive (as in the population in general not individual people) because people gradually develop immunity to them especially due to proximity to animals. For example smallpox. For examples of what happens when people are suddenly exposed to diseases just look at aboriginal populations like the Australian Aborigines, the South American or North American Indians.
So a man-made virus: (1) While a natural virus's main aim is to survive and hence not kill everything in sight, thus either is either difficult to spread (anything that doesn't involve airbourne or a simple touch) or is simply not instantly deadly, a man-made virus does not need to fill this condition and thus can be both deadly and easy to spread. In fact these are the sort of mutations they are working on in the experiments. (2) The virus escapes suddenly into a population which has none or practically no immunity to it.
So a man-made virus could very well be something that nature has never produced and is not likely to produce - a virus as deadly as Ebola (99% death rate), as easy to spread as the cold (airbourne and touch) released suddenly into a population which has even less immunity to it than the American Indians to smallpox.
Actually isn't the quote to give up an "essential liberty" for a "little temporary safety"? That puts a whole different slant on your comparison as I wouldn't exactly say that the security offered by the GPL is temporary or little. And I guess the people who use the GPL consider allowing companies to close source your work to be a very bad thing rather than an essential liberty (otherwise they wouldn't choose the GPL in the first place). And also it's not like they are forcing any one else who does consider allowing companies to close source your work an "essential liberty" to give it up (which is different from the circumstances which Franklin was probably talking about where people in fear force through laws that restrict the freedom of everyone whether they agree with the new laws or not. A citizen can't be selective about what laws they obey or not but you can choose not to have anything to do with the GPL).
I don't really know much about the XFree86 project except what I read here on./ I'm sure a lot of readers are similar. So can anyone clarify who's responsible for this fiasco? I keep on reading about this David Dawes guy but I thought that the main problem with the XFree86 project was the core team who were the main people antogonising X developers and that they disbanded a while ago? Who is this David Dawes guy then? How could he have made this decision about the license change himself so suddenly? Surely something like this would have had to go through a long discussion process with the XFree86 community, consultation, flame wars etc. and the community leaders would have to come to an agreement together? So why are people blaming him?
Slashdot Mirror
I've seen a lot about how "But what about what they did in Fallujah!"
What was done in Fallujah was the work of an angry lynch mob of young men in a dusty desert town. At least the mutilation part. Also I think Fallujah has suffered enough for the crime already. 600 Iraqis died and I don't think that mob was 600 strong. Besides many of those 600 were civilians and much of the town itself is now in ruins.
What was done in the prisons was not the work of a few rogue soldiers but a systematic problem with torture which even if the specific orders didn't come from the very top, the attitudes that led to it did. As it is, the soldiers were given orders by their immediate superiors to torture the prisoners. That is what happened with the prisons is a problem with the very institution of the US army. Both the army's own report and the Red Cross believe the problem was systematic.
The two are not comparable. Crimes done by institutions and the state are a different order of crimes done by individuals or small groups. What do you think is worse? A small lynch mob, acting illegally to lynch a black, for which the authorities punish them, or the government army being given the orders to herd all blacks into little enclosures because the government believes blacks are inferior?
But hey, compare Fallujah and what happened in the prisons if you like. Then I can say that you think that the insitution of the US army is no better than a lynch mob.
One thing I heard is that they were told by military intelligence and civilian contractors who seem to have been their bosses in the prison, to take the photos to show to incoming Iraqi prisoners to scare them. It's well known that anticipation of torture is part and parcel of the psychological aspect. Then, I guess they decided to keep copies of the photos as "trophies".
Actually recording lines separately is common practice in the US dubbing industry, at least for anime. I think it's supposed to be cheaper and the technical quality is better.
In Japan however, it is common practice to have all the voice actors in the scene in the same room at the same time. You can see them sometimes in extra clips in the recording room, cracking jokes with each other. Some of them become pretty good friends (or at least they seem to become good friends).
China's attitudes to homosexuality are interesting. For much of China's history, homosexuality was treated fairly leniently. One vast difference with the West is that homosexuality has *never* been considered a religious sin. The major forces of Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism and Buddhism have never said in any terms that homosexuality was wrong. Note, this is *male* homosexuality as the vast majority of Chinese history and literature focuses on guys. This passed onto Japan as well, well I think in the 17th century, a Japanese samurai wrote a book basically saying "It must be good. The Chinese do it!" The attitude was more to do with "As long as you marry a good girl and get children to carry on the family line, who cares what you do?" Also male homosexuality was strongly connected with the whole brotherhood concept so beloved of Chinese. Male/male friendships were considered the ultimate in human relationships. There is a saying that to lose a wife is like losing a piece of clothing. To lose a brother/friend is like losing a limb. For example in one Chinese province there were gay "marriages" where the "older brother" is obliged to protect the younger one and later on, help him find a wife. Buddhist temples in China and Japan also were bastions of homosexual relations and Japanese samurai had a common sort of homosexual "mentor and student" relationship. Starting during the Manchurian rule (who were foreigners) and then continuing into modern times, however, homosexuality was treated far less leniently. However many of the earlier emperors had gay lovers, and the stories are the source of famous euphamisms like the "Passion of the Cut Sleeve" and "The half-eaten peach". What disgust existed for homosexuality was for men who dressed like women. That was giving up one's manhood and honour. I suppose one could say that most homosexual men in China/Japan were actually bisexual.
A big change occurred with the influx of Western culture into China, esp. science. A lot of science at the time said homosexuality was a mental illness and many modern Chinese,eager to grasp Western ideas took this to heart. Homosexuality as well as old Confucian ideas became part of the "old" way and many young revolutionaries were eager to get rid of the "old ways". There's this story about this young revolutionary staring at disgust at his grandfather who came back drunk from a night of debauchery with young male opera stars. Actually the Communists were pretty much against overt romanticism even between males and females as well and even tender parental feelings for your children. You were supposed to be a worker for the state. Women who gave their children to their parents to raise so they could devote themselves to their work were praised (where do you think 1984 got these ideas from?). I'm not sure what the bias against homosexuality is like nowadays. My parents are very conservative religious Chinese who are not very up with PC (eg. they are openly hostile to people with dark skin) and grew up in Communist China. They don't act like they know anything about homosexuality, but then again, they don't act as if they know anything about sex at all. But when I mention something about two teachers possibly being in a homosexual relationship, they just titter rather than act disgusted. They seem to treat it more as something funny than repulsive. I guess I could test it by introducing them to a gay guy...Other people have mentioned that many modern Chinese refuse to admit homosexuals exist at all. It could be because we're from the south (and according to very ancient stereotypes which I'm not sure of the truth of), the south was always supposed to be more liberal about male/male relations (there's extremely old jokes about how "man" and "south" sound a lot alike). And my impression is the far south (Guangdong in my case) was always less influenced by Communist doctrine than further north. Anyway, I see the Communist attitude against homosexuality more similar to their attitude against religion (they banned all
One has to ask why IT workers don't form a union or if they don't like the idea of a union, at least a Professional Organisation like doctors and lawyers have to fight for their rights? Right now, the only IT lobby groups represent your employers ie. the big IT companies. Remember, government doesn't hear anyone who doesn't have a big enough lobby group. Government is a matter of give and take between different interest groups and since there's a finite money to go around (yes, even with the heavy government debt) if you're not one of the winners, you're one of the losers. It was fine to be free-wheelers during the dot-com boom, but now in the down-turn you need to really have an organised voice.
I am not American and generally I agree with the statement that a lot of the complaining about outsourcing is rather hypocritical and self-serving. However I sense a bad confluence of circumstances in America.
1. Outsourcing. Technological know-how, knowledge and IP going overseas. Even worse, even new "emerging" fields that would traditionally create new jobs seem to be getting into the outsourcing game early.
2. New harsher security measures are making US firms, universities and labs much less attractive to foreign researchers. This is quite a big topic in major science journals like Science. Right now enough research money is in the US that it can still attract talent, but people are believing that the balance is tipping (esp. if the US government makes things even harsher, which is fairly likely).
3. IP laws strangling innovation in the US. This is a pretty contentious assertion. But the US patent system is very obviously broken. The worse case scenario are large companies using their defensive patent portfolios to stop smaller companies enter their field (is that already happening?) But already the legal burdern amongst small companies are quite high.
4. Microsoft. Once again a very contentious assertion. But as a recent slashdot article put it, a lot of investment money is growing wary of software business because of the "Netscape effect" ie. if you are successful in carving out a new niche, if MS wants in too (and given their "We want to own everything" nature there is a good chance that they will), you are in big trouble. None of the law suits have done anything to check the MS juggernaut.
5. This should be up above - but from lectures from scientists from countries like China, it seems that a lot of countries, esp. in Asia are taking a huge interest in research. The Chinese scientist (who was the head of some university or committee) was boasting about all the incentives they offer to Chinese scientists to stay in China to work instead of going overseas. Emerging countries like China *really* want their scientists to stay exactly where they are, and are willing to pay to keep them there (as opposed to in the Cultural Revolution where they used to arrest them and send them to work in the fields). Combined with harsh security measures to get into the US and an increasing number of US companies outsourcing research to places like China anyway (ie. research money is going increasingly out of the US), why bother going to the US? Asian countries also want to start producing "world-class" journals (in English) to challenge the dominant US and British ones.
All in all, it seems that innovation in technical fields in America is seeming to be either outsourced out of existence, not allowed in because of overly harsh security (or not wanting to go at all after experiencing said harsh security), litigated out of existence or stiffled by huge economic oligarchs. Also foreign governments like China seem to take much more personal interest in futhering science in their countries, than the US government. To them the very future and prosperity of their country depends on it (not to mention national pride) and so they really put a lot of personal effort, time and money into encouraging research.
I'm not sure how bunk the notion of Global Warming causing an ice age is (esp. since the article seems to be slashdotted so I can't read it) nor have I watched the movie. I remember when we were studying planetary science, one of the chief questions was what caused ice ages, esp. connections with the Earth's orbit and rotation. Mind you this was some years back, but if I recall correctly, one of the things we focused heavily on was the fact that the geological evidence shows that just before Ice Ages, the Artic regions have record peaks in their temperatures. It seemed that no-one was too sure about why this was the case but what seemed to be popular was how very high Artic temperatures affected the percentage of the ocean covered by ice and the different amounts of heat that land and water absorb (and also how the Southern Hemisphere was different because of its different ratio of land to water). This seemed to be pretty established physics at the time and no-one mentioned anything about global warming. Though the question of just exactly how this all worked was still up in the air. It just seems that people are applying what is known about past Ice Ages and theorising that if record high temperatures in the Artic Circle which preceded previous Ice Ages played a direct role in the Ice Ages (and you have to admit, it's pretty reasonable to assume this), global warming may eventually result in an Ice Age as well due to the same conditions that caused previous Ice Ages.
I think people have not yet realised the company's plan of profit.
1. Make genetically modified grass.
2. Wait until it is accidentally spread to rest of town's/city's lawns eg. wind.
3. Sue whole town/city for patent violation because there is no way their intellectual property aka the grass could have got into people's lawns without them stealing the seed. This is because mankind can control nature with pinpoint control. If we say the grass won't spread because we cut it short enough, then damn it, nature will fall in place whether it likes it or not.
4. Profit!
The sad part is given past court cases they would actually have a very good chance of winning their case in court...
Cringely makes some good comments. One thing I can think of though, if as he says MS manages to kill off its competitors in the US (or bashes them to tame submission) and the software industry in the US as a whole is paralysed because investors are afraid of the "Netscape effect" when MS notices your niche and decides to compete with you - it may be possible that the next leap in innovation he thinks that will kill MS may come outside of the US. If MS suffocates the US software industry the next big innovation will have to come outside of the US. Which means that the hub of the software industry may end up moving out of the US into probably Asia - maybe China or India. And then the job losses we see in the US IT industry now would be nothing compared to what would happen then...
You keep on insisting suicide bombers are stupid because they allow other people to convince them to do horrible things. If this is true, then obviously the very smart, very organised bureaucrats of the Nazi machine were people with sub-IQs because they were indoctrinated into believing that the Final Solution was great. Not to mention the pilots who dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were stupid idiots. All the Chinese and Japanese generals and scholars who committ suicide before dishonour because that is what their culture indoctrinated in them obviously must have failed IQ tests. Richard the Lionheart obviously had an IQ little above an ape because he believed that killing innocent heathens in the Holy Land was the right thing to do because the church told him to. The feared Shi'ite assassins of the Old Man on the Mountain who even Saladin was afraid of, and who went on suicide missions were obviously brain-damaged (well they were doped up I suppose...). The Romans who ordered Cathage to be razed to the ground.
There is a very big difference between being indoctrinated that doing bad deeds or believing committing suicide in certain circumstances is the right thing to do and stupidity. Stupidity means the inability to reason and think. Basically there is no relationship between the ability to do evil, the ability to kill yourself and your IQ level. We may like to *think* that there is so that we can say that we are intelligent educated moral people so that we would never advocate the acceptability of blowing up civilians as a means to an end - wait a second...It's nice to believe that people who do bad things are somehow fundamentally different from us, maybe brain-damaged, maybe possessed by the devil, but that's not how the world works. Maybe you feel uncomfortable with the idea that people with normal or even high intelligence could do horrible things because it means that have something in common with you.
And really if you've studied how propaganda works, you'll soon come to the realisation that *most* people are easily led sheep. The existence of religion alone shows that people are very willing to believe in something of which they have absolutely no proof exists. Not only that they are willing to die for it and even kill for it. Every ideology and even patriotism can be seen in this light. It is very easy to manipulate masses of people to believe in what you want them to believe. It's done all the time today to sell cleaning products. It's known as advertising. I'm pretty sure even you could easily be convinced to blow up a boatful of innocent civilians. You just need time and the right argument. Look at what the "good" sides did in WWII and Vietnam? We can knowingly kill civilians quite well without feeling much remorse (though not as well as the bad guys). Suicide attacks are nothing special. Neither are attacks specifically aimed at terrorising civilians. Both have been done many times throughout history by many different cultures for various reasons. I mean the modern codification of terrorism as a political tool was by the French in the defence of democracy during the Reign of Terror. This is about as different from Osama bin Ladin as you can get.
And even if suicide bombers are stupid, they managed to outsmart the FBI and CIA and all the other American security apparatus, not to mention the European security apparatus for years as they planned 9/11. This is something I doubt that you could do. They are smarter than the flight instructors that taught them, the visa officials who let them in, the FBI who didn't pull them up, their Western friends and girlfriends who never suspected what they were up to, the airline company they bought their tickets from, the people who organised the security for airlines, etc. They don't need to be geniuses. They just need to be smarter than the "ordinary" people around them (and this includes most slashdotters including you) and the security forces who never suspected a thing.
You seem to have a naive v
Actually, if you look at the Palestinian suicide bombers a lot of them are well-educated and middle class (by Palestinian standards). Some were not even particularly religious. In fact I believe some of them were even university students studying subjects like law. The 9/11 suicide bombers - quite a few of them were well educated and came from relatively rich families. Despite the hatred they nutured for the West they spent years studying in Western universities, getting Western friends and even girlfriends. This takes as much intelligence as any good spy in a foreign country. To hide your true self, blend in, become one of the enemy. They even learnt how to fly planes. A suicide bomber has to be smart to succeed. They have to be someone who can act on their own. Once they are set loose they are on their own. They have to negotiate their way to the target. They have to be able to act well enough to blend in to the crowd to do the maximum damage. If something goes wrong they have to negotiate the obstacles by themselves with no one to help them. Of course there is a lot of psychological preparation as well (brainwashing) but that's nowhere near the same thing as stupidity.
Of course there are stupid ones as well but that's true for everything.
In "The Age" article at http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/03/25/10799 39782633.html
the former head of antitrust in the DOJ under Clinton disagrees with the current head of antitrust.
"But Douglas Melamed, chief of the DoJ's antitrust division in the Clinton administration, said the EU's order made perfect sense.
"The commission did nothing that strikes me as outrageous or foolish," he said. The fine was appropriate; a good deterrent that "enables you to focus yourself on deterring wrongful conduct rather than trying to regulate it after you find it.""
The opposing reactions of the two heads of antitrust lends strong credence to the theory that Bush's election did lead to a dramatic change in the DOJ antitrust operations and was the reason why stronger action against MS was dropped.
Also, Senate Republican leader Bill Frist has hinted at sanctions and a trade war with the EU over Microsoft. According to the article in "The Age" he is quoted as saying:
"I fear that the US and the EU are heading towards a new trade war and that the commission's ruling against Microsoft is the first shot." and
"If the US Government does not make a clear and strong objection to the EU actions, we will lose influence and credibility for years to come, to the detriment of the US economy and US consumers,"
So I guess now support for MS has become intertwined with patriotism and national pride. Yay. I guess for all your Americans out there, remember, according to your beloved Republican Senate leader, the reputation of the US as a nation is now intertwined with that of MS...
To put it simply, in a way a lot of Slashdotters would understand is that the way a lot of the world sees America, is the way a lot of us see Microsoft.
To add to your comment, there are current debates going on, at least in Australia, and I imagine in other Western nations on whether it is feasible to try to give the best medical treatment possible to everyone. Of course they are only talking about government funds here, not private treatment.
The points being raised is there is only X amount of dollars available in the government for health. Yet with the ever increasing sophistication of medical treatment, the cost of treatments is going up. People who before would have died rather rapidly are now hanging on with new treatments. Ailments that were not life threatening but affected quality of life are now curable or much more treatable. And of course everyone wants the best treatments available. Also people are living longer and of course elderly people require more treatments. Add to this the ever increasing imbalance between the elderly and working tax paying members of society and some people think that we could be heading to a budgetary catastrophe in the future.
This raises the question of whether every medical treatment should be available to everyone. Whether or not we should ration our public health dollars to give the best return ie. bumping up the queue those who have the best chance of survival, who require the least money to treat, treat working age citizens and reasonably healthy children before the elderly and those who are very sick etc.
This of course is a controversial topic. The idea of having a committee choose who will live or who will die or telling someone that they can't get treatment because they are too old and no longer working and therefore no longer useful to society or I guess in this case, telling parents their kid will die because those 7 organs could be used to treat and cure 7 kids rather than just one, is very emotive and raises a lot of uneasy feelings and questions about the criteria to be used not to mention the uncomfortable closeness to eugenics and euthanasia. However it might be possible that in the future, if the public health $$ starts running out, we may be forced into this type of system.
The best thing is, if there is a terrorist attack, the government will say it is because the system isn't draconian enough and make it even more unfair, invasive and tougher.
If there isn't a terrorist attack, the government will say "hey it's working" and to make it work better we need to make it more draconian and even more unfair, invasive and tougher.
It's a win-win situation for the government either way.
Has anyone in government thought about, if the terrorists stated aims really *are* to "destroy freedom and democracy", if we give up "essential liberties" for a little "temporary safety" or state heading down the path of a police state, or Fortress America, that the terrorists will in fact, have won.
The article was talking about the PG2 license on their website, not the PG one.
I think a lot of people are getting the issues confused. What seems to be happening is not an evil corporation hijacking the name of an innocent open source project, it is the head of said project being personally involved in a corporation called PG2 run by a good mate offering the paid options. I have to snigger at all the declarations of evil corporations and telling Michael Hart about this and calling up the lawyer attack dogs, because the article plainly states that he is behind all this. All these statements show is that people really don't read articles on slashdot and have knee-jerk reactions.
What this is, is if Linus (who I think personally owns the Linux trademark) starting up a company with some good mates, which takes the current Linux source, close-sources it and sells it for a profit with the name Linux 2 and takes the domain name, www.linux.com as his company's front. Not only that said company heavily promotes propietry closed-source formats and programs.
Basically, has Michael Hart sold out?
1. There is no trademark issue, because Michael Hart, the founder of PG, who *personally* owns the trademark "Project Gutenberg" is personally involved with the commercial entity called "Project Gutenburg 2" which is run by a good friend of his. The people running PG2 seem to have *permission* from Michael to use the trademark. They are NOT co-opting the name illegally. They have the full permission of the right holder. Calling lawyers to sue in this case is stupid. The issue seems to boil down to a lot of PG people disagreeing with Michael this is an appropriate use of the name, not that they can do anything about it legally. The issue the article raises is whether a single person should have the right to the name and hopes that this incident will lead to a more formal control structure for the project (eg. a committee) which is independent of any single person's control.
(2) There seems to be some problem with the license. Not sure about this. I think the license on the PG2 website asserts copyright over the contents of the public domain books as well.
(3) There is the question over whether Michael is personally profiting from PG2. Whether or not you think he should is another issue, but it is one of the issues the original author of the article is pressing Michael to explain.
(4) In relation to (1). The issue is not whether or not you should be able to repackage and profit from PG's work as this is allowed. The issue is the name PG2 seems to indicate that this is the successor to PG. And also the association with the PG name with closed, propietry formats.
People are saying that these computers are likely to be hacked very quickly.
I agree.
I also predict the reaction of the companies will be to
(1) make it even *more* draconian.
(2) Whine that the entire computer industry as we know it will be destroyed (and the terrorists will win!) unless Congress enacts laws that will make it illegal to break into "Trusted" computers which given the way Congress usually drafts laws will probably be so vague and broad that merely open the case of any computer (w/o a government sanctioned license) will count as infringement worthy of 5 years jail. (Maybe we should call this the Patriot Computing Act?) And if they are really good, enact laws force everyone to upgrade to Trusted computing within say 5 years or else via legislating that within 5 years every new computer sold in the US has to be a "Trusted" computer.
Remember, in the field of "intellectual property" and anything associated with "computers" or "digital" or "internet", if something fails, it's not because it's a technological impossibility, your business model is failing or your customers plain don't want it or even hate it. It's because you just haven't made it draconian enough, your customers are your enemies who need to be punished and made to toe the line and you need draconian broad-based legislation otherwise the economy will collapse, WWIII will happen and of course, the terrorists will win.
Besides the privacy, police-state implications that I'm sure other people will point out, here are several points:
Firstly, if there is a easily available backdoor for everything, what's to stop criminals and terrorists from using it as well? People don't seriously think that they are not going to be able to get the technical information easily. Especially if *every* software program that allows communication the way they describe requires these backdoors. There's no-way you can keep all those civilian mouths shut. These backdoors will be built-in security holes. Just like mandating only low-level encryption may mean that it is easier for the US government to break into your data, but it also makes it easier for criminals to do so as well. The likely ease with which the technical information will spread will mean that hackers will probably make versions of the programs w/o the backdoors and spread them through the underground. Real (smart) criminals and terrorists will use these backdoorless programs leaving the American government to spy on harmless citizens and the inept.
Secondly, I can see governments like China rejecting any protocol or programs which has these backdoors installed. They are already paranoid enough about rumoured backdoors. If they are sure they exist (say through a FCC mandate) they are going to drop American software like a hot stone. While the Chinese government is a police state and would love the ability to spy on their *own* people, the last thing they want is to allow the American government to spy on *them*. Other countries, like the EU, UK might have a few qualms of letting the US government spy on *them*, though I wouldn't put it past them (esp. the UK ie. Blunkett) to start thinking of mandating their own spyware for their citizens....Say goodbye to the American software export industry...
I also wonder how these things would work in conjunction with Trusted Computing?
The last thing is, I presume that all rules and regulations will apply to open source software as well. So I guess all open source developers of the mentioned program types will have to submit their programs to the US government for approval before they can release it. And how does this affect the open source nature of development if you need government oversight *every* time you want to release any sort of new code?
Further vertical integration with other MS products. You see the bonds are quite tight enough yet. Now it is possible to escape MS once you are in its clutches (though maybe quite painful). They want to make it impossible.
This doesn't even match the US government's definition of terrorism.
...The concept of "terror" as systematic use of violence to attain political ends was first codified by Maximilien Robespierre during the French Revolution. He deemed it an "emanation of virtue" that delivers "prompt, severe, and inflexible" justice, as "a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country's most pressing needs."
From a Science article:
According to the U.S. Department of State report Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001 (1), no single definition of terrorism is universally accepted; however, for purposes of statistical analysis and policy-making: "The term `terrorism' means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience." Of course, one side's "terrorists" may well be another side's "freedom fighters" (Fig. 1). For example, in this definition's sense, the Nazi occupiers of France rightly denounced the "subnational" and "clandestine" French Resistance fighters as terrorists. During the 1980s, the International Court of Justice used the U.S. Administration's own definition of terrorism to call for an end to U.S. support for "terrorism" on the part of Nicaraguan Contras opposing peace talks.
For the U.S. Congress, "`act of terrorism' means an activity that--(A) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life that is a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State; and (B) appears to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by assassination or kidnapping." (2). When suitable, the definition can be broadened to include states hostile to U.S. policy.
But Nature also seems to be good at counter-balancing its viruses so that they don't wipe out everything (thus ending up killing the virus as well - it needs something to spread to).
For example many of the most deadly viruses which you have practically no chance of surviving such as Ebola are not airborne. Syphilis used to be much more deadly but gradually evolved into a less potent form.
Also you forget that a lot of the diseases we survive (as in the population in general not individual people) because people gradually develop immunity to them especially due to proximity to animals. For example smallpox. For examples of what happens when people are suddenly exposed to diseases just look at aboriginal populations like the Australian Aborigines, the South American or North American Indians.
So a man-made virus:
(1) While a natural virus's main aim is to survive and hence not kill everything in sight, thus either is either difficult to spread (anything that doesn't involve airbourne or a simple touch) or is simply not instantly deadly, a man-made virus does not need to fill this condition and thus can be both deadly and easy to spread. In fact these are the sort of mutations they are working on in the experiments.
(2) The virus escapes suddenly into a population which has none or practically no immunity to it.
So a man-made virus could very well be something that nature has never produced and is not likely to produce - a virus as deadly as Ebola (99% death rate), as easy to spread as the cold (airbourne and touch) released suddenly into a population which has even less immunity to it than the American Indians to smallpox.
Actually isn't the quote to give up an "essential liberty" for a "little temporary safety"? That puts a whole different slant on your comparison as I wouldn't exactly say that the security offered by the GPL is temporary or little. And I guess the people who use the GPL consider allowing companies to close source your work to be a very bad thing rather than an essential liberty (otherwise they wouldn't choose the GPL in the first place). And also it's not like they are forcing any one else who does consider allowing companies to close source your work an "essential liberty" to give it up (which is different from the circumstances which Franklin was probably talking about where people in fear force through laws that restrict the freedom of everyone whether they agree with the new laws or not. A citizen can't be selective about what laws they obey or not but you can choose not to have anything to do with the GPL).
I don't really know much about the XFree86 project except what I read here on ./ I'm sure a lot of readers are similar. So can anyone clarify who's responsible for this fiasco? I keep on reading about this David Dawes guy but I thought that the main problem with the XFree86 project was the core team who were the main people antogonising X developers and that they disbanded a while ago? Who is this David Dawes guy then? How could he have made this decision about the license change himself so suddenly? Surely something like this would have had to go through a long discussion process with the XFree86 community, consultation, flame wars etc. and the community leaders would have to come to an agreement together? So why are people blaming him?
Thanks!