This is one of my beefs with the "derivative works" clauses in many software products. There's this strange idea of what is and what isn't a derivative product.
What is seems is that IBM may have gotten System V from SCO and then added some features that were original creations of IBM (to create AIX/Dynix). IBM is then alleged to have given those new features to Linux. SCO is claiming they own those "new" features created by IBM because of some wording in the System V contracts.
Now, we can all reasonably conclude that this is stupid; if I buy a car and design a new fin for it, then sell the fin design to others, the car companies don't claim the fin design is their property. However, when we purchase a car we don't sign a "derivative works" contract with the car dealer or manufacturer.
The way I see it there are a couple of things that could happen. One is that the original contracts may be found to say that derivative works are property of SCO, in which case IBM did not have the right to give them away for use in Linux - and I would say IBM was dumb to sign such a contract and should legally pay. However, even if the contract was written for that scenario, the court might find that such a provision is "unreasonable" and is void (similar to the car example). Another way it could go is that IBM somehow took code that it did not originally create but thought it owned and contributed it to Linux. This is a little more tricky because it's basically an "oops, we didn't read the original contract correctly".
Out of those scenarios, the latter is the worst because it would mean that [Linux] is infringing. In the former case, either SCO owns the derivative works or doesn't. I would argue that, if SCO is found to own the derivative works, IBM charges them some large amount of money for the development of those new works. Probably to the tune that SCO is filing in the suit, since that is the apparent value on those features. After all, IBM did not develop those features gratis for the benefit of SCO!
All in all, I think all sides (SCO, IBM, the Linux crowd) are focusing on the wrong things here. Litigation never added value to society at all and sucks up resources. I definitely agree with the camp that thinks SCO would be better off devleoping product than litigating.
Amen to that! I really think people are confused if they really try to adhere to the "all people are created equal" nonsense in all venues. Here is what I mean:
"All [people] are created equal" simply refers to how they should treat each other - not ability, competency, or physical attributes. I do not have perfect pitch. I do not have 20/20 vision. I am not as tall as some, and my muscles will never get as strong as some no matter how much I body-build or take drugs. I am not equal to everyone else!
I think it's a disservice to tell people "you can do anything you want" because that is just not true. People generally all have something they do better than other things. Sometimes people also like to try and push themselves to do things that aren't "naturally easy" for them.
I actually find it demeaning to say that "all people can do all things equally if they just try hard enough" because that takes away our individuality and our identity. The fact that some abilities might be related to genetics is a moot point.
Ah! I could dialog about this topic for quite some time, but methinks that people would just get irate...
Actually, since economics is really a form of psychology/sociology, an economist might not be a bad authority on saying "some differences in gender are not social like people think they are (i.e., if someone did a study to test correlation, causation, or whatever); if they are not social then there must be some other determining characteristic. Since there is a difference based on gender lines, one might reasonably argue that difference is genetic and therefore 'innate'."
Argh, I can't resist: buffer overflows are not a limitation of programming language (all languages boil down to assembly anyway, right? Didn't someone write something about how all computer languages were equivalent or something - Turing I think?) but a direct result of coding practices (either ignorance, management pressures, or some other non-technical factor).
I'm a firm believer in the fact that, if it's possible to write one line of bug-free code, it's possible to write one more line of bug-free code, and so on, until you have an arbitrary number of bug-free lines (proof by induction). Granted, it becomes more difficult, but it's not impossible as many would think. If I had enough money, I'd try and prove it...
Anyway, sorry to rant...I'm in a strange mood today.
Yes, I know about the limited monopoly in exchange for public disclosure. However, why would this be preferable to trade secrets? Companies like trade secrets because they can have complete control over a technology - if that trade secret is something that cannot be easily reverse-engineered or duplicated. (Companies prefer trade secrets where possible; the danger is trade secrets are not - afaik - legally protected). Having a monopoly in exchange for public disclosure only encourages innovation where people can base things on that disclosed invention without having to be encumbered by the disclosed invention. If you have to pay license fees to make a "derivative work" that actually stifles innovation. This gets tricky in the modern marketplace because of a couple things: First, people are trying to patent results and not mechanisms. Even with pharmaceutacals, what is patented (and rightly so, in my mind) is a particular recipe for a drug. It is not the idea of making a drug to treat condition X. (Hopefully that illustrates my point). One reason why people dislike software and business patents is because they put a lock on "results" rather than on a mechanism. (This should be a new criteria in evaluating claims, as I see it). For instance, "Any mechanism that allows purchase by clicking one button by storing information in a database that can be referenced when clicking that button" is a result, not a mechanism (despite the fact that it has the word "mechanism" in it).
Second, people have extended the meaning of the word "derivative work" a bit too far - some take it to mean that "I patented this bolt. If you use my bolt, whatever you use it in is a derivative work," which is a bit obtuse (I paid for the bolt, you got your compensation already!). Patents were in place to protect a particular means of performing some operation, not the operation itself! This doesn't even being to touch on the realm of even when a patent does address a means and not an end and that means is absurd (like the laser-pointer-feline-activity-inducer).
Standards are a different issue entirely; if you look at most standards today they are "pay to enter the club" type things (look at ANSI, ISO, SAE, etc.) Standards are basically arbitrary agreements on interfaces and shouldn't be protected at all in my book. (Do we have to pay to know what a meter is? A kilogram?) If it's protected, it's not a "standard" - it's an access card and a tool to expand elitism. While you can argue about which "interfaces" should be standards and which aren't, I think we agree that "closed" interfaces are a hindrance rather than a help to innovation.
Forcing others to reinvent the wheel is actually also a good way to promote innovation - assuming you aren't really trying to reinvent the wheel but "find another way to perform operation Q". Sometimes things are natural building blocks - like basic mechanics, mathematics, and the like and reinventing things like calculus or how to make steel or coordinate transforms are better left shared than protected. But the FAT filesystem? Why does that need protection when there are millions of ways to store data on a disk? The only reason to patent something like that is to force people to your method and hinder alternatives - or at least hinder interfacing with your things that use that "interface".
The trouble, I guess, is determining at what point people are "making money off your invention" and when they are merely using your invention as a starting point for something else. For instance, cars use lots of steel, so technically they "make money off steel", but cars are not steel.
I know I'm rambling a bit, but mostly it's because I'm really trying to contribute (albeit in a very limited and uncoordinated fashion) to the intellectual-property-reform movement. (You can also ask me about my recent foray into musings on property rights and property taxes in general).
Your comment is starting to get at the heart of the matter: what is it that patents (and copyright) are "supposed" to do?
"Copyrights" should really have been called something like "distribution and performance rights", but back in the day, you enforced this by limiting the ability to copy. Now there are no physical barriers to copying so the word is odd. What "copyrights" are intended to do is this: make sure that the people who originate a work of art are the only ones with the right to obtain compensation for the distribution of that art. I'm not even sure how 'performance' fits in, because there are some folks that maybe wrote a song but couldn't sing, but other folks will go see someone else who sings it better - so are the people paying for the song or the performance of the song? It's not clear what the correct distinction should be.
Patents were slightly different - they were originally around so that the garage inventor would be protected from the giant corporation (at least, I hope that's the original intent!). Think about it: if you're a big corporation, you don't need to be "protected" from people stealing your idea because you can build and market it. If you're a small operation, you have to work hard to get resources to develop. The patent protected that period of time so that a rich entity didn't come along and beat you to market using your idea. Now only big entities can easily get patents, and they don't so much use them to be first to market but to keep others out of the market. The intent of a patent should be "development protection" rather than "market protection" (we all know that artificial barriers in the market are inherently Bad). Giant companies hardly need development protection, and the only reason they want "market protection" is to cover their incompetencies (yes, I know the truth is hard to swallow) at adapting to changing markets.
So, my proposals to revamp the whole system would be to come up with a new system of "distribution rights", "performance rights", and "development protection" with appropriate, thoughtful definitions for each of those (to distinguish what customers want as in the example of the writer and singer that I gave above). What we need to keep in mind is that the people that deserve the "protection" from these laws is not the big businesses (publishers, manufacturers, etc.) but the people that generate the thigns of value - the artists, the engineers, the performers. After all, you will always have artists and engineers independently of the means of getting their ideas out to the masses; the current trend in "intellectual property" seems to miss this.
This is irrelevant for something like a solar cell. A solar cell might take lots of energy to produce, but as long as there is the correct incident radiation and the device works, it will produce energy. For instance, say, it takes 10 MJ to produce one of these capable of produce one watt. The 10 MJ will be made up in 10 million seconds, which is not quite 4 months. (1e7 seconds / 86.4e4 seconds/day = 115 days and some change.) My guess is that's on the right order of magnitude.
Note that this material doesn't "produce" energy at all - it just converts it from the sun (which is the thing sending all the energy our way in the first place). This is different than, say, hydrogen, which is an energy storage medium; you have to put energy into hydrogen to store it, then you get a little less out. With these, you simply build the device, then use (solar) radiation to create a current.
Re:Engineering within limits brings great results
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Where's My 10 Ghz PC?
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If this were the case, wouldn't the price of software and the demand for programmers be higher? With all the talk about programming work going overseas, it seems there is definitely enough supply of developers.
On the flip side, the fact that software companies can charge thousands of dollars for enterprise-level applications (I'm even thinking in the engineering arena, when a single license for a simulation package that implements college-level concepts costs $3000 for a year) does bear some credence to your observation. You would think, though, that software companies would remain profitable, keep US (high-paid) employeees, and not have to offshore.
It sounds like, since the supply is so limited, that all the unemployed programmers in the US should be able to find all the jobs they want, because the customers would be happy to hire them (after all, you get hired because of customers, not because of a company that produces product Z). The fact that this doesn't work and the companies have the ability to [offshore] means that there is enough supply (not just local) and the demand and supply are in balance. Granted, this doesn't apply to all classes of software, so it's hard to quantify.
Interesting train of thought on which you've sent me this afternoon, though...
This may be a subtle point, the but Commandment is "don't commit murder" not "don't kill". There's actually a very important non-trivial difference there. For instance, the very same old testatment which has in its primary laws "don't murder" also has "if someone commits such-and-so act, the penalty is death." The death sentence for a crime is not murder, but is the ramification of a particular action. Strictly speaking, murder is killing outside the realm of the concept of justice.
While you can argue about the "real" reasons people go to war, you should be able to see that some violence is a means of meting out justice while some violence is pure lack of regard for others (for instance, me beating you up so I can have your shoes).
Of course, you get into all sorts of mess when you have conflicting ideas of what actions are crimes, and what punishments are appropriate for what crimes; that's an area which causes much conflict and often even results in war.
I hate responding to AC's, but this is one thing people always fail to consider:
God is all of the following (not a complete list, but I've inserted some important missing pieces. For more characteristics, and how these fit together, consider reading Knowing God by J.I. Packer):
omnipotent
good
holy
just
For a just and holy God it is possible to also be fully good and omnipotent and have the existence of things like natural disasters. I won't debate the point ad infinitum here as most are wont, unless people really want to disucuss it. I'd encourage you to do a little research on what 'just' and 'holy' mean and how those tie in with 'good' and 'omnipotent'.
Also, what's worse than holding "the fear of eternal damnation" over people (which I agree is an unfortunate approach) is to withold from people the hope of a meaningful existence (even the atheist Bertrand Russel said, "life without God is meaningless").
So, from your first paragraph, you're saying that it's good that somebody is making another tool that facilitates inefficient/lazy behaviors instead of educating people how to organize things? This is one of my pet peeves of 'modern society': I'd say a portion of our 'improvements' are things that let us get away with being slackers where we wouldn't get away with it before; only a few things actually improve quality of life / productivity / whatever. Incidentally I don't think it's beyond the capability of the "average user" to learn about how to file things. People file things every day - where they place dishes, clothes, etc.
For uses like your second paragraph, though, I'd say that is about the only appropriate use for a local search tool. The problem is, you still have to know what it is for which you're looking, hope you added metadata, or hope the search tool is smart enough to find a similiar 'idea' to the one you want.
The metadata (which requires some way of setting that metadata)/ searching idea is good for datasets that you might want to search (and sort) according to many different possible criteria, but most (grandma) users could get away with a simple single-level file structure and, if taught to name things in an intelligent way, would be better off for it.
If you look back, what, 15 years and just say, "Taking on Intel is always an unlikely path to success" people would have believed you. AMD is proof-positive that it is possible to break into a "saturated" market with the right combination of engineering, marketing, and manufacturing.
For the life of me, I still can't quite figure out what all the hype is about desktop search.
I can understand the hype about searching for things on other folks' computers (such as on the internet) because I don't have a priori knowledge about where to find some information.
When I store things on my computer, however, I already (at some point) know where that bit of information is. I created my own "filing system" optimized for the way I think. You might say it's some sort of O(1) function to find something (now, navigating to that something might be a little more difficult). The human brain is way better about managing the location of objects than a computer (so far) in terms of retrieval.
Think about it: the word "search" connotes looking for something you either think or know exists somewhere, but you don't know where. If you know where something is, you don't search for it but just go and grab it.
Now, of course there are times when you haven't used something in so long that you might not remember where it is, and I can see how a search might come in handy for that. But if most people use computers like I use them, they use a small subset of the things on their computer very frequently, and the rest is archived away. I would have to say that less than 5% (that's a 95% confidence interval - it's probably way less than that) of my total computing experience (on my desktop) is spent on trying to find stuff.
Does anyone out there know how "desktop search" is supposed to improve the way I do work when most of the time I am either creating new data (programs, documents, etc.) for a specific purpose or playing games? Am I missing something about the power of "searching" in general?
I never said selfishness was necessarily part of being human (even though if being human did dictate that you had selfish tendencies, this does not mean that being selfish means you are human. You could say in this case that humans are inherently selfish, but you cannot say that to be selfish is inherently being human), all I said is that selfishness is most often the problem. If you observe society, almost all social problems result from selfishness (beating each other up over food, resources, a mate to propagate one's genes, or an idea you want to preserve, etc.). Yes, some social problems do result from disease or other reason for incapacity to interact in an peaceful manner with others.
I agree that "selfishness" is a vague term. That does not mean, however, that the drive to do what is perceived most attractive for oneself is not a very dominant (if not the dominant) factor in determining what a person will do. This is not to say people cannot act in a way which is not selfish (such as a parent going hungry for a child to eat - but isn't this just ensuring that the parent's genes will have the best likelihood of lasting longest*? Ok, how about giving up food so someone not related to you can eat. That does happen, and that is not selfish.).
I would ask, though, how you would explain any of the "way too many things" to which you refer without selfishness. I would posit, though, that if nobody was selfish, we'd never have wars (there would still be violence, because things like weather can be violent; harvesting a plant for food is violent, wild animals attacking is violent).
What you have described - spending less than you earn - is orthogonal to capitalism. If you are able to spend less than you make in any economic system you will become more wealthy (note the caveat "if you are able" - some systems may not allow savings - and I include the willpower to actually save in the "able" part of it). Savings rates are not fundamental to capitalism. Capitalism is merely the allowing of corporations and enforcement of ownership (of capital - hence "capitalism") by property rights rather than fuedalism and it also incorporates free markets. The result of (truly) free markets on people who are unwilling or unable to adapt to the market is that they will become poor (ideal economic purchasers will always purchase the least expensive alternative that meets their needs / desires). Typically the poor are the ones unable to adapt to a changing market, so they become poorer. Your parents and yourself are examples of those who were able to adapt and so not remain poor. However, by the world's standards, you are among the rich already (the fact that you *can* spend less than you earn and stay healthy and content makes you rich).
The reason that capitalism favors the rich is because they own the capital, and it's easy to use capital to generate more wealth. Think about it - if you have money (capital) to buy a well and pump you can pump oil and get more money (more capital) much more rapidly than if you have to dig that well and pump it by hand. In fact - if you're poor and have to give up farming to dig that well, you get poorer while you're digging that well.
You are right in saying that financial education helps, and willingness to sacrifice in the short term helps, but if you are already not able to save more than you make (and you have no cushion) you cannot sacrifice without sacrificing your health. The only way to avoid having the poor get poorer in a capitalistic society is to create a flexible workforce that can adapt rapidly to changing market conditions. This is not something our current policies or sentiments allow (the stereotypes about "we don't want our jobs replaced by machines" were not for no reason - this was an unwillingness to adapt to market conditions. The problems in the steel industry and auto industry - in any industry - are all at root an unwillingness or incapactiy (due to managment or whatever) to adapt to the new global marketplace).
Of course, even in the US we don't have a true capitalistic economy, because we don't have truly free markets. The Wikipedia has a good article on capitalism and links to other economic systems.
But, I'm pleased to find that there are other sensible folks out there who spend less than they make!
There are two routes you can go. One is the "hermit" approach I outlined above: basically provide everything for yourself so you know that nothing you do can ever get back to supporting war (even if you buy socks, the company that sold them to you has to pay taxes on the income...)
The other approach is to try and change policy to be less likely to use force to determine international policy. While I can't say that I necessarily think all war is bad (sometimes I think force is necessary to stop some behavior), I know war shouldn't be used for things of non-moral nature. The problem is nobody can agree on which morals should be enforced or not; the only politically correct policy (I don't think at all that this is a morally correct option, though) is then to only use the military to enforce our own country's morals within its borders and protect our borders from others. This would be the "hermit" concept on a national rather than personal scale.
So, to summarize your options:
1. Become a hermit.
2. Support isolationist policy, starting in your local community and getting support to bring a good case to your state government and national representatives.
There are other things you can do, but these are the only things you can do to ensure that you personally are not involved in war and, at best, that your country is not involved in war. Note though that both options do not nor can they eliminate the possibility for war: even in option 1), your country could go to war to protect you without you knowing it. In 2), even if nobody attacks us, there is no way we could prevent other people from attacking each other. Fundamentally this is because people (and nations) are generally selfish and don't want to let others play with their toys / have some piece of land / whatever. I don't know if it's possible to support a policy that will effectively make people be nice to each other.
Uh, dude? If you're alive, you're part of the "war machine" whether you like it or not. Unless you are a subsistence farmer, use no utilities, and make all your own clothes and built your own house with tools you made yourself...
Seriously, though, I commend your willingness to make it known that you do not condone the "war machine". The unfortunate thing with statements like you made is that, like most people including myself, you have a conviction but have not acted on it to its fullest extent. What we have to ask ourselves is, "How far am I willing to go for my convictions"? It's a scary question, because you have to then ask, "If I'm not willing to act on my convictions, are they any good? Why have them at all then?".
Now, I know you were just making the point that you don't feel that your refusal to work for a defense company or contractor is not "religious" - and I think you're right because of my previous paragraph (you don't take it to the n-th level).
...for identifying problems and coming up with solutions...
Hrm. Perhaps, but I think that Stallman did not address the real "problem". He correctly observed that the inevitable result of capitalism is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. This is because captialism is a sneaky form of "whoever has the biggest stick makes the rules" where the "biggest stick" isn't a stick but a pile of money.
What he failed to note, however, is that people don't care about doing what's right. The vast majority of the public doesn't even care about losing some freedom (such as the FCC broadcast flag issue he mentions). What the public cares about is discomfort.
As long as a loss of freedom, even a "big" freedom, does not manifest itself in the form of present discomfort, a person has no motivation to change. Folks like Stallman who feel a present discomfort due to future possibilities are a rare breed, and while there is a danger in worrying too much about possibilities there is value in thinking about the future.
However, since most people only care about the discomfort they feel "now", it will be hard to get political change. We will probably see some soon as there are a lot of people feeling "now" discomfort due to the international trade policies (you cannot blame capitalism for sending jobs to lower-cost providers, even if the companies that do it abuse the power, because that is what capitalism is designed to do. Capitalism is working just fine!).
I'm also not quite sure what Stallman thinks people will do for food if people quit their jobs over non-free software. And you have to ask the question, if people "donate" money to you for writing non-free software (i.e., they pay you for your services as a programmer rather than for the right to use and control the software), is it really non-free?
Anyway, those are just a few thoughts. In summary, I don't think any of Stallman's "solutions" are real solutions as they merely mitigate the symptoms; they don't eliminate the cause, which is basic human selfishness.
Ok, where I said "information dense" I should have said "amount of information per unit time"; The amount of information per unit time appears to be higher with analog than for digital. I know that you can use either digital or analog without losing information, but I couldn't remember from Shannon's theory if there was anything about the rates of information transfer (I know it has stuff about theoretical limits based on channel capacity and stuff like that - but I couldn't recall if that was for only digital or both analog and digital).
So, I went to Bell Labs (now Lucent) and looked it up. I perused it briefly, but want to look at it more to understand just what they mean by 'entropy' of a message (especially in the transmission of continuous data and how you measure how much 'information' is in a bit of continuous data). Fun stuff for a rainy day!
I have made a funny observation. Granted, NTSC (and similar) don't have great pixel resolution or anything, but analog is a much more efficient use of a medium than digital. You can cram a LOT more information in analog bandwidth than in digital. I'm not up on the mathematics behind this, but you can think of it this way: say you want to send the number '500' across a medium. You can send an analog signal for time, say, t that is some level above a reference that indicates 500 (say, 500 mV). To send that digitally, you have to send at least 9 bits. If the minimum time to sample some voltage value is t, the analog packing there is more than 9 times information-dense than digital.
Sure, digital has its advantages for reproducible exactness, and analog hardware has a more difficult time coping with noise, but digital loses out every time to analog in information density. After all, what's the "bit rate" for analog television anyway? It's a meaningless comparison, mostly because there's no way (of which I'm aware) to quantify just how much "information" is in an instant of an analog phenomenon.
The rational-degree-of-belief definition is basically a measure of information
This is the correct definition of probability as far as I can tell. Any event either will or will not happen; we can only at best put a measure on how sure we are that it will or will not happen. It's also a little confusing to say "as more information comes in the probability changes"; it is a correct statement but I'm not sure even the average/. reader can correctly interpret it;)
You have astutely observed one of the true aspects of security: Security is always somehow inversely proportional to the amount of functionality you allow "remotely" - i.e., without physical verification. For instance, whenever you allow remote logins, there is no difference from the server's standpoint between the authorized person using a correct password and a malevolent person using a correct password; this is because the server verifies the password (you can substitute "encrypted key of any sort" for "password"), not the person itself. It's actually not even possible to ever verify a person - even biometrics could be spoofed (albeit with difficulty).
It's a radical assertion perhaps, but it's my belief that security attacks are merely a symptom of some other problem (not sure entirely what it is, but I could posit some of the characteristics); beefing up security is merely like treating a toothache with painkillers; the pain goes away, but the rot is still there.
So, how do you get rid of the rot? There are only two options: you have to first remove the rot from the system, then implement preventive measures so more rot doesn't develop. Strangely enough, nobody in the security industry (computer, homeland, or any other variety) seems to be looking at that aspect - they seem to be focused on creating and using better pain killers.
This is the dangerous type of path down which one must travel if one starts to ascribe rights to machines. There are two reasons for this. One is that you can either assert that machines, with a certain level of "intelligence" or "sentience" or "sapience" or whatever you want to call it have rights. The question then becomes "at what point do they have rights". For instance, nobody questions that an automobile has no rights. My laptop doesn't have rights. If I put a program on my laptop that makes it "self aware" does it have rights? This is even the abortion debate - at what point do the rights of the child equal the rights of the mother? (I.e., at what point is a person a person and not a collection of biological matter)?
This whole discussion is very interesting, but if you posit that people are nothing but machines, then you have to ask yourself why this type of machine has these things called "rights" and other types of machines do not. In a non-theistic viewpoint, the only conclusion is that the bestowing of rights is an arbitrary construct by those with enough coercive ability to enforce that construct. There would be no inherent "meaning" to what it means to be human (or "AI" or whatever it becomes) - it would simply devlove to "the people with the weapons say it's this way, so it's this way. It's not a pretty place to be, even though we could train ourselves to be complacent.
After all, if you're a pure atheist, everything we are is simply a deterministic outcome of the fundamental laws of physics (we only have statistics because we can't measure accurately enough or measure without affecting the observed entity - with sufficiently powerful and nonintrusive equipment, and a complete model of the universe (including initial conditions), you could then deterministically compute the entire history of the universe). That's a very disturbing idea because it means we have absolutely no choice in anything at all, and then how you can even have concepts like murder when everything is determined by some equation?
These are the questions that philosophers and physicists cannot answer; there are inevitable conclusions about the assertions people make about the world that most folks cannot or choose to not see.
The entire concept of rights is laughable in a deterministic universe - except that somehow we must get into the anthropic principle that "the universe we're in has as a result of its determinism the concept of rights" which is not a very fulfilling answer, even though there exists the possibility that it is true.
The simplistic summary of all this is: humans are different than other things or they aren't. If humans are not different than other things, this means we must treat everything else as we treat humans, or we must treat humans as we treat everything else. This does not seem to be demonstrated in reality so we could conclude (in all probability correctly) that humans are indeed different than "everything else" including our creations. If that's the case, we should focus on what makes us different and figure that out before we make things which are not observably different than ourselves. (After all, is something what it is observed to be, or can something appear to be something that it is not where even the most intense scrutiny cannot reveal otherwise? - that is, does observation determine truth/reality, or does truth/reality exist above observation?)
You may be right in that we have the technology to "reduce pollution" but that isn't the problem, and never was. The real problem is that there is no desire to reduce pollution. Most of the people in China (I don't know about India) are subsistence farmers and don't care about having TVs, cell phones with gigapixel cameras, or cars that go 0-60 in 6 seconds. Subsistence farming doesn't generate much pollution at all.
The problem here is that in the US, we have enough resources and technology so that, when the weather heats up, we just crank up the AC. When the sea level rises, we just move inland. When we have droughts, we just irrigate. There is not enough near term discomfort generated by the threat of "global warming" to cause people to act now. People do not generally act with the long term in mind - here in the US people are taught from a young age to "do what feels good - NOW! Don't wait to enjoy yourself - enjoy yourself NOW!" The issue here is not simply how much CO2 (or other bad gas of the decade - remember the 80s -90s and CFCs?) we generate, but the conflicting ideals of "do what's most enjoyable for myself" and "do what's responsible". For, inevitably, doing what is responsible will require some sacrifice on the part of a person in their choices.
That's the real problem - people not wanting to sacrifice something; it's not how much stuff we burn. (Think of it this way - why do we produce CO2? Why don't we use the alternatives? The answer is generally "because I'd have to wait to have the same things I can have now and that would infringe on my right to enjoy myself now". Sad.)
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What is seems is that IBM may have gotten System V from SCO and then added some features that were original creations of IBM (to create AIX/Dynix). IBM is then alleged to have given those new features to Linux. SCO is claiming they own those "new" features created by IBM because of some wording in the System V contracts.
Now, we can all reasonably conclude that this is stupid; if I buy a car and design a new fin for it, then sell the fin design to others, the car companies don't claim the fin design is their property. However, when we purchase a car we don't sign a "derivative works" contract with the car dealer or manufacturer.
The way I see it there are a couple of things that could happen. One is that the original contracts may be found to say that derivative works are property of SCO, in which case IBM did not have the right to give them away for use in Linux - and I would say IBM was dumb to sign such a contract and should legally pay. However, even if the contract was written for that scenario, the court might find that such a provision is "unreasonable" and is void (similar to the car example). Another way it could go is that IBM somehow took code that it did not originally create but thought it owned and contributed it to Linux. This is a little more tricky because it's basically an "oops, we didn't read the original contract correctly".
Out of those scenarios, the latter is the worst because it would mean that [Linux] is infringing. In the former case, either SCO owns the derivative works or doesn't. I would argue that, if SCO is found to own the derivative works, IBM charges them some large amount of money for the development of those new works. Probably to the tune that SCO is filing in the suit, since that is the apparent value on those features. After all, IBM did not develop those features gratis for the benefit of SCO!
All in all, I think all sides (SCO, IBM, the Linux crowd) are focusing on the wrong things here. Litigation never added value to society at all and sucks up resources. I definitely agree with the camp that thinks SCO would be better off devleoping product than litigating.
"All [people] are created equal" simply refers to how they should treat each other - not ability, competency, or physical attributes. I do not have perfect pitch. I do not have 20/20 vision. I am not as tall as some, and my muscles will never get as strong as some no matter how much I body-build or take drugs. I am not equal to everyone else!
I think it's a disservice to tell people "you can do anything you want" because that is just not true. People generally all have something they do better than other things. Sometimes people also like to try and push themselves to do things that aren't "naturally easy" for them.
I actually find it demeaning to say that "all people can do all things equally if they just try hard enough" because that takes away our individuality and our identity. The fact that some abilities might be related to genetics is a moot point.
Ah! I could dialog about this topic for quite some time, but methinks that people would just get irate...
Actually, since economics is really a form of psychology/sociology, an economist might not be a bad authority on saying "some differences in gender are not social like people think they are (i.e., if someone did a study to test correlation, causation, or whatever); if they are not social then there must be some other determining characteristic. Since there is a difference based on gender lines, one might reasonably argue that difference is genetic and therefore 'innate'."
I'm a firm believer in the fact that, if it's possible to write one line of bug-free code, it's possible to write one more line of bug-free code, and so on, until you have an arbitrary number of bug-free lines (proof by induction). Granted, it becomes more difficult, but it's not impossible as many would think. If I had enough money, I'd try and prove it...
Anyway, sorry to rant...I'm in a strange mood today.
Second, people have extended the meaning of the word "derivative work" a bit too far - some take it to mean that "I patented this bolt. If you use my bolt, whatever you use it in is a derivative work," which is a bit obtuse (I paid for the bolt, you got your compensation already!). Patents were in place to protect a particular means of performing some operation, not the operation itself! This doesn't even being to touch on the realm of even when a patent does address a means and not an end and that means is absurd (like the laser-pointer-feline-activity-inducer).
Standards are a different issue entirely; if you look at most standards today they are "pay to enter the club" type things (look at ANSI, ISO, SAE, etc.) Standards are basically arbitrary agreements on interfaces and shouldn't be protected at all in my book. (Do we have to pay to know what a meter is? A kilogram?) If it's protected, it's not a "standard" - it's an access card and a tool to expand elitism. While you can argue about which "interfaces" should be standards and which aren't, I think we agree that "closed" interfaces are a hindrance rather than a help to innovation.
Forcing others to reinvent the wheel is actually also a good way to promote innovation - assuming you aren't really trying to reinvent the wheel but "find another way to perform operation Q". Sometimes things are natural building blocks - like basic mechanics, mathematics, and the like and reinventing things like calculus or how to make steel or coordinate transforms are better left shared than protected. But the FAT filesystem? Why does that need protection when there are millions of ways to store data on a disk? The only reason to patent something like that is to force people to your method and hinder alternatives - or at least hinder interfacing with your things that use that "interface".
The trouble, I guess, is determining at what point people are "making money off your invention" and when they are merely using your invention as a starting point for something else. For instance, cars use lots of steel, so technically they "make money off steel", but cars are not steel.
I know I'm rambling a bit, but mostly it's because I'm really trying to contribute (albeit in a very limited and uncoordinated fashion) to the intellectual-property-reform movement. (You can also ask me about my recent foray into musings on property rights and property taxes in general).
"Copyrights" should really have been called something like "distribution and performance rights", but back in the day, you enforced this by limiting the ability to copy. Now there are no physical barriers to copying so the word is odd. What "copyrights" are intended to do is this: make sure that the people who originate a work of art are the only ones with the right to obtain compensation for the distribution of that art. I'm not even sure how 'performance' fits in, because there are some folks that maybe wrote a song but couldn't sing, but other folks will go see someone else who sings it better - so are the people paying for the song or the performance of the song? It's not clear what the correct distinction should be.
Patents were slightly different - they were originally around so that the garage inventor would be protected from the giant corporation (at least, I hope that's the original intent!). Think about it: if you're a big corporation, you don't need to be "protected" from people stealing your idea because you can build and market it. If you're a small operation, you have to work hard to get resources to develop. The patent protected that period of time so that a rich entity didn't come along and beat you to market using your idea. Now only big entities can easily get patents, and they don't so much use them to be first to market but to keep others out of the market. The intent of a patent should be "development protection" rather than "market protection" (we all know that artificial barriers in the market are inherently Bad). Giant companies hardly need development protection, and the only reason they want "market protection" is to cover their incompetencies (yes, I know the truth is hard to swallow) at adapting to changing markets.
So, my proposals to revamp the whole system would be to come up with a new system of "distribution rights", "performance rights", and "development protection" with appropriate, thoughtful definitions for each of those (to distinguish what customers want as in the example of the writer and singer that I gave above). What we need to keep in mind is that the people that deserve the "protection" from these laws is not the big businesses (publishers, manufacturers, etc.) but the people that generate the thigns of value - the artists, the engineers, the performers. After all, you will always have artists and engineers independently of the means of getting their ideas out to the masses; the current trend in "intellectual property" seems to miss this.
Note that this material doesn't "produce" energy at all - it just converts it from the sun (which is the thing sending all the energy our way in the first place). This is different than, say, hydrogen, which is an energy storage medium; you have to put energy into hydrogen to store it, then you get a little less out. With these, you simply build the device, then use (solar) radiation to create a current.
On the flip side, the fact that software companies can charge thousands of dollars for enterprise-level applications (I'm even thinking in the engineering arena, when a single license for a simulation package that implements college-level concepts costs $3000 for a year) does bear some credence to your observation. You would think, though, that software companies would remain profitable, keep US (high-paid) employeees, and not have to offshore.
It sounds like, since the supply is so limited, that all the unemployed programmers in the US should be able to find all the jobs they want, because the customers would be happy to hire them (after all, you get hired because of customers, not because of a company that produces product Z). The fact that this doesn't work and the companies have the ability to [offshore] means that there is enough supply (not just local) and the demand and supply are in balance. Granted, this doesn't apply to all classes of software, so it's hard to quantify.
Interesting train of thought on which you've sent me this afternoon, though...
While you can argue about the "real" reasons people go to war, you should be able to see that some violence is a means of meting out justice while some violence is pure lack of regard for others (for instance, me beating you up so I can have your shoes).
Of course, you get into all sorts of mess when you have conflicting ideas of what actions are crimes, and what punishments are appropriate for what crimes; that's an area which causes much conflict and often even results in war.
God is all of the following (not a complete list, but I've inserted some important missing pieces. For more characteristics, and how these fit together, consider reading Knowing God by J.I. Packer):
For a just and holy God it is possible to also be fully good and omnipotent and have the existence of things like natural disasters. I won't debate the point ad infinitum here as most are wont, unless people really want to disucuss it. I'd encourage you to do a little research on what 'just' and 'holy' mean and how those tie in with 'good' and 'omnipotent'.
Also, what's worse than holding "the fear of eternal damnation" over people (which I agree is an unfortunate approach) is to withold from people the hope of a meaningful existence (even the atheist Bertrand Russel said, "life without God is meaningless").
For uses like your second paragraph, though, I'd say that is about the only appropriate use for a local search tool. The problem is, you still have to know what it is for which you're looking, hope you added metadata, or hope the search tool is smart enough to find a similiar 'idea' to the one you want.
The metadata (which requires some way of setting that metadata)/ searching idea is good for datasets that you might want to search (and sort) according to many different possible criteria, but most (grandma) users could get away with a simple single-level file structure and, if taught to name things in an intelligent way, would be better off for it.
If you look back, what, 15 years and just say, "Taking on Intel is always an unlikely path to success" people would have believed you. AMD is proof-positive that it is possible to break into a "saturated" market with the right combination of engineering, marketing, and manufacturing.
I can understand the hype about searching for things on other folks' computers (such as on the internet) because I don't have a priori knowledge about where to find some information.
When I store things on my computer, however, I already (at some point) know where that bit of information is. I created my own "filing system" optimized for the way I think. You might say it's some sort of O(1) function to find something (now, navigating to that something might be a little more difficult). The human brain is way better about managing the location of objects than a computer (so far) in terms of retrieval.
Think about it: the word "search" connotes looking for something you either think or know exists somewhere, but you don't know where. If you know where something is, you don't search for it but just go and grab it.
Now, of course there are times when you haven't used something in so long that you might not remember where it is, and I can see how a search might come in handy for that. But if most people use computers like I use them, they use a small subset of the things on their computer very frequently, and the rest is archived away. I would have to say that less than 5% (that's a 95% confidence interval - it's probably way less than that) of my total computing experience (on my desktop) is spent on trying to find stuff.
Does anyone out there know how "desktop search" is supposed to improve the way I do work when most of the time I am either creating new data (programs, documents, etc.) for a specific purpose or playing games? Am I missing something about the power of "searching" in general?
I agree that "selfishness" is a vague term. That does not mean, however, that the drive to do what is perceived most attractive for oneself is not a very dominant (if not the dominant) factor in determining what a person will do. This is not to say people cannot act in a way which is not selfish (such as a parent going hungry for a child to eat - but isn't this just ensuring that the parent's genes will have the best likelihood of lasting longest*? Ok, how about giving up food so someone not related to you can eat. That does happen, and that is not selfish.).
I would ask, though, how you would explain any of the "way too many things" to which you refer without selfishness. I would posit, though, that if nobody was selfish, we'd never have wars (there would still be violence, because things like weather can be violent; harvesting a plant for food is violent, wild animals attacking is violent).
* - I love the "Selfish Gene" theory, don't you?
The reason that capitalism favors the rich is because they own the capital, and it's easy to use capital to generate more wealth. Think about it - if you have money (capital) to buy a well and pump you can pump oil and get more money (more capital) much more rapidly than if you have to dig that well and pump it by hand. In fact - if you're poor and have to give up farming to dig that well, you get poorer while you're digging that well.
You are right in saying that financial education helps, and willingness to sacrifice in the short term helps, but if you are already not able to save more than you make (and you have no cushion) you cannot sacrifice without sacrificing your health. The only way to avoid having the poor get poorer in a capitalistic society is to create a flexible workforce that can adapt rapidly to changing market conditions. This is not something our current policies or sentiments allow (the stereotypes about "we don't want our jobs replaced by machines" were not for no reason - this was an unwillingness to adapt to market conditions. The problems in the steel industry and auto industry - in any industry - are all at root an unwillingness or incapactiy (due to managment or whatever) to adapt to the new global marketplace).
Of course, even in the US we don't have a true capitalistic economy, because we don't have truly free markets. The Wikipedia has a good article on capitalism and links to other economic systems.
But, I'm pleased to find that there are other sensible folks out there who spend less than they make!
Any more questions?
The other approach is to try and change policy to be less likely to use force to determine international policy. While I can't say that I necessarily think all war is bad (sometimes I think force is necessary to stop some behavior), I know war shouldn't be used for things of non-moral nature. The problem is nobody can agree on which morals should be enforced or not; the only politically correct policy (I don't think at all that this is a morally correct option, though) is then to only use the military to enforce our own country's morals within its borders and protect our borders from others. This would be the "hermit" concept on a national rather than personal scale.
So, to summarize your options:
1. Become a hermit.
2. Support isolationist policy, starting in your local community and getting support to bring a good case to your state government and national representatives.
There are other things you can do, but these are the only things you can do to ensure that you personally are not involved in war and, at best, that your country is not involved in war. Note though that both options do not nor can they eliminate the possibility for war: even in option 1), your country could go to war to protect you without you knowing it. In 2), even if nobody attacks us, there is no way we could prevent other people from attacking each other. Fundamentally this is because people (and nations) are generally selfish and don't want to let others play with their toys / have some piece of land / whatever. I don't know if it's possible to support a policy that will effectively make people be nice to each other.
Seriously, though, I commend your willingness to make it known that you do not condone the "war machine". The unfortunate thing with statements like you made is that, like most people including myself, you have a conviction but have not acted on it to its fullest extent. What we have to ask ourselves is, "How far am I willing to go for my convictions"? It's a scary question, because you have to then ask, "If I'm not willing to act on my convictions, are they any good? Why have them at all then?".
Now, I know you were just making the point that you don't feel that your refusal to work for a defense company or contractor is not "religious" - and I think you're right because of my previous paragraph (you don't take it to the n-th level).
What he failed to note, however, is that people don't care about doing what's right. The vast majority of the public doesn't even care about losing some freedom (such as the FCC broadcast flag issue he mentions). What the public cares about is discomfort.
As long as a loss of freedom, even a "big" freedom, does not manifest itself in the form of present discomfort, a person has no motivation to change. Folks like Stallman who feel a present discomfort due to future possibilities are a rare breed, and while there is a danger in worrying too much about possibilities there is value in thinking about the future.
However, since most people only care about the discomfort they feel "now", it will be hard to get political change. We will probably see some soon as there are a lot of people feeling "now" discomfort due to the international trade policies (you cannot blame capitalism for sending jobs to lower-cost providers, even if the companies that do it abuse the power, because that is what capitalism is designed to do. Capitalism is working just fine!).
I'm also not quite sure what Stallman thinks people will do for food if people quit their jobs over non-free software. And you have to ask the question, if people "donate" money to you for writing non-free software (i.e., they pay you for your services as a programmer rather than for the right to use and control the software), is it really non-free?
Anyway, those are just a few thoughts. In summary, I don't think any of Stallman's "solutions" are real solutions as they merely mitigate the symptoms; they don't eliminate the cause, which is basic human selfishness.
So, I went to Bell Labs (now Lucent) and looked it up. I perused it briefly, but want to look at it more to understand just what they mean by 'entropy' of a message (especially in the transmission of continuous data and how you measure how much 'information' is in a bit of continuous data). Fun stuff for a rainy day!
Sure, digital has its advantages for reproducible exactness, and analog hardware has a more difficult time coping with noise, but digital loses out every time to analog in information density. After all, what's the "bit rate" for analog television anyway? It's a meaningless comparison, mostly because there's no way (of which I'm aware) to quantify just how much "information" is in an instant of an analog phenomenon.
It's a radical assertion perhaps, but it's my belief that security attacks are merely a symptom of some other problem (not sure entirely what it is, but I could posit some of the characteristics); beefing up security is merely like treating a toothache with painkillers; the pain goes away, but the rot is still there.
So, how do you get rid of the rot? There are only two options: you have to first remove the rot from the system, then implement preventive measures so more rot doesn't develop. Strangely enough, nobody in the security industry (computer, homeland, or any other variety) seems to be looking at that aspect - they seem to be focused on creating and using better pain killers.
This whole discussion is very interesting, but if you posit that people are nothing but machines, then you have to ask yourself why this type of machine has these things called "rights" and other types of machines do not. In a non-theistic viewpoint, the only conclusion is that the bestowing of rights is an arbitrary construct by those with enough coercive ability to enforce that construct. There would be no inherent "meaning" to what it means to be human (or "AI" or whatever it becomes) - it would simply devlove to "the people with the weapons say it's this way, so it's this way. It's not a pretty place to be, even though we could train ourselves to be complacent.
After all, if you're a pure atheist, everything we are is simply a deterministic outcome of the fundamental laws of physics (we only have statistics because we can't measure accurately enough or measure without affecting the observed entity - with sufficiently powerful and nonintrusive equipment, and a complete model of the universe (including initial conditions), you could then deterministically compute the entire history of the universe). That's a very disturbing idea because it means we have absolutely no choice in anything at all, and then how you can even have concepts like murder when everything is determined by some equation?
These are the questions that philosophers and physicists cannot answer; there are inevitable conclusions about the assertions people make about the world that most folks cannot or choose to not see.
The entire concept of rights is laughable in a deterministic universe - except that somehow we must get into the anthropic principle that "the universe we're in has as a result of its determinism the concept of rights" which is not a very fulfilling answer, even though there exists the possibility that it is true.
The simplistic summary of all this is: humans are different than other things or they aren't. If humans are not different than other things, this means we must treat everything else as we treat humans, or we must treat humans as we treat everything else. This does not seem to be demonstrated in reality so we could conclude (in all probability correctly) that humans are indeed different than "everything else" including our creations. If that's the case, we should focus on what makes us different and figure that out before we make things which are not observably different than ourselves. (After all, is something what it is observed to be, or can something appear to be something that it is not where even the most intense scrutiny cannot reveal otherwise? - that is, does observation determine truth/reality, or does truth/reality exist above observation?)
The problem here is that in the US, we have enough resources and technology so that, when the weather heats up, we just crank up the AC. When the sea level rises, we just move inland. When we have droughts, we just irrigate. There is not enough near term discomfort generated by the threat of "global warming" to cause people to act now. People do not generally act with the long term in mind - here in the US people are taught from a young age to "do what feels good - NOW! Don't wait to enjoy yourself - enjoy yourself NOW!" The issue here is not simply how much CO2 (or other bad gas of the decade - remember the 80s -90s and CFCs?) we generate, but the conflicting ideals of "do what's most enjoyable for myself" and "do what's responsible". For, inevitably, doing what is responsible will require some sacrifice on the part of a person in their choices.
That's the real problem - people not wanting to sacrifice something; it's not how much stuff we burn. (Think of it this way - why do we produce CO2? Why don't we use the alternatives? The answer is generally "because I'd have to wait to have the same things I can have now and that would infringe on my right to enjoy myself now". Sad.)