It however doesn't mean that we should not pollute.
But that's the problem. Kyoto isn't about pollution, it's about greenhouse gases, most notably CO2. The argument I hear from many scientists is that the efforts to enforce Kyoto will take away from efforts to reduce actual pollution -- that is, chemicals that are harmful to humans, animals, and plants. CO2, and other greenhouse gases, do not fit this description.
Enforcing Kyoto could actually make pollution worse. That's why it's paramount that it be clearly demonstrated that:
Global warming be demonstrated as a real phenomenon. (This appears to be true, but it hasn't been shown this isn't a natural cycle.)
Global warming is shown to be caused by greenhouse gases. (This definitely hasn't been shown to be true.)
Damage from global warming is a higher priority than other polluting chemicals that harm living organisms. (This definitely hasn't been shown to be true.)
I'm amazed that this hasn't been modded "troll". I also can't believe that people are still trying to use this argument when the inherent flaws have been demonstrated for hundreds of years. Like all "by design" arguments, this is similar to the watchmaker's argument. (Look it up if you don't know what it is.) There are more than a dozen flaws in this reasoning.
The number one flaw in the "complexity requires design" premise is that by the very premise, the designer requires a designer, who requires a designer, ad infinitum. So, either complexity has always existed, without a "first cause", which contradicts the premise, or the premise is false. Because of the self-contradiction, the former means the premise is false, and the latter of course just states it outright. Either way, the premise that complexity requires design is false.
This isn't rocket science, it's a simple logical deduction that has been well known for centuries. That people still try to use it says a lot about the state of education (or brainwashing) today.
Not really true. Lidars and Ladars use time of flight (TOF) methods and phase shifting. These are used for long distance measurements (tens of meters to kilometers). Current accuracy of TOF is about 1 cm, with improvements using phase shifting. But measuring close objects can be hard and less accurate because the flight time gets so short.
Most laser scanners for close scanning (cm to several meters) use triangulation. Wide FOV versions can have ~1 mm precision and cover medium volumes. Narrow FOV versions can be precise to ~0.025-0.1 mm but often can only see at very close range (~10 cm to 1 m) over small volumes. One exception is the autosyncronous scanner from NRC of Canada that can measure on the order of 25 microns (~0.025 mm) over large volumes and a wide FOV, by using a narrow FOV camera that automatically follows the laser spot across a wide FOV. This also makes it "random access" which means it doesn't have to do raster scans (but can) but can trace out any shape you want.
Neptec Design Group has developed one of these for use in space. Right now, Neptec's laser scanner is being included as a required 3D scanner for analyzing the shuttle thermal protective system on orbit (tiles, RCC panels) for return-to-flight, as a result of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report.
A good review of TOF and triangulation scanners (and structured light / fringe), including commercially available ones, is given in this paper, and here is a good list of some scanners and their type.
Nice rant, but it all relies on semantics and is a straw-man argument. You've taken a single definition of "addiction" and used it to discredit a lot of things that use a different definition.
From Merriam-Webster, addiction is defined as a "compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance (as heroin, nicotine, or alcohol) characterized by tolerance and by well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal". It specifically mentions drugs with "chemical dependency" and directly refers to withdrawal.
So your arguments are pointless. The TRUTH commercials are not full of shit, they are using "addiction" to mean the same as "chemical dependency", which is a common usage. At worst, they are inaccurate with their terminology, but it's the same context as the general public would understand.
That was my first thought too, but on closer reading it's technically not so. If the computer was powered by light (solar, screen, whatever), but the monitor was powered by another source it would be possible. However, this would make things a lot worse than they are. Instead of directly running power into the computer, we'd first be transforming it into light energy (and producing waste heat) and then transforming some of that light back into electricity using something like solar cells, which at least today are highly inefficient.
However, in the context it was given, I think the monitor was supposed to be included as part of the computer, in which case you'd be right about the "perpetual motion" problem.
Ironically, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report specifically criticized extreme government cutbacks on NASA as one of the main factors that lead to the mindset of managers that lead to the Columbia accident.
It also calls on Congress to actually support the development of a replacement for the shuttle. So, while NASA is trying to implement all the recommendations of the report, it seems Congress hasn't learned a thing.
Would you argue that the tape -- belonging to the Idiot -- wasn't submissible?
That's not analagous. If you bought a house from a developer , and they had put video cameras in every room without telling you, and they could view the tapes whenever and the police could use them against you, wouldn't you be a little pissed? Shouldn't that qualify as an invasion of privacy? If not, what does qualify?
Now do the following replacements and re-read the paragraph above:
"house" -> "car",
"developer" -> "manufacturer",
"video cameras" -> "an event recorder",
"every room" -> "your car",
"tapes" -> "data"
If you had full knowledge of the tapes or analagous video cameras, that's a separate issue. There's a matter of informed consent you are missing.
Without this sensory equipment in the car your last line of defense (Airbag) would not work, and you would most likely die in a major collision.
Um, no. Airbag deployment is essentially based on acceleration/deceleration information, and there is certainly no need to record it. The issue isn't the existence of the sensors, it's the recording of information, and more precisely the fact that consumers are told about it and the consumer has little (if any) control over the information.
... if as a side effect of this it can identify the criminals and bad drivers, then so be it
Be very careful, my friend. That argument is a very slippery slope towards unconstrained surveillance of the population. How about the government recording every phone call of every citizen. That could put an end to crank calls, obscene calls, and provide direct evidence of telemarketers violating the do-not-call list. There's pleanty of benefits, but is this really something any sane person would want?
How about 24 hour video surveillence of everyone's home without their knowledge. Then you could catch burglars, kidnappers, arsonists, murderers, and so forth, and even catch them in the act. You could also see who's stealing cable, who's growing pot, who's doing drugs, who's skipping school. There are literally thousands of benefits of this. Again, something you'd want? It all follows from your argument of "...if as a side effect of this it can identify the criminals and bad drivers, then so be it".
It's usage is not really the issue. It's the surveillance factor that's at issue here. When is it ok to put surveillance sensors in products and not tell the consumer. (Remember, the consumer owns the car.)
Try to imagine all the products you buy on a daily basis. Now imagine if each of them contained some sort of sensor that recorded how you used them, and this information was available to the manufacturer and even the police. (How about a fridge that takes your picture each time you open it.)
How is this significanlty different from the car black box. On the other end, how close is this to having police surveillance of all citizens 24 hours a day? It's a very slippery slope.
I'm not saying there isn't some merit, but we've got to be very careful.
Good point. Mind you that isn't really a new problem. We already have to get rid of the batteries we use in cars now (albeit much smaller than for a complete electric), and there are tons of other junk that we waste.
But yes, there are currently no vehicles even in concept (that I'm aware of) that don't produce some sort of pollution or recycling problem somewhere in their lifecycle. Basically, you generally can't get, or convert, energy for free. It's just a matter of picking the one that causes the least damage, by whatever definition of damage we want to use.
I was thinking of that too, but it seems like a lame reason given the potentially significant benefit of such a swappable system. Most people can't lift the weight of gas they put in either. There are ways around the weight problem, such as more smaller units (as you mention) or simply having some sort of assist device at the gas station. It seems an easier problem to solve than infrastructure for hydrogen distribution or making batteries that recharge in minutes instead of hours.
Power plants are incredibly more efficient at producing electricity than your car engine.
Generally speaking, that's not true. It really depends on the type of power plant -- nuclear, hydro, fossil fuel, solar, wind,... -- their all different.
Really, it's not an issue of efficiency, it's an issue of pollution. Electric vehicles do not directly release any pollutants. Mind you, the power plants you get the power from usually do pollute, though each again is different (see list above).
What has me curious is why there aren't any "hot swappable" batteries for these things. People complain about 8 hour recharge time. Why can't you just swap out the battery and put the old one in a recharger?
This would get around all sorts of distance/infrastructure problems. Install some rechargers at gas stations. Then customers come in, drop off their depleted batteries and pick up full ones (and paying for the electricity plus other costs + profit).
In fact, I don't see why a fuel cell vehicle would be worth it. Generating and distributing the hydrogen is a major stumbling block. With hot-swappable batteries, the electricity source is essentially irrelevant. The cars won't pollute at all, and the new "clean" energy sources can go towards the generating stations (fuel cells, solar, etc.) rather than trying to get them in a car. This approach separates the development of new energy sources from implementation in vehicles.
Is there a reason this approach isn't feasible or practical?
...apparently had El Camino Real through Silicon Valley
OK, this is driving me nuts. There's an El Camino Real Blvd in Clear Lake, Texas (just south of Houston) near JSC. I thought it was one of these local things, but if there's one in Silicon Valley I must be wrong. WTF does El Camino Real come from, there's obviously some history I'm missing here.
Thanks. I realize on a daily basis that reason is hard to find, but you'd think you'd see a bit more of it with educated people, like business people at Forbes and techies at Slashdot, and to be honest there probably is a bit more of it than in the general public. But it seems that these days many people spend their education only on the narrow field they've chosen, and never actually learn to think.
I know how to make chocolate mousse. Do you? Even if I told you how, would you know? No, of course not.
OK, now I get it. You're trolling, not serious. The obvious answer is yes. Teaching somebody something does end up with them knowing how to do it.
We're talking about intangible property.
No, we're talking about algorithms, ideas, recipes, plans. As a simple example, today we were looking for an algorithm to make random numbers with a Gaussian distribution from random numbers with a uniform distrubution. Sure enough, we found such an algorithm in some code that someone made available online. Just the algorithm would have done, but they actually had written out the source code. Saved us a lot of time figuring it out, writing it, and debugging it. Made us progress to our final product a lot quicker.
You have a tyro's understanding of the social philosophy behind property rights. No offense, but I'm completely uninterested in educating you. Go read a book or something.
This convinced me you're trolling, it's a standard ploy, "You're wrong, but I'm not going to explain why, go figure it out yourself." In other words, I'm right and you can't come up with a valid argument. See, I could say the exact same thing to you, that you should educate yourself because you are ignorant. It's a pointless exchange because it doesn't go anywhere.
Look at the real progress in computing over the past ten years.
First, most progress in computing in the last ten years has arguably come from researchers whose findings are largely in the public domain. Sure, many companies have applied this research in their products, but that doesn't mean they created it.
And yes, much progress has been made by the companies themselves, but you confuse quantity with efficiency. If 100 people push a box up a hill it will get there faster than 1 person pushing it on a wheeled cart, but it certainly isn't a more efficient (or better) way. There is significantly more work being done using proprietary development, because it is the traditional business model, than through open source or shared development, so obviously you'd expect to see significant progress from it. Perhaps we'd see even more progress faster if everyone switched to a shared development model.
Progress happens only when there's a profit motive. We have five thousand years of recorded history that demonstrates this.
Troll, troll, troll. Most of the progress in civilization has been shared community work for everyone's benefit. The wheel wasn't pattented by it's inventor. Neither was the development of farming, irrigation, houses, roads, schools, mathematics, language, writing, astronomy, art, and most other developments over the last 5000 years. Only in the last 100-200 years have we seen significant profit-driven protectionism of ideas, and at first it was fair -- because of the limited time involved. Now the balance has passed the point of usefulness and is an impedance to progress.
Please, if you are going to troll, put a little more effort into at least trying to make your arguments sound like they make sense.
You see, in my world, ideas are subject to scarcity, too. See, because I have it, and you don't.
No, the previous post was right, and you are wrong here. You may the first to express a new idea, but once it is expressed it cannot be stopped. You can claim to "own" it, and the laws allow only you to exploit for a limited time, but you cannot take your idea back from somebody else. The idea may inspire others, and forcing them to keep their applications of your idea, or their own derivative ideas, under wraps for many years is counter-productive to the goal of progress.
The "limited time" part is to provide some incentive for you to exploit your ideas, thereby making them publically expressed. The point is to balance this incentive for expressing ideas (monopoly) with the overall good of progress (allowing others to use your ideas). The GPL is essentially the same -- providing an incentive for you to express your ideas and promoting progress by allowing others to use and modify them. It's just that the incentive is different. Instead of a time limited monopoly to exploit, you get to exploit everybody else's ideas for your own use. This means there doesn't have to be a limited time monopoly, and hence progress can move faster.
Really, the argument about GPL versus standard licensing is which incentive (time limited monopoly versus exploiting others' ideas) is more attractive to you.
The GPL says, "What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine."
No, the GPL says, "What's mine is mine but everyone can use it, and what's yours (derived from mine) is yours but everyone can use it." In terms of fairness, the GPL and standard proprietary licenses are the same. In terms of what's good for progress and society in general, IMHO the GPL wins hands down because it promotes progress at a faster rate.
I can honestly say I've never been described as vapid before. My approach was to respond to a poor business argument in a manner that business people, like Mr. Lyons and his readers, would understand. Cost/benefit analyses are important for making these types of choices, and Mr. Lyons seems to have overlooked it. (Sure, it's a dull subject for non-business people, but I wouldn't call it vapid.)
...claiming that Linux is somehow cheaper than BSD...
Where did I mention BSD? I didn't say Linux was the cheapest, or even the best when a cost/benefit analysis is done, just that it is "more than favourable". BSD may indeed be better following a cost/benefit analysis, though there may be some disadvantages to it over Linux as well. (I'm not the person to ask since I don't know BSD very well.)
...he misses the essential point. Linux is Free Software.
No, I fully understand Mr. Lyons's point. In fact, I agree that in some cases Linux isn't right for some products. But Mr. Lyons failed to demonstrate that Linux was worse than any other option in any of his examples. He only reported on companies that violated the GPL and were "threatened" by the FSF, and then concluded that being required to release source code is worse for business than any of the alternatives. The two don't connect. It's bad logic and bad business. At best he demonstrated that violating the GPL is bad for business. Name a company who's hardware product tanked because they released source code under the GPL? There's tons of examples of successful Linux products. It's a "put up or shut up" argument.
If this is true, it should be modded up. $3.0M for the computers actually makes it cheap than the G5 cluster, unless of course their cost includes more than the computers too.
Perhaps somebody should do the research to find out what the actual computer costs were for each.
What I believe Daniel Lyons is trying to say, and doing a very poor job at it, is the the "payment" required by the GPL is not good, implying that it is better to pay for proprietary software than to use GPL software for free and "pay" by having to release your source code.
He doesn't state it as clearly as that, but that's what I get out of it. He misses several big things:
Would the router have been such a success, including as cheap and high quality, if they had developed it all in-house or paid for proprietary software.
Cisco and Broadcom made a shitload of cash (as even he states), but did it off the work of others. Is that fair? Shouldn't Cisco & Broadcom pay? (In this case, the payment is not monetary, but sharing of their code.)
The Linksys router was a success because it was a good product and cheap, not because the software on it was a secret.
Ironically, he wraps it in a communist insult, when in fact his position -- that companies should have to pay for the works of others -- is closer to communistic. The GPL does require payment in the form of sharing back what you have developed. Pretty cheap if you ask me. It also works on the princple that commercial success should be built on making a better mousetrap, not keeping the plans secret.
I see a lot of posts here saying "I have such-and-such still working". But few seem to be the primary computer.
I'm still using a Pentium 233MMX, circa 1997/98 as my primary computer with a Gravis Ultrasound sound card (circa 1994). I'm writing this on it right now. I'm also using a Pentium 90, circa 1994, as my firewall/server. (I also have a 486DX266, but that's been scavaged for parts. It'll still boot though, if I put a power supply back in.)
My goal was to upgrade my computer when they became 10 times as fast. Now they're well past it, but I have a new kid so we're not spending on things we don't absolutely need right now. Maybe next year.
Actually, if you read the IBM contract addendum, it does actually say it is irrevocable. That's not an interpretation, it actually uses the word "irrevocable". (Check out some of the other posts, it's copied here somewhere.) As for SGI, it's not clear if they have such an addendum.
Thank you. I was looking for someone to post the actual contract clause.
It seems just about the only way around this clause is that it depends on what "rights" are actually written in the "Related Agreements". Does anybody have a copy?
They also have (had?) it at the Canadian pavilion at Epcot Center. Mind you, it's only the "nature" type movies they show. The cameras were basically a circular cluster of cameras either hanging from a helicopter or on a tripod of some sort. Of course, in the latter case the crew either had to run off a long distance or duck beneath the camera so as not to get in the scene.
Slashdot Mirror
But that's the problem. Kyoto isn't about pollution, it's about greenhouse gases, most notably CO2. The argument I hear from many scientists is that the efforts to enforce Kyoto will take away from efforts to reduce actual pollution -- that is, chemicals that are harmful to humans, animals, and plants. CO2, and other greenhouse gases, do not fit this description.
Enforcing Kyoto could actually make pollution worse. That's why it's paramount that it be clearly demonstrated that:
Global warming be demonstrated as a real phenomenon. (This appears to be true, but it hasn't been shown this isn't a natural cycle.)
Global warming is shown to be caused by greenhouse gases. (This definitely hasn't been shown to be true.)
Damage from global warming is a higher priority than other polluting chemicals that harm living organisms. (This definitely hasn't been shown to be true.)
The number one flaw in the "complexity requires design" premise is that by the very premise, the designer requires a designer, who requires a designer, ad infinitum. So, either complexity has always existed, without a "first cause", which contradicts the premise, or the premise is false. Because of the self-contradiction, the former means the premise is false, and the latter of course just states it outright. Either way, the premise that complexity requires design is false.
This isn't rocket science, it's a simple logical deduction that has been well known for centuries. That people still try to use it says a lot about the state of education (or brainwashing) today.
Most laser scanners for close scanning (cm to several meters) use triangulation. Wide FOV versions can have ~1 mm precision and cover medium volumes. Narrow FOV versions can be precise to ~0.025-0.1 mm but often can only see at very close range (~10 cm to 1 m) over small volumes. One exception is the autosyncronous scanner from NRC of Canada that can measure on the order of 25 microns (~0.025 mm) over large volumes and a wide FOV, by using a narrow FOV camera that automatically follows the laser spot across a wide FOV. This also makes it "random access" which means it doesn't have to do raster scans (but can) but can trace out any shape you want.
Neptec Design Group has developed one of these for use in space. Right now, Neptec's laser scanner is being included as a required 3D scanner for analyzing the shuttle thermal protective system on orbit (tiles, RCC panels) for return-to-flight, as a result of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report.
A good review of TOF and triangulation scanners (and structured light / fringe), including commercially available ones, is given in this paper, and here is a good list of some scanners and their type.
I don't think you can terrorize with vaporware.
Nice rant, but it all relies on semantics and is a straw-man argument. You've taken a single definition of "addiction" and used it to discredit a lot of things that use a different definition.
From Merriam-Webster, addiction is defined as a "compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance (as heroin, nicotine, or alcohol) characterized by tolerance and by well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal". It specifically mentions drugs with "chemical dependency" and directly refers to withdrawal.
So your arguments are pointless. The TRUTH commercials are not full of shit, they are using "addiction" to mean the same as "chemical dependency", which is a common usage. At worst, they are inaccurate with their terminology, but it's the same context as the general public would understand.
That was my first thought too, but on closer reading it's technically not so. If the computer was powered by light (solar, screen, whatever), but the monitor was powered by another source it would be possible. However, this would make things a lot worse than they are. Instead of directly running power into the computer, we'd first be transforming it into light energy (and producing waste heat) and then transforming some of that light back into electricity using something like solar cells, which at least today are highly inefficient.
However, in the context it was given, I think the monitor was supposed to be included as part of the computer, in which case you'd be right about the "perpetual motion" problem.
It also calls on Congress to actually support the development of a replacement for the shuttle. So, while NASA is trying to implement all the recommendations of the report, it seems Congress hasn't learned a thing.
Actually, probably the closest society to communism we've seen is some of the native North American tribes.
That's not analagous. If you bought a house from a developer , and they had put video cameras in every room without telling you, and they could view the tapes whenever and the police could use them against you, wouldn't you be a little pissed? Shouldn't that qualify as an invasion of privacy? If not, what does qualify?
Now do the following replacements and re-read the paragraph above:
"house" -> "car",
"developer" -> "manufacturer",
"video cameras" -> "an event recorder",
"every room" -> "your car",
"tapes" -> "data"
If you had full knowledge of the tapes or analagous video cameras, that's a separate issue. There's a matter of informed consent you are missing.
Um, no. Airbag deployment is essentially based on acceleration/deceleration information, and there is certainly no need to record it. The issue isn't the existence of the sensors, it's the recording of information, and more precisely the fact that consumers are told about it and the consumer has little (if any) control over the information.
Be very careful, my friend. That argument is a very slippery slope towards unconstrained surveillance of the population. How about the government recording every phone call of every citizen. That could put an end to crank calls, obscene calls, and provide direct evidence of telemarketers violating the do-not-call list. There's pleanty of benefits, but is this really something any sane person would want?
How about 24 hour video surveillence of everyone's home without their knowledge. Then you could catch burglars, kidnappers, arsonists, murderers, and so forth, and even catch them in the act. You could also see who's stealing cable, who's growing pot, who's doing drugs, who's skipping school. There are literally thousands of benefits of this. Again, something you'd want? It all follows from your argument of "...if as a side effect of this it can identify the criminals and bad drivers, then so be it".
Try to imagine all the products you buy on a daily basis. Now imagine if each of them contained some sort of sensor that recorded how you used them, and this information was available to the manufacturer and even the police. (How about a fridge that takes your picture each time you open it.)
How is this significanlty different from the car black box. On the other end, how close is this to having police surveillance of all citizens 24 hours a day? It's a very slippery slope.
I'm not saying there isn't some merit, but we've got to be very careful.
But yes, there are currently no vehicles even in concept (that I'm aware of) that don't produce some sort of pollution or recycling problem somewhere in their lifecycle. Basically, you generally can't get, or convert, energy for free. It's just a matter of picking the one that causes the least damage, by whatever definition of damage we want to use.
I was thinking of that too, but it seems like a lame reason given the potentially significant benefit of such a swappable system. Most people can't lift the weight of gas they put in either. There are ways around the weight problem, such as more smaller units (as you mention) or simply having some sort of assist device at the gas station. It seems an easier problem to solve than infrastructure for hydrogen distribution or making batteries that recharge in minutes instead of hours.
Generally speaking, that's not true. It really depends on the type of power plant -- nuclear, hydro, fossil fuel, solar, wind, ... -- their all different.
Really, it's not an issue of efficiency, it's an issue of pollution. Electric vehicles do not directly release any pollutants. Mind you, the power plants you get the power from usually do pollute, though each again is different (see list above).
What has me curious is why there aren't any "hot swappable" batteries for these things. People complain about 8 hour recharge time. Why can't you just swap out the battery and put the old one in a recharger?
This would get around all sorts of distance/infrastructure problems. Install some rechargers at gas stations. Then customers come in, drop off their depleted batteries and pick up full ones (and paying for the electricity plus other costs + profit).
In fact, I don't see why a fuel cell vehicle would be worth it. Generating and distributing the hydrogen is a major stumbling block. With hot-swappable batteries, the electricity source is essentially irrelevant. The cars won't pollute at all, and the new "clean" energy sources can go towards the generating stations (fuel cells, solar, etc.) rather than trying to get them in a car. This approach separates the development of new energy sources from implementation in vehicles.
Is there a reason this approach isn't feasible or practical?
OK, this is driving me nuts. There's an El Camino Real Blvd in Clear Lake, Texas (just south of Houston) near JSC. I thought it was one of these local things, but if there's one in Silicon Valley I must be wrong. WTF does El Camino Real come from, there's obviously some history I'm missing here.
Thanks. I realize on a daily basis that reason is hard to find, but you'd think you'd see a bit more of it with educated people, like business people at Forbes and techies at Slashdot, and to be honest there probably is a bit more of it than in the general public. But it seems that these days many people spend their education only on the narrow field they've chosen, and never actually learn to think.
OK, now I get it. You're trolling, not serious. The obvious answer is yes. Teaching somebody something does end up with them knowing how to do it.
We're talking about intangible property.
No, we're talking about algorithms, ideas, recipes, plans. As a simple example, today we were looking for an algorithm to make random numbers with a Gaussian distribution from random numbers with a uniform distrubution. Sure enough, we found such an algorithm in some code that someone made available online. Just the algorithm would have done, but they actually had written out the source code. Saved us a lot of time figuring it out, writing it, and debugging it. Made us progress to our final product a lot quicker.
You have a tyro's understanding of the social philosophy behind property rights. No offense, but I'm completely uninterested in educating you. Go read a book or something.
This convinced me you're trolling, it's a standard ploy, "You're wrong, but I'm not going to explain why, go figure it out yourself." In other words, I'm right and you can't come up with a valid argument. See, I could say the exact same thing to you, that you should educate yourself because you are ignorant. It's a pointless exchange because it doesn't go anywhere.
Look at the real progress in computing over the past ten years.
First, most progress in computing in the last ten years has arguably come from researchers whose findings are largely in the public domain. Sure, many companies have applied this research in their products, but that doesn't mean they created it.
And yes, much progress has been made by the companies themselves, but you confuse quantity with efficiency. If 100 people push a box up a hill it will get there faster than 1 person pushing it on a wheeled cart, but it certainly isn't a more efficient (or better) way. There is significantly more work being done using proprietary development, because it is the traditional business model, than through open source or shared development, so obviously you'd expect to see significant progress from it. Perhaps we'd see even more progress faster if everyone switched to a shared development model.
Progress happens only when there's a profit motive. We have five thousand years of recorded history that demonstrates this.
Troll, troll, troll. Most of the progress in civilization has been shared community work for everyone's benefit. The wheel wasn't pattented by it's inventor. Neither was the development of farming, irrigation, houses, roads, schools, mathematics, language, writing, astronomy, art, and most other developments over the last 5000 years. Only in the last 100-200 years have we seen significant profit-driven protectionism of ideas, and at first it was fair -- because of the limited time involved. Now the balance has passed the point of usefulness and is an impedance to progress.
Please, if you are going to troll, put a little more effort into at least trying to make your arguments sound like they make sense.
No, the previous post was right, and you are wrong here. You may the first to express a new idea, but once it is expressed it cannot be stopped. You can claim to "own" it, and the laws allow only you to exploit for a limited time, but you cannot take your idea back from somebody else. The idea may inspire others, and forcing them to keep their applications of your idea, or their own derivative ideas, under wraps for many years is counter-productive to the goal of progress.
The "limited time" part is to provide some incentive for you to exploit your ideas, thereby making them publically expressed. The point is to balance this incentive for expressing ideas (monopoly) with the overall good of progress (allowing others to use your ideas). The GPL is essentially the same -- providing an incentive for you to express your ideas and promoting progress by allowing others to use and modify them. It's just that the incentive is different. Instead of a time limited monopoly to exploit, you get to exploit everybody else's ideas for your own use. This means there doesn't have to be a limited time monopoly, and hence progress can move faster.
Really, the argument about GPL versus standard licensing is which incentive (time limited monopoly versus exploiting others' ideas) is more attractive to you.
The GPL says, "What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine."
No, the GPL says, "What's mine is mine but everyone can use it, and what's yours (derived from mine) is yours but everyone can use it." In terms of fairness, the GPL and standard proprietary licenses are the same. In terms of what's good for progress and society in general, IMHO the GPL wins hands down because it promotes progress at a faster rate.
Despite DashingLeech's long, yet vapid, response...
I can honestly say I've never been described as vapid before. My approach was to respond to a poor business argument in a manner that business people, like Mr. Lyons and his readers, would understand. Cost/benefit analyses are important for making these types of choices, and Mr. Lyons seems to have overlooked it. (Sure, it's a dull subject for non-business people, but I wouldn't call it vapid.)
Where did I mention BSD? I didn't say Linux was the cheapest, or even the best when a cost/benefit analysis is done, just that it is "more than favourable". BSD may indeed be better following a cost/benefit analysis, though there may be some disadvantages to it over Linux as well. (I'm not the person to ask since I don't know BSD very well.)
No, I fully understand Mr. Lyons's point. In fact, I agree that in some cases Linux isn't right for some products. But Mr. Lyons failed to demonstrate that Linux was worse than any other option in any of his examples. He only reported on companies that violated the GPL and were "threatened" by the FSF, and then concluded that being required to release source code is worse for business than any of the alternatives. The two don't connect. It's bad logic and bad business. At best he demonstrated that violating the GPL is bad for business. Name a company who's hardware product tanked because they released source code under the GPL? There's tons of examples of successful Linux products. It's a "put up or shut up" argument.
Perhaps somebody should do the research to find out what the actual computer costs were for each.
He doesn't state it as clearly as that, but that's what I get out of it. He misses several big things:
Would the router have been such a success, including as cheap and high quality, if they had developed it all in-house or paid for proprietary software.
Cisco and Broadcom made a shitload of cash (as even he states), but did it off the work of others. Is that fair? Shouldn't Cisco & Broadcom pay? (In this case, the payment is not monetary, but sharing of their code.)
The Linksys router was a success because it was a good product and cheap, not because the software on it was a secret.
Ironically, he wraps it in a communist insult, when in fact his position -- that companies should have to pay for the works of others -- is closer to communistic. The GPL does require payment in the form of sharing back what you have developed. Pretty cheap if you ask me. It also works on the princple that commercial success should be built on making a better mousetrap, not keeping the plans secret.
I'm still using a Pentium 233MMX, circa 1997/98 as my primary computer with a Gravis Ultrasound sound card (circa 1994). I'm writing this on it right now. I'm also using a Pentium 90, circa 1994, as my firewall/server. (I also have a 486DX266, but that's been scavaged for parts. It'll still boot though, if I put a power supply back in.)
My goal was to upgrade my computer when they became 10 times as fast. Now they're well past it, but I have a new kid so we're not spending on things we don't absolutely need right now. Maybe next year.
Actually, if you read the IBM contract addendum, it does actually say it is irrevocable. That's not an interpretation, it actually uses the word "irrevocable". (Check out some of the other posts, it's copied here somewhere.) As for SGI, it's not clear if they have such an addendum.
It seems just about the only way around this clause is that it depends on what "rights" are actually written in the "Related Agreements". Does anybody have a copy?
They also have (had?) it at the Canadian pavilion at Epcot Center. Mind you, it's only the "nature" type movies they show. The cameras were basically a circular cluster of cameras either hanging from a helicopter or on a tripod of some sort. Of course, in the latter case the crew either had to run off a long distance or duck beneath the camera so as not to get in the scene.