Also, copyright is an artificial right (as opposed to natural rights like due process or property). And it has NOTHING to do with property. You don't "own" a work, you only hold a copyright to it, which is supposed to be a carefully limited MONOPOLY right. The belief that copyright is a property right has a lot to do with the extension of copyright to heirs and estates.
Not too bad. Under "Open Source Software" I would take this sentence: "Your draft bill could, in effect, make this type of software illegal...." and remove the "in effect". That extra qualifier makes you sound less confident of the symptom you describe. Also, the end of that sentence ("...developers would be unable to "hide" security software in open code.") sounds odd and *will* confuse the reader. The idea of hiding security in Free code won't seem right to them. They're going to read that phrase and say, "Huh? If the source code is freely available, then this law makes no difference to you!" The way these people think, Free Software is a special case and no one would really "bother" you. They're naive but that's the way they think.
You also write: "Copyright protection can be maintained with state-of-the-art technology." Copyright originated as an artificial right that is only enforcible by punitive action. They very well might be aware of this and look askance at that statement. You could just say, "Your bill will encourage copyright holders to develop mediocre protection schemes while relying too much on threat of prosecution. The result of this mediocre protection will be continued unauthorized copying in foreign countries." This makes the connection between mediocre protection and foreign copying operations more obvious. Also, you will note that I have used the more accurate phrase, "unauthorized copying" rather than piracy. This is essential because copyright is not a property right--it is an artificial monopoly right.
I loved your prediction of "increased development expenses" under the Digital Devices section. Good point.
BTW, where do you live in SC? I'm originally from the Greenville/Spartanburg area (I just moved to New Jersey to go to school).
Offtopic, I think it's really significant that GPL'd software invades the Objective C/Cocoa world. We REALLY need more software for this great API and it's a niche that GNU can fill.
Nevertheless, most of them are just poor college kids and don't deserve the treatment they're sometimes given. I would certainly hope that YOU politely decline their offers. I do.
According to our founders, property rights are natural and flow from the nature of God. This is one major assumption on which our government is built.
It is an artificial monopoly right that the law has given you over your cell phone.
First, in a legal sense the term "monopoly" can be used only to refer to an exlusive ability to take part meaningfully in a market. This is what is granted by Article I, Section 8 (the Copyright and Patent clause of the Constitution). It is limited by time (14 Years) and substance (Fair Use Exemptions). This is entirely different from "ownership" of something, under which you (and your descendants) are assumed to have a permanent and natural "right" to posess it forever. This is granted implicitly by God and all human government can do is try--immorally--to interfere.
Second, you make the common mistake of believing that we have rights only because the legislative power has granted them to us. This is completely opposite of what was intended! The founders wanted a government that defended rights rather than protecting them; and a government whose powers were granted by the people.
You might say, "Yeah, that's the way it was supposed to be--but I'm just describing what our government has degraded into!" Chicken and Egg: are you describing what our government has degraded into, or has our government degraded into what it is because enough people have drifted in their understanding of the nature of our government?
The individual populating our government are drawn from the ranks of the people. Therefore, their minds will be flavored with the common beliefs and views of the people from which they arise.
It means you and the copyright owner do not have an agreement to let you use their property.
It isn't property. Copyright is an artificial monopoly right, not one of ownership. This misconception (perhaps intentional) is one of the primary causes for the outrageous length of copyright these days.
A revisiting of the issue by a Supreme Court that is more likely to protect business and property rights
Copyright and Patent are NOT property rights! They are artificial monopoly rights! Geez, if even the people on OUR side keep referring to them as property rights, how can we expect to make any progress?
A.NET presence in GNOME will force these users to find a new desktop environment, and they will do so without hesitation.
I recommend GNUstep. No, it isn't polished yet, but we already have a nice mail client, an IDE, and a GUI design application. And we hope to have a calendar/planner application coming soon. Oh, and you can easily compile Cocoa (Mac OS X) apps under GNUstep too (and vice versa).
Everybody who can help us should give it a shot. We just need more people involved in the project.
Anyways I'm glad BG has decided to give us this new initiative b\c it will raise the bar, cleam up the bad press we've been getting, and maybe weed out some of the weaker links.
The reason why I dislike Microsoft so much has very little to do with bugcount, so I think you guys might not get much better press after this.
Let me elaborate by giving you a synopsis of my personal gripes (which I think are shared by many out here) against the company. Some of these are probably gross over-simplifications or exaggerations. If so, I'll be glad for your own more experienced insights.
Number one on the list is that Microsoft seems to have absolutely no respect for the beauty of the UNIX tradition. The reason computers turn me on so much is the rich history of elegant problem solving that goes along with the history of UNIX. I think there's a lot of pride involved here. Bill Gates, in particular, doesn't seem to be willing to admit that UNIX is a beautiful architecture that is worth keeping. Instead, he seems to be convinced that there's not even anything to be learned from it (unlike Jean Louis Gassee, who admitted that UNIX had a big impact on BeOS). Bill Gates despised NeXTSTEP, probably the greatest operating system/environment ever designed. Why?
Second on the list is that Microsoft seems to have no respect for the code-as-art community. They don't like the idea of programming as an art to be shared with others and admired for its own sake. Instead, it's just another business venture and so long as you can make a lot of money, real visionary design doesn't count for anything. This is what Steve Jobs was talking about when he said that Microsoft "had no taste." He meant that unless they saw something as a way to compete in a market, they didn't think it was important at all. There's no appreciation for art and vision in Microsoft's world.
Third, they appear to take the credit for things that others have done. Everything in the modern world is, as far as they're concerned, a Microsoft "innovation" (that others have been doing for years). Listening to Bill Gates is like listening to Al Gore, as far as I'm concerned. Truly brilliant people like Dennis Ritchie or the Woz don't seem to be worthy of respect in the eyes of Bill Gates. He seems to think that he is responsible for everything good in the computing world. And I wish to high heaven that they would admit that most of their products are actually from other companies that they purchased rather than the brilliant innovations of Bill Gates (look what we've come up with--a TCP/IP stack!)
Fourth are the business practices they engage in. This has been harped on constantly, so I don't think I need to say much here.
Finally, there are the buggy products. Like I said, this is actually not *too* much of a big deal with me--Other Operating Systems have bugs too, y'know. But if they would pay more attention to the first 2 items on my list, many of these would go away or be less severe.
I'm sorry that this is such a rambling post; but it *is* 5:30 in the morning and I've got to go to bed:-). If you'd like to offer your personal observations (from the belly of the beast--hehe) on these points, I'd be grateful.
Slashdot Mirror
*Nobody* cares about Casino on Net. Yet every webmaster on earth seems to think we do.
"How did you learn so much about swallows?"
"Well, you have to know those sort of things when you're a king, you know."
C'mon people, let's keep this going!
CELEBRITY DEATHMATCH!
Don't feed the trolls. Please.
Well-known usability expert Jakob Nielsen has been found dead in his home. The suicide note simply said, "God, make it stop!"
Also, copyright is an artificial right (as opposed to natural rights like due process or property). And it has NOTHING to do with property. You don't "own" a work, you only hold a copyright to it, which is supposed to be a carefully limited MONOPOLY right. The belief that copyright is a property right has a lot to do with the extension of copyright to heirs and estates.
You also write: "Copyright protection can be maintained with state-of-the-art technology." Copyright originated as an artificial right that is only enforcible by punitive action. They very well might be aware of this and look askance at that statement. You could just say, "Your bill will encourage copyright holders to develop mediocre protection schemes while relying too much on threat of prosecution. The result of this mediocre protection will be continued unauthorized copying in foreign countries." This makes the connection between mediocre protection and foreign copying operations more obvious. Also, you will note that I have used the more accurate phrase, "unauthorized copying" rather than piracy. This is essential because copyright is not a property right--it is an artificial monopoly right.
I loved your prediction of "increased development expenses" under the Digital Devices section. Good point.
BTW, where do you live in SC? I'm originally from the Greenville/Spartanburg area (I just moved to New Jersey to go to school).
And he would have to call himself "UberQwerty". Typist geeks....
I think you meant to say DOS rather than Windows.
Now I've seen everything. Hats off to ya.
Offtopic, I think it's really significant that GPL'd software invades the Objective C/Cocoa world. We REALLY need more software for this great API and it's a niche that GNU can fill.
Nevertheless, most of them are just poor college kids and don't deserve the treatment they're sometimes given. I would certainly hope that YOU politely decline their offers. I do.
They will now, you troublemaker. :-)
GNUmail? It requires GNUstep. But hey, you only forbade GNOME and KDE. :-)
Errr, thanks for sharing.
According to our founders, property rights are natural and flow from the nature of God. This is one major assumption on which our government is built.
It is an artificial monopoly right that the law has given you over your cell phone.
First, in a legal sense the term "monopoly" can be used only to refer to an exlusive ability to take part meaningfully in a market. This is what is granted by Article I, Section 8 (the Copyright and Patent clause of the Constitution). It is limited by time (14 Years) and substance (Fair Use Exemptions). This is entirely different from "ownership" of something, under which you (and your descendants) are assumed to have a permanent and natural "right" to posess it forever. This is granted implicitly by God and all human government can do is try--immorally--to interfere.
Second, you make the common mistake of believing that we have rights only because the legislative power has granted them to us. This is completely opposite of what was intended! The founders wanted a government that defended rights rather than protecting them; and a government whose powers were granted by the people.
You might say, "Yeah, that's the way it was supposed to be--but I'm just describing what our government has degraded into!" Chicken and Egg: are you describing what our government has degraded into, or has our government degraded into what it is because enough people have drifted in their understanding of the nature of our government?
The individual populating our government are drawn from the ranks of the people. Therefore, their minds will be flavored with the common beliefs and views of the people from which they arise.
It isn't property. Copyright is an artificial monopoly right, not one of ownership. This misconception (perhaps intentional) is one of the primary causes for the outrageous length of copyright these days.
Copyright and Patent are NOT property rights! They are artificial monopoly rights! Geez, if even the people on OUR side keep referring to them as property rights, how can we expect to make any progress?
You mean, like trick cigars?
Not to mention Objective C.
I recommend GNUstep. No, it isn't polished yet, but we already have a nice mail client, an IDE, and a GUI design application. And we hope to have a calendar/planner application coming soon. Oh, and you can easily compile Cocoa (Mac OS X) apps under GNUstep too (and vice versa).
Everybody who can help us should give it a shot. We just need more people involved in the project.
Come again?
The reason why I dislike Microsoft so much has very little to do with bugcount, so I think you guys might not get much better press after this.
Let me elaborate by giving you a synopsis of my personal gripes (which I think are shared by many out here) against the company. Some of these are probably gross over-simplifications or exaggerations. If so, I'll be glad for your own more experienced insights.
Number one on the list is that Microsoft seems to have absolutely no respect for the beauty of the UNIX tradition. The reason computers turn me on so much is the rich history of elegant problem solving that goes along with the history of UNIX. I think there's a lot of pride involved here. Bill Gates, in particular, doesn't seem to be willing to admit that UNIX is a beautiful architecture that is worth keeping. Instead, he seems to be convinced that there's not even anything to be learned from it (unlike Jean Louis Gassee, who admitted that UNIX had a big impact on BeOS). Bill Gates despised NeXTSTEP, probably the greatest operating system/environment ever designed. Why?
Second on the list is that Microsoft seems to have no respect for the code-as-art community. They don't like the idea of programming as an art to be shared with others and admired for its own sake. Instead, it's just another business venture and so long as you can make a lot of money, real visionary design doesn't count for anything. This is what Steve Jobs was talking about when he said that Microsoft "had no taste." He meant that unless they saw something as a way to compete in a market, they didn't think it was important at all. There's no appreciation for art and vision in Microsoft's world.
Third, they appear to take the credit for things that others have done. Everything in the modern world is, as far as they're concerned, a Microsoft "innovation" (that others have been doing for years). Listening to Bill Gates is like listening to Al Gore, as far as I'm concerned. Truly brilliant people like Dennis Ritchie or the Woz don't seem to be worthy of respect in the eyes of Bill Gates. He seems to think that he is responsible for everything good in the computing world. And I wish to high heaven that they would admit that most of their products are actually from other companies that they purchased rather than the brilliant innovations of Bill Gates (look what we've come up with--a TCP/IP stack!)
Fourth are the business practices they engage in. This has been harped on constantly, so I don't think I need to say much here.
Finally, there are the buggy products. Like I said, this is actually not *too* much of a big deal with me--Other Operating Systems have bugs too, y'know. But if they would pay more attention to the first 2 items on my list, many of these would go away or be less severe.
I'm sorry that this is such a rambling post; but it *is* 5:30 in the morning and I've got to go to bed :-). If you'd like to offer your personal observations (from the belly of the beast--hehe) on these points, I'd be grateful.
I don't think that 'alarmed' is quite the word to use. Mmmmm. :-)
Wow--I think I'm love! :-)