but without copyright, the creative commons and GPL wouldn't work, these things rely on copyright law.
Given that these things are a kind of legal judo, I don't think that that's a big problem. It's a little like the question "What should I do, Sensei, if the assailant doesn't attack?"
Hah! So Douglas Adams beat Icke to the lizard theory?
For skimmers, I'll re-iterate my main point:
One of the voters for the other lizard feels less threatened by your own lizard, and votes for yet another lizard^wparty representative, or perhaps even a human being!
As a fellow Brit, it's almost ontopic to reply here:p
I wrote a JE a while back, asking people to vote third or fourth party, even if they could "make do" with one of the "main" parties. The interesting thing is that reasons to do so do not rely upon faith!
A number a years back, I did some campaigning for the Liberal Democrats; I no longer consider myself to be party political, but their campaign techniques were interesting. The most interesting was the "reverse squeeze". The way that that works is that the Lib Dems would go after either Labour or the Tories, whichever had the fewest votes in the seat. Once their support went down, the numbers voting for the other team would come down in roughly equal numbers.
In other words, one vote fewer for one of the main parties implies approximately one fewer votes for the other one. Because voters can sense the political equilibrium, your own decision to deny the main parties your vote for a better personal choice is essentially costless! Better still, your vote is amplified (although they might instead choose to vote for another small party).
Not only is your change of vote essentially costless, but also you get to send a signal both to voters and to your future representative. The voters get to see a change in the support of your chosen party which is bigger than the signal would have been if cast for one of the main ones. Your representive receives a signal as to how best to win your vote the next time around.
The only reasons not to vote for a smaller party are if you are better represented by one of the main parties, or else if you think that competition is a harmful force in politics, and would rather give a clearer "mandate" to the winner. American voters seem to act like this, with later voters preferring to strengthen the early vote, and it can even make a kind of sense if a "strong nation" is more important to you than democracy.
The flip side to the last observation is that if you're in the US, vote early. Others will then copy your vote, so in a sense, you get to "vote early, vote often".
There's certainly an irony in using lottery income to fund culture.
But there's a bigger issue here: whether culture has intrinsic value, and whether it is worth raising people up. If we fund education for its effect in raising the consciousness of the population, we should also fund culture out of general taxation. All the same, given that the lottery fund is used for cultural promotion, Bletchley Park has a pretty good claim on a slice of that funding.
One almost wonders whether lottery funding is part of a deliberate attempt to degrade ("democratise") culture.
Raising the consciousness of the population cannot easily be argued either from a democratic position, nor a capitalist one, and justifications for it in terms of appreciation after the fact are too easily misused in other contexts, except for one thing: culture has a long track record. Additionally, culture works by extending people, unlike more political 'fixes' of limiting people in a manner that politicians deem to be good.
The antigony of culture with political ideas, together with the degrading effects of democratic "philsophical" relativism is hostile not only to the recognition of culture, but also to its very existence.
Without such things as culture and the abstract search for truth, our purpose on this earth is no more than the propagation of our genes (for an atheist), or else is a waste of the talents that have been entrusted to us (for a theist).
There is nothing in your reply that doesn't also apply to cheaper competition. There are costs, as well as benefits to competition, and one of them is that some ideas don't get the chance to mature, which is part of the point of having such things as patents. All the same, we benefit immensely from competition, despite its occasional fallouts. The superior product does occasionally go to the wall, and the reasons for this are political, as often as they're economic.
What is the point of trying to compete when you lose your edge as soon as you release your product/application?
This is a problem with competition in general. Without free software, the competition is less intense, so that short-term niches can appear. Perhaps there is an argument for competition to be less intense, so that the marketplace has an opportunity to anneal.
However, free software still provides competition; that the competition is perhaps too effective doesn't contradict that basic fact.
As competition, free software is interesting in that its wage is non-monetary, this leads many who don't realy grok supply and demand, and the roots of money in barter to consider such non-monetary wages as being somehow against the spirit of capitalism. Such distortion is then used to link volentarism with oppressive regimes, so as to present the exercise of freedom as anti-freedom.
Copyright (theoretically and used to be in fact) runs out and the work goes into the public doamin with Huck Finn.
I'm coming to think that the US should make a Peter-Pan type exception for Mickey Mouse, since US congress refuse to let the sun set on the rodent.
Yes, it would be a barmy exception, but it is still worse, by some considerable margin, that one cartoon character should make law for the whole system of copyright!
Hell, they should make an exception for Minnie and Pluto while they're at it...
Law doesn't mean "confirmed theory", but is rather an element of a theory, typically characterised by its simplicity.
Consider, as examples, Newton's laws of motion, or the laws of thermodynamics. Newton's theory of motion is deduced from his laws; the conventional theory of thermodynamics, likewise.
I say this because there are plenty of non-scientists who deliberately attempt to exploit confusion induced by popular use of the terms "law" and "theory" so as to imply that scientific theories, notably the theory of evolution, are held tentatively.
I'm afraid that you'll find that "high priority" means "corporate".
The selection criterion won't be copyright infringement, but based upon supplier. Peer-to-peer includes gaming; the agenda here is to force out small-time and co-operative endeavors that challenge 'push' delivery of media.
Ordering packets according to criteria as regularity verses simple bandwidth is another matter, but sensible QoS is no-one's agenda; it is rather used as a point of leverage for the transparent interest of particular parties.
I put up an journal entry about this from my experience campaigning for a third party several years ago.
I'll shorten it to the most important observation. Voters can feel the state of voting intention, and every vote for a third party wins a corresponding vote from the other side. This is why the "reverse squeeze" (seek votes from the less popular competing local candidate) works: the party with majority support loses a roughly equal number of votes, since it is now (relatively) "safer" to vote for the third party.
I've done a fair amount of research on this one, and I've decided that I like coffee enough to get the Rancilio, which is constructed with many professional parts.
I'm sure that the Gaggia is good, but if you check out the reviews, the Silvia is the reference machine in its price range. It is also an Italian machine, from a small factory, so there's no loss of authenticity!
Thank-you for your goodwill, though; it's worth getting a good espresso machine, and silly to spend more than you have to!
I have three moka makers (2 cup, 6cup, 18 cup), and they certainly make a good coffee, but I am absolutely intent upon upgrading to a Rancilio Silvia; you can get a bar grade espresso for less than $1000 (you also need to buy a good grinder).
Geeks have an income; I'm sure that a fair few of us can afford decent coffee, and have the temprement to learn to work the machine!
I thought the speed limit thing was because breaking the speed limit is dangerous to yourself and others, and killing people is generally considered immoral. In fact it is driving dangerously that is considered immoral; the meaning of "driving dangerously" depends upon the driver, and an advanced driver would be able to drive safely at higher speeds, all other things being equal.
This pushes the emphasis back onto social contract: because it is hard to detect a driver's skill, a single standard is set for all, which better drivers are expected to buy into since they believe in society.
Prior to Alanis Morrissette's album, this is precisely how the word "irony" was used. In overcorrecting for "rain on your wedding day", which is simply bad news, it seems that people have turned to their dictionaries for the original literary menaing. Being geeks, the honest, popular yet informed meaning of "irony" is being dropped for an acedemic definition sepcific to the English department.
Besides, in terms of prediction, what matters is whether the 15-year-old kid would have predicted the outcome. If you'd done the same thing, it wouldn't have been irony, but rather would have been civil disobedience.
The terms of the GPL prohibit charging for GPL code ever, so real predatory pricing is precluded.
By 'code' here, I assume that you mean 'source'. You can charge what you like for the runtime code, provided that you also ship the source.
If you do not provide another way of providing the source code, they you can charge no more than the reasonable cost of physically making a copy. Also, once three years are up from their last shipping of runtime code, the GPL licencees can charge what they like for the source.
The point isn't that the software is free-as-in-beer, but rather that any shipped software comes with the source, or else the source is easily acquired for the next three years, together with liberal hacking rights. Unshipped runtime code doesn't matter, whether for reasons of price or else any other reason, any more than undistributed code matters.
That's the precise reason I actually liked the UK to install the system. I know, I'm a selfish bastard, but it did work as many people outside the UK expected.
It's the same reason to be happy about RIAA strategy. They fail so badly their tactics will be much harder to use anywhere else.
You're optimistic. In politics, results do not feature strongly in the feedback cycle; politicians are not typically looking to see whether a policy achieves its purported end, but rather that it will be tolerated by the people.
That is: experiments test feasibility to a politician, not utility.
The politician's mode of thinking is not strongly connected to any kind of scientific reasoning, but rather to correct intent ("evil" must be "fought against") and, to some extent, social theory. They understand democracy as a check upon the excesses of "theory", but they do not consider theory in the scientific sense, but rather in the social science sense.
Is it any wonder that politicians and their kin in management talk of the "difference between theory and practice"?
I get the impression that the professor wants to penalise those who couldn't make his lecture (and therefore understand his slant).
So instead of having a purer skill-based outcome (since all are clued up as to the professor's outlook), insiders are to be preferred over outsiders.
That was far too severe a default judgement. The judges lack of caution strongly suggests another motive.
Naturally, this is speculation, but if you're unwilling to make judgements on the world, you're intending a willful blindness upon yourself.
As for liquidpele's comment, you can get too serious. Formal proof and discussion is for science and for the courts, where the cost of false judgement is far greater than the denial of small insights; in casual discussion, these small insights (often mixed with opinion) help us to prepare ourselves against subtle and systemic risks.
In favour of this scoop: Wikileaks' best defense right now is popularity. It has been taken off DNS because a Judge didn't like its mission^W^W^W^W ruled against it; this could easily happen again with a bigger foe.
I just clicked through to your Blueyonder site, and it turns out that we're both old scholars at St. Chris. So I just thought that I'd say hi! I was there between 1982 and 1989.
BTW, the Online Comments Form didn't work for me. Just thought that I'd say...
Slashdot Mirror
Whoever modded it troll should get their geek licence revoked.
Given that these things are a kind of legal judo, I don't think that that's a big problem. It's a little like the question "What should I do, Sensei, if the assailant doesn't attack?"
Yes, but then the wrong lizard might get in!:
http://wso.williams.edu/~rcarson/lizards.html
Hah! So Douglas Adams beat Icke to the lizard theory?
For skimmers, I'll re-iterate my main point:
One of the voters for the other lizard feels less threatened by your own lizard, and votes for yet another lizard^wparty representative, or perhaps even a human being!
As a fellow Brit, it's almost ontopic to reply here :p
I wrote a JE a while back, asking people to vote third or fourth party, even if they could "make do" with one of the "main" parties. The interesting thing is that reasons to do so do not rely upon faith!
A number a years back, I did some campaigning for the Liberal Democrats; I no longer consider myself to be party political, but their campaign techniques were interesting. The most interesting was the "reverse squeeze". The way that that works is that the Lib Dems would go after either Labour or the Tories, whichever had the fewest votes in the seat. Once their support went down, the numbers voting for the other team would come down in roughly equal numbers.
In other words, one vote fewer for one of the main parties implies approximately one fewer votes for the other one. Because voters can sense the political equilibrium, your own decision to deny the main parties your vote for a better personal choice is essentially costless! Better still, your vote is amplified (although they might instead choose to vote for another small party).
Not only is your change of vote essentially costless, but also you get to send a signal both to voters and to your future representative. The voters get to see a change in the support of your chosen party which is bigger than the signal would have been if cast for one of the main ones. Your representive receives a signal as to how best to win your vote the next time around.
The only reasons not to vote for a smaller party are if you are better represented by one of the main parties, or else if you think that competition is a harmful force in politics, and would rather give a clearer "mandate" to the winner. American voters seem to act like this, with later voters preferring to strengthen the early vote, and it can even make a kind of sense if a "strong nation" is more important to you than democracy.
The flip side to the last observation is that if you're in the US, vote early. Others will then copy your vote, so in a sense, you get to "vote early, vote often".
There's certainly an irony in using lottery income to fund culture.
But there's a bigger issue here: whether culture has intrinsic value, and whether it is worth raising people up. If we fund education for its effect in raising the consciousness of the population, we should also fund culture out of general taxation. All the same, given that the lottery fund is used for cultural promotion, Bletchley Park has a pretty good claim on a slice of that funding.
One almost wonders whether lottery funding is part of a deliberate attempt to degrade ("democratise") culture.
Raising the consciousness of the population cannot easily be argued either from a democratic position, nor a capitalist one, and justifications for it in terms of appreciation after the fact are too easily misused in other contexts, except for one thing: culture has a long track record. Additionally, culture works by extending people, unlike more political 'fixes' of limiting people in a manner that politicians deem to be good.
The antigony of culture with political ideas, together with the degrading effects of democratic "philsophical" relativism is hostile not only to the recognition of culture, but also to its very existence.
Without such things as culture and the abstract search for truth, our purpose on this earth is no more than the propagation of our genes (for an atheist), or else is a waste of the talents that have been entrusted to us (for a theist).
What is the point of trying to compete when you lose your edge as soon as you release your product/application?
This is a problem with competition in general. Without free software, the competition is less intense, so that short-term niches can appear. Perhaps there is an argument for competition to be less intense, so that the marketplace has an opportunity to anneal.
However, free software still provides competition; that the competition is perhaps too effective doesn't contradict that basic fact.
As competition, free software is interesting in that its wage is non-monetary, this leads many who don't realy grok supply and demand, and the roots of money in barter to consider such non-monetary wages as being somehow against the spirit of capitalism. Such distortion is then used to link volentarism with oppressive regimes, so as to present the exercise of freedom as anti-freedom.
Pretty bizarre, if you ask me...
You honestly think open source encourages competition? I removes all competition, which isn't the same thing.
Only in the sense that outcompeting someone so that they go to the wall removes competition. However:
Protection of competition does not mean protection from competitors.
Copyright (theoretically and used to be in fact) runs out and the work goes into the public doamin with Huck Finn.
I'm coming to think that the US should make a Peter-Pan type exception for Mickey Mouse, since US congress refuse to let the sun set on the rodent.
Yes, it would be a barmy exception, but it is still worse, by some considerable margin, that one cartoon character should make law for the whole system of copyright!
Hell, they should make an exception for Minnie and Pluto while they're at it...
Consider, as examples, Newton's laws of motion, or the laws of thermodynamics. Newton's theory of motion is deduced from his laws; the conventional theory of thermodynamics, likewise.
I say this because there are plenty of non-scientists who deliberately attempt to exploit confusion induced by popular use of the terms "law" and "theory" so as to imply that scientific theories, notably the theory of evolution, are held tentatively.
The selection criterion won't be copyright infringement, but based upon supplier. Peer-to-peer includes gaming; the agenda here is to force out small-time and co-operative endeavors that challenge 'push' delivery of media.
Ordering packets according to criteria as regularity verses simple bandwidth is another matter, but sensible QoS is no-one's agenda; it is rather used as a point of leverage for the transparent interest of particular parties.
I'll shorten it to the most important observation. Voters can feel the state of voting intention, and every vote for a third party wins a corresponding vote from the other side. This is why the "reverse squeeze" (seek votes from the less popular competing local candidate) works: the party with majority support loses a roughly equal number of votes, since it is now (relatively) "safer" to vote for the third party.
I'm sure that the Gaggia is good, but if you check out the reviews, the Silvia is the reference machine in its price range. It is also an Italian machine, from a small factory, so there's no loss of authenticity!
Thank-you for your goodwill, though; it's worth getting a good espresso machine, and silly to spend more than you have to!
Following links from the WIKI leads to an interesting thread on the corretto. Right to the source!
I think that I'll be controlling one variable at a time for the moment; the corretto could be yet to come.
Nice latte art, BTW!
Geeks have an income; I'm sure that a fair few of us can afford decent coffee, and have the temprement to learn to work the machine!
This pushes the emphasis back onto social contract: because it is hard to detect a driver's skill, a single standard is set for all, which better drivers are expected to buy into since they believe in society.
Besides, in terms of prediction, what matters is whether the 15-year-old kid would have predicted the outcome. If you'd done the same thing, it wouldn't have been irony, but rather would have been civil disobedience.
By 'code' here, I assume that you mean 'source'. You can charge what you like for the runtime code, provided that you also ship the source.
If you do not provide another way of providing the source code, they you can charge no more than the reasonable cost of physically making a copy. Also, once three years are up from their last shipping of runtime code, the GPL licencees can charge what they like for the source.
The point isn't that the software is free-as-in-beer, but rather that any shipped software comes with the source, or else the source is easily acquired for the next three years, together with liberal hacking rights. Unshipped runtime code doesn't matter, whether for reasons of price or else any other reason, any more than undistributed code matters.
It's the same reason to be happy about RIAA strategy. They fail so badly their tactics will be much harder to use anywhere else.
You're optimistic. In politics, results do not feature strongly in the feedback cycle; politicians are not typically looking to see whether a policy achieves its purported end, but rather that it will be tolerated by the people.
That is: experiments test feasibility to a politician, not utility.
The politician's mode of thinking is not strongly connected to any kind of scientific reasoning, but rather to correct intent ("evil" must be "fought against") and, to some extent, social theory. They understand democracy as a check upon the excesses of "theory", but they do not consider theory in the scientific sense, but rather in the social science sense.
Is it any wonder that politicians and their kin in management talk of the "difference between theory and practice"?
I get the impression that the professor wants to penalise those who couldn't make his lecture (and therefore understand his slant). So instead of having a purer skill-based outcome (since all are clued up as to the professor's outlook), insiders are to be preferred over outsiders.
"We're considering giving her a 100 gigabits per second connection in the summer," said Hafsteinn Jonsson.
"Then she'll be able to dry all her neighbours' laundry too."
That was far too severe a default judgement. The judges lack of caution strongly suggests another motive.
Naturally, this is speculation, but if you're unwilling to make judgements on the world, you're intending a willful blindness upon yourself.
As for liquidpele's comment, you can get too serious. Formal proof and discussion is for science and for the courts, where the cost of false judgement is far greater than the denial of small insights; in casual discussion, these small insights (often mixed with opinion) help us to prepare ourselves against subtle and systemic risks.
In favour of this scoop: Wikileaks' best defense right now is popularity. It has been taken off DNS because a Judge didn't like its mission^W^W^W^W ruled against it; this could easily happen again with a bigger foe.
I hope that it's no more sinister than a server crash.
It's just an aside, as your sig made me think of a culture's values more generally...
BTW, the Online Comments Form didn't work for me. Just thought that I'd say...