A superconducting ring has a quantised magnetic field, since the wavefuction describing the movement of electrons around the ring needs to "match up". Applying sufficient field to change the field appears to be enough to disrupt superconduction. Thus, although you need a ballpark figure for the mass (so that the nearest integer is the right one), this method can refine the mass to the correct value, subject to measurement accuracy.
This example of the quantising effect of a superconducting ring is given early in Carver Mead's fairly straightforward text, Collective Electrodynamics.
If this story is true, then it's obvious that the department of homeland security are conspiring to make Bush look stupid. After all, a straightforward Google search would have turned up Bruce Schneier's efforts to the same end.
Surely it would be far better to ask whether the policy or action makes any sense, rather than whether it was proposed by your team or the opposing team? Celebration or derision should follow, rather than preceeding the analysis.
On of the symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome is heightened perceptual sensitivity through weaker filters, which would otherwise help with such things as "cocktail party hearing".
Freedom is more free than restriction. How difficult is that?!?!
It follows from this that copyright is less free than copyleft, even if copyleft is less free than public domain.
If you want the world to be freer as a result of what you produce, you don't necessarily achieve that by facilitating restriction. Acting 'politically', you can achieve more freedom in the world than if you'd acted naïvely.
Law, in general, is a similar concept; good laws create freedom through selective restriction. Perhaps there are few good laws, but a very small proportion of the population would argue that there were none. The closest that you would generally get is that the last few laws should be removed as the system's dead weight outweighs their benefit.
Co-incidentally, those opposed to copyright would hold to a similar position in that restricted field: the copyleft licences are good, but in general copyright is bad, and getting rid of the deadweight of copyright law would bring greater benefits than the comparatively minor cost of neutering such copyleft licenses. Given that using copyleft licenses is a political act that is aimed at maximising freedom, someone thus motivated would see that their intent would be better achieved by squashing copyright altogether.
For the record, I favour limited copyright, say 14 years plus a possible 14 year extension that has to be applied for.
Which is okay, for I deliberately missed your point while taking you literally in order to make the point that there are interests other than the producers'.
It's a problem for me as a listener (and therefore not a RIAA copyright holder) if I get to hear less music. For there to be a fee that is payable for non-RIAA music will mean that stations producing free music will simply not legally exist, simply because free is cheaper than for a fee.
Producers who are non-RIAA copyright holders need to make the effort to waive the fee, but not all of them will do so, especially if their main market isn't the American one. Their lack of putting in the effort affects me, another, albeit non-producing non-RIAA copyright holder because if I am in the States, I will be less likely to be able to hear their music.
Changing the default isn't a victimless act; many people take the status quo as "how things are done", and to specify otherwise requires an act of will, when they might have other things on their mind, or even simply believe that whatever the status quo is is reasonable because it is the status quo.
Solution for non RIAA copyright holders: unless you are going to make lots of money off radio (not likely) just have a free license for radio and net broadcasters. I'm not an RIAA copyright holder, but if I want to listen to non-RIAA music, I'll have less choice, since not every musician or producer will have thought to do this, especially if they're not American.
Please, can we stay away from the analogies? I don't think they're especially productive. On the contrary, analogy and metaphor is extremely powerful; if this weren't the case, mathematics could not be applied: in some ways, parts of the world share structure with mathematical systems, for example, group theory can be used to model the rubix cube (ie. be used to form a close analogy with said cube), and fluid dynamics can be used to model weather systems. Naturally analogies have limitations (if you twist the cube wrong, it can come apart), but that implies a need to take care with our analogies.
If my argument holds in the case of the rubix cube, then, by analogy, it refutes your assertion of the unproductive nature of analogies in the general case (you only need the imagination to come up with a good analogy). If we're using more brittle logic, it's a counter-example (so that the original assertion is false).
You argued that if I don't know how to control the behavior of the technology I bought, then I'm still at fault for the results. So if someone's client connects to my AP because they don't know how to modify its default behavior, why are they not at fault? I submit that this is a double standard. Not so. A presumption of freedom supports someone who is connecting to open wi-fi, before issues of knowledge come into play.
As rational beings who have learnt economics starting with supply and demand, we look in vain for good reasons for AMD to do something like this.
Business people do not start with supply and demand. They begin with property. Capitalism and free-marketry are sufficiently similar to confuse with one another, but they are not the same thing.
Management will see property ownership (the flip-side of rights restrictions) as inherently good. Their instinct is to perpetuate the business 'good', and receive a slice of that 'good' in due course. This is how they implement long-termism. 'Good' accumulates on 'good', and eventually the property that they created is expected to bring dividends. In a large company, the dividends are unlikely to be directly to themselves; so they are rewarded for being seen to have promoted the 'good' (in this case, creating new property).
The only thing that is missing from this equation is whether it actually brings benefits to the bottom line. When there is class war going on (in this case management against engineers), this side is often missed. When functionality fights a propertarian ideology, you're going to need mutiny to prevent propertarianism from winning. Engineers are trying to feed their families, are likely to be fatalist, and might be trying to win management favour besides. It's not as if it were a union issue; they're not protecting their own interests, so ethics and consumer interest will fail.
The shareholders will surely comply themselves, regardless of their true interests; when faced with a choice of slightly greater profits, and the promotion of their own propertarian ideology, they will choose "common sense" over analysis. Ie, they will choose propertarianism, for failure to do so is to oppose Locke and the American dream; something that they will not do for a couple of basis points on the dividend. Companies that choose analysis over "common sense" will be following a "risky" (non-conservative) strategy; thus their shares will be marked down, and the company will find it harder to raise money.
Market corrections to this kind of tendency are long-term, and people are born and indoctrinated too fast for them to do more than push a little the other way. Powerful social pressures strengthen naïve propertarianism; mere economics cannot compete.
If i had one dollar for every brain you dont have, i would have $1.
Hang on, I don't have your brain, nor do I have anyone else's bar my own.
I make it that you'd have more than 6,500,000,000 dollars. Unless you're counting all possible potential brains that I could have, in which case the sum would be astronomical.
You're missing that there's more than one way to be generous.
If my motive is to help free software, rather than give away my code, I can do so more effectively by putting the code under the GPL than BSD or Public Domain. This doesn't need rancour; just the observation that some of the free software that is out there is only there because of conditions of licence.
On top of that, there is an efficiency issue; encouraging speciation between free and proprietry software aids the market in selecting the more efficient mode of production, without being influenced by cross-subsidy (free software that is then used to help proprietry software).
The GPL, in practice is used as a means to say two things: Don't steal my code outright, and if you want to contribute, these are the terms (also, we're now in it together).
It's this alignment of purpose that is the most potent side of the GPL, and this is why so many are miffed at Novell's exclusivity deal.
Only if the library is GPL. Most *GPLed libraries are LGPLed, where there is no "infection". I do see your point when it comes to GPLed libraries, of which there are a few, but the likes of readline can be easily recreated by other programmers. GPLing libraries tends to yield software of lowish "genetic fitness" IFAICT, in that they don't get developed very fast; certainly there is "infection", but it not particularly effective, unless you're referring to "growing" an LGPLed library.
Practically speaking, GPLed code is finished code; libraries, by and large, are not.
Nothing you quote in the MS license restricts you from releasing your own code under any license you choose, unless of course, the license you want to use requires that MS's source code is released as well. That would be giving away something you don't own. True, but it does show the viral nature of proprietry software very well, doesn't it? Exclusive ownership perpetuates just as copyleft does. And yes, I agree, this is just a matter of respecting the terms of the licence under which you're using the software. It isn't especially sinister.
I owe you an apology, though; when I read about this a few months ago, I took it as saying something more extreme. My mistake for remembering the reporting and not checking the licence then. I skimmed it now, and seeing that the gist was compatible with what I remember, posted it. As it stands, it simply reinforces the GPL from the other side. You can't find ICC-compiled kernels for much the same reason, although you can compile your own.
Although the quote doesn't make the point of unreasonableness that I wanted to make, it does reinforce my main point about symmetry, and that is sufficient for my argument.
You're right that I should have said copylefted software instead of open source; I suppose that I was distracted by the closed_source/open_source dichotomy, and, of course, your pseudonym.
Closed source libraries are in general licenced under the closed-source equivelent of the Lesser GPL (formerly Library GPL), or LGPL for short. Such a licence explicitally allows linking, and the publishing of your work as you choose.
However, if you have access to the innards of closed source software, and derive an involved derived work, you'll found yourself bound not only with various non-disclosure agreements, but you will find yourself unable to release your work in useable form, even if the company allow you to publish the diffs (perhaps subject to variable-name obfuscation).
Most library code that is *GPLed is in fact LGPLed, so it's fair to compare the GPLed library code with various closed-source libraries that do in fact come with funny licence conditions. Vis:
3. ADDITIONAL LICENSING REQUIREMENTS AND/OR USE RIGHTS.
. ..
iii. Distribution Restrictions. You may not
alter any copyright, trademark or patent notice in the Distributable Code;
use Microsoft's trademarks in your programs' names or in a way that suggests your programs come from or are endorsed by Microsoft;
distribute Distributable Code, other than code listed in OTHER-DIST.TXT files, to run on a platform other than the Windows platform;
include Distributable Code in malicious, deceptive or unlawful programs; or
modify or distribute the source code of any Distributable Code so that any part of it becomes subject to an Excluded License. An Excluded License is one that requires, as a condition of use, modification or distribution, that
the code be disclosed or distributed in source code form; or
others have the right to modify it.
Closed source licencing mirrors copyleft licencing very closely, when you compare like with like. There is a massive difference in the field, but that is the difference of availability. Locking code open might mirror locking code closed, but the effect of doing so is to positively enables the creation of derived work. This, however, is simply an efficiency of a different licencing model; it does not follow from the formal properties of the licence, rather, it follows from the source being available for derived works to be made from it.
No, not really. It's the nature of the license, not the mere fact that there is one. I don't see why it's so important to you to try to equate things that clearly aren't the same. There is a symmetry: closed source begets closed source, and open source begets open source.
The apparent asymmetry has nothing to do with the licence; it's related to the availability of the code, so that it is easier to create a derived work from open source code (this is, after all, the idea). However, in licencing terms, the symmetry is near-perfect.
Naturally this also applies to the licence terms of closed source software. This is important, or else closed source software would become public domain when used by a licencee to make derived works.
"Infection" simply means "you have to obey the licence terms".
I don't think that opposition to vouchers is about opposing the Republicans; I get the impression that it is primarily ideological; they have that stance prior to knowledge the the Republican position.
I'm not going to go all "BSD is superior" on you; I myself prefer the GPL.
My point is simply that free will is something that can change moment to moment, yet can also impinge upon itself, somewhat like happens to BSDed code as it goes down the line, including a choice to bind the code by contract, which is something that we can choose to do to ourselves.
The marketplace as a whole, rather than particlar items being traded, is kept open. You have resale rights, for a start. Similarly, truely free speech can be reused, and cannot be bound in subsequent incarnations.
Bad analogies are a pet peave of mine; I'm not saying that BSD is superior, but only that free will is a bad analogy for the mechanisms of the GPL licence. There are better analogies.
Slashdot Mirror
Then I read ShieldW0lf's reply to you in turn.
This example of the quantising effect of a superconducting ring is given early in Carver Mead's fairly straightforward text, Collective Electrodynamics.
Surely it would be far better to ask whether the policy or action makes any sense, rather than whether it was proposed by your team or the opposing team? Celebration or derision should follow, rather than preceeding the analysis.
On of the symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome is heightened perceptual sensitivity through weaker filters, which would otherwise help with such things as "cocktail party hearing".
A complaint at being ripped off is likely to contain many of the same words and sentence order fragments as someone who is ripping stuff off.
It's all part of the robot plan to take over the earth by Kafkaesque means...
Yeah, Iceberg; it's such a giveaway!
If you want the world to be freer as a result of what you produce, you don't necessarily achieve that by facilitating restriction. Acting 'politically', you can achieve more freedom in the world than if you'd acted naïvely.
Law, in general, is a similar concept; good laws create freedom through selective restriction. Perhaps there are few good laws, but a very small proportion of the population would argue that there were none. The closest that you would generally get is that the last few laws should be removed as the system's dead weight outweighs their benefit.
Co-incidentally, those opposed to copyright would hold to a similar position in that restricted field: the copyleft licences are good, but in general copyright is bad, and getting rid of the deadweight of copyright law would bring greater benefits than the comparatively minor cost of neutering such copyleft licenses. Given that using copyleft licenses is a political act that is aimed at maximising freedom, someone thus motivated would see that their intent would be better achieved by squashing copyright altogether.
For the record, I favour limited copyright, say 14 years plus a possible 14 year extension that has to be applied for.
It's a problem for me as a listener (and therefore not a RIAA copyright holder) if I get to hear less music. For there to be a fee that is payable for non-RIAA music will mean that stations producing free music will simply not legally exist, simply because free is cheaper than for a fee.
Producers who are non-RIAA copyright holders need to make the effort to waive the fee, but not all of them will do so, especially if their main market isn't the American one. Their lack of putting in the effort affects me, another, albeit non-producing non-RIAA copyright holder because if I am in the States, I will be less likely to be able to hear their music.
Changing the default isn't a victimless act; many people take the status quo as "how things are done", and to specify otherwise requires an act of will, when they might have other things on their mind, or even simply believe that whatever the status quo is is reasonable because it is the status quo.
How is this a solution for me?
Bill's up to his usual tricks.
If my argument holds in the case of the rubix cube, then, by analogy, it refutes your assertion of the unproductive nature of analogies in the general case (you only need the imagination to come up with a good analogy). If we're using more brittle logic, it's a counter-example (so that the original assertion is false).
You argued that if I don't know how to control the behavior of the technology I bought, then I'm still at fault for the results. So if someone's client connects to my AP because they don't know how to modify its default behavior, why are they not at fault? I submit that this is a double standard. Not so. A presumption of freedom supports someone who is connecting to open wi-fi, before issues of knowledge come into play.Business people do not start with supply and demand. They begin with property. Capitalism and free-marketry are sufficiently similar to confuse with one another, but they are not the same thing.
Management will see property ownership (the flip-side of rights restrictions) as inherently good. Their instinct is to perpetuate the business 'good', and receive a slice of that 'good' in due course. This is how they implement long-termism. 'Good' accumulates on 'good', and eventually the property that they created is expected to bring dividends. In a large company, the dividends are unlikely to be directly to themselves; so they are rewarded for being seen to have promoted the 'good' (in this case, creating new property).
The only thing that is missing from this equation is whether it actually brings benefits to the bottom line. When there is class war going on (in this case management against engineers), this side is often missed. When functionality fights a propertarian ideology, you're going to need mutiny to prevent propertarianism from winning. Engineers are trying to feed their families, are likely to be fatalist, and might be trying to win management favour besides. It's not as if it were a union issue; they're not protecting their own interests, so ethics and consumer interest will fail.
The shareholders will surely comply themselves, regardless of their true interests; when faced with a choice of slightly greater profits, and the promotion of their own propertarian ideology, they will choose "common sense" over analysis. Ie, they will choose propertarianism, for failure to do so is to oppose Locke and the American dream; something that they will not do for a couple of basis points on the dividend. Companies that choose analysis over "common sense" will be following a "risky" (non-conservative) strategy; thus their shares will be marked down, and the company will find it harder to raise money.
Market corrections to this kind of tendency are long-term, and people are born and indoctrinated too fast for them to do more than push a little the other way. Powerful social pressures strengthen naïve propertarianism; mere economics cannot compete.
I make it that you'd have more than 6,500,000,000 dollars. Unless you're counting all possible potential brains that I could have, in which case the sum would be astronomical.
If my motive is to help free software, rather than give away my code, I can do so more effectively by putting the code under the GPL than BSD or Public Domain. This doesn't need rancour; just the observation that some of the free software that is out there is only there because of conditions of licence.
On top of that, there is an efficiency issue; encouraging speciation between free and proprietry software aids the market in selecting the more efficient mode of production, without being influenced by cross-subsidy (free software that is then used to help proprietry software).
It's this alignment of purpose that is the most potent side of the GPL, and this is why so many are miffed at Novell's exclusivity deal.
Practically speaking, GPLed code is finished code; libraries, by and large, are not.
I owe you an apology, though; when I read about this a few months ago, I took it as saying something more extreme. My mistake for remembering the reporting and not checking the licence then. I skimmed it now, and seeing that the gist was compatible with what I remember, posted it. As it stands, it simply reinforces the GPL from the other side. You can't find ICC-compiled kernels for much the same reason, although you can compile your own.
Although the quote doesn't make the point of unreasonableness that I wanted to make, it does reinforce my main point about symmetry, and that is sufficient for my argument.
Closed source libraries are in general licenced under the closed-source equivelent of the Lesser GPL (formerly Library GPL), or LGPL for short. Such a licence explicitally allows linking, and the publishing of your work as you choose.
However, if you have access to the innards of closed source software, and derive an involved derived work, you'll found yourself bound not only with various non-disclosure agreements, but you will find yourself unable to release your work in useable form, even if the company allow you to publish the diffs (perhaps subject to variable-name obfuscation).
Most library code that is *GPLed is in fact LGPLed, so it's fair to compare the GPLed library code with various closed-source libraries that do in fact come with funny licence conditions. Vis:
Closed source licencing mirrors copyleft licencing very closely, when you compare like with like. There is a massive difference in the field, but that is the difference of availability. Locking code open might mirror locking code closed, but the effect of doing so is to positively enables the creation of derived work. This, however, is simply an efficiency of a different licencing model; it does not follow from the formal properties of the licence, rather, it follows from the source being available for derived works to be made from it.The apparent asymmetry has nothing to do with the licence; it's related to the availability of the code, so that it is easier to create a derived work from open source code (this is, after all, the idea). However, in licencing terms, the symmetry is near-perfect.
I create a JE about this very issue not so many moons ago.
"Infection" simply means "you have to obey the licence terms".
This is similar to opposition to higher pay for maths and science teachers. All opinion is equal, all knowledge equally valuable; there is no nature*.
*When it comes to ID, the roles are reversed, of course.
My point is simply that free will is something that can change moment to moment, yet can also impinge upon itself, somewhat like happens to BSDed code as it goes down the line, including a choice to bind the code by contract, which is something that we can choose to do to ourselves.
The marketplace as a whole, rather than particlar items being traded, is kept open. You have resale rights, for a start. Similarly, truely free speech can be reused, and cannot be bound in subsequent incarnations.
Bad analogies are a pet peave of mine; I'm not saying that BSD is superior, but only that free will is a bad analogy for the mechanisms of the GPL licence. There are better analogies.
Check out Late Junction, Mixing It, Hear and Now, in particular. Their Jazz is pretty cool too, if you like that kind of thing.
I don't know if they stream outside the UK, but I imagine that they must; Radio 3 is part of an ex-pat's staple diet...
More accurate: "Free as in Market" <- Good for libertarians.
Better still: "Free as in Speech"
Or as another .sig almost has it:
BSD: Liberté
GPL: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité
Unfortunate term, n'est pas?