Ditto. Even if you take Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia out of the picture, the state has killed more human beings in the twentieth century than all non-state actors in all of history combined. And not "evil" states either, but the warm fuzzy humanitarian states as well.
Viable 3a: capable of working, functioning, or developing adequately
Linux and FreeBSD certainly met that definition ten years ago. They worked, they were productive, all the basic apps most people needed were available, and quite a few people, including myself, used them as their primary or sole operating system. They weren't experimental operating systems, they were complete. They were being used as servers and workstations in major corporations.
Linux has been a viable operating system for at least ten years now. Ditto for FreeBSD which I use. They have had ample developers to make them viable for a very long time. Don't worry about what other people are using, and make your own decisions.
The developers and end-users you mention are the SAME people! They are both the licensees. If the users are free to adapt their code, then they must be developers. And if the developers can use a library in their application, then they are end-users. They are the same people. It's a very flimsy definition of freedom if it depends on what hat you happen to be wearing at the time.
They couldn't call it "Coke" because that would be fraud and misrepresentation. But they certainly could put it in a red can and call it "cola". I see absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Your confusion over freedom is resolved if you consider the property rights. You own your fist, I own my face. (Even the most anti-property anarcho-socialist agrees that people should at least have ownership of themselves). You can do what ever you want with your property so long as you do not violate the property of others. You can swing you fist, but not so far that it connects with my face. If you hit my face you violate my rights.
In regards to the GPL software, what are the property rights? To some people, there are none because copyright is not a legitimate property. These people think it's okay to copy and distribute other people's music, for example, because it not legitimately owned. The FSF seems to be in that camp, because the FSF explicitly states that software should not be owned. But if no one owns the software, whose rights are violated? Cisco is not punching anyone in the metaphorical face.
If the FSF says that software should not be owned then why do they sue over copyright? It's like an anarchist who doesn't believe in property suing someone for trespass. The only conclusion I can arrive at is that the FSF does not mean what they say.
The openness derived from Data.gov will strengthen the Nation's democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.
While I consider openness to be an extremely desirable trait of government, I must question the goals of efficiency and effectiveness. The first examples I think of when I hear the phrase "efficient government" are Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Until they got obsessed with endless warfare, they were quite efficient governments. They got the trains to run on time! They kept meticulous records of the people they gassed! I hope to God we will never again see such organizational skills in the hands of an evil government/
While efficiency and effectiveness are worthy attributes, they should not be the goal. Instead we should aim for GOOD government. I would much rather have an inefficient good government than an efficient bad government.
It's "free" software. Given away to everyone at zero cost and no price tag. The license holders have not been affected, the original software is still in its original state. The monetary damage should thus be zero dollars and zero cents. A good lawyer of sufficient bulk could make a case that there was emotional damage to the original developers, and a ruffling of their sensitivities, but there are still no material damages necessitating monetary compensation.
Who cares about a dominant market position. This obsession with keeping everything exactly equal is insane. Maybe you feel compelled to use Microsoft (as an example), but I sure as hell don't. I am in charge of my own life and will make my own decisions. If an ISP starts filtering then I will go find another. It really is that simply. I fail to understand why you think that is an absurd statement. Earthlink fucked with my account a couple of years ago, so I stopped using them. I found another ISP. Simple. Simple. But too simple apparently for the whiners on Slashdot.
Who cares about "dominant" market positions? There are still choices out there, you don't even have to search for them. Don't like Microsoft? Use Apple! or Linux! Or FreeBSD! Don't like Intel? Use AMD! Duh!
Go ahead and mark me down as a troll. I'm sure that will make you feel better.
Distilled to its essence, net neutrality is nothing more than price controls. It's the government telling private businesses what they can or cannot charge for their services. Anyone with more than two days of economics education knows that price controls lead to supply distortions. Yet the geeks are demanding it because they don't care.
Competition works well in most areas related to the internet, but those areas where it does not can be directly attributable to past government actions, primarily in the handing out of communications monopolies. Government isn't the solution, it's frequently the cause of the very problems we want it to solve.
First time I got laid I was so nervous I messed it all up. I got her hair caught in my zipper, rolled over and broke her glasses, and then came in her ear. Then she went and told all her friends, who told all their friends, and so... like... it's only been once because I've been blackballed from female companionship. Sigh.
Take roads for an example. Many roads arose purely organically, with no planning, central or otherwise. They just happened to be where people walked and beat down a trail. Or where people decided to build their houses back centuries ago. Others follow the courses of rivers and streams. Once laid down, a curve in a road can remain long after the obstacle that was in its way is gone. Europe is a great example. Nearly all of the small towns are completely unplanned. Even the cities are largely organic. (It's one reason mass transit works so much better in Europe than in the hyper-planned Los Angeles basin). I had a friend visit from Germany who remarked on California, "all the roads are unnaturally straight!" Some roads are planned however, but not always centrally from the top. Often time its the real estate developer who lays out a few blocks in a subdivision. And of course, water and sewers tend to follow the roads.
10. Floptical storage. Great stuff if you want to lose data.
On the other hand, MO drives were awesome. 128Mb in the same convenient form factor as a floppy. They weren't that expensive, but just pricy enough that they never caught on outside of some specialty applications.
I meant "centrally planned". Is there an individual or committee that imposes its plan on everyone from the top, or does the city arise from the interaction tens of thousands of individuals each with their own personal plans? Cities are an emergent order, and pure central planning cannot work any more than pure communism can work. It's against human nature.
GNOME was an unfinished project when Qt announced its first license change. It was the KDE developers who lobbied for the license, not GNOME. Commercial companies, such as trolltech, pay a lot more attention to their own customers (KDE developers) than they do to knee-jerk detractors who have no interest in using the code for any reason.
While they may result in some extreme terseness, they do not simplify. If you are doing an operation that is best represented by lambda functions, then use lambda functions. Otherwise keep them in the bottom of your tool chest.
My dad was in the tail end of WWII, and the most he or others in his unit could do was three days without sleep. After that you start to hallucinate. Guns and hallucinations do not mix.
I was at a company that did that. Everyone was told to stay until midnight on a Saturday to meet the deadline. At 6:00pm I walked out the door. The boss tried to stop me, but I told him the truth: "I'm a consultant, you only paid for eight hours. See you Monday morning."
Cities need to grow and evolve "organically". All of this new technology is wonderful and awesome, but if imposed from above by planners, will only result in distortions and unintended consequences. City planning beyond a local neighborhood level just doesn't work well. We don't like to admit it, because we've been taught since childhood that central planners are quasi-omniscient, but it's true. Cities are just too complex.
That doesn't mean that cities don't get planned, they do. Cities are an emergent order. No one person (or committee) can possibly plan an efficient healthy city, but the voluntary interactions of a hundred thousand inhabitants can give rise to one. The information needed to run a city is extremely dispersed and constantly changing, so that it cannot be codified into a static plan. This is about Hayekian information coordination. It's something every city manager needs to understand. Only then will City 2.0 be open to us.
Slashdot Mirror
Ditto. Even if you take Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia out of the picture, the state has killed more human beings in the twentieth century than all non-state actors in all of history combined. And not "evil" states either, but the warm fuzzy humanitarian states as well.
From my dictionary:
Linux and FreeBSD certainly met that definition ten years ago. They worked, they were productive, all the basic apps most people needed were available, and quite a few people, including myself, used them as their primary or sole operating system. They weren't experimental operating systems, they were complete. They were being used as servers and workstations in major corporations.
Linux has been a viable operating system for at least ten years now. Ditto for FreeBSD which I use. They have had ample developers to make them viable for a very long time. Don't worry about what other people are using, and make your own decisions.
Damn. Too bad Robert Heinlein ain't around anymore.
The developers and end-users you mention are the SAME people! They are both the licensees. If the users are free to adapt their code, then they must be developers. And if the developers can use a library in their application, then they are end-users. They are the same people. It's a very flimsy definition of freedom if it depends on what hat you happen to be wearing at the time.
They couldn't call it "Coke" because that would be fraud and misrepresentation. But they certainly could put it in a red can and call it "cola". I see absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Your confusion over freedom is resolved if you consider the property rights. You own your fist, I own my face. (Even the most anti-property anarcho-socialist agrees that people should at least have ownership of themselves). You can do what ever you want with your property so long as you do not violate the property of others. You can swing you fist, but not so far that it connects with my face. If you hit my face you violate my rights.
In regards to the GPL software, what are the property rights? To some people, there are none because copyright is not a legitimate property. These people think it's okay to copy and distribute other people's music, for example, because it not legitimately owned. The FSF seems to be in that camp, because the FSF explicitly states that software should not be owned. But if no one owns the software, whose rights are violated? Cisco is not punching anyone in the metaphorical face.
I don't agree with the RIAA either. But thanks for letting us know that you're willing to take Free Software down to their level.
If the FSF says that software should not be owned then why do they sue over copyright? It's like an anarchist who doesn't believe in property suing someone for trespass. The only conclusion I can arrive at is that the FSF does not mean what they say.
The GPL is the license, not the license holder, so it cannot "win". But +1 for your religious devotion.
While I consider openness to be an extremely desirable trait of government, I must question the goals of efficiency and effectiveness. The first examples I think of when I hear the phrase "efficient government" are Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Until they got obsessed with endless warfare, they were quite efficient governments. They got the trains to run on time! They kept meticulous records of the people they gassed! I hope to God we will never again see such organizational skills in the hands of an evil government/
While efficiency and effectiveness are worthy attributes, they should not be the goal. Instead we should aim for GOOD government. I would much rather have an inefficient good government than an efficient bad government.
It's "free" software. Given away to everyone at zero cost and no price tag. The license holders have not been affected, the original software is still in its original state. The monetary damage should thus be zero dollars and zero cents. A good lawyer of sufficient bulk could make a case that there was emotional damage to the original developers, and a ruffling of their sensitivities, but there are still no material damages necessitating monetary compensation.
The sad thing is that so many people think GNu is about freedom...
Who cares about a dominant market position. This obsession with keeping everything exactly equal is insane. Maybe you feel compelled to use Microsoft (as an example), but I sure as hell don't. I am in charge of my own life and will make my own decisions. If an ISP starts filtering then I will go find another. It really is that simply. I fail to understand why you think that is an absurd statement. Earthlink fucked with my account a couple of years ago, so I stopped using them. I found another ISP. Simple. Simple. But too simple apparently for the whiners on Slashdot.
Who cares about "dominant" market positions? There are still choices out there, you don't even have to search for them. Don't like Microsoft? Use Apple! or Linux! Or FreeBSD! Don't like Intel? Use AMD! Duh!
Go ahead and mark me down as a troll. I'm sure that will make you feel better.
Distilled to its essence, net neutrality is nothing more than price controls. It's the government telling private businesses what they can or cannot charge for their services. Anyone with more than two days of economics education knows that price controls lead to supply distortions. Yet the geeks are demanding it because they don't care.
Competition works well in most areas related to the internet, but those areas where it does not can be directly attributable to past government actions, primarily in the handing out of communications monopolies. Government isn't the solution, it's frequently the cause of the very problems we want it to solve.
First time I got laid I was so nervous I messed it all up. I got her hair caught in my zipper, rolled over and broke her glasses, and then came in her ear. Then she went and told all her friends, who told all their friends, and so... like... it's only been once because I've been blackballed from female companionship. Sigh.
You've completely misunderstood my point.
Take roads for an example. Many roads arose purely organically, with no planning, central or otherwise. They just happened to be where people walked and beat down a trail. Or where people decided to build their houses back centuries ago. Others follow the courses of rivers and streams. Once laid down, a curve in a road can remain long after the obstacle that was in its way is gone. Europe is a great example. Nearly all of the small towns are completely unplanned. Even the cities are largely organic. (It's one reason mass transit works so much better in Europe than in the hyper-planned Los Angeles basin). I had a friend visit from Germany who remarked on California, "all the roads are unnaturally straight!" Some roads are planned however, but not always centrally from the top. Often time its the real estate developer who lays out a few blocks in a subdivision. And of course, water and sewers tend to follow the roads.
On the other hand, MO drives were awesome. 128Mb in the same convenient form factor as a floppy. They weren't that expensive, but just pricy enough that they never caught on outside of some specialty applications.
I meant "centrally planned". Is there an individual or committee that imposes its plan on everyone from the top, or does the city arise from the interaction tens of thousands of individuals each with their own personal plans? Cities are an emergent order, and pure central planning cannot work any more than pure communism can work. It's against human nature.
I've heard of killer class schedules, but that's ridiculous. I hope you have subsequently come to your senses.
GNOME was an unfinished project when Qt announced its first license change. It was the KDE developers who lobbied for the license, not GNOME. Commercial companies, such as trolltech, pay a lot more attention to their own customers (KDE developers) than they do to knee-jerk detractors who have no interest in using the code for any reason.
While they may result in some extreme terseness, they do not simplify. If you are doing an operation that is best represented by lambda functions, then use lambda functions. Otherwise keep them in the bottom of your tool chest.
My dad was in the tail end of WWII, and the most he or others in his unit could do was three days without sleep. After that you start to hallucinate. Guns and hallucinations do not mix.
I was at a company that did that. Everyone was told to stay until midnight on a Saturday to meet the deadline. At 6:00pm I walked out the door. The boss tried to stop me, but I told him the truth: "I'm a consultant, you only paid for eight hours. See you Monday morning."
Cities need to grow and evolve "organically". All of this new technology is wonderful and awesome, but if imposed from above by planners, will only result in distortions and unintended consequences. City planning beyond a local neighborhood level just doesn't work well. We don't like to admit it, because we've been taught since childhood that central planners are quasi-omniscient, but it's true. Cities are just too complex.
That doesn't mean that cities don't get planned, they do. Cities are an emergent order. No one person (or committee) can possibly plan an efficient healthy city, but the voluntary interactions of a hundred thousand inhabitants can give rise to one. The information needed to run a city is extremely dispersed and constantly changing, so that it cannot be codified into a static plan. This is about Hayekian information coordination. It's something every city manager needs to understand. Only then will City 2.0 be open to us.