It's not for everyone, but I drive my car cross-country instead of flying. The humiliation, absurdity and inconvenience of TSA keeps me off commercial airlines unless business requires me to travel by air.
I'm a single parent, and the logistics of toting kids and carry-ons through security and around the airport make it nearly impossible to travel with my children by commercial airlines. Years ago, I could have a friend escort me to the gate, help carry the bags and manage the kids. That's simply not possible anymore. Even if I could manage the bags and the kids, I can't bring their medicine, or juice cups to sip on the plane since apple-juice and medicine are components of terrorist plots to blow up airplanes.
I travelled last with my daughter in 2006. She was 4 years old and was searched by TSA. She was separated from me and terrified. Why should a parent subject a little girl to that sort of treatment? I prefer to drive, show her the country and let her watch movies in the car on the trip instead of being *terrorized* by minimum wage thugs at the airport.
What really irks me is that I'm a private pilot. In VFR conditions, I can hop right into a plane, pack it full of all sorts of nasty things and fly wherever I like without any security. I fly club planes and would only have to drive my car to the hangar at the airport across the street, but there's no security and the club is in uncontrolled airspace. If I had a plane on my property and an air strip I would only have to walk to my back yard and hop in.
TSA is window dressing and does nothing to promote national security. It's destroying air travel in the United States. It is a useless drag on the economy, a violation of liberty and an enormous waste of money. It needs to be eliminated immediately.
Censor: an official who examines books, plays, news reports, motion pictures, radio and television programs, letters, cablegrams, etc., for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds.
Official: a person appointed or elected to an office or charged with certain duties
I don't believe the term censorhip is applicable here. An editorial staff refusing to publish materials that do not meet their own standards of decorum are not censoring.
I think the decision not to run the comic is cowardly.
Corporations and big business cannot tarrif, create copyright and patent laws, etc. Governments have been doing that at the request of some business lobbies. If control over economics is revoked from government, bureaucrats have less corruptable power to exert on smaller businesses and individuals.
It's silly that people that are afraid free markets cite big business power as the source of the problem. In fact, that power is bought from governments because it is for sale. In a free market society, the law isn't for sale because it is out of the hands of corruptable men. The separation of economy and State is at least as important as the separation of Church and State for reasons that should be obvious to anyone that believes deep-pocket lobbies, not voters, control governments.
1) An agreement between two or more parties, especially one that is written and enforceable by law. 2) The writing or document containing such an agreement.
social contract n. An agreement among the members of an organized society or between the governed and the government defining and limiting the rights and duties of each.
Now, how can "corporate character" be interpreted as a "social contract" or any sort of contract?
The only "social" contract that I know of is the Constitution of the United States (an "agreement between the governed and the government"). It happens to be a contract (written agreement) and it is also among an organized society (U.S. citizens).
Less than 0.5% of concealed carry licensees in my state (Texas) commit even MISDEMEANORS. (cited from http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/administration/crime_ records/chl/chlsindex.htm)
Yet, there are hundreds of thousands of people licensed to carry a concealed weapon in Texas. So, 99.5% of the time, the people who fill out the paperwork to carry a concealed weapon don't commit even the most modest crimes.
In locales where gun control is the strictist, crime rates have soared. Washington D.C. for example, has hit crime rates of 24% over the past decade. (http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/dccrime.htm)
I'll take the 0.5% TOTAL crime rate in an armed society over the 24% crime rate in a legally disarmed society, thank you.
You know, I've heard that Canadians have more guns than U.S. citizens, but seem to suffer less from gun-related crime.
Statistically, U.S. cities/states with the strictist gun laws also suffered from the highest gun-related crime-rates. Could that be because the criminals knew their victims would probably be disarmed?
"An armed society is a polite society." -- Robert A. Heinlein(?)
Torque appears to satisfy most of what you are looking for. It's the Tribes 2 engine available to indie developers for $100/programmer.
I haven't worked with it personally, but I have looked over the feature set and demos and it appears to be a very capable game development platform.
Just remember, you need a game design, good artwork, and competent coding. There's more to game creation than "wouldn't it be cool if..." (though that's where good games start!)
And perhaps GM, Ford, Pepsico, Nabsico, Johnson & Johnson, Dow, and the other "Big Business" could do the world a favor, give us what we are begging for: freedom from corporate greed. If they would just go away, perhaps we could return to scraping the earth with our bare hands, doing honest work. We would not be destroying our environment, enslaving children in sweatshops, or corrupting the inhabitants of our planet with a religion of shallow consumerism. We could finally return to our caves, cowering in the dark, cold and starving.
Sorry, Slashdot would have to go too, but that's a small price to pay as long as we can punish the successful for being too good.
"Live on competition, destruction to monopolies. Innovation exists not in monopolies, but in competition."
-- And whoever "wins" the "competition" is a "monopoly"
Moron.
Not such a great implementation
on
BeOS For Linux
·
· Score: 1
In spite of what the website says, it looks like a Gnome screenshot. Gnome (GTK+ in non-OO C) and BeOS (well designed OO C++) are worlds apart. Making a BeOS theme for Gnome is a far cry from bringing the BeOS to the Linux desktop.
More comprehensive, approach, true to the BeOS may be evolving at OpenBeOS
If I expected $$ for my work (or even wanted it), I wouldn't be releasing it for free.
What is most gratifying (to me anyway) is to see my software gain a life of its own.
You (the original poster) may not be inclined to contribute code, or bug reports, or feature requests, but as more users become involved, chances are that they will contribute in some directly productive way.
In short, if you can't be directly productive, invite others you know to try the software.
I'd like to see more developer's with the cajones to deliver their systems in the PUBLIC DOMAIN. If ever there was a free for all of intellectual property, public domain is it.
Anyone, anywhere, whether capitalistic developers or hippie-RMS droids can take PD software and do what they like with it. They don't have to give it back if they don't want to, They can't sue competitors who use PD software. In the end, it's a battle of merit, not patents and copyright, that wins the battle.
How is this so different from local bands plastering lamp-posts and telephone poles with ads for their next gig?
It's nice to see that/.'ers are amused by this campaign. Had this been Microsoft, there would be a million posts screaming for blood. How is IBM's ad campaign different from any other Big Company?
SF City Officials, true to Californian culture, get their sphincters tied in knots if a Big Company pulls something like this, but turn the other way if it's the Little Guy. Nevermind the fact that if the Big Companies pull all of the tech shops out of the area, SF would be bankrupt in less than a year. Punish the producers. That's about as smart as forcing power companies to operate at a loss and expecting them to stay in business.
Personally, I don't think there's any harm in this kind of campaign. We're already inundated with advertising on billboards, shop windows, radio, television, T-Shirts, etc... would SF city officials fine me for wearing a Tux T-Shirt on a public street? Playing my car stereo within earshot of public property? California is pretty hostile to business. It's no wonder so many companies are bailing out and moving operations elsewhere.
SF bureaucrats are motivated by sensationalistic dogma bashing Big Companies because it's OK to punish the successful for being successful. They fail to demonstrate how the sidewalk-chalk icons pose some threat to life and property. There's no debate on the legal or political merit of the law (especially in the face of their attitude toward other advertisements on public property).
The/. reaction so far is telling. While most posters (at least those moderated above 1) seem to have a pretty light-hearted outlook on the whole scenario, they share the city government's simple-minded rhetoric as well -- it's OK if the little guy gets some attention, but we need to bash the Big Guys simply because they are Big.
There's also a similar lack in substantive debate over Linux vs. Microsoft (or any free software system vs. any commercial software system).
Where are the technical discussions of the new Linux Kernel scheduler vs. the abomination of a scheduler in the Win2K kernel? QT/KDE vs MFC? gcc compiler optimizations vs MSVC? Python Vs Java?
Empty rhetoric. Answer the argument. A coporation cannot use physical force to compel a person to divulge any information. Only a government can do so. A corporation could not force anyone to do *anything* without government guns to help them.
What exactly is the violation of fair use? Nothing is really stopping the buyer from playing the CD they bought, making analog copies of it, finding some way to make digital copies of it.
An audio CD that only works on some players is not very different from software that only runs on a Mac -- is a buyer's fair use violated because the software won't run on PC's? Is the buyer breaking the law if the software is run on a PC with a Mac emulator?
If the media is purchased, it's still legal (in most places) to do with that media whatever the owner likes for their own personal use (even copying it if someone can hack the protection).
It's perfectly natural for a human being to own the product of his (or her) effort -- even copies of the product.
This is a matter of property rights. Whether property is a person's own body, some piece of land they develop to live on, some crops they grow and sell at a market, stories they tell their children or music they write.
In order to debunk copy rights, one has to first debunk property rights -- and that involves placing an individual human being in a position of slavery to some tribe or state. It is a matter of recognizing that people belong to no one but themselves -- or not.
I'm not so anxious to become a BORG drone. I'll suffer through actually having to BUY music, books or non-free software in a society where my peers respect my right to live my life as I see fit.
Who is right by nature: the person who defends their life against someone violently threatening it, or the agressor? The person who tries to keep the food they grow to feed their family, or somoene trying to steal it? Is it less right for a person to defend their property because they produced more than they need for the next minute? For the next hour? For the next day or week? Whatever it is someone tries to kill, steal or pirate, there would be no one to kill, no product to steal, and no idea to pirate without someone first living, working or creating.
Our nature is to live, and live by a very specific mode -- thinking, choosing, then acting on our own best judgement. What is unnatural is circumventing the ability to freely think, freely choose, and reap the rewards (or penalties) of our choices, which is why civilized people agree not to kill and steal from each other. This is the foundation for laws recognizing a human right to their own property.
So, a lot of./'ers believe that copy right is evil. They would tell an artist: "you have no right to tell me or anyone else how your work can be used or disseminated. You created it, thanks, but don't expect to get anything for your trouble. Excuse me while I use your work to promote my own agenda..." Essentially: the product of one's mind belongs to the mob, not the person who did the thinking, regardless of the fact that there would be no product if *someone* hadn't been creating.
Without copy right (or property rights in general) a person cannot produce for themselves *by right*, but merely by permission of the community -- they become communal property because the decision of how they can live their life is no longer theirs to make.
Jimi Hendrix said it best
"I'm the one that has to die when it's time for me to die."
First, DC uses DirectX as an API. Second, the only "goofy chip" to learn on the XBox is the video hardware. The amount of dev time getting a poly pipeline set up is insignificant to things like game logic or asset creation for a title.
Current compilers are uber-optimized already for the x86. The bulk of game code can be written in C++ with an assurance of reasonable performance.
Does that mean that X-Box will do better than the PS2? Who knows?
I could have an OC-192 to my home. If my upstream provider only has a T1 to the next peer, that's all the damage that can be done to the network upstream.
Does anyone know of a service provider that *doesn't* oversubscribe it's available bandwidth? Does the proposed service expect to have overwhelming long-haul bandwidth with peers?
The debate is pointless and appearantly not technically clued.
To quote the ruling: (somewhat redundant, but selective in the quote, please don't moderate down)
------------------
Computer code is expressive. To that extent, it is a matter of First Amendment
concern. But computer code is not purely expressive any more than the assassination of a political
figure is purely a political statement. Code causes computers to perform desired functions. Its
expressive element no more immunizes its functional aspects from regulation than the expressive
motives of an assassin immunize the assassin's action.
====== PARAPHRASE ======
New ideas are expressive. To that extent, they are a matter of First Amendment concern. But new ideas are not purely expressive any more than the assissination of a political figure is a purely political statement. Ideas cause people to perform their desired actions. Their expressive element no more immunizes their functional aspects from regulation than the expressive motives of an assassin immunize the assassin's action.
--------------------------------------------
In an era in which the transmission of computer viruses--which, like DeCSS, are
simply computer code and thus to some degree expressive--can disable systems upon which the
nation depends and in which other computer code also is capable of inflicting other harm, society
must be able to regulate the use and dissemination of code in appropriate circumstances. The
Constitution, after all, is a framework for building a just and democratic society. It is not a suicide
pact.
====== PARAPHRASE ======
In an era which the transmission of new ideas --which, like DeCSS, are simply principles to action and thus to some degree expressive --can disable dogmas upon which the nation depends and in which other ideas are also capable of inflicting other harm, society must be able to regulate the use and dissemination of ideas in appropriate circumstances.
-----------------------------------
So here is a juror, setting a precedent, for the regulation of expression (ideas/code/art/whatever) (same principle, as he admits in his opinion) because they may have functional aspects -- code can be used to pirate, a book can be used to incite rebellion, art can move a subculture to offend some sense of community standards, etc... "to promote a just and democratic society"?!
Perhaps an alternative, well reasoned, approach would be to attack those who use the code (idea) to perform ILLEGAL acts. In the case of DeCSS, attack pirates. In the case of other politically impalatable notions, those who perform assassinations.
I may not like some legislator or government official. Does that justify imprisonment? It's just an idea. That same notion, in the mind of someone less scrupulous, could end up in assassination. We had the same basic idea: "I don't like this guy", but applied it differently.
DeCSS is the same basic code. I may use it just to watch a DVD that *I* own. No harm done. Someone else may use it to pirate it. But it isn't the pirate who is persecuted. It is the creator of a new idea, of the CODE, that empowers the just AND the unjust to realize their desires.
This is merely a venture to build an interopable ORB. It is unlikely that the two projects will merge into a single desktop environment.
KDE and QT are very well engineered --in C++.
GNOME and GTK+ are very engineered --in C.
The design philosophy of a C programmer is very different from a C++ programmer. A programmer who implements an application (or desktop) in C will do it very differently under the hood from one who will implement the same features using C++.
This is (IMO) one of the reasons KDE and GNOME have been so antithetical.
This collaboration makes perfect sense, however. It is probably the most agreeable point for both camps. With a common component interaction protocol used by both GNOME and KDE, developers can continue to pursue implementation their own way without a religous war over how specific components are implemented.
KDE will still be KDE, GNOME will still be GNOME, but KDE application developers can leverage GNOME apps, and visa versa. Again, this is not a merge to a single desktop.
It's ironic that GNOME uses an ORB for component interaction, but is primarily implemented in C, whereas KDE has avoided OMG recommendations for object interoperability. It may explain why the teams are receptive to the proposal.
Hopefully this sheds a little more light on the discussion here.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not for everyone, but I drive my car cross-country instead of flying. The humiliation, absurdity and inconvenience of TSA keeps me off commercial airlines unless business requires me to travel by air.
I'm a single parent, and the logistics of toting kids and carry-ons through security and around the airport make it nearly impossible to travel with my children by commercial airlines. Years ago, I could have a friend escort me to the gate, help carry the bags and manage the kids. That's simply not possible anymore. Even if I could manage the bags and the kids, I can't bring their medicine, or juice cups to sip on the plane since apple-juice and medicine are components of terrorist plots to blow up airplanes.
I travelled last with my daughter in 2006. She was 4 years old and was searched by TSA. She was separated from me and terrified. Why should a parent subject a little girl to that sort of treatment? I prefer to drive, show her the country and let her watch movies in the car on the trip instead of being *terrorized* by minimum wage thugs at the airport.
What really irks me is that I'm a private pilot. In VFR conditions, I can hop right into a plane, pack it full of all sorts of nasty things and fly wherever I like without any security. I fly club planes and would only have to drive my car to the hangar at the airport across the street, but there's no security and the club is in uncontrolled airspace. If I had a plane on my property and an air strip I would only have to walk to my back yard and hop in.
TSA is window dressing and does nothing to promote national security. It's destroying air travel in the United States. It is a useless drag on the economy, a violation of liberty and an enormous waste of money. It needs to be eliminated immediately.
Censorship: the act or practice of censoring.
Censor: an official who examines books, plays, news reports, motion pictures, radio and television programs, letters, cablegrams, etc., for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds.
Official: a person appointed or elected to an office or charged with certain duties
I don't believe the term censorhip is applicable here. An editorial staff refusing to publish materials that do not meet their own standards of decorum are not censoring.
I think the decision not to run the comic is cowardly.
Corporations and big business cannot tarrif, create copyright and patent laws, etc. Governments have been doing that at the request of some business lobbies. If control over economics is revoked from government, bureaucrats have less corruptable power to exert on smaller businesses and individuals.
It's silly that people that are afraid free markets cite big business power as the source of the problem. In fact, that power is bought from governments because it is for sale. In a free market society, the law isn't for sale because it is out of the hands of corruptable men. The separation of economy and State is at least as important as the separation of Church and State for reasons that should be obvious to anyone that believes deep-pocket lobbies, not voters, control governments.
What the hell is a social contract?
Contract:
n.
1) An agreement between two or more parties, especially one that is written and enforceable by law.
2) The writing or document containing such an agreement.
social contract
n.
An agreement among the members of an organized society or between the governed and the government defining and limiting the rights and duties of each.
Now, how can "corporate character" be interpreted as a "social contract" or any sort of contract?
The only "social" contract that I know of is the Constitution of the United States (an "agreement between the governed and the government"). It happens to be a contract (written agreement) and it is also among an organized society (U.S. citizens).
Less than 0.5% of concealed carry licensees in my state (Texas) commit even MISDEMEANORS. (cited from http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/administration/crime_ records/chl/chlsindex.htm)
Yet, there are hundreds of thousands of people licensed to carry a concealed weapon in Texas. So, 99.5% of the time, the people who fill out the paperwork to carry a concealed weapon don't commit even the most modest crimes.
In locales where gun control is the strictist, crime rates have soared. Washington D.C. for example, has hit crime rates of 24% over the past decade. (http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/dccrime.htm)
I'll take the 0.5% TOTAL crime rate in an armed society over the 24% crime rate in a legally disarmed society, thank you.
You know, I've heard that Canadians have more guns than U.S. citizens, but seem to suffer less from gun-related crime.
Statistically, U.S. cities/states with the strictist gun laws also suffered from the highest gun-related crime-rates. Could that be because the criminals knew their victims would probably be disarmed?
"An armed society is a polite society." -- Robert A. Heinlein(?)
hmmm... Grass fire?
Gee, I vote, they get an account. Lets run this poll on Slashdot instead!
Torque appears to satisfy most of what you are looking for. It's the Tribes 2 engine available to indie developers for $100/programmer.
I haven't worked with it personally, but I have looked over the feature set and demos and it appears to be a very capable game development platform.
Just remember, you need a game design, good artwork, and competent coding. There's more to game creation than "wouldn't it be cool if..." (though that's where good games start!)
Good luck!
Amen.
And perhaps GM, Ford, Pepsico, Nabsico, Johnson & Johnson, Dow, and the other "Big Business" could do the world a favor, give us what we are begging for: freedom from corporate greed. If they would just go away, perhaps we could return to scraping the earth with our bare hands, doing honest work. We would not be destroying our environment, enslaving children in sweatshops, or corrupting the inhabitants of our planet with a religion of shallow consumerism. We could finally return to our caves, cowering in the dark, cold and starving.
Sorry, Slashdot would have to go too, but that's a small price to pay as long as we can punish the successful for being too good.
"Live on competition, destruction to monopolies. Innovation exists not in monopolies, but in competition."
-- And whoever "wins" the "competition" is a "monopoly"
Moron.
In spite of what the website says, it looks like a Gnome screenshot. Gnome (GTK+ in non-OO C) and BeOS (well designed OO C++) are worlds apart. Making a BeOS theme for Gnome is a far cry from bringing the BeOS to the Linux desktop.
More comprehensive, approach, true to the BeOS may be evolving at OpenBeOS
Microsoft does not write hardware OpenGL drivers. Hardware manufacturers write them.
Microsoft provides a software only reference OpenGL driver.
If I expected $$ for my work (or even wanted it), I wouldn't be releasing it for free.
What is most gratifying (to me anyway) is to see my software gain a life of its own.
You (the original poster) may not be inclined to contribute code, or bug reports, or feature requests, but as more users become involved, chances are that they will contribute in some directly productive way.
In short, if you can't be directly productive, invite others you know to try the software.
Evangelize!
I'd like to see more developer's with the cajones to deliver their systems in the PUBLIC DOMAIN. If ever there was a free for all of intellectual property, public domain is it.
Anyone, anywhere, whether capitalistic developers or hippie-RMS droids can take PD software and do what they like with it. They don't have to give it back if they don't want to, They can't sue competitors who use PD software. In the end, it's a battle of merit, not patents and copyright, that wins the battle.
My software is PD, is yours?
How is this so different from local bands plastering lamp-posts and telephone poles with ads for their next gig?
/.'ers are amused by this campaign. Had this been Microsoft, there would be a million posts screaming for blood. How is IBM's ad campaign different from any other Big Company?
/. reaction so far is telling. While most posters (at least those moderated above 1) seem to have a pretty light-hearted outlook on the whole scenario, they share the city government's simple-minded rhetoric as well -- it's OK if the little guy gets some attention, but we need to bash the Big Guys simply because they are Big.
It's nice to see that
SF City Officials, true to Californian culture, get their sphincters tied in knots if a Big Company pulls something like this, but turn the other way if it's the Little Guy. Nevermind the fact that if the Big Companies pull all of the tech shops out of the area, SF would be bankrupt in less than a year. Punish the producers. That's about as smart as forcing power companies to operate at a loss and expecting them to stay in business.
Personally, I don't think there's any harm in this kind of campaign. We're already inundated with advertising on billboards, shop windows, radio, television, T-Shirts, etc... would SF city officials fine me for wearing a Tux T-Shirt on a public street? Playing my car stereo within earshot of public property? California is pretty hostile to business. It's no wonder so many companies are bailing out and moving operations elsewhere.
SF bureaucrats are motivated by sensationalistic dogma bashing Big Companies because it's OK to punish the successful for being successful. They fail to demonstrate how the sidewalk-chalk icons pose some threat to life and property. There's no debate on the legal or political merit of the law (especially in the face of their attitude toward other advertisements on public property).
The
There's also a similar lack in substantive debate over Linux vs. Microsoft (or any free software system vs. any commercial software system).
Where are the technical discussions of the new Linux Kernel scheduler vs. the abomination of a scheduler in the Win2K kernel? QT/KDE vs MFC? gcc compiler optimizations vs MSVC? Python Vs Java?
City of SF: "Don't bite the hand that feeds you."
Empty rhetoric. Answer the argument. A coporation cannot use physical force to compel a person to divulge any information. Only a government can do so. A corporation could not force anyone to do *anything* without government guns to help them.
Violence != consentual trade
A corporation can only take your information with your permission. If you refuse to report to the governmnent, they can shoot you ... dead.
If I hang up on a telemarketer, I finish my dinner.
If I ignore the IRS, they will forcefully take my property. If I resist, they shoot.
VERY big difference in how a business achieves it's ends vs. a government which has a monopoly on the use of force.
Of course, this would not have been an issue if the software were free'd.
What exactly is the violation of fair use? Nothing is really stopping the buyer from playing the CD they bought, making analog copies of it, finding some way to make digital copies of it.
An audio CD that only works on some players is not very different from software that only runs on a Mac -- is a buyer's fair use violated because the software won't run on PC's? Is the buyer breaking the law if the software is run on a PC with a Mac emulator?
If the media is purchased, it's still legal (in most places) to do with that media whatever the owner likes for their own personal use (even copying it if someone can hack the protection).
-- IANAL though...
It's perfectly natural for a human being to own the product of his (or her) effort -- even copies of the product.
./'ers believe that copy right is evil. They would tell an artist: "you have no right to tell me or anyone else how your work can be used or disseminated. You created it, thanks, but don't expect to get anything for your trouble. Excuse me while I use your work to promote my own agenda..." Essentially: the product of one's mind belongs to the mob, not the person who did the thinking, regardless of the fact that there would be no product if *someone* hadn't been creating.
This is a matter of property rights. Whether property is a person's own body, some piece of land they develop to live on, some crops they grow and sell at a market, stories they tell their children or music they write.
In order to debunk copy rights, one has to first debunk property rights -- and that involves placing an individual human being in a position of slavery to some tribe or state. It is a matter of recognizing that people belong to no one but themselves -- or not.
I'm not so anxious to become a BORG drone. I'll suffer through actually having to BUY music, books or non-free software in a society where my peers respect my right to live my life as I see fit.
Who is right by nature: the person who defends their life against someone violently threatening it, or the agressor? The person who tries to keep the food they grow to feed their family, or somoene trying to steal it? Is it less right for a person to defend their property because they produced more than they need for the next minute? For the next hour? For the next day or week? Whatever it is someone tries to kill, steal or pirate, there would be no one to kill, no product to steal, and no idea to pirate without someone first living, working or creating.
Our nature is to live, and live by a very specific mode -- thinking, choosing, then acting on our own best judgement. What is unnatural is circumventing the ability to freely think, freely choose, and reap the rewards (or penalties) of our choices, which is why civilized people agree not to kill and steal from each other. This is the foundation for laws recognizing a human right to their own property.
So, a lot of
Without copy right (or property rights in general) a person cannot produce for themselves *by right*, but merely by permission of the community -- they become communal property because the decision of how they can live their life is no longer theirs to make.
Jimi Hendrix said it best
" I'm the one that has to die when it's time for me to die."
First, DC uses DirectX as an API. Second, the only "goofy chip" to learn on the XBox is the video hardware. The amount of dev time getting a poly pipeline set up is insignificant to things like game logic or asset creation for a title.
Current compilers are uber-optimized already for the x86. The bulk of game code can be written in C++ with an assurance of reasonable performance.
Does that mean that X-Box will do better than the PS2? Who knows?
I could have an OC-192 to my home. If my upstream provider only has a T1 to the next peer, that's all the damage that can be done to the network upstream.
Does anyone know of a service provider that *doesn't* oversubscribe it's available bandwidth? Does the proposed service expect to have overwhelming long-haul bandwidth with peers?
The debate is pointless and appearantly not technically clued.
To quote the ruling: (somewhat redundant, but selective in the quote, please don't moderate down)
------------------
Computer code is expressive. To that extent, it is a matter of First Amendment
concern. But computer code is not purely expressive any more than the assassination of a political
figure is purely a political statement. Code causes computers to perform desired functions. Its
expressive element no more immunizes its functional aspects from regulation than the expressive
motives of an assassin immunize the assassin's action.
====== PARAPHRASE ======
New ideas are expressive. To that extent, they are a matter of First Amendment concern. But new ideas are not purely expressive any more than the assissination of a political figure is a purely political statement. Ideas cause people to perform their desired actions. Their expressive element no more immunizes their functional aspects from regulation than the expressive motives of an assassin immunize the assassin's action.
--------------------------------------------
In an era in which the transmission of computer viruses--which, like DeCSS, are
simply computer code and thus to some degree expressive--can disable systems upon which the
nation depends and in which other computer code also is capable of inflicting other harm, society
must be able to regulate the use and dissemination of code in appropriate circumstances. The
Constitution, after all, is a framework for building a just and democratic society. It is not a suicide
pact.
====== PARAPHRASE ======
In an era which the transmission of new ideas --which, like DeCSS, are simply principles to action and thus to some degree expressive --can disable dogmas upon which the nation depends and in which other ideas are also capable of inflicting other harm, society must be able to regulate the use and dissemination of ideas in appropriate circumstances.
-----------------------------------
So here is a juror, setting a precedent, for the regulation of expression (ideas/code/art/whatever) (same principle, as he admits in his opinion) because they may have functional aspects -- code can be used to pirate, a book can be used to incite rebellion, art can move a subculture to offend some sense of community standards, etc... "to promote a just and democratic society"?!
Perhaps an alternative, well reasoned, approach would be to attack those who use the code (idea) to perform ILLEGAL acts. In the case of DeCSS, attack pirates. In the case of other politically impalatable notions, those who perform assassinations.
I may not like some legislator or government official. Does that justify imprisonment? It's just an idea. That same notion, in the mind of someone less scrupulous, could end up in assassination. We had the same basic idea: "I don't like this guy", but applied it differently.
DeCSS is the same basic code. I may use it just to watch a DVD that *I* own. No harm done. Someone else may use it to pirate it. But it isn't the pirate who is persecuted. It is the creator of a new idea, of the CODE, that empowers the just AND the unjust to realize their desires.
Does anyone else see anything wrong with this?
This is merely a venture to build an interopable ORB. It is unlikely that the two projects will merge into a single desktop environment.
KDE and QT are very well engineered --in C++.
GNOME and GTK+ are very engineered --in C.
The design philosophy of a C programmer is very different from a C++ programmer. A programmer who implements an application (or desktop) in C will do it very differently under the hood from one who will implement the same features using C++.
This is (IMO) one of the reasons KDE and GNOME have been so antithetical.
This collaboration makes perfect sense, however. It is probably the most agreeable point for both camps. With a common component interaction protocol used by both GNOME and KDE, developers can continue to pursue implementation their own way without a religous war over how specific components are implemented.
KDE will still be KDE, GNOME will still be GNOME, but KDE application developers can leverage GNOME apps, and visa versa. Again, this is not a merge to a single desktop.
It's ironic that GNOME uses an ORB for component interaction, but is primarily implemented in C, whereas KDE has avoided OMG recommendations for object interoperability. It may explain why the teams are receptive to the proposal.
Hopefully this sheds a little more light on the discussion here.