I can't say if that is equally common or not, my main point is that our society(-ies?) today don't seem to seek any improvement that they can't buy off the shelf; we need more large scale educational improvement before we can begin to really utilize the value of technology we have had for the last 300 years (and more). I agree that alarmists will always exist, but the 2nd order effects I'm talking about are the kind that people FAIL to predict because of an implicit assumption that a tool or invention will be used as the creator intended it to be used.
Re:When did we decide "no more progress?"
on
The Rights of GM Humans
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
She, on the other hand, believes that we shouldn't meddle, because if we do as I just described, it's a small step to handing prospective parents a form, letting them choose their baby's sex, hair colour, height, etc. I say, "so what?
She's right - a common problem with scientific advances is to underestimate the magnitude of 2nd and 3rd order (unintended) effects. Humans are notoriously bad at foresight beyond the simplest predictions. The problem is that (we) science-minded types run into is that we don't assume or count on people ABUSING the things we come up with. But they do, and usually in far greater numbers than they use inventions in a good way. It's not enough to say "People are still responsible for their actions" because what we will have done is made it far more likely that we will destroy ourselves, much sooner than before our latest "Advance" came to fruition.
Let me propose this idea to you: Broaden and enhance your definition of "advance". I personally think we are long on technological and communications advancements, such that we are limited by our own (think average joe) education and morality. Yes, morality. Without some compass we would (and do) slide down a slippery slope towards the dregs of what humanity can be. When you've gone the wrong way, the most progressive man is the one who turns back FIRST..
Thanks for delivering me from my cloud of ignorance.. legal/licensing issues are always taking a backseat to actual coding so (and because) we don't always realize their importance.
Good to know. So how would that work if the corporation would only contract with the individual if they accepted those terms? Wouldn't that amount to an NDA?
I doubt it, it comes down to the non-disclosure agreement between them. If the contractor is using the program only for work for that company (as they should) there is no reason the company has to give up their right not to 'distribute', as it's still that company [legally a person] using the program to their own ends. IANAL, of course, so this could be debated endlessly, but I think the real important part is that a corporation is legally an individual, and a contractor doing work for that 'individual' is part of that individual when serving in that capacity, and doesn't have the right to distribute their works if they don't say so. if the company says the contractor can distribute it, then they have to give them the source too, but otherwise I think the rights still lie with teh corporation.
Big difference between distribution within a company and distributing to anyone who wants to download it. Since corporations are legally treated as an individual person, there is no difference between everyone in a corporation using the modified code (in binary form) and not distributing it at all.
That cuts both ways, too. There is a huge faction of scientists that seem to believe that if you are a "man of science" you can't hold any religious belief either... It's just not true, the two aren't at odds with one another.
I've seen people call themselves scientists and then proceed to illogically define religion by the fringe fanatics.
This is analogous to a Southern Baptist thinking that all science is like Snake Oil salesmen... This is similar to an ad hominem attack, in that the person is trying to understand a huge, varied group of people and ideas by oversimplifying the matter with a label: "All those religion people are just fanatical zealots who think the earth is flat" or "All those science types are just ashamed to know God"..
When you try to define something by it's fringes you aren't being very scientific, yet a great many 'scientists' do just this, possibly because they are emotionally horrified by the idea that some religion, somewhere, might contain an element of real truth..
I can only think of two compelling reasons for failing to release source code or specifications:
1) Secret contracts or other means of control imposed by a third party interested in impeding the progress of open source software
2) Management ineptitude
A little from column A, a little from column B.. I don't think it's anyting to do with impeding OSS's progress, more likely that the implementations (i.e. OpenGL) they've licensed for their drivers are under a non GPL compatible license to them.
I'll never bet against management ineptitude though..
Good point, glad you brought it up. That's a grey area I guess. It is, after all , relative. It turns out that there isn't much practical use for the answer -- it's not like we are trying to make a standards body (bite my tongue) to tell people when to open source certain areas of software. In the example you give, the right thing happened. No, filmgimp isn't commodity to most people, but most people also have no use for it. BUT there was a big enough group of people who DID need it that pooling their resources proved worthwhile.
So it's sort of a non-issue. If a group of people large enough exists that has need for or sees value in a type of app being open source, it will come to fruition eventually. (ideally, assuming some of them program). That's why we have openoffice, mozilla, the Gimp, etc.
I agree that the Gimp isn't a commodity product -- I thought about making the point that the Gimp has spoiled the Open community in that we have a tool that is every bit as extendable as Photoshop, and has 99% of the features I'll ever want already there, for free! I *would* gladly pay for a closed source Gimp if no open one existed, so it's a singularity as far as I'm concerned. We're just lucky that there was overlap between teh developers needs and ours, it's a gift.
For resource mining companies...
Again, would you ever have use for that software? It's just fine with me that it's closed source, it's probably just fine with them. If it makes sense to open it up, they will. I think the monopoly on a particular segment SHOULD exist until it's a commodity, if nobody else will compete! Microsoft might be bad, but they haven't done anything that couldn't have been prevented...
Nintey-five percent of all their video products share the same pool of code.
Most video card makers do this, don't they? I know for sure Matrox does, as I've been a big fan of their cards for years. As for making it open source, I still defy anybody to show me a business reason to open up their drivers. They're in a space where without trade secrets, you have no profits in a year or two. In 10 years the info in those drivers will be old hat or common practice, so I'm not sweating it. They developed it, they SHOULD make a buck on it while they can. I'm sure far fewer peole are locked into using Nvidia, unlike the situtation with M$.
To keep this "short", I like your GUDA idea. Sounds GUDA. However I doubt too much other than the libraries for speaking pci would be common between a sound card and a nic -- and it's probably already in libraries they both use (I don't know firsthand)
Companies that are bottom line driven (accept it, you won't change capitalism over night) can't usually afford to jump in head first. This goes double for Nvidia, ATI, etc. Their driver source is like a blueprint of the important parts of their hardware.
I prefer open source, but to say there is no place in the world for closed source modules, applications, whatever, is too extreme IMHO.
For me the dividing line has always been commodity vs non commodity. Example: Of COURSE the OS, office software, web browsers, MUA's, MTA's, etc should be open, they are commodities. Specialized programs like AutoCAD, Drivers for up-to-the-minute video cards, and various other areas do NOT lend themselves to the open source model, and I don't believe they have to.
So right now the devil's choice is,
a) fast nvidia drivers for linux/bsd that get released with the windows drivers, which is 2 steps ahead of where we were in July, or
b) only a community supported driver, created by reverse engineering the chipset or windows drivers, released months (and years) after the windows versions.
It's not a perfect world, we have to change it in small steps. Your idealism is duly noted. Give nvidia credit for moving in the right direction, maybe at some point it *will* make sense to go GPL for them..
Please point me to WORKING nvidea drivers for a non intel/amd architecture.......
Umm. right. point me to someone with an IQ over room temperature who bought a non intel/amd architechture + an nvidia card with gaming in mind. I agree that the driver source would be much better, esp in light of the changes regarding exporting the entire symbol table to modules upcoming in linux 2.6, but nvidia is doing a great job of recognizing our 'demographic' and doing *something* to support it. I honestly can't think of a business justification for them to release the source for those drivers, I really can't. They're in a cut throat business, and if you ahve the source to their drivers the cat's out of the bag. You're technically right that they don't support 'linux' in all it's ported architechtures, but they are doing a good job supporting the most used ones. My Ti4200 arrives Thursday; good frame rates here I come.
"However, I believe things are slightly better than the days when Trip Hawkins (EA's co-founder founder) Harvard professor told him to stop wasting time with games."
Ok..
-- better than what? You've given away your view as someone who thinks everyone should take gaming seriously. Everyone has the right to think games are worthwhile, or not.. oh what a dumb unenlightened harvard professor that guy must have been, huh? Just because there's a market for something doesn't make it 'worthwhile' or prove that Hawkins is the one in the right.. just the one in the dough
-- I play Unreal with friends but I still consider it a waste of time... is this hypocritical? NO.. to say so would be to assume that it's wrong to 'waste time'. Doing it too much is just as bad as doing any other thing to excess; doing it in moderation is healthy like many other things (but not all)
I thought maybe this was for their cable modem prisoners as well -- you'll forgive me for not reading the article before posting, this *IS*/. after all.. and if it is for the unfortuneate monopoly victims as well, then HA!
I'm kind of speaking for the more lay person that doesn't know linux very well, wants an alternative to Windows, and this is not it.
I think it will get there as those tools you have trouble finding, including CUPS, are packaged and setup by default. I don't know who's going to do it yet of course..
Okay. Grr. Failed dependency on xyz-1.2.3.4.5.6. Find that. Install. Grr. Need to load the parport module. Failed, need to specify IRQ in/etc/conf.modules.
Dependency hell? Try debian. I'm not gonna preach, you have enough clue to read if you don't know it already; but apt/dpkg are a great system. Dependency problems melt away and I can have my system automatically updated if I really want.. RPM is not a very good system IMHO for upgrading an entire distribution, but I haven't used it much since RedHat 6.0, either. Debian is just the right way to do it, for me.
Many times I just say screw it and install from source.
I only have to install from source the important stuff that people don't package the way I want it (there would be too many packages) like apache.
Do I want to deal with all that? I like a good mix of GUI tools and command line tools. I like to be able to do everything command line, but have the option of GUI for normal tasks.
I can respect that. Personally I don't care about GUI anything except a web browser, the GIMP, and other things that inherently can't be done right without a gui. I'm much more into automating things, which is much easier with CLI tools anyway.
There's a SourceForge project for almost everything I want to do... but it's crazy sometimes to locate all these things and get them all working in a resonable amount of time.
That's a hole I think will be filled by a user-friendly distribution at some point. Looking back, Redhat 8.0 is easier to install and use than WinXP, and it's about 10x easier to install than RH 6.0, 5.2, 5.0, etc. Within a few years I'd say it'll be 5x as good as it is now for new users.
I'm not going to address your paragraphs about Outlook too much. To each his own, just so long as I can use the one I want to. If it works for you it works for you.
Never had much luck with WINE. I haven't looked at it in awhile and could only really get MiRC to work;
WineX isn't wine, it's a fork of wine; it's specifically geared to let you play windows games that haven't been ported. Heh, what's the point of getting MiRC to work?:P) there are plenty of good irc clients you can run natively. BitchX, Xchat are both good, I prefer BitchX.
Slashdot Mirror
If he wins, will it become the GNUnited States?
or GNUSA?
You must have a really slow internet connection.
Or a heck of a lot of books to download..
Some would say He Has..
: )
Microsoft commissioned VeriTest, a
I can't say if that is equally common or not, my main point is that our society(-ies?) today don't seem to seek any improvement that they can't buy off the shelf; we need more large scale educational improvement before we can begin to really utilize the value of technology we have had for the last 300 years (and more). I agree that alarmists will always exist, but the 2nd order effects I'm talking about are the kind that people FAIL to predict because of an implicit assumption that a tool or invention will be used as the creator intended it to be used.
She, on the other hand, believes that we shouldn't meddle, because if we do as I just described, it's a small step to handing prospective parents a form, letting them choose their baby's sex, hair colour, height, etc. I say, "so what?
She's right - a common problem with scientific advances is to underestimate the magnitude of 2nd and 3rd order (unintended) effects. Humans are notoriously bad at foresight beyond the simplest predictions. The problem is that (we) science-minded types run into is that we don't assume or count on people ABUSING the things we come up with. But they do, and usually in far greater numbers than they use inventions in a good way. It's not enough to say "People are still responsible for their actions" because what we will have done is made it far more likely that we will destroy ourselves, much sooner than before our latest "Advance" came to fruition.
Let me propose this idea to you: Broaden and enhance your definition of "advance". I personally think we are long on technological and communications advancements, such that we are limited by our own (think average joe) education and morality. Yes, morality. Without some compass we would (and do) slide down a slippery slope towards the dregs of what humanity can be. When you've gone the wrong way, the most progressive man is the one who turns back FIRST..
Don't the two coincide pretty often?
Of course, it begs the question - why does this situation exist in IT?
DOOOT! 'Begs the question' Used incorrectly at line 8.. Just an FYI
Thanks for delivering me from my cloud of ignorance.. legal/licensing issues are always taking a backseat to actual coding so (and because) we don't always realize their importance.
Good to know. So how would that work if the corporation would only contract with the individual if they accepted those terms? Wouldn't that amount to an NDA?
Good point. Hell, even Microsoft has used bsd code :) (/me coughs KERBEROS)
I doubt it, it comes down to the non-disclosure agreement between them. If the contractor is using the program only for work for that company (as they should) there is no reason the company has to give up their right not to 'distribute', as it's still that company [legally a person] using the program to their own ends. IANAL, of course, so this could be debated endlessly, but I think the real important part is that a corporation is legally an individual, and a contractor doing work for that 'individual' is part of that individual when serving in that capacity, and doesn't have the right to distribute their works if they don't say so. if the company says the contractor can distribute it, then they have to give them the source too, but otherwise I think the rights still lie with teh corporation.
Big difference between distribution within a company and distributing to anyone who wants to download it. Since corporations are legally treated as an individual person, there is no difference between everyone in a corporation using the modified code (in binary form) and not distributing it at all.
That cuts both ways, too. There is a huge faction of scientists that seem to believe that if you are a "man of science" you can't hold any religious belief either... It's just not true, the two aren't at odds with one another.
I've seen people call themselves scientists and then proceed to illogically define religion by the fringe fanatics.
This is analogous to a Southern Baptist thinking that all science is like Snake Oil salesmen... This is similar to an ad hominem attack, in that the person is trying to understand a huge, varied group of people and ideas by oversimplifying the matter with a label: "All those religion people are just fanatical zealots who think the earth is flat" or "All those science types are just ashamed to know God"..
When you try to define something by it's fringes you aren't being very scientific, yet a great many 'scientists' do just this, possibly because they are emotionally horrified by the idea that some religion, somewhere, might contain an element of real truth..
Even if true (which seems a stretch) how would that stop them from releasing the hardware specs?
that's covered by your item 2)
I can only think of two compelling reasons for failing to release source code or specifications:
1) Secret contracts or other means of control imposed by a third party interested in impeding the progress of open source software
2) Management ineptitude
A little from column A, a little from column B.. I don't think it's anyting to do with impeding OSS's progress, more likely that the implementations (i.e. OpenGL) they've licensed for their drivers are under a non GPL compatible license to them.
I'll never bet against management ineptitude though..
Although, on a totally unrelated note, I do recall at one point in my life enjoying a little ketchup with my ice cream.
.. this is truly what they meant when they said you learn something new every day..
wow
i guess so long as you didn't LIKE the ketchup with the ice cream it's ok...
Ah! Commodity for whom?
...
...
Good point, glad you brought it up. That's a grey area I guess. It is, after all , relative. It turns out that there isn't much practical use for the answer -- it's not like we are trying to make a standards body (bite my tongue) to tell people when to open source certain areas of software. In the example you give, the right thing happened. No, filmgimp isn't commodity to most people, but most people also have no use for it. BUT there was a big enough group of people who DID need it that pooling their resources proved worthwhile.
So it's sort of a non-issue. If a group of people large enough exists that has need for or sees value in a type of app being open source, it will come to fruition eventually. (ideally, assuming some of them program). That's why we have openoffice, mozilla, the Gimp, etc.
I agree that the Gimp isn't a commodity product -- I thought about making the point that the Gimp has spoiled the Open community in that we have a tool that is every bit as extendable as Photoshop, and has 99% of the features I'll ever want already there, for free! I *would* gladly pay for a closed source Gimp if no open one existed, so it's a singularity as far as I'm concerned. We're just lucky that there was overlap between teh developers needs and ours, it's a gift.
For resource mining companies
Again, would you ever have use for that software? It's just fine with me that it's closed source, it's probably just fine with them. If it makes sense to open it up, they will. I think the monopoly on a particular segment SHOULD exist until it's a commodity, if nobody else will compete! Microsoft might be bad, but they haven't done anything that couldn't have been prevented
Nintey-five percent of all their video products share the same pool of code.
Most video card makers do this, don't they? I know for sure Matrox does, as I've been a big fan of their cards for years. As for making it open source, I still defy anybody to show me a business reason to open up their drivers. They're in a space where without trade secrets, you have no profits in a year or two. In 10 years the info in those drivers will be old hat or common practice, so I'm not sweating it. They developed it, they SHOULD make a buck on it while they can. I'm sure far fewer peole are locked into using Nvidia, unlike the situtation with M$.
To keep this "short", I like your GUDA idea. Sounds GUDA. However I doubt too much other than the libraries for speaking pci would be common between a sound card and a nic -- and it's probably already in libraries they both use (I don't know firsthand)
Companies that are bottom line driven (accept it, you won't change capitalism over night) can't usually afford to jump in head first. This goes double for Nvidia, ATI, etc. Their driver source is like a blueprint of the important parts of their hardware.
I prefer open source, but to say there is no place in the world for closed source modules, applications, whatever, is too extreme IMHO.
For me the dividing line has always been commodity vs non commodity. Example: Of COURSE the OS, office software, web browsers, MUA's, MTA's, etc should be open, they are commodities. Specialized programs like AutoCAD, Drivers for up-to-the-minute video cards, and various other areas do NOT lend themselves to the open source model, and I don't believe they have to.
So right now the devil's choice is,
a) fast nvidia drivers for linux/bsd that get released with the windows drivers, which is 2 steps ahead of where we were in July, or
b) only a community supported driver, created by reverse engineering the chipset or windows drivers, released months (and years) after the windows versions.
It's not a perfect world, we have to change it in small steps. Your idealism is duly noted. Give nvidia credit for moving in the right direction, maybe at some point it *will* make sense to go GPL for them..
Please point me to WORKING nvidea drivers for a non intel/amd architecture.......
Umm. right. point me to someone with an IQ over room temperature who bought a non intel/amd architechture + an nvidia card with gaming in mind. I agree that the driver source would be much better, esp in light of the changes regarding exporting the entire symbol table to modules upcoming in linux 2.6, but nvidia is doing a great job of recognizing our 'demographic' and doing *something* to support it. I honestly can't think of a business justification for them to release the source for those drivers, I really can't. They're in a cut throat business, and if you ahve the source to their drivers the cat's out of the bag. You're technically right that they don't support 'linux' in all it's ported architechtures, but they are doing a good job supporting the most used ones. My Ti4200 arrives Thursday; good frame rates here I come.
"However, I believe things are slightly better than the days when Trip Hawkins (EA's co-founder founder) Harvard professor told him to stop wasting time with games."
.. just the one in the dough
... is this hypocritical? NO.. to say so would be to assume that it's wrong to 'waste time'. Doing it too much is just as bad as doing any other thing to excess; doing it in moderation is healthy like many other things (but not all)
Ok..
-- better than what? You've given away your view as someone who thinks everyone should take gaming seriously. Everyone has the right to think games are worthwhile, or not.. oh what a dumb unenlightened harvard professor that guy must have been, huh? Just because there's a market for something doesn't make it 'worthwhile' or prove that Hawkins is the one in the right
-- I play Unreal with friends but I still consider it a waste of time
I thought maybe this was for their cable modem prisoners as well -- you'll forgive me for not reading the article before posting, this *IS* /. after all.. and if it is for the unfortuneate monopoly victims as well, then HA!
Ok, so basically as soon as one of their subscribers learns to setup squid transparently this plan falls through, no?
I fully defend a company's right to implement whatever they feel like in this way, using technology to do so, but it's much easier said than done..
Do you guys READ your own site? {slashdot.org, from YESTERDAY]
Sure, once you figure the damned thing out.
/etc/conf.modules.
:P) there are plenty of good irc clients you can run natively. BitchX, Xchat are both good, I prefer BitchX.
Yes, you are correct that it's not for Joe User.
I'm kind of speaking for the more lay person that doesn't know linux very well, wants an alternative to Windows, and this is not it.
I think it will get there as those tools you have trouble finding, including CUPS, are packaged and setup by default. I don't know who's going to do it yet of course..
Okay. Grr. Failed dependency on xyz-1.2.3.4.5.6. Find that. Install. Grr. Need to load the parport module. Failed, need to specify IRQ in
Dependency hell? Try debian. I'm not gonna preach, you have enough clue to read if you don't know it already; but apt/dpkg are a great system. Dependency problems melt away and I can have my system automatically updated if I really want..
RPM is not a very good system IMHO for upgrading an entire distribution, but I haven't used it much since RedHat 6.0, either. Debian is just the right way to do it, for me.
Many times I just say screw it and install from source.
I only have to install from source the important stuff that people don't package the way I want it (there would be too many packages) like apache.
Do I want to deal with all that? I like a good mix of GUI tools and command line tools. I like to be able to do everything command line, but have the option of GUI for normal tasks.
I can respect that. Personally I don't care about GUI anything except a web browser, the GIMP, and other things that inherently can't be done right without a gui. I'm much more into automating things, which is much easier with CLI tools anyway.
There's a SourceForge project for almost everything I want to do... but it's crazy sometimes to locate all these things and get them all working in a resonable amount of time.
That's a hole I think will be filled by a user-friendly distribution at some point. Looking back, Redhat 8.0 is easier to install and use than WinXP, and it's about 10x easier to install than RH 6.0, 5.2, 5.0, etc. Within a few years I'd say it'll be 5x as good as it is now for new users.
I'm not going to address your paragraphs about Outlook too much. To each his own, just so long as I can use the one I want to. If it works for you it works for you.
Never had much luck with WINE. I haven't looked at it in awhile and could only really get MiRC to work;
WineX isn't wine, it's a fork of wine; it's specifically geared to let you play windows games that haven't been ported. Heh, what's the point of getting MiRC to work?