That's not plain transparency, did no one notice? There 's a smoothing filter applied to the items in the background, which allows for much more transparency to be used, without disturbing.
Look at the first picture here (which is a mirror by the way)
http://www.phoenixrealm.com/wp-gal/index.php?dir=./longhorn
The logic seems wrong. Even if OS X will steal market share from Linux, it will steal more from Windows. And stealing market share from Windows is a favour to Linux, which is much bigger than the loss of market share.
Excuse me, I don't see what people find so terrifying about this scenario. In particular:
1. What will prevent you from using only free software (which of course will not do the checks you described)?
2. Why should people who use only free software be locked out of the web, since Linux will support DRM?
Making a copy of yourself doesn't avoid death for you, it just means ongoing life for a copy of you.
Anyone who cannot grasp this either hasn't thought deeply about a subject, or is an idiot.
How was this idiot moderated insightful? What's the difference between a set of biological neurons, and a set of silicon neurons, as long as they contain exacly the same values and perform exactly the same computation? Duh.
You're splitting hairs to justify doing something that is clearly ethically wrong, that is pirating movies, music, and software.
That is not ethically wrong; this is what we are being brainwashed to believe.
What is ethically wrong is that the author release his work (software, music, etc) under a license that prevents free copying and distribution. The author had better made sure he was paid in advance by consumers, i.e. before releasing the product; then he would have nothing to fear from the sharing of his work.
We need to set up a system with which consumers can get their money together and DIRECTLY finance the development of the products they like, or need. For example, the author declared what the product is, and says how much he needs; then he sais "let donations begin. Donations close in 3 months".
From that moment on, each consumer can donate freely, or not donate at all, depending on how much he likes the product and on the author's reputation.
After 3 months, if the money threshold (decided by the author) has been reached, the author gets the money, starts working, and after some time he is legally bound to release it under a free license. If, OTOH, the money threshold is NOT reached, the money gets refunded to donators. Better yet, the money is not taken at all from their credit cards. This is a fundamental incentive to donations.
Of course, visibility is crucial for success. But all it would take, for the system to be visible, is some big name to produce his next album with this technique. "I will not release this album until the overall donations reach X dollars".
That's what U2 should have done, instead of complaining about piracy.
DRM is a wrong solution to the problem of granting artists the reward that they deserve.
It is wrong because it denies the freedom of consumers to copy and share their music.
IMHO, the right solution is to build a system where music (and software, etc) are paid by consumers before they are released to the public, and, thereafter, can be freely used, copied and shared by anyone.
All needs to be done is to build a central place where consumers can donate to an artist before he releases his next work, based on their reputation, or on a sample of his work.
Even better, where consumers can directly sponsor the development of albums or films, before they are worked on. This way, producers can be bypassed completely.
It is no wonder that companies are not proposing this model.
In another discussion, someone told me there is a site that allows you to do just that. Consumers can get together and finance the development of any kind of product (not only music, but software, etc).
My idea is to extend Bugzilla to allow users to donate money directed towards a precise feature (or bug).
To see how this is related with Eugenia's article, please read on.
The problem
In the article, Eugenia correctly points out that OSS projects tend to ignore the needs of ordinary users: currently the OSS model tends to favour the needs of corporate customers (because corporations such as IBM or Novell put the money for those features), and those of power users (because they program the features they need by themselves). But the needs of ordinary home users are not respected as much. They often tend to be ignored.
So Eugenia is right here. But, IMHO, her error is to assume that this lack of respect for the need of ordinary users is the developers' fault. Instead, I think it is the users fault; I think users are still not as responsible and self-aware to get together and directly finance the features they want.
Consumers are not yet a responsible community and they have no awareness of themeselves as a power. (I believe this is partly why the economy is dominated by corporations.)
The solution
The idea is that
You donate for each feature separately. Donations are per-feature (or per-bug).
Everyone can donate freely (or not donate at all).
When, and if, the overall donation for a given feature reaches a certain threshold, that feature is guaranteed to be implemented within a given time (the time is stated in advance, before donations begin).
(optional) as an incentive to donating, you could give the guarantee that, if the threshold is not reached within X days, the money will be given back to the donator, or at least it will be reusable to sponsor another feature.
I am sure many of us have a small amount money, but no time to contribute code. Some of us love OSS so much that we would happily donate some, *provided* we are guaranteed the feature to be implemented if the threshold is reached.
Example
Here is the process I am proposing:
In bugzilla, I file a wish for a feature;
Some developer (Jack) decides to take care of the task, and says:
I can implement this feature in 3 months for 5000$. I declare donations open. Donations close in 20 days, on September 6 2005.
People begin donating freely.
After 20 days, on September 6 2005:
(a) if the 5000$ threshold was reached, Jack begins working, and he
*must* deliver within 3 months.
(b) if the 5000$ were not reached, the money is refunded to the donators
(or at least it because reusable for other tasks).
Notice there are two times involved here:
six months. This is the maximum time needed to implement the feature.
september 6 2005. We can call this the "restitution date".
Both should be decided by the developer, I believe.
Many more things should be discussed:
Once the threshold is reached, how do we decide which programmer is to take care of the task?
What does "guarantee"mean?
This is a difficult matter. Above I talked about "guarantees" as an incentive to donations.
Suppose the threashold is reached for a given feature: exactly, to what extent are you guaranteed the feature will be implemented? I mean: what if the developer fails to implement the feature in the given time? After all, 100% guarantees do not exist in the real world; that's why collaboration contracts exists, stating what happens when one of the parts fails to provide its service.
I would like someone to expand this topic. Some ideas: if it is not possible to guarantee the feature is implemented, at least we can guarantee it will be worked on. We could also set up some rating system, where developers are rated according to how well they behaved in the past.
As an extreme measure, we could provide legal contracts between donators and implementors! I would not underestimate this possibility.
Let artists be paid in advance, directly by consumers, before releasing their works; and then, after a work has been released, let it be freely copiable and shareable.
Artists would simply say "I want to be paid X dollars for my new work. Please donate to this paypal account. Each one of you can donate freely, or not donate at all. When, and if, the overall donation reaches X, I will release my work for free".
The author of Mute (a file sharing application) is doing this.
Out of curiosity: are you dictating this document with a speech recognizer? Noone who is using the keyboard would misspell "accept" with "except", "write it down" with "right it down".
But if someone does come up with something truly unique that is expressed in software, how can this be legally protected so someone else doesn't steal your work after one or one-half year?
Why should you be protected after revealing your invention? You should have required your retribution before divulging it.
Why would they refrain from continuing such behavior?
I agree. It's time to start blaming microsoft, which is doing what anyone in its shoes would do, and start blaming the US government and the European Union. I can understand the US government, but not the fact that EU does not wish to stop the constant flow of money that goes out of Europe to end up in Redmond.
the talk show host asked him: "Does it bother you that people use your product for negative purposes, sort of like the scientists who developed the formulas used in the atomic bombs that killed hundreds of thousands?"
He should have answered: There is no way to use my product for negative purposes.
The exchange of information, and in general the exchange of non-physical objects that can be copied at no cost, is not wrong. The only thing that's wrong is the law that says that non-physical objects can have an owner.
I really don't see the big fuss, whether God created the world one way or another, it doesn't affect the core basis of my beliefs. This has little to do with morality and my day to day life.
The point you seem to miss is that, after Darwin, there is no intellectually respectable reason to have such beliefs.
After you have explained how complexity arises naturally from the bare laws of physics, there is no reason at all to postulate any higher being that created those laws. Furthermore, postulating such a being would not be an explanation of anything.
You can find the latest kde, mplayer, xine, libdvdcss, synaptic, etc.
Quick instructions:
First, install apt (which means installing three packages: lua, apt-libs and apt, if memory doesn't fail me. ). you can find these packages in the subdir suser-rbos.
Then, edit/etc/apt/sources.list according to the software you need.
Then apt-get update.
Now you can install every other packages like you would on debian.
For example, here's the line I usually add to sources.list:
IMHO, as long as Microsoft is allowed to offer Internet Explorer as a default, Firefox will never reach a sufficient market share to have vendors use it as a platform.
The law has to realize that a (monopolist) operating system must not be allowed to bundle a file browser, a web browser, a multimedia player, a firewall, an instant messenger, and any other kind of software which someone else may want to sell. Otherwise that dominant position of that monopolist will be self-reinforcing.
We are spectators to the same phenomenon that happened on the earth, where a completely unregulated natural selection took place: humans have come to such a dominant position that other animals simply cannot compete with them anymore and have no way to invert the dominance. They are only free to adapt to niches that are of no interest to humans. (like MacOSX and Linux are doing)
There is a degree X of dominance that, when crossed by a species S, allows S to stay dominant, if no regulation happens. This has happened on the planet earth but must not happen in the market.
So we can only prevent monopolists to include products by default. Of course some users like to buy a product that does all those things out of the box, but 1. that desire is not necessarily to be fulfilled, because there may be more pressing matters, 2. the installation of products could be made embarassingly easy if you really want to. One click.
Could somebody explain why bad pages can make a browser crash? For what I know, if a parser is fed illegal code, it simply returns "failure in parsing" or something like that. Why should it crash?
Slashdot Mirror
LOL! That must be the funniest comment I ever read on shashdot!
You pay for the freedom to remove freedom, yes. Can't see anything wrong with it.
That's not plain transparency, did no one notice? There 's a smoothing filter applied to the items in the background, which allows for much more transparency to be used, without disturbing. Look at the first picture here (which is a mirror by the way) http://www.phoenixrealm.com/wp-gal/index.php?dir=. /longhorn
The logic seems wrong. Even if OS X will steal market share from Linux, it will steal more from Windows. And stealing market share from Windows is a favour to Linux, which is much bigger than the loss of market share.
Excuse me, I don't see what people find so terrifying about this scenario. In particular: 1. What will prevent you from using only free software (which of course will not do the checks you described)? 2. Why should people who use only free software be locked out of the web, since Linux will support DRM?
How was this idiot moderated insightful? What's the difference between a set of biological neurons, and a set of silicon neurons, as long as they contain exacly the same values and perform exactly the same computation? Duh.
That is not ethically wrong; this is what we are being brainwashed to believe.
What is ethically wrong is that the author release his work (software, music, etc) under a license that prevents free copying and distribution. The author had better made sure he was paid in advance by consumers, i.e. before releasing the product; then he would have nothing to fear from the sharing of his work.
We need to set up a system with which consumers can get their money together and DIRECTLY finance the development of the products they like, or need. For example, the author declared what the product is, and says how much he needs; then he sais "let donations begin. Donations close in 3 months".
From that moment on, each consumer can donate freely, or not donate at all, depending on how much he likes the product and on the author's reputation.
After 3 months, if the money threshold (decided by the author) has been reached, the author gets the money, starts working, and after some time he is legally bound to release it under a free license. If, OTOH, the money threshold is NOT reached, the money gets refunded to donators. Better yet, the money is not taken at all from their credit cards. This is a fundamental incentive to donations.
Of course, visibility is crucial for success. But all it would take, for the system to be visible, is some big name to produce his next album with this technique. "I will not release this album until the overall donations reach X dollars". That's what U2 should have done, instead of complaining about piracy.
DRM is a wrong solution to the problem of granting artists the reward that they deserve.
It is wrong because it denies the freedom of consumers to copy and share their music.
IMHO, the right solution is to build a system where music (and software, etc) are paid by consumers before they are released to the public, and, thereafter, can be freely used, copied and shared by anyone.
All needs to be done is to build a central place where consumers can donate to an artist before he releases his next work, based on their reputation, or on a sample of his work.
Even better, where consumers can directly sponsor the development of albums or films, before they are worked on. This way, producers can be bypassed completely.
It is no wonder that companies are not proposing this model.
In another discussion, someone told me there is a site that allows you to do just that. Consumers can get together and finance the development of any kind of product (not only music, but software, etc).
My idea is to extend Bugzilla to allow users to donate money directed towards a precise feature (or bug).
To see how this is related with Eugenia's article, please read on.
The problem
In the article, Eugenia correctly points out that OSS projects tend to ignore the needs of ordinary users: currently the OSS model tends to favour the needs of corporate customers (because corporations such as IBM or Novell put the money for those features), and those of power users (because they program the features they need by themselves). But the needs of ordinary home users are not respected as much. They often tend to be ignored.
So Eugenia is right here. But, IMHO, her error is to assume that this lack of respect for the need of ordinary users is the developers' fault. Instead, I think it is the users fault; I think users are still not as responsible and self-aware to get together and directly finance the features they want.
Consumers are not yet a responsible community and they have no awareness of themeselves as a power. (I believe this is partly why the economy is dominated by corporations.)
The solution
The idea is that
I am sure many of us have a small amount money, but no time to contribute code. Some of us love OSS so much that we would happily donate some, *provided* we are guaranteed the feature to be implemented if the threshold is reached.
Example
Here is the process I am proposing:
Notice there are two times involved here:
- six months. This is the maximum time needed to implement the feature.
- september 6 2005. We can call this the "restitution date".
Both should be decided by the developer, I believe.Many more things should be discussed:
- Once the threshold is reached, how do we decide which programmer is to take care of the task?
- What does "guarantee"mean?
This is a difficult matter. Above I talked about "guarantees" as an incentive to donations.
Suppose the threashold is reached for a given feature: exactly, to what extent are you guaranteed the feature will be implemented? I mean: what if the developer fails to implement the feature in the given time? After all, 100% guarantees do not exist in the real world; that's why collaboration contracts exists, stating what happens when one of the parts fails to provide its service.
My best wishes to you all.I would like someone to expand this topic. Some ideas: if it is not possible to guarantee the feature is implemented, at least we can guarantee it will be worked on. We could also set up some rating system, where developers are rated according to how well they behaved in the past.
As an extreme measure, we could provide legal contracts between donators and implementors! I would not underestimate this possibility.
You'd just need to provide a sample of your work.
Artists would simply say "I want to be paid X dollars for my new work. Please donate to this paypal account. Each one of you can donate freely, or not donate at all. When, and if, the overall donation reaches X, I will release my work for free".
The author of Mute (a file sharing application) is doing this.
What's wrong with acrobat reader for linux?
For one, the scroll wheel does not work.
Just a curiosity.
But if someone does come up with something truly unique that is expressed in software, how can this be legally protected so someone else doesn't steal your work after one or one-half year?
Why should you be protected after revealing your invention? You should have required your retribution before divulging it.
I agree. It's time to start blaming microsoft, which is doing what anyone in its shoes would do, and start blaming the US government and the European Union. I can understand the US government, but not the fact that EU does not wish to stop the constant flow of money that goes out of Europe to end up in Redmond.
He should have answered: There is no way to use my product for negative purposes.
The exchange of information, and in general the exchange of non-physical objects that can be copied at no cost, is not wrong. The only thing that's wrong is the law that says that non-physical objects can have an owner.
As if that were of little importance...
I was wondering what would be the difference with what we have today with eMule/aMule and in general the eDonkey network.
The point you seem to miss is that, after Darwin, there is no intellectually respectable reason to have such beliefs.
After you have explained how complexity arises naturally from the bare laws of physics, there is no reason at all to postulate any higher being that created those laws. Furthermore, postulating such a being would not be an explanation of anything.
ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/linux/suse/apt/SuSE/9.1-i386/
You can find the latest kde, mplayer, xine, libdvdcss, synaptic, etc.
Quick instructions:
First, install apt (which means installing three packages: lua, apt-libs and apt, if memory doesn't fail me. ). you can find these packages in the subdir suser-rbos.
Then, edit /etc/apt/sources.list according to the software you need.
Then apt-get update.
Now you can install every other packages like you would on debian.
For example, here's the line I usually add to sources.list:
rpm ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/apt/ SuSE/9.1-i386 suser-rbos packman-i686 packman base funktronics suser-scorot suser-tcousin suser-ollakka suser-oc2pus suser-jogley suser-gbv suse-people suser-guru suser-sbarnin rpmkeys ximian xorg wine
The law has to realize that a (monopolist) operating system must not be allowed to bundle a file browser, a web browser, a multimedia player, a firewall, an instant messenger, and any other kind of software which someone else may want to sell. Otherwise that dominant position of that monopolist will be self-reinforcing.
We are spectators to the same phenomenon that happened on the earth, where a completely unregulated natural selection took place: humans have come to such a dominant position that other animals simply cannot compete with them anymore and have no way to invert the dominance. They are only free to adapt to niches that are of no interest to humans. (like MacOSX and Linux are doing)
There is a degree X of dominance that, when crossed by a species S, allows S to stay dominant, if no regulation happens. This has happened on the planet earth but must not happen in the market.
So we can only prevent monopolists to include products by default. Of course some users like to buy a product that does all those things out of the box, but 1. that desire is not necessarily to be fulfilled, because there may be more pressing matters, 2. the installation of products could be made embarassingly easy if you really want to. One click.
Modularity is the key.
Could somebody explain why bad pages can make a browser crash? For what I know, if a parser is fed illegal code, it simply returns "failure in parsing" or something like that. Why should it crash?
Take an italian PC user and ask them if they need the "Inkulator 9000". Then run away to avoid being punched in the face.
Why is that?
--- SPOILER --------
-
-
-
-
-
-
- Inkulator means "he who sticks it up your butt" in italian.