Even/. has this vengeance (as seen by the Gates of Borg picture).
It's called "Gates Bashing." It's not that fun anymore, since MS and Bill Gates III has made it so easy. It's like shooting fish in a barrel.
I've crashed a fresh install of W2k before it was 30 minutes old. There was nothing but stock W2k on a single processor machine (PII-200, 128M RAM, yada yada yada). I was browsing the web. It crashed on msnbc.com, of all places-- froze, and no amount of shaking would bring it back.
This really impressed my friend, since it was his machine and he had been bragging W2k's stability. It was his install, so he couldn't even accuse me of sabotaging the system.
On a counter note, my brother told me about a Linux-based web server he has at work. He wanted to update the site over the weekend, but kept getting errors on login. It would site for 10 minutes between commands, and he couldn't update anything. When he got to work on Monday, he asked coworkers if they'd had problems with the web server. They reported it had worked just fine. He went back to the cold room, and heard a grand and frightening grinding. The hard drive had crashed on Friday, and the server had worked out of cache all weekend.
People who brag about the stability of W2k amuse me. I can crash any system-- it's just easier to crash windows. I've found there are two types of people in the world-- those who believe the hype, and those who don't. (Really, you can find ambivilent people as well, so perhaps there are three types.)
The Veterans Administration created a package called VISTA on Mumps. The Indian Health Service (in which my employer is a participant) used the VISTA package to create their own specialized version of the software-- RPMS.
Based on ANSI-standard MUMPS, RPMS isn't a bad alternative. It has a complete patient management system (one of the best in the industry), a pharmacy package, a lab package which interfaces to most common lab equipment, scheduling, diabetes, a couple of third-part (read: non-free) billing package, and a great ad-hoc query tool.
The issue is finding a MUMPS (M) environment. All the good M vendors were gobbled up by Intersytems. They created a product called Cache.
Cache is available for Linux, though. And I understand RPMS has run on Cache. I think. Although you could probably get RPMS under the freedom of information act, and the source is available (which means it's a government-sponsered open-source project, essentially), Cache is rather expensive. But they do have a free Linux download.
There is a Free Software version of Mumps in the works. Although it is not ready to run RPMS or VISTA, it would be easier to get FreeM working for RPMS than it would to write a free medical package from scratch.
here are no logical paradoxes. If two things seem to conflict, check your premises. One of them is usually wrong. -- Ayn Rand (Via Hugh Akston)
Didn't Godel prove that no logical system can be both complete and internally consistent?
In any case, anyone who wants to "do away with money" doesn't give a damn about IPOs. I certainly don't. Not that I want to give away money-- I just want to change the way in which it is made. Money should *not* be made by metering out information, and restricting distribution of something that has no physical distribution.
If I create something, my creation means nothing unless it is used and distributed. Corporations seem to take the view that information is not important unless it is difficult (READ: expensive) to get. If it doesn't make money, it ain't worth anything.
I take the view that information is only important if it helps humanity. I realize I'm in the minority, but that doesn't stop me from proselytizing.
Yes, he should have credited linux.com. But really, isn't the idea of code re-use central to the concept of developing an information milieu freindly to everyone?
We should *encourage* good web design-- there are enough ugly pages in the world. We should also gently remind people the old addage, "Give credit where credit is due," but we shouldn't rain down a firestorm on those who ignore proper webiquette.
Free software has set us free. Although there is a slight artistic difference between web pages and code, I think we should encourage the same free flow of information on web sites that we encourage with our code. Once we've built up a culture of page-sharing, the whole issue of "who stole from whom" will be moot.
First, Ellison didn't dig through trash cans. The private dicks he hired dug through trash cans. Second, he didn't lie about it, so he was honest.
Not that Ellison wouldn't lie. It's just that your example isn't a good one.
Second, Miguel isn't a FUD spreader against KDE. He expresses his honest opinion about KDE. He just doesn't have a good opinion of KDE. (Or, rather, he *does* have a good opinion of KDE; he just thinks he can do better.) Mostly, Gnome folks and KDE folks don't infight. It's the users who do most of the FUDding, without having any idea what they are talking about.
Thirdly, Stallman doesn't say copyrights shouldn't be honored. He does *not* advocate ignoring copyright. He thinks keeping knowledge hidden is ethically wrong; so he advocates using copyright law to keep information from being hidden, through the GPL.
Fourthly, how the *hell* is the GPL a "nazi" license? If you don't care if someone takes your code and makes it proprietary and makes a bundle off your work, don't use it. If you want to guarantee that no-one can profit off your code while keeping knowledge hidden (see the paragraph above), then the GPL is the one for you. It allows freedom of information.
Basically, if you don't mind using proprietary programs, where you don't have access to the source code, then you have no complaints about the GPL, since the GPL gives you *more* rights than a proprietary binary-only program license, without taking away a *single* right a proprietary license grants.
Unless, of course, you don't like the idea of people sharing ideas without making a monetary profit.
True, I did mention military spending, which is federal; and mentioned it in a context along side education, which is funded mostly by state governments, with federal funding constituting around 15% of the total.
Yes, military spending has been curtailed slightly in the last 15 years. It is *still* the largest single line-item of our country's budget (followed closely by Social Security). And since education hasn't been able to track increased student populations (focusing instead on "inflation," a useless number when used all by itself), I am not convinced my rant was a "load of crap."
In fact, our government and our media has focused on the symptoms, and not the problem. Everyone agrees that our education system is degnerating; but not many people agree on the solution. The current silver bullet seems to be "outcome-based education;" three years ago it was team teaching.
So far, the statistics show only one thing-- that small class sizes with a teacher to student ratio of no more than 1:15 have better results than larger classes. Yet instead of fixing the problem of too many students in too small of space with too few teachers, we persue teaching fads with the fervor and blind jubilence of a born-again Christian at a Jim and Tammy Faye reunion concert.
I too come from a family of educators; I too have taught, but not at the primary or secondary levels. But it doesn't take an accountant to see that our government spends a relative pittance on education, while kowtowing to corporate special interest groups; and that the amount spent on education per-capita is falling dramatically.
It isn't enough to track or exceed inflation. Government spending on education hasn't tracked increasing population (that is, per capita spending). Per capita spending has decreased; plus, the money individual schools see has also decreased. Teachers' salaries haven't tracked national averages; and the disparity between urban and rural schools has increased dramatically (some schools are seeing more money, but not the ones that really need it).
Meanwhile, the cost of many school supplies is increasing. In some areas, the cost of building a school has doubled in the last fifteen years. The cost of texts has also dramatically increased-- *much* faster than the rate of inflation.
Sorry to ruin a perfectly good rationalization with more facts.
How can schools hope to stay afloat while government funding for education is falling faster than hot grits down a troll's trousers?
If schools hope to survive (and I'm talking about primary and secondary schools as well, not just Higher Education) they will have to find sources of funding. Our beloved US of freaking A would rather subsidize military waste and corporate bail-out programs than spend an extra tupence on our childrens' (and our) education.
Schools either have to find new sources of funding, or raise tuition. In the case of public (primary and secondary) schools, they don't have the option of raising tuition.
In a few years, GM & Microsoft & McDonald's will have to sponser our public schools just so new employees can read and understand the binder. It's no surprise they are already sponsering higher education.
Look for the same thing in your local high school soon.
Perfect! You got all the troll characteristics down pat. It's all in on paragraph, there are *plenty* of misspellings, you spout nonsense as if you knew what you were talking about, you pander to an unpopular view (which is not a bad thing), and you prove short-sighted stupidity is mightier than intelligence and wit.
And, yes, you are right. Any time you can hand a company your freedom, privacy, and money, you should. Look at all the shiny things we get in return!
Just remember-- Manhattan Island was purchased for about $24 worth of glass beads (though I should point out that, in today's terms, that's about $1024 worth of beads).
There are thousands of non-profit organizations across the states, and probably millions throughout the world, who need computer help. Here in Sitka, AK, with a population of 8500, there are probably 8 non-profit organizations that could use computer help.
Who are these non-profits?
The SAFE shelter (a refuge for battered women-- there are Safe Shelters in almost every town in the US), a local non-profit which does respite care for the infirm and elderly and also does welfare-to-work case management, a group that focuses on teen intervention (drugs, pregnancy, etc), the local emergency medical team, a writers-in-residence program, and the Sitka Summer Music Festival.
Also, the PBS radio station needs help once in a while.
For you urban dwellers (those of you who have schools in which the children have recess on the rooftops), there are many urban non-profits that deal with everything from under-priveleged education, to big brothers and big sisters (where you can mentor a kid and make a geek out of them), to political action groups that work on awareness issues (a social buzzword, I know).
I've volunteered time at 5 local non-profit groups, and I've never regretted a minute.
I'm currently having loads of fun with Objective-C. It is far easier to mess with than C++, but fundamentally more powerful at the same time.
Yep. Objective-C is much more powerful, and much-better designed, than C++.
There is no good reason why $_, @_, $@, etc. should be legal variable names in any language. They're pure nonsense. Why couldn't they be given more descriptive names? It wouldn't kill the power of the language, only reduce the ability to write incomprehensible statements. This is, of course, only a simple example.
And this is one of my biggest problems with the Mac, and MS-Windows, &c. There are good reasons for those variable names. There are also common aliases that are more descriptive. Perl is a great language for exactly this reason: there are simple, verbose ways of doing things; and there are terse, arcane ways of doing things. This is the difference between "See Dick Run" and "Cryptonomicon." Sure, you can start off simple; but the further you get, the more beautiful the language becomes. Perl can't help that there are poor programmers, anymore than the English language can help that there are poor writers.
Don't blame the language for the fault of the programmers.
The philosophy of the Mac (and of Apple in the post-Wozniak days) is to remove complexity and replace it with simplicity. Fine, except that complexity can be beautiful, and useful. An automatic transmission is simple to use, but I prefer a standard-- it's much more fun.
Both Gnome and KDE proscribe common keys for all actions, and provide a framework for doing the most common things. But programmers are not forced to follow them. Just as in Perl, the programmer is not forced to follow good programming practices. And just as Apple has thrown away their own programming style guide (for Quicktime 4.0, as one example), Gnome or KDE authors are free to ignore their respective style guides.
No, there is not a formula for calculating the simplicity to power ratio, but in my book, flexibility is directly proportional to power. And often, flexibility in design often requires flexibility of mind.
Just my tupence.
- Tony
Re:GPL is a chastity belt. BSD tests your morals.
on
RMS On 'Open' Motif
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· Score: 1
I use the GPL the same reason I use locks-- it keeps the honest people honest.
You are right, and I had never thought about the BSD license in that way. If only everyone was up for a test of their morals.
MORALITY TEST:
1. You are offered money in exchange for acts you consider unscrupulous. You should:
a: Take the money and feel guilty. b: Change your scruples. c: All of the above.
2. On Slashdot (News for nerds, etc) there is a posting about RMS. You should:
a: Call RMS a whiner and whisk him off to Russia. b: Call RMS a whiner and ask him to step aside. c: Say that RMS is correct, but he should really stop whining.
3: When asked to use Motif in an "open source" project, you should:
a: Use Qt instead. b: Use MFC instead. c: Use Visual Basic instead.
8. Why shouldn't Slashdot users and the general public be able to view this protocol for purposes of commentary and criticism in light of its apparent relevance to issues in the government's antitrust litigation?
It is completely irrelevant to the antitrust case. That notwithstanding, Slashdot users DO have the right to view the specification, and to comment on it, provided that it is obtained lawfully.
These questions lead through a minefield. First, they try to establish that the click-through is neither effective, nor legally binding. So that leaves the document as a standard copyrighted document published on the internet. Under copyright law, there is a thing called "Fair Use." Is is *legal* to publish portions of a document for criticism.
This is why ESR was able to publish the Halloween Documents as he did; they contained the full text of copyrighted documents (because *all* documents are copyrighted as soon as written under current copyright law).
By stripping the click-through agreement of any meaning, we expose the document itself to fair use. It's that simple, and that is *exactly* what the/. questions do, while putting Microsoft in the worst possible light.
But the real battle of free speech is won at the individual level, not by giving more money to lawyers duking it out with another company.
You are partly correct; but in this case, there is very little distinction between the individuals and the corporation. MS is using a corporation (Andover) to pressure/censor individuals (ACs and other posters). If Andover does *not* bend, then we have a rare case of a corporation standing up for the rights of the individual. In that case, we have a corporation acting in the best interest of our rights-- and doesn't this contradict your claim that a corporation *never* does this?
(Corporations are inherently evil; their only alliegence is to the allmighty Profit. But some corporations have a moral center (always with individuals) that balances this.)
And if that happens, I think it is our moral imperative to help support that fight, in any way possible.
I despise lawyers, since most tend to get wealthy off the pain, suffering, and oppression of other people. But they are necessary to work within the system like this.
Our only other defense against the sort of this insane manuevering is to read the specs, write our software using the published-but-secret specs, and publish it in spite of the law. If we do that (Civil Disobedience) we don't stand much of a chance. Our best bet is to fight it now, while it's fresh.
The DMCA definately sucks, but in the end, companies will do what is best for their profitability.
In general, I agree. In this specific, I do not. I believe Rob, Robin, Hemos, et. al., are moral individuals. They have been given complete editorial control over/.'s content.
Plus, in this case, I believe it will be worth a court battle; it'll bring/.'s name into the mainstream. What better than a Free Speech battle with MS to get good press?
Personally, I would support *any* corporation who has the balls to stand up for what is Right instead of what is Profitable. If it were MS itself fighting the good fight, I would support them to the best of my ability. (Though with MS it would be moral support, and not financial.)
If/. does not stand up for Free Speech now, it will never get the chance again.
In Germany they first came for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up.
--The Reverend Martin Niemöller, a pastor in the German Confessing Church who spent seven years in a concentration camp.
That's not a fair evaluation of this at all. In the 200+ finding of facts, the browser issue was only a small part.
In the finding of facts, it was determined that:
A: Microsoft is a monopoly
B: Microsoft has, in the past, used it's monopoly position to destroy other products (eg, DR Dos, Word Perfect, GeoWorks, and most recently Netscape).
C: It is illegal to use a monopoly in one market to force your way into another market.
D: MS was a latecomer to the Internet game.
E: There are *MS documents* that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that top MS executives knew they must destroy Netscape in order to shoulder in and take over the Internet market. They planned to destroy Netscape by replacing them with their own competing browser. MS understood that since it was the dominant platform, it would be trivial to use their monopoly to force Netscape out of busines.
See the sorite here? Microsoft has a history of using their superior position in one market to strongarm their way into another market. In most of the earlier cases, they did not have a monopoly yet, or were simply maintaining their current monopoly; this was the first case where they used their monopoly power to force their way into a market they did not dominate.
It's a very simple, and a very fair, law. *You cannot be a bully just because you are bigger than the other kids.* Pretty simple, huh?
Microsoft was bigger than the other kids. It was a bully. Now it has to see the principle.
Oh, and the "Multiple Document Interface" was not first implemented in MS Word. It's been around since the Altos days.
Not really. It's okay to make discount volume sales. That's okay. What's *not* okay is tieing the discount to another, unrelated product. It would be as if Cisco owned 90% of the router market, and they decided to move into the PC hardware world, and said that if you wanted to buy Cisco routers, you had to buy Cisco PCs as well.
This is called "product tieing," and it is illegal if you are a monopoly.
<i>You can't blame MS and Cisco. These companies are out there in a dog-eat-dog marketplace trying to survive. They walk a fine line between honesty, morality and making a buck.<i>
You can blame them, as a matter of fact. We *should* blame them. If you cannot make an *honest* buck, then you shouldn't be working in that business... or something is wrong. In the case of the software business, something is wrong. MS stopped making money honestly, and started being dishonest, sneaky, and underhanded; it got to the point where some stated business plans were to make an innovative product just so Microsoft would buy them out.
When your only hope for profit is to be bought out, something is wrong.
For instance, you say that corporations are not allowed to support candidates for federal office. This is, in fact, correct. In practice, it is *not* correct.
Corporations have spent many years circumventing rules and regulations. By spinning off "non-profit" groups and supporting these non-profits with huge amounts of cash, they are able to influence (perhaps even "buy") politicians. That is why corporate-friendly laws are passed more often than consumer-friendly laws. Corporations also have more lobbying money than the opposition, and so are able to buy votes that way.
Even though individuals contribute more money to political parties than corporations, individuals do not have a coherent political agenda. This is the difference between a lightbulb and a laser.
Now, even if the DMCA were designed as a copyright protection mechanism, it is used to coerce an online community to follow the rules as the RIAA chooses. For instance, by trying hard to stamp out MP3 sites and software in the name of "copyright protection," they interfere with the legitimate distribution of artists who *choose* to distribute their works in this manner.
Copyrights are designed to protect the artist. However, in todays society artists, especially musicians, have no control over their own creation. Currently, almost all profits go directly into the coffers of the corporations who distribute the music; musicians (eg, those who created the work in the first place) see only a small (often as little as 1%-3%) percentage of the profits of their labors. If they wish to see their works distributed at all, they must enter into contracts that strip them of their rights, essentially giving all copyright to the distributors, leaving them with nothing.
You may say that is the price of doing business. You would be correct. That is the price of doing business the *old* way, where the distribution of a physical CD or vinyl album was important. But today, an artist can place their work on the 'net, and distribute their work themselves.
The members of RIAA want to maintain their extremely lucrative stranglehold on the distribution mechanisms of music; this is what Katz is referring to as "corporatism." They see the net as a friction-free distribution system for the artists; the 'net cuts out the middle-man, the recording studios.
The current plan for distribution is to create a system in which the consumer downloads music for free, and is only able to play the music on a device that bills the listener every time a song is played. Who will manage this system? The members of the RIAA. Who will reap the benefits? The members of the RIAA.
This has nothing to do with copyright, and everything to do with corporate control.
In an ideal world, the musician would retain complete copyright control over their works. In today's world, a musician with a contract to any member of the RIAA cannot release their own non-album music on the net. If they created a song that will not be available to their fans, they have no recourse. They have signed away the rights not only to the music they produce for the studio, but the rights of any music they produce in the future, sometimes for years in the future.
The current situation is hardly equitable; the internet may be able to change that.
And finally, Katz' definition of mainstream media is probably close to mine-- anything that is nationally distributed, like NBC, Newsweek or even the New York Times. These media outlets are getting swallowed whole by other major corporations; they are no longer only in the business of providing news or entertainment. The media sources are being subsumed by the media distribution channels.
So, to sum up: corporations eat individuals whenever possible; corporations have more political clout than individuals; and the DMCA is designed to allow old-media corporations to control the new-media distribution channel (the Internet). Geeks don't like it, because it wrests the power from the person and gives it to the corporation, and individuals may have a concience, but corporations do not.
Teching the masses is not the point and will never be the point. The masses will not learn and any software that is predicated on a painful interface will be opverthrown by software that is pretty and easy to use.
I disagree. People learn new things every day, whether it's how to use a microwave, or drive their car, or operate a new remote.
Computers are comples beasts. There is *no* such thing as an intuitive interface. And the only programs that are easy to use are easy programs.
After a time, people want to move beyond easy. They want to do something different-- they need to split their memo into two columns, or they need to insert a spreadsheet (and there's no such thing as an easy spreadsheet).
Or they want to create a database to store their recipes. Creating a database can be relatively easy, but not many people know how. Why? Because the concept of a database is not easy. (Okay, so the concept is easy. But it's not easy for a layperson to grasp.)
It doesn't have to be hard, that's true, as your example of the XF86Config file demonstrates. But for people who understand how the monitor frequencies work, squeezing out higher resolutions at better refresh rates is easy.
Too many interfaces that are "easy" are also restrictive. That is how they get their ease-of-use. It's like the Holly-hop drive-- two buttons, labelled "Start" and "Stop." The "Start" button starts the Holly-hop drive. You can figure the rest out from there.
Sure, it's easy to use. But it's hard to do anything *interesting*.
More important than "ease-of-use" is consistency. An interface must be consistent, unless there is a damn good reason to break consistency.
Anyway, this whole "Linux is not easy to use" thread is getting old. I have a lot of friends who are non-geeks, who visit for long periods. Given a choice between Linux or MS-Windows, most of them choose Linux. Why? "It's easier."
Ideas do not belong to anyone, but how about expression? If I express an idea in a unique way, and it is my skill and craft that make the expression interesting, then do I not own that expression?
In music, who owns the recording of a performance? Where is the line drawn between idea and expression? (Or, if I don't own my expression of an idea, why should I bother expressing it?)
This is the idea (freely availabe-- distribute it as you like) behind the current copyright scheme. The publishing industry (whether paper print or music) has perverted this so the publishers (and distributers) of the music end up with 98% of the profits.
I, for one, am willing to pay for the music and print I consume, whether on or off-line. What I am *not* willing to do is support a system where the creators see almost nothing, while the distributors get the profit.
If no-one can "own" expression, then the argument is moot. But, if you think artists (whether music, print, or visual media) deserve something for their time, effort, and creativity, then there *must* be some way for the artist to see the rewards of their labors, and not have some heavyweight thugs suck off the cream of the revenue stream.
Your reasoning, while quite fair and well-thought-out, is incomplete.
Using music distribution as an example, you mention that the creator of the music should be able to decide the ways in which their music is distributed. This is fair, I agree, but even in today's society their options are extremely limited.
The only way an artist can distribute their music is to enter into an agreement with a record company. This agreements essentially strip ownership of the creation from the creator. Now, you might say the artist has willingly agreed to this arrangement. But let me ask you, would *anyone*, especially an artist, agree to release their rights to their creation unless there was no other option?
So, we've established that a person has the right to do whatever they want with their creation (except harm other people, as you've noted), but that *in practice*, they are limited to the available methods of distribution.
The internet, and the free trade of information (trade meaning exchange, not sale) it embodies, provides another means of distribution, one that is completely outside the current regime of recording studios. This distribution channel does not rely on the physical distribution of any media; rather, it relies on the logical distribution of pure information. This distribution channel has certain trade-offs WRT the media moguls that currently rule music distribution; but, there are many successful models that give control *back* to the artist.
*THIS* is what the media is afraid of-- if the artist controls their own wares, there is no way for the middle-man to siphon off profits. Instead of creating distribution stations (like mp3.com), the current lords of music are fighting the encroachment of an entirely new outlet. And they are doing it at the source.
By essentially outlawing the legitimate trade of music (that is, music put out on the 'net by artists who are not beholden to a media tychoon), they are stopping the creation of a new music industry based on a creator/consumer relationship. Since the media giants do not get to choose the next star musician, they can no longer manufacture the industry. *THIS* is what they fear-- the end of easy money. Lots and lots of easy money.
Anyway, I just thought I'd clarify the real issue. The creator currently has no control over their creation anyway, so this new media just cuts out the middle-man (or, should I say, the *real* pirates).
Slashdot Mirror
Even /. has this vengeance (as seen by the Gates of Borg picture).
It's called "Gates Bashing." It's not that fun anymore, since MS and Bill Gates III has made it so easy. It's like shooting fish in a barrel.
I've crashed a fresh install of W2k before it was 30 minutes old. There was nothing but stock W2k on a single processor machine (PII-200, 128M RAM, yada yada yada). I was browsing the web. It crashed on msnbc.com, of all places-- froze, and no amount of shaking would bring it back.
This really impressed my friend, since it was his machine and he had been bragging W2k's stability. It was his install, so he couldn't even accuse me of sabotaging the system.
On a counter note, my brother told me about a Linux-based web server he has at work. He wanted to update the site over the weekend, but kept getting errors on login. It would site for 10 minutes between commands, and he couldn't update anything. When he got to work on Monday, he asked coworkers if they'd had problems with the web server. They reported it had worked just fine. He went back to the cold room, and heard a grand and frightening grinding. The hard drive had crashed on Friday, and the server had worked out of cache all weekend.
People who brag about the stability of W2k amuse me. I can crash any system-- it's just easier to crash windows. I've found there are two types of people in the world-- those who believe the hype, and those who don't. (Really, you can find ambivilent people as well, so perhaps there are three types.)
I'm just one who doesn't buy the hype, I guess.
The Veterans Administration created a package called VISTA on Mumps. The Indian Health Service (in which my employer is a participant) used the VISTA package to create their own specialized version of the software-- RPMS.
Based on ANSI-standard MUMPS, RPMS isn't a bad alternative. It has a complete patient management system (one of the best in the industry), a pharmacy package, a lab package which interfaces to most common lab equipment, scheduling, diabetes, a couple of third-part (read: non-free) billing package, and a great ad-hoc query tool.
The issue is finding a MUMPS (M) environment. All the good M vendors were gobbled up by Intersytems. They created a product called Cache.
Cache is available for Linux, though. And I understand RPMS has run on Cache. I think. Although you could probably get RPMS under the freedom of information act, and the source is available (which means it's a government-sponsered open-source project, essentially), Cache is rather expensive. But they do have a free Linux download.
There is a Free Software version of Mumps in the works. Although it is not ready to run RPMS or VISTA, it would be easier to get FreeM working for RPMS than it would to write a free medical package from scratch.
Anyway, that's my $.02.
Tony
Nope. You're right. I was being simple, in the worst possible way.
here are no logical paradoxes. If two things seem to conflict, check your premises. One of them is usually wrong. -- Ayn Rand (Via Hugh Akston)
Didn't Godel prove that no logical system can be both complete and internally consistent?
In any case, anyone who wants to "do away with money" doesn't give a damn about IPOs. I certainly don't. Not that I want to give away money-- I just want to change the way in which it is made. Money should *not* be made by metering out information, and restricting distribution of something that has no physical distribution.
If I create something, my creation means nothing unless it is used and distributed. Corporations seem to take the view that information is not important unless it is difficult (READ: expensive) to get. If it doesn't make money, it ain't worth anything.
I take the view that information is only important if it helps humanity. I realize I'm in the minority, but that doesn't stop me from proselytizing.
Your mother goes both ways.
Tell me about it. There's nothing worse than my mom after a few glasses of wine-- she starts telling my girlfriend all about her recent orgies.
Embarrasing.
BTW, you're kinda cute.
You're right! Those sites look nothing alike. Once has purty graphics, etc, and the other only has this ugly text:
ERROR
The requested URL could not be retrieved
While trying to retrieve the URL: http://hobbes.resnet.tamu.edu/
The following error was encountered:
Connection Failed
The system returned:
(146) Connection refused
The remote host or network may be down. Please try the request again.
Obviously two completely different sites.
Yes, he should have credited linux.com. But really, isn't the idea of code re-use central to the concept of developing an information milieu freindly to everyone?
We should *encourage* good web design-- there are enough ugly pages in the world. We should also gently remind people the old addage, "Give credit where credit is due," but we shouldn't rain down a firestorm on those who ignore proper webiquette.
Free software has set us free. Although there is a slight artistic difference between web pages and code, I think we should encourage the same free flow of information on web sites that we encourage with our code. Once we've built up a culture of page-sharing, the whole issue of "who stole from whom" will be moot.
Just my rambling thoughts. YOMV.
*sigh*
First, Ellison didn't dig through trash cans. The private dicks he hired dug through trash cans. Second, he didn't lie about it, so he was honest.
Not that Ellison wouldn't lie. It's just that your example isn't a good one.
Second, Miguel isn't a FUD spreader against KDE. He expresses his honest opinion about KDE. He just doesn't have a good opinion of KDE. (Or, rather, he *does* have a good opinion of KDE; he just thinks he can do better.) Mostly, Gnome folks and KDE folks don't infight. It's the users who do most of the FUDding, without having any idea what they are talking about.
Thirdly, Stallman doesn't say copyrights shouldn't be honored. He does *not* advocate ignoring copyright. He thinks keeping knowledge hidden is ethically wrong; so he advocates using copyright law to keep information from being hidden, through the GPL.
Fourthly, how the *hell* is the GPL a "nazi" license? If you don't care if someone takes your code and makes it proprietary and makes a bundle off your work, don't use it. If you want to guarantee that no-one can profit off your code while keeping knowledge hidden (see the paragraph above), then the GPL is the one for you. It allows freedom of information.
Basically, if you don't mind using proprietary programs, where you don't have access to the source code, then you have no complaints about the GPL, since the GPL gives you *more* rights than a proprietary binary-only program license, without taking away a *single* right a proprietary license grants.
Unless, of course, you don't like the idea of people sharing ideas without making a monetary profit.
True, I did mention military spending, which is federal; and mentioned it in a context along side education, which is funded mostly by state governments, with federal funding constituting around 15% of the total.
Yes, military spending has been curtailed slightly in the last 15 years. It is *still* the largest single line-item of our country's budget (followed closely by Social Security). And since education hasn't been able to track increased student populations (focusing instead on "inflation," a useless number when used all by itself), I am not convinced my rant was a "load of crap."
In fact, our government and our media has focused on the symptoms, and not the problem. Everyone agrees that our education system is degnerating; but not many people agree on the solution. The current silver bullet seems to be "outcome-based education;" three years ago it was team teaching.
So far, the statistics show only one thing-- that small class sizes with a teacher to student ratio of no more than 1:15 have better results than larger classes. Yet instead of fixing the problem of too many students in too small of space with too few teachers, we persue teaching fads with the fervor and blind jubilence of a born-again Christian at a Jim and Tammy Faye reunion concert.
I too come from a family of educators; I too have taught, but not at the primary or secondary levels. But it doesn't take an accountant to see that our government spends a relative pittance on education, while kowtowing to corporate special interest groups; and that the amount spent on education per-capita is falling dramatically.
It isn't enough to track or exceed inflation. Government spending on education hasn't tracked increasing population (that is, per capita spending). Per capita spending has decreased; plus, the money individual schools see has also decreased. Teachers' salaries haven't tracked national averages; and the disparity between urban and rural schools has increased dramatically (some schools are seeing more money, but not the ones that really need it).
Meanwhile, the cost of many school supplies is increasing. In some areas, the cost of building a school has doubled in the last fifteen years. The cost of texts has also dramatically increased-- *much* faster than the rate of inflation.
Sorry to ruin a perfectly good rationalization with more facts.
How can schools hope to stay afloat while government funding for education is falling faster than hot grits down a troll's trousers?
If schools hope to survive (and I'm talking about primary and secondary schools as well, not just Higher Education) they will have to find sources of funding. Our beloved US of freaking A would rather subsidize military waste and corporate bail-out programs than spend an extra tupence on our childrens' (and our) education.
Schools either have to find new sources of funding, or raise tuition. In the case of public (primary and secondary) schools, they don't have the option of raising tuition.
In a few years, GM & Microsoft & McDonald's will have to sponser our public schools just so new employees can read and understand the binder. It's no surprise they are already sponsering higher education.
Look for the same thing in your local high school soon.
Perfect! You got all the troll characteristics down pat. It's all in on paragraph, there are *plenty* of misspellings, you spout nonsense as if you knew what you were talking about, you pander to an unpopular view (which is not a bad thing), and you prove short-sighted stupidity is mightier than intelligence and wit.
And, yes, you are right. Any time you can hand a company your freedom, privacy, and money, you should. Look at all the shiny things we get in return!
Just remember-- Manhattan Island was purchased for about $24 worth of glass beads (though I should point out that, in today's terms, that's about $1024 worth of beads).
What a deal!
There are thousands of non-profit organizations across the states, and probably millions throughout the world, who need computer help. Here in Sitka, AK, with a population of 8500, there are probably 8 non-profit organizations that could use computer help.
Who are these non-profits?
The SAFE shelter (a refuge for battered women-- there are Safe Shelters in almost every town in the US), a local non-profit which does respite care for the infirm and elderly and also does welfare-to-work case management, a group that focuses on teen intervention (drugs, pregnancy, etc), the local emergency medical team, a writers-in-residence program, and the Sitka Summer Music Festival.
Also, the PBS radio station needs help once in a while.
For you urban dwellers (those of you who have schools in which the children have recess on the rooftops), there are many urban non-profits that deal with everything from under-priveleged education, to big brothers and big sisters (where you can mentor a kid and make a geek out of them), to political action groups that work on awareness issues (a social buzzword, I know).
I've volunteered time at 5 local non-profit groups, and I've never regretted a minute.
- Tony
I'm currently having loads of fun with Objective-C. It is far easier to mess with than C++, but fundamentally more powerful at the same time.
Yep. Objective-C is much more powerful, and much-better designed, than C++.
There is no good reason why $_, @_, $@, etc. should be legal variable names in any language. They're pure nonsense. Why couldn't they be given more descriptive names? It wouldn't kill the power of the language, only reduce the ability to write incomprehensible statements. This is, of course, only a simple example.
And this is one of my biggest problems with the Mac, and MS-Windows, &c. There are good reasons for those variable names. There are also common aliases that are more descriptive. Perl is a great language for exactly this reason: there are simple, verbose ways of doing things; and there are terse, arcane ways of doing things. This is the difference between "See Dick Run" and "Cryptonomicon." Sure, you can start off simple; but the further you get, the more beautiful the language becomes. Perl can't help that there are poor programmers, anymore than the English language can help that there are poor writers.
Don't blame the language for the fault of the programmers.
The philosophy of the Mac (and of Apple in the post-Wozniak days) is to remove complexity and replace it with simplicity. Fine, except that complexity can be beautiful, and useful. An automatic transmission is simple to use, but I prefer a standard-- it's much more fun.
Both Gnome and KDE proscribe common keys for all actions, and provide a framework for doing the most common things. But programmers are not forced to follow them. Just as in Perl, the programmer is not forced to follow good programming practices. And just as Apple has thrown away their own programming style guide (for Quicktime 4.0, as one example), Gnome or KDE authors are free to ignore their respective style guides.
No, there is not a formula for calculating the simplicity to power ratio, but in my book, flexibility is directly proportional to power. And often, flexibility in design often requires flexibility of mind.
Just my tupence.
- Tony
I use the GPL the same reason I use locks-- it keeps the honest people honest.
You are right, and I had never thought about the BSD license in that way. If only everyone was up for a test of their morals.
MORALITY TEST:
1. You are offered money in exchange for acts you consider unscrupulous. You should:
a: Take the money and feel guilty.
b: Change your scruples.
c: All of the above.
2. On Slashdot (News for nerds, etc) there is a posting about RMS. You should:
a: Call RMS a whiner and whisk him off to Russia.
b: Call RMS a whiner and ask him to step aside.
c: Say that RMS is correct, but he should really stop whining.
3: When asked to use Motif in an "open source" project, you should:
a: Use Qt instead.
b: Use MFC instead.
c: Use Visual Basic instead.
8. Why shouldn't Slashdot users and the general public be able to view this protocol for purposes of commentary and criticism in light of its apparent relevance to issues in the government's antitrust litigation?
/. questions do, while putting Microsoft in the worst possible light.
It is completely irrelevant to the antitrust case. That notwithstanding, Slashdot users DO have the right to view the specification, and to comment on it, provided that it is obtained lawfully.
These questions lead through a minefield. First, they try to establish that the click-through is neither effective, nor legally binding. So that leaves the document as a standard copyrighted document published on the internet. Under copyright law, there is a thing called "Fair Use." Is is *legal* to publish portions of a document for criticism.
This is why ESR was able to publish the Halloween Documents as he did; they contained the full text of copyrighted documents (because *all* documents are copyrighted as soon as written under current copyright law).
By stripping the click-through agreement of any meaning, we expose the document itself to fair use. It's that simple, and that is *exactly* what the
But the real battle of free speech is won at the individual level, not by giving more money to lawyers duking it out with another company.
You are partly correct; but in this case, there is very little distinction between the individuals and the corporation. MS is using a corporation (Andover) to pressure/censor individuals (ACs and other posters). If Andover does *not* bend, then we have a rare case of a corporation standing up for the rights of the individual. In that case, we have a corporation acting in the best interest of our rights-- and doesn't this contradict your claim that a corporation *never* does this?
(Corporations are inherently evil; their only alliegence is to the allmighty Profit. But some corporations have a moral center (always with individuals) that balances this.)
And if that happens, I think it is our moral imperative to help support that fight, in any way possible.
I despise lawyers, since most tend to get wealthy off the pain, suffering, and oppression of other people. But they are necessary to work within the system like this.
Our only other defense against the sort of this insane manuevering is to read the specs, write our software using the published-but-secret specs, and publish it in spite of the law. If we do that (Civil Disobedience) we don't stand much of a chance. Our best bet is to fight it now, while it's fresh.
Urrrmmm....
/.'s content.
/.'s name into the mainstream. What better than a Free Speech battle with MS to get good press?
/. does not stand up for Free Speech now, it will never get the chance again.
The DMCA definately sucks, but in the end, companies will do what is best for their profitability.
In general, I agree. In this specific, I do not. I believe Rob, Robin, Hemos, et. al., are moral individuals. They have been given complete editorial control over
Plus, in this case, I believe it will be worth a court battle; it'll bring
Personally, I would support *any* corporation who has the balls to stand up for what is Right instead of what is Profitable. If it were MS itself fighting the good fight, I would support them to the best of my ability. (Though with MS it would be moral support, and not financial.)
If
In Germany they first came for the Communists
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
--The Reverend Martin Niemöller, a pastor in the German Confessing Church who spent seven years in a concentration camp.
That's not a fair evaluation of this at all. In the 200+ finding of facts, the browser issue was only a small part.
In the finding of facts, it was determined that:
A: Microsoft is a monopoly
B: Microsoft has, in the past, used it's monopoly position to destroy other products (eg, DR Dos, Word Perfect, GeoWorks, and most recently Netscape).
C: It is illegal to use a monopoly in one market to force your way into another market.
D: MS was a latecomer to the Internet game.
E: There are *MS documents* that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that top MS executives knew they must destroy Netscape in order to shoulder in and take over the Internet market. They planned to destroy Netscape by replacing them with their own competing browser. MS understood that since it was the dominant platform, it would be trivial to use their monopoly to force Netscape out of busines.
See the sorite here? Microsoft has a history of using their superior position in one market to strongarm their way into another market. In most of the earlier cases, they did not have a monopoly yet, or were simply maintaining their current monopoly; this was the first case where they used their monopoly power to force their way into a market they did not dominate.
It's a very simple, and a very fair, law. *You cannot be a bully just because you are bigger than the other kids.* Pretty simple, huh?
Microsoft was bigger than the other kids. It was a bully. Now it has to see the principle.
Oh, and the "Multiple Document Interface" was not first implemented in MS Word. It's been around since the Altos days.
Hmmmm, smells like Microsoft :) </I>
Not really. It's okay to make discount volume sales. That's okay. What's *not* okay is tieing the discount to another, unrelated product. It would be as if Cisco owned 90% of the router market, and they decided to move into the PC hardware world, and said that if you wanted to buy Cisco routers, you had to buy Cisco PCs as well.
This is called "product tieing," and it is illegal if you are a monopoly.
<i>You can't blame MS and Cisco. These companies are out there in a dog-eat-dog marketplace trying to survive. They walk a fine line between honesty, morality and making a buck.<i>
You can blame them, as a matter of fact. We *should* blame them. If you cannot make an *honest* buck, then you shouldn't be working in that business... or something is wrong. In the case of the software business, something is wrong. MS stopped making money honestly, and started being dishonest, sneaky, and underhanded; it got to the point where some stated business plans were to make an innovative product just so Microsoft would buy them out.
When your only hope for profit is to be bought out, something is wrong.
You argue well, but you miss the point.
For instance, you say that corporations are not allowed to support candidates for federal office. This is, in fact, correct. In practice, it is *not* correct.
Corporations have spent many years circumventing rules and regulations. By spinning off "non-profit" groups and supporting these non-profits with huge amounts of cash, they are able to influence (perhaps even "buy") politicians. That is why corporate-friendly laws are passed more often than consumer-friendly laws. Corporations also have more lobbying money than the opposition, and so are able to buy votes that way.
Even though individuals contribute more money to political parties than corporations, individuals do not have a coherent political agenda. This is the difference between a lightbulb and a laser.
Now, even if the DMCA were designed as a copyright protection mechanism, it is used to coerce an online community to follow the rules as the RIAA chooses. For instance, by trying hard to stamp out MP3 sites and software in the name of "copyright protection," they interfere with the legitimate distribution of artists who *choose* to distribute their works in this manner.
Copyrights are designed to protect the artist. However, in todays society artists, especially musicians, have no control over their own creation. Currently, almost all profits go directly into the coffers of the corporations who distribute the music; musicians (eg, those who created the work in the first place) see only a small (often as little as 1%-3%) percentage of the profits of their labors. If they wish to see their works distributed at all, they must enter into contracts that strip them of their rights, essentially giving all copyright to the distributors, leaving them with nothing.
You may say that is the price of doing business. You would be correct. That is the price of doing business the *old* way, where the distribution of a physical CD or vinyl album was important. But today, an artist can place their work on the 'net, and distribute their work themselves.
The members of RIAA want to maintain their extremely lucrative stranglehold on the distribution mechanisms of music; this is what Katz is referring to as "corporatism." They see the net as a friction-free distribution system for the artists; the 'net cuts out the middle-man, the recording studios.
The current plan for distribution is to create a system in which the consumer downloads music for free, and is only able to play the music on a device that bills the listener every time a song is played. Who will manage this system? The members of the RIAA. Who will reap the benefits? The members of the RIAA.
This has nothing to do with copyright, and everything to do with corporate control.
In an ideal world, the musician would retain complete copyright control over their works. In today's world, a musician with a contract to any member of the RIAA cannot release their own non-album music on the net. If they created a song that will not be available to their fans, they have no recourse. They have signed away the rights not only to the music they produce for the studio, but the rights of any music they produce in the future, sometimes for years in the future.
The current situation is hardly equitable; the internet may be able to change that.
And finally, Katz' definition of mainstream media is probably close to mine-- anything that is nationally distributed, like NBC, Newsweek or even the New York Times. These media outlets are getting swallowed whole by other major corporations; they are no longer only in the business of providing news or entertainment. The media sources are being subsumed by the media distribution channels.
So, to sum up: corporations eat individuals whenever possible; corporations have more political clout than individuals; and the DMCA is designed to allow old-media corporations to control the new-media distribution channel (the Internet). Geeks don't like it, because it wrests the power from the person and gives it to the corporation, and individuals may have a concience, but corporations do not.
Teching the masses is not the point and will never be the point. The masses will not learn and any software that is predicated on a painful interface will be opverthrown by software that is pretty and easy to use.
I disagree. People learn new things every day, whether it's how to use a microwave, or drive their car, or operate a new remote.
Computers are comples beasts. There is *no* such thing as an intuitive interface. And the only programs that are easy to use are easy programs.
After a time, people want to move beyond easy. They want to do something different-- they need to split their memo into two columns, or they need to insert a spreadsheet (and there's no such thing as an easy spreadsheet).
Or they want to create a database to store their recipes. Creating a database can be relatively easy, but not many people know how. Why? Because the concept of a database is not easy. (Okay, so the concept is easy. But it's not easy for a layperson to grasp.)
It doesn't have to be hard, that's true, as your example of the XF86Config file demonstrates. But for people who understand how the monitor frequencies work, squeezing out higher resolutions at better refresh rates is easy.
Too many interfaces that are "easy" are also restrictive. That is how they get their ease-of-use. It's like the Holly-hop drive-- two buttons, labelled "Start" and "Stop." The "Start" button starts the Holly-hop drive. You can figure the rest out from there.
Sure, it's easy to use. But it's hard to do anything *interesting*.
More important than "ease-of-use" is consistency. An interface must be consistent, unless there is a damn good reason to break consistency.
Anyway, this whole "Linux is not easy to use" thread is getting old. I have a lot of friends who are non-geeks, who visit for long periods. Given a choice between Linux or MS-Windows, most of them choose Linux. Why? "It's easier."
Ideas do not belong to anyone, but how about expression? If I express an idea in a unique way, and it is my skill and craft that make the expression interesting, then do I not own that expression?
In music, who owns the recording of a performance? Where is the line drawn between idea and expression? (Or, if I don't own my expression of an idea, why should I bother expressing it?)
This is the idea (freely availabe-- distribute it as you like) behind the current copyright scheme. The publishing industry (whether paper print or music) has perverted this so the publishers (and distributers) of the music end up with 98% of the profits.
I, for one, am willing to pay for the music and print I consume, whether on or off-line. What I am *not* willing to do is support a system where the creators see almost nothing, while the distributors get the profit.
If no-one can "own" expression, then the argument is moot. But, if you think artists (whether music, print, or visual media) deserve something for their time, effort, and creativity, then there *must* be some way for the artist to see the rewards of their labors, and not have some heavyweight thugs suck off the cream of the revenue stream.
At least, that's my opinion. I could be wrong.
Your reasoning, while quite fair and well-thought-out, is incomplete.
Using music distribution as an example, you mention that the creator of the music should be able to decide the ways in which their music is distributed. This is fair, I agree, but even in today's society their options are extremely limited.
The only way an artist can distribute their music is to enter into an agreement with a record company. This agreements essentially strip ownership of the creation from the creator. Now, you might say the artist has willingly agreed to this arrangement. But let me ask you, would *anyone*, especially an artist, agree to release their rights to their creation unless there was no other option?
So, we've established that a person has the right to do whatever they want with their creation (except harm other people, as you've noted), but that *in practice*, they are limited to the available methods of distribution.
The internet, and the free trade of information (trade meaning exchange, not sale) it embodies, provides another means of distribution, one that is completely outside the current regime of recording studios. This distribution channel does not rely on the physical distribution of any media; rather, it relies on the logical distribution of pure information. This distribution channel has certain trade-offs WRT the media moguls that currently rule music distribution; but, there are many successful models that give control *back* to the artist.
*THIS* is what the media is afraid of-- if the artist controls their own wares, there is no way for the middle-man to siphon off profits. Instead of creating distribution stations (like mp3.com), the current lords of music are fighting the encroachment of an entirely new outlet. And they are doing it at the source.
By essentially outlawing the legitimate trade of music (that is, music put out on the 'net by artists who are not beholden to a media tychoon), they are stopping the creation of a new music industry based on a creator/consumer relationship. Since the media giants do not get to choose the next star musician, they can no longer manufacture the industry. *THIS* is what they fear-- the end of easy money. Lots and lots of easy money.
Anyway, I just thought I'd clarify the real issue. The creator currently has no control over their creation anyway, so this new media just cuts out the middle-man (or, should I say, the *real* pirates).
.................... Tony
Gibson is one of the absolute *worst* writers in SF today. His story lines are repetitive & hokey, and his characters flat. Stylistically, he is okay.
Has he written another story since Neuromancer? I mean, besides just re-writing Neuromancer.
I'm willing to try his new book, though. "All Tomorrow's Parties." It sounds like something new.