There's no such thing as intellectual property
on
The Demise of IP?
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· Score: 1
The Constitution gives Congress the right to grant exclusive rights, for a limited time, to authors and scientists. This is nowhere near the same thing as property, and it cannot be "stolen." The point, as the Constitution says, is to provide an economic incentive. That is the only defensible position regarding copyright, trademark, and patent law.
Anything beyond that, including this mistaken notion that people OWN ideas, is illegal and un-American.
From the phrase "Allow me to present Michigan SB-0416, the latest attempt by the American government..." I was turned off by the lack of journalistic professionalism.
Rhetoric is for propaganda, not news. Get your facts straight before you start "reporting." Oh, and uh... look up Federalism while you're at it.
This is so misleading, I halfway expect to see it as the basis of an LSAT question tomorrow morning. For those of you in need of some last minute LSAT prep, let's turn this into a sample question.;-)
Tom: A study found that people who download copyrighted music on peer-to-peer networks are much more willing than others to make illegal copies of software programs, cheat on exams or shoplift. So getting people to stop that kind of downloading will remove one cause of those kinds of activities.
Tom's argument is most subject to criticism because: a) It assumes a cause-effect relationship where a correlation exists. b) It confuses an activity and its cause. c) It doesn't cite the source of funding for the study. d) It overlooks the possibility that Tom works for the RIAA.
Which one of the following, if true, would most weaken the argument? a) Tom downloads music on peer-to-peer networks, and doesn't cheat on his exams or shoplift. b) Exams are administered in such a way as to ensure that cheating is impossible. c) College students are the most likely to own computers, which is a requirement of using peer-to-peer networks or programs. d) The laws of copyright don't make any provisions for peer-to-peer networks to exist.
Answers: (a) Tom's argument says that eliminating peer-to-peer networking would remove a cause of the other illicit activity. The inferential assumption then is that the correlation is due to a cause-effect relationship, which hasn't been established. (c) If college students have the most access to computers, then EVEN IF the moral attitudes and behavior among all computer users is IDENTICAL regarding peer-to-peer downloading and pirating software, they will still be more likely to engage in those activities.
Yes, I know Tom doesn't exactly represent the article's authors or the study. The title "P2P Users More Likely to Cheat, Shoplift," however, does kind of head TOWARD Tom's opinion, and I was only being as reactionary to it as it is to the article.
For anyone who didn't notice, there's some very suspect logical weirdness here. Notice the "or." That means that for the whole statement to be true, the likelihood of only ONE of those activities has to go up. That means I could add any activity onto the end of the statement and, assuming one of the first activities' likelihoods did indeed correlate with peer-to-peer music downloads, the whole statement would be true.
Example:
"Vegetarians are more likely to eat broccoli."
If that's true then the following MUST ALSO be true:
"Vegetarians are more likely to eat broccoli, get abortions, commit murder, engage in promiscuous b***iality o**ies with n*ns, or own a copy of the Chicago Manual of Style."
If you want a "job" then go to a tech school. University is for people interested in advancing a field of study.
One of the biggest problems with the education system is the massive influx of people who don't care about education, but about training.
On the other hand, if you actually care about algorithmic efficiency and want to work doing CS research, say at Google or any other lab, then these courses are indeed useful for "getting a job" -- or rather, starting a career.
There are a few questions you should have asked yourself before getting into this field. One of them is whether you're more interested in shaping the field of computer science or if you just want to be a techie for some company somewhere.
Without having read the article, this does sound quite a bit like earlier findings that men have more grey matter and women more 'white' matter. That is, men are better at pure processing and women are better at making connections between things. This is consistent with conventional wisdom (like "Men navigate by names and numbers, women navigate by landmarks"), and is hardly what I would call controversial. In addition, saying that women 'use' their grey matter more effectively by making connections better doesn't imply that increases in grey matter are useless; your implied assertion that IQ is 'useless' it unfounded. There are many areas (mathematics, science) where focussed processing power (if you'll allow the analogy) is exceedingly useful.
Depending on my mood, I find it annoying or amusing that people would be up in arms for saying that men are more intelligent, but nobody thinks twice when someone says that women are more intuitive. If these recent studies and conventional wisdom are to be believed, then both statements are equally correct.
Scenario 1) Someone steals a record from the record store. Result: The store owner is out the wholesale price. The artist still gets his royalty. The RIAA still gets their fees.
Scenario 2) Someone downloads a new record, instead of buying it. This scenario cannot be proven to exist, because of the "instead of buying it" clause. You don't have the ability to see what would have been. Nobody does. Moving on, who do you think put the music up? You have two options: someone who got the music from the artist or someone who - alone or as part of a group - totally independently created the music and performed it. If it was independent, then it in no way violates copyright. If that someone got it from the artist, chances are the artist got royalties.
I'd also like to take issue with your use of the word "download" as though it were illegal. Even if current copyright law were valid, there are numerous download services (Napster, iTunes, Rhapsody) which are fully compliant with said law.
On something of a tangent I'd like to ask if you feel you've been misled about this. Ask yourself this question: is it right for a party X (RIAA) to claim that a group of people Y (us) owes X money to use a lossy downsampling (MP3) of accoustical data (album) produced by a certain interpretation (performance) of a piece of intellectual work (sheet music) based on the collective creation of Y (generational culture) and methods now largely in the public domain and/or available freely academically (music theory)?
The Constitution says that Artists and Scientists are allowed exclusive market rights for a limited time on their creations. It does not say that they can sell these rights. It does not say the limits can be extended indefinitely. It does not say that they own interpretations of their work. It does not say they own data collected about the interpretation of the work. It does not say they own all samples of any such data. It does not say that consumers are restricted from work-/sound-/look-alikes in the privacy of their homes.
Has anyone read the article? Because it seems the link is bad. I get "Hurd signs on as new HP chief" as the story, and a quick search for "layoff" fails, as does a search for "15".
As for the layoffs... well... I really believe in free, borderless markets. I really really do. But I think we can take a lesson from the EU, and require an adherence to a minimum set of criteria before granting full trade privileges. Giving other markets power without responsibility is a bad thing; without some sort of market synchronization we're just shooting ourselves in the foot.
What if we could say "Okay, India, we'll have completely free trade with you if you become a fully-compliant member of WEFTA (World-Encompassing Free Trade Agreement) and have your economy up to minimum standards within five years."?
Maybe a four-tiered system could be made:
Tier 3 - Minimal Trade:
We disapprove of counties' economies and market practices
Trade is negotiated on a case-by-case basis
Superfluous trade is discouraged
Tier - Normal Trade 2:
Friendly trade partners
Large-scale trading allowed
Protectionism discouraged
Reflects current US/EU (e.g., Boeing/Airbus subsidies)
Tier 1 - Privileged Trade:
Similar to current US/Canada relations
Mostly free trade
Would be mostly for candidate WEFTA members
Expectations of attempted synchronization to WEFTA standards
Tier 0 - Free Trade:
Full WEFTA member
All members compliant with WEFTA labor regulations
Free movement of goods, services, people, institutions, without visas or import/export taxes
Would be like current trade relations between any two US States
This is a bit more complicated than the current EU system, but the idea is the same: Don't let our jobs, our money, our very economy go to those who aren't gonna play by the rules. Small economic variations in WEFTA would exist and would be allowed (it's cheaper to live in Ithaca, NY than it is in Beverly Hills, CA) for free-trade regions but this $1-an-hour-factory-in-Mexico phenomenon wouldn't exist to pull jobs from the lower rungs of the U.S. (or any full WEFTA member) economy.
If only we could get our Congress to get their charbon and acier together.;-)
Has anyone read the article? Because it seems the link is bad. I get "Hurd signs on as new HP chief" as the story, and a quick search for "layoff" fails, as does a search for "15".
As for the layoffs... well... I really believe in free, borderless markets. I really really do. But I think we can take a lesson from the EU, and require an adherence to a minimum set of criteria before granting full trade privileges. Giving other markets power without responsibility is a bad thing; without some sort of market synchronization we're just shooting ourselves in the foot.
What if we could say "Okay, India, we'll have completely free trade with you if you become a member of WEFTA (World-Encompassing Free Trade Agreement) and have your economy up to minimum standards within five years."
Maybe a four-tiered system could be made:
Tier 3:
We disapprove of counties' economies and market practices
Trade is negotiated on a case-by-case basis
Superfluous trade is discouraged
Tier 2:
Friendly trade partners
Large-scale trading allowed
Protectionism discouraged
Reflects current US/EU (e.g., Boeing/Airbus subsidies)
Tier 1:
Similar to current US/Canada relations
Mostly free trade
Would be mostly for candidate WEFTA members
Expectations of attempted synchronization to WEFTA standards
Tier 0:
Full WEFTA member
All members compliant with WEFTA labor regulations
Free movement of goods, services, people, institutions, without visas or import/export taxes
Would be like current trade relations between any two US States
This is a bit more complicated than the current EU system, but the idea is the same: Don't let our jobs, our money, our very economy go to those who aren't gonna play by the rules. Small economic variations in WEFTA would exist and would be allowed (it's cheaper to live in a small town in Ithaca, NY than it is in Beverly Hills, CA) for free-trade regions but this $1-an-hour-factory-in-Mexico phenomenon wouldn't exist to pull jobs from the lower rungs of the U.S. (or any full WEFTA member) economy.
If only we could get our Congress to get their charbon and acier together.;-)
It's the contribution that counts to GPL-license-using developers and to some others. There is a section of society that prefers wide-spread adoption and de facto standardization to forcing contribution of new code. Even Stallman sometimes shares this viewpoint, as he said in his rationale behind the LGPL.
I usually don't respond to AC trolls, but I'd like to point out that the vast majority of files SCO pointed out as "proof" of infringement were BSD-licensed. So those stacks and stacks of listings, that preponderance of code? Yeah. That represents a *portion* of BSD-licensed contribution to the GPL community. Think about it.
There's a big difference between "encourages" and "allows".
A license cannot encourage anything. A license is a legal agreement and only specifies what is allowed and not allowed. Any sort of conversational cruft is exceedingly unprofessional.
The BSD community encourages sharing just as much as the GPL.. erm.. community does. Often with very good, arguably better results. I bet there are many more users who would be effected by Apple's launchd than who jumped for joy about... wait, what was the last really important *forced* GPL re-contribution?
I generally release code I write under the BSD license. I think it's better to give freely. People just tend to trust you more when you upfront, and don't have any restrictions on something that's supposedly free, not to mention when your license is only half a page long and readable by mortals.
You could do this, but the extra development would of course cost you more money. Either you want to spend money or you don't. Showing spite for those less fortunate than yourself is hardly becoming.
Not to mention, what constitutes educational? What constitutes news? Does Fox constitute a "news channel"? What about CBS, NBC, ABC? CSPAN? Okay, what about ESPN?
Corrections: "not a good thing for Democracy for the voting public to be uninformed" (emphasis added) "but other people do things for your benefit, too" (ties in better with the following idea)
There are several reasons that the subsidy would be a good idea.
a) These 15% of people is a big chunk. That's almost one in six people. You really really don't want 15% of the voting public to be uninformed about political issues. You seem to be Fiscal Republican so maybe you want the non-media-savvy uninformed voting populace to grow in size, but I think that an objective view would show that at the very least, it's not a good thing for Democracy for the voting public to be informed. Of course, with comments like "I was incorrectly using the term to appeal to the misunderstanding masses..." that doesn't seem to raise any ethical problems for you. It does for me.
b) As a social progressive and small-town white trash farmboy from Northern Michigan, I can tell you first hand that you have a responsibility to these people. You have your cheap SUV because of the hard work of skilled and unskilled laborers in Detroit who make less than you do at your white collar job. Your wealth is made on their backs and I don't think paying a one-time fee of (($50)(15%)(AmericanPublic))/AmericanPublic = $7.50 (average among the various tax brackets) is such a huge thing to ask. Remember that significantly less than 15% of the taxable population is completely tax-exempt, so they'd be paying for it as well. And those beneficiaries of the subsidy who do pay taxes are also subsidizing things for YOU, buster, such a road construction and the generous subsidy the American government puts on gasoline (Ever bought petrol in Canada? Care to take a guess as to why it's so much cheaper here?).
It's easy for you to deride the idea of paying so much for other people, but other people pay for you too. Just remember that it's primarily this poorer 15% of the population from which our enisted military is drawn.
Try deleting your profile (save your bookmarks first) and the Firefox folder under Program Files. This is assuming you're using Windows. If you're using *Nix, ditto, except that Firefox maybe be installed in various locations (depending on your flavor). Uninstall, update your locate database, and search for directories left over. For Mac, I haven't a clue.
Wait wait... a court legalizes taking away private property for big business use, and you think this means it's philosophically aligned with the grassroots party?
I think I perhaps failed to communicate my point clearly. I should have stressed the "If it's emulated..." part, as I really haven't paid much attention to the internal workings of the JRE recently. Wikipedia makes me think that it JITs everything. In which case the "If it's emulated" part is inapplicable; I was still under the impression that we were actually emulating the JVM in the JRE. My mistake.
(Side note: Some of you thought my entire point was about whether or not Java(tm) can be used in realtime applications. It was not. This thread is about whether or not "Java is slow.")
When using a JIT compiler then the Java code is converted to native code. As such, execution time isn't pertinent to the discussion in and of itself, because it's comparing native assembly to native assembly. Only the quality of the compilers can change this, and as there exist a plethora of compilers for C, C++, ObjectPascal, BrainFuck, and SNOBOL (bizarre enumeration meant to signify "everything else under the sun"), it's not really possible to use a compiler comparison to compare the speed of two languages.
"Java is slow" is an oversimplification. As Mr. Lector would say "That's incidental!". There's nothing in the language which inherently requires that the resulting native code be slower than any other native code (except perhaps for some paradigms which it encourages which may not result in optimal code). What people mean when they say this is that the majority of runs involving Java are slower than the majority of runs involving another language; the run-times of two equivalent programs are different, disfavoring Java.
This is because of the design of the Java environment. The vast majority of people do not run pre-compiled native-code versions of Java programs. The Java apps in use my most people is JITted. This results in a delay (often significant) before code execution. In addition, the JRE remains loaded, handling all sorts of who-knows-what instead of compiling to a complete executable and running that. This takes up memory and CPU power.
Compiled C program run: Start up slow-downs: None Run-time slow-downs: None
JIT Java program run: Start up slow-downs: Compiling JVM code 2 native Run-time slow-downs: (potential) RAM overhead of JRE
Please note that I marked the RAM overhead as a potential factor in speed reduction because it isn't guaranteed that less available RAM = reduced speed (a user could have a gig or more of RAM and/or nothing else running and virtual memory turned off or be in any of the other myriad circumstances which would render the RAM usage irrelevant).
Compiler design and algorithm use being equal, it's impossible for a Java program run in the de facto environment to be have a run-time equal to or less than the equivalent C program. The only way for Java apps not to be 'slow' compared to other apps is to have fully-fledged native executable versions of Java apps (including allowing static linking).
If I'm significantly off-base, I appreciate any friendly corrections.
What does embedded have to do with realtime? My phone is embedded, doesn't mean I play Java(tm) bowling games in realtime. Throwing extra unrelated stuff in to obscure the point is not the mark of an organized, rational, correct mind. This almost borders on a Straw Man fallacy.
Secondly, Java being used IN real time and Java being used FOR real time are two very different things.
Unless you have a physical Java Machine, then your Java code will always always always get JITted or be emulated. If it is emulated, it by definition cannot be as resource-efficient and fast as native code, because the emulation itself takes CPU time and RAM. It's like throwing a football toward the cabin in an airplane approaching the speed of light: as hard as you try, you can't break basic laws of reality. (Sorry for the weird analogy, but I thought it appropriate considering the Relativity piece).
Sure, once the emulator (JVM) is loaded, it may have close to the same speeds. Hell, if the JVM and compiler writers are smarter than the compiler writers for C or whatever, the Java may even run faster. But that's purely incidental.
*bashes it into your head* Native code is faster than emulated code!
Free-as-in-beer for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. Some of us like to have long uptimes. Once Sun sanctions and offers for download on its web site JVMs for FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD, THEN you can claim they're "readily available".
For some reason I randomly remembered this really neat local business. Have you ever heard of Gwen Frostic? You might want to check out her site. I remember being impressed with the beauty and quality the first time I was presented with such a card. <shameless plug>
Slashdot Mirror
The Constitution gives Congress the right to grant exclusive rights, for a limited time, to authors and scientists. This is nowhere near the same thing as property, and it cannot be "stolen." The point, as the Constitution says, is to provide an economic incentive. That is the only defensible position regarding copyright, trademark, and patent law.
Anything beyond that, including this mistaken notion that people OWN ideas, is illegal and un-American.
I fail to see how this is so sweeping as the OP makes it sound (even if he's technically correct on all counts).
Please realize that the Second Circuit only includes New York, Vermont, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.
Nobody in California -- or, say, Washington State -- is affected. Different circuit courts of appeals do NOT have to follow eachother's precedent.
PS -- Slashdot is going socialist. My little not-a-script-confirmation-word-in-an-image thing is "unionize"
Not so much. In Michigan, for example, there's a limit to the number of times you can go to small claims. After that, you're just a trouble-maker.
From the phrase "Allow me to present Michigan SB-0416, the latest attempt by the American government..." I was turned off by the lack of journalistic professionalism.
Rhetoric is for propaganda, not news. Get your facts straight before you start "reporting." Oh, and uh... look up Federalism while you're at it.
This is so misleading, I halfway expect to see it as the basis of an LSAT question tomorrow morning. For those of you in need of some last minute LSAT prep, let's turn this into a sample question. ;-)
Tom: A study found that people who download copyrighted music on peer-to-peer networks are much more willing than others to make illegal copies of software programs, cheat on exams or shoplift. So getting people to stop that kind of downloading will remove one cause of those kinds of activities.
Tom's argument is most subject to criticism because:
a) It assumes a cause-effect relationship where a correlation exists.
b) It confuses an activity and its cause.
c) It doesn't cite the source of funding for the study.
d) It overlooks the possibility that Tom works for the RIAA.
Which one of the following, if true, would most weaken the argument?
a) Tom downloads music on peer-to-peer networks, and doesn't cheat on his exams or shoplift.
b) Exams are administered in such a way as to ensure that cheating is impossible.
c) College students are the most likely to own computers, which is a requirement of using peer-to-peer networks or programs.
d) The laws of copyright don't make any provisions for peer-to-peer networks to exist.
Answers:
(a) Tom's argument says that eliminating peer-to-peer networking would remove a cause of the other illicit activity. The inferential assumption then is that the correlation is due to a cause-effect relationship, which hasn't been established.
(c) If college students have the most access to computers, then EVEN IF the moral attitudes and behavior among all computer users is IDENTICAL regarding peer-to-peer downloading and pirating software, they will still be more likely to engage in those activities.
Yes, I know Tom doesn't exactly represent the article's authors or the study. The title "P2P Users More Likely to Cheat, Shoplift," however, does kind of head TOWARD Tom's opinion, and I was only being as reactionary to it as it is to the article.
For anyone who didn't notice, there's some very suspect logical weirdness here. Notice the "or." That means that for the whole statement to be true, the likelihood of only ONE of those activities has to go up. That means I could add any activity onto the end of the statement and, assuming one of the first activities' likelihoods did indeed correlate with peer-to-peer music downloads, the whole statement would be true.
Example:
"Vegetarians are more likely to eat broccoli."
If that's true then the following MUST ALSO be true:
"Vegetarians are more likely to eat broccoli, get abortions, commit murder, engage in promiscuous b***iality o**ies with n*ns, or own a copy of the Chicago Manual of Style."
That's not misleading at all. </sarcasm>
PS -- Wish me luck on the LSAT tomorrow <grin>
University.
If you want a "job" then go to a tech school. University is for people interested in advancing a field of study.
One of the biggest problems with the education system is the massive influx of people who don't care about education, but about training.
On the other hand, if you actually care about algorithmic efficiency and want to work doing CS research, say at Google or any other lab, then these courses are indeed useful for "getting a job" -- or rather, starting a career.
There are a few questions you should have asked yourself before getting into this field. One of them is whether you're more interested in shaping the field of computer science or if you just want to be a techie for some company somewhere.
Without having read the article, this does sound quite a bit like earlier findings that men have more grey matter and women more 'white' matter. That is, men are better at pure processing and women are better at making connections between things. This is consistent with conventional wisdom (like "Men navigate by names and numbers, women navigate by landmarks"), and is hardly what I would call controversial. In addition, saying that women 'use' their grey matter more effectively by making connections better doesn't imply that increases in grey matter are useless; your implied assertion that IQ is 'useless' it unfounded. There are many areas (mathematics, science) where focussed processing power (if you'll allow the analogy) is exceedingly useful.
Depending on my mood, I find it annoying or amusing that people would be up in arms for saying that men are more intelligent, but nobody thinks twice when someone says that women are more intuitive. If these recent studies and conventional wisdom are to be believed, then both statements are equally correct.
Is the monster a werewolf?
False. Wrong wrong wrong.
Scenario 1) Someone steals a record from the record store. Result: The store owner is out the wholesale price. The artist still gets his royalty. The RIAA still gets their fees.
Scenario 2) Someone downloads a new record, instead of buying it. This scenario cannot be proven to exist, because of the "instead of buying it" clause. You don't have the ability to see what would have been. Nobody does. Moving on, who do you think put the music up? You have two options: someone who got the music from the artist or someone who - alone or as part of a group - totally independently created the music and performed it. If it was independent, then it in no way violates copyright. If that someone got it from the artist, chances are the artist got royalties.
I'd also like to take issue with your use of the word "download" as though it were illegal. Even if current copyright law were valid, there are numerous download services (Napster, iTunes, Rhapsody) which are fully compliant with said law.
On something of a tangent I'd like to ask if you feel you've been misled about this. Ask yourself this question: is it right for a party X (RIAA) to claim that a group of people Y (us) owes X money to use a lossy downsampling (MP3) of accoustical data (album) produced by a certain interpretation (performance) of a piece of intellectual work (sheet music) based on the collective creation of Y (generational culture) and methods now largely in the public domain and/or available freely academically (music theory)?
The Constitution says that Artists and Scientists are allowed exclusive market rights for a limited time on their creations. It does not say that they can sell these rights. It does not say the limits can be extended indefinitely. It does not say that they own interpretations of their work. It does not say they own data collected about the interpretation of the work. It does not say they own all samples of any such data. It does not say that consumers are restricted from work-/sound-/look-alikes in the privacy of their homes.
As for the layoffs... well... I really believe in free, borderless markets. I really really do. But I think we can take a lesson from the EU, and require an adherence to a minimum set of criteria before granting full trade privileges. Giving other markets power without responsibility is a bad thing; without some sort of market synchronization we're just shooting ourselves in the foot.
What if we could say "Okay, India, we'll have completely free trade with you if you become a fully-compliant member of WEFTA (World-Encompassing Free Trade Agreement) and have your economy up to minimum standards within five years."?
Maybe a four-tiered system could be made:
This is a bit more complicated than the current EU system, but the idea is the same: Don't let our jobs, our money, our very economy go to those who aren't gonna play by the rules. Small economic variations in WEFTA would exist and would be allowed (it's cheaper to live in Ithaca, NY than it is in Beverly Hills, CA) for free-trade regions but this $1-an-hour-factory-in-Mexico phenomenon wouldn't exist to pull jobs from the lower rungs of the U.S. (or any full WEFTA member) economy.
If only we could get our Congress to get their charbon and acier together.
As for the layoffs... well... I really believe in free, borderless markets. I really really do. But I think we can take a lesson from the EU, and require an adherence to a minimum set of criteria before granting full trade privileges. Giving other markets power without responsibility is a bad thing; without some sort of market synchronization we're just shooting ourselves in the foot.
What if we could say "Okay, India, we'll have completely free trade with you if you become a member of WEFTA (World-Encompassing Free Trade Agreement) and have your economy up to minimum standards within five years."
Maybe a four-tiered system could be made:
This is a bit more complicated than the current EU system, but the idea is the same: Don't let our jobs, our money, our very economy go to those who aren't gonna play by the rules. Small economic variations in WEFTA would exist and would be allowed (it's cheaper to live in a small town in Ithaca, NY than it is in Beverly Hills, CA) for free-trade regions but this $1-an-hour-factory-in-Mexico phenomenon wouldn't exist to pull jobs from the lower rungs of the U.S. (or any full WEFTA member) economy.
If only we could get our Congress to get their charbon and acier together.
Yeah, cuz those Bibliography of German Language and Literature at the University Library of Frankfort on the Main folks sure do hate the General Public License. ;-)
It's the contribution that counts to GPL-license-using developers and to some others. There is a section of society that prefers wide-spread adoption and de facto standardization to forcing contribution of new code. Even Stallman sometimes shares this viewpoint, as he said in his rationale behind the LGPL.
I usually don't respond to AC trolls, but I'd like to point out that the vast majority of files SCO pointed out as "proof" of infringement were BSD-licensed. So those stacks and stacks of listings, that preponderance of code? Yeah. That represents a *portion* of BSD-licensed contribution to the GPL community. Think about it.
There's a big difference between "encourages" and "allows".
.. erm .. community does. Often with very good, arguably better results. I bet there are many more users who would be effected by Apple's launchd than who jumped for joy about... wait, what was the last really important *forced* GPL re-contribution?
A license cannot encourage anything. A license is a legal agreement and only specifies what is allowed and not allowed. Any sort of conversational cruft is exceedingly unprofessional.
The BSD community encourages sharing just as much as the GPL
I generally release code I write under the BSD license. I think it's better to give freely. People just tend to trust you more when you upfront, and don't have any restrictions on something that's supposedly free, not to mention when your license is only half a page long and readable by mortals.
You could do this, but the extra development would of course cost you more money. Either you want to spend money or you don't. Showing spite for those less fortunate than yourself is hardly becoming.
Not to mention, what constitutes educational? What constitutes news? Does Fox constitute a "news channel"? What about CBS, NBC, ABC? CSPAN? Okay, what about ESPN?
Corrections:
"not a good thing for Democracy for the voting public to be uninformed" (emphasis added)
"but other people do things for your benefit, too" (ties in better with the following idea)
There are several reasons that the subsidy would be a good idea.
a) These 15% of people is a big chunk. That's almost one in six people. You really really don't want 15% of the voting public to be uninformed about political issues. You seem to be Fiscal Republican so maybe you want the non-media-savvy uninformed voting populace to grow in size, but I think that an objective view would show that at the very least, it's not a good thing for Democracy for the voting public to be informed. Of course, with comments like "I was incorrectly using the term to appeal to the misunderstanding masses..." that doesn't seem to raise any ethical problems for you. It does for me.
b) As a social progressive and small-town white trash farmboy from Northern Michigan, I can tell you first hand that you have a responsibility to these people. You have your cheap SUV because of the hard work of skilled and unskilled laborers in Detroit who make less than you do at your white collar job. Your wealth is made on their backs and I don't think paying a one-time fee of (($50)(15%)(AmericanPublic))/AmericanPublic = $7.50 (average among the various tax brackets) is such a huge thing to ask. Remember that significantly less than 15% of the taxable population is completely tax-exempt, so they'd be paying for it as well. And those beneficiaries of the subsidy who do pay taxes are also subsidizing things for YOU, buster, such a road construction and the generous subsidy the American government puts on gasoline (Ever bought petrol in Canada? Care to take a guess as to why it's so much cheaper here?).
It's easy for you to deride the idea of paying so much for other people, but other people pay for you too. Just remember that it's primarily this poorer 15% of the population from which our enisted military is drawn.
Try deleting your profile (save your bookmarks first) and the Firefox folder under Program Files. This is assuming you're using Windows. If you're using *Nix, ditto, except that Firefox maybe be installed in various locations (depending on your flavor). Uninstall, update your locate database, and search for directories left over. For Mac, I haven't a clue.
Wait wait... a court legalizes taking away private property for big business use, and you think this means it's philosophically aligned with the grassroots party?
Are you crazy?
Friendly auto-correction:
s/run in the de facto/that is run in the de facto/
s/be have/have/
Sorry. I should have used Preview.
I think I perhaps failed to communicate my point clearly. I should have stressed the "If it's emulated..." part, as I really haven't paid much attention to the internal workings of the JRE recently. Wikipedia makes me think that it JITs everything. In which case the "If it's emulated" part is inapplicable; I was still under the impression that we were actually emulating the JVM in the JRE. My mistake.
(Side note: Some of you thought my entire point was about whether or not Java(tm) can be used in realtime applications. It was not. This thread is about whether or not "Java is slow.")
When using a JIT compiler then the Java code is converted to native code. As such, execution time isn't pertinent to the discussion in and of itself, because it's comparing native assembly to native assembly. Only the quality of the compilers can change this, and as there exist a plethora of compilers for C, C++, ObjectPascal, BrainFuck, and SNOBOL (bizarre enumeration meant to signify "everything else under the sun"), it's not really possible to use a compiler comparison to compare the speed of two languages.
"Java is slow" is an oversimplification. As Mr. Lector would say "That's incidental!". There's nothing in the language which inherently requires that the resulting native code be slower than any other native code (except perhaps for some paradigms which it encourages which may not result in optimal code). What people mean when they say this is that the majority of runs involving Java are slower than the majority of runs involving another language; the run-times of two equivalent programs are different, disfavoring Java.
This is because of the design of the Java environment. The vast majority of people do not run pre-compiled native-code versions of Java programs. The Java apps in use my most people is JITted. This results in a delay (often significant) before code execution. In addition, the JRE remains loaded, handling all sorts of who-knows-what instead of compiling to a complete executable and running that. This takes up memory and CPU power.
Compiled C program run:
Start up slow-downs: None
Run-time slow-downs: None
JIT Java program run:
Start up slow-downs: Compiling JVM code 2 native
Run-time slow-downs: (potential) RAM overhead of JRE
Please note that I marked the RAM overhead as a potential factor in speed reduction because it isn't guaranteed that less available RAM = reduced speed (a user could have a gig or more of RAM and/or nothing else running and virtual memory turned off or be in any of the other myriad circumstances which would render the RAM usage irrelevant).
Compiler design and algorithm use being equal, it's impossible for a Java program run in the de facto environment to be have a run-time equal to or less than the equivalent C program. The only way for Java apps not to be 'slow' compared to other apps is to have fully-fledged native executable versions of Java apps (including allowing static linking).
If I'm significantly off-base, I appreciate any friendly corrections.
What does embedded have to do with realtime? My phone is embedded, doesn't mean I play Java(tm) bowling games in realtime. Throwing extra unrelated stuff in to obscure the point is not the mark of an organized, rational, correct mind. This almost borders on a Straw Man fallacy.
Secondly, Java being used IN real time and Java being used FOR real time are two very different things.
Unless you have a physical Java Machine, then your Java code will always always always get JITted or be emulated. If it is emulated, it by definition cannot be as resource-efficient and fast as native code, because the emulation itself takes CPU time and RAM. It's like throwing a football toward the cabin in an airplane approaching the speed of light: as hard as you try, you can't break basic laws of reality. (Sorry for the weird analogy, but I thought it appropriate considering the Relativity piece).
Sure, once the emulator (JVM) is loaded, it may have close to the same speeds. Hell, if the JVM and compiler writers are smarter than the compiler writers for C or whatever, the Java may even run faster. But that's purely incidental.
*bashes it into your head* Native code is faster than emulated code!
Free-as-in-beer for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. Some of us like to have long uptimes. Once Sun sanctions and offers for download on its web site JVMs for FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD, THEN you can claim they're "readily available".
For some reason I randomly remembered this really neat local business. Have you ever heard of Gwen Frostic? You might want to check out her site. I remember being impressed with the beauty and quality the first time I was presented with such a card. <shameless plug>