Crap. Silicon is environmentally uncool? Somebody better start getting rid of all those rocks that we've got lying around, then. Clean the sand off of the beaches, too. Move it, people, move it! We've got 25% of the Earth's mass to get rid of here!
In any case, there's on way that GPL version 2 requires them to provide a person anything aside from the source code to any binaries they distributed to that person, or (probably in this case) to anyone that person redistributed binaries to.
Actually, GPL says that they must distribute source code not only to the recipients of the binaries (provided they ask), but also to any third party that requests the source code. So, if they have given the binaries to absolutely anyone anywhere, even just one person (say Larry Niven), then anyone (say Osama Bin Ladin) could write them an email asking for the source code, and they would be obligated by the copyright laws of most nations to provide (Osama) with the sourcecode at no more than the cost of reproduction. This even though neither they nor Larry gave Osama any binaries. The relevant portion of the gnu faq on the gpl is:
"Valid for any third party" means that anyone who has the offer is entitled to take you up on it.
If you commercially distribute binaries not accompanied with source code, the GPL says you must provide a written offer to distribute the source code later. When users non-commercially redistribute the binaries they received from you, they must pass along a copy of this written offer. This means that people who did not get the binaries directly from you can still receive copies of the source code, along with the written offer.
The reason we require the offer to be valid for any third party is so that people who receive the binaries indirectly in that way can order the source code from you.
Cable Communications is coming to subscribers' houses and updating the boxes, but not leaving a USB key.
Sounds to me as though Cable Communications is distributing the binaries, yet not distributing the source code for no more than the cost of reproduction. Unless I've missed something (which I likely have, as the whole summary didn't make a whole lot of sense to me), the proper target for a lawsuit would be Cable Communications.
Dang it, you made the universe implode! Take it back!
One of my favorite math professors here, whenever doing a proof by contradiction, after assuming the wrong answer and getting a contradiction, says "And then the universe implodes. Soooo, we'll take the safer choice, not-${whatever supposition led to the contradiction}.".
We've known for years that Vista was going to have content protection in all kinds of nasty ways. We've known ever since anyone cared to think about it that content protection does cause problems (because it is actually an insoluble problem). We've known for months that the actual release of Vista sucked (and if we didn't know from firsthand experience, then we certainly could find out about 3 times a day on slashdot). Now what makes this newsworthy again? Dog Bites Man.
Yes, in fact, I am. I have been working with/at CDF for coming up on 3 years now, as an undergraduate. I'm working with some of the ATLAS people this summer, and then I don't get to do much research for a couple of years while I get my graduate coursework out of the way. Then I intend to be back with CMS or ATLAS.
So what you are really saying is that someone from one culture found people from another culture somewhat unsettling? Wow! Mein Gott, sell all our stock, Mr. Ironfoundersson is on to the next Big Thing!
Oh, don't get me wrong. I never claimed to think, and in fact don't think, that Tolkien was successful in creating a mythology. If he had, then some of the conditions you describe as differentiating fan fic from oral storytelling would exist surrounding the idea of Middle Earth. I do even agree that his dream is likely impossible. However, given that that was his dream, his own son can hardly be criticized for carrying out actions which would be entirely appropriate if that dream were to be realized.
Well, I suppose one might criticize Christopher for not realizing that the dream has failed, or something like that. But an accusation that he is just trying to make a buck off his father's work is, I think, entirely off the mark, given that his actions are entirely what one might expect of a man (perhaps ineptly) trying to carry on his father's dream.
* In oral tradition, most listeners are not furries
Touché, salesman. I too have an uncle. This point had me laughing pretty good.
You should read up about concept albums. Typically, the bands that produced concept albums were better overall. I think that this is likely because making a concept album requires much more thought and care for each and every song. A hit or singles album typically is a mere collection of songs, each of which has the sole goal of getting you to listen to it more than once. Concept albums are art. Singles albums are entertainment. (This is a generalization which does not always hold true, but is a decent rule of thumb.)
Without the "unfortunate phenomenon" of "fan-fiction", most of greek and roman mythology would not exist. Or were you under the impression that those were created by one man with a huge master plan? Anything written after the first writer of greek mythology which fit into the universe conceived of in greek mythology would have to be considered part of the "unfortunate phenomenon". And yes, I'm sure that the vast majority of this greek "fan-fiction" was silently ignored. Most of it was probably terrible. But some of it was not terrible. Without that greek "fan-fiction", the world would be a culturally poorer place. Sure, of the tiny portion that wasn't ignored, some of it is contradictory (not "canon", as it is called in today's world of "this story is mine, and if anyone else contributes to it, they are just trying to make a buck off of my name"), but it is still all valuable and culturally important.
As I tried to say before, Tolkien was trying to create an environment similar to that of Greece in that the people at large not only were quite conversant in their national mythology, but they felt free and some even compelled to add to it, without the fear that people like you would label them as worthless writers of fan-fiction trying to ride on someone else's coattails. They felt some ownership in the story because it was part of their society, rather than just something that somebody wrote down once. It was mutable, not set in stone for all time forever and ever amen. Furthermore, in that time in Greece, most writing was set in the Greek mythos. In contrast, although today most people are minimally conversant about Tolkien (Oh, he did that... umm, lord of the.. rings? thing, right?), it is perceived as JRR's property, sacred and untouchable. Diff that with Greek mythological culture, and with what Tolkien was really trying to achieve...
Sure, you may label him a raving madman if you like. But it hardly seems fair to say that someone trying to do what JRR would have liked for them to do is just trying to make a buck off his work.
BTW, Beowulf, while the only surviving manuscripts are in Old English, is a Scandinavian tale, not a British tale. I don't think that the people who told and retold and eventually wrote down Beowulf even knew who the Britons were.
That might be true in the case of people who are not already at risk for diabetes. However, I know of two people (my grandmother and a (college-age) friend of mine) who were told by their doctors that they were at risk for diabetes and that they should therefore stick to a strict diet which would help prevent their risk from developing into full-blown diabetes. This largely (for my grandmother at least) meant a severe restriction on sugar consumption. Both ignored it, and sure enough, both are now diabetic. Were their doctors ensnared by this myth as well, or are you only referring to people who are not at risk already?
My grandmother is/was only very slightly overweight. The young friend -- not overweight at all, rather underweight in fact. Underweight due to (like me) metabolism, not self starvation or any kind of eating disorder like that. Also, she ignored the doctors advice for two reasons: One, she didn't have a blood sugar testing machine, her insurance refused to pay for one, and neither she nor the rest of her family could afford one independently. Two, she didn't have enough money to buy the foods she was supposed to be eating, and rather ate things like a spoonful of peanut butter for dinner because that was what she could afford. Just in case you were wondering.
Anything that doesn't present you with 100 options for anything is a good thing. Something which doesn't allow you those 100 options is a bad thing. I don't use KDE, but if it really presents you with 100 options for every little thing, that would just drive me nuts. I want to customize the look-and-feel of my system (a lot), but having once done that, I want it to stay that way and not bug me. As long as it is fairly clear where to go to find those 100 options, they never need to be presented. An somewhat extreme example would be if firefox asked you which skin you wanted to use every time you started a new browser window. Sure, that would make it extremely easy to customize, but a real PITA too.
It is not just his notes. Tolkien actually wrote several versions of this story in full. One of them is found in the Silmarillion (according to my fiancee, who knows a lot more about Tolkien and his writings than I do, and also a lot more than anybody (but one person) that I know), another in the Unfinished Tales, another in the Lays of Beleriand, and more in other publications. So, if anything, Christopher is probably doing significantly less to change his father's original text than he did for the Silmarillion. I believe that the various manuscripts of this story are slightly inconsistent with one another (as is typical when Tolkien wrote multiple manuscripts for one story), so most likely all that Christopher did was to smooth out the inconsistencies.
Furthermore, Tolkien intended his writings to form the basis of a mythology for the British Isles' peoples. Many lands and their peoples have mythologies. The Greeks have a mythology. The Norse have a mythology. The Romans have a mythology. If Ovid's son wrote stories that were intended to be part of the Roman mythology, nobody would have criticized him for "just trying to make a buck off of his father's work". The Roman mythology was considered essentially the collective property of the Roman people, not the work of Ovid or Virgil or anybody else. If Tolkien had succeeded in truly creating a British mythology, then dozens of British people would be contributing to it all the time. Over the centuries, most of their works would likely fade away, but they would not properly be criticized for "trying to make a buck off of Tolkien's work", they would be applauded for contributing to their national mythos.
The parent comment was not intended to be flamebait. Nor do I think it unintentionally became flamebait, as no flames were produced in reply to it. It has the superficial appearance of a troll, but I don't think it was even that, if I may say so myself. By exaggeration, I was making fun of the perceived slashdot groupthink regarding Microsoft and Windows. Additionally, this tied in quite nicely via a pun on both the previous comment and the overall topic of the article. Please, try to notice these things. Overrated mods, perhaps. This was not my magnum opus. Troll mods, perhaps. As I said, it superficially resembles many poorly done trolls. Flamebait mods, no. Not at all. I hope you can't sleep tonight over your wanton cruelty to the innocent comment.
Fair enough. You're right, my description left a good bit to be desired. FYI, the canonical examples are the Linux kernel (bazaar) and emacs (cathedral). But as always, the best way to get a sense of it is to read the original essay.
The summary (and presumably, the article, no I didn't RTFA) seems to think that the only reason for communication is persuasion. If it were, perhaps the long distance communication methods would work just fine for men according to the article. The fact that people still fly out to meet each other does not contradict the article because people do communicate for other purposes as well. Maybe they only fly out to meet each other when it is for purposes other than persuasion (I don't think so, but who knows?).
The cathedral model doesn't even really refer to proprietary development. You might term the closed proprietary development model the prison model or something, the code only gets out when it has done its time. CatB discussed two open source development models, one in which potential changes were submitted to the monarch or oligarchs of a project for consideration, and one in which pretty much anybody could add stuff whenever. Microsoft uses neither of these.
In short, the difference between the cathedral and the bazaar is not and has never been the difference between closed and open source. It is the difference between two open source development strategies. If you're not sure of this, go read ESR's essay again. http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar /cathedral-bazaar/
This is just a name for the particular quantum mechanical property that causes the electron to deflect one way or another when travelling through a magnetic field.
Bzzzt! You are referring to the Stern-Gerlach effect, I believe. Firstly, electrons have electric charge, which means that they will deflect when traveling through a magnetic field anyway, even if they were spin-0 particles. Secondly, the Stern-Gerlach effect requires not just any magnetic field, but an inhomogeneous one. That is, a magnetic field which is pointing perpendicularly to the direction of electron travel, and varies in strength along the direction the magnetic field is pointing. Then you get splitting based on spin (up or down).
But, spin is far more and far more important than just the Stern-Gerlach effect. Above all, spin is angular momentum, just as any rotating object has angular momentum (hence the name spin). Now, we know that even if electrons and other (we think) fundamental particles have some kind of non-infinitesimal structure (in which case they are quite likely not fundamental), that structure is so small that in order to produce the measured angular momentum, the outermost portions of the electron would have to be moving faster than the speed of light. So, unless we've gotten something wrong, you are correct that the electron is not really spinning. But nonetheless, spin is angular momentum, a locally conserved quantity.
Spin also plays a very important role in both chemistry and nuclear physics (in similar ways). The spin of a particle determines whether it is a fermion or a boson, and thus how it plays with other particles like itself. You can't have more than one electron in any given quantum state, because the electron is a fermion. Since spin is part of the quantum state, you can have two electrons in one energy state, so long as they have opposite spins. If spin didn't exist, chemistry would be considerably different. Nuclear physics is a little bit like chemistry of the nuclei (protons and neutrons instead of electrons), and without spin, which elements are stable or not would be quite different.
Finally (not the last that spin is important for, just the last I'm going to talk about), spin is important in solid state physics, and thus in everyday life. That chair you're sitting in? Wouldn't be solid if it weren't for spin. Because electrons are fermions, and can't be in the same state as other electrons, solids don't collapse. Collapsing would require moving electrons down to a lower energy state, and at some point, all lower states are filled. So there is an outward pressure due to the fact that electrons are fermions. The difference between fermions and bosons? Spin. If there were no spin, everything would have to be a boson (or all distinguishable particles), and we wouldn't really get any solids. </gross oversimplifications>
Very dangerous, as it allows any company which primarily does sketchy business in the US to have a mailing address in, say, Malaysia, and designate that their headquarters. Then anybody they do business with is in the US, and thus cannot sue them.
In a world where international business is allowed, there really needs to be some provision for international lawsuits.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed, you have hit the nail on the head.
Crap. Silicon is environmentally uncool? Somebody better start getting rid of all those rocks that we've got lying around, then. Clean the sand off of the beaches, too. Move it, people, move it! We've got 25% of the Earth's mass to get rid of here!
Dang it, you made the universe implode! Take it back!
One of my favorite math professors here, whenever doing a proof by contradiction, after assuming the wrong answer and getting a contradiction, says "And then the universe implodes. Soooo, we'll take the safer choice, not-${whatever supposition led to the contradiction}.".
You are quite correct. Which is why I pointed out that it was a rather rough generalization, a rule of thumb, rather than a law of nature.
We've known for years that Vista was going to have content protection in all kinds of nasty ways. We've known ever since anyone cared to think about it that content protection does cause problems (because it is actually an insoluble problem). We've known for months that the actual release of Vista sucked (and if we didn't know from firsthand experience, then we certainly could find out about 3 times a day on slashdot). Now what makes this newsworthy again? Dog Bites Man.
Yes, in fact, I am. I have been working with/at CDF for coming up on 3 years now, as an undergraduate. I'm working with some of the ATLAS people this summer, and then I don't get to do much research for a couple of years while I get my graduate coursework out of the way. Then I intend to be back with CMS or ATLAS.
So what you are really saying is that someone from one culture found people from another culture somewhat unsettling? Wow! Mein Gott, sell all our stock, Mr. Ironfoundersson is on to the next Big Thing!
Well, I suppose one might criticize Christopher for not realizing that the dream has failed, or something like that. But an accusation that he is just trying to make a buck off his father's work is, I think, entirely off the mark, given that his actions are entirely what one might expect of a man (perhaps ineptly) trying to carry on his father's dream.
Touché, salesman. I too have an uncle. This point had me laughing pretty good.
You should read up about concept albums. Typically, the bands that produced concept albums were better overall. I think that this is likely because making a concept album requires much more thought and care for each and every song. A hit or singles album typically is a mere collection of songs, each of which has the sole goal of getting you to listen to it more than once. Concept albums are art. Singles albums are entertainment. (This is a generalization which does not always hold true, but is a decent rule of thumb.)
Without the "unfortunate phenomenon" of "fan-fiction", most of greek and roman mythology would not exist. Or were you under the impression that those were created by one man with a huge master plan? Anything written after the first writer of greek mythology which fit into the universe conceived of in greek mythology would have to be considered part of the "unfortunate phenomenon". And yes, I'm sure that the vast majority of this greek "fan-fiction" was silently ignored. Most of it was probably terrible. But some of it was not terrible. Without that greek "fan-fiction", the world would be a culturally poorer place. Sure, of the tiny portion that wasn't ignored, some of it is contradictory (not "canon", as it is called in today's world of "this story is mine, and if anyone else contributes to it, they are just trying to make a buck off of my name"), but it is still all valuable and culturally important.
.. rings? thing, right?), it is perceived as JRR's property, sacred and untouchable. Diff that with Greek mythological culture, and with what Tolkien was really trying to achieve...
As I tried to say before, Tolkien was trying to create an environment similar to that of Greece in that the people at large not only were quite conversant in their national mythology, but they felt free and some even compelled to add to it, without the fear that people like you would label them as worthless writers of fan-fiction trying to ride on someone else's coattails. They felt some ownership in the story because it was part of their society, rather than just something that somebody wrote down once. It was mutable, not set in stone for all time forever and ever amen. Furthermore, in that time in Greece, most writing was set in the Greek mythos. In contrast, although today most people are minimally conversant about Tolkien (Oh, he did that... umm, lord of the
Sure, you may label him a raving madman if you like. But it hardly seems fair to say that someone trying to do what JRR would have liked for them to do is just trying to make a buck off his work.
BTW, Beowulf, while the only surviving manuscripts are in Old English, is a Scandinavian tale, not a British tale. I don't think that the people who told and retold and eventually wrote down Beowulf even knew who the Britons were.
That might be true in the case of people who are not already at risk for diabetes. However, I know of two people (my grandmother and a (college-age) friend of mine) who were told by their doctors that they were at risk for diabetes and that they should therefore stick to a strict diet which would help prevent their risk from developing into full-blown diabetes. This largely (for my grandmother at least) meant a severe restriction on sugar consumption. Both ignored it, and sure enough, both are now diabetic. Were their doctors ensnared by this myth as well, or are you only referring to people who are not at risk already?
My grandmother is/was only very slightly overweight. The young friend -- not overweight at all, rather underweight in fact. Underweight due to (like me) metabolism, not self starvation or any kind of eating disorder like that. Also, she ignored the doctors advice for two reasons: One, she didn't have a blood sugar testing machine, her insurance refused to pay for one, and neither she nor the rest of her family could afford one independently. Two, she didn't have enough money to buy the foods she was supposed to be eating, and rather ate things like a spoonful of peanut butter for dinner because that was what she could afford. Just in case you were wondering.
Anything that doesn't present you with 100 options for anything is a good thing. Something which doesn't allow you those 100 options is a bad thing. I don't use KDE, but if it really presents you with 100 options for every little thing, that would just drive me nuts. I want to customize the look-and-feel of my system (a lot), but having once done that, I want it to stay that way and not bug me. As long as it is fairly clear where to go to find those 100 options, they never need to be presented. An somewhat extreme example would be if firefox asked you which skin you wanted to use every time you started a new browser window. Sure, that would make it extremely easy to customize, but a real PITA too.
It is not just his notes. Tolkien actually wrote several versions of this story in full. One of them is found in the Silmarillion (according to my fiancee, who knows a lot more about Tolkien and his writings than I do, and also a lot more than anybody (but one person) that I know), another in the Unfinished Tales, another in the Lays of Beleriand, and more in other publications. So, if anything, Christopher is probably doing significantly less to change his father's original text than he did for the Silmarillion. I believe that the various manuscripts of this story are slightly inconsistent with one another (as is typical when Tolkien wrote multiple manuscripts for one story), so most likely all that Christopher did was to smooth out the inconsistencies.
Furthermore, Tolkien intended his writings to form the basis of a mythology for the British Isles' peoples. Many lands and their peoples have mythologies. The Greeks have a mythology. The Norse have a mythology. The Romans have a mythology. If Ovid's son wrote stories that were intended to be part of the Roman mythology, nobody would have criticized him for "just trying to make a buck off of his father's work". The Roman mythology was considered essentially the collective property of the Roman people, not the work of Ovid or Virgil or anybody else. If Tolkien had succeeded in truly creating a British mythology, then dozens of British people would be contributing to it all the time. Over the centuries, most of their works would likely fade away, but they would not properly be criticized for "trying to make a buck off of Tolkien's work", they would be applauded for contributing to their national mythos.
The parent comment was not intended to be flamebait. Nor do I think it unintentionally became flamebait, as no flames were produced in reply to it. It has the superficial appearance of a troll, but I don't think it was even that, if I may say so myself. By exaggeration, I was making fun of the perceived slashdot groupthink regarding Microsoft and Windows. Additionally, this tied in quite nicely via a pun on both the previous comment and the overall topic of the article. Please, try to notice these things. Overrated mods, perhaps. This was not my magnum opus. Troll mods, perhaps. As I said, it superficially resembles many poorly done trolls. Flamebait mods, no. Not at all. I hope you can't sleep tonight over your wanton cruelty to the innocent comment.
Fair enough. You're right, my description left a good bit to be desired. FYI, the canonical examples are the Linux kernel (bazaar) and emacs (cathedral). But as always, the best way to get a sense of it is to read the original essay.
Hooray for the Crimson Permanent Assurance!
Of course windoze doesn't have wireless security! M$ couldn't have any security if they tried! LOLOL...
</feeling childish for the day>
The summary (and presumably, the article, no I didn't RTFA) seems to think that the only reason for communication is persuasion. If it were, perhaps the long distance communication methods would work just fine for men according to the article. The fact that people still fly out to meet each other does not contradict the article because people do communicate for other purposes as well. Maybe they only fly out to meet each other when it is for purposes other than persuasion (I don't think so, but who knows?).
The cathedral model doesn't even really refer to proprietary development. You might term the closed proprietary development model the prison model or something, the code only gets out when it has done its time. CatB discussed two open source development models, one in which potential changes were submitted to the monarch or oligarchs of a project for consideration, and one in which pretty much anybody could add stuff whenever. Microsoft uses neither of these.
r /cathedral-bazaar/
In short, the difference between the cathedral and the bazaar is not and has never been the difference between closed and open source. It is the difference between two open source development strategies. If you're not sure of this, go read ESR's essay again. http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaa
Oh, I was going to write it for a Turing machine, running in Conway's Game of Life, implemented in Postscript.
But, spin is far more and far more important than just the Stern-Gerlach effect. Above all, spin is angular momentum, just as any rotating object has angular momentum (hence the name spin). Now, we know that even if electrons and other (we think) fundamental particles have some kind of non-infinitesimal structure (in which case they are quite likely not fundamental), that structure is so small that in order to produce the measured angular momentum, the outermost portions of the electron would have to be moving faster than the speed of light. So, unless we've gotten something wrong, you are correct that the electron is not really spinning. But nonetheless, spin is angular momentum, a locally conserved quantity.
Spin also plays a very important role in both chemistry and nuclear physics (in similar ways). The spin of a particle determines whether it is a fermion or a boson, and thus how it plays with other particles like itself. You can't have more than one electron in any given quantum state, because the electron is a fermion. Since spin is part of the quantum state, you can have two electrons in one energy state, so long as they have opposite spins. If spin didn't exist, chemistry would be considerably different. Nuclear physics is a little bit like chemistry of the nuclei (protons and neutrons instead of electrons), and without spin, which elements are stable or not would be quite different.
Finally (not the last that spin is important for, just the last I'm going to talk about), spin is important in solid state physics, and thus in everyday life. That chair you're sitting in? Wouldn't be solid if it weren't for spin. Because electrons are fermions, and can't be in the same state as other electrons, solids don't collapse. Collapsing would require moving electrons down to a lower energy state, and at some point, all lower states are filled. So there is an outward pressure due to the fact that electrons are fermions. The difference between fermions and bosons? Spin. If there were no spin, everything would have to be a boson (or all distinguishable particles), and we wouldn't really get any solids. </gross oversimplifications>
Very dangerous, as it allows any company which primarily does sketchy business in the US to have a mailing address in, say, Malaysia, and designate that their headquarters. Then anybody they do business with is in the US, and thus cannot sue them.
In a world where international business is allowed, there really needs to be some provision for international lawsuits.
Except those guys would precisely not be old UNIX hackers. Rather most of them would have been old ITS hackers before becoming LISP machine hackers.