This comes down to which side of the F/OSS coin you're on. Do you use GNU/Linux, *BSD, OpenSolaris, etc. for ideological purposes or because you like it better? Do you define success of F/OSS as having many users or simply having many free software libraries and programs to choose from? (yes, that question is not an either/or)
The open source people are pragmatists. They actually do, for the most part, rely on self interest to get the job done. IBM doesn't really care about the politics behind free software; they just care that it does the job at the lowest cost. There is nothing wrong with this.
For the most part, this distinction doesn't really matter. Those of us in the free software movement who work towards the volunteerism and ideals can work in harmony with those who are directed by self-interest. The only thing that we need to agree on is the license the code is using. The license doesn't require you to buy in to any politics to use the code. Stallman doesn't make you buy into his rhetoric before you get a copy of binutils. This is the great thing about F/OSS; anyone can contribute for any reason, and we all gain from the contribution.
Why'd they even bother passing the thing at all, if it's completely meaningless?
Think about it. The government cares about your privacy. They just passed a bill called PIPEDA which has to protect your privacy. After all, as you said, they wouldn't pass anything that was meaningless.
The loopholes were there to make sure it was business as usual while providing the docile populace with a feeling of "gubmint off my back". After all, the Clear Skies Initiative must be about cleaning up the air, right?
2. The Republicans have a slim (1 person) majority in the Senate, and a semi-slim (12 person) majority in the House.
WTF are you talking about? In the Senate the split is 55-44 with 1 independent siding with the Democrats. Thus, 55-45 is 10. In the House it is currently 231-201 with 1 independent siding with the Democrats. That makes a 29 person advantage.
Its late in the game, so I hope someone will see this... but damn you were way off. Check your facts, sir.
This is either a well crafted troll (to which I salute you) or you simply don't understand the concept of copyright law.
I get the choice of having my IP owned by me, not by the people.
For the sole reason that the people decided that you should have a limited monopoly on its distribution. If we didn't, then I could copy any works you created for any reason I wanted and there would be nothing you could do about it.
Sorry, but scarcity, artificial or otherwise, is a fine part of a free market.
Actually, artificial scarcity isn't part of a free market. At least if you believe a free market is the natural order. In fact, copyright is the antithesis of a free market as it depends on government intervention in order to create the artifical scarcity. If you believe strongly in the idea of a free market, why would you want the government to intervene on your behalf? Is it because you want the government to increase your profitability? Is that the job of government in a free market, to pass laws to increase the profitablity of a private citizen's business?
Sorry -- you don't have the rights to my IP.
Again, you have it wrong. It is society's "IP" (hint: this is the reason why there is a public domain). The fact that you get a monopoly on its distribution is because we, as a society, decided that you might not release it unless you got such a monopoly. The idea of a natural right to control creative works was soundly rejected in 1774 (in common law jurisdictions) via Donaldson v. Beckett.
If you take the stance that you have the natural right to the creative output of the world, then I can see why you'd perceive somebody doing something with their IP as an infringement on "your" rights. But nonetheless, you'd be wrong.
Well, that is a matter of opinion, but all legal doctrine regarding copyright in commonwealth realms rests on this premise.
Define "original." The U.S. Constitution states that it is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts." That's deliberately vague. Making money is a perfectly acceptable reason to promote the progress of science and useful arts.
May I suggest you read the framers' original (try "define:original" in google) remarks on the subject? I think you will see that it was a compromise to even get copyright into the Constitution. Jefferson, as I recall, was opposed to the idea. He would have had everything be public domain. The comprimise was struck because some people, like you, would simply not create any works if anyone could just up and copy them. Some still would, as is evidenced by the fact that the vast majority of copyrightable works were not copyrighted until 1989 when copyright was automatic. The fact that you get to make money off them is incidental.
Sir, Harper is to the left of quite a few Democrats. You act like you've got it bad up there. And even then, the Tories have a minority government. Its not like they can do all that much.
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay.
on
How to Win on Ebay: Snipe
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· Score: 3, Insightful
If you put in the maximum you are willing to pay for it at the start, you can't be sniped.
I've heard the reason this is the case (and I used to live in NE Ohio) is that NE Ohio's climate is incredibly hard on the roads. Being in the snow belt, which causes cracks to form and enlarge, doesn't help.
If they'd just do the roads in concrete, rather than the cheap asphalt they use, we wouldn't have the problems we have. Of course, it'd require one hell of a tax increase since the concrete roads cost a bit much. After that, they'd last for quite a long time with little to no repair.
Aside: Here in Dayton, they've been working on the I-75/I-70 interchange for nearly 3 years with little to no progress!
Are you trying to say that you believe someone else (perhaps everyone else?) owes you a "living wage"? On what basis do you come to that conclusion?
You can say that about nearly anything. Do you think that others owe you roads? Why? Its because we as a society have decided that we all are generally better off if we pay taxes so that roads are built. This concept can be extended to literally anything so long as enough people (enough defined differently from place to place, but certainly >50%) in the society want it that way. We could have minimum ice cream limits, minimum bandwidth limits, etc. We already have decided that we owe each other welfare services once we reach retirement age. As a matter of fact, I owe today's retirees those welfare services on the implicit assumption that people not even born yet will do it for me! Why are wages any different?
I believe I'm owed a lot of things that I don't get. Some things I owe people that I don't believe I owe them. Such is the cost of living in a large, diverse group of people.
I think you've got something there. I lived in a pretty much rural setting all my life until I came to college. The culture shock was crazy. Going from living in a city of 7,000 (literally in the middle of nowhere) to a college with an enrollment of 17,000 does a number on your expectations.
It has been almost 4 years now, and I still haven't adjusted. In fact, I'm a lot more paranoid than I ever used to be. Social norms are completely different, so making friends is hard to say the least. I call this condition "Small Town Syndrome". I've talked to people going from rural areas into the city, and many of them have the same problems adjusting.
You forgot your salt shaker. The Ed V. Mises institute is for complete deregulation and privitization of everything. They'd have you believe there could be competition regarding water delivery/sewers/etc. Some things are simply natural monopolies. Last mile ISPs are.
The telco camp is a type of BSD freedom where the Internet would be completely free to the point that powerful people can make it non-free. The "net neutrality" type of freedom is a GPL stance (sort of). It puts more restrictions on what can be done, but in an effort to preserve freedom for everyone.
If this were telephone service, no one would stand for it. Lets say Company X did a lot of business over the phone. Of course, you pay for your phone line (AT&T), they pay for theirs (Sprint). Imagine if AT&T tried to start charging company X because company X is using AT&T's lines. AT&T's CEO would cry about how much Company X is making off of their lucrative business, without so much as a dollar thrown in AT&T's direction. Now AT&T says they need to be able to prioritize the quality of calls and charge or outright block their customers from calling Company X or else they won't have any profit motive to upgrade the network. If anyone would have tried that, they would have been laughed out of town.
Now, with cable lines, I think its a different story. That stuff is private, but ran on the public's right of way. The locals should regulate that as they see fit, just as they do with cable franchises these days. DSL is different because much of the infrastructure was paid for by the tax payer.
Re:Dude, there's a whole universe in all of us...
on
Futurama Returns
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I know for a fact that Groening, Cohen and co set out to write lengthy thematic arcs which in some cases spanned series 1-4 inclusive.
In fact, when it is revealed that Nibbler pushes Fry into the cryogenic freezer, they show his (Nibbler's) shadow on the wall. If you go back to the pilot episode when it originally happened, Nibbler's shadow is on the wall.
I was amazed that the writing team had thought that far ahead.
Complaining that someone was using an unsecured, free AP as theft of services is like saying someone should have to close their eyes if they hang around outside your store at night as to avoid taking advantage of your free lights.
Not exactly. Since the wireless bandwidth is shared, anything the leecher used dimished what others can use. It is not so with lights. That being said, I tend to agree with you that using an open AP should not be a crime. The AP broadcasts the SSID. DHCP does the rest. In effect:
AP: "Hey, I'm an access point." Client: "Great! Can I have an IP?" AP: "Sure thing. Here you go, have fun!"
And somehow this is theft?
Come on guys, if you can't at least secure it with WEP or some sort of "password du jour" as the parent says, don't go complaining when people use your access point.
That might be true if you have a representative in a competitive district. Those of us who don't are literally wasting electricity by letting our representatives know where we stand on a particular piece of legislation. Districts are so horribly gerrymandered that the incumbent politician is all but re-elected after he/she wins his/her primary. They've already decided how they are voting on about 99% of the bills before they even hit the floor. This is obviously less of a problem in the Senate where there is no redistricting.
Because of the anthrax scare, snail mail to your representative is not the best way to go. The USPS usually ends up delaying your letter by at least a week because of the extra checks. The best way to go to get your voice heard is the following:
1) Campaign contribution 2) Call 3) Email/web form 4) Snail mail
All joking aside, my grandparents live in rural northern Ohio. I'd be suprised if they even know where their house keys are.
They only lock their doors if they are going to be gone for an extended time (read: vacation). It has been many a time I've stopped over unannounced, walked in, sat down for a drink and some food, and left with only a note saying I was there.
Re:distro fragmentation
on
Ubuntu Hacks
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· Score: 2, Informative
Generally, a "hack" on one distro will work on another if they are related. For instance, I'm pretty sure most of these would work with Debian with minor adjustments. Of course, many such adjustments will also work just fine with Fedora/etc. if you change "apt-get" to "yum" and "sudo" to "su -c".
In my experiences, one of the main factors tends to be package managment. Does the distro use.deb or.rpm?
Since they are pro-privacy, I'd assume that would mean pro-gun and pro-choice. Of course, if they are anything like their Swedish counterparts, they won't take up any official position.
Slashdot Mirror
This comes down to which side of the F/OSS coin you're on. Do you use GNU/Linux, *BSD, OpenSolaris, etc. for ideological purposes or because you like it better? Do you define success of F/OSS as having many users or simply having many free software libraries and programs to choose from? (yes, that question is not an either/or)
The open source people are pragmatists. They actually do, for the most part, rely on self interest to get the job done. IBM doesn't really care about the politics behind free software; they just care that it does the job at the lowest cost. There is nothing wrong with this.
For the most part, this distinction doesn't really matter. Those of us in the free software movement who work towards the volunteerism and ideals can work in harmony with those who are directed by self-interest. The only thing that we need to agree on is the license the code is using. The license doesn't require you to buy in to any politics to use the code. Stallman doesn't make you buy into his rhetoric before you get a copy of binutils. This is the great thing about F/OSS; anyone can contribute for any reason, and we all gain from the contribution.
The loopholes were there to make sure it was business as usual while providing the docile populace with a feeling of "gubmint off my back". After all, the Clear Skies Initiative must be about cleaning up the air, right?
WTF are you talking about? In the Senate the split is 55-44 with 1 independent siding with the Democrats. Thus, 55-45 is 10. In the House it is currently 231-201 with 1 independent siding with the Democrats. That makes a 29 person advantage.
Its late in the game, so I hope someone will see this
For the sole reason that the people decided that you should have a limited monopoly on its distribution. If we didn't, then I could copy any works you created for any reason I wanted and there would be nothing you could do about it.
Actually, artificial scarcity isn't part of a free market. At least if you believe a free market is the natural order. In fact, copyright is the antithesis of a free market as it depends on government intervention in order to create the artifical scarcity. If you believe strongly in the idea of a free market, why would you want the government to intervene on your behalf? Is it because you want the government to increase your profitability? Is that the job of government in a free market, to pass laws to increase the profitablity of a private citizen's business?
Again, you have it wrong. It is society's "IP" (hint: this is the reason why there is a public domain). The fact that you get a monopoly on its distribution is because we, as a society, decided that you might not release it unless you got such a monopoly. The idea of a natural right to control creative works was soundly rejected in 1774 (in common law jurisdictions) via Donaldson v. Beckett.
Well, that is a matter of opinion, but all legal doctrine regarding copyright in commonwealth realms rests on this premise.
May I suggest you read the framers' original (try "define:original" in google) remarks on the subject? I think you will see that it was a compromise to even get copyright into the Constitution. Jefferson, as I recall, was opposed to the idea. He would have had everything be public domain. The comprimise was struck because some people, like you, would simply not create any works if anyone could just up and copy them. Some still would, as is evidenced by the fact that the vast majority of copyrightable works were not copyrighted until 1989 when copyright was automatic. The fact that you get to make money off them is incidental.
Sir, Harper is to the left of quite a few Democrats. You act like you've got it bad up there. And even then, the Tories have a minority government. Its not like they can do all that much.
If you put in the maximum you are willing to pay for it at the start, you can't be sniped.
I've heard the reason this is the case (and I used to live in NE Ohio) is that NE Ohio's climate is incredibly hard on the roads. Being in the snow belt, which causes cracks to form and enlarge, doesn't help.
If they'd just do the roads in concrete, rather than the cheap asphalt they use, we wouldn't have the problems we have. Of course, it'd require one hell of a tax increase since the concrete roads cost a bit much. After that, they'd last for quite a long time with little to no repair.
Aside: Here in Dayton, they've been working on the I-75/I-70 interchange for nearly 3 years with little to no progress!
I believe I'm owed a lot of things that I don't get. Some things I owe people that I don't believe I owe them. Such is the cost of living in a large, diverse group of people.
They're calling it an alpha release, but it seems pretty pre-alpha to me. It crashes firefox (for me) like crazy.
Give it until the end of the year.
I can't remember where the quote came from but it seems in the same vein as what you are saying:
It is not enough for some people to be happy that they win. Others must lose as well.
I think you've got something there. I lived in a pretty much rural setting all my life until I came to college. The culture shock was crazy. Going from living in a city of 7,000 (literally in the middle of nowhere) to a college with an enrollment of 17,000 does a number on your expectations.
It has been almost 4 years now, and I still haven't adjusted. In fact, I'm a lot more paranoid than I ever used to be. Social norms are completely different, so making friends is hard to say the least. I call this condition "Small Town Syndrome". I've talked to people going from rural areas into the city, and many of them have the same problems adjusting.
I have a copy of the originally broadcased episode on VHS tape.
Its there.
You forgot your salt shaker. The Ed V. Mises institute is for complete deregulation and privitization of everything. They'd have you believe there could be competition regarding water delivery/sewers/etc. Some things are simply natural monopolies. Last mile ISPs are.
The telco camp is a type of BSD freedom where the Internet would be completely free to the point that powerful people can make it non-free. The "net neutrality" type of freedom is a GPL stance (sort of). It puts more restrictions on what can be done, but in an effort to preserve freedom for everyone.
If this were telephone service, no one would stand for it. Lets say Company X did a lot of business over the phone. Of course, you pay for your phone line (AT&T), they pay for theirs (Sprint). Imagine if AT&T tried to start charging company X because company X is using AT&T's lines. AT&T's CEO would cry about how much Company X is making off of their lucrative business, without so much as a dollar thrown in AT&T's direction. Now AT&T says they need to be able to prioritize the quality of calls and charge or outright block their customers from calling Company X or else they won't have any profit motive to upgrade the network. If anyone would have tried that, they would have been laughed out of town.
Now, with cable lines, I think its a different story. That stuff is private, but ran on the public's right of way. The locals should regulate that as they see fit, just as they do with cable franchises these days. DSL is different because much of the infrastructure was paid for by the tax payer.
I was amazed that the writing team had thought that far ahead.
Seconded.
Friend, the RNG is broken.
I've been picked to mod about 5 times in the past 7 days.
Not exactly. Since the wireless bandwidth is shared, anything the leecher used dimished what others can use. It is not so with lights. That being said, I tend to agree with you that using an open AP should not be a crime. The AP broadcasts the SSID. DHCP does the rest. In effect:
AP: "Hey, I'm an access point."
Client: "Great! Can I have an IP?"
AP: "Sure thing. Here you go, have fun!"
And somehow this is theft?
Come on guys, if you can't at least secure it with WEP or some sort of "password du jour" as the parent says, don't go complaining when people use your access point.
That might be true if you have a representative in a competitive district. Those of us who don't are literally wasting electricity by letting our representatives know where we stand on a particular piece of legislation. Districts are so horribly gerrymandered that the incumbent politician is all but re-elected after he/she wins his/her primary. They've already decided how they are voting on about 99% of the bills before they even hit the floor. This is obviously less of a problem in the Senate where there is no redistricting.
Because of the anthrax scare, snail mail to your representative is not the best way to go. The USPS usually ends up delaying your letter by at least a week because of the extra checks. The best way to go to get your voice heard is the following:
1) Campaign contribution
2) Call
3) Email/web form
4) Snail mail
All joking aside, my grandparents live in rural northern Ohio. I'd be suprised if they even know where their house keys are.
They only lock their doors if they are going to be gone for an extended time (read: vacation). It has been many a time I've stopped over unannounced, walked in, sat down for a drink and some food, and left with only a note saying I was there.
Generally, a "hack" on one distro will work on another if they are related. For instance, I'm pretty sure most of these would work with Debian with minor adjustments. Of course, many such adjustments will also work just fine with Fedora/etc. if you change "apt-get" to "yum" and "sudo" to "su -c".
.deb or .rpm?
In my experiences, one of the main factors tends to be package managment. Does the distro use
Since they are pro-privacy, I'd assume that would mean pro-gun and pro-choice. Of course, if they are anything like their Swedish counterparts, they won't take up any official position.
Two out of 535 isn't exactly a counterexample, especially when both politicians come from the same state.