I think that the GPL should be changed so that distributors could keep the source closed and copy-protected for 4 years. This would allow them to make much more profit, thus attracting many more companies to GPL software. Then after 4 years that code becomes public. I think this would increase the amount of available free code.
Not at all. While there some rare places on Earth that are possibly overpopulated (such as Bangladesh), most of Earth is facing *underpopulation*.
The total fertility rate in much of Earth (including Europe) is below replacement level, which means that these places are growing only due to demographic lag and immigration. This harms the economy and is cultural suicide.
And, while fear-mongers claim that the population is "growing exponentially", in reality the population is projected to reach 9B at 2050 and then start falling.
Actually I was seriously wrong about the numbers: Apollo commanded 5% of the US government budget, so its share of the global economy was less than 1%.
Despite this very embarrassing error, my main point still stands: Apollo was a pharaonic project and SpaceX's feat is impressive.
As long as you don't want the PDF viewer, or Flash, or the H.264 video, or the MP3 audio, or a few other goodies.
You can use any PDF plugin, and flash plugin is also available. Regarding MP3/H264: if there were strong demand for them, Open Source developers would have already implemented it. Also, dropping MP3/H264 is arguably a good thing.
I have heard people from Opera and Microsoft explicitly express concerns about the licensing of NaCl; whether it was copyright or patent issues I can't tell you.
I would thank if you provided links.
If they ever manage that (which is somewhat doubtful), we can revisit the situation. In the meantime, PNaCl is vaporware, and Google is pushing hard to get people to use NaCl.
I read nativeclient.googlecode.com/svn/data/site/pnacl.pdf and it seems that PNaCl is well within the reach of Google and LLVM. And the creation of optimised portable bitcode will benefit the whole software market. And PNaCl seems very active - http://code.google.com/feeds/p/nativeclient/issueupdates/basic. As for Google pushing hard, it may be a good thing. This will showcase the superiority of Chrome, helping make it more popular. And we need Chrome to be very popular by late 2012, when Microsoft will launch Windows 8. Microsoft wants to lock WIndows 8 to MSIE, which could be a disaster. But if Chrome is popular by late 2012, then it will be in Microsoft's best interest to support Chrome.
I still want MSIE to die. One of the reasons for my hate is that I find it outrageous that a clearly inferior product is used only because it comes bundled with Windows.
I also don't have a strong opinion on amnesty. I find it hard to make an opinion on it.
And, what is the problem with people who don't learn English? There are some German-speaking people in the South of Brazil, and I see no problem with it.
Maybe the problem is not cultural diversity itself, but those idiotic leftists who think that communities should be immune from the police. Here in Brazil we have a related problem: the shanty towns of Rio de Janeiro, while having the same ethnicity as the rest of the city, became communities on their own. And full of drug traffic. Every time the police entered the shanty towns, the left would libel the police and paint them as oppressors and violators of human rights. This made politicians very afraid to send police there. It was made worse by the fact that some leftists "intellectuals" taught guerrilla warfare to the drug dealers. Drug dealers with guerrilla training, holding advantage of terrain (due to the geographical features of the shanty towns and due to knowing the civil population) and heavy weapons (rifles, Submachine guns, hand grenades and even anti-helicopter bazookas) are very hard to face. But I digress.
I agree with much of what you said. I think I have expressed myself bit poorly. I owe you and the American people an apology.
I didn't mean to paint the US as being more xenophobic than other nations. I am aware that the USA is far more immigrant-friendly than many other countries. I heard that the USA takes more immigrants than all other countries combined. I also heard that legal immigrants are treated very well.
Regarding poor-skilled immigrants who can't support themselves: I think that this is partially caused by their illegal status. If they were legal, they would more easily find a decent-paying job. Why don't we let them in for a given period (say, 5 years) and then give citizenship to those who managed to support themselves? The American market is FULL of opportunities, even for low-skilled people. Only hard work is needed. A *huge* number of immigrants (much more than the US currently allows) could come and support themselves, making America a greater nation.
Regarding illegal immigration: it is indeed a problem, because I think it fosters crime. But it would be much smaller if the US increased legal immigration. And, I don't oppose Arizona-like laws. And more border vigilance. Perhaps a border fence (I heard claims that the fence would harm the environment, but this could be exaggerated tree-hugging bullshit. Since I haven't studied this idea carefully - it doesn't impact me here in Brazil - I don't have a strong opinion).
First, I didn't mean that Dawkins explicitly advocates violence; I merely say that his ideology, if it spreads, will eventually lead to great violence.
I agree that people who believe in Jesus should live by His teachings. And regarding state-sponsored violence, please check out www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/ratzinger2.html (Why the Church and state must be separate, by Pope Benedict XVI).
And just so you know where I am coming from, i am half-conservative and half-libertarian. I am pro-life, anti-war, pro-immigration, pro-small government. I am even open to the idea of legalizing some recreational drugs (I think they are evil; but not every sin must be a crime).
My original point is simply that Dawkins is extremely partial and intellectually dishonest. He spreads the idea that religion is pure evil and that we must be hard-core materialists and be a huge intolerant impolite dick to anyone who believes in God. I am merely saying that this is wrong.
Last I installed Skype, you had to select the "Custom Install" option to even get to the part of the install process that had the checkboxes. If you did the default install, Chrome just got installed silently without ever asking you.
If that is true, it is indeed wrong. I hope it was a misunderstanding on Skype's side. I hope that Google did not do this intentionally. Or that the Google employee that did this is an exception to the rule of don't be evil. Anyway, it shows that we consumers must be constantly vigilant.
Except it's not. Large parts of it are open-source, but some pieces relevant to actually providing a good user experience are not.
AFAIK, chromium has an excellent user experience.
And even the open-source parts are not under a license that allows, say, Microsoft or Opera to use the code.
The Google-authored parts of Chromium (including V8) are under the BSD license, so Microsoft/Opera can use them at will. Webkit is under the LGPL, so Microsoft/Opera can incorporate parts of it under the reasonable condition of providing source code of the changes they did to the Webkit code (while their proprietary code remains closed).
Furthermore, Chrome is busy trying to push features like NaCl which would tie the web to particular hardware architectures if they actually gained traction. So Chrome dominance would be terrible for the evolution of the web, just like MSIE's dominance was terrible.
And when I said Chrome should eclipse MSIE, I didn't mean Chrome should reach 100% of market. Ideally (in my opinion) the market would be 34% Firefox (my preferred browser), 33% Chrome and 33% Opera.
Finally, I agree that Google is no saint; but I ask you to agree that it is not as evil as Microsoft. MSIE needs to die.
Thank you for correcting me. I had that number from memory; either someone passed me bogus information, or my memory corrupted data (should have used a journaled filesystem!). I am very embarrassed; I erred by about one order of magnitude. Either way, commanding 4.8% of the government budget of the USA is a mighty feat indeed. And SpaceX launching a rocket is also a mighty feat.
Increasing legal immigration, would reduce ethic tension, illegal immigration, crime and tax evasion, thus benefiting the USA. It would also benefit immigrants, who just want a nice honest job
I meant of course *ethnic* tension.
I also forgot to say that absorbing more people into America helps it compete with China. Not that America must reach 1.3B, but at least some 750M would be nice to maintain economic and military superiority over that large evil tyranny.
First, you are nitpicking about the house-robbery example. Wether the police stops the robbery (which may be extremely rare as you claim) or prosecutes the criminal, it *is* public protection of private property.
Second, are you a leftist or a libertarian? Because advocating for the right of large corporations to buy their own warships would make a leftist's head explode.
Well, at least that source of anti-immigrant sentiment is going to decay.
Minority babies now outnumber white infants in the US, preliminary Census estimates show, a finding that indicates racial and ethnic minorities will become the nation's majority by the middle of the century. Just under half of all children under 3 are non-Hispanic whites, down from more than 60% in 1990, the AP reports. Meanwhile, 80% of seniors in America are white, as are 73% of those aged 45-64.
Should the lessons learned, capabilities gained, infrastructure created, and accomplishments of the last over-30 years be abandoned because the legislative, acquisition, and contracting landscape for government space operations isn't perfect
I don't want to argue for or against government involvement, but what you said above is a straw-man. The infrastructure/technology created could be privatised. The debate is between continuing government involvement or privatising the current assets; no one is arguing that the infrastructure should be bulldozed and the documents/books be burned.
Can you possibly be serious? The Apollo program consumed nearly 10% of the GDP of a country which commanded almost 50% of the world economy. Now we have a young private company, founded by an internet entrepreneur, launch this wonderful rocket into space. Can you really not see the vast improvement?
There is no reason to think that the privatisation of space access will reduce science research. In fact, science research will become much more efficient because rockets will be far more cheaply manufactured by competing private companies. Rocket technology will progress faster. There is no reason to think we will have less Mars probes.
Do you think we would have more Antarctica expeditions if ships were built by the government?
Which is just fine by us. We're supposed to be a melting pot. It only makes the case stronger with immigrants succeed so well in the U.S.
The US should vastly increase legal immigration. The anti-immigrant attitude is based largely on the idea that "immigrants take our jobs" which, in my arrogant opinion, is outrageously idiotic. Each immigrant does take a job, but he also creates wealth and spends money on the American economy, thus creating additional jobs. And if immigrants did increase unemployment, then additional Americans (USA-born) would increase unemployment by the same logic. Therefore the greater the population the bigger would be unemployment. Therefore tiny island countries would be unemployment-free worker paradises, which AFAIK does not happen.
And even if the immigrant sends money to his family overseas, those dollars will eventually be used to buy American goods, thus increasing exports.
Increasing legal immigration, would reduce ethic tension, illegal immigration, crime and tax evasion, thus benefiting the USA. It would also benefit immigrants, who just want a nice honest job.
Can anyone explain to me how immigration harms America?
TL;DR: Dawkins killed 100 million! (Hey, if you can misread posts, so can I!)
You deliberately misread what I said. This suggest you have no argument and decided to resort to fallacies.
Very few of those deaths have to do with anti-religious intorlerance and none with materialism. Marxist socialism doesn't imply totalitarian socialism.
What? Have you ever studied Marxism? Marxism explicitly advocates class hatred, violent revolutions and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
I love America (even though I am not American). Few countries *even have* a space-reaching rocket, while in the US multiple *private companies* have it.
Slashdot Mirror
Making money off other people's work is outrageous.
I meant, "only one agrees with *hitslink*"
I think that the GPL should be changed so that distributors could keep the source closed and copy-protected for 4 years.
This would allow them to make much more profit, thus attracting many more companies to GPL software. Then after 4 years
that code becomes public. I think this would increase the amount of available free code.
I still disagree, but I fear I am wasting your time.
Only on Slashdot would two nerds discuss whether or nod MSIE needs to die.
Regards
Not at all.
While there some rare places on Earth that are possibly overpopulated (such as Bangladesh), most of Earth is facing *underpopulation*.
The total fertility rate in much of Earth (including Europe) is below replacement level, which means that these places are growing only due to demographic lag and immigration. This harms the economy and is cultural suicide.
And, while fear-mongers claim that the population is "growing exponentially", in reality the population
is projected to reach 9B at 2050 and then start falling.
Actually I was seriously wrong about the numbers: Apollo commanded 5% of the US government budget, so its share of the global economy was less than 1%.
Despite this very embarrassing error, my main point still stands: Apollo was a pharaonic project and SpaceX's feat is impressive.
And I am sorry for the bad English. I typed in a hurry and English is my second language.
As long as you don't want the PDF viewer, or Flash, or the H.264 video, or the MP3 audio, or a few other goodies.
You can use any PDF plugin, and flash plugin is also available. Regarding MP3/H264: if there were strong demand
for them, Open Source developers would have already implemented it. Also, dropping MP3/H264 is arguably a
good thing.
I have heard people from Opera and Microsoft explicitly express concerns about the licensing of NaCl; whether it was copyright or patent issues I can't tell you.
I would thank if you provided links.
If they ever manage that (which is somewhat doubtful), we can revisit the situation. In the meantime, PNaCl is vaporware, and Google is pushing hard to get people to use NaCl.
I read nativeclient.googlecode.com/svn/data/site/pnacl.pdf and it seems that PNaCl is well within the reach of Google and LLVM. And the creation of optimised portable bitcode will benefit the whole software market. And PNaCl seems very active - http://code.google.com/feeds/p/nativeclient/issueupdates/basic.
As for Google pushing hard, it may be a good thing. This will showcase the superiority of Chrome, helping make it more popular. And we need Chrome to be very popular by late 2012, when Microsoft will launch Windows 8. Microsoft wants to lock WIndows 8 to MSIE, which could be a disaster. But if Chrome is popular by late 2012, then it will be in Microsoft's best interest to support Chrome.
I still want MSIE to die. One of the reasons for my hate is that I find it outrageous that a clearly inferior product is used only because it comes bundled with Windows.
I also don't have a strong opinion on amnesty. I find it hard to make an opinion on it.
And, what is the problem with people who don't learn English?
There are some German-speaking people in the South of Brazil, and I see no problem with it.
Maybe the problem is not cultural diversity itself, but those idiotic leftists who think that communities should be immune from the police. Here in Brazil we have a related problem: the shanty towns of Rio de Janeiro, while having the same ethnicity as the rest of the city, became communities on their own. And full of drug traffic. Every time the police entered the shanty towns, the left would libel the police and paint them as oppressors and violators of human rights. This made politicians very afraid to send police there. It was made worse by the fact that some leftists "intellectuals" taught guerrilla warfare to the drug dealers. Drug dealers with guerrilla training, holding advantage of terrain (due to the geographical features of the shanty towns and due to knowing the civil population) and heavy weapons (rifles, Submachine guns, hand grenades and even anti-helicopter bazookas) are very hard to face. But I digress.
I agree with much of what you said. I think I have expressed myself bit poorly. I owe you and the American people an apology.
I didn't mean to paint the US as being more xenophobic than other nations. I am aware that the USA is far more immigrant-friendly than many other countries. I heard that the USA takes more immigrants than all other countries combined. I also heard that legal immigrants are treated very well.
Regarding poor-skilled immigrants who can't support themselves: I think that this is partially caused by their illegal status. If they were legal, they would more easily find a decent-paying job. Why don't we let them in for a given period (say, 5 years) and then give citizenship to those who managed to support themselves? The American market is FULL of opportunities, even for low-skilled people. Only hard work is needed. A *huge* number of immigrants (much more than the US currently allows) could come and support themselves, making America a greater nation.
Regarding illegal immigration: it is indeed a problem, because I think it fosters crime. But it would be much smaller if the US increased legal immigration. And, I don't oppose Arizona-like laws. And more border vigilance. Perhaps a border fence (I heard claims that the fence would harm the environment, but this could be exaggerated tree-hugging bullshit. Since I haven't studied this idea carefully - it doesn't impact me here in Brazil - I don't have a strong opinion).
What do you think?
First, I didn't mean that Dawkins explicitly advocates violence; I merely say that his ideology, if it spreads, will eventually lead to great violence.
I agree that people who believe in Jesus should live by His teachings. And regarding state-sponsored violence, please check out www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/ratzinger2.html (Why the Church and state must be separate, by Pope Benedict XVI).
And just so you know where I am coming from, i am half-conservative and half-libertarian. I am pro-life, anti-war, pro-immigration, pro-small government. I am even open to the idea of legalizing some recreational drugs (I think they are evil; but not every sin must be a crime).
My original point is simply that Dawkins is extremely partial and intellectually dishonest. He spreads the idea that religion is pure evil and that we must be hard-core materialists and be a huge intolerant impolite dick to anyone who believes in God. I am merely saying that this is wrong.
Regards
Last I installed Skype, you had to select the "Custom Install" option to even get to the part of the install process that had the checkboxes. If you did the default install, Chrome just got installed silently without ever asking you.
If that is true, it is indeed wrong. I hope it was a misunderstanding on Skype's side. I hope that Google did not do this intentionally. Or that the Google employee that did this is an exception to the rule of don't be evil. Anyway, it shows that we consumers must be constantly vigilant.
Except it's not. Large parts of it are open-source, but some pieces relevant to actually providing a good user experience are not.
AFAIK, chromium has an excellent user experience.
And even the open-source parts are not under a license that allows, say, Microsoft or Opera to use the code.
The Google-authored parts of Chromium (including V8) are under the BSD license, so Microsoft/Opera can use them at will. Webkit is under the LGPL, so Microsoft/Opera can incorporate parts of it under the reasonable condition of providing source code of the changes they did to the Webkit code (while their proprietary code remains closed).
Furthermore, Chrome is busy trying to push features like NaCl which would tie the web to particular hardware architectures if they actually gained traction. So Chrome dominance would be terrible for the evolution of the web, just like MSIE's dominance was terrible.
But NaCl is under a BSD-like license. And Google is busy developing Portable NaCl, which removes CPU architecture-lock-in.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Native_Client.
And when I said Chrome should eclipse MSIE, I didn't mean Chrome should reach 100% of market. Ideally (in my opinion) the market would be 34% Firefox (my preferred browser), 33% Chrome and 33% Opera.
Finally, I agree that Google is no saint; but I ask you to agree that it is not as evil as Microsoft. MSIE needs to die.
Thank you for correcting me. I had that number from memory; either someone passed me bogus information, or my memory corrupted data (should have used a journaled filesystem!). I am very embarrassed; I erred by about one order of magnitude.
Either way, commanding 4.8% of the government budget of the USA is a mighty feat indeed.
And SpaceX launching a rocket is also a mighty feat.
Increasing legal immigration, would reduce ethic tension, illegal immigration, crime and tax evasion, thus benefiting the USA. It would also benefit immigrants, who just want a nice honest job
I meant of course *ethnic* tension.
I also forgot to say that absorbing more people into America helps it compete with China. Not that America must reach 1.3B, but at least some 750M would be nice to maintain economic and military superiority over that large evil tyranny.
First, you are nitpicking about the house-robbery example. Wether the police stops the robbery (which may be extremely rare as you claim) or prosecutes the criminal, it *is* public protection of private property.
Second, are you a leftist or a libertarian? Because advocating for the right of large corporations to buy their own warships would make a leftist's head explode.
Well, at least that source of anti-immigrant sentiment is going to decay.
Minority babies now outnumber white infants in the US, preliminary Census estimates show, a finding that indicates racial and ethnic minorities will become the nation's majority by the middle of the century. Just under half of all children under 3 are non-Hispanic whites, down from more than 60% in 1990, the AP reports. Meanwhile, 80% of seniors in America are white, as are 73% of those aged 45-64.
(http://www.newser.com/story/121760/white-babies-now-a-minority-in-us.html)
Great news, IMHO.
Well, come on over, then. We need more people with a can-do attitude. Visa applications are avaialble at your local embassy...
Sorry, but I am too coward to leave my family and friends.
Should the lessons learned, capabilities gained, infrastructure created, and accomplishments of the last over-30 years be abandoned because the legislative, acquisition, and contracting landscape for government space operations isn't perfect
I don't want to argue for or against government involvement, but what you said above is a straw-man. The infrastructure/technology created could be privatised. The debate is between continuing government involvement or privatising the current assets; no one is arguing that the infrastructure should be bulldozed and the documents/books be burned.
?
I didn't understand that.
We're back, baby!
No offense, but we're not even back to 1969.
Can you possibly be serious? The Apollo program consumed nearly 10% of the GDP of a country which commanded almost 50% of the world economy.
Now we have a young private company, founded by an internet entrepreneur, launch this wonderful rocket into space. Can you really not see the vast improvement?
There is no reason to think that the privatisation of space access will reduce science research.
In fact, science research will become much more efficient because rockets will be far more cheaply manufactured by competing private companies. Rocket technology will progress faster.
There is no reason to think we will have less Mars probes.
Do you think we would have more Antarctica expeditions if ships were built by the government?
Which is just fine by us. We're supposed to be a melting pot. It only makes the case stronger with immigrants succeed so well in the U.S.
The US should vastly increase legal immigration. The anti-immigrant attitude is based largely on the idea that "immigrants take our jobs" which, in my arrogant opinion, is outrageously idiotic. Each immigrant does take a job, but he also creates wealth and spends money on the American economy, thus creating additional jobs. And if immigrants did increase unemployment, then additional Americans (USA-born) would increase unemployment by the same logic. Therefore the greater the population the bigger would be unemployment. Therefore tiny island countries would be unemployment-free worker paradises, which AFAIK does not happen.
And even if the immigrant sends money to his family overseas, those dollars will eventually be used to buy American goods, thus increasing exports.
Increasing legal immigration, would reduce ethic tension, illegal immigration, crime and tax evasion, thus benefiting the USA. It would also benefit immigrants, who just want a nice honest job.
Can anyone explain to me how immigration harms America?
TL;DR: Dawkins killed 100 million! (Hey, if you can misread posts, so can I!)
You deliberately misread what I said. This suggest you have no argument and decided to resort to fallacies.
Very few of those deaths have to do with anti-religious intorlerance and none with materialism. Marxist socialism doesn't imply totalitarian socialism.
What? Have you ever studied Marxism? Marxism explicitly advocates class hatred, violent revolutions and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Please at least attempt to argue rationally.
I love America (even though I am not American). Few countries *even have* a space-reaching rocket, while in the US multiple *private companies* have it.
Flamebait?! I was responding to the signature of the grandparent! Do moderators know any impartiality?