The GPL is designed to ensure that the users of software will always have complete access to the source code and the ability to modify it, and the same access to any derrivative work.
The BSD license ensures that the users of the software have complete access to the source code and the ability to modify it.
Many feel that guaranteeing access to the derrivative works is important. Some, of course do not.
My argument is precisely that all developers should be able to beneift from my code if they want to.
The BSD licence does not guarantee this, since it permits the creation of derrivative works that could be propiratary and thus those derrivative works are not availablel to any developers.
I guess it comes down to what is meant by "beneift". If you mean "sell proprietary versions of" then of course the BSD lisence is a good choice. If you mean "be able to access subsequent work", then this is clearly not served by the BSD lisence.
Apple's license is OSI Certified, and is quite close to being "Free Software" as defined by the FSF with the only "flaw" according to the FSF being "any modified version "deployed" in an organization must be published". I don't really understand why so many seem to be bothered by the APSL.
I doubt any charity would issue a tax receipt for any donations unless they could then resell that donation to raise money for their primary mandate. Or unless that donation enabled them to avoid paying for something that they would otherwise have to buy.
Thus, donating my copy of MS Word could work (since they could avoid buying a copy themselves or resell it themselves and keep the cash), but that are they going to do with GNUMP?
So then do you suggest that apple offer a.mac service so long as they load it up with ads? They have to make money off it somehow!
A very strong arguement can be made that no matter how they price the.mac service it is going to be an Apple add all the time. Every email sent and web page built with a mac.com address is in essence an advertisement for Apple. I think that providing a minimal free or extrememly cheap ($5-10 per year for example) service in addition to the premium one would be the best way to leverage this advertising budget.
Trying to make money from your advertising is tricky business and can backfire big time.
Man this is going to make my job keeping client machines up to date a lot easier!
SOFTWAREUPDATE(8) System Manager's Manual SOFTWAREUPDATE(8)
NAME softwareupdate - system software update tool
SYNOPSIS softwareupdate [item...]
DESCRIPTION Software Update checks for new and updated versions of your software based on information about your computer and current software.
If you give no arguments, a list of available software updates is determined and displayed. Each entry includes the item name, description, version, and size.
For each item name you give, the corresponding software update is downloaded, unarchived, and installed.
There are likely to be continual updates/bug fixes to the classic/Mac OS 9 software components. For example there was a recent CarbonLib update.
It is true that there are no major updates expected as Apple has stated that they are not going to make any, but bug fixes and possibly efficiency updates will likely continue for some time.
They have had some problems with frequent abuser, fog, and things like that, but they save big big big bucks on paying people to collect the tolls, and it is a lot quicker than having to slow down every few km to pay a toll.
Details are at their website - they even have a system to pay for a transponder by cash to remain anonymous.
For people from states/provinces that do not have an agreement with Ontario to share lisence data they just do not charge them. It makes a bit of sense that if it costs more to collect than the charge then it isn't worth it. However, according to the local laws, everyone is still liable, so if they can find you to send a bill you are probably required to pay it, but they probably do not have much leverage against people driving up from Panama...
not bad but nothing special
on
The Chronoliths
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I picked this up the other day (along with "Dead Girls" (or available here) by Nancy Lee which was pretty good and I am not just saying that because I know the author) just for the fun of it.
It has an interesting style and brings up questions about the nature of destiny and time, but I found it
a bit unsatisfying. There were a number of fairly standard plot devices, although given a bit of a twist by the idea that the characters knew that they were somehow destined to come together.
I seem to recall a few years back reading about a diesel engine (maybe from VW?) that was designed for super fuel efficiency, combined with a contineously variable transmission. The engine would shut down when stopped or coasting or decellerating and would startup again as the accelerator was pressed, presumably with minimal delay.
It seems as though the on/off problem was solved in at least this one design.
I am pretty certain that the batteries get charged when they are low, regardless of the status of the brake system. Otherwise, a two hour highway drive would leave you with dead batteries!
As you drive the car, the gas motor does not start up until the charge on the batteries drop below some set point, and then the motor startus up.
You don't dispose of the batteries, you recycle them. Lead-acid batteries are completely recycled these days - that's why you have to turn in your old one before they give you the new one or pay a hefty deposit.
Not only that, but debit cards cost merchants more to handle than credit cards, even when they are from the same network.
I am not sure that that is the case. My understanding is the compelte opposite. I think that some banks are even encouraging people (by way of sweepstakes and other incentives) to get into the habit of "signing" for their debit card purchases. Basically, most debit cards that cary a credit card logo (MasterCard or Visa) can be processed either as a debit card by way of a PIN or as a credit card by way of a signature. When processed as a credit card, the merchant pays the credit card rates (maybe 2% plus a minimum?) and when processed as a debit card the merchant pays the debit card rate (maybe a flat $0.25 or something like that?). The issuers of course want the largest chunk of change from the merchants.
Now where did I read this? Consumer Reports?
Around here (Southern Ontario) almost everyone accepts debit cards including the corner store since they cost so little to process, while fewer places are set up for credit cards.
How about based on technical merits, does that count anymore?
Acutally, laws such as this one are designed to avoid dealing with companies and people who have shown themselves to be untrustworthy, which is a fairly good way of avoiding poor purchasing decisions, regardless of the "technical merits".
Sure, you want to check out the quality of the stuff you buy, but it is generally easier to just avoid the stuff sold by crooks, and only do your checking of products from reputable dealers.
I doubt the status of the current litigation would matter to the local laws. I had thought that MS was convicted of both federal and various state monopoly practices and thus would be subject to such local laws, regardless the out come of the various settlement negotiations and lawsuits.
Actually I don't disagree with any of your analysis. I used the term "underpaying" in quotes because I was using it only in the limited idea of paying less than the maximum that the payer is willing to pay.
Why should I get all the profit?
I recall seeing someone (the photo.net guy from MIT I think) talking about the then new idea of "associate" websites giving commissions for sales, such as what Amazon does. He noted that since it was often trivally simple for someone with such a web site to switch their system from amazon.com to chapters.com it would seem as though eventually the associates would get all of the profits as each bookstore enticed the associates to switch to them by offering a larger cut of the sales profits. 5% -> 6% -> 7%, etc.
Given a low enough barrier to switching to the competition, it would seem that such switches should result in getting a larger share of the pie.
I guess we just do not live in a world where everyone has complete knowledge of the options and always acts in the "rational" manner that ecconomics types like to say that they should.
This is true, however much of the "business value" of labour and capitol goods can be and is reflected in the price of those goods. The sales price of the building for example will reflect the prices that a variety of buyers are willing to pay for that asset, and those buyers take into account the building's usefulness in their business.
The assets are undoubtably more value in combination than alone, but presumably their individual pricing reflects in part their potential to be grouped together.
Well, "*NO* validity" is a bit strong. In principle at least, the "customer" of the company could directly make arrangements themselves with the various parties that the company uses to provide their product, and in that case the "employee" would get paid without the need for a company to exist.
But of course it is very true that "the company itself provides value" both to the worker and to the customer, otherwise that company would not be able to survive very long (in theory at least - I am sure we can find many examples of long lasting companies that provide little value to anyone...)
But it still has validity. In order to make a profit the company gets someone to pay them more for a product or service than it costs to provide that product or service. Obviously if this can be done, then on average, the various expenses (labour, capiol, etc.) that are required to provide the product or service have a value to the company that is slightly greater than the price that the company must pay to receive them from whoever is providing them.
If one of those expenses increases in price (for example the workers get a raise) then either the company will have less profit or they will have to raise their prices to reflect their increased costs.
Thus in some cases, the profit can be though of as coming from "underpaying" for some of the necessary expenses.
"St. Elsewhere" finished their run with an episode that explained away the entire series as being the fantasy of an autistic child (one of the minor (no pun intended) characters in the series).
And then there was the last "Newhart" show (where he is a hotel owner in Vermont) where it turns out that the entire series was a dream taking place in the old "Bob Newhart" show - the one where he is a psychologist.
Well, if you can impose some real costs on the sender, such as the threat of fines, then it becomes cost prohibitive.
An example of the potential effectiveness of such legislation, one could point to the anti-SPAM-fax laws in the USA. Before them junk faxes were a real problem, and after them they were much reduced. Now this might not be long term, since I think there have been recent court cases that have invalidated parts of this lawas in some areas, but in general the approach has some merrit.
I find that ASM is useful in hiding/showing running applications, just like the Application Menu in classic used to do, and it is GPL which is nice. Additionally it allows one to go back to the classic windowning mode of bringing all application windows to the front if that is what you like rather than Mac OS X's default mode of treating each window seperately which I have difficulty getting used to.
There is a book called the Sceptial Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg which I think you might like:
http://www.easyfiction.co.uk/Bjorn-Lomborg-Sceptic al-Environmentalis-0521804477.html
Scientific America did a fairly lenghtly piece on this in their January 2002 issue which pointed out a large number of fundamental flaws in the book. They had a breif rebuttal the next issue and further disussion in the letters to the editor. Pretty interesting, but Bjorn doesn't seem very persuasive in that forum at least.
Maybe I am not reading you correctly, but my understanding of what you are saying is incorrect. Go perform the experiment if you doubt my exposition.
Things float when they displace an amount of water equal in weight to their total weight. Thus if you wanted to cause an object weighting 1 pound to float, it will need to displace exactly one pound of water. Thus it needs to have a volume equal to or greater than the volume of one pound of water in order to float. Any extra volume greater than the volume of one pound of water will stick up above the surface of the wanter that the object if floating in.
Now take a pound of ice. Since ice is less dense than water a pound of ice will have a volume greater than a pound of liquid water. Thus it will float in liquid water. When a pound of ice is floating, it will displace exactly the volume of one pound of water, and the extra volume of ice will stick up above the water.
What hapens when this floating ice melts? Well, obviously it turns into a pound of water, and less obviously, in the process it decreases its volume because as previously stated, the density of liquid water is greater than the density of ice. The pound of water-that-was-ice will exactly fill the hole displace by the ice floating in water, since that hole was exactly the volume of one pound of water.
Thus, floating ice melting does not change the level of the water as it melts.
There are subtle differences when we start mixing fresh-water-icebergs in a salt-water-ocean, but they do not have a great effect, I think.
Slashdot Mirror
The BSD license ensures that the users of the software have complete access to the source code and the ability to modify it.
Many feel that guaranteeing access to the derrivative works is important. Some, of course do not.
My argument is precisely that all developers should be able to beneift from my code if they want to.
The BSD licence does not guarantee this, since it permits the creation of derrivative works that could be propiratary and thus those derrivative works are not availablel to any developers.
I guess it comes down to what is meant by "beneift". If you mean "sell proprietary versions of" then of course the BSD lisence is a good choice. If you mean "be able to access subsequent work", then this is clearly not served by the BSD lisence.
Apple's license is OSI Certified, and is quite close to being "Free Software" as defined by the FSF with the only "flaw" according to the FSF being "any modified version "deployed" in an organization must be published". I don't really understand why so many seem to be bothered by the APSL.
Thus, donating my copy of MS Word could work (since they could avoid buying a copy themselves or resell it themselves and keep the cash), but that are they going to do with GNUMP?
A very strong arguement can be made that no matter how they price the .mac service it is going to be an Apple add all the time. Every email sent and web page built with a mac.com address is in essence an advertisement for Apple. I think that providing a minimal free or extrememly cheap ($5-10 per year for example) service in addition to the premium one would be the best way to leverage this advertising budget.
Trying to make money from your advertising is tricky business and can backfire big time.
SOFTWAREUPDATE(8) System Manager's Manual SOFTWAREUPDATE(8)
NAME
...]
...
softwareupdate - system software update tool
SYNOPSIS
softwareupdate [item
DESCRIPTION
Software Update checks for new and updated versions of your software based on information about your computer and current software.
If you give no arguments, a list of available software updates is determined and displayed. Each entry includes the item name, description, version, and size.
For each item name you give, the corresponding software update is downloaded, unarchived, and installed.
softwareupdate must be run as root.
It is true that there are no major updates expected as Apple has stated that they are not going to make any, but bug fixes and possibly efficiency updates will likely continue for some time.
Details are at their website - they even have a system to pay for a transponder by cash to remain anonymous.
For people from states/provinces that do not have an agreement with Ontario to share lisence data they just do not charge them. It makes a bit of sense that if it costs more to collect than the charge then it isn't worth it. However, according to the local laws, everyone is still liable, so if they can find you to send a bill you are probably required to pay it, but they probably do not have much leverage against people driving up from Panama...
It has an interesting style and brings up questions about the nature of destiny and time, but I found it a bit unsatisfying. There were a number of fairly standard plot devices, although given a bit of a twist by the idea that the characters knew that they were somehow destined to come together.
All in all I would rate it about 6/10.
It seems as though the on/off problem was solved in at least this one design.
As you drive the car, the gas motor does not start up until the charge on the batteries drop below some set point, and then the motor startus up.
You don't dispose of the batteries, you recycle them. Lead-acid batteries are completely recycled these days - that's why you have to turn in your old one before they give you the new one or pay a hefty deposit.
Similar for most other technologies.
I am not sure that that is the case. My understanding is the compelte opposite. I think that some banks are even encouraging people (by way of sweepstakes and other incentives) to get into the habit of "signing" for their debit card purchases. Basically, most debit cards that cary a credit card logo (MasterCard or Visa) can be processed either as a debit card by way of a PIN or as a credit card by way of a signature. When processed as a credit card, the merchant pays the credit card rates (maybe 2% plus a minimum?) and when processed as a debit card the merchant pays the debit card rate (maybe a flat $0.25 or something like that?). The issuers of course want the largest chunk of change from the merchants.
Now where did I read this? Consumer Reports?
Around here (Southern Ontario) almost everyone accepts debit cards including the corner store since they cost so little to process, while fewer places are set up for credit cards.
Acutally, laws such as this one are designed to avoid dealing with companies and people who have shown themselves to be untrustworthy, which is a fairly good way of avoiding poor purchasing decisions, regardless of the "technical merits".
Sure, you want to check out the quality of the stuff you buy, but it is generally easier to just avoid the stuff sold by crooks, and only do your checking of products from reputable dealers.
I doubt the status of the current litigation would matter to the local laws. I had thought that MS was convicted of both federal and various state monopoly practices and thus would be subject to such local laws, regardless the out come of the various settlement negotiations and lawsuits.
Why should I get all the profit?
I recall seeing someone (the photo.net guy from MIT I think) talking about the then new idea of "associate" websites giving commissions for sales, such as what Amazon does. He noted that since it was often trivally simple for someone with such a web site to switch their system from amazon.com to chapters.com it would seem as though eventually the associates would get all of the profits as each bookstore enticed the associates to switch to them by offering a larger cut of the sales profits. 5% -> 6% -> 7%, etc.
Given a low enough barrier to switching to the competition, it would seem that such switches should result in getting a larger share of the pie.
I guess we just do not live in a world where everyone has complete knowledge of the options and always acts in the "rational" manner that ecconomics types like to say that they should.
The difference in "psychology" between a "buyer's" and a "seller's" market can make for quite different pricing schemes, eh?
The question is always which there are more of - the buyers or the sellers?
The assets are undoubtably more value in combination than alone, but presumably their individual pricing reflects in part their potential to be grouped together.
Well, "*NO* validity" is a bit strong. In principle at least, the "customer" of the company could directly make arrangements themselves with the various parties that the company uses to provide their product, and in that case the "employee" would get paid without the need for a company to exist.
But of course it is very true that "the company itself provides value" both to the worker and to the customer, otherwise that company would not be able to survive very long (in theory at least - I am sure we can find many examples of long lasting companies that provide little value to anyone...)
But it still has validity. In order to make a profit the company gets someone to pay them more for a product or service than it costs to provide that product or service. Obviously if this can be done, then on average, the various expenses (labour, capiol, etc.) that are required to provide the product or service have a value to the company that is slightly greater than the price that the company must pay to receive them from whoever is providing them.
If one of those expenses increases in price (for example the workers get a raise) then either the company will have less profit or they will have to raise their prices to reflect their increased costs.
Thus in some cases, the profit can be though of as coming from "underpaying" for some of the necessary expenses.
"St. Elsewhere" finished their run with an episode that explained away the entire series as being the fantasy of an autistic child (one of the minor (no pun intended) characters in the series).
And then there was the last "Newhart" show (where he is a hotel owner in Vermont) where it turns out that the entire series was a dream taking place in the old "Bob Newhart" show - the one where he is a psychologist.
Well, if you can impose some real costs on the sender, such as the threat of fines, then it becomes cost prohibitive.
An example of the potential effectiveness of such legislation, one could point to the anti-SPAM-fax laws in the USA. Before them junk faxes were a real problem, and after them they were much reduced. Now this might not be long term, since I think there have been recent court cases that have invalidated parts of this lawas in some areas, but in general the approach has some merrit.
I find that ASM is useful in hiding/showing running applications, just like the Application Menu in classic used to do, and it is GPL which is nice. Additionally it allows one to go back to the classic windowning mode of bringing all application windows to the front if that is what you like rather than Mac OS X's default mode of treating each window seperately which I have difficulty getting used to.
Scientific America did a fairly lenghtly piece on this in their January 2002 issue which pointed out a large number of fundamental flaws in the book. They had a breif rebuttal the next issue and further disussion in the letters to the editor. Pretty interesting, but Bjorn doesn't seem very persuasive in that forum at least.
Things float when they displace an amount of water equal in weight to their total weight. Thus if you wanted to cause an object weighting 1 pound to float, it will need to displace exactly one pound of water. Thus it needs to have a volume equal to or greater than the volume of one pound of water in order to float. Any extra volume greater than the volume of one pound of water will stick up above the surface of the wanter that the object if floating in.
Now take a pound of ice. Since ice is less dense than water a pound of ice will have a volume greater than a pound of liquid water. Thus it will float in liquid water. When a pound of ice is floating, it will displace exactly the volume of one pound of water, and the extra volume of ice will stick up above the water.
What hapens when this floating ice melts? Well, obviously it turns into a pound of water, and less obviously, in the process it decreases its volume because as previously stated, the density of liquid water is greater than the density of ice. The pound of water-that-was-ice will exactly fill the hole displace by the ice floating in water, since that hole was exactly the volume of one pound of water.
Thus, floating ice melting does not change the level of the water as it melts.
There are subtle differences when we start mixing fresh-water-icebergs in a salt-water-ocean, but they do not have a great effect, I think.