Oh yeah, this is gross negligence that has resulted in death. I'm not sure how much exactly she drank, but even if it was the high end of what's normally considered "safe", without doing a medical examination, you can't tell how somebody's going to react to something. Without testing their health beforehand, you've no idea what you're going to do to them playing with their internal chemistry like that.
Maybe there should be a darwin awards for most stupid ways to kill someone?
OR dishonest advantage! Don't ignore half of it just so that it fits your preconceptions!
"As far as I know, when people are charged with fraud, it is usually because they have taken something"
There are other laws, governing fraud, that don't require the taking of something. Impersonating a police officer, for example, is the use of fraud to gain authority. If a "scientist" makes a claim (eg, "i've discovered free energy!"), but it turns out it's not true, it was said only for the fame and glory, then that is a fraudulent claim, the scientist is considered a fraud.
"I do not consider it to be truth that copyright infringement is theft"
Of cause you don't, you seem very good at misinterpreting the dictionary so that words fit your own special meanings.
"that part of the test of their truthfulness is to judge the consequences"
Wrong again, whether something is TRUE depends on it being FACTUAL. I'd suggest looking up that word in the dictionary to you too, but you'd only ignore it.
"but for the record, truth is important to me"
No it's not, you don't even know what the word means! What's important to you is not serving fact, but getting people to believe what you think is best for them to do what you want. To believe that the consequences of what you say define how truthful it is? Well, everyone in the rest of the world calls that "lying to avoid trouble". You're deliberately deceiving people for your own means, which is always wrong, whatever you're trying to accomplish.
"Sometimes, I've decided to believe that they meant no offense"
This is a judgement based upon what you know, and applying it to something that you don't. It's called inductive reasoning, and it's totally different to the state of denial you're in.
"Counterfeiting is still a better description. I notice you didn't address that. I guess you just chose what to believe"
You guess wrong, I wasn't actually sure what point you were trying to make. Counterfeiting would be a fair description when you are trying to pass off your copy as real, eg, printing scans of an album cover to make the CD case look like it's geniune. Counterfeiting is dependant on the immitation aspect of it, so if you're not trying to pass off your copy as the genuine article, it's not counterfeiting.
Is English actually not your first language? Because you really need to learn it better before getting involved with things like this. If people like you keep throwing these invalid arguments against what the RIAA doing, then the real arguments from people that know what they're talking about don't get heard through all the noise.
"I believe you have not understood the consequences of the stance you take"
The stance I take is to represent the truth, and any unfortunate consequences that may come of it would be dwarfed by the alternative.
"The *AA's gain another person that much more susceptible to their propaganda"
As opposed to your propaganda? Listen to you, it's not being truthful you care about, it's winning the battle, all you're interested in is making sure people take your side, being flexible with the truth because you don't think people can understand the truth without falling prey to the evil RIAA (heh, that rhymed).
"Fraud is still taking something that doesn't belong to you"
What?!! No it's not, fraud's deception! It can be used to steal, ie, you pretend to be someone else so you can steal their money, use their credit cards etc, but fraud's not the stealing bit, it's the deception bit. If you went round telling people you're a fireman, and telling stories of how you've saved peoples lives, when actually you're just a student who's scared of the dark, then you'd fit the description of a fraud, despite the fact you've not taken anything from people, you've just deceived them.
"Theft - n, 1. the act of stealing; the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods or property of another; larceny."
The results of copyright infringement could in some circumstances be similar to theft, but the act is very different"
It doesn't matter how different you think it is, what matters is whether it's covered by the definition of the word! From the definition that you present, the word theft is used to refer to the act of stealing... how does that prove that piracy (yes I know it's a tacky word, but we're clear enough on what we mean by it) isn't stealing? It doesn't at all. In fact, if you had gone one step further and looked up the word 'stealing', on that very same website, on this page, you'll find these:
to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment
steal someone's thunder, to appropriate or use another's idea, plan, words, etc.
To take (the property of another) without right or permission.
To present or use (someone else's words or ideas) as one's own.
To get or take secretly or artfully: steal a look at a diary;
Synonyms: These verbs mean to take another's property wrongfully, often surreptitiously. Steal is the most general: stole a car; steals research from colleagues.
to take or appropriate without right or consent and with intent to keep or make use of
Stealing: the act of taking something from someone unlawfully
As you can see, there are several references to when the 'thing' isn't an actual physical object, ideas, information etc, are covered. There's a reference "steal a look at a diary", which is PURELY taking information that you have no right to - not taking the physical book, just looking at it. You'll also notice the mentions of 'without right', and even 'unlawfully', so even if it hurts nobody, if it's illegal, it's stealing. BUT, it also means that if something is not unlawful, and especially, if you're granted rights for something by law (ie, fair use), then the word stealing, and by extension, theft, become less relevant.
To finally wrap this thing up.
"what do you think you would lose by changing your idea of theft to not include copyright infringement?"
Integrity, trust, and the knowledge that everything I work for is build on solid foundations. Not that any of those really matter, I can't choose what I believe, I know what I know, and no matter how hard I pretended otherwise, I'd still know. I would be betraying everyone who trusts what I say, f
And yours seems to be around zero. Twist my words and insult me all you like, if that's what you have to do to feel like you're in the right. Go ahead and throw me in with the RIAA because you're unable to understand that if you do not honour somebody's decision that they have been granted the right to make by law, you're depriving them of the decision - I didn't say you're depriving them of anything else, and I didn't say that I believe that the law should grant them the right to decide whether you should be allowed to mediashift - for the last time - I don't! But right now, the law gives them the decision, and not honouring that decision, is taking the decision away from them. Rightly or wrongly is irrelevant to the fact.
If you're unable to even understand the thing that you are fighting, then you've already lost, before you even began.
"And from an evolutionary standpoint, I know of no obvious reason females should be less intelligent than males"
Who's more intelligent, a doctor, or a computer programmer? A person who can speak five languages, or a person who can play five instruments?
Point is, there in fact are well understood reasons why males and females intelligence tends to go in the seperate directions that they do, just as there is understanding about the difference between the intelligence of a mathematician, and an artist. The mathematician might be seen as being more intelligent, but can he recreate a scene as well as the artist can? The brain can do many, many things; different people will have their strengths lie in different places, and your gender has quite a lot to say about that. It doesn't mean that one is less intelligent than another, but their intelligence is different.
"Therefore, we should consider if we can fix the cultural aspect"
Really though, why? Men and women should be different, why would we want to make them the same? Are women unhappy being woman, and wanting to be men? Are men (forget the oddballs) wanting to be women? The ignorant fear difference, the enlightened embrace it. Our differences make us stronger. Our differences make things interesting, they make things fun, they drive curiosity in each other, and passion. Before you consider if we can 'fix' it, consider if we should.
"there is no obvious biological reason male and female brains should be that different"
Yes there is, huge reasons, right from the DNA (see my reply to your younger sibling post, spacial awareness vs social interaction) up to the different hormones that pump through our bodies, which are mind altering, they do have receptor sites within the brain, and change the rate at which different neurons fire, eg, women with higher testosterone levels tend to have higher sex drives. Increasing testosterone in a man tends to make him more agressive. As they cause behavioral differences, they change the way the brain will continue to develop.
Well that's actually just cuz their pee comes out in different places...
"From there we move to separate names and separate pronouns"
I don't think they make any difference... being referred to as "she" isn't going to make someone less likely to be interested in computers.
"Separate clothing"
Now, more yes, but this wasn't always the case though from birth, even not that long ago (relatively speaking) boys would often use "girls" clothes until they were older.
"Separate responsibilities"
This is unavoidable; girls grow up to have children, guys don't get pregnant, this has a huge difference at the genetic level due to evolution. Guys who "spread the seed" were more likely to have their dna survive, whereas for girls, it's looking after your child that improves success. This means that a guys sex drive tends to be more immediate goal oriented, and a girls is more long term oriented. Even if you're not after a baby, sexual attraction is still steered by target dna (and for a women, the type of person she's physically attracted to changes during the red cycle).
"Separate locker rooms"
Tha's down to sexuality rather than sexism.
"Separate schools"
Again, sexuality... does distract!
"You can't possibly draw any meaningful conclusions about the true nature of something in the presence of interference like that"
Yeah you can, by understanding the interference; not all of it's cause, much of it is effect. And there are huge genetic differences between men and women, other than just reproductive organs. The curves of a woman to hypotise and say "you wanna stay look after me, despite your genes telling you you wanna sleep around". The muscles of a man, to inspire confidence in the woman that he can defend, and provide healthy DNA. Male DNA tells the brain to develop more spacial awareness capacity, whereas women have a larger chunk devoted towards social interaction.
This is not social conditioning, this is pure cold genetics, and the effects touch every part of life.
"and the people you are likely to get as a result will tend to be those who will not do as well in the field as their self-selected counterparts"
and as a result, hurt the overall cause. If you grab a load of uncommitted women to increase female % workers, then it'll leave the whole site with the taste that women, overall, aren't as good at the job, don't focus on it as much, and aren't as much of an asset to the business, as men are.
No see the thing is, we don't have direct neural interfaces yet*, either person to person, or person to computer, so while the brain may be comin up with this stuff, it still requires other things to carry its desires out, such as keyboard, mouse and boobs.
(*okay, there are in fact primative devices that can be used to control a computer through thought; they're not yet at the level where they're useful for most people, as the other interfaces I mentioned give a lot more control. For someone who's paralised though, something like this is a big step forward, and offers a lot of hope)
"A core American value is not to discriminate based on race, or gender. You suggest doing exactly that, and you are exactly unamerican for doing so"
Nice, well done for dropping that one in while talking about discrimination and prejudice etc.
"Hi, I'm American, so I'm open minded enough to not discriminate against you. If only you were American too, you'd understand and appreciate it, but as you're not, you're probably the kind of person to discriminate against other types of people".
Boobs & Control. That's what it comes down to. Men - easily controlled by boobs. Even when not on a full "control" level, chemicals released in the brain increase chance that the man will act/react favourably when there's a hint of boob. Computers - see, they're not so bothered. Even when they're pushed right up against the screen, they just go "they're not gonna work on me, now enter the correct license key or I'm shutting down". So men, they like computers because they can control them. Women, they can control men without even trying, and controlling people's much more fun, so why'd they need computers?
Maybe if we could get computers to recognise and respond to boobs, some kind of "boob input device" or something, more women would be interested in working with them? After all, if men can be controlled with boobs, but computers could be controlled with boobs, keyboard AND mouse, then computers could be controlled much better than men - who lack the keyboard and mouse interface - then the computers are going to be much more fun!
There can be huge advantages to having the source code, there's no denying that. If you're building your business on a software package that manages your accounts, stock etc, having access to the source code means your business isn't dependent on the people who wrote it sticking around and maintaining it. But 3D accelleration driver for a high end graphics card? It just doesn't cut it in the same way. Are you going to have a business tied into the functions provided on that nvidia graphics card? Are you going to be upgrading the rest of the systems to the extent where current drivers no longer work, while keeping the same old graphics card? There really isn't the same level of tie in. Yes there could be the annoying aspect of it, if your operating system requires updates that will stop the driver working (linux, I'm looking at you) - but a fair amount of this can be solved in the code we do have access to (the kernel, the module stub/shim layer). If NVidia die within a year of buying a new graphics card, that's pretty unlucky, but anything over that, you'll be able to replace your graphics card with a similarly powerful one without having to fork out too much at all. A pain, but nothing too tragic. And with Windows backward compatability what it is, you can be pretty confident that todays drivers will see you through the next 5 years. Windows 2003 will still load drivers designed for Win98 (and pos 95 (VxDs) but not sure). I just can't see, in this case, it being that big a problem.
But on the other hand, look from NVidia's point of view. They're state of the art leaders, in constant battle with ATI for the best and the fastest GPUs, they gotta keep some things close to their chest. They also gotta protect their brand. If a driver fork doesn't perform quite as well (which can be for many reasons, eg, if they've licensed a compiler that can optimise better than the standard GCC everyone'll be using), benchmark figures could reflect badly on their product. And, at on a smaller level, they get to do things like flash their latest and greatest at people who come to their website's front page looking for drivers.
If things change, then we can reevaluate, but as things are at the moment, we have little to gain, but they have a lot more to lose, they keep on top of kernel changes fast enough, and the drivers seem to do their job just fine.
"I think you over estimate the number of people involved in the Linux / BSD nvidia driver"
No I wasn't trying to make any assertions as to number of people involved, I was just using the numbers 5000 and 5 in regards to the kernel to demonstrate the idea that having loads of manpower involved in something doesn't mean that they can all solve these various problems, there may only be 1 in 1000 that have the experience and knowledge of internal design etc required to fix it. The linux kernel is huge, and bugs tends to be fixed by people specific to the particular subsystem... Linus may fix an issue with the VM subsystem, but usually won't be the person to fix a problem with ext2 - that's better handled by the ext2 team. In the same way, what I'm saying, is that the nvidia driver developers are going to be the people best for fixing problems with the nvidia driver, and openning it up to thousands of other people is as likely to change that, as the thousands of people who have access to the linux kernel has changed that Linus* is the best person for fixing problems deep routed in his VM subsys.
(*no, it may not be linus who's the best person, and there maybe a few others who are on equal enough footing, I haven't followed it enough to say, but it works as an example to demonstrate my point nonetheless)
"if that is the impression you got from reading Slashdot..."
It's the impression I get of the majority opinion on here, I, as you can tell, have my own differing opinion (and sarcasm). My opinion is that people should be entitled to keep their source code to themselves if that is their decision, without having to deal with this constant whining across the internet by spoilt brats who think they have a god given right to somebody elses work, just because they want it. If you have any young children, just as they're developing their rebelious streak, you'll know exactly what I mean. They'll say anything to try and justify why they should be getting something they want, taking any reason they can find or make up to fit what they've already decided should happen. All it's doing is creating an image of the OSS community and its users, of a bunch of spoilt stroppy adolescents who can't deal with things in the real world. Like it or not, there are very good reasons why ATI and NVidia won't open up their code. So what if Intel have done? They're not the one in the fierce competition pushing the state of the art as ATI and NVidia are, they don't have the same thing to protect. And NVidia isn't going to want to open up drivers, and potentially risk damage to their name and brand due to dodgy patched drivers that hurt performance of their products.
So nvidia drivers had a bug, but you can throw 100 additional people at it, and you'll still get the occasional bug get through, you always do. But the drivers do actually work just fine, I've never personally had problems with them on multiple machines running linux over the past few years, upgrading kernels from linus' tree regularly enough. There comes a point when people are just looking for problems, making up hypothetical ones, to justify their attitude of snobbery and arrogance towards anyone who doesn't do things their way. It's getting really old, it's causing real alienation and harm to any cause people might have in the furthering of freedom and openness. This kind of "pushing my beliefs on others" is exactly why so many people started becoming disenchanted with religion, whatever the message may have been that day. It's one of the best ways to lose support.
Oh, but well done to you for the work you've put back into the community, the work of the OSS developers is truely invaluable, it should be appreciated for what it is, not for what other stuff isn't.
Slashdot Mirror
"I have not read the RTFA, of course"
:-p
Or figured out what the 'RT' stands for
"being dragged cross country by his nuts"
I don't think his nuts could drag him very far, they lack independant power of movement.
"Even if by some insane judge sentences him to 101 years in jail, that's a no-brainer that'll get reduced on first appeal"
And even if he doesn't, ya just know he's not gonna server the whole 101 years.
"Y t3st1fy? Do and no more v14gr4 for U!"
Yeah but even for that, 100 years is a pretty stiff sentence
"including wire fraud, unauthorized use of credit cards, misuse of the AOL trademark and attempted witness harassment"
He's being charged with improving their reputation and brand name. Bastard.
"how the fuck can they justify over 100 years of punishment?
Rapists and murderers get less"
I'd phrase that as "how the fuck can we justify rapists and murders so much less time in prison, when this guy can get over 100 years".
How quickly someone can get out of prison for destroying a life is where the miscarriage of justice lies.
"Whats the value of life?"
42
duh
Oh yeah, this is gross negligence that has resulted in death. I'm not sure how much exactly she drank, but even if it was the high end of what's normally considered "safe", without doing a medical examination, you can't tell how somebody's going to react to something. Without testing their health beforehand, you've no idea what you're going to do to them playing with their internal chemistry like that.
Maybe there should be a darwin awards for most stupid ways to kill someone?
"Perpetrated for profit, you see?"
OR dishonest advantage! Don't ignore half of it just so that it fits your preconceptions!
"As far as I know, when people are charged with fraud, it is usually because they have taken something"
There are other laws, governing fraud, that don't require the taking of something. Impersonating a police officer, for example, is the use of fraud to gain authority. If a "scientist" makes a claim (eg, "i've discovered free energy!"), but it turns out it's not true, it was said only for the fame and glory, then that is a fraudulent claim, the scientist is considered a fraud.
"I do not consider it to be truth that copyright infringement is theft"
Of cause you don't, you seem very good at misinterpreting the dictionary so that words fit your own special meanings.
"that part of the test of their truthfulness is to judge the consequences"
Wrong again, whether something is TRUE depends on it being FACTUAL. I'd suggest looking up that word in the dictionary to you too, but you'd only ignore it.
"but for the record, truth is important to me"
No it's not, you don't even know what the word means! What's important to you is not serving fact, but getting people to believe what you think is best for them to do what you want. To believe that the consequences of what you say define how truthful it is? Well, everyone in the rest of the world calls that "lying to avoid trouble". You're deliberately deceiving people for your own means, which is always wrong, whatever you're trying to accomplish.
"Sometimes, I've decided to believe that they meant no offense"
This is a judgement based upon what you know, and applying it to something that you don't. It's called inductive reasoning, and it's totally different to the state of denial you're in.
"Counterfeiting is still a better description. I notice you didn't address that. I guess you just chose what to believe"
You guess wrong, I wasn't actually sure what point you were trying to make. Counterfeiting would be a fair description when you are trying to pass off your copy as real, eg, printing scans of an album cover to make the CD case look like it's geniune. Counterfeiting is dependant on the immitation aspect of it, so if you're not trying to pass off your copy as the genuine article, it's not counterfeiting.
Is English actually not your first language? Because you really need to learn it better before getting involved with things like this. If people like you keep throwing these invalid arguments against what the RIAA doing, then the real arguments from people that know what they're talking about don't get heard through all the noise.
The stance I take is to represent the truth, and any unfortunate consequences that may come of it would be dwarfed by the alternative.
"The *AA's gain another person that much more susceptible to their propaganda"
As opposed to your propaganda? Listen to you, it's not being truthful you care about, it's winning the battle, all you're interested in is making sure people take your side, being flexible with the truth because you don't think people can understand the truth without falling prey to the evil RIAA (heh, that rhymed).
"Fraud is still taking something that doesn't belong to you"
What?!! No it's not, fraud's deception! It can be used to steal, ie, you pretend to be someone else so you can steal their money, use their credit cards etc, but fraud's not the stealing bit, it's the deception bit. If you went round telling people you're a fireman, and telling stories of how you've saved peoples lives, when actually you're just a student who's scared of the dark, then you'd fit the description of a fraud, despite the fact you've not taken anything from people, you've just deceived them.
"Theft - n,
1. the act of stealing; the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods or property of another; larceny."
The results of copyright infringement could in some circumstances be similar to theft, but the act is very different"
It doesn't matter how different you think it is, what matters is whether it's covered by the definition of the word! From the definition that you present, the word theft is used to refer to the act of stealing... how does that prove that piracy (yes I know it's a tacky word, but we're clear enough on what we mean by it) isn't stealing? It doesn't at all. In fact, if you had gone one step further and looked up the word 'stealing', on that very same website, on this page, you'll find these:
As you can see, there are several references to when the 'thing' isn't an actual physical object, ideas, information etc, are covered. There's a reference "steal a look at a diary", which is PURELY taking information that you have no right to - not taking the physical book, just looking at it. You'll also notice the mentions of 'without right', and even 'unlawfully', so even if it hurts nobody, if it's illegal, it's stealing. BUT, it also means that if something is not unlawful, and especially, if you're granted rights for something by law (ie, fair use), then the word stealing, and by extension, theft, become less relevant.
To finally wrap this thing up.
"what do you think you would lose by changing your idea of theft to not include copyright infringement?"
Integrity, trust, and the knowledge that everything I work for is build on solid foundations. Not that any of those really matter, I can't choose what I believe, I know what I know, and no matter how hard I pretended otherwise, I'd still know. I would be betraying everyone who trusts what I say, f
"Reason has limits"
And yours seems to be around zero. Twist my words and insult me all you like, if that's what you have to do to feel like you're in the right. Go ahead and throw me in with the RIAA because you're unable to understand that if you do not honour somebody's decision that they have been granted the right to make by law, you're depriving them of the decision - I didn't say you're depriving them of anything else, and I didn't say that I believe that the law should grant them the right to decide whether you should be allowed to mediashift - for the last time - I don't! But right now, the law gives them the decision, and not honouring that decision, is taking the decision away from them. Rightly or wrongly is irrelevant to the fact.
If you're unable to even understand the thing that you are fighting, then you've already lost, before you even began.
"And from an evolutionary standpoint, I know of no obvious reason females should be less intelligent than males"
Who's more intelligent, a doctor, or a computer programmer? A person who can speak five languages, or a person who can play five instruments?
Point is, there in fact are well understood reasons why males and females intelligence tends to go in the seperate directions that they do, just as there is understanding about the difference between the intelligence of a mathematician, and an artist. The mathematician might be seen as being more intelligent, but can he recreate a scene as well as the artist can? The brain can do many, many things; different people will have their strengths lie in different places, and your gender has quite a lot to say about that. It doesn't mean that one is less intelligent than another, but their intelligence is different.
"Therefore, we should consider if we can fix the cultural aspect"
Really though, why? Men and women should be different, why would we want to make them the same? Are women unhappy being woman, and wanting to be men? Are men (forget the oddballs) wanting to be women? The ignorant fear difference, the enlightened embrace it. Our differences make us stronger. Our differences make things interesting, they make things fun, they drive curiosity in each other, and passion. Before you consider if we can 'fix' it, consider if we should.
"there is no obvious biological reason male and female brains should be that different"
Yes there is, huge reasons, right from the DNA (see my reply to your younger sibling post, spacial awareness vs social interaction) up to the different hormones that pump through our bodies, which are mind altering, they do have receptor sites within the brain, and change the rate at which different neurons fire, eg, women with higher testosterone levels tend to have higher sex drives. Increasing testosterone in a man tends to make him more agressive. As they cause behavioral differences, they change the way the brain will continue to develop.
"Separate diapers"
Well that's actually just cuz their pee comes out in different places...
"From there we move to separate names and separate pronouns"
I don't think they make any difference... being referred to as "she" isn't going to make someone less likely to be interested in computers.
"Separate clothing"
Now, more yes, but this wasn't always the case though from birth, even not that long ago (relatively speaking) boys would often use "girls" clothes until they were older.
"Separate responsibilities"
This is unavoidable; girls grow up to have children, guys don't get pregnant, this has a huge difference at the genetic level due to evolution. Guys who "spread the seed" were more likely to have their dna survive, whereas for girls, it's looking after your child that improves success. This means that a guys sex drive tends to be more immediate goal oriented, and a girls is more long term oriented. Even if you're not after a baby, sexual attraction is still steered by target dna (and for a women, the type of person she's physically attracted to changes during the red cycle).
"Separate locker rooms"
Tha's down to sexuality rather than sexism.
"Separate schools"
Again, sexuality... does distract!
"You can't possibly draw any meaningful conclusions about the true nature of something in the presence of interference like that"
Yeah you can, by understanding the interference; not all of it's cause, much of it is effect. And there are huge genetic differences between men and women, other than just reproductive organs. The curves of a woman to hypotise and say "you wanna stay look after me, despite your genes telling you you wanna sleep around". The muscles of a man, to inspire confidence in the woman that he can defend, and provide healthy DNA. Male DNA tells the brain to develop more spacial awareness capacity, whereas women have a larger chunk devoted towards social interaction.
This is not social conditioning, this is pure cold genetics, and the effects touch every part of life.
"and the people you are likely to get as a result will tend to be those who will not do as well in the field as their self-selected counterparts"
and as a result, hurt the overall cause. If you grab a load of uncommitted women to increase female % workers, then it'll leave the whole site with the taste that women, overall, aren't as good at the job, don't focus on it as much, and aren't as much of an asset to the business, as men are.
Don't most people? :-p
No see the thing is, we don't have direct neural interfaces yet*, either person to person, or person to computer, so while the brain may be comin up with this stuff, it still requires other things to carry its desires out, such as keyboard, mouse and boobs.
(*okay, there are in fact primative devices that can be used to control a computer through thought; they're not yet at the level where they're useful for most people, as the other interfaces I mentioned give a lot more control. For someone who's paralised though, something like this is a big step forward, and offers a lot of hope)
"A core American value is not to discriminate based on race, or gender. You suggest doing exactly that, and you are exactly unamerican for doing so"
Nice, well done for dropping that one in while talking about discrimination and prejudice etc.
"Hi, I'm American, so I'm open minded enough to not discriminate against you. If only you were American too, you'd understand and appreciate it, but as you're not, you're probably the kind of person to discriminate against other types of people".
Boobs & Control. That's what it comes down to. Men - easily controlled by boobs. Even when not on a full "control" level, chemicals released in the brain increase chance that the man will act/react favourably when there's a hint of boob. Computers - see, they're not so bothered. Even when they're pushed right up against the screen, they just go "they're not gonna work on me, now enter the correct license key or I'm shutting down". So men, they like computers because they can control them. Women, they can control men without even trying, and controlling people's much more fun, so why'd they need computers?
Maybe if we could get computers to recognise and respond to boobs, some kind of "boob input device" or something, more women would be interested in working with them? After all, if men can be controlled with boobs, but computers could be controlled with boobs, keyboard AND mouse, then computers could be controlled much better than men - who lack the keyboard and mouse interface - then the computers are going to be much more fun!
I'm a genius!
Who said anything about copy? He only had one drive damnit!
That's so untrue, they just happen to be dykes, that's why they're so butch.
"Given that there are no inherent disparities in aptitude between men and women, why aren't as many women appearing in engineering positions?"
:-p
Perhaps you have to question that initial assertion then
There can be huge advantages to having the source code, there's no denying that. If you're building your business on a software package that manages your accounts, stock etc, having access to the source code means your business isn't dependent on the people who wrote it sticking around and maintaining it. But 3D accelleration driver for a high end graphics card? It just doesn't cut it in the same way. Are you going to have a business tied into the functions provided on that nvidia graphics card? Are you going to be upgrading the rest of the systems to the extent where current drivers no longer work, while keeping the same old graphics card? There really isn't the same level of tie in. Yes there could be the annoying aspect of it, if your operating system requires updates that will stop the driver working (linux, I'm looking at you) - but a fair amount of this can be solved in the code we do have access to (the kernel, the module stub/shim layer). If NVidia die within a year of buying a new graphics card, that's pretty unlucky, but anything over that, you'll be able to replace your graphics card with a similarly powerful one without having to fork out too much at all. A pain, but nothing too tragic. And with Windows backward compatability what it is, you can be pretty confident that todays drivers will see you through the next 5 years. Windows 2003 will still load drivers designed for Win98 (and pos 95 (VxDs) but not sure). I just can't see, in this case, it being that big a problem.
But on the other hand, look from NVidia's point of view. They're state of the art leaders, in constant battle with ATI for the best and the fastest GPUs, they gotta keep some things close to their chest. They also gotta protect their brand. If a driver fork doesn't perform quite as well (which can be for many reasons, eg, if they've licensed a compiler that can optimise better than the standard GCC everyone'll be using), benchmark figures could reflect badly on their product. And, at on a smaller level, they get to do things like flash their latest and greatest at people who come to their website's front page looking for drivers.
If things change, then we can reevaluate, but as things are at the moment, we have little to gain, but they have a lot more to lose, they keep on top of kernel changes fast enough, and the drivers seem to do their job just fine.
I figured it out as soon as I saw mention of the CPU and Xen, but yeah it could have been a lot clearer.
Oh and well done on getting modded troll... WTF's with that?! Any mod wanna cancel that out, it's a perfectly reasonable comment.
"I think you over estimate the number of people involved in the Linux / BSD nvidia driver"
No I wasn't trying to make any assertions as to number of people involved, I was just using the numbers 5000 and 5 in regards to the kernel to demonstrate the idea that having loads of manpower involved in something doesn't mean that they can all solve these various problems, there may only be 1 in 1000 that have the experience and knowledge of internal design etc required to fix it. The linux kernel is huge, and bugs tends to be fixed by people specific to the particular subsystem... Linus may fix an issue with the VM subsystem, but usually won't be the person to fix a problem with ext2 - that's better handled by the ext2 team. In the same way, what I'm saying, is that the nvidia driver developers are going to be the people best for fixing problems with the nvidia driver, and openning it up to thousands of other people is as likely to change that, as the thousands of people who have access to the linux kernel has changed that Linus* is the best person for fixing problems deep routed in his VM subsys.
(*no, it may not be linus who's the best person, and there maybe a few others who are on equal enough footing, I haven't followed it enough to say, but it works as an example to demonstrate my point nonetheless)
"if that is the impression you got from reading Slashdot..."
:-p
It's the impression I get of the majority opinion on here, I, as you can tell, have my own differing opinion (and sarcasm). My opinion is that people should be entitled to keep their source code to themselves if that is their decision, without having to deal with this constant whining across the internet by spoilt brats who think they have a god given right to somebody elses work, just because they want it. If you have any young children, just as they're developing their rebelious streak, you'll know exactly what I mean. They'll say anything to try and justify why they should be getting something they want, taking any reason they can find or make up to fit what they've already decided should happen. All it's doing is creating an image of the OSS community and its users, of a bunch of spoilt stroppy adolescents who can't deal with things in the real world. Like it or not, there are very good reasons why ATI and NVidia won't open up their code. So what if Intel have done? They're not the one in the fierce competition pushing the state of the art as ATI and NVidia are, they don't have the same thing to protect. And NVidia isn't going to want to open up drivers, and potentially risk damage to their name and brand due to dodgy patched drivers that hurt performance of their products.
So nvidia drivers had a bug, but you can throw 100 additional people at it, and you'll still get the occasional bug get through, you always do. But the drivers do actually work just fine, I've never personally had problems with them on multiple machines running linux over the past few years, upgrading kernels from linus' tree regularly enough. There comes a point when people are just looking for problems, making up hypothetical ones, to justify their attitude of snobbery and arrogance towards anyone who doesn't do things their way. It's getting really old, it's causing real alienation and harm to any cause people might have in the furthering of freedom and openness. This kind of "pushing my beliefs on others" is exactly why so many people started becoming disenchanted with religion, whatever the message may have been that day. It's one of the best ways to lose support.
Oh, but well done to you for the work you've put back into the community, the work of the OSS developers is truely invaluable, it should be appreciated for what it is, not for what other stuff isn't.
I'll stop now