we only use 10% of the theoretical power in any programming language.
PHP might be the gedit of programming languages. No, gedit can't do everything emacs does, but it's always there when you need it and damned if it can't show you a bunch of text and let you edit. You can even search/replace
The United States one is more glaring to me
on
In2TV Goes Public
·
· Score: 1
I'm not a historian, especially not a historian of patent law. I can't give you data. Sorry. Call yourself the winner of the argument if you like.
But I do know that the rate of inventions increased dramatically in the past couple of hundred years.
There's some data!
The problem, of course, is that it proves nothing. For every Industrial Age with patents there's a Renaissance or Athens without them.
The United States was a dramatic mover in technology from its inception as a country. Perhaps it's a coincidence that the US also had a strong notion of patents
See, this is where you should stop: "perhaps it's a coincidence". Maybe look at a real set of data before forming your opinion
My opinion is that lots of things were invented in the 18th century because the use of reason was widely encouraged. I encourage everyone to use reason. Base their opinions on data, that sort of thing
"There is no question MS should be penalized if they break the law but we shouldn't fine a company just because they are the major player or because they can afford it."
Would fining a company because they broke the law be okay with you?
1. 200 non-MS-related companies would spring up in 1 week, and they would offer tolerable support of all versions of windows. Maybe not "inner circle" type support but do most people really get that anyway?
2. There would be about a 100-million-person case study confirming that... um... Windows is not absolutely essential to your business, organization, or government.
No, I'm talking about the code in the TiVo's BIOS that says something like
if (md5sum(EXECUTABLE) != b8bc0c13ab3fe6c1727cf4a27b0204d2) {
/* just sit there doing nothing
}
This stuff is in the hardware, and not subject to any GPL. The question is, if you hack your own copy of the BIOS so that it didn't include such a line, then somehow get the machine to use this new BIOS, would you be infringing anything?
I don't have a lot of hope for this discussion. If there are no natural rights, then there are no ethics. Every transaction is a contractual matter, and the rest is gamesmanship -- ppl doing their best to take advantage of the contracts/games available to them.
"the buyer can look at it, figure out how it works, make an imitation"
This is the problem that our patent system was designed to fix
Outrageous. My taking inspiration from someone's work and using my own creativity to expand on it is a problem. For fun, say it's not a knife, but a movie. Or a haiku.
Well, regardless, this is not the problem the IP system is designed to fix. As stated, the problem is underprovision of things that are nontangible. Nontangible products can be duplicated freely and given to everyone without violating the creator's rights (whether they're natural or contractual) to live and do what heshe likes.
Because of this quality (non-rivalrousness) of ideas, it is difficult to make a profit from their development/production. Because it is difficult to make a profit, (this part is theory) the socially-optimum quantity of e.g. science and the useful arts will not be produced in a free market.
The IP system addresses this problem -- underprovision, by creating artificial scarcity in things that are not naturally scarce.
"This is why so few people ever sell anything but their labor."
What? Look around you. Everybody is selling everything.
I only meant this is why so few people develop a new product and go into business selling it.
"Tom did not come to a deal with me. Tom does not have any of the rights I extended to the buyer"
The question is about Tom's rights to duplicate, imitate, and share the idea he has found. It seems you must choose
1. Tom can do whatever he wants with the idea, just as though it popped into his head like other ideas sometimes do.
or
2. Tom cannot do anything with the idea. "Tom does not have any of the rights I extended to the buyer ". In fact, Tom must pretend he has not encountered it because he does not have the right (which you sold only to 1 person) to use the idea.
Also: Tom must guess what rights he has w/r/t the idea, since all he has is the paper with the idea on it.
Sounds difficult. It's much easier if you say Tom can do what he wants as long as he doesn't hurt anyone else. This is what I think you mean when you say "Tom has the same rights to the idea that every other person does", although I don't think you realize it.
Pro: I get to eat.
Con: Other people don't get a free ride.
Wrong. When you disclose an idea, it's Pro: you get paid/eat. Con: you no longer control the idea, because it has taken up residence in someone else's head, and you do not control that person's head.
You might be able to persuade the government to let you partially control that person's head, and to punish that person if heshe uses his head in ways unapproved by you -- i.e. sharing the idea, performing the song, etc. Tell the govt. this would be an incentive for you to keep coming up with ideas. If they buy it, you will get some sort of IP system. But it's a tradeoff where the govt. is regulating someone's head in exchange for your promised ideas.
There is nothing wrong with giving stuff away. Its is a very noble thing. However, selling product, in and of itself, is not wrong.
In the second case, I think nothing prevents you from hacking up a screen for the shuffle somehow. Or coding in such a way that it sends the data out the USB port to a screen elsewhere. I don't know how those things work.
But the first example:
Doesn't the DMCA prevent you circumventing the md5 sumcheck? How does TiVO describe this part of the code -- which I guess is kind of a BIOS? and presumably TiVO's proprietary code?
Am I correct about what exactly TiVo did?
-grabbed whatev version of the kernel
-modified it, presumably to use their hardware efficiently
-made their code available somehow, in accord w/GPLv2 obligations
but
-included a secret key or something so that only TiVo's code actually works TiVos? i.e. there's nowhere to test/run your modified version of it?
Then don't call the people who hold one of the two opinions "fringe", and associate them with disparaging metaphors like ivory towers, and imply that they don't know how to function in the real world, and... and... and...
Like I remember installing Ubuntu once and gcc wasn't on it. Some other nontechnical-user-oriented distros I've seen were like that. They assume you'll use package managers to do everything?
If your reasons for choosing open development are pragmatic. If they are moral/ethical, then you might choose a less-efficient method of development.
Analogy: democracy, as it turns out, is pretty. Who'dathunkit? Monarchies & dictatorships are very efficient by comparison.
Did you know there are higher values than "efficiency"?
Crap, another question ...I have a lot to learn
on
Linus on GPL3 In Forbes
·
· Score: 5, Informative
GPLv3 code "crimps the style of mad scientists everywhere by also putting restrictions on the use of the source code. You cannot install it on your hardware (laser-equipped shark or otherwise) without also making sure that others can install another version"
If I understand it right, and I prolly don't, you can install any modified version whatsoever on your sharks. Your obligations re: making keys available etc. do not kick in until you distribute the modified version. i.e. if you're a shark salesman rather than a mad scientist.
Is that right?
A Brief Question of Fact re: "Most Popular"
on
Linus on GPL3 In Forbes
·
· Score: -1, Redundant
TFA: "Torvalds' opinion matters because his program is by far the most popular open source program in the world"
Is that actually true? Does that mean talked-about? What about Firefox? Or something like gcc?
GPLv3 is closing loopholes, see the TiVo example, by which people could use other people's work and ignore their obligations under the license, i.e. by making the code modifiable but making modified versions of the code unrunnable.
If Linus is fine with TiVo's method of coopting the kernel and making it for all practical purposes unmodifiable, that's his business. But lots of other people have contributed code to free software and are not.
PS: this is how I understand it so far. My opinion is subject to revision
"The copyright system and patent system, as broken as they may be, are designed to make it financially worthwhile for people to invest their time and capital to make new products."
But this is not an ethical argument. It is a practical one.
By nature I have the right to reverse engineer your machine or any other machine/software I feel like. Doing so does not violate your natural rights -- unless you feel (like the RIAA for example seems to) that you have a natural right to a quantitiy of revenue that you project you "would have earned" if I hadn't reverse-engineered yr stuff..
That of course would require a totally controlled market, where some entity (govt., presumably) made the projected revenue calculation and enforced your natural right to that sum because it is that entity's mandate to secure your natural rights.
In a "free" market, it works differently: you produce something and try to sell it. Let's say it's a knife. One disadvantage of selling it is that you no longer control it; the buyer can look at it, figure out how it works, make an imitation, or use it for something you never intended. Killing people with it is forbidden because it violates their natural rights, not because anyone (including you) retains any power to control the uses of what was purchased (unless part of the deal, i.e. a EULA)
The advantage of selling it is that you get paid. Weigh the pros and cons yourself.
"Research, engineering, and development take time and capital."
This is why so few people ever sell anything but their labor. But it does not ground any ethical argument about compensation for that time/capital investment. If I invent a machine that can produce fleas in infinite quantities, it doesn't matter how hard I worked at it.
"The copyright system and patent system, as broken as they may be, are designed to make it financially worthwhile for people to invest their time and capital to make new products."
You are correct: these are pragmatic solutions to the problem of underprovision of abstract commodities/ideas. But they are not based on a natural right you have to control an idea once you have shared it with someone else. That person can redistribute your idea without violating your natural rights (unless, as above, you feel you have a natural right to all the proceeds your idea generates).
But you weigh the pros and cons of sharing the idea, and come to a deal/EULA where the "buyer" cannot share the idea. You jot down the idea, the buyer takes it home, heshe dies, and the paper with the idea on it blows out the window. My brother, Tom, finds the paper. Now what?
And what of the fact that you are able to create that product by using the knowledge that resulted from other people's hard work. Do you compensate all of them?
I'm not picking a fight; I understand, and agree that you can limit my freedom to modify yr software as part of the deal. But the ethical basis for that is that breaking promises (made in the course of the deal) is bad.
Thought experiment: I invent a machine that can produce food in infinite quantities at no cost. I am free to make food available at whatever price I can finagle. People who agree to the price are not free to take the food and refuse to pay.
But what is the ethical basis for me restricting people's access to food? The fact that I worked hard inventing the machine?
I agree your statement makes zero sense. Nobody, not even the religousfanatic communistical free-lovin' America-hatin' FSF, thinks that software itself has rights.
PS: do whatever you want with your work. But you don't get to do whatever you want with *my computer.
Lots of ppl here quick to insert that word "religious" wherever they can. Zuck's piece did its job, I guess.
"To release a non-free program is always ethically tainted". This can be deduced from the premise "one should not abridge people's freedom". Maybe your own ethics don't include that premise. Or maybe none of your beliefs/premises are of the form "one should not _____", in which case you have no ethics.
"gowen has not made any comment doubting the validity of Zuck's deduction."
But I feel like I have to point out, in addition, that Zuck actually doesn't make any deductions. The piece is all rhetoric meant (as usual) to make ppl associate Stallman with religious zealotry, and an impractical unwillingness to compromise.
The only inter-subjectively verifiable/falsifiable sentences are of the form "Linus has been quoted as saying ______" or "Santayana said _______"
Slashdot Mirror
we only use 10% of the theoretical power in any programming language.
PHP might be the gedit of programming languages. No, gedit can't do everything emacs does, but it's always there when you need it and damned if it can't show you a bunch of text and let you edit. You can even search/replace
What's up with that? WIPO?
But I do know that the rate of inventions increased dramatically in the past couple of hundred years.
There's some data!
The problem, of course, is that it proves nothing. For every Industrial Age with patents there's a Renaissance or Athens without them.
The United States was a dramatic mover in technology from its inception as a country. Perhaps it's a coincidence that the US also had a strong notion of patents
See, this is where you should stop: "perhaps it's a coincidence". Maybe look at a real set of data before forming your opinion
My opinion is that lots of things were invented in the 18th century because the use of reason was widely encouraged. I encourage everyone to use reason. Base their opinions on data, that sort of thing
All the companies riding the coattails of all the legacy versions of windows will be native speakers of European.
Would fining a company because they broke the law be okay with you?
2. There would be about a 100-million-person case study confirming that
In other words, please please do this, bill.
if (md5sum(EXECUTABLE) != b8bc0c13ab3fe6c1727cf4a27b0204d2) {
/* just sit there doing nothing
}
This stuff is in the hardware, and not subject to any GPL. The question is, if you hack your own copy of the BIOS so that it didn't include such a line, then somehow get the machine to use this new BIOS, would you be infringing anything?
(If not, someone should do that now)
"the buyer can look at it, figure out how it works, make an imitation"
This is the problem that our patent system was designed to fix
Outrageous. My taking inspiration from someone's work and using my own creativity to expand on it is a problem. For fun, say it's not a knife, but a movie. Or a haiku.
Well, regardless, this is not the problem the IP system is designed to fix. As stated, the problem is underprovision of things that are nontangible. Nontangible products can be duplicated freely and given to everyone without violating the creator's rights (whether they're natural or contractual) to live and do what heshe likes.
Because of this quality (non-rivalrousness) of ideas, it is difficult to make a profit from their development/production. Because it is difficult to make a profit, (this part is theory) the socially-optimum quantity of e.g. science and the useful arts will not be produced in a free market.
The IP system addresses this problem -- underprovision, by creating artificial scarcity in things that are not naturally scarce.
"This is why so few people ever sell anything but their labor."
What? Look around you. Everybody is selling everything.
I only meant this is why so few people develop a new product and go into business selling it.
"Tom did not come to a deal with me. Tom does not have any of the rights I extended to the buyer"
The question is about Tom's rights to duplicate, imitate, and share the idea he has found. It seems you must choose
1. Tom can do whatever he wants with the idea, just as though it popped into his head like other ideas sometimes do.
or
2. Tom cannot do anything with the idea. "Tom does not have any of the rights I extended to the buyer ". In fact, Tom must pretend he has not encountered it because he does not have the right (which you sold only to 1 person) to use the idea.
Also: Tom must guess what rights he has w/r/t the idea, since all he has is the paper with the idea on it.
Sounds difficult. It's much easier if you say Tom can do what he wants as long as he doesn't hurt anyone else. This is what I think you mean when you say "Tom has the same rights to the idea that every other person does", although I don't think you realize it.
Pro: I get to eat.
Con: Other people don't get a free ride.
Wrong. When you disclose an idea, it's Pro: you get paid/eat. Con: you no longer control the idea, because it has taken up residence in someone else's head, and you do not control that person's head.
You might be able to persuade the government to let you partially control that person's head, and to punish that person if heshe uses his head in ways unapproved by you -- i.e. sharing the idea, performing the song, etc. Tell the govt. this would be an incentive for you to keep coming up with ideas. If they buy it, you will get some sort of IP system. But it's a tradeoff where the govt. is regulating someone's head in exchange for your promised ideas.
There is nothing wrong with giving stuff away. Its is a very noble thing. However, selling product, in and of itself, is not wrong.
Pure straw. Sell what you like.
But the first example:
Doesn't the DMCA prevent you circumventing the md5 sumcheck? How does TiVO describe this part of the code -- which I guess is kind of a BIOS? and presumably TiVO's proprietary code?
I was this close to giving up. Thanks for the links, too. read a couple of 'em before, but they cheer me up anyway.
Am I correct about what exactly TiVo did?
-grabbed whatev version of the kernel
-modified it, presumably to use their hardware efficiently
-made their code available somehow, in accord w/GPLv2 obligations
but
-included a secret key or something so that only TiVo's code actually works TiVos? i.e. there's nowhere to test/run your modified version of it?
Then don't call the people who hold one of the two opinions "fringe", and associate them with disparaging metaphors like ivory towers, and imply that they don't know how to function in the real world, and ... and ... and ...
Like I remember installing Ubuntu once and gcc wasn't on it. Some other nontechnical-user-oriented distros I've seen were like that. They assume you'll use package managers to do everything?
Analogy: democracy, as it turns out, is pretty. Who'dathunkit? Monarchies & dictatorships are very efficient by comparison.
Did you know there are higher values than "efficiency"?
If I understand it right, and I prolly don't, you can install any modified version whatsoever on your sharks. Your obligations re: making keys available etc. do not kick in until you distribute the modified version. i.e. if you're a shark salesman rather than a mad scientist.
Is that right?
Is that actually true? Does that mean talked-about? What about Firefox? Or something like gcc?
If Linus is fine with TiVo's method of coopting the kernel and making it for all practical purposes unmodifiable, that's his business. But lots of other people have contributed code to free software and are not.
PS: this is how I understand it so far. My opinion is subject to revision
But this is not an ethical argument. It is a practical one.
By nature I have the right to reverse engineer your machine or any other machine/software I feel like. Doing so does not violate your natural rights -- unless you feel (like the RIAA for example seems to) that you have a natural right to a quantitiy of revenue that you project you "would have earned" if I hadn't reverse-engineered yr stuff..
That of course would require a totally controlled market, where some entity (govt., presumably) made the projected revenue calculation and enforced your natural right to that sum because it is that entity's mandate to secure your natural rights.
In a "free" market, it works differently: you produce something and try to sell it. Let's say it's a knife. One disadvantage of selling it is that you no longer control it; the buyer can look at it, figure out how it works, make an imitation, or use it for something you never intended. Killing people with it is forbidden because it violates their natural rights, not because anyone (including you) retains any power to control the uses of what was purchased (unless part of the deal, i.e. a EULA)
The advantage of selling it is that you get paid. Weigh the pros and cons yourself.
"Research, engineering, and development take time and capital."
This is why so few people ever sell anything but their labor. But it does not ground any ethical argument about compensation for that time/capital investment. If I invent a machine that can produce fleas in infinite quantities, it doesn't matter how hard I worked at it.
"The copyright system and patent system, as broken as they may be, are designed to make it financially worthwhile for people to invest their time and capital to make new products."
You are correct: these are pragmatic solutions to the problem of underprovision of abstract commodities/ideas. But they are not based on a natural right you have to control an idea once you have shared it with someone else. That person can redistribute your idea without violating your natural rights (unless, as above, you feel you have a natural right to all the proceeds your idea generates).
But you weigh the pros and cons of sharing the idea, and come to a deal/EULA where the "buyer" cannot share the idea. You jot down the idea, the buyer takes it home, heshe dies, and the paper with the idea on it blows out the window. My brother, Tom, finds the paper. Now what?
I'm not picking a fight; I understand, and agree that you can limit my freedom to modify yr software as part of the deal. But the ethical basis for that is that breaking promises (made in the course of the deal) is bad.
Thought experiment: I invent a machine that can produce food in infinite quantities at no cost. I am free to make food available at whatever price I can finagle. People who agree to the price are not free to take the food and refuse to pay.
But what is the ethical basis for me restricting people's access to food? The fact that I worked hard inventing the machine?
I agree your statement makes zero sense. Nobody, not even the religousfanatic communistical free-lovin' America-hatin' FSF, thinks that software itself has rights.
PS: do whatever you want with your work. But you don't get to do whatever you want with *my computer.
wish i had a mod point for ye.
"To release a non-free program is always ethically tainted". This can be deduced from the premise "one should not abridge people's freedom". Maybe your own ethics don't include that premise. Or maybe none of your beliefs/premises are of the form "one should not _____", in which case you have no ethics.
"gowen has not made any comment doubting the validity of Zuck's deduction." But I feel like I have to point out, in addition, that Zuck actually doesn't make any deductions. The piece is all rhetoric meant (as usual) to make ppl associate Stallman with religious zealotry, and an impractical unwillingness to compromise. The only inter-subjectively verifiable/falsifiable sentences are of the form "Linus has been quoted as saying ______" or "Santayana said _______"
If you're looking for *real fallacies, name-calling, and overall weak reasoning, try TFA.
I've been wanting to search the internet for *years, and if I just download IE I can!!!! Wheee!!!