I can't help but think that the DeCSS case in some way represents a turning point in American society, and how it goes will be a prediction of much more important trends.
Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. There are quite a few examples of citizen organizations that have risen up to protest injustices inflicted by large powerful bodies (in this case corporations). Consider the following:
The women's rights movement
The environmental movements
The anti-Vietnam war movement
The civil rights movement
Any number of groups objecting to nasty regimes (Phillippines in the mid 80's, East Timorese etc.)
Indeed, it would be wise to learn the lessons from successful protest campaigns. One important lesson is the need to convince as many people as possible that the issue matters to them, so that they will get involved.
I was head tutor (approximately equivalent to a TA) for an introductory university C programming course. To allow students to work from home, we provided a CD including the Cygwin tools and a couple of other free development tools for Windows. It drove me absolutely nuts trying to provide installation support - and, being an Australian university, there weren't enough other staff to help. This was for a simple software package, not an operating system that has to cope with the vagaries of a huge variety of hardware and the joys of repartitioning and reformatting hard disks.
While any IT student who is serious about their profession should install Linux or a BSD on their computer, without a large committment of support resources it's not practical for a university to provide Linux (or Windows, for that matter) for their students.
Perhaps American universities have that luxury. If so, maybe I should consider a move:)
And continuing on this thread, why did the US embark on an expensive space program when it had a substantial part of its population living in poverty?
Because enough politicians figured that a game of one-upmanship with Russians was worthwhile in getting them votes. I don't really see the propaganda value in doing something that the US and Russia achieved almost 40 years ago, particularly when you do it with Russian technology!
China, despite the economic growth over the past 20 or so years, is a really poor country with lots of problems - chief among them the state-owned enterprises that are reportedly going to go down the toilet in the not-too-distant future.
The scientific payoff from sending up a copycat version of the Soyuz is minimal, and the propaganda benefits aren't all that great either (some research into undetectable sporting performance-enhancing drugs would achieve a similar propaganda result at a much lower cost), and the military benefits non-existent. So, what's the point - even from the view of the Chinese leadership?
Unless this was the first step in some kind of long-term plan (Mars anyone?)
In Texas (I believe), one of the graduation tests included a question on credit card usage. While most middle class kids have seen their parents use a credit card (heck, a lot probably have one), there are some poor students whose families don't even have bank accounts.
However, experiments have been done where biases like the above were removed from the tests (as much as possible). Minority students' test scores improved, but they were still below the mean.
This is a good example of the limitations of autonomous robots in natural terrain. While things have improved from 20 years ago, where mobile robots were first tried, it's still pathetic compared to what a pair of geologists with appropriate transport could do.
While research into mobile robots is very valuable stuff, you're still going to need people if you want to do real exploration on bodies out of radio range of Earth.
There are in fact World Cups for several sports, including rugby, volleyball, and (I think) tennis.
Mens' tennis national team championship is the Davis Cup, this year won by Australia (though, to be fair, Andre and Pete didn't play). The women's equivalent is the Federation Cup.
As for other World Cups, there are many of them, but perhaps the biggest one that you haven't mentioned is the cricket World Cup which was (you guessed it) won by Australia this year. It might seem like a really strange sport to Americans, but go ask an Indian or Pakistani expatriate about cricket and see the reaction you get. Better still, ask an English expatriate about cricket and watch their downtrodden look . . .
The Case For Mars, by Robert Zubrin. It presents a convincing case that:
Manned Mars explanation is necessary - robots just won't do
It could be done for less than the adjusted cost of the Apollo program, and in less than a decade
Mars is the most logical place for setting up sustainable off-Earth human civilizations
Colonizing Mars is necessary for the human race's continued happiness (yes, it sounds strange, but there he does make a convincing case)
A thoroughly inspirational read.
Re:Space travel won't solve overpopulation.
on
On to Mars
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· Score: 2
Kim Stanley Robinson's Blue Mars discusses this quite extensively. No feasible amount of emigration to other planets, even given cool technologies like fusion rockets or space elevators, is likely to solve Earth's population problem. Contraception, war, famine, and plague are the only real solutions to population control. I know which of the four is preferable.
By the way, this doesn't mean I don't support space exploration, including manned exploration. I'm just trying to clarify which arguments are valid ones.
After seeing the movie and reading it as a hatchet job on
Fascism
War movies
I decided to make an attempt at the book. After reading it, the only thing I gained was the realisation that Paul Verhoeven was also doing a hatchet job on the attitudes expressed in the book, and quite deservedly so. Did I miss some subtlety which placed the greater mass and apparent messages of the text in another context?
So we end up with less funding for them and more funding for useless liberal fedbloat.
What about cutting money for missile defence research? It was an expensive waste of time in the 1980's, will be an even more expensive waste of time in the coming decade.
Most free software projects rely on instant feedback from their users - as ESR points out, this is one of the greatest advantages we have over commercial developers. However, if developers aren't getting feedback from the target population (which, for many of the new projects out there, is J. Random User), that advantage is lost and applications which are too obtuse for them are produced. Therefore, the situation should be changed - developers must make an effort to get average users to get involved in development. This is difficult because development software is generally much more difficult to obtain and install, and, if feedback is to be useful, must be kept up-to-date on a regular (in some cases near-daily) basis.
The key thing developers can do to make this process easier for non-programmer users is provide binary rpms or debs of recent development, complete with instructions on how to install them. You must also pay close attention to the feedback they provide, even if it is difficult to follow sometimes (and extracting the exact nature of a problem or complaint can be like pulling teeth). Mozilla, perhaps the free software project most focussed on end-user development, does both of these things.
OTOH, it would be an interesting experiment in negative reinforcement (can you train a good sys admin by causing pain every time he screws the system over?).
You're obviously not a true sysadmin. A true sysadmin would be trying to find ways to fit their users with the device. Just imagine it - bounce the user off walls every time they overload the network downloading pr0n. . .
You should have the right to do whatever you like provided you aren't hurting anyone else. An idea that is quite popular on Slashdot, and reasonably popular elsewhere in the States (as far as I can tell as an outsider).
Therefore, as taking drugs does not hurt anyone but oneself, it should be legal.
Making drugs illegal has led to the US having a ridiculously large prison population, costing a fortune to maintain.
Drug law enforcement costs a fortune, and has not stopped the flow of illegal drugs anywhere.
The illegality of drugs is the cause of a majority of property crime.
More liberal drug laws work. Go check out what Europe does.
However, not only does the US retain its incredibly punitive drugs policy, it rams its failed approach down the throat of other countries like Australia!
So, no, logic isn't universal. People (especially in totalitarian regimes like China and Cuba) don't always have complete information, and even if they do, prejudices often get in the way. Like the US in this case.
BTW, most Australians who know anything about the issues agree that our censorship policies have been infiltrated by the religious right and Something Should Be Done(TM). Unfortunately, the only thing that can be done is vote out the present Federal Government and that won't happen for another 18 months or so:(
in that cases you throw out the rulebook and make it efficient for the narrow task at hand
However, "little languages" have a nasty habit of growing into full-fledged programming languages and the compromises that were fine when it was just a quick hack suddenly become ugly, cancerous warts.
IMHO, Tcl is an excellent example of a "little language" pushed too far. It was originally designed as a glue language for bits of C. The designer never envisiaged anyone writing fully-fledged programs purely in Tcl, and consequently there are some quite large warts lying around.
It has been claimed repeatedly that a virus, while not able to attack files that its user doesn't have write access to, could easily wipe out that user's entire home directory. Quite true (thanks for reminding me that I need to do a backup . ..)
However, most newbies don't run any binaries (or even scripts) that they have write access to! How is a file infector going to work if all their executables are owned by root and they don't have write access?
From the question, it appears that the idea is to have an LGPL version and a commercial binary-only version. Dumb question, if the two are identical why in the world would I pay for the commercial version?
As I understand it, The LGPL lets me ( Binary-Only Software Inc) get away with just about anything if I dynamically link, or merely requires me to provide a linkable object file containing my proprietary binary(and there are tools to combine a pile of object files into one massive one, so shipping one.o file would potentially meet the requirement), as well as requiring the distribution of the original LGPL code.
Are these minor hassles to Binary-Only Software Inc. really worth paying you money? I doubt it.
With the Cygwin distribution, Cygnus uses a dual GPL/commercial licence to ensure that binary-only developers need to pay for a licence. This would probably make more sense. I realise that such a licensing scheme would make life difficult for BSD'ers, but from a revenue-generating standpoint it's the only variation of this business model that really makes sense.
The slashdot community thinks that an invention is unworthy of a patent -- all without seeing a single line of any specification or claim. With all due respect, none of us, myself included, can comment on the validity or propriety of an application for a patent until we have seen what in fact is claimed.
I'm not prepared to comment on whether this deserved a patent under the existing criteria - because, as you rightly point out, I (like most of the posters here) don't have the background knowledge to do so.
However, I don't believe that it is *right* to patent this kind of thing. I don't believe society benefits from this kind of patent. I believe that patent law should be changed to avoid these patents, and the opportunity for wider re-examination of the patent system taken.
18 months ago. Sounds like yet another "too hard basket" jobby.
The Dreamcast is probably a more interesting target for a Linux port. If it can run WinCE it should have room for Linux. You might even run Emacs on it (shudder. ..)
Waste of time, but the technology could be useful.
on
Virtual Newscaster
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· Score: 2
If these guys have some decent technology to back up their rather slick marketing, that is.
For instance, if they've really developed text-to-speech technology that can read the text fluently and well enough not to be concentrating on the voice's synthesized quality, that would be kind of nifty. Similarly, while I believe the technology has been around for a while, synchronized lip movement with speech would be impressive. Imagine what this kind of thing could do in adventure games!
However, if the company has the technology to do this, why haven't they demonstrated it yet? Until I see some concrete evidence, I doubt there's terribly much behind the marketing waffle.
It's actually kind of nice that he picked chess. If he had have picked poker, he'd still be gloating. Anyway, he annoys me because he came to what have turned out to be irrefutable (at the moment) conclusions (ie that conventional computers can't give you general "intelligence") through erroneous premises and logic.
Penrose's "proofs" are hotly debated by many people working in logic and AI. I tend to agree with the dissenters, though I'm not convinced I've understood his arguments completely enough to be sure he's wrong.
Anyway, the jury is still very much out on Mr Penrose's ventures into the world of AI.
They probably can't afford Intuit, even with their grossly overinflated stock. Intuit is a multibillion dollar company, I believe.
#ifdef PLUG I'm part of a team working on a decent, GPL'd, accounting package for Linux. We're not quite Quicken yet, but we're working on it! Check out (with CVS preferably) Gnucash. #endif
Slashdot Mirror
Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. There are quite a few examples of citizen organizations that have risen up to protest injustices inflicted by large powerful bodies (in this case corporations). Consider the following:
Indeed, it would be wise to learn the lessons from successful protest campaigns. One important lesson is the need to convince as many people as possible that the issue matters to them, so that they will get involved.
While any IT student who is serious about their profession should install Linux or a BSD on their computer, without a large committment of support resources it's not practical for a university to provide Linux (or Windows, for that matter) for their students.
Perhaps American universities have that luxury. If so, maybe I should consider a move :)
Disclaimer: speaking for me only
Because enough politicians figured that a game of one-upmanship with Russians was worthwhile in getting them votes. I don't really see the propaganda value in doing something that the US and Russia achieved almost 40 years ago, particularly when you do it with Russian technology!
The scientific payoff from sending up a copycat version of the Soyuz is minimal, and the propaganda benefits aren't all that great either (some research into undetectable sporting performance-enhancing drugs would achieve a similar propaganda result at a much lower cost), and the military benefits non-existent. So, what's the point - even from the view of the Chinese leadership?
Unless this was the first step in some kind of long-term plan (Mars anyone?)
However, experiments have been done where biases like the above were removed from the tests (as much as possible). Minority students' test scores improved, but they were still below the mean.
While research into mobile robots is very valuable stuff, you're still going to need people if you want to do real exploration on bodies out of radio range of Earth.
Mens' tennis national team championship is the Davis Cup, this year won by Australia (though, to be fair, Andre and Pete didn't play). The women's equivalent is the Federation Cup.
As for other World Cups, there are many of them, but perhaps the biggest one that you haven't mentioned is the cricket World Cup which was (you guessed it) won by Australia this year. It might seem like a really strange sport to Americans, but go ask an Indian or Pakistani expatriate about cricket and see the reaction you get. Better still, ask an English expatriate about cricket and watch their downtrodden look . . .
A thoroughly inspirational read.
By the way, this doesn't mean I don't support space exploration, including manned exploration. I'm just trying to clarify which arguments are valid ones.
After seeing the movie and reading it as a hatchet job on
I decided to make an attempt at the book. After reading it, the only thing I gained was the realisation that Paul Verhoeven was also doing a hatchet job on the attitudes expressed in the book, and quite deservedly so. Did I miss some subtlety which placed the greater mass and apparent messages of the text in another context?
I'd try Snow Crash first, personally.
Surely you could throw in at least 2001 and Childhood's End.
What about cutting money for missile defence research? It was an expensive waste of time in the 1980's, will be an even more expensive waste of time in the coming decade.
The key thing developers can do to make this process easier for non-programmer users is provide binary rpms or debs of recent development, complete with instructions on how to install them. You must also pay close attention to the feedback they provide, even if it is difficult to follow sometimes (and extracting the exact nature of a problem or complaint can be like pulling teeth). Mozilla, perhaps the free software project most focussed on end-user development, does both of these things.
You're obviously not a true sysadmin. A true sysadmin would be trying to find ways to fit their users with the device. Just imagine it - bounce the user off walls every time they overload the network downloading pr0n. . .
So, no, logic isn't universal. People (especially in totalitarian regimes like China and Cuba) don't always have complete information, and even if they do, prejudices often get in the way. Like the US in this case.
BTW, most Australians who know anything about the issues agree that our censorship policies have been infiltrated by the religious right and Something Should Be Done(TM). Unfortunately, the only thing that can be done is vote out the present Federal Government and that won't happen for another 18 months or so :(
However, "little languages" have a nasty habit of growing into full-fledged programming languages and the compromises that were fine when it was just a quick hack suddenly become ugly, cancerous warts.
IMHO, Tcl is an excellent example of a "little language" pushed too far. It was originally designed as a glue language for bits of C. The designer never envisiaged anyone writing fully-fledged programs purely in Tcl, and consequently there are some quite large warts lying around.
However, most newbies don't run any binaries (or even scripts) that they have write access to! How is a file infector going to work if all their executables are owned by root and they don't have write access?
As I understand it, The LGPL lets me ( Binary-Only Software Inc) get away with just about anything if I dynamically link, or merely requires me to provide a linkable object file containing my proprietary binary(and there are tools to combine a pile of object files into one massive one, so shipping one .o file would potentially meet the requirement), as well as requiring the distribution of the original LGPL code.
Are these minor hassles to Binary-Only Software Inc. really worth paying you money? I doubt it.
With the Cygwin distribution, Cygnus uses a dual GPL/commercial licence to ensure that binary-only developers need to pay for a licence. This would probably make more sense. I realise that such a licensing scheme would make life difficult for BSD'ers, but from a revenue-generating standpoint it's the only variation of this business model that really makes sense.
I'm not prepared to comment on whether this deserved a patent under the existing criteria - because, as you rightly point out, I (like most of the posters here) don't have the background knowledge to do so.
However, I don't believe that it is *right* to patent this kind of thing. I don't believe society benefits from this kind of patent. I believe that patent law should be changed to avoid these patents, and the opportunity for wider re-examination of the patent system taken.
The Dreamcast is probably a more interesting target for a Linux port. If it can run WinCE it should have room for Linux. You might even run Emacs on it (shudder. . .)
For instance, if they've really developed text-to-speech technology that can read the text fluently and well enough not to be concentrating on the voice's synthesized quality, that would be kind of nifty. Similarly, while I believe the technology has been around for a while, synchronized lip movement with speech would be impressive. Imagine what this kind of thing could do in adventure games!
However, if the company has the technology to do this, why haven't they demonstrated it yet? Until I see some concrete evidence, I doubt there's terribly much behind the marketing waffle.
It's actually kind of nice that he picked chess. If he had have picked poker, he'd still be gloating. Anyway, he annoys me because he came to what have turned out to be irrefutable (at the moment) conclusions (ie that conventional computers can't give you general "intelligence") through erroneous premises and logic.
Anyway, the jury is still very much out on Mr Penrose's ventures into the world of AI.
#ifdef PLUG
I'm part of a team working on a decent, GPL'd, accounting package for Linux. We're not quite Quicken yet, but we're working on it! Check out (with CVS preferably) Gnucash.
#endif