I don't mean the video card's memory being swapped, just that the memory for the programs you want to use it being swapped. If the program itself isn't ready, it doesn't matter how fast the video card can display it.
Also, just to be more specific about how fast PCI express is, a PCI express 3.0 16x slot transfers at 128 GB/s. Your 8 MB texture should be able to get to it in around 60 microseconds. To put that into perspective, rendering the screen at 60 fps means one frame every 17 milliseconds, so even if the texture was transferred from main memory every frame, the actual rendering of the frame would take almost 300x longer.
It's anecdotal, to be sure... All I can tell you is that when I have tons of windows open on Win7, then switching to old ones takes a while to repaint (and it's quite noticeable). With few windows open, it's effectively instantaneous (i.e presumably within a few VSYNCs). And, no offense taken, but I absolutely do want high-performance tab/window switching in my desktop applications. If I don't have to wait for contents to be repainted, then I don't want to.
Since video memory transfers are so fast, it seems more likely that you're seeing normal swapping behavior -- Windows sees that you have 30 windows open but you're currently only using a few of them, so the rest get swapped out (even if you have a bunch of free memory). On Linux you can change the "swappiness" to fix this. You could see if there's a similar fix on Windows 7 (back when I used Windows XP I just disabled swap files and got a massive performance improvement).
My point is that it's a difference in opinion. You don't to share with people who won't share with you. I do. That's it. The BSD license doesn't make any ideological argument, it just says that you can use the code however you want. That's what I like, and I don't care about all of these things that you're so worked up about it. If you want to use my code you're welcome to use it and keep your code under the GPL.
The reasons to pick the GPL are practical. Without demanding a price for software the companies that use it won't reciprocate and users won't benefit.
I already responded to this in my last comment -- Theoretically companies could use BSD-licensed software without releasing their changes back to the community, but in practice, companies that use open source software tend to realize that there are huge benefits to working with the community (no one wants to maintain a fork if they don't have to).
What are we [arguing] about?
"less ideological purity."
I consider the BSD-licenses to be less idiological because I see them as a way to say "Here's my code, I have no opinion about how you use it. Have fun.", while the GPL is more "Here's my code, you can use it if you agree with me on this issue." I realize some people may see the BSD-licenses as "more free", but I see them as more practical (for reasons you obvious disagree with it, but that's not the point).
This. And trying to figure out why you think corporate welfare is good...
How is sharing code "corporate welfare"? Is every use of open source software a form of welfare now? The reason I want software usable by companies is that I work for one, and I like being able to use open source software where I work. I'm not the boss; I don't decide what gets open sourced and what does, but I can say "I could write my own database, or I could use SQLite (public domain)". BSD-style licenses make my job easier, and I'd like to make other people's jobs easier too, and I don't particularly care if they reciprocate (again, a personal choice, not something to argue about). If that happens to make companies I don't work for more productive, then who cares?
If nvidia can improve their code by using a library I wrote, I'd be happy to have them use it.
But why? All you giving them something for free does is further remove any incentive to share. If not for people like you their unsharable code might become a liability and encourage them to change their ways.
Because I don't care if they don't open source their drivers. I don't want to create a liability, I just want people to use my code. Besides, there always is an incentive to keep contributing back -- not having to maintain a fork. I assume this is the reason Apple keeps LLVM, Webkit and CUPS open source. They understand that it's easier for them to let the community deal with it. Companies that don't get this tend to not use open source software at all.
The BSDL trolls keep saying the GPL is meaningfully less free even though the GPLs "lack of freedom" only interferes with those who'd take everything and give nothing back. Further, the BSDLers always miss the point that most GPLers find the users of the software, and their access to code (even if they don't currently understand the benefits), to be more important than the right of the developer to get code for free.
All they do is harp on about ideological purity, and how (from their POV) the GPL lacks it.
Read my original post. I didn't say anything about the GPL, I just said that the BSD license isn't as bad as the OP said. Whether to use one or the other really does come down to what you want out of it -- I want my code to be usable by anyone in any software they care to put it in, you want your code to only be usable by people who share their code too. It's your code, do what you want with it. The whole point of my post was just to counter this:
Then, once you've got a really great project, I'll take it, place it under my own licence that forbids you from even mentioning it again, and call it my own. Since I can afford scarier lawyers than you, there's nothing you can do about it.
Time was, food wasn't inspected, water wasn't clean, and buildings weren't built to code. People died as a result. Everyone who says "the market will take care of that" forgets that the market didn't, until the government said they had to.
And if the government stopped doing it, the world would suddenly revert back to the early 1900's and no one would notice. It's not likely people would continue to demand the same level of quality. And it's not like there are stores that already sell food certified by non-government groups (organic, kosher, gluten free, vegan).
If the government doesn't exist or is in the very least rendered completely impotent due to its lack of funds, then the capitalist side of your ideal world also falls apart, because I make a deal with you to buy, say, 10 bushels of apples for 1 ounce of gold, and when you give me the apples the economically rational thing to do is shoot you and keep the gold. And by making many such deals, I eventually acquire both enough stuff and gold to be able to raise my own private army, and before you know it we've got a bunch of warlords with armies running around trying to slaughter each other.
So you're going to kill everyone who produces the things you want? And no one is going to stop you just because the government isn't doing it? If someone broke into your house and tried to kill you, would you just let them because the police aren't there to save you? If you knew there was no government, you wouldn't get your own protection (buy a gun, pay someone else to protect you, etc)?
Yeah because the problems in Somalia are all caused by the lack of government, just like all of our money and technology are entirely the result of government.
Agreed on the anarchist thing. Also worth mentioning- People will protect themselves.. how do you suppose they'll do it.. perhaps they'll make a watch-group. Maybe we'll call it the police. Maybe other people will want protecting as well. Then at some point, we'll decide as a group that society benefits better if the police protect everybody equally, to discourage crime unilaterally. Oops, did we just invent a government? Let's skip these steps and just say we're better off without anarchism.
Perfect example, considering defense and police are pretty much the only thing that all Libertarians agree should be handled by the government (what separates them from Anarchists).
Presumably many people want nice parks, clean water, safe cars, and so on. When people want things, it generates something called "demand" in the economy
Capitalism means that your "want" has to be greater than everyone else's "want" in terms of cash on the barrel before you get what you want. Want a park? Developers want that land to build $500k houses on. Ready to pony up a few million dollars for your park? No?
You're welcome to say "then it's fine you don't get a park". You're not welcome to imply that capitalism will provide otherwise.
So you want a park and someone else wants a house. How should we decide who gets what? If only we had some sort of system to determine who should get it. Like comparing who has done the most for other people. We could exchange something whenever we get goods or services from someone else. When we want something, we could exchange them for whatever we want. If there are two people who want the same thing, we could give it to whoever is willing and able to give the most for it. Unfortunately I'm a common Slashdot troll, so I can't imagine what that kind of system would be like though.
Furthermore, being paid under the table is illegal, working for that wage doesn't give you enough to retire, and also doesn't give you social security benefits nor good medical care.
Yeah because having no job is better than having a job that doesn't give you benefits and enough money to retire!
Some people want their code to be usable by anyone, even if it means less ideological purity.
Exactly. And the GPL is the best license for achieving this. The miniscule extra freedom the BSDL could have to offer is at the cost of its effectiveness. The small compromise the GPL makes vastly increases its real-world usefulness.
By usable by anyone, I mean even people who don't want to give back to the community (the less ideological purity point). Contrary to popular belief, open sourcing all of your code isn't always possible. If you're using code under a license that's not compatible with the GPL, you can't use GPL code without getting rid of your other code. Also, sometimes your code contains secrets that aren't yours to share (this is the excuse nVidia gives for not open sourcing their drivers). If nvidia can improve their code by using a library I wrote, I'd be happy to have them use it. I understand that not everyone agrees, and it's your code so do what you want. My point was that BSD-style licenses aren't as scary as the GP was making them out to be.
To make your code usable, and helpful, to everyone it's got to be available to them. Even if they never look they'll benefit from being able to hire consultants to change it. The BSDL doesn't attempt this, the GPL does.
If you use the BSDL other programmers aren't disadvantaged because they know where to go to get your original code even if it's been eclipsed by a closed-source version. But users are simply stuck with a closed-source package and it's far less useful in the long run.
Agreed, there are reasons to prefer to GPL. I never disputed that.
If you used the GPL the only person inconvenienced is someone who wants to 1) use someone's code without paying, 2) without passing the benefits to the users. Everyone else would have as much, or far more, access.
The GPL and BSD-style licenses are pretty much identical when it comes to using code without paying so I don't see your point for #1. #2 isn't as black-and-white as you're making it out to be for the reasons I mentioned above (not everyone can open-source their code, and some of us don't care if they do).
BSD trolls (because non-trolls don't care) go on and on about how the GPL isn't free because it wouldn't have been as convenient for a Bill Gates as the BSDL is, but they miss that 1) this person is far rarer than most users, 2) this person is an absolute jerk - trying to deny their users the benefits they've had. So, to the degree the GPL does hurt this person, good. It's protecting everyone else from them.
Those jerks like Apple using LLVM and not contributing their changes back to the community? Or when they took KHTML, made massive improvements so they could use it in their browser, and then didn't give their changes back to the community*? Or that time Google decided to use Webkit but needed their own JavaScript engine, so they wrote it and kept it closed source?
Oh wait, I must be living in an alternate universe than you, because I'm not seeing the horror stories you're complaining about.
* Note: Webkit is partially LGPL and partial BSDL but the argument for the LGPL is similar to BSD-style licenses.
Maybe you should look at licenses that don't place any restriction on what people do with your code.
Then, once you've got a really great project, I'll take it, place it under my own licence that forbids you from even mentioning it again, and call it my own.
With many licenses, you could redistribute the software with a new license, but you're making it sound like you could change the license of the original (which you can't). You can place your copy under whatever restrictive license you want, but it doesn't change the fact that the original is still free (and the original author probably owns the copyright).
Since I can afford scarier lawyers than you, there's nothing you can do about it.
Having scarier lawyers has nothing to do with it. BSD-style intentionally let other people re-license the code, because some people want their code to be usable by anyone, even if it means less ideological purity.
Macro and micro evolution are the same thing on different time scales, and if one works, the other has to.
Like the way that effects observed at quantum sizes have to manifest themselves at macroscopic sizes? And the way that objects behave at low speeds has to imply they behave the same at near-light speed? The trouble with your assertion is that there may be some greater, overriding principle or effect that only comes into play in larger timescales... inferring macroevolution based on observations of microevolution is certainly a plausible working hypothesis (and indeed I believe it myself) - but it's far from being the "has to" you claim...
Relativity and quantum physics aren't good analogies in this case. What happens with science is that we do tests in some range (certain speeds, certain scales), and then find out what happens within those scales. Newtonian physics failed to predict things that only happen (to an observable degree) in conditions that weren't tested until recently. The reason the analogy fails when applied to evolution is that macro and micro evolution have the same parameters (the conditions on Earth) when applied to a single generation, we just use more generations for macro evolution. It's like how you can use the same equations to predict the movements of two billiard balls as with a million. They're still all within the parameters (speed, size, etc), there's just more balls.
It further demonstrates my point about the inconvenience of measuring rods.
Personally, I find a measuring rod that says everything is the same size kind of useless. If everything that can't be definitively proven is faith, then everything is, which makes the word completely pointless. I propose that we use the commonly accepted definition, believing something without any proof, as in "I just feel it" (what most religious people will say when asked about their faith). No one uses faith in the way you're describing. I believe certain things that I can't definitively prove, but belief with evidence is not faith.
This whole argument seems to be people saying "Scientists think they're so smart just because they have a method of verifying what they think. What I think is smart too, so we should call them the same thing."
Part of the problem today is that attempts to examine the science have generated scandal, in that it was not science that was reported, but manipulated data. I am thinking here of the climate data debacle. Those that fear AGW may well be correct, but if the only thing available to support the idea is corrupt, it calls the whole business into question.
Except it's not. People only pay attention to the scandals, and then ignore the findings once its actually researched.
Three investigations into the affair were initiated in the UK, two of which were concluded by the end of March 2010, with the remaining review releasing its findings on 7 July.[9] The CRU's director, Professor Phil Jones, stood aside temporarily from his post during the reviews, then was reinstated in a new position as Director of Research after the reviews cleared him of the most serious charges.[9][10]
The investigations concluded that there was no evidence of scientific malpractice and Jones was cleared of any scientific misconduct.[11] They reported that while sharing of data and methods was in line with common scientific practice, it was desirable that there should be greater openness and information sharing.[12] The Select Committee report concluded that "the scientific reputation of Jones and the CRU was untarnished".
The problem is that people only hear what they want to hear and then stop listening again when it turns out they were wrong.
As another commenter already pointed out, my first two paragraphs are about one testable hypothesis (correlation between CO2 levels and temperature). My fourth paragraph is about a second hypothesis, which is exactly what you're claiming I don't know about.
For my theory that "CO2 levels cause global warming" to be true, both of these things must be true: 1. CO2 levels and global temperature are related (correlation) 2. The change in CO2 levels causes a change in global temperature, not the other way around, and they're not both caused by some other variable (causation)
Both are testable hypothesis (I've described some possible tests in my previous comment, someone more familiar with the subject could probably give better ones). They are testable; it is science; people testing it are scientists. That's my entire point. Whether you agree with the conclusions that most global warming scientists make is irrelevant. You're free to look at the data and the hypothesis and make your own conclusions -- being able to do that is one of the great things about science. You can accept what scientists in the field say, or you can check it yourself, but not liking the conclusions that other scientists make doesn't make it not science (we know that Newton wasn't quite right about physics and no one claims he wasn't doing science).
Macro vs micro evolution is a distinction made for convenience, not to represent any special difference between the two. Macro and micro evolution are the same thing on different time scales, and if one works, the other has to.
No, that's not necessarily true. That's an assumption, and one rather largely unproven. Thereby, it's not demonstrable and is therefore faith, not science.
It's not an assumption, it's a definition. Micro-evolution is natural selection at small scales. Macro evolution is natural selection at large scales. They are the same thing, the difference is time or the result (more differences).
That's the great thing about science -- using small things that we can observe to understand big things that we can't.
Your argument makes as much sense as saying that since we will probably never be able to watch a planet form up-close, we'll never understand how planet formation works. Who cares if we understand the basics (gravity, thermodynamics, radioactive decay, conservation of momentum), we haven't actually seen it so despite what we know, it must be magic.
For example, Newtonian Physics works great at the macro (every-day-object), slow-speed level. However, it substantially breaks down at the macro, high-speed and the micro levels. Einstein improved this with special relativity, though it still breaks down at the sub-micro levels, where Quantum mechanics fine tune from there using vastly different equations - different enough it cannot be reconciled (yet) with Newtonian and Einsteinian Physics. Yet, we wouldn't know that there is any break down of the Newtonian Physics without demonstrating it, the same goes for Einsteinian Physics.
Time is not the same thing as size and speed. Yes, maybe evolution doesn't work close to the speed or light, or at the atomic level. No one is claiming that does. What you seem to be claiming is that everything we know about physics only applies on short time scale, which we do have evidence for (the speed of light changing would make distant galaxies look different, gravity changing would do the same thing, changes in the strength of forces like the strong and weak nuclear forces would completely change everything).
You're also missing the point of science becoming "less wrong" all the time, meaning that if we found out that things that work now didn't work before, it would have to be a tiny tiny difference, or we would've noticed already. I highly recommend reading this article by Isaac Asimov. It explains things like how Einstein discovering relativity didn't prove that all of physics was wrong, just a very very small part of it.
Now for part of the kicker - Micro-Evolution has been shown to be temporary in many cases. Things "evolve" to meet a need, and as soon as the need is no longer they revert back. This has been shown time and time again - example: check out any of the examples used by Darwin to demonstrate Micro-Evolution; they all reverted after a time. All within his lifetime nonetheless.
I'm not actually familiar with this, do you have references I could see?
By this logic if I can walk from my house to the store, I should be able to walk from Boston to London. They're just at different scales!
So walking on dry land is the same as walking on water? If you argument was "I should be able to walk from Boston to LA", then yes.. you could. It would take a long time, and probably more money than you'd be willing to spend to test it, but you could. On the other hand, if you can't walk from your house to the store, then based on that knowledge we could safely assume that you can't walk from Boston to LA.
What evidence do you have that macro and micro evolution are the same thing? Your argument "it has to" is exactly no argument at all, but a statement of faith.
Definition. Macro evolution is defined to be evolution on large time scales or evolution that results in large changes (depending on who you talk to). Micro evolution is defined to be evolution on small time scales or with small results. They're both the exact same thing (natural selection). If you had a small bar of iron and a massive bar of iron, would you expect them to have different properties (besides size)? One will obviously weight more, but they're both still iron.
Look, they are not saying science has less merit or that its merits are strictly that of faith. What they are saying is, by the time it trickles down to the layman, they only acknowledgement is strictly ONLY, "because I said so", from an authoritative source. Given that many people consider churches and/or religions to be an authoritative source , in the layman's eyes, its a difference without distinction. After all, in both cases, its completely a leap of faith.
But the information is there. Whether you care or not doesn't change the fact that if you want to understand why scientists believe something, you can usually look it up on Wikipedia. If that's not enough, you can get a book. There are generally books that will explain experiments you could do to reproduce it (or at high levels, references to experiments, and the data which you can find the conclusion for yourself -- unless you think that there's some grand conspiracy between multiple universities in multiple countries to fake the data, which is a matter of trust, not faith).
Compare that to religion. The Wikipedia article on God doesn't explain how magic works. There are no books on how to do magic (that aren't fake). Religious texts usually don't suggest any experiments you could try (besides dying or waiting for Jesus to return).
Your ideas have intrigued me. Could you please direct me to how I can sign up for your newsletter. I am most interested in your experiments duplicating the creation of antihydrogen as well as recreating the big bang, abiogenesis and whatever else you have used in your methodology in doing so.
Perhaps when you show us how to do that, I can show you how to make a man blind with the touch of my hand.
Mind explaining to me what physical process would cause making a blind man see by touching him with your hand? I'm very interested how you came to this conclusion. Let's compare how many steps we can explain before getting to "God did it".
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I don't mean the video card's memory being swapped, just that the memory for the programs you want to use it being swapped. If the program itself isn't ready, it doesn't matter how fast the video card can display it.
Also, just to be more specific about how fast PCI express is, a PCI express 3.0 16x slot transfers at 128 GB/s. Your 8 MB texture should be able to get to it in around 60 microseconds. To put that into perspective, rendering the screen at 60 fps means one frame every 17 milliseconds, so even if the texture was transferred from main memory every frame, the actual rendering of the frame would take almost 300x longer.
It's anecdotal, to be sure... All I can tell you is that when I have tons of windows open on Win7, then switching to old ones takes a while to repaint (and it's quite noticeable). With few windows open, it's effectively instantaneous (i.e presumably within a few VSYNCs). And, no offense taken, but I absolutely do want high-performance tab/window switching in my desktop applications. If I don't have to wait for contents to be repainted, then I don't want to.
Since video memory transfers are so fast, it seems more likely that you're seeing normal swapping behavior -- Windows sees that you have 30 windows open but you're currently only using a few of them, so the rest get swapped out (even if you have a bunch of free memory). On Linux you can change the "swappiness" to fix this. You could see if there's a similar fix on Windows 7 (back when I used Windows XP I just disabled swap files and got a massive performance improvement).
I thought it was an empty colon?
My point is that it's a difference in opinion. You don't to share with people who won't share with you. I do. That's it. The BSD license doesn't make any ideological argument, it just says that you can use the code however you want. That's what I like, and I don't care about all of these things that you're so worked up about it. If you want to use my code you're welcome to use it and keep your code under the GPL.
The reasons to pick the GPL are practical. Without demanding a price for software the companies that use it won't reciprocate and users won't benefit.
I already responded to this in my last comment -- Theoretically companies could use BSD-licensed software without releasing their changes back to the community, but in practice, companies that use open source software tend to realize that there are huge benefits to working with the community (no one wants to maintain a fork if they don't have to).
What are we [arguing] about?
"less ideological purity."
I consider the BSD-licenses to be less idiological because I see them as a way to say "Here's my code, I have no opinion about how you use it. Have fun.", while the GPL is more "Here's my code, you can use it if you agree with me on this issue." I realize some people may see the BSD-licenses as "more free", but I see them as more practical (for reasons you obvious disagree with it, but that's not the point).
This. And trying to figure out why you think corporate welfare is good...
How is sharing code "corporate welfare"? Is every use of open source software a form of welfare now? The reason I want software usable by companies is that I work for one, and I like being able to use open source software where I work. I'm not the boss; I don't decide what gets open sourced and what does, but I can say "I could write my own database, or I could use SQLite (public domain)". BSD-style licenses make my job easier, and I'd like to make other people's jobs easier too, and I don't particularly care if they reciprocate (again, a personal choice, not something to argue about). If that happens to make companies I don't work for more productive, then who cares?
If nvidia can improve their code by using a library I wrote, I'd be happy to have them use it.
But why? All you giving them something for free does is further remove any incentive to share. If not for people like you their unsharable code might become a liability and encourage them to change their ways.
Because I don't care if they don't open source their drivers. I don't want to create a liability, I just want people to use my code. Besides, there always is an incentive to keep contributing back -- not having to maintain a fork. I assume this is the reason Apple keeps LLVM, Webkit and CUPS open source. They understand that it's easier for them to let the community deal with it. Companies that don't get this tend to not use open source software at all.
The BSDL trolls keep saying the GPL is meaningfully less free even though the GPLs "lack of freedom" only interferes with those who'd take everything and give nothing back. Further, the BSDLers always miss the point that most GPLers find the users of the software, and their access to code (even if they don't currently understand the benefits), to be more important than the right of the developer to get code for free.
All they do is harp on about ideological purity, and how (from their POV) the GPL lacks it.
Read my original post. I didn't say anything about the GPL, I just said that the BSD license isn't as bad as the OP said. Whether to use one or the other really does come down to what you want out of it -- I want my code to be usable by anyone in any software they care to put it in, you want your code to only be usable by people who share their code too. It's your code, do what you want with it. The whole point of my post was just to counter this:
Then, once you've got a really great project, I'll take it, place it under my own licence that forbids you from even mentioning it again, and call it my own. Since I can afford scarier lawyers than you, there's nothing you can do about it.
Obvious lie right? What are we argument about?
There is no government or taxes in Somalia right now. How's that working out?
About the same as when there was a government in Somalia.
Time was, food wasn't inspected, water wasn't clean, and buildings weren't built to code. People died as a result. Everyone who says "the market will take care of that" forgets that the market didn't, until the government said they had to.
And if the government stopped doing it, the world would suddenly revert back to the early 1900's and no one would notice. It's not likely people would continue to demand the same level of quality. And it's not like there are stores that already sell food certified by non-government groups (organic, kosher, gluten free, vegan).
If the government doesn't exist or is in the very least rendered completely impotent due to its lack of funds, then the capitalist side of your ideal world also falls apart, because I make a deal with you to buy, say, 10 bushels of apples for 1 ounce of gold, and when you give me the apples the economically rational thing to do is shoot you and keep the gold. And by making many such deals, I eventually acquire both enough stuff and gold to be able to raise my own private army, and before you know it we've got a bunch of warlords with armies running around trying to slaughter each other.
So you're going to kill everyone who produces the things you want? And no one is going to stop you just because the government isn't doing it? If someone broke into your house and tried to kill you, would you just let them because the police aren't there to save you? If you knew there was no government, you wouldn't get your own protection (buy a gun, pay someone else to protect you, etc)?
Yeah because the problems in Somalia are all caused by the lack of government, just like all of our money and technology are entirely the result of government.
Agreed on the anarchist thing. Also worth mentioning- People will protect themselves.. how do you suppose they'll do it.. perhaps they'll make a watch-group. Maybe we'll call it the police. Maybe other people will want protecting as well. Then at some point, we'll decide as a group that society benefits better if the police protect everybody equally, to discourage crime unilaterally. Oops, did we just invent a government? Let's skip these steps and just say we're better off without anarchism.
Perfect example, considering defense and police are pretty much the only thing that all Libertarians agree should be handled by the government (what separates them from Anarchists).
Presumably many people want nice parks, clean water, safe cars, and so on. When people want things, it generates something called "demand" in the economy
Capitalism means that your "want" has to be greater than everyone else's "want" in terms of cash on the barrel before you get what you want. Want a park? Developers want that land to build $500k houses on. Ready to pony up a few million dollars for your park? No?
You're welcome to say "then it's fine you don't get a park". You're not welcome to imply that capitalism will provide otherwise.
So you want a park and someone else wants a house. How should we decide who gets what? If only we had some sort of system to determine who should get it. Like comparing who has done the most for other people. We could exchange something whenever we get goods or services from someone else. When we want something, we could exchange them for whatever we want. If there are two people who want the same thing, we could give it to whoever is willing and able to give the most for it. Unfortunately I'm a common Slashdot troll, so I can't imagine what that kind of system would be like though.
Furthermore, being paid under the table is illegal, working for that wage doesn't give you enough to retire, and also doesn't give you social security benefits nor good medical care.
Yeah because having no job is better than having a job that doesn't give you benefits and enough money to retire!
Some people want their code to be usable by anyone, even if it means less ideological purity.
Exactly. And the GPL is the best license for achieving this. The miniscule extra freedom the BSDL could have to offer is at the cost of its effectiveness. The small compromise the GPL makes vastly increases its real-world usefulness.
By usable by anyone, I mean even people who don't want to give back to the community (the less ideological purity point). Contrary to popular belief, open sourcing all of your code isn't always possible. If you're using code under a license that's not compatible with the GPL, you can't use GPL code without getting rid of your other code. Also, sometimes your code contains secrets that aren't yours to share (this is the excuse nVidia gives for not open sourcing their drivers). If nvidia can improve their code by using a library I wrote, I'd be happy to have them use it. I understand that not everyone agrees, and it's your code so do what you want. My point was that BSD-style licenses aren't as scary as the GP was making them out to be.
To make your code usable, and helpful, to everyone it's got to be available to them. Even if they never look they'll benefit from being able to hire consultants to change it. The BSDL doesn't attempt this, the GPL does.
If you use the BSDL other programmers aren't disadvantaged because they know where to go to get your original code even if it's been eclipsed by a closed-source version. But users are simply stuck with a closed-source package and it's far less useful in the long run.
Agreed, there are reasons to prefer to GPL. I never disputed that.
If you used the GPL the only person inconvenienced is someone who wants to 1) use someone's code without paying, 2) without passing the benefits to the users. Everyone else would have as much, or far more, access.
The GPL and BSD-style licenses are pretty much identical when it comes to using code without paying so I don't see your point for #1. #2 isn't as black-and-white as you're making it out to be for the reasons I mentioned above (not everyone can open-source their code, and some of us don't care if they do).
BSD trolls (because non-trolls don't care) go on and on about how the GPL isn't free because it wouldn't have been as convenient for a Bill Gates as the BSDL is, but they miss that 1) this person is far rarer than most users, 2) this person is an absolute jerk - trying to deny their users the benefits they've had. So, to the degree the GPL does hurt this person, good. It's protecting everyone else from them.
Those jerks like Apple using LLVM and not contributing their changes back to the community? Or when they took KHTML, made massive improvements so they could use it in their browser, and then didn't give their changes back to the community*? Or that time Google decided to use Webkit but needed their own JavaScript engine, so they wrote it and kept it closed source?
Oh wait, I must be living in an alternate universe than you, because I'm not seeing the horror stories you're complaining about.
* Note: Webkit is partially LGPL and partial BSDL but the argument for the LGPL is similar to BSD-style licenses.
Maybe you should look at licenses that don't place any restriction on what people do with your code.
Then, once you've got a really great project, I'll take it, place it under my own licence that forbids you from even mentioning it again, and call it my own.
With many licenses, you could redistribute the software with a new license, but you're making it sound like you could change the license of the original (which you can't). You can place your copy under whatever restrictive license you want, but it doesn't change the fact that the original is still free (and the original author probably owns the copyright).
Since I can afford scarier lawyers than you, there's nothing you can do about it.
Having scarier lawyers has nothing to do with it. BSD-style intentionally let other people re-license the code, because some people want their code to be usable by anyone, even if it means less ideological purity.
Oversight of the banking industry, or any other similar juggernaut of potential corruption.
You mean like the banking industry that convinced the government to give them almost a trillion dollars?
And why would I want this on my server anyway?? If people want the internet faster there are obvious things that can be done,
1. Stop using those fucking redirects everywhere!!
2. HTTP pipelining - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_pipelining
3. Stop with the google-analytics, tracking, spying, etc.
4. Make the protocol more efficient
It's not like we can only pick one.
Macro and micro evolution are the same thing on different time scales, and if one works, the other has to.
Like the way that effects observed at quantum sizes have to manifest themselves at macroscopic sizes? And the way that objects behave at low speeds has to imply they behave the same at near-light speed? The trouble with your assertion is that there may be some greater, overriding principle or effect that only comes into play in larger timescales... inferring macroevolution based on observations of microevolution is certainly a plausible working hypothesis (and indeed I believe it myself) - but it's far from being the "has to" you claim...
Relativity and quantum physics aren't good analogies in this case. What happens with science is that we do tests in some range (certain speeds, certain scales), and then find out what happens within those scales. Newtonian physics failed to predict things that only happen (to an observable degree) in conditions that weren't tested until recently. The reason the analogy fails when applied to evolution is that macro and micro evolution have the same parameters (the conditions on Earth) when applied to a single generation, we just use more generations for macro evolution. It's like how you can use the same equations to predict the movements of two billiard balls as with a million. They're still all within the parameters (speed, size, etc), there's just more balls.
It further demonstrates my point about the inconvenience of measuring rods.
Personally, I find a measuring rod that says everything is the same size kind of useless. If everything that can't be definitively proven is faith, then everything is, which makes the word completely pointless. I propose that we use the commonly accepted definition, believing something without any proof, as in "I just feel it" (what most religious people will say when asked about their faith). No one uses faith in the way you're describing. I believe certain things that I can't definitively prove, but belief with evidence is not faith.
This whole argument seems to be people saying "Scientists think they're so smart just because they have a method of verifying what they think. What I think is smart too, so we should call them the same thing."
Part of the problem today is that attempts to examine the science have generated scandal, in that it was not science that was reported, but manipulated data. I am thinking here of the climate data debacle. Those that fear AGW may well be correct, but if the only thing available to support the idea is corrupt, it calls the whole business into question.
Except it's not. People only pay attention to the scandals, and then ignore the findings once its actually researched.
From the Wikipedia article on Climatic Research Unit email controversy:
Three investigations into the affair were initiated in the UK, two of which were concluded by the end of March 2010, with the remaining review releasing its findings on 7 July.[9] The CRU's director, Professor Phil Jones, stood aside temporarily from his post during the reviews, then was reinstated in a new position as Director of Research after the reviews cleared him of the most serious charges.[9][10]
The investigations concluded that there was no evidence of scientific malpractice and Jones was cleared of any scientific misconduct.[11] They reported that while sharing of data and methods was in line with common scientific practice, it was desirable that there should be greater openness and information sharing.[12] The Select Committee report concluded that "the scientific reputation of Jones and the CRU was untarnished".
The problem is that people only hear what they want to hear and then stop listening again when it turns out they were wrong.
As another commenter already pointed out, my first two paragraphs are about one testable hypothesis (correlation between CO2 levels and temperature). My fourth paragraph is about a second hypothesis, which is exactly what you're claiming I don't know about.
For my theory that "CO2 levels cause global warming" to be true, both of these things must be true:
1. CO2 levels and global temperature are related (correlation)
2. The change in CO2 levels causes a change in global temperature, not the other way around, and they're not both caused by some other variable (causation)
Both are testable hypothesis (I've described some possible tests in my previous comment, someone more familiar with the subject could probably give better ones). They are testable; it is science; people testing it are scientists. That's my entire point. Whether you agree with the conclusions that most global warming scientists make is irrelevant. You're free to look at the data and the hypothesis and make your own conclusions -- being able to do that is one of the great things about science. You can accept what scientists in the field say, or you can check it yourself, but not liking the conclusions that other scientists make doesn't make it not science (we know that Newton wasn't quite right about physics and no one claims he wasn't doing science).
Macro vs micro evolution is a distinction made for convenience, not to represent any special difference between the two. Macro and micro evolution are the same thing on different time scales, and if one works, the other has to.
No, that's not necessarily true. That's an assumption, and one rather largely unproven. Thereby, it's not demonstrable and is therefore faith, not science.
It's not an assumption, it's a definition. Micro-evolution is natural selection at small scales. Macro evolution is natural selection at large scales. They are the same thing, the difference is time or the result (more differences).
That's the great thing about science -- using small things that we can observe to understand big things that we can't.
Your argument makes as much sense as saying that since we will probably never be able to watch a planet form up-close, we'll never understand how planet formation works. Who cares if we understand the basics (gravity, thermodynamics, radioactive decay, conservation of momentum), we haven't actually seen it so despite what we know, it must be magic.
For example, Newtonian Physics works great at the macro (every-day-object), slow-speed level. However, it substantially breaks down at the macro, high-speed and the micro levels. Einstein improved this with special relativity, though it still breaks down at the sub-micro levels, where Quantum mechanics fine tune from there using vastly different equations - different enough it cannot be reconciled (yet) with Newtonian and Einsteinian Physics. Yet, we wouldn't know that there is any break down of the Newtonian Physics without demonstrating it, the same goes for Einsteinian Physics.
Time is not the same thing as size and speed. Yes, maybe evolution doesn't work close to the speed or light, or at the atomic level. No one is claiming that does. What you seem to be claiming is that everything we know about physics only applies on short time scale, which we do have evidence for (the speed of light changing would make distant galaxies look different, gravity changing would do the same thing, changes in the strength of forces like the strong and weak nuclear forces would completely change everything).
You're also missing the point of science becoming "less wrong" all the time, meaning that if we found out that things that work now didn't work before, it would have to be a tiny tiny difference, or we would've noticed already. I highly recommend reading this article by Isaac Asimov. It explains things like how Einstein discovering relativity didn't prove that all of physics was wrong, just a very very small part of it.
Now for part of the kicker - Micro-Evolution has been shown to be temporary in many cases. Things "evolve" to meet a need, and as soon as the need is no longer they revert back. This has been shown time and time again - example: check out any of the examples used by Darwin to demonstrate Micro-Evolution; they all reverted after a time. All within his lifetime nonetheless.
I'm not actually familiar with this, do you have references I could see?
By this logic if I can walk from my house to the store, I should be able to walk from Boston to London. They're just at different scales!
So walking on dry land is the same as walking on water? If you argument was "I should be able to walk from Boston to LA", then yes.. you could. It would take a long time, and probably more money than you'd be willing to spend to test it, but you could. On the other hand, if you can't walk from your house to the store, then based on that knowledge we could safely assume that you can't walk from Boston to LA.
What evidence do you have that macro and micro evolution are the same thing? Your argument "it has to" is exactly no argument at all, but a statement of faith.
Definition. Macro evolution is defined to be evolution on large time scales or evolution that results in large changes (depending on who you talk to). Micro evolution is defined to be evolution on small time scales or with small results. They're both the exact same thing (natural selection). If you had a small bar of iron and a massive bar of iron, would you expect them to have different properties (besides size)? One will obviously weight more, but they're both still iron.
Look, they are not saying science has less merit or that its merits are strictly that of faith. What they are saying is, by the time it trickles down to the layman, they only acknowledgement is strictly ONLY, "because I said so", from an authoritative source. Given that many people consider churches and/or religions to be an authoritative source , in the layman's eyes, its a difference without distinction. After all, in both cases, its completely a leap of faith.
But the information is there. Whether you care or not doesn't change the fact that if you want to understand why scientists believe something, you can usually look it up on Wikipedia. If that's not enough, you can get a book. There are generally books that will explain experiments you could do to reproduce it (or at high levels, references to experiments, and the data which you can find the conclusion for yourself -- unless you think that there's some grand conspiracy between multiple universities in multiple countries to fake the data, which is a matter of trust, not faith).
Compare that to religion. The Wikipedia article on God doesn't explain how magic works. There are no books on how to do magic (that aren't fake). Religious texts usually don't suggest any experiments you could try (besides dying or waiting for Jesus to return).
Your ideas have intrigued me. Could you please direct me to how I can sign up for your newsletter. I am most interested in your experiments duplicating the creation of antihydrogen as well as recreating the big bang, abiogenesis and whatever else you have used in your methodology in doing so.
Perhaps when you show us how to do that, I can show you how to make a man blind with the touch of my hand.
Mind explaining to me what physical process would cause making a blind man see by touching him with your hand? I'm very interested how you came to this conclusion. Let's compare how many steps we can explain before getting to "God did it".