If you take GPLed code, modify it, and then release only binaries, you ARE depriving the rest of the world of something - the source code of your modifications. In that case, the word 'steal' is appropriate.
I think you're trying to have it both ways. If a software company can't morally require you not to make copies of their product, then the community can't morally require you not to make modifications of their code.
All you have to do is swap a couple of words: "Those (software copies|code changes) belong to our (company|community) according to the legal agreement!"
Same idea. The violating party says "I haven't deprived you of anything physical, it's not stealing, nyah nyah nyah."
Do you know how to conjugate verbs in English, or do you just use them naturally (and get the conjugation wrong sometimes)? Can you give me the grammar rules for English speech? Maybe you can, but they're certainly not require to speak well, and I'll damn well bet that you didn't even think of them while writing your response.
As someone who learned Spanish in college and studied abroad twice, I can tell you that having some grammatical grounding helped a whole lot with being immersed in the language. In Spain I was always thinking "how do I say 'I would have done this if...' or 'when we have eaten we will' or 'if only there were'...". Having to say such things on a regular basis sent me back to the books. Later it became more internal, and eventually I didn't have to think English first at all.
Immersion also helps you practice parsing a long stream of sound into words - if you already know some of the words. Your brain starts picking them out of the stream and reconstructing the meaning. From there you can explore the parts you didn't understand. If you don't know the words, it's just sound.
I'm not sure that I'm really contradicting you here, but I do think that foreign grammar study is useful. You don't have to know what all tenses are called, and maybe eventually you can forget the grammar and just speak, but at first, it helps to know the patterns so you recognize them when you first hear them.
By the way, this kind of functionality is what I'm looking forward to in Android phones. It will be great to be able to install my own address book app instead of relying on the manufacturer to do it the way I want, and to post suggestions in forums where people can see them and code them.
I think it will do an arbitrary amount of phone numbers for each contact, but I don't know that many people with 2 cell phones...
I don't think this is what he means. It's not "I have work, home and cell contacts for each person," it's "I have each person filed according to whether they're a work contact or personal contact or another category."
My BlackBerry does this, and I love it. Switching between categories is a bit annoying though; I'd like to have up and down scroll through a list, and side-to-side switch between contact groups. I would also like it if the groups were tags, so a person could appear in more than one group.
Even better would be built-in call screening - "don't ring after 10pm unless it's an immediate family member," or "after 10pm don't ring without first asking the caller if it's an emergency."
I seriously doubt they could win that battle. I mean really, you're talking about something that most Americans take for granted. Telling people that it's illegal for their teenager to record the song he wrote with his band, or that they can't make and publish their own home movies, even when there is no copyrighted content involved, would not fly.
If anything, I think the pendulum is going in the other direction: lots of people are putting stuff on Youtube that is already technically illegal, and at least in some cases, a blind eye is being turned to it. People feel more entitled to do things that DO infringe copyright; if you tell them they can't do something even though it doesn't infringe, I don't think they'll accept it.
I record music. I wouldn't buy a player that won't let me play my own stuff, or my friend's stuff, just because an authority hasn't signed off on it.
With home recording becoming cheaper and better all the time, I expect that this will be more of an issue in the future, not less. The era of "top-down" music distribution is ending.
I agree with the majority decision, but I don't agree about "more pressure brought to bear" on the dissenting justices. The reason that Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life is precisely so that (in theory) nobody can pressure them to vote one way or another.
No, it mostly means that they were more concerned about their chances for re-election than doing what was best for the country, however unpopular it might have been.
Exactly. Congress is complicit in everything Bush has done because they didn't move decisively to stop anything. Anything they say now is hot air.
And can anything but elections be behind this "impeachment" stunt? The man has been president for almost eight years, and you want to impeach him a few months before he leaves office? This is nothing more than an effort to say "hey, Republicans are bad, vote for Democrats!"
You don't actually learn anything through memorization.
I disagree. If someone forced you to memorize the date "July 4, 1776" as the day the U.S. declared independence, and years later you read a book written in England or America in 1778, you automatically know something about the political environment it was written in.
Having your brain say "hmmm, this happened before X or during Y" is automatic in this case. Whereas you'd have to be quite curious to go out of your way to research the historical context otherwise.
Most learning is memorization in a way - names, properties, relationships, etc. And the more framework you have in your mind, the easier it is the place a new bit in. 1778 only means "Revolutionary Era" to me, but to my history-professor brother, I'm sure it calls up tons of associations.
In my first year honors math class we had to propose a method for calculating pi, prove that it was valid, then use it to find pi to some number of decimal places, by hand, showing all the steps... So I guess way back in my day we not only had to calculate pi to 5000 decimal places but we had to derive and prove the method first!
Well sure, if you get to use PAPER.;) (In truth, I submit to your superior geekiness.)
It is hard to motivate soldiers to fight when they otherwise have all their material needs met.
First, there is no test case for this, as it has never happened. Second, many soldiers do enlist for non-monetary reasons; most people call this "patriotism." Third, groups of people will riot and fight over meaningless things, like who won a soccer game, simply because that is their nature.
Finally, even if war is someday abolished, that's wasn't my point. My point is that most human problems stem from, or are aggravated by, individuals' attitudes and actions, and that even a theoretical world where most resources are boundless will not change our basic propensities. Perhaps you can imagine a world of technology where people don't, at the very least, manipulate others, spread hurtful rumors, snub one another, and withhold affection. I cannot. We may get a better world, and I hope we do. We'll never perfect our moral behavior via technology.
A person who feels it necessary to make insulting comments when responding to an argument has no business claiming that humans are benevolent by nature.
Nations are made of, and led by, individuals. People love to have power over one another. A world without scarcity (even if that's possible) may be less violent, but the claim I disputed was that technology will solve "all our problems." It will not.
People will always want the affection and respect of other people, and that will always be a scarce resource. Fame is scarce by its nature. Prime real estate is likely to remain scarce. Some people will always be smarter, funnier, better looking, more talented, or more successful than others, so envy will not disappear, either.
Yes, we all have good motives and tendencies, too. But we do have moral problems that can't be solved by any tools. As long as there are at least two people in the universe, there will be disagreements and possibly fighting. That is human nature, and it's one thing about which Christianity's view is quite realistic.
Wars and selfishness arise from conflict over scarce resources.
So if someone has everything they could possibly want, in terms of resources, they will not have any impulse to dominate their fellow humans simply to satisfy their ego?
I submit that this view doesn't reflect reality. I would humbly say, as well, that it doesn't reflect my own conscience. I am as selfish as anyone, and have to fight hard against impulse. I think our problem is deeper than mere circumstance. Mine certainly is.
The difference is that technology really could solve pretty much all of our problems. It has a long and verifiable history of solving problems in ways that earlier generations would have described as magical or divine. Religion, on the other hand, does not do this.
I disagree. Our main problem is this: people are terrible. People are selfish and do terrible things to each other to satisfy their selfish desires.
We already have the technology to give food and medicine and shelter to everyone on earth. But we don't. Nothing has ever changed the basic selfishness of people, and nothing technological ever will.
I do not believe that "religion" will ever solve that problem, either. I believe that God will solve that problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Because... your neighborhood is really really exclusive?
This made me smile, imagining telling my past self circa 1995 about that system you're running.
I think you're trying to have it both ways. If a software company can't morally require you not to make copies of their product, then the community can't morally require you not to make modifications of their code.
All you have to do is swap a couple of words: "Those (software copies|code changes) belong to our (company|community) according to the legal agreement!"
Same idea. The violating party says "I haven't deprived you of anything physical, it's not stealing, nyah nyah nyah."
As someone who learned Spanish in college and studied abroad twice, I can tell you that having some grammatical grounding helped a whole lot with being immersed in the language. In Spain I was always thinking "how do I say 'I would have done this if...' or 'when we have eaten we will' or 'if only there were'...". Having to say such things on a regular basis sent me back to the books. Later it became more internal, and eventually I didn't have to think English first at all.
Immersion also helps you practice parsing a long stream of sound into words - if you already know some of the words. Your brain starts picking them out of the stream and reconstructing the meaning. From there you can explore the parts you didn't understand. If you don't know the words, it's just sound.
I'm not sure that I'm really contradicting you here, but I do think that foreign grammar study is useful. You don't have to know what all tenses are called, and maybe eventually you can forget the grammar and just speak, but at first, it helps to know the patterns so you recognize them when you first hear them.
You mean that people who make no effort to find a better browser ALSO make no effort to update their browser? Gasp!
By the way, this kind of functionality is what I'm looking forward to in Android phones. It will be great to be able to install my own address book app instead of relying on the manufacturer to do it the way I want, and to post suggestions in forums where people can see them and code them.
I don't think this is what he means. It's not "I have work, home and cell contacts for each person," it's "I have each person filed according to whether they're a work contact or personal contact or another category."
My BlackBerry does this, and I love it. Switching between categories is a bit annoying though; I'd like to have up and down scroll through a list, and side-to-side switch between contact groups. I would also like it if the groups were tags, so a person could appear in more than one group.
Even better would be built-in call screening - "don't ring after 10pm unless it's an immediate family member," or "after 10pm don't ring without first asking the caller if it's an emergency."
I seriously doubt they could win that battle. I mean really, you're talking about something that most Americans take for granted. Telling people that it's illegal for their teenager to record the song he wrote with his band, or that they can't make and publish their own home movies, even when there is no copyrighted content involved, would not fly.
If anything, I think the pendulum is going in the other direction: lots of people are putting stuff on Youtube that is already technically illegal, and at least in some cases, a blind eye is being turned to it. People feel more entitled to do things that DO infringe copyright; if you tell them they can't do something even though it doesn't infringe, I don't think they'll accept it.
I record music. I wouldn't buy a player that won't let me play my own stuff, or my friend's stuff, just because an authority hasn't signed off on it.
With home recording becoming cheaper and better all the time, I expect that this will be more of an issue in the future, not less. The era of "top-down" music distribution is ending.
I agree with the majority decision, but I don't agree about "more pressure brought to bear" on the dissenting justices. The reason that Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life is precisely so that (in theory) nobody can pressure them to vote one way or another.
This made me laugh. :) Truly, sir, you have the superior machine.
Yeah? Well my computer is so fast that it loads pages before I request them.
Oh, who am I kidding? [sobs]
Exactly. Congress is complicit in everything Bush has done because they didn't move decisively to stop anything. Anything they say now is hot air.
And can anything but elections be behind this "impeachment" stunt? The man has been president for almost eight years, and you want to impeach him a few months before he leaves office? This is nothing more than an effort to say "hey, Republicans are bad, vote for Democrats!"
EarthWeasel?
I disagree. If someone forced you to memorize the date "July 4, 1776" as the day the U.S. declared independence, and years later you read a book written in England or America in 1778, you automatically know something about the political environment it was written in.
Having your brain say "hmmm, this happened before X or during Y" is automatic in this case. Whereas you'd have to be quite curious to go out of your way to research the historical context otherwise.
Most learning is memorization in a way - names, properties, relationships, etc. And the more framework you have in your mind, the easier it is the place a new bit in. 1778 only means "Revolutionary Era" to me, but to my history-professor brother, I'm sure it calls up tons of associations.
What's to prevent the RIAA from having fake "experts" volunteer to do this, only to offer easily-refuted arguments in court?
I'll try, but all I have are these rusty, blunt metal tools...
Well sure, if you get to use PAPER. ;) (In truth, I submit to your superior geekiness.)
Kids these days. Why, back in my day, we had to calculate pi to 5,000 decimal places in our heads.
Oh wait. I'm only 28. And I nearly failed geometry.
First, there is no test case for this, as it has never happened. Second, many soldiers do enlist for non-monetary reasons; most people call this "patriotism." Third, groups of people will riot and fight over meaningless things, like who won a soccer game, simply because that is their nature.
Finally, even if war is someday abolished, that's wasn't my point. My point is that most human problems stem from, or are aggravated by, individuals' attitudes and actions, and that even a theoretical world where most resources are boundless will not change our basic propensities. Perhaps you can imagine a world of technology where people don't, at the very least, manipulate others, spread hurtful rumors, snub one another, and withhold affection. I cannot. We may get a better world, and I hope we do. We'll never perfect our moral behavior via technology.
A person who feels it necessary to make insulting comments when responding to an argument has no business claiming that humans are benevolent by nature.
Nations are made of, and led by, individuals. People love to have power over one another. A world without scarcity (even if that's possible) may be less violent, but the claim I disputed was that technology will solve "all our problems." It will not.
People will always want the affection and respect of other people, and that will always be a scarce resource. Fame is scarce by its nature. Prime real estate is likely to remain scarce. Some people will always be smarter, funnier, better looking, more talented, or more successful than others, so envy will not disappear, either.
Yes, we all have good motives and tendencies, too. But we do have moral problems that can't be solved by any tools. As long as there are at least two people in the universe, there will be disagreements and possibly fighting. That is human nature, and it's one thing about which Christianity's view is quite realistic.
So if someone has everything they could possibly want, in terms of resources, they will not have any impulse to dominate their fellow humans simply to satisfy their ego?
I submit that this view doesn't reflect reality. I would humbly say, as well, that it doesn't reflect my own conscience. I am as selfish as anyone, and have to fight hard against impulse. I think our problem is deeper than mere circumstance. Mine certainly is.
Pretty dang good, actually. :)
So your idea of being God is a really good game of the SIMs? ;)
I disagree. Our main problem is this: people are terrible. People are selfish and do terrible things to each other to satisfy their selfish desires.
We already have the technology to give food and medicine and shelter to everyone on earth. But we don't. Nothing has ever changed the basic selfishness of people, and nothing technological ever will.
I do not believe that "religion" will ever solve that problem, either. I believe that God will solve that problem.