Then what about the multi-millions of "white" people targeted by "hate crimes" against "whites" that the media won't even report because of whatever reason?
Dunno, do you have some facts to back that up ? I'd agree that they are still "hate crimes". However, it's also worth mentioning that black people get stiffer sentences in the criminal justice system by default.
So, if someone murders multiple people who park in the 7th parking space from the left of center, he's not intimidating a group of people from parking in that space?
He's intimidating a considerably smaller group of people. The point is that hate crimes target a large group. ``Hate crime'' is a misnomer, ``terrorism'' is a better word for it.
A crime is a crime REGARDLESS of motivation.
Yes, muirder is murder. And terrorism is terrorism. You are either guilty or not guilty of murder. on top of that, one may be guilty or not guilty of terrorism. Nobody should have greater importance simply because they meet some artificial criteria.
Exactly. Millions of black people targetted by a hate crime have more importance than a small group of people terrorized by a parking space shooting. There are more victims, and the terror is occuring on a larger scale. A terrorist act against an entire country is more severe still.
I can copy audio or video recordings, or make photocopies from books or magazines, for personal use without paying the author a cent.
Depending on how you do this, you may be violating the copyright on the work in question.
Not at all. I can read a book without paying the author a cent. I can sing a song without paying the songwriter (unless I'm getting paid to sing, basically). I can use the copy of MS Word on my father's computer
Yes, because the copyrights permit you to do all of those things. But IMO, the author has the right to choose how their material should be licenses ( within the reasonable bounds of basic consumer protection laws and ethics ). I'd argue that there's nothing wrong with an author licensing a book on a pay-to-read basis, though a printed distribution format would certainly make this kind of license difficult to enforce.
But having creators get paid by using government force preventing the making of copies is ethically questionable,
You could equally argue that it is somehow ethically questionable for the government to prevent you from counterfeiting money. THe issue is very similar -- when you counterfeit money, you are leeching off the people who are really producing something, because you are undermining the currency. And when you distribute illegal copies, you are undermining the value of the authors work.
and with the advent of digital media is not practical.
I don't buy this. Copyright protection works most of the time in countries that properly recognise copyright law. I am not clear what your new model is. I suppose it's one which doesn't require you to pay anything. That model works well if you're the one who doesn't have to pay, as opposed to the one who doesn't get paid ( or the one who has to pay your share )
Did you even read the article ? He is arguing the case for copyright protection. There's nothing paternalistic about wanting copyright protection ( which musicians and artists had for years )
If, however, you make a copy of my work, it's much less clear that what you've done is unethical, and its legal status varies though time and space.
You have every right to copy the work, as long as the author is duely compensated for their labor. The author is entitled to receive compensation from each person using their work. If I use a service provided by someone, that person has the right to compensation.
The whole article is talking about copyright protection, and that is what he is advocating. THere's nothing wrong with copyright law IMO ( with the possible exception to the fact that it doesn't protect font designers ). However, the patent laws are really out of whack.
There are millions of coders out there. And not just mercenaries like Gates. There are now enough people who enjoy writing code as a hobby that free software is starting to take flight.
That doesn't alter the fact that someone who works hard at their job as a developer has the right to be duly compensated.
But when a coder comes up with something interesting, he need only send word to freshmeat.net, and the world gets this innovation, at almost no cost to anyone.
It cost the coder time and effort, and they have every right to be compensated for their time and effort.
At least he couldn't imagine that happening on the scale we're seeing today.
Whether he could or not is orthogonal to the point that he had the right to be compensated.
You might think that ripping off the fruits of someone's creative efforts is funny. Maybe it is when it happens to someone with billions of dollars. However, it's totally unfunny when a small time shareware author or a small time font designer gets screwed out of their income because their users are too dishonest to pay up.
Linux and OSS is vastly superior in the realm of high-performance and expert computing needs, but have there been any successes of OSS on the average consumer's desktop?
The bulk of ``high performance'' computing needs are best served by closed source solutions ( commercial UNIX and mainframes ). As for ``expert'', the expert musicians, and graphic designers aren't switching to Linux until there's more ( probably closed source ) software available.
Of course he's wrong about the banking metaphor. Money is unitary and only can increase through interest accruing loans (AFAIK). Software is like fire - it can be freely distributed without lessening the original flame.
Actually, this isn't really correct. You can make more money by printing more. The problem is that you devalue your currency by doing this. Likewise, with software, you devalue the software, and consequently the author's creative work when you reproduce it.
You might laugh when BG loses a few dollars, but it's not nearly as funny when a small time shareware author or font designer gets screwed because of it.
He just sounds pissed off because a lot of people were ripping him off by leeching off the fruits of his labour without paying for them. Sure, sharing is nice, but who has the right to force anyone to share ? What right do I have to "share" your house with you ? I think he has every right to be mad. I'm sure you'd be mad if your employer decided not to pay you or if someone stole your car. It's much easier to advocate stripping others of their property rights than it is to give up your own.
.. is not so much the content, but the manner. Bill Gates comes across constantly as very aggressive and arrogant
I think he sounds more upset and angry that a lot of people were ripping him off, and ripping off programmers in general. And it sounds like, given the circumstances, he had every right to be pissed off. I'd also be pissed off if people leeched off the fruits of my labour without paying up.
What many modern people object to today is that software is buggy and does not work as advertised. If we wish to think in terms of capitalism we are selling a service or a product but if it isn't quality then people have a right to compalain.
Yes, but what they don't have the right to do is to use the software while withholding payment. If they have a problem with the quality, they are within their rights returning it, as with any other product. But as with any other product, they have no right to use it without paying for it.
No. SSH doesn't do this kind of thing. This is why it is not redundandant to use ssh and kerberos. ssh is your login shell ( and port forwarding tool ), and kerberos takes care of authentication for everything including ssh. One can also use pam with ssh.
However, it's not true that ssh is just a secure remote shell. Because of it's port forwarding features, ssh is a secure remote anything.
Sorry, I didn't read your post properly before writing the other response. A couple of things:
The ACME Klien bottle is the image of an immersion of a Klien bottle into R^3, it's not a Klien bottle proper, because in a Klien bottle proper, there is no self-intersection ( so if you embedded it into R^4, the water would not have to flow through the surface.
That you can put water in it doesn't mean it has nonzero volume. It's "volume" is the volume of the space it occupies, not volume of some part of the space around it that you embed it in.
They have volume in a generalised sense. Since they are two dimensional ( ie they locally look like R^2 ), their "volume" is in fact surface area.
Now you can *not* put something inside a Klien bottle, because it is non orientable. In otherwords, there is no "inside" and "outside" of a Klien bottle ( much like the Moebius band )
One question, though, can someone tell me wether a klein bottle is really embeddable in R^3, i.e. are these really klein bottles?
A Klein bottle can be immersed ( as these bottles show ) but not embedded. These things self-intersect, which is why they are not embedded Klein bottles.
I have a TNT, and I'm kicking myself that I didn't get a Voodoo 3 or Matrox instead. The nVidia cards don't offer an acceptable level of acceleration. It's a good start, nothing more.
Well that's really clever -- you've left out the context in which I said it. Your rebuttal is completely baseless on the grounds that you're missing the context. Allow me to remind you --
The paragraph started with the words "pop quiz:". Suffice it to say that I was not referring to an open-book or computer aided pop quiz.
Gnome, KDE, and Mozilla are large C/C++ systems, and they both try to force a dynamic object system on
top of those languages. It's a testament to human persistence in the face of great odds that those systems are
as nice as they are. But it's also pretty clear that those systems are neither easy to extend nor easy to
modify--the learning curve is pretty high.
A high learning curve doesn't mean that the systems are "hard" to extend or modify, it means that it's hard to learn to extend and modify. I know this sounds pedantic, but it's actually an important difference. I'd argue that a reasonably proficient C++ programmer shouldn't have much trouble working with KDE, for example. I'd agree that it's quite difficult to become a reasonably proficient C++ programmer though.
Aren't MS using some big virtual machine for their common runtime ? I'm not that familiar with it, pardon my ignorance. I'm suspicious of anything that sits on top of a VM. (I'm concerned about performance, mostly ) I'm also suspicious of GC. I can see them pulling off a good imitation of Java, with slow performance as part of the deal.
I didn't really get what you were trying to say about GNOME. Are you trying to say that CORBA doesn't have exceptions, or an object model or type information anything like that ? IIRC, GNOME has all the things you claimed it didn't have (though I don't program in GNOME that much -- I prefer KDE).
QT certainly has its own rtti system, its own object model, and a CORBA-like system (DCOP) which acts as a cross-language object system.
C++, on the other hand, is a language
considered unsafe because it allows unchecked array accesses among other flaws.
This kind of reasoning is simply dishonest. The fact is that the only reason to use pointer arrays in C++ is for performance. If you're satisfied with java=like performance, you can use vector and not worry about "array out of bounds" errors.
Python "answers" these concerns by providing container classes (like C++), and providing reference counting.
C++ has container classes which are managed automatically, so let's move on to reference counts.
Reference counts are fairly easy to implement in C++. They do not free you of all memory management because it uses reference counts, and not garbage collection. This is a convenience for sure, but when one runs into hard memory management issues (such as writing a graph class for example), the reference counts don't make things that much easier. In fact C++ programmers usually use reference counts as a performance enhancement technique (since it saves redundant copying)
Python may well supplant perl one day , but it will not replace C++ because it is not and never will be as fast as C++. Its design goals are completely orthogonal to those of C++. It's certainly a great language, but you're kidding yourself if you think its performance is acceptable for speed critical applications.
Still, I disagree with the following comment the other guy made:
The fact remains that Linux and Gnome are based on a language and runtime that is processor and
architecture dependent, provides no support for runtime safety and fault isolation, and provides no
dynamic type information.
CORBA has built in exceptions, C is an ISO standard and GNOME sits on top of various portability layers (such as glib). I'm pretty sure GTK+ has some kind of dynamic type information, CORBA certainly does.
(a) doesn't work so well on a dialup machine ( it's faster just to reboot ) (b) if you're silly enough to run rlogind, you probably have no business adminning a machine with a static IP.
(a) I expect that the home user will have root priveliges on their own system !!! (b) I don't expect someone completely lacking in expertees to use unsupported alpha quality software.
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Dunno, do you have some facts to back that up ? I'd agree that they are still "hate crimes". However, it's also worth mentioning that black people get stiffer sentences in the criminal justice system by default.
He's intimidating a considerably smaller group of people. The point is that hate crimes target a large group. ``Hate crime'' is a misnomer, ``terrorism'' is a better word for it.
A crime is a crime REGARDLESS of motivation.
Yes, muirder is murder. And terrorism is terrorism. You are either guilty or not guilty of murder. on top of that, one may be guilty or not guilty of terrorism. Nobody should have greater importance simply because they meet some artificial criteria.
Exactly. Millions of black people targetted by a hate crime have more importance than a small group of people terrorized by a parking space shooting. There are more victims, and the terror is occuring on a larger scale. A terrorist act against an entire country is more severe still.
Depending on how you do this, you may be violating the copyright on the work in question.
Not at all. I can read a book without paying the author a cent. I can sing a song without paying the songwriter (unless I'm getting paid to sing, basically). I can use the copy of MS Word on my father's computer
Yes, because the copyrights permit you to do all of those things. But IMO, the author has the right to choose how their material should be licenses ( within the reasonable bounds of basic consumer protection laws and ethics ). I'd argue that there's nothing wrong with an author licensing a book on a pay-to-read basis, though a printed distribution format would certainly make this kind of license difficult to enforce.
But having creators get paid by using government force preventing the making of copies is ethically questionable,
You could equally argue that it is somehow ethically questionable for the government to prevent you from counterfeiting money. THe issue is very similar -- when you counterfeit money, you are leeching off the people who are really producing something, because you are undermining the currency. And when you distribute illegal copies, you are undermining the value of the authors work.
and with the advent of digital media is not practical.
I don't buy this. Copyright protection works most of the time in countries that properly recognise copyright law. I am not clear what your new model is. I suppose it's one which doesn't require you to pay anything. That model works well if you're the one who doesn't have to pay, as opposed to the one who doesn't get paid ( or the one who has to pay your share )
You have every right to copy the work, as long as the author is duely compensated for their labor. The author is entitled to receive compensation from each person using their work. If I use a service provided by someone, that person has the right to compensation.
That doesn't alter the fact that someone who works hard at their job as a developer has the right to be duly compensated.
But when a coder comes up with something interesting, he need only send word to freshmeat.net, and the world gets this innovation, at almost no cost to anyone.
It cost the coder time and effort, and they have every right to be compensated for their time and effort.
At least he couldn't imagine that happening on the scale we're seeing today.
Whether he could or not is orthogonal to the point that he had the right to be compensated.
You might think that ripping off the fruits of someone's creative efforts is funny. Maybe it is when it happens to someone with billions of dollars. However, it's totally unfunny when a small time shareware author or a small time font designer gets screwed out of their income because their users are too dishonest to pay up.
The bulk of ``high performance'' computing needs are best served by closed source solutions ( commercial UNIX and mainframes ). As for ``expert'', the expert musicians, and graphic designers aren't switching to Linux until there's more ( probably closed source ) software available.
Actually, this isn't really correct. You can make more money by printing more. The problem is that you devalue your currency by doing this. Likewise, with software, you devalue the software, and consequently the author's creative work when you reproduce it.
You might laugh when BG loses a few dollars, but it's not nearly as funny when a small time shareware author or font designer gets screwed because of it.
I think he sounds more upset and angry that a lot of people were ripping him off, and ripping off programmers in general. And it sounds like, given the circumstances, he had every right to be pissed off. I'd also be pissed off if people leeched off the fruits of my labour without paying up.
Yes, but what they don't have the right to do is to use the software while withholding payment. If they have a problem with the quality, they are within their rights returning it, as with any other product. But as with any other product, they have no right to use it without paying for it.
However, it's not true that ssh is just a secure remote shell. Because of it's port forwarding features, ssh is a secure remote anything.
The "development" page on their website is dated 1998. The project seems unmaintained, they haven't had any releases for over a year.
Now you can *not* put something inside a Klien bottle, because it is non orientable. In otherwords, there is no "inside" and "outside" of a Klien bottle ( much like the Moebius band )
Trust me, you really do want your bong to be orientable.
A Klein bottle can be immersed ( as these bottles show ) but not embedded. These things self-intersect, which is why they are not embedded Klein bottles.
GC, virtual machines, etc. Is it going to need a Pentium 4 to even run ?
Bonobo doesn't even come close. It doesn't provide a common runtime, fault isolation, or garbage collection.
CORBA provides reference counts and exceptions. I believe it also provides runtime type information.
Bonobo would basically just give you the same functionality COM/DCOM give you, with all the problems that that entails
Such as ?
A high learning curve doesn't mean that the systems are "hard" to extend or modify, it means that it's hard to learn to extend and modify. I know this sounds pedantic, but it's actually an important difference. I'd argue that a reasonably proficient C++ programmer shouldn't have much trouble working with KDE, for example. I'd agree that it's quite difficult to become a reasonably proficient C++ programmer though.
Aren't MS using some big virtual machine for their common runtime ? I'm not that familiar with it, pardon my ignorance. I'm suspicious of anything that sits on top of a VM. (I'm concerned about performance, mostly ) I'm also suspicious of GC. I can see them pulling off a good imitation of Java, with slow performance as part of the deal.
I didn't really get what you were trying to say about GNOME. Are you trying to say that CORBA doesn't have exceptions, or an object model or type information anything like that ? IIRC, GNOME has all the things you claimed it didn't have (though I don't program in GNOME that much -- I prefer KDE). QT certainly has its own rtti system, its own object model, and a CORBA-like system (DCOP) which acts as a cross-language object system.
This kind of reasoning is simply dishonest. The fact is that the only reason to use pointer arrays in C++ is for performance. If you're satisfied with java=like performance, you can use vector and not worry about "array out of bounds" errors.
Python "answers" these concerns by providing container classes (like C++), and providing reference counting.
C++ has container classes which are managed automatically, so let's move on to reference counts. Reference counts are fairly easy to implement in C++. They do not free you of all memory management because it uses reference counts, and not garbage collection. This is a convenience for sure, but when one runs into hard memory management issues (such as writing a graph class for example), the reference counts don't make things that much easier. In fact C++ programmers usually use reference counts as a performance enhancement technique (since it saves redundant copying)
Python may well supplant perl one day , but it will not replace C++ because it is not and never will be as fast as C++. Its design goals are completely orthogonal to those of C++. It's certainly a great language, but you're kidding yourself if you think its performance is acceptable for speed critical applications.
Still, I disagree with the following comment the other guy made: The fact remains that Linux and Gnome are based on a language and runtime that is processor and architecture dependent, provides no support for runtime safety and fault isolation, and provides no dynamic type information.
CORBA has built in exceptions, C is an ISO standard and GNOME sits on top of various portability layers (such as glib). I'm pretty sure GTK+ has some kind of dynamic type information, CORBA certainly does.
(b) if you're silly enough to run rlogind, you probably have no business adminning a machine with a static IP.
(b) I don't expect someone completely lacking in expertees to use unsupported alpha quality software.