> Fucking mod parent up. If you buy into the two party system, you've already bought into the bullshit, no matter which one you choose.
Sorry, no mod points.
Copulation and bovine excrement aside, I completely agree with "stinky wizzleteats". What you need is a wider selection of viable parties with differing ideologies (not just platforms) such that no single party can control the majority of the votes.
> Heck, my mother, a 7-8th grade advanced science teacher did a test with the class showing them an online article about the evils of hydrogen hydroxide. At the end of the class, over half the class believed that there was a serious problem in the world with hydrogen hydroxide that needs to be dealt with.
The problem was that she neglected to mention that Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO), Dihydrogen Oxide, Hydroxyl acid, and Hydric acid are just as prevalent and just as dangerous.
> They are still actively enforced, and the Supreme Court has consistently held in modern times that a search warrant is not needed to break into your house if it is suspected that you are in the act of sex without the possibility of pregnancy.
> And we have finally arrived at the philosophical "meat" of the GPL vs. BSD licensing issue. I think I deserve to be compensated for any improvements that I have made to the original code
So let me get this straight, you deserve the right to be compensated for your improvements it any way you see fit but would like to deny the author(s) of the original code the same right?
Whoever wrote the original code could have demanded that you pay a very large sum plus royalties for the source, that you sign NDAs that may limit your employability or ability to develop other products or that you hand over your firstborn. They could have also refused and sued your ass for any attempt at reverse ingeneering or interoperability (under the DMCA or something similar). Instead they have decided that their preferred "compensation" is compliance with the GPL. Do you have any problem with that?
> and I reserve the right to keep those improvements private.
You can keep your improvements private. The GPL does not compel you to distribute them.
> You think I owe you and the rest of the world something. I don't.
Methinks you feel that the world owes you something.
> I did the work on the improvements, I can license them as I see fit.
But not the original code. The GPL does not limit your choice of license if you distribute only the enhancements. If, however, your work also contains pieces or derivatives of the original, you are by default violating its copyright unless you have a valid license to distribute it. And, as you were so kind to point out, the author(s) may use any licensing scheme they desire, including the GPL.
> I paid for that park design with my taxes, I can do what I want with the design
Say you ask your employee to give me a call and ask me to develop something for you and, yes, you are willing to pay. Sure thing, I say, let me research the issue and get back to you with a quote. Couple of days later I call said employee to tell him that, sure, I can do that but there are two choices: I could use a GPLed work that already does 90% of what you need as a base or I could develop everything from scratch. The first option will cost you X but will be "encumbered" by the GPL. The second option will have no strings attached but will cost you 20X. Oh, sorry, couldn't find anything even remotely relevant under a BSD license.
The employee asks you what to do and now you can decide whether you call the whole thing off, mortgage your future or accept the restrictions of the GPL.
Now let's complicate the experiment by giving the employee a name. We'll call him Ralph Klein and now, instead of having just one employer (you) he has to answer to some three million other people. What should he do in this situation? Hell, what would you want him to do with your tax money? The budget is limited and, in your quest to be GPL free, something would have to give. What will it be? Healthcare? Education? Infrastructure? Or maybe you'd like to pay PST like in the other provinces?
> As an advocate of the BSD license I think the choice of what to do with derived works should rest with developers of said works. As a taxpayer I should not be required to fund works that I will not be able to use (copy, modify, etc.) because of licensing restrictions.
In a perfect world every such work would be in the public domain. Unfortunately, reality bites and more often than not the choice is between a proprietary system with restrictive licenses, the GPL and in-house solutions that are will be much more expensive to develop and maintain.
> Communication is an important aspect of being part of the international community.
Indeed. However, I am sure that these Laotian villagers that you've mentioned would prefer, say, a better road system to the internet. I also suspect that better telecom and electricity infrastructure would be needed. (source).
> Obviously, no one can bring peace and prosperity all in one package.
Obviously, no one can bring peace and prosperity period. Those have to be "generated" by the people. I agree that they can use all the help they can get but see below.
> What's important is that those who want to help do their little part, according to their ability.
> I see much irony coming from you, but ask yourself: have you done your part?
Yes, I do ask myself this question sometimes, then I answer it and so far I have been reasonably satisfied with my answer. Of course, not having bombed anyone "back to the stone age", I don't have much to atone for.
> Bush didn't qualify his statements then, didnâ(TM)t allow anyone independent to see his evidence and make an independent judgment (supposedly for national security reasons), and even now he is claiming the WMD are sure to be found. He asked us to believe his unsupported accusations, and months later, the evidence that was so clear then is not good enough to help find the WMD now.
ATI's margins on chips are much higher than their margin on cards. They are concentrating heavily on providing discrete components to OEMs, partners and other manufacturers.
Please forgive the rearrangement of the paragraphs.
Science and religion are very similar things. They are attempts to understand everything and where we fit in. The difference between the two is that science is generally believed to be able to prove beyond a doubt what is true. And religion admits that we're not going to figure it out because it is beyond our capabilities. I know everyone thinks we've just about got it all figured out now, but it wouldn't be the first time for that.
This may be the way religion views science but it is not an accurate description. Science, as I understand it, is a collection of methodologies that allows us to model the way the universe (or rather selected parts of it) works and to make objective and consistent "predictions" of the outcome of an action in given circumstances. A good analogy would be a set of tools which, once you get skilled in their use, allow you to build things. Some of the tools are better then others, some got inherent limitations, some get replaced by more complex ones (in time), etc.
Religion, on the other hand, can only explain things post factum. It is also wholy subjective and deals mostly with unquantifyable things (morals, ethics, beliefs).
One difference is that science paints an open picture. It allows you to adapt and refine (sometimes even change) your view of the universe to conform to new discoveries. Religion is mostly static.
But the biggest difference, IMO, is that religion is dogmatic. It (as opposed to science) does not, cannot, prove anything. And before you start spewing indignation, consider this: In order to prove something, you need to have a possibility to disprove it. For each scientific "law", one can devise an experiment that, if performed successfully, will disprove it.
I can suggest an experiment to prove that gravitation does not follow the inverse square law, that the speed of light in vacuum is not constant, etc. In fact, a prime example of this is that Newton's "laws" were proven to only be a good approximation at low speeds and break completely at relativistic ones.
Now, look at religious arguments. Some people purport to have proof of their god's (or gods') existance but such "proofs" are meaningless without offering "counter-experiments" that may possibly refute this claim in a definite way.
A more specific example would be the Judo-Christian belief that the "world" was created 5763 years ago. What I usually say to the proponents of this idea is: "Offer me an experiment that can definitevely disprove this claim. If I (and others) fail to do it, then I'll regard your claim as credible."
I can look at an apple and say it is red. I can touch it and say it is solid. I can taste it and say it is sweet. All of these are true depending on how I am looking at that apple. It doesn't feel red though. It doesn't look sweet.
Ah, but science does not not tell you that the apple is "red" or "sweet". What it does tell you is that the apple reflects the light in the 600nm range better than the rest of the visible spectrum and that it contains organic molecules (glucose) that bind to certain receptors in your mouth which cause certain signals to be sent to your brain. The rest is subjective.
Science can help us understand a lot of things. There are things it can't help us understand and that's what religion is for.
If by "religion" you mean "faith", "philosophy" or "a consistent set of beliefs" then I concur. Some things are currently outside the domain of science (and science readily acknowledges this). However, if is my firm belief that most organized religions are more about power and control than anything else.
* ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg, 86 F.3D 1447 (7th Cir., June 20, 1996). This phone directory data case is important because it validates the legality of "shrink wrap" software licenses for the first time. This case suggests that similar "on screen acceptance" licenses, now commonly used on the Internet, may also be upheld as legal someday. The phone directory database at issue in this case was not protected by copyright, but was protected by contract. So the person who published ProCD's phone directories on the Internet was found to have breached the shrink wrap license agreement that came with the software.
* In Bowers v. Baystate Technologies Inc., 64 USPQ2d 1065 (CA FC 2002), the Federal Circuit has upheld a contractual no-reverse engineering restriction in an agreement between two parties in a software license that was characterized by the court as shrink wrap.
If, as you say, EULAs have no legal wight then why, in the two decades or so of their existence, nobody -- NOBODY -- managed to provide a serious test case to establish that precedent?
Is there some independent comparison of different archive/compression formats and applications? One that compares compression ratios of different file types, compression and decompression speed, insertion and extraction of individual files in an archive, etc.
Well, sort of. It is different from the English "cursive" writing in that the letters do not connect (at least, they are not supposed to but it can happen if you are a sloppy writer and in a hurry). A more accurate description is that Hebrew letters have two forms: printed (blocky) and handwritten (more rounded).
Somehow I doubt the sincerety of your "open tetter" and your willingness to follow through. A posturing slashdot comment, even when moderated to 5, does not a challenge make and I have a suspicion that it is not only RIAA who is "a sham" and "full of shit".
On the other hand, I could be totally wrong about you (it happens) so here's what I suggest:
Go ahead and set yourself up to get sued by RIAA for a similar offence. I don't know your university's policies about setting up a file indexing server on their network but that could be a first step.
If you succeed in baiting RIAA (supporting evidence will be required), you'll get the following from me: A posted apology in the slashdot thread(s) of your choosing, A case of beer (or the monetary equivalent, should the shipping prove to be too cumbersome), and A contribution to your legal defence fund, should you open one.
Drop a note in my journal when you're ready to collect. Otherwise... Well, you're smart, figure it out.
SF is a genre. It has it's own publishing houses/subdivisions, it's own bookstore networks, it's own magazines. SF works have their own section in most major libraries. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a ghetto thing, but there's a clear delineation and there has been for decades. It's a genere, just like 'westerns' and 'harlequin romance' and 'mystery.'
And it has to be, because, sadly, none of those 'genere' subcultures of literature stand on their own as mainstream fiction. There are great SF and Western and Mystery writers, but they're the exception. It's like O. Henry's writing. The term for it is 'commercial stories' and there's been a market for that kind of thing for over a century and a half now.
Herbert George Wells? Jules Verne? Edgar Allan Poe? (e.g., here) Mark Twain? (e.g., here) Ray Bradbury?
And why should my tax dollars go to fund the "undernourished child of a single working parent?" Why is she (most single parents seem to be women, though there are exceptions) single? Odds are by her choice. Fact is, it takes two parents to raise a child properly; those who argue otherwise don't read studies by developmental psychologists. And, while we're on the subject of her decision to have a child (yes, she chose to do it; between the choice to have sex, and the strongly-protected option of an abortion, and adoption, and a few other possiblities, but mostly the choice to have sex), why did she choose to have a kid when she couldn't afford it? If she has to work full-time to support the kid, who's raising him? Perhaps she should have considered that before putting herself in that position.
Maybe she thought she had met "mr. Perfect". Maybe she married him at 18. Maybe he told her that they can live comfortably on his salary so she should stay home and take care of the children. Maybe he later decided that she - and the children - had become a liablility. Maybe he could afford a much better lawyer. Maybe she has almost no "marketable" skills for a job with a reasonable pay. Maybe her only survivng parent is disabled and can offer little financial help. Maybe she took two (low paying) "jobs" and still manages to squeeze in some time with her kids (which means working night shifts, after they fall asleep at her mom's) because she does not want her sons to be disadvantaged. Maybe her health is deteriorating because she's overworked, overstressed, underfed and sleep deprived.
Does that put it in a different light?
Oh, by the way, true story. Although I don't personally know this woman, one of my acquaintances does.
I believe in personal responsibility: you make a bad decision, you get yourself into a hole, well, you'd best be prepared to drag yourself out of it. I don't understand, absolutely cannot fathom, why her poor decision-making process is my problem.
Good question. Maybe because
Fortunately, some of us are willing to put equality and justice before our "best self-interest."
Slashdot Mirror
> Fucking mod parent up. If you buy into the two party system, you've already bought into the bullshit, no matter which one you choose.
Sorry, no mod points.
Copulation and bovine excrement aside, I completely agree with "stinky wizzleteats". What you need is a wider selection of viable parties with differing ideologies (not just platforms) such that no single party can control the majority of the votes.
> Glad I'm a canadian, proud and free
That's OK, two out of three ain't bad...
> Heck, my mother, a 7-8th grade advanced science teacher did a test with the class showing them an online article about the evils of hydrogen hydroxide. At the end of the class, over half the class believed that there was a serious problem in the world with hydrogen hydroxide that needs to be dealt with.
The problem was that she neglected to mention that Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO), Dihydrogen Oxide, Hydroxyl acid, and Hydric acid are just as prevalent and just as dangerous.
> They are still actively enforced, and the Supreme Court has consistently held in modern times that a search warrant is not needed to break into your house if it is suspected that you are in the act of sex without the possibility of pregnancy.
Proof please.
> And we have finally arrived at the philosophical "meat" of the GPL vs. BSD licensing issue. I think I deserve to be compensated for any improvements that I have made to the original code
So let me get this straight, you deserve the right to be compensated for your improvements it any way you see fit but would like to deny the author(s) of the original code the same right?
Whoever wrote the original code could have demanded that you pay a very large sum plus royalties for the source, that you sign NDAs that may limit your employability or ability to develop other products or that you hand over your firstborn. They could have also refused and sued your ass for any attempt at reverse ingeneering or interoperability (under the DMCA or something similar). Instead they have decided that their preferred "compensation" is compliance with the GPL. Do you have any problem with that?
> and I reserve the right to keep those improvements private.
You can keep your improvements private. The GPL does not compel you to distribute them.
> You think I owe you and the rest of the world something. I don't.
Methinks you feel that the world owes you something.
> I did the work on the improvements, I can license them as I see fit.
But not the original code. The GPL does not limit your choice of license if you distribute only the enhancements. If, however, your work also contains pieces or derivatives of the original, you are by default violating its copyright unless you have a valid license to distribute it. And, as you were so kind to point out, the author(s) may use any licensing scheme they desire, including the GPL.
> I paid for that park design with my taxes, I can do what I want with the design
Say you ask your employee to give me a call and ask me to develop something for you and, yes, you are willing to pay. Sure thing, I say, let me research the issue and get back to you with a quote. Couple of days later I call said employee to tell him that, sure, I can do that but there are two choices: I could use a GPLed work that already does 90% of what you need as a base or I could develop everything from scratch. The first option will cost you X but will be "encumbered" by the GPL. The second option will have no strings attached but will cost you 20X. Oh, sorry, couldn't find anything even remotely relevant under a BSD license.
The employee asks you what to do and now you can decide whether you call the whole thing off, mortgage your future or accept the restrictions of the GPL.
Now let's complicate the experiment by giving the employee a name. We'll call him Ralph Klein and now, instead of having just one employer (you) he has to answer to some three million other people. What should he do in this situation? Hell, what would you want him to do with your tax money? The budget is limited and, in your quest to be GPL free, something would have to give. What will it be? Healthcare? Education? Infrastructure? Or maybe you'd like to pay PST like in the other provinces?
> As an advocate of the BSD license I think the choice of what to do with derived works should rest with developers of said works. As a taxpayer I should not be required to fund works that I will not be able to use (copy, modify, etc.) because of licensing restrictions.
In a perfect world every such work would be in the public domain. Unfortunately, reality bites and more often than not the choice is between a proprietary system with restrictive licenses, the GPL and in-house solutions that are will be much more expensive to develop and maintain.
>MS will win.
>
> Want a list of victems?
>
> 2. OS/2
OS/2 was not a victim of Microsoft, it was a victim of IBM.
Actually other search engines offer as many or even more cistomization options.
See, for example AllTheWeb or Alta Vista.
Personally, I find Google rather limited in its query options. Some things that it lacks, which other search engines offer, are:
- Wildcards or at least word stemming.
- Better boolean expression support (including parentheses).
- More than 10 words in a query.
- Selective case sesitivity.
- Better support for file formats (such as, searching specific extensions).
That said, I use Google for 99% of my searches, because it is:- Good enough (read: convenient).
- The only search engine that indexes Usenet.
- Caches the pages.
- Offers the clean, customizable and very usable GoogleBar.
When I need more specialized searches, there's is always AllTheWeb (formerly known as FAST) and Alta Vista Tools> Google censors Indymedia news items.
Huh?
The Google search engine seems to find Indymedia quite fine. The feature prominently on Google directory (third link in Society/Activism/Media). Google news may not use Indymedia as one of their 4.5K news sources but that's hardly censorship.
> Communication is an important aspect of being part of the international community.
Indeed. However, I am sure that these Laotian villagers that you've mentioned would prefer, say, a better road system to the internet. I also suspect that better telecom and electricity infrastructure would be needed. (source).
> Obviously, no one can bring peace and prosperity all in one package.
Obviously, no one can bring peace and prosperity period. Those have to be "generated" by the people. I agree that they can use all the help they can get but see below.
> What's important is that those who want to help do their little part, according to their ability.
Unfortunately the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
> I see much irony coming from you, but ask yourself: have you done your part?
Yes, I do ask myself this question sometimes, then I answer it and so far I have been reasonably satisfied with my answer. Of course, not having bombed anyone "back to the stone age", I don't have much to atone for.
As Galen put it: Primum non nocere.
> Bush didn't qualify his statements then, didnâ(TM)t allow anyone independent to see his evidence and make an independent judgment (supposedly for national security reasons), and even now he is claiming the WMD are sure to be found. He asked us to believe his unsupported accusations, and months later, the evidence that was so clear then is not good enough to help find the WMD now.
Now where did I hear that before?
ATI's margins on chips are much higher than their margin on cards. They are concentrating heavily on providing discrete components to OEMs, partners and other manufacturers.
This may be the way religion views science but it is not an accurate description. Science, as I understand it, is a collection of methodologies that allows us to model the way the universe (or rather selected parts of it) works and to make objective and consistent "predictions" of the outcome of an action in given circumstances. A good analogy would be a set of tools which, once you get skilled in their use, allow you to build things. Some of the tools are better then others, some got inherent limitations, some get replaced by more complex ones (in time), etc.
Religion, on the other hand, can only explain things post factum. It is also wholy subjective and deals mostly with unquantifyable things (morals, ethics, beliefs).
One difference is that science paints an open picture. It allows you to adapt and refine (sometimes even change) your view of the universe to conform to new discoveries. Religion is mostly static.
But the biggest difference, IMO, is that religion is dogmatic. It (as opposed to science) does not, cannot, prove anything. And before you start spewing indignation, consider this:
In order to prove something, you need to have a possibility to disprove it. For each scientific "law", one can devise an experiment that, if performed successfully, will disprove it.
I can suggest an experiment to prove that gravitation does not follow the inverse square law, that the speed of light in vacuum is not constant, etc.
In fact, a prime example of this is that Newton's "laws" were proven to only be a good approximation at low speeds and break completely at relativistic ones.
Now, look at religious arguments. Some people purport to have proof of their god's (or gods') existance but such "proofs" are meaningless without offering "counter-experiments" that may possibly refute this claim in a definite way.
A more specific example would be the Judo-Christian belief that the "world" was created 5763 years ago. What I usually say to the proponents of this idea is: "Offer me an experiment that can definitevely disprove this claim. If I (and others) fail to do it, then I'll regard your claim as credible."
Ah, but science does not not tell you that the apple is "red" or "sweet". What it does tell you is that the apple reflects the light in the 600nm range better than the rest of the visible spectrum and that it contains organic molecules (glucose) that bind to certain receptors in your mouth which cause certain signals to be sent to your brain. The rest is subjective.
If by "religion" you mean "faith", "philosophy" or "a consistent set of beliefs" then I concur. Some things are currently outside the domain of science (and science readily acknowledges this). However, if is my firm belief that most organized religions are more about power and control than anything else.
> Having brought pain to this part of the world, he now wants to make amends by bringing peace and the internet to Loatian villagers.
Nice to know that somebody got their priorities straight.
> I wonder which and how many of the 30,000 patents IBM owns SCO will get accused of violating.
Probably this one.
> Such widely-held disdain spells doom for a corporation.
I'm sure they quake in their boots...
Some googling around finds:
* Re: "Double" Licenses--enforceability of shrinkwrap and clickwrap licenses
* WASHINGTON COURT OF APPEALS UPHOLDS ENFORCABILITY OF "SHRINK-WRAP" SOFTWARE LICENSES
* Shrink-wrap software licenses upheld
* Contractor Denied Recovery for $1.95 Million Bidding Error Caused by Allegedly Defective Software
* CPT's Page on the Enforceability of Shrinkwrap Licenses
* ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg, 86 F.3D 1447 (7th Cir., June 20, 1996). This
phone directory data case is important because it validates the legality of
"shrink wrap" software licenses for the first time. This case suggests that
similar "on screen acceptance" licenses, now commonly used on the Internet,
may also be upheld as legal someday. The phone directory database at issue
in this case was not protected by copyright, but was protected by contract.
So the person who published ProCD's phone directories on the Internet was
found to have breached the shrink wrap license agreement that came with the
software.
* In Bowers v. Baystate Technologies Inc., 64 USPQ2d 1065 (CA FC 2002), the Federal Circuit has upheld a contractual no-reverse engineering restriction in an agreement between two parties in a software license that was characterized by the court as shrink wrap.
If, as you say, EULAs have no legal wight then why, in the two decades or so of their existence, nobody -- NOBODY -- managed to provide a serious test case to establish that precedent?
Is there some independent comparison of different archive/compression formats and applications?
One that compares compression ratios of different file types, compression and decompression speed, insertion and extraction of individual files in an archive, etc.
What do you mean "moderated by Slashdot users"?
How can you moderate journal posts?
> Hebrew has cursive.
Well, sort of. It is different from the English "cursive" writing in that the letters do not connect (at least, they are not supposed to but it can happen if you are a sloppy writer and in a hurry).
A more accurate description is that Hebrew letters have two forms: printed (blocky) and handwritten (more rounded).
Arabic, on the other hand, is cursive.
Whois info
University record (the "M" stands for "Michael")
Somehow I doubt the sincerety of your "open tetter" and your willingness to follow through. A posturing slashdot comment, even when moderated to 5, does not a challenge make and I have a suspicion that it is not only RIAA who is "a sham" and "full of shit".
On the other hand, I could be totally wrong about you (it happens) so here's what I suggest:
Go ahead and set yourself up to get sued by RIAA for a similar offence.
I don't know your university's policies about setting up a file indexing server on their network but that could be a first step.
If you succeed in baiting RIAA (supporting evidence will be required), you'll get the following from me:
A posted apology in the slashdot thread(s) of your choosing,
A case of beer (or the monetary equivalent, should the shipping prove to be too cumbersome), and
A contribution to your legal defence fund, should you open one.
Drop a note in my journal when you're ready to collect. Otherwise... Well, you're smart, figure it out.
Jules Verne?
Edgar Allan Poe? (e.g., here)
Mark Twain? (e.g., here)
Ray Bradbury?
Does that put it in a different light?
Oh, by the way, true story. Although I don't personally know this woman, one of my acquaintances does.
Good question. Maybe because
Insightful???
This is the final proof that