"The Globe and Mail reports that the Canadian record industry has experienced a 6.4% drop in CDs and cassettes overall (not singles) in the last year."
Who buys cassettes anymore anyways? Why do they tie cassettes and CDs together? Well, to make a story for gullible people of course. Blargh! Give us some REAL numbers, not lies through statistics.
He went to the wrong site. He should try Kuro5hin, which has a superior moderation system and new stories once in a blue moon. Which I believe is a healthy thing for great discussion. When everybody can moderate, there isn't so much bad moderation either.
I was a student at the time, and I said that it was all hype and that it would just be Windows 3.11 on DOS, just forced and even more user-unfriendly and slower. I predicted the nightmare of Plug & Play, because I knew that it was too good to be true. Especially since most hardware at the time wasn't build with P&P in mind at all. So the P&P code in Windows must be insanely hacky. It's not that many people didn't realize, it's that many people wants to believe something so much that they blindly accepts the hype and disregards all reason. It's pretty much like falling in love.
You'll still have a breakdown, since a data-model is not really patentable (IMHO). Patents are for new inventions, which data-models clearly are not. As the process of data-modelling is a very researched and published area.
However, all is not lost. Copyright only applies to the source and its copies. Reverse-engineering is thereby legal, except that you propbably have to do it outside the US because of the DMCA.
You can still get sued though. Anyone can sue. It's up to the court to rule if it was correct or not. If I were a US citizen, I would sue the politicians for passing such mediocre laws. Surely the sell-outs can afford it!
"The open source community can come up with a working alternative, but in doing so will become a criminal group, breaking copyright laws and violating patents. M$,"
Not to forget the DMCA. Well thought out piece. Kudos!
For $200 I got a T-shirt from the FSF. Now that was cool! (Expensive though;*) Maybe something to think about for those "evil" donation-hungry corporations among us?:-)
That's quite right, and without a descent moderation system like on K5, the expression "the more the merrier" doesn't necessary hold true. So even though the growth of Usenet has been underwhelming, that might actually be a good thing and not death-cramps.
I think you got the right idea, but the wrong conclusion. Porting may be hard, but it's next to impossible without the source. However, just look at cygwin, a posix-compatible layer on windows that makes it possible to compile alot of linux-tools on it. Many of these no longer require source-changes (merged with linux source). They are even working on an X-server, and have a fully downloadable/updateable distribution full of goodies like ls, cp, diff, vi, etc. Conclusion: Whatever "killer apps" linux gets, it will eventually be ported to Windows and/or other proprietary OSes because it is free and therefore can be ported. Cygwin is even funded by Red Hat, what business sense that makes I don't know, but it makes sense for free applications across platforms (=more freedom).
The point of free software is not "killer apps", lock-ins (or luring) and world conquest. The whole point is to educate people to see that free software (two-way sharing of code) can be beneficial to all, and get them involved in it. If people don't see this, they deserve to be stuck in whatever proprietary world they belong to. This is how the world works, not because it's evil. It's a classical mistake to throw pearls before swine.
Well, if we say never, it'll never happen. It's a self-fullfilling prophecy. It just shows you're not doing your part, and want to transfer that to everyone else. So you can be released from guilt in collective crime. You'd like those (few) people that really works for a better earth and helps others, to stop, or become invisible so you don't have to think about them. Not that I'm any better than that either, I'm just saying what I think is the problem.
You can have as many scientific and technological breakthroughs as you'd like, but we'd still have the same lack of morals, ethics and willingess to work for the collective. We're egoistic, all we think about is ourselves. Even when we care for family and colleagues. If you just stop once in a while in your day-to-day life, and notice who you're really thinking about, you'll see too.
This doesn't work. In order to have a well-directed and healthy society, it's habitants MUST care for it. There's nothing out there in space that can do it for us. However, that care needs energy, and cannot really sustain by itself over time (due to friction). That is where I believe spirituality (breath-excersises, yoga, meditation, etc) comes into play. But negativity is what keeps people from breaking out of their circle, until they're fed up.
Just wait till this comes with censorware being installed on schools and libraries. Sometimes it's okay not to chill, because with today's society: if it can happen, it will happen.
I know. I was referring to constrictions on use as non-free. Btw, if the source is free (readable and modifiable), there's nothing to stop someone else from porting to other platforms (as long as they get the source). My comment was a reply on the notion that free software should be constricted to a free-platform only. The part of free that is great, is that a windows manager for linux is easily ported to the BSD-family for instance.
So many are talking about this "killer-app" that could lure everyone onto linux. I don't believe that's entirely true, because linux already has a "killer-app" that noone can take away (we hope), it's free. Whatever the linux-crowd do with the OS, someone else can do with a proprietary OS (except for making it free, since it would no longer be proprietary). But you'd have to have alot of really dedicated people, to freely deliver systems to support people who don't support them back. In the longer run, that does not work. So I don't see why everyone should switch to linux. Not until people freely chose so themselves, because linux is free and they wish to be a part of it, not because they just want a free ride. When linux is mature enough as a desktop OS, maybe then it could be an ideal OS for non-technical people. But as it is now, linux demands you to learn your ropes (not just click some icons), which I think is great btw. Having said that, I would personally much rather support Linux than any proprietary platform if I were to administer a network of desktop OSes for use of textprocessors and spreadsheets. Even through Wine or Win4Lin;-)
Well the whole point of sharing is that you give some, you get some. If somebody are never given to, they will surely stagnate and die (in a general system). Your company is a company that doesn't want to give back when it is given something, which is the very reason the GPL exists.
However, the GPL doesn't really cover stuff like object brokers and self-supported programs, maybe you could use that as a loop-hole? Since the use of a GPLed program is free, you can use the output as you wish (unless it outputs code that is copyright/copyleft). Good luck!
That's pretty paradoxial IMHO: If free software has to force me to switch entire systems for everything I use my computer for, it's no longer free. Thus, it cannot exist. It should be called forced software instead, or remain a lie. This is the excact reason the GPL is called free: It doesn't constrict use. Such constrictions are silly artificial barriers that will melt-down soon enough when people discovers how absolutely stupid it is. Remember that distribution != use.
Not to mention it would be like shooting yourself in the foot again and again and again, since nobody but a few hardcore supporters are only using free software in their day-to-day life. And if that's an argument against free software, well that has its reason because free software hasn't really had the amount of mindshare that proprietary software has had.
All in all, those who think the world only consists of a battle between free vs proprietary software, are sadly mistaken.
I've tried BearShare and can't really say I was impressed. Unless I'm after Brittney Spears (which I'm not), it's impossible to find what I'm looking for. Check out my Bio to see what kind of music that is. Hard to get under gnutella, and I've never managed to download a single working file from gnutella.
Buying more CDs would not help your case. The only proper action is non-violent civil disobedience. Sure they can tell you this and that is unlawful, unethical or whatever FUD they can come up with. However, just keep going, and after a while they might even get your point. Because in order to break you, _they_ will have to use violence and force. Only then will they have lost their case. The trick is to not give any energy to people you don't think deserve it and convince others why you chose to do so.
This is basically a receipe for non-violent change in society. If a society can't tolerate such actions, then that society is no longer free. Strangely enough, it worked in India for Mahatma Gandhi.
The people the RIAA really wants to target aren't educated consumers like you, or me, or most of the Slashdot community, but the people who just want 'that song from the radio.'
Except that 'that song from the radio' is very often a special radio-edition which are not sold in stores. So you litteraly have to "pirate" it (Arrr! Flee landcrabs!) from somewhere to get what you really want.
Of course, the masses don't care about this, and money follow the masses. So we're damned if we do and damned if we don't.
I believe the kids of tomorrow are going to be heavily influenced by the new technology available. I don't think it will make them that much smarter though, and it certainly won't make them less lazy. There are alot of pit-traps to fall into, in for instance online gaming and chatting. These can be time-consuming activities that ruin the social life, spelling and even "the whole education" of the kid (*gasp!* *choke!*). However, they'll also learn to appreciate real life as they mature. When they start thinking about how much time they (and others) have "wasted". Therefore, I firmly believe the market is going to be satiated after a while. There's only that many cool games the industry can make, until most kids are fed up with the concept. Kids will want to socialize more, even outside the games. You can't turn whole nations into hardcore gamers you know.. (At least I hope so) Perhaps they will find a balance between gaming and other chores, just as kids have managed before. The key element here is that what we find stunning and addictive today, will be pretty ordinary in 5 years.
Programming is perhaps one aspect of computers that will affect how kids think drastically. More and younger kids will think in vastly more complex and logical ways. They will learn sooner that the real world doesn't always operate that way though. Again, it'll be easier to find a balance than before. Because they'll start younger. Gaming often inspires new wanna-be programmers, and there are alot of new techno-toys even outside the realm of computers. Think Lego Mindstorms. I believe many of these can counter the death of creativity created by consuming media. Kids will always need an outlet for creativity, and the mind-dumbing of TV and games will have a counter-action.
The Internet is going to make everyone more aware that we're all in this together. Kids growing up will not understand why we have international borders at all. To them, it will seem old-fashioned and irrational to segregate populations in such an unnatural way. They will feel less part of their nation, and more part of their online and local communities. As always, they won't understand why we have wars.
So all in all, everything will pretty much remain the same.
- Steeltoe
Re:RMS as inflammatory as ever.
on
GPL FAQ
·
· Score: 1
No source is unbiased. The trick is to extract what truth you can find, happily ignoring what you think of as biased. This is possible because you know WHO wrote it and WHAT they stand for. A little propaganda never hurts you if you think, and it might even give you some new insights either way.
Yeah, instead of dealing with their lives they get babies and live through their kids. Nice to know someone actually have character and don't do what everyone else does.
I agree. I would just like to add to your last sentence, that the total meaning of childhood is not just to produce an adult. Happiness NOW is pretty important no matter age. Maybe it should be The most important thing?
When I went to school, the teacher didn't make detailed statistics over who did homework and not. Maybe latecomings, but the parents weren't actually meant to inspect these. As for lunch, this is espionage plain and simple. You might as well stick a webcam in the childs head (which I'm sure is coming soon too).
When I went to school, we were taught "responsibility for own learning". There are children down to 8 years that are forced to take responsibility over their parents. So it shouldn't be impossible to teach teenagers to think a little more. Special cases will always be special.
The difference lies in the day-to-day monitoring aspect, detail of it and ability to prevent your kid from doing "bad actions" like buying icecream. It has absolutely nothing to do with parenting. Checking the logs wether your kids did their homework that day or what they ate at lunch, is no assurance of their good health and well-being. The net effect being that the kids be further alienated from their parents, learn to accept monitoring and having no real choice and responsibility.
Furthermore, irresponsible parents will continue to be irresponsible. They will still do the wrong choices.
Slashdot Mirror
"The Globe and Mail reports that the Canadian record industry has experienced a 6.4% drop in CDs and cassettes overall (not singles) in the last year."
Who buys cassettes anymore anyways? Why do they tie cassettes and CDs together? Well, to make a story for gullible people of course. Blargh! Give us some REAL numbers, not lies through statistics.
- Steeltoe
He went to the wrong site. He should try Kuro5hin, which has a superior moderation system and new stories once in a blue moon. Which I believe is a healthy thing for great discussion. When everybody can moderate, there isn't so much bad moderation either.
- Steeltoe
I was a student at the time, and I said that it was all hype and that it would just be Windows 3.11 on DOS, just forced and even more user-unfriendly and slower. I predicted the nightmare of Plug & Play, because I knew that it was too good to be true. Especially since most hardware at the time wasn't build with P&P in mind at all. So the P&P code in Windows must be insanely hacky. It's not that many people didn't realize, it's that many people wants to believe something so much that they blindly accepts the hype and disregards all reason. It's pretty much like falling in love.
- Steeltoe
You'll still have a breakdown, since a data-model is not really patentable (IMHO). Patents are for new inventions, which data-models clearly are not. As the process of data-modelling is a very researched and published area.
However, all is not lost. Copyright only applies to the source and its copies. Reverse-engineering is thereby legal, except that you propbably have to do it outside the US because of the DMCA.
You can still get sued though. Anyone can sue. It's up to the court to rule if it was correct or not. If I were a US citizen, I would sue the politicians for passing such mediocre laws. Surely the sell-outs can afford it!
- Steeltoe
"The open source community can come up with a working alternative, but in doing so will become a criminal group, breaking copyright laws and violating patents. M$,"
Not to forget the DMCA. Well thought out piece. Kudos!
- Steeltoe
For $200 I got a T-shirt from the FSF. Now that was cool! (Expensive though ;*) Maybe something to think about for those "evil" donation-hungry corporations among us? :-)
- Steeltoe
That's quite right, and without a descent moderation system like on K5, the expression "the more the merrier" doesn't necessary hold true. So even though the growth of Usenet has been underwhelming, that might actually be a good thing and not death-cramps.
- Steeltoe
I think you got the right idea, but the wrong conclusion. Porting may be hard, but it's next to impossible without the source. However, just look at cygwin, a posix-compatible layer on windows that makes it possible to compile alot of linux-tools on it. Many of these no longer require source-changes (merged with linux source). They are even working on an X-server, and have a fully downloadable/updateable distribution full of goodies like ls, cp, diff, vi, etc. Conclusion: Whatever "killer apps" linux gets, it will eventually be ported to Windows and/or other proprietary OSes because it is free and therefore can be ported. Cygwin is even funded by Red Hat, what business sense that makes I don't know, but it makes sense for free applications across platforms (=more freedom).
The point of free software is not "killer apps", lock-ins (or luring) and world conquest. The whole point is to educate people to see that free software (two-way sharing of code) can be beneficial to all, and get them involved in it. If people don't see this, they deserve to be stuck in whatever proprietary world they belong to. This is how the world works, not because it's evil. It's a classical mistake to throw pearls before swine.
- Steeltoe
Well, if we say never, it'll never happen. It's a self-fullfilling prophecy. It just shows you're not doing your part, and want to transfer that to everyone else. So you can be released from guilt in collective crime. You'd like those (few) people that really works for a better earth and helps others, to stop, or become invisible so you don't have to think about them. Not that I'm any better than that either, I'm just saying what I think is the problem.
You can have as many scientific and technological breakthroughs as you'd like, but we'd still have the same lack of morals, ethics and willingess to work for the collective. We're egoistic, all we think about is ourselves. Even when we care for family and colleagues. If you just stop once in a while in your day-to-day life, and notice who you're really thinking about, you'll see too.
This doesn't work. In order to have a well-directed and healthy society, it's habitants MUST care for it. There's nothing out there in space that can do it for us. However, that care needs energy, and cannot really sustain by itself over time (due to friction). That is where I believe spirituality (breath-excersises, yoga, meditation, etc) comes into play. But negativity is what keeps people from breaking out of their circle, until they're fed up.
- Steeltoe
Just wait till this comes with censorware being installed on schools and libraries. Sometimes it's okay not to chill, because with today's society: if it can happen, it will happen.
- Steeltoe
This may be the closest this many humans have come to developing a (somewhat focused) hive mind,, yet."
./ you mean? :*)
Except for
- Steeltoe
I know. I was referring to constrictions on use as non-free. Btw, if the source is free (readable and modifiable), there's nothing to stop someone else from porting to other platforms (as long as they get the source). My comment was a reply on the notion that free software should be constricted to a free-platform only. The part of free that is great, is that a windows manager for linux is easily ported to the BSD-family for instance.
;-)
So many are talking about this "killer-app" that could lure everyone onto linux. I don't believe that's entirely true, because linux already has a "killer-app" that noone can take away (we hope), it's free. Whatever the linux-crowd do with the OS, someone else can do with a proprietary OS (except for making it free, since it would no longer be proprietary). But you'd have to have alot of really dedicated people, to freely deliver systems to support people who don't support them back. In the longer run, that does not work. So I don't see why everyone should switch to linux. Not until people freely chose so themselves, because linux is free and they wish to be a part of it, not because they just want a free ride. When linux is mature enough as a desktop OS, maybe then it could be an ideal OS for non-technical people. But as it is now, linux demands you to learn your ropes (not just click some icons), which I think is great btw. Having said that, I would personally much rather support Linux than any proprietary platform if I were to administer a network of desktop OSes for use of textprocessors and spreadsheets. Even through Wine or Win4Lin
- Steeltoe
Well the whole point of sharing is that you give some, you get some. If somebody are never given to, they will surely stagnate and die (in a general system). Your company is a company that doesn't want to give back when it is given something, which is the very reason the GPL exists.
However, the GPL doesn't really cover stuff like object brokers and self-supported programs, maybe you could use that as a loop-hole? Since the use of a GPLed program is free, you can use the output as you wish (unless it outputs code that is copyright/copyleft). Good luck!
- Steeltoe
That's pretty paradoxial IMHO: If free software has to force me to switch entire systems for everything I use my computer for, it's no longer free. Thus, it cannot exist. It should be called forced software instead, or remain a lie. This is the excact reason the GPL is called free: It doesn't constrict use. Such constrictions are silly artificial barriers that will melt-down soon enough when people discovers how absolutely stupid it is. Remember that distribution != use.
Not to mention it would be like shooting yourself in the foot again and again and again, since nobody but a few hardcore supporters are only using free software in their day-to-day life. And if that's an argument against free software, well that has its reason because free software hasn't really had the amount of mindshare that proprietary software has had.
All in all, those who think the world only consists of a battle between free vs proprietary software, are sadly mistaken.
- Steeltoe
Let me ask you this - just because you're holding something I own, does that change the fact that I own it?
You still own it, but the analogy fails because a physical thing and software are two entirely different things.
- Steeltoe
I don't kill people. They just die.
- Steeltoe
I've tried BearShare and can't really say I was impressed. Unless I'm after Brittney Spears (which I'm not), it's impossible to find what I'm looking for. Check out my Bio to see what kind of music that is. Hard to get under gnutella, and I've never managed to download a single working file from gnutella.
- Steeltoe
Buying more CDs would not help your case. The only proper action is non-violent civil disobedience. Sure they can tell you this and that is unlawful, unethical or whatever FUD they can come up with. However, just keep going, and after a while they might even get your point. Because in order to break you, _they_ will have to use violence and force. Only then will they have lost their case. The trick is to not give any energy to people you don't think deserve it and convince others why you chose to do so.
This is basically a receipe for non-violent change in society. If a society can't tolerate such actions, then that society is no longer free. Strangely enough, it worked in India for Mahatma Gandhi.
- Steeltoe
The people the RIAA really wants to target aren't educated consumers like you, or me, or most of the Slashdot community, but the people who just want 'that song from the radio.'
Except that 'that song from the radio' is very often a special radio-edition which are not sold in stores. So you litteraly have to "pirate" it (Arrr! Flee landcrabs!) from somewhere to get what you really want.
Of course, the masses don't care about this, and money follow the masses. So we're damned if we do and damned if we don't.
- Steeltoe
I believe the kids of tomorrow are going to be heavily influenced by the new technology available. I don't think it will make them that much smarter though, and it certainly won't make them less lazy. There are alot of pit-traps to fall into, in for instance online gaming and chatting. These can be time-consuming activities that ruin the social life, spelling and even "the whole education" of the kid (*gasp!* *choke!*). However, they'll also learn to appreciate real life as they mature. When they start thinking about how much time they (and others) have "wasted". Therefore, I firmly believe the market is going to be satiated after a while. There's only that many cool games the industry can make, until most kids are fed up with the concept. Kids will want to socialize more, even outside the games. You can't turn whole nations into hardcore gamers you know.. (At least I hope so) Perhaps they will find a balance between gaming and other chores, just as kids have managed before. The key element here is that what we find stunning and addictive today, will be pretty ordinary in 5 years.
Programming is perhaps one aspect of computers that will affect how kids think drastically. More and younger kids will think in vastly more complex and logical ways. They will learn sooner that the real world doesn't always operate that way though. Again, it'll be easier to find a balance than before. Because they'll start younger. Gaming often inspires new wanna-be programmers, and there are alot of new techno-toys even outside the realm of computers. Think Lego Mindstorms. I believe many of these can counter the death of creativity created by consuming media. Kids will always need an outlet for creativity, and the mind-dumbing of TV and games will have a counter-action.
The Internet is going to make everyone more aware that we're all in this together. Kids growing up will not understand why we have international borders at all. To them, it will seem old-fashioned and irrational to segregate populations in such an unnatural way. They will feel less part of their nation, and more part of their online and local communities. As always, they won't understand why we have wars.
So all in all, everything will pretty much remain the same.
- Steeltoe
No source is unbiased. The trick is to extract what truth you can find, happily ignoring what you think of as biased. This is possible because you know WHO wrote it and WHAT they stand for. A little propaganda never hurts you if you think, and it might even give you some new insights either way.
- Steeltoe
Yeah, instead of dealing with their lives they get babies and live through their kids. Nice to know someone actually have character and don't do what everyone else does.
- Steeltoe
I agree. I would just like to add to your last sentence, that the total meaning of childhood is not just to produce an adult. Happiness NOW is pretty important no matter age. Maybe it should be The most important thing?
- Steeltoe
When I went to school, the teacher didn't make detailed statistics over who did homework and not. Maybe latecomings, but the parents weren't actually meant to inspect these. As for lunch, this is espionage plain and simple. You might as well stick a webcam in the childs head (which I'm sure is coming soon too).
When I went to school, we were taught "responsibility for own learning". There are children down to 8 years that are forced to take responsibility over their parents. So it shouldn't be impossible to teach teenagers to think a little more. Special cases will always be special.
- Steeltoe
The difference lies in the day-to-day monitoring aspect, detail of it and ability to prevent your kid from doing "bad actions" like buying icecream. It has absolutely nothing to do with parenting. Checking the logs wether your kids did their homework that day or what they ate at lunch, is no assurance of their good health and well-being. The net effect being that the kids be further alienated from their parents, learn to accept monitoring and having no real choice and responsibility.
Furthermore, irresponsible parents will continue to be irresponsible. They will still do the wrong choices.
- Steeltoe