Kaching. This exact point was the seed for my antipathy towrds IP. Economics (for all its faults) has some very elegant tools. The point you identified is one such. If extraordinary profits exist then there is a market externality. You should be doubly careful when running this argument though because there are two points of which you need to be aware. First the externality is not necessarily a monopoly (and monopoly is not a critical issue). The second is that retail price is not a good example of how to think about it. In general, companies do spend money to develop a game and there are hidden costs that under the current IP paradigm they spend speculatively. The important measure is return on capital. this is not even profit since that is a temporary measure and it is the capital value of development companies that is the killer critique of IP. How can a company like mirosoft whose capital assets (IP value aside:-) would be a sliver compared to the return on that capital. this is the red flag that the market is failing. But all the operations of the market seem to be working ok (even considering the "monopolistic" behaviour of some participants) so if all the deductions in the market are ok it can only be the initial premise that is flawed. And that initial premise is that property exists in the output of intellect. More and more people are seeing the flaws the market. And yet few realise that the cause is the initial premise and not the operation of the market.
On the contrary. I am _very_ familiar with the history and philosophy of IP (and hence the small part of it that is copyright). I study law at a university with a focus on the whys and wherefores of law (in Australia, so derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition) with comparative law figuring strongly. IP has been a pet project of mine for quite some time with extensive reading of the authors I mention above, and others, in preparation for what will one day be a Thesis on the deconstruction of IP.
Regardless of whether we choose to agree or not. The previous failure of correct policy does not imply that the policy is in itself flawed. Indeed the French position on the "moral" rights associated with property would tend to contradict your original statement, particularly when viewed in the light of the olde torts such as passing off that show a tradition of preserving the "truth" of authorship and integrity of reputation by allowing authors (or creators more correctly i guess) to prosecute (in a civil jurisdiction) those who would gain from the reputation established by the creators works or attempt to profit by trading on the name of a creator.
If one believes that property exists in the output of intellect (which I do not), ie Intellectual Property (IP) then there are a number of principles that I think need to be addressed in the light of IP.
The state must stop criminalising civil wrongs. It is not a crime to copy a piece of software (substitute music, video etc). There is no risk to civil order nor personal injury that justifies the criminal sanction as does acts against private property (such as taking or break enter steal).
Independent discovery must be a defense against a patented process prosecution (or patnents should be abolished:-)
Any process that restricts the fair use of property purchased by a consumer must be illegal (DVD region encoding for example)
I am sorry, but I can't do it. I can't keep up the pretence, IP is bunk it has to go. One cannot describe a logical regime when the initial premise is so broken. There is no property in intellect.
The reason they are the same is that they are both the creation of "property" in something for which such a creation is a contradiction in terms. You cannot, legitimately, create property in another human being, we both agree on that (I hope:-). You cannot, legitimately, create property in the output of intellect, this is my contention. To do so (as we have) is this reason that makes _everything_ about what is going on today wrt to intellectual property so broken.
Please feel free to stop there.
Now I digress. Private property is a legal fiction arising out of the industrial revolution. The legal philosopher's of the time, Blackstone, Locke, Hobbes etc contructed a thing called property in the "stuff" that was appearing in their society, specifically industrial plant and the material that this plant produced. Prior to this moment in history the only property was in land (hence the wrongs of the time were things like trespass, trover and conversion) since land, and the stuff on it (wood and deer for example) or the stuff under it (metals and water for example) were the only things of value. But the industrial development of the time presented an anomaly that threatened the ability of the new industrialists to continue to develop, they needed to be able to protect the "stuff" they had but without recourse to land law since, almost invariably they were not landowners.
Now, as far as I am concerned, private property is good. But there are a number of "sufficiency" tests that need to a apply to a thing before it can legitimately be called property (and it does not have to be a "real" thing for these tests to succeed, but the nontangible properties are much harder to find). One of these tests is exclusion. The ability to exclude another from their property and cause damage is a necessary condition. It is not the only one, nor is it sufficient for the existence of property but it is necessary.
Now IP fails this test. Sure a specific artwork might pass, but then that is not the IP, but real property (RP). The right to stop someone taking a photo of the artwork and putting it in a book or a poster, now that fails since the act does not damage the output of intellect that is embodied in the artwork. Software is the best example, take a copy of my version of applicationX and I still have applicationX, no loss, no exclusion. Take my _actual_ copy of the media, loss, but then what has been taken is the real property of the media and hence we fall into RP land again.
This issue is really important. Most people will reply with the standard arguments against this position. The GNU manifesto serves to rebut many of the arguments that are usually raised against this contention, the "but no one will innovate" argument for example, so I shan't restate them here. But think about it really carefully. The real value in writing a good piece of software (be it induvidually or as part of a team) is that establishes ones repute as a good developer and thus enhances your ability to attract a good wage for your next work or to make you the desired choice to solves someones next problemY. This is the method by which artists made their living in history. One might even find that people are willing to provide you with resources speculatively, on the off chance that what you will come up with will benefit them (that perl guy that got his wages paid for a year by the community for example).
The implications of this paradigm are enourmous. Clearly I don't really have the opportunity here to provide the full thesis, but think of it from a more esoteric perspective. The universe is a righteous place. It treats everyone equally and without prejudice, it takes a pretty exceptional circumstance to justify creating a "law" that impedes our ability to do what the universe allows us to do in a particular circumstance. So let's take software as an example. If I have obtained a piece of software, and with that I have everything I need to distribute it to others, there needs to be a pretty persuasive reason to contradict the universe's granting of the abilty to make copies of that software and create a law to deny the right to act on this ability. In circumstances where such abilities are impugned by laws, we need to ask the hard questions about why. WRT IP the answers are poor, the current state of affairs is impossible to justify, if everything about the current state of law seems "logical" and yet the results are "broken" then perhaps it is not the logic but the premises that are broken. My contention is that the premise is the existence of property in the output of intellect. This premise is broken.
Note: I say "obtained" above wrt getting the software in the first place. This is where the "itch to scratch" argument is elegant. If someone has a million dollar itch then they can spend 999,999 dollars writing a solution to scratch it. Similarly if ten million people have a one dollar itch, well you get the idea. One the solution is paid for, why should additional social capital be reallocated to fund the solving of that problem (unless there is more work to do but then that is ostensibly a different itch). This misallocation (and the failure of the return on capital statistics for IP industries) is another of the "red flags" that made me question the initial premise. BTW I ain't no socialist so this is not a left wing analysis.
My objection to the RMS position is that he still constructs his notion of freedom within the context of a world with IP (He has told me so). I have the same objection to Linux et al, however both positions are superior to unfree software (note I do not use proprietary since "free" is also proprietary) and so I endorse both approaches.
The most robust point made by another poster is that there seems to be no such agenda to promulgate GNU/BSD. A noteworthy observation.
I reject any argument that says all this conflict only helps X or hinders Y. All this conflict is _exactly_ the reason why freedom is something to be pursued and so even were I to disagree with RMS in principle, I would still defend his right to argue his position. A full and public discourse is a good thing, those who cannot see it do not value freedom.
In ancient greek society (a source of many of the foundations for freedom and citzenship) and in our own recent history (little more than 100 years ago) we believed it was possible to have property in another human being, even some of our otherwise most enlightened citizens. Such a thought, slavery, is (hopefully) repellent to all of us now (indenturing... hmmm... ok so maybe not all of us, but anyway) and so we have recognised that there is no property in human beings. I think it is inevitable that the same revelation will come to us over the idea of property in the output of intellect (ie Intellectual Property). In which case the whole argument is somewhat pointlesss. It is to some extent arguing about which is the best arrangement for deck chairs on the Titanic. The one point I would make is that at least RMS is arguing that they should be in the life boats, rather than on the sun deck, if you know what I mean. That is, he is, whilst participating in the futile discussion, doing so recognising how important are the issues.
There is a huge "cultural" issue here. The Americans view Gould as the authority on accessible Evolutionary Biology (to put it simply). Most of the rest of the world does not. Further many (most?) think he is wrong and other's think he is positively destructuive to the understanding of evolution. Punctured Equilibrium being a crock and all.
One of the problems I have with judging SF in general, but SF cinema in particular is the extent to which the cinematic realisation is based on a preexisting work, in particular literature. Can one really judge the merits of the cinematic realisation of the future apart from the original author's vision? (and more based on than say, Blade Runner).
I think that by any standard, there will be an inherent bias against older SF cinema, particularly if the original (as in innovative) idea presented in the film has become passe (Planet of the Apes for example) or SF is merely the setting for an old story (The Forbidden Planet as The Tempest for example) or the vehicle for allegory (The Day the Earth Stood Still for example).
The prevalence of Dystopic future visions, suggest SF as vehicle for allegory and pure SF story telling is actually pretty rare.
Some glaring omissions (IMHO). 1984, 'nuff said. Have there really been no good implementations of a work by HG Wells? What of Verne? A cinematic execution of an illusory world, what about Dark City, if not as good then certainly better than The Matrix. What about Cube? Anyway the list of omissions is, as ever always extensive. But most of all, why isn't Star Wars number 1. Surely by any criteria (except maybe acting:-).
The thing that is more troublesome than no comments is wrong comments. There are all sorts of reasons why it might be good to put a comment in, but the big problem is that they are essentially narrative with no impact on the correctness of the code. In the circumstances where comment says X and code does Y which is correct. Well the only way to work it out is to go back to the functional spec. What, none such detail is provided in your FS? Then you have to go and find the expected behaviour of the system. And determine if the functionality or the comment is correct.
For these reasons there is something to be said for the structured commenting of formal systems like doxygen or autoduck.
However, there are two types of "bug" a legitimate "bug bug" where the code as typed does not perform as intended and a "design flaw" where what is implemented does not fully implement the problem domain. The latter will never be helped by even accurate comments since by definition the comment describes the flawed design. In the event of a "bug bug" the helpfulness of comments is even less since the flaw will almost certainly be an unintended side effect or a typo and only analysing the code will help.
I think that many of the descriptions in these posts (and probably not the author of the post to which this is a reply) are comments in lieu of design documentation (or even design:-). In these cases, I think the only justification is structured commenting where the comments are the design spec in situ, and can be extracted to form the formal design documentation.
In the event that the code is illuminated by the existence of comments then the variable/functon names/algorithm implementation should be revisited to make the intention of the code clear in the source itself. There is one exception to this, and that is where a performance optimisation neccesarily pollutes the "self describing" nature of the code. Such enhancements need to be commented so that subsequent maintainers do not "clean" up the ugly code.
The other exception of course is literate programming. But that is a different story altogether
How about not funding terrorism in Norther Ireland?
I think it is very important to draw the distinction between what the state funds and what free citizens do. Funding terrorist organisations in Ireland is illegal in the US. So is soliciting funds for them. That citizens choose to flaunt the law is not the same thing as the state funding terorism in Ireland (northern or republic of). Further to draw the corollary between funding dirigibles out of govenrment expenditure and the flow of funds from citizens in the US to organisations in Irelend is at best ignorant and at worst disingenuous.
How about not pissing off the Arabs?
Whilst it is somewhat flippant of me, I think that pissing of the Arabs as you put it is sufficiently easy (ie for some of them not being muslim is sufficient for some whilst the simple existence of Israel is enough for other's [others are completely tolerant mind you]) that it is impossible not to piss someone off.
Regardless, I think that if one is willing to argue that _any_ policy warrants the kind of action that has lead to these kind of ideas being floated (excuse the pun) then rational discourse is harldy the vehicle through which you can be persuaded of the folly of your position.
The irony is that there _are_ sufficient steps that the americans need to take to demonstrate their commitment to avoiding the hypocracy that causes their credibility so many problems. The extent to which they make those steps will determine the extent to whihc they are deserving of coninued support (for example the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation).
Whilst you are right about the missing pieces for nanatechnology (and indeed I have no position on the feasibility of the components of which you speak) there are a number of "necessary" components for these nanotech objects to work and without all of them the system is not feasible. One of the necessary components is probably a micro turbine and so it is newsworthy when the advances are made for once they exist, the solving of the other components reduce the number of missing "necessary" components before we have sufficient technology to try the whole deal.
Seem almost prescient considering what happened in Florida in 2000:-)
Sheesh, when will you democrats stop whining? It's like losing on penalties. If you can't score one more goal in over two hours of football, then you really can't complain about losing on penalites (even if it was a duff decision). BIG:-)
The Jefferson quote is superb. However, I think that he envisions a society where such a right to profit from the idea may or may not exist. We (the liberal democratic west) have come from a background where such a right is presumed. But such a right is purely fiction and can be revoked (if the will can be found).
I am distressed by the way things are heading, but my consolation is that the further the industry pushes the idocy of IP, the soner the backlash will arrive.
The problem with our current system is that many have taken the concept espoused by Jefferson, that an idea is deserving of profit, and extended it into meaning that property exists in ideas. Clearly this is not the case, even if one supports Jeffersons position (which I do not [if i was still studying law now I would get into sooo much trouble ]:-). There is no property in ideas. The inability to create scarcity through formal menas is the failing criteria.
Jefferson's never diminshed flame is a beautiful analogy (and one I shall use in future). There is sucha crucial difference between ideas and real property, even things like covenants, that it is not posisble to use the principles of property with ideas or the product of ideas. That we do is the source of all this pain.
IANOVPE (I am not a visual processing expert) but for an example of the difference between us and machines in this area take a whole screen of white noise. How cut out a random square. Now tile the square (or probably any tesselating shape for that matter) and look at the resulting image. A child will see the "grid" pattern. Now try and get a computer to work it out.
Our capacity to distinguish "difference" is such that for us absoluteness of colour is almost irrelvant it is change in wavelenth to which our cones are focused.
"Product placement has to be the worst choice though, as you will quickly end up losing creative control of the show to advertisers "
Hello! Why do you think it is called soap opera? And who cares who has creative control as long as it is creative. The beauty of boradcast TV (and I don't mean stuff like the BBC) is that if I don't like it I turn off. Now the real trick is subscriber TV. Or even better yet, the holy grail of content creaters, Pay Per View. I really don't care. To paraphrase, Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you won't miss 'til it's gone.
The reason why they don't want you skipping their adds is that if the avertisers found out that their sales are unnafected by the decrease in "person views" then the TV industry would be screwed.
There are obvious exceptions; the dinner time ad for dominos during the simpsons or whatever, but efficacy of these real advertising "channels" is easily measured and priced and the price ain't where it is now.
An amazing organisation. Depsite the vagaries of public funding it is a network of insitutions with a proud history of discovery and invention.
The specific research in question here is to determine the feasibility of the idea and to answer (with facts rather than BS we have seen here) the question of whether the wireless technology is viable. And despite the erudite position of some of the "interesting" slashdotter's, I'll take CSIRO's results before their opinions any day:-P
advertising is bunk. I never cease to be amazed that the people who tell corporate spenders about how effective their advertising is the advertising industry _HELLO_ can you say vested interest.
There are some legitimate and effective purposes to which advertising can be put. For example "new product" awareness but the whole visibility == sales mantra is a crock. If you want to find out haw good a brand of car is, you dont ask the manufacturer you look for an independent source, why should it be any different with advertising. The nearest thing advertising has seen to a scientific proof of its effectiveness is well,... nothing.
The proof in what I say is the death of the banner add revenues. The corporates found (surprise fucking surprise) that not only did not page impressions correlate to sales, but not even click throughs corellated to sales. An independent monkey could have told 'em that. So there is no such thing as the "free ride" of which people speak.
I didn't mean to suggest that automating them was a bad idea just that if one chooses an RDBMS as the vehicle then performance will be unnecessarily compromised.
I never cease to be amazed by people who worry about the "blockbuster" being bootlegged. I mean, if the film doesn't suffer so horribly from not being on a HUGE screen with the full ambient sound method of your choice, then it is hardly worth seeing at all:-) And certainly isn't worth seeing for X$ more than the video/cable/dvd version.
Don't misunderstand, I think that there are great films that do not require the cinematic experience, but others _demand_ it. AotC had better be one of the latter:-)
As a side note, I think that the shared experience that is going to see afilm with a friend is really important as well.
It is always difficult for a screenwriter to put dead information into a screenplay since the 120mins (yeah I know give or TAKE) doesn't leave too much time for superfluous material, but that is kinda sad, it would be nice to be able to (both as audience and maker I suspect although I am not the latter) meandre through episodes rather than rush. Some of the more intriguing films of the last 10 years do meandre more and I love them for it, but still there is not so much that gets to screen that is unimportant or even misleading. To this end, I had an idea for a new kind of shared experience cinema. You go in pairs and start by each sitting in different theatres watching different aspects of the same film and then an interval and you join up to watch the remainder of the film together at which point talking is encouraged so that you might build apon each others missing facts.
In truth election systems can be complex. The queries associated therewith extremely un-relational which makes an RDBMS a poor choice of implementation.
In 1989, I taught myself C writing an election counting application for the particularly complex system used at my university student union. It was only an exercise and so the count was performed in the traditional fashion, with the continual distribution and redistribution of votes until sufficient candidates had been eliminated to determine the council.
The computer made this process trivial and a count that took upwards of 12 hours by hand for a few thousand votes could be done in the application in seconds (no surprise there). But were I to have used an RDBMS then the number of updates would have been quite horrible and the indexing largely ineffective. Blecch.
Having said that Germany's preferential voting system is pretty trivial so I don't imagine that performance will be any issue regardles of implementation.
I'm sorry but the pinnacle of screwy highways is Canberra in Australia. It is the nation's capital, a designed city, and engineered for a population of a million where only 100,000 public servants live. Due to an amazing configuration of highways, round abouts and ring roads it is the only place in the world where you can know exactly where you are and still be completely lost, with no idea of how to get where you want to go.
Slashdot Mirror
Kaching. This exact point was the seed for my antipathy towrds IP. Economics (for all its faults) has some very elegant tools. The point you identified is one such. If extraordinary profits exist then there is a market externality. You should be doubly careful when running this argument though because there are two points of which you need to be aware. First the externality is not necessarily a monopoly (and monopoly is not a critical issue). The second is that retail price is not a good example of how to think about it. In general, companies do spend money to develop a game and there are hidden costs that under the current IP paradigm they spend speculatively. The important measure is return on capital. this is not even profit since that is a temporary measure and it is the capital value of development companies that is the killer critique of IP. How can a company like mirosoft whose capital assets (IP value aside :-) would be a sliver compared to the return on that capital. this is the red flag that the market is failing. But all the operations of the market seem to be working ok (even considering the "monopolistic" behaviour of some participants) so if all the deductions in the market are ok it can only be the initial premise that is flawed. And that initial premise is that property exists in the output of intellect. More and more people are seeing the flaws the market. And yet few realise that the cause is the initial premise and not the operation of the market.
CC: "These are not the bands you are looking for"
PUB: "These are not the bands I am looking for"
Or Perhaps:
CC: "You are all individuals"
PUB:"Yes, we are all individuals"
IND: "I'm not!"
and then 5 hours later when we finish our last game of Monkey Target and can't hold our eyes open any more, it's time to put it away
See, your mother always told you that spanking the monkey would make you go blind. So yes, it is time to "put it away".
On the contrary. I am _very_ familiar with the history and philosophy of IP (and hence the small part of it that is copyright). I study law at a university with a focus on the whys and wherefores of law (in Australia, so derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition) with comparative law figuring strongly. IP has been a pet project of mine for quite some time with extensive reading of the authors I mention above, and others, in preparation for what will one day be a Thesis on the deconstruction of IP.
Regardless of whether we choose to agree or not. The previous failure of correct policy does not imply that the policy is in itself flawed. Indeed the French position on the "moral" rights associated with property would tend to contradict your original statement, particularly when viewed in the light of the olde torts such as passing off that show a tradition of preserving the "truth" of authorship and integrity of reputation by allowing authors (or creators more correctly i guess) to prosecute (in a civil jurisdiction) those who would gain from the reputation established by the creators works or attempt to profit by trading on the name of a creator.
If one believes that property exists in the output of intellect (which I do not), ie Intellectual Property (IP) then there are a number of principles that I think need to be addressed in the light of IP.
:-)
The state must stop criminalising civil wrongs. It is not a crime to copy a piece of software (substitute music, video etc). There is no risk to civil order nor personal injury that justifies the criminal sanction as does acts against private property (such as taking or break enter steal).
Independent discovery must be a defense against a patented process prosecution (or patnents should be abolished
Any process that restricts the fair use of property purchased by a consumer must be illegal (DVD region encoding for example)
I am sorry, but I can't do it. I can't keep up the pretence, IP is bunk it has to go. One cannot describe a logical regime when the initial premise is so broken. There is no property in intellect.
The reason they are the same is that they are both the creation of "property" in something for which such a creation is a contradiction in terms. You cannot, legitimately, create property in another human being, we both agree on that (I hope :-). You cannot, legitimately, create property in the output of intellect, this is my contention. To do so (as we have) is this reason that makes _everything_ about what is going on today wrt to intellectual property so broken.
Please feel free to stop there.
Now I digress. Private property is a legal fiction arising out of the industrial revolution. The legal philosopher's of the time, Blackstone, Locke, Hobbes etc contructed a thing called property in the "stuff" that was appearing in their society, specifically industrial plant and the material that this plant produced. Prior to this moment in history the only property was in land (hence the wrongs of the time were things like trespass, trover and conversion) since land, and the stuff on it (wood and deer for example) or the stuff under it (metals and water for example) were the only things of value. But the industrial development of the time presented an anomaly that threatened the ability of the new industrialists to continue to develop, they needed to be able to protect the "stuff" they had but without recourse to land law since, almost invariably they were not landowners.
Now, as far as I am concerned, private property is good. But there are a number of "sufficiency" tests that need to a apply to a thing before it can legitimately be called property (and it does not have to be a "real" thing for these tests to succeed, but the nontangible properties are much harder to find). One of these tests is exclusion. The ability to exclude another from their property and cause damage is a necessary condition. It is not the only one, nor is it sufficient for the existence of property but it is necessary.
Now IP fails this test. Sure a specific artwork might pass, but then that is not the IP, but real property (RP). The right to stop someone taking a photo of the artwork and putting it in a book or a poster, now that fails since the act does not damage the output of intellect that is embodied in the artwork. Software is the best example, take a copy of my version of applicationX and I still have applicationX, no loss, no exclusion. Take my _actual_ copy of the media, loss, but then what has been taken is the real property of the media and hence we fall into RP land again.
This issue is really important. Most people will reply with the standard arguments against this position. The GNU manifesto serves to rebut many of the arguments that are usually raised against this contention, the "but no one will innovate" argument for example, so I shan't restate them here. But think about it really carefully. The real value in writing a good piece of software (be it induvidually or as part of a team) is that establishes ones repute as a good developer and thus enhances your ability to attract a good wage for your next work or to make you the desired choice to solves someones next problemY. This is the method by which artists made their living in history. One might even find that people are willing to provide you with resources speculatively, on the off chance that what you will come up with will benefit them (that perl guy that got his wages paid for a year by the community for example).
The implications of this paradigm are enourmous. Clearly I don't really have the opportunity here to provide the full thesis, but think of it from a more esoteric perspective. The universe is a righteous place. It treats everyone equally and without prejudice, it takes a pretty exceptional circumstance to justify creating a "law" that impedes our ability to do what the universe allows us to do in a particular circumstance. So let's take software as an example. If I have obtained a piece of software, and with that I have everything I need to distribute it to others, there needs to be a pretty persuasive reason to contradict the universe's granting of the abilty to make copies of that software and create a law to deny the right to act on this ability. In circumstances where such abilities are impugned by laws, we need to ask the hard questions about why. WRT IP the answers are poor, the current state of affairs is impossible to justify, if everything about the current state of law seems "logical" and yet the results are "broken" then perhaps it is not the logic but the premises that are broken. My contention is that the premise is the existence of property in the output of intellect. This premise is broken.
Note: I say "obtained" above wrt getting the software in the first place. This is where the "itch to scratch" argument is elegant. If someone has a million dollar itch then they can spend 999,999 dollars writing a solution to scratch it. Similarly if ten million people have a one dollar itch, well you get the idea. One the solution is paid for, why should additional social capital be reallocated to fund the solving of that problem (unless there is more work to do but then that is ostensibly a different itch). This misallocation (and the failure of the return on capital statistics for IP industries) is another of the "red flags" that made me question the initial premise. BTW I ain't no socialist so this is not a left wing analysis.
</soapbox>
My objection to the RMS position is that he still constructs his notion of freedom within the context of a world with IP (He has told me so). I have the same objection to Linux et al, however both positions are superior to unfree software (note I do not use proprietary since "free" is also proprietary) and so I endorse both approaches.
The most robust point made by another poster is that there seems to be no such agenda to promulgate GNU/BSD. A noteworthy observation.
I reject any argument that says all this conflict only helps X or hinders Y. All this conflict is _exactly_ the reason why freedom is something to be pursued and so even were I to disagree with RMS in principle, I would still defend his right to argue his position. A full and public discourse is a good thing, those who cannot see it do not value freedom.
In ancient greek society (a source of many of the foundations for freedom and citzenship) and in our own recent history (little more than 100 years ago) we believed it was possible to have property in another human being, even some of our otherwise most enlightened citizens. Such a thought, slavery, is (hopefully) repellent to all of us now (indenturing... hmmm... ok so maybe not all of us, but anyway) and so we have recognised that there is no property in human beings. I think it is inevitable that the same revelation will come to us over the idea of property in the output of intellect (ie Intellectual Property). In which case the whole argument is somewhat pointlesss. It is to some extent arguing about which is the best arrangement for deck chairs on the Titanic. The one point I would make is that at least RMS is arguing that they should be in the life boats, rather than on the sun deck, if you know what I mean. That is, he is, whilst participating in the futile discussion, doing so recognising how important are the issues.
There is a huge "cultural" issue here. The Americans view Gould as the authority on accessible Evolutionary Biology (to put it simply). Most of the rest of the world does not. Further many (most?) think he is wrong and other's think he is positively destructuive to the understanding of evolution. Punctured Equilibrium being a crock and all.
Linux will be the operating system of choice "off planet"? Cool.
One of the problems I have with judging SF in general, but SF cinema in particular is the extent to which the cinematic realisation is based on a preexisting work, in particular literature. Can one really judge the merits of the cinematic realisation of the future apart from the original author's vision? (and more based on than say, Blade Runner).
:-).
I think that by any standard, there will be an inherent bias against older SF cinema, particularly if the original (as in innovative) idea presented in the film has become passe (Planet of the Apes for example) or SF is merely the setting for an old story (The Forbidden Planet as The Tempest for example) or the vehicle for allegory (The Day the Earth Stood Still for example).
The prevalence of Dystopic future visions, suggest SF as vehicle for allegory and pure SF story telling is actually pretty rare.
Some glaring omissions (IMHO). 1984, 'nuff said. Have there really been no good implementations of a work by HG Wells? What of Verne? A cinematic execution of an illusory world, what about Dark City, if not as good then certainly better than The Matrix. What about Cube? Anyway the list of omissions is, as ever always extensive. But most of all, why isn't Star Wars number 1. Surely by any criteria (except maybe acting
The thing that is more troublesome than no comments is wrong comments. There are all sorts of reasons why it might be good to put a comment in, but the big problem is that they are essentially narrative with no impact on the correctness of the code. In the circumstances where comment says X and code does Y which is correct. Well the only way to work it out is to go back to the functional spec. What, none such detail is provided in your FS? Then you have to go and find the expected behaviour of the system. And determine if the functionality or the comment is correct.
:-). In these cases, I think the only justification is structured commenting where the comments are the design spec in situ, and can be extracted to form the formal design documentation.
For these reasons there is something to be said for the structured commenting of formal systems like doxygen or autoduck.
However, there are two types of "bug" a legitimate "bug bug" where the code as typed does not perform as intended and a "design flaw" where what is implemented does not fully implement the problem domain. The latter will never be helped by even accurate comments since by definition the comment describes the flawed design. In the event of a "bug bug" the helpfulness of comments is even less since the flaw will almost certainly be an unintended side effect or a typo and only analysing the code will help.
I think that many of the descriptions in these posts (and probably not the author of the post to which this is a reply) are comments in lieu of design documentation (or even design
In the event that the code is illuminated by the existence of comments then the variable/functon names/algorithm implementation should be revisited to make the intention of the code clear in the source itself. There is one exception to this, and that is where a performance optimisation neccesarily pollutes the "self describing" nature of the code. Such enhancements need to be commented so that subsequent maintainers do not "clean" up the ugly code.
The other exception of course is literate programming. But that is a different story altogether
The best commented code is literate programming code. There is no better.
How about not funding terrorism in Norther Ireland?
I think it is very important to draw the distinction between what the state funds and what free citizens do. Funding terrorist organisations in Ireland is illegal in the US. So is soliciting funds for them. That citizens choose to flaunt the law is not the same thing as the state funding terorism in Ireland (northern or republic of). Further to draw the corollary between funding dirigibles out of govenrment expenditure and the flow of funds from citizens in the US to organisations in Irelend is at best ignorant and at worst disingenuous.
How about not pissing off the Arabs?
Whilst it is somewhat flippant of me, I think that pissing of the Arabs as you put it is sufficiently easy (ie for some of them not being muslim is sufficient for some whilst the simple existence of Israel is enough for other's [others are completely tolerant mind you]) that it is impossible not to piss someone off.
Regardless, I think that if one is willing to argue that _any_ policy warrants the kind of action that has lead to these kind of ideas being floated (excuse the pun) then rational discourse is harldy the vehicle through which you can be persuaded of the folly of your position.
The irony is that there _are_ sufficient steps that the americans need to take to demonstrate their commitment to avoiding the hypocracy that causes their credibility so many problems. The extent to which they make those steps will determine the extent to whihc they are deserving of coninued support (for example the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation).
Whilst you are right about the missing pieces for nanatechnology (and indeed I have no position on the feasibility of the components of which you speak) there are a number of "necessary" components for these nanotech objects to work and without all of them the system is not feasible. One of the necessary components is probably a micro turbine and so it is newsworthy when the advances are made for once they exist, the solving of the other components reduce the number of missing "necessary" components before we have sufficient technology to try the whole deal.
Seem almost prescient considering what happened in Florida in 2000 :-)
Sheesh, when will you democrats stop whining? It's like losing on penalties. If you can't score one more goal in over two hours of football, then you really can't complain about losing on penalites (even if it was a duff decision). BIG :-)
The Jefferson quote is superb. However, I think that he envisions a society where such a right to profit from the idea may or may not exist. We (the liberal democratic west) have come from a background where such a right is presumed. But such a right is purely fiction and can be revoked (if the will can be found).
I am distressed by the way things are heading, but my consolation is that the further the industry pushes the idocy of IP, the soner the backlash will arrive.
The problem with our current system is that many have taken the concept espoused by Jefferson, that an idea is deserving of profit, and extended it into meaning that property exists in ideas. Clearly this is not the case, even if one supports Jeffersons position (which I do not [if i was still studying law now I would get into sooo much trouble ]:-). There is no property in ideas. The inability to create scarcity through formal menas is the failing criteria.
Jefferson's never diminshed flame is a beautiful analogy (and one I shall use in future). There is sucha crucial difference between ideas and real property, even things like covenants, that it is not posisble to use the principles of property with ideas or the product of ideas. That we do is the source of all this pain.
IANOVPE (I am not a visual processing expert) but for an example of the difference between us and machines in this area take a whole screen of white noise. How cut out a random square. Now tile the square (or probably any tesselating shape for that matter) and look at the resulting image. A child will see the "grid" pattern. Now try and get a computer to work it out.
Our capacity to distinguish "difference" is such that for us absoluteness of colour is almost irrelvant it is change in wavelenth to which our cones are focused.
"Product placement has to be the worst choice though, as you will quickly end up losing creative control of the show to advertisers "
Hello! Why do you think it is called soap opera? And who cares who has creative control as long as it is creative. The beauty of boradcast TV (and I don't mean stuff like the BBC) is that if I don't like it I turn off. Now the real trick is subscriber TV. Or even better yet, the holy grail of content creaters, Pay Per View. I really don't care. To paraphrase, Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you won't miss 'til it's gone.
The reason why they don't want you skipping their adds is that if the avertisers found out that their sales are unnafected by the decrease in "person views" then the TV industry would be screwed.
There are obvious exceptions; the dinner time ad for dominos during the simpsons or whatever, but efficacy of these real advertising "channels" is easily measured and priced and the price ain't where it is now.
An amazing organisation. Depsite the vagaries of public funding it is a network of insitutions with a proud history of discovery and invention.
:-P
The specific research in question here is to determine the feasibility of the idea and to answer (with facts rather than BS we have seen here) the question of whether the wireless technology is viable. And despite the erudite position of some of the "interesting" slashdotter's, I'll take CSIRO's results before their opinions any day
advertising is bunk. I never cease to be amazed that the people who tell corporate spenders about how effective their advertising is the advertising industry _HELLO_ can you say vested interest.
There are some legitimate and effective purposes to which advertising can be put. For example "new product" awareness but the whole visibility == sales mantra is a crock. If you want to find out haw good a brand of car is, you dont ask the manufacturer you look for an independent source, why should it be any different with advertising. The nearest thing advertising has seen to a scientific proof of its effectiveness is well,... nothing.
The proof in what I say is the death of the banner add revenues. The corporates found (surprise fucking surprise) that not only did not page impressions correlate to sales, but not even click throughs corellated to sales. An independent monkey could have told 'em that. So there is no such thing as the "free ride" of which people speak.
In that case, automating them is a good idea.
I didn't mean to suggest that automating them was a bad idea just that if one chooses an RDBMS as the vehicle then performance will be unnecessarily compromised.
I never cease to be amazed by people who worry about the "blockbuster" being bootlegged. I mean, if the film doesn't suffer so horribly from not being on a HUGE screen with the full ambient sound method of your choice, then it is hardly worth seeing at all :-) And certainly isn't worth seeing for X$ more than the video/cable/dvd version.
:-)
Don't misunderstand, I think that there are great films that do not require the cinematic experience, but others _demand_ it. AotC had better be one of the latter
As a side note, I think that the shared experience that is going to see afilm with a friend is really important as well.
It is always difficult for a screenwriter to put dead information into a screenplay since the 120mins (yeah I know give or TAKE) doesn't leave too much time for superfluous material, but that is kinda sad, it would be nice to be able to (both as audience and maker I suspect although I am not the latter) meandre through episodes rather than rush. Some of the more intriguing films of the last 10 years do meandre more and I love them for it, but still there is not so much that gets to screen that is unimportant or even misleading. To this end, I had an idea for a new kind of shared experience cinema. You go in pairs and start by each sitting in different theatres watching different aspects of the same film and then an interval and you join up to watch the remainder of the film together at which point talking is encouraged so that you might build apon each others missing facts.
In truth election systems can be complex. The queries associated therewith extremely un-relational which makes an RDBMS a poor choice of implementation.
In 1989, I taught myself C writing an election counting application for the particularly complex system used at my university student union. It was only an exercise and so the count was performed in the traditional fashion, with the continual distribution and redistribution of votes until sufficient candidates had been eliminated to determine the council.
The computer made this process trivial and a count that took upwards of 12 hours by hand for a few thousand votes could be done in the application in seconds (no surprise there). But were I to have used an RDBMS then the number of updates would have been quite horrible and the indexing largely ineffective. Blecch.
Having said that Germany's preferential voting system is pretty trivial so I don't imagine that performance will be any issue regardles of implementation.
I'm sorry but the pinnacle of screwy highways is Canberra in Australia. It is the nation's capital, a designed city, and engineered for a population of a million where only 100,000 public servants live. Due to an amazing configuration of highways, round abouts and ring roads it is the only place in the world where you can know exactly where you are and still be completely lost, with no idea of how to get where you want to go.
Screwy