Slashback: IceWeasel, Online Gambling, GPU Folding, Evolution

Slashback tonight brings some clarifications and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including: The facts about Debian Iceweasel; A closer look at Folding@home's GPU client; David Brin's lament; Online gambling ban may violate international law; Human species may do whatnow?; and Another RIAA lawsuit dropped. Read on for details.

The facts about Debian Iceweasel. john-da-luthrun writes, "Debian Firefox/XULrunner maintainer Mike Hommey reports on the Firefox/Iceweasel wrangle, correcting various assertions that have been made in the assorted trollfests/flamewars currently raging over the proposed Firefox rename. Hommey confirms that Firefox in Etch will be renamed 'Iceweasel,' but this will only be a renamed version of the vanilla Firefox, not the GNU Iceweasel fork — though the Debian and GNU Iceweasel teams may work together in future."

A closer look at Folding@home's GPU client. TheRaindog writes, "Slashdot recently covered some impressive client statistics for Stanford's Folding@home project, but they don't tell the whole story. The Tech Report has taken a closer look at the GPU client, running it on a Radeon X1900 XTX against the CPU client on a dual-core Opteron. The results are enlightening, especially considering how Stanford has chosen to award points GPU client work units. Power consumption is more interesting, with the GPU client apparently far more power-efficient than folding with a CPU."

David Brin need not lament — KidBasic. sproketboy writes, "I was thinking about the recent slashdot story David Brin Laments Absence of Programming For Kids, and after looking around I found KidBasic. KidBasic is quite good and teaches all the basics of programming. My 4 year old nephew and I have been able to get a few simple games programmed with it."

Online gambling ban may violate international law. An anonymous reader writes, "As Slashdot noted earlier, Congress has passed an effective ban on online gambling in the U.S. This may not be the end of the story, however. The law may be struck down by the World Trade Organization on the grounds that it violates the United States' international obligation not to discriminate in favor of domestic casinos. If the WTO strikes down this U.S. gambling ban, it would not be the first time. In November of 2004, the WTO struck down a U.S. anti-gambling law as illegally discriminating against the nation of Antigua."

Human species may do whatnow?. jamie writes, "'I might have believed this nonsense could come from some late 19th century eugenicist, but now? Is there any evidence...?' That's biologist PZ Myers's comment on the BBC story that claims the human species may split in two. It was posted on Slashdot as humor, but Myers's comments are a much-needed sober appraisal of this kind of pseudoscientific claim."

Another RIAA lawsuit dropped. skelator2821 writes, "Another RIAA lawsuit has been dropped against a defendant who had been accused of illegally sharing songs online, according to Ars Technica. Looks like the Mob tactics are not paying off for our good friends at the RIAA anymore."

F@H

[slimjim8094]

I hope they make it run on other GPUs. Maybe, this will pressure gfx card manufacturers to make some sort of cross-compatible powerful scripting language to run any other embarrassingly parallel calculations... it would certainly be benificial

Re:

[donglekey]

It's called OpenGL 2.0 and it rocks pretty hard.

Re:F@H

[SETIGuy]

Since, AFAIHBT, ATI is funding the port, a generalized GPU client might not happen for a while.

Most of the claims in TFA hinge on beleiving that the GPU client is (as Stanford has claimed) 20 to 40 times faster than the CPU client. It would be nice, and certainly beneficial to ATI, if the FAH team would allow the same work units to be processed by both the GPU and CPU versions. As it is, there is no way to test their claims, and it seems they've gone out of their way to be sure there is no way to test their claims.

Call me skeptical.

Something they forgot

[2.7182]

Penny Smith's supposed solution to the Millenium problem (Navier Stokes) turned out to be wrong.

International law?

[RelliK]

Since when does US care about international law?

Re:International law?

[chill]

A: Since when does US care about international law?

When is "never", Alex?

I'll take "Obvious Questions for $1,000.

Re:

[Mike_ya]

When does any country care about international law when it comes to its own interests?

Re:

[IWannaBeAnAC]

Often. Don't project the faults of your own country onto others.

Fault is being shortsighted.

[Kadin2048]

Actually never -- if they did, they would be neglectful of their responsibilities as leaders to do the best thing for their country. However, sometimes it's best to forgo a short-term gain in favor of long term stability. In other words, by submitting to international law (or a body like the WTO), you preserve a system which you believe benefits you in the long run.

Being law abiding, whether on the individual or national level, is not self-sacrificial behavior. There are good and rational reasons for doing so. It only looks disadvantageous when you're using a very short or narrow perspective. I would argue that the main problem with U.S. foreign policy is that it sacrifices long-term goals for short-term advantages or gains. We probably have more to gain from a strong World Trade Organization than anyone; if we make it irrelevant, we hurt ourselves in the long run.

Re:

[darum]

Notice how in Game Theory cooperation (e.g. abiding to international law) is often a good long term strategy. Other "players" might find ways to "punish" non-cooperative behaviour.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Theory [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[HTH NE1]

Notice how in Game Theory cooperation (e.g. abiding to international law) is often a good long term strategy.

Only so long as you don't know when the last round is to be played.

It is unfortunate for all others if any one player can bring about the final round at a time of his choosing.

Re:

[Lars T.]

The purpose of a democratically elected government is to represent and advocate for the interests of their constituency.

Which includes "getting along with other countries", because the consequences of not doing so may well not be for the best interests of their constituency.

Sure, go ahead, piss off more people - but don't come crying to other countries.

Re:International law?

[John Hasler]

You really ought to learn what "international law" actually is. Hint: the WTO does not have the power to "strike down" the laws of any nation.

Re:International law?

[TubeSteak]

the WTO does not have the power to "strike down" the laws of any nation.

True, but irrelevant.

They up the ante by having the ability to allow penalties on almost any of the violating country's exports.

The WTO does this by allowing the people making the complaints to place some decided amount of import tariffs on any of the [violating country]'s export goods. The country(s) making the complaint can decide the products they want to place tariffs on.

The net result is that you may get away with breaking the rules... but only until the complaint works its way through the WTO system. Even the U.S. has been forced to play along.

Re:

[Best ID Ever!]

Sadly the country bringing the complaint in this case is Antigua, so the imposition of tariffs by Antigua will probably not be effective.

There's a little more to it

[BeeBeard]

The WTO does this by allowing the people making the complaints to place some decided amount of import tariffs on any of the [violating country]'s export goods. The country(s) making the complaint can decide the products they want to place tariffs on.

This is true, and no offense, but frankly I'm impressed that you are aware of this. It's a welcome relief from the overwhelmingly ignorant "globalization this" and "free trade that" rants that I often read on Slashdot. What you might not know, however, is that allowing the nation who petitioned the Dispute Settlement Body to choose the way in which they are to be compensated has had an unexpected political side-effect, at least in the U.S. It turns out that one of the best ways of putting pressure on lawmakers and even the President of the United States is to impose tariffs on goods that are made in certain politically volatile states.

For instance, let's say it's 3 years ago and you're, I dunno...Germany. You just won your DSB case because you successfully demonstrated that you were harmed because of let's say, an economic initiative by George Bush that involved giving domestic steel producers in the northeast an unfair subsidy. As Germany, you turn around and impose a heavy tariff against all oranges coming from the United States, knowing full well many of those oranges come from Florida. Then, the pressure is ramped up on Bush, because he must then explain to Florida orange growers (who have a powerful lobby, by the way) why it is that they're having trouble selling their oranges in certain European markets.

That's the theory, anyway.

Re:

[Usagi_yo]

Whats the problem here?

The U.S doesn't allow anything equivalent in the U.S ... I.E online gambling ... which is alot different then B&M Casinos. About the only legal U.S online gambling I know of is horse racing in certain states that have race tracks. TVG for example. It's paramutual and they charge a fee and the track still gets the the takeout. If those foreign companies adhered to U.S laws I.E takeout, vig, IRS reportings then there probably wouldn't have been any problems in the first place.

Re:International law?

[coaxial]

Since when does US care about international law?

When it's convienent.

Re:

[guardiangod]

As a Canadian, I am frankly annoyed by how US government ignored the US-Canada softwood dispute [wikipedia.org] NAFTA ruling, and how our new PM bent over.

Re:

[topham]

We don't discuss how our PM bends over in public. No, I don't mean we don't discuss it in public. We just don't talk about what he does in public.

Re:International law?

[rs79]

"NAFTA ruling, and how our new PM bent over."

Hey, that's Vice President Harper to you, buddy.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, don't be alarmist. We'd take you in as 10 states and 3 territories. Well, maybe 9 states and 3 territories. ;-)

Re:

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

To be fair, our previous PM also bent over (what did he accomplish?). The only difference is this PM has decided to pick his battles, rather than venting a bunch of hot air when he has no intention of doing anything meaningful.

Re:

[JanneM]

Since when does US care about international law?

Since you want to sell your products and services to other countries in turn.

Nonsense

[John Hasler]

> The law may be struck down by the World Trade Organization...

The WTO does not have the power to strike down any US law.

Re:Nonsense

[Dachannien]

They can permit member states to impose trade sanctions that would otherwise also be against WTO agreements if they decide a member state is in violation. It wouldn't be the first time the US has caved.

There may be one interesting consequence of the WTO opposing this law, though. The US federal government cannot regulate gambling transactions that don't cross state lines, due to the Commerce Clause [wikipedia.org] in the US Constitution. This means that any federal law restricting online gambling must exempt, at least implicitly, online gambling transactions that take place all in one state. One of the grounds of complaint that other WTO members apparently have with this law is that it treats intrastate gambling transactions differently from international ones, and if the WTO rules that this part of the complaint is valid, then the US would never be able to restrict online gambling in any way, and still remain in compliance with treaty obligations, without a Constitutional amendment or without all 50 states imposing the same regulations on intrastate gambling.

Re:Nonsense

[anthony_dipierro]

The US federal government cannot regulate gambling transactions that don't cross state lines, due to the Commerce Clause in the US Constitution.

Oh c'mon. The Commerce Clause hasn't been taken seriously (by the Supreme Court) in decades. See Gonzales v. Raich for one of the most recent examples. If the federal government can regulate the cultivation of marijuana in a home garden, they can regulate gambling within one state.

The US federal government shouldn't be allowed to regulate gambling transactions that don't cross state lines, but they sure as hell can.

Re:Nonsense

[CaptainEbo]

The US federal government cannot regulate gambling transactions that don't cross state lines, due to the Commerce Clause in the US Constitution.

In the wake of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Gonzales v. Raich, I doubt this is true. Raich essentially held that the government could ban all trade & production of cannabis in California, even that activity which involved entirely homegrown plants which never crossed state lines, on the theory that if local growers could introduce cannabis to a local marketplace, it would impact the nationwide cannabis market, and thus have a substantial cross-state effect.

(As a side note, I don't like the government banning medical marijuana, but there is no question that Raich was correctly decided. The same theory is also why landmark civil rights legislation, such as the act which forbids whites-only lunch counters, also applies to lunch counters which only serve local clients. One of the unfortunate things about constitutional law is that you often have to take the bitter with the sweet.)

The case for allowing interstate gambling to be banned is bolstered by the WTO. As has been correctly noted above, the WTO does not have the power to "strike down" laws, per se. It does, however, have the power to allow trade sanctions so onerous that any reasonable government would repeal the offending law on their own initiative. Given this framework (which is an international framework largely outside of U.S. hands), the federal government could likely defend an intrastate gambling ban on the grounds that, by banning intrastate gambling, the government avoids onerous trade sanctions, which itself has a substantial effect on interstate commerce.

Re:

[Dachannien]

Well, I suppose I could ultimately be wrong regarding the Commerce Clause, but it still presents Congress with the conundrum of abandoning the gambling regulations altogether, or imposing them uniformly on state transactions and incurring an almost certain legal battle, with an uncertain outcome, spanning multiple years and courtrooms.

Re:

[xenocide2]

How does that work? If there's no lawful way for cannabis to be sold across state lines, then there's no trade and thus no effect on the market. Extra supply in one state cannot move to another, so the price isn't affected. Are we allowed to consider the unlawful actions people might take? Hopefully the argument is more complex than stated.

The commerce clause has become far too powerful,

Re:

[TubeSteak]

In the wake of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Gonzales v. Raich, I doubt this is true. Raich essentially held that the government could ban all trade & production of cannabis in California, even that activity which involved entirely homegrown plants which never crossed state lines, on the theory that if local growers could introduce cannabis to a local marketplace, it would impact the nationwide cannabis market, and thus have a substantial cross-state effect.

That's the same reasoning they've use

If the sweet comes with bitter, you've lost.

[Kadin2048]

(As a side note, I don't like the government banning medical marijuana, but there is no question that Raich was correctly decided. The same theory is also why landmark civil rights legislation, such as the act which forbids whites-only lunch counters, also applies to lunch counters which only serve local clients. One of the unfortunate things about constitutional law is that you often have to take the bitter with the sweet.)

This is a dangerous attitude to take. Just because some good effects came out of a poorly-reasoned decision, doesn't make the decision good. It means that a whole lot of social good is resting on insecure, poorly-reasoned legal foundations.

I'd argue that a similar situation now exists with abortion and other reproductive and personal rights. Lots of things that many people take for granted rest on a series of court decisions -- Roe v. Wade chief among them -- which are rather delicate logical and jurisprudential constructs. Had Roe not been decided the way it was, political will might have developed in the 1970s to codify an actual right to privacy, rather than relying on the flawed concept of a "pneumbra." Unfortunately, the latter path was taken, and now a whole host of rights ride on a this concept. As soon as people began to take those rights for granted, the opportunity of actually having enough momentum to get an actual codified right disappeared. Today, if a handful of legal scholars can be convinced of the wrongness of Roe and the pneumbra concept, then not only abortion but the whole "right" to privacy could disappear.

Swallowing bad jurisprudence simply because it produces social good in the short term is almost always a bad idea, and it leads to less stability in the long run. It forces you to either run the risk of losing the social gains in order to overturn bad law (as in Roe), or in keeping the bad precedent and subsequent bad judgements in order to keep the social good (as with your example of Raich and civil rights).

"Rights" won on questionable legal arguments can hardly said to be 'won' at all -- they're the social-freedom versions of stock-market bubbles. Pleasant, ephemeral, but apt to cause chaos one way or another whether they burst or remain. Slow growth based on actual legislative action is far better in the long run, painful as it may be in the present. Sometimes extreme pain is what's required to motivate both the people and the Legislative branch into action.

Civil Rights Legislation

[200_success]

Civil rights legislation is justified by Amendment XIV [cornell.edu], which provides for equal protection under the law. It gives Congress the authority to enforce civil rights laws, trumping states' rights.

Civil rights laws aren't based on the interstate commerce clause. All sorts of discrimination were legal before Amendment XIV was passed.

Wickard v. Filburn

[tepples]

The US federal government cannot regulate gambling transactions that don't cross state lines, due to the Commerce Clause in the US Constitution.

O RLY? The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that Congress can regulate wheat and marijuana production that does not cross state lines because they compete with products that do cross state lines. Wickard v. Filburn [wikipedia.org]; Gonzales v. Raich [wikipedia.org].

Re:

[Sloppy]

The US federal government cannot regulate gambling transactions that don't cross state lines, due to the Commerce Clause in the US Constitution. This means that any federal law restricting online gambling must exempt, at least implicitly, online gambling transactions that take place all in one state.

They have set up a back door to get around this. Congress just has to state they want to stop or regulate interstate gambling, and also state that intrastate gambling is a part of that market. At that poin

Re:

[nebaz]

The WTO does not have the power to strike down any US law.

Disclaimer, IDNKWIATA (I do not know what I am talking about), but I think that even though the parent statement is technically true, I believe the WTO can decide to take punative trading measures against countries that do not comply with these rulings. I do not know if the US has any veto power here, like they do in the security council.

Re:

[Andrew Kismet]

re-read the section you've quoted and I'll you see why he has to use an acronym that needs explaining.

Re:

[Reverend528]

The WTO does not have the power to strike down any US law.

Congress responded to the WTO by stating, "If you strike us down now, we'll become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."

Stolen name; nice one.

[topham]

Debian is being stupid if they use the Iceweasel name knowing the it will be confused with a current, ongoing project.

And you wonder why Mozilla doesn't want them abusing their trademark...

Re:

[xenocide2]

Guess where that project got the name: DEBIAN! But we'll conveniently ignore that part, cuz then there's no clearly right answer. If only they had trademarked the name...

Re:Stolen name; nice one.

[Anonymous Coward]

The name Iceweasel came from Debian itself when they were first contemplating renaming Firefox® to get around trademark issues. It never came to that because Mozilla® decided to allow Debian to use the name Firefox® without requiring them to use the non-Free branding images - which Debian legally couldn't distribute in any case.

Then, about a year ago, Mozilla® decided that this was not enough. That in order to use the name Firefox®, Debian would either have to submit all patches through Mozilla® and get them approved (thereby greatly delaying critical security patches) or not call the browser Firefox®.

Mozilla® has always been a primarily Windows-based program. It's architected around Windows and ported to UNIX and other systems almost as an after-thought. This has forced every single Linux distribution to apply patches to make Firefox® a well-behaved program. Some distributions are willing to go through what should be, for an "open source" project, a completely unnecessary patch approval process.

However, that goes completely against the point of Free software. So Debian has no choice - if they want to continue distributing a secure Firefox® that works within a Linux environment, they're forced to call it something else. So they're calling it by the name they came up with when the issue came up originally: Iceweasel.

This entire issue is 100% Mozilla®'s problem. None of the blame can possibly be placed on Debian, Mozilla® is being 100% unreasonable.

Re:Stolen name; nice one.

[bfree]

I basically agree with everything you say until the last line. This is not 100% Mozilla's problem and this is demonstrated by the willingness of other distributions to jump through Mozilla's hoops to have Firefox in their distro.

Note that I am not addressing who has the right approach, just that the problem is in part created by the DFSG (the very core rules for debian and the thing that ensures it remains more Free then virtually any other distribution). I don't actually think Mozilla is being unreasonable, they don't want the Firefox name tarnished so they want to control what is called Firefox, but they are taking an approach which means that their flagship product is not Free Software (as by definition it must include non-free parts and derivatives cannot be freely distributed without a patch sign-off).

Of course as IceWeasel demonstrates, while Firefox may not be Free, it's source code is, so if you want to distribute your own Free version of Firefox you are free to do so as long as you change the name and remove the logo. What this really highlights, to those who can think beyond "you suck", is that the co-operation implicit in good Free software license's allows diverse needs to still work together past fundamental differences in their approach.

Re:

[jonasj]

It is not correct that Debian couldn't "legally" distribute the non-free logo. They won't distribute it because it violates the *DFSG* -- not the *law*!

Re:Stolen name; nice one.

[smoker2]

An interesting use of the ® symbol there.

Didn't Debian (TM) force people to stop using the word Debian (TM) ?

Another shining example of Debian (TM) pettiness.

It's architected around Windows and ported to UNIX and other systems almost as an after-thought.

Oh, that's why you need cygwin to build it -

Here is the complete cygwin package list for building Mozilla. You can use it to double-check your packages, or to understand and customize the build process:

* ash -- UNIX-like command line interpreter shell (Base category)
* coreutils -- GNU core utilities (includes fileutils, install, sh-utils, and textutils) (Base category)
* cvs -- concurrent versions system (Devel category)
* diffutils -- file comparison utility (Base category)
* findutils (Base category)
* gawk -- pattern matching language (Base and Interpretors categories)
* grep -- text search tool (Base category)
* libiconv -- character set conversion (Devel category)
* make 3.80 (not 3.81!) -- dependency analyzer for software builds (Devel category)
* patchutils -- a small collection of programs that operate on patch files (Devel category)
* perl -- a scripting language used to control parts of the build (Interpreters category)
* sed -- a search and replace language (Base category)
* unzip -- zip file extraction (Archive category)
* zip -- zip file creation (Archive category)

From Mozilla [mozilla.org]

Re:Stolen name; nice one.

[ElleyKitten]

I think it's perfect.

Debian comes up with a name, GNU applies that name to a browser, Ubuntu takes the name and makes spiffy logos for it, Debian takes the name and the browser and probably the logos and goes in a totally different direction from the other two.

Stop looking at me like I'm crazy.

What does this mean? This means that no one person or organization can have a trademark on the word IceWeasel. This Firefox mess has been because Debian is not able to do what it wants to do with Firefox because Mozilla has final say because they have the trademark. Mozilla's been demanding they break their own guidelines by including a non-free image with their distro and demanding that all patches be approved by them, even though they don't support the old versions that Debian does. The last thing anyone wants would be for the same thing to happen to IceWeasel. Happily, that looks like that's impossible, and IceWeasel will be the free Firefox.

Re:Stolen name; nice one.

[harves]

Woah, how is this insightful? Debian discussed renaming Firefox and thought up a suitable name name, GNU made the fork using the name Debian thought up, and now Debian has decided to go ahead with their plan.

"So they forked a project, then decided they didn't want to use the fork" is absolute rubbish. Try reading the article.

My Own Followup to David Brin's Article

[AKAImBatman]

I chose to use a Commodore 64 for educating my own son:

http://akaimbatman.intelligentblogger.com/wordpres s/archives/42 [intelligentblogger.com]

Re:My Own Followup to David Brin's Article

[Cylix]

I prefer to use the belt.

"Someone's about to get some edumacation!"

Ok so this is slashback so it's not offtopic

[Anonymous Coward]

When are we going to see the tag cloud that stories are tagged with? Is it possible to make sure that some words are not used when tagging stories? I would bet that the current tag cloud has the words yes, no, fud, notfud, notnotfud as the largest taxonomies. Whilst I'm sure some /.'ers couldn't care about those words being the dominant words they really don't add any substance to a tagged story. How about tagging stories with useful concept-oriented tags and blocking non-substance words like 'no' or 'yes'?

Re:

[quantaman]

Actually I think that yes, no, fud, notfud, and the like are some of the most useful tags a story can get. Normal tagging has its advantages but I find it also tends to be fairly hit and miss on whether people made the associations you're counting on for your search, as well I don't really like the idea of having people do what search engines are designed for (but that's just my own anti-tag bias).

The /. tagging however has evolved into essentially a quick informal vote about the story (where the users make

The World Trade Organization can strike down a law

[anthony_dipierro]

As much as I'd appreciate giving the WTO such a power in this particular case, I'm afraid the ability to strike down laws of sovereign nations is far too extreme to allow this organization.

Fortunately, it seems the WTO doesn't actually have this power. They can declare a law in violation of the WTO. They can convince the member nations to implement sanctions against countries which remain in violation. But they don't seem to have the power to "strike down" any laws.

Re:The World Trade Organization can strike down a

[ranton]

But they don't seem to have the power to "strike down" any laws.

The only power that anyone ever really has is military power. The only way that the US government can enforce any law on its citizens is to threaten them with force. The only way to actually "strike down" any American law would be to use force against the US government. Or at least threaten to use force.

Because the WTO has no military force, the only thing they can do is put sanctions against the US. It is the same thing that the UN is planning on doing to North Korea. It could still work if they can work up the guts, and I hope they do.

Im an American, but these gambling laws are rediculous. If it takes crippling our own economy to show our rulers that they are out of line then its a small price to pay. If I lose my job I could always become a professional gambler :-)

--

Re:

[Teancum]

The problem with the WTO and American law is that treaties are considered "the supreme law of the land" in the USA. Indeed, if a statutory law conflicts with treaty obligations, the treaty wins out and is what gets enforced by U.S. courts.

In other words, the WTO has real teeth in terms of overruling actions of the U.S. Congress.

About the only thing that the WTO can't do is to override the U.S. Constitution, which in theory trumps even treaties (and a prime factor to consider with copyright treaties, for ex

Re:

[TubeSteak]

They can declare a law in violation of the WTO. They can convince the member nations to implement sanctions against countries which remain in violation.

AFAIK, the WTO is there to act as a Judge.

They can only respond to complaints about unfair trading practices, ie they cannot go out & 'declare a law in violation' unless someone comes to them first.

Since that person came to them, the WTO doesn't have to convince anyone. The complaint wouldn't be made if the complainer wasn't seeking relief.

First we demand the conclusion be true!

[fermion]

Then we fabricate evidence the supports the conclusion. This wishful thinking is really no different than all the other faith based reasoning that is the cause of massive waste and inefficiency in our government, research, and educational ventures. We wish we had perpetual energy. We wish we that a homogeny was sustainable. We wish that there was someone who would answer our prayers and give us houses and cell phones and cool cars. We wish that the world was full of tall blonde pert breasted ubiquitous

Wait a minute...

[Trumpet of Doom]

Did anyone notice the link provided for the RIAA case simply discussed the Elektra v. Wilke case, which has already been posted here to /. and is actually the topic of the story "RIAA Drops Case in Chicago," under the related stories? ...or am I the only one here who RTFAs?

(no link, you can click over on your own)

Yeah Yeah GPU Client

[code shady]

That's cool and all, but how about a universal binary folding@home client?
Or at the very least, an intel compatible one. Running F@H under rosetta is barely worth it.

Lamenet?

[nacturation]

Did anyone else read that as "David Brin's Lamenet" and wonder what kind of lame-ass peer to peer network this was?
 

Re:

[FooAtWFU]

Did anyone else read that as "David Brin's Lamenet" and wonder what kind of lame-ass peer to peer network this was?

LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder [wikipedia.org], that's what kind of lame-ass P2P network it is.

KidBasic

[KlausBreuer]

Hmm, sounds like VisualBasic ;)

Aaaanyway, what I'd recommend for his kid is IBOL: Icon Based Operation Language. Never heard of it? Try googling for 'ChipWits' :)

(Yes, this time I'm involved: am re-creating a freeware version of it for - gasp! shudder! - Windoze)

Ciao,
Klaus

Re:Thy shall not steal

[John Hasler]

Unauthorized copying is not theft, nor is it even always illegal.

Re:

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Which part of the "nor give away something, that is not yours" was so difficult to grasp?

Gee, I don't see anything going away. That song my friend just copied is still right here.

By now only idiots and fools with axes to grind try to apply the 'rules' of physical things to non-rivalrous and non-excludable things.

Re:

[kingkade]

The fact that for the *other* person it's "there" now is the stealing part.

Re:

[the_humeister]

Let's say I have a paper origami crane. My friend has a piece of paper and proceeds to make a paper origami crane with his piece of paper. The end result looks exactly like mine. Did my friend just steal something? If not, then why is it considered "stealing" when magnetic bits are manipulated to the same state on hard drives?

Re:

[kingkade]

I appreciate your analogy, but I don't agree. One reason, as dopey as it sounds, is that your paper crane is not copyrighted, that music is.

Or I can go a different route and argue that you're not stealing something tangible such as a pattern of bits that is a song, but you are stealing a potential customer from the artist to whom they'd be able to sell their song. Let's go to the extreme.

If we decided to pass a law that it is not a crime to copy songs if you haven't bought them, and I can copy music without

Re:Thy shall not steal

[the_humeister]

The problem we have here is an issue of semantics. Here's the crux of the problem: my origami crane is implicitly copyrighted [copyright.gov]. Thus my friend would be guilty of copyright infringement. If my friend took away my origami crane, that would be stealing because I no longer have the physical object. However, since he just made his own origami crane to look like mine, he's only infringing on my copyright of the crane. I still have my origami crane in my possession.

The issue here is that the RIAA/MPAA would like to have you believe that copyright infringement and stealing are the same thing when they are not. What they're trying to do is pound into the public that copyright infringement is stealing because, quite frankly, which term sounds worse? Stealing or copyright infringement?

Re:

[kingkade]

I agree we have the problem of semantics, to me copyright infringement is a form of stealing. Whether it sounds worse that "copyright infringement" or not is irrelevant.

I disagree that your crane is implicitly copyrighted since I don't think it would be considered an "original work of authorship".

Re:

[HuguesT]

If the parent came up with a novel way of folding the paper to produce a crane, it would most definitely be copyritable, or at least the explanations to fold the paper would be.

Re:

[Alsee]

US Law > TITLE 17 > Chapter 1 > Section 102 >

Subject matter of copyright: In general

(a) Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. Works of authorship include the following categories:

(1) literary works;
(2) musical works, includ

Re:

[NoOneInParticular]

I disagree that your crane is implicitly copyrighted since I don't think it would be considered an "original work of authorship".

Yes it would [origami.as].

Re:

[Alsee]

Mr. Dowling is still guilty of it

Of course. The example would have pointless if he wasn't.

copyright infringment is still wrong

Agreed.

If you had said copyright infringment is rape or copyright infringment is murder, and someone replied saying "no it's not", would you jump to the conclusion that they were somehow saying copyright infringment was ok? Of course not. Or at least I assume not. Infringment is not theft rape or murder, and should not be thought of in terms of theft rape or murder.

Copyright is a goo

Re:

[14CharUsername]

Ok lets say you and I have a contract that specifies that you will provide me with a service in exchange for some money. You provide the service and I skip town without paying you. Most people would consider this stealing (fraud).

But according to yor logic I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't take any physical object from you. I didn't take away your ability to provide services to others. So you have no reason to be upset, right?

Re:Thy shall not steal

[LordLucless]

If you're going to extrapolate, you can't just stop at an arbitrary point.

Ok, so the abolition of copyright has lead to destruction of the music industry. Only the very few art-for-art's sake type musicians still release music.

Is there still a demand for music? Yes? Then there is the potential for a market. Obviously the market won't operate on the basis of selling a single song many times cheaply due to copyright. What would the artist do? Demand money up-front. Instead of working "on-spec", the artist works on commission. Either a rich guy commissions a song/album, or a coalition of moderately wealthy people (fans) pool their money to commission an album. End result: artist gets paid, music gets made.

Such a scheme wouldn't work know - why would any consumer go to that length of trouble when they can go to the CD store and just buy an album for $25? But if the current distribution method died, the commission-based system would become attractive as the only way to get new music. That sort of shift would also have a noticable effect on the end product. In the current model, artists must write to please studios, so they can get in to the global distribution and publicity network the studios offer. In the commission-based model, artists must write to please their fans, or they're not going to get another commission after the first. It would probably also put commercial radio out of business.

As long as there is significant demand for music - and there has been throughout all recorded history - then music will be made. What changes is how, why and how much.

Re:

[kingkade]

The original dispute was whether violating copyright was stealing. The extreme scenario was not meant to be a dishonest mechanism to say that you couldn't take it further such as commissioned works as you describe. As an aside, a future where the only music is that commissioned by movie moguls and television producers seems terrible.

Re:

[LordLucless]

As an aside, a future where the only music is that commissioned by movie moguls and television producers seems terrible.

Yeah, it does, but a future where the majority of music is commissioned by pools of fans seems less so, to me at least. After all, most of the music produced now is essentially being commissioned by the music industry - if you dont do it like they want it, you don't get signed. Of course, there are indies now, and there will probably be indies then. They are the "art-for-arts-sake" arti

Re:

[RodgerDodger]

Copyright violation is not theft. Nor is it stealing. This does not mean it is not a crime, or morally wrong, or anything similar (though it doesn't mean that it is, either).

Copyright violation is actually closer to trespassing than theft. If I trespass, I do not necessarily inflict any harm on the property owner, anymore than I inflict harm on a musician by copying a song I didn't intend to buy.

The current copyright laws in the US are not geared to encourage creativity, or to engender economic growth. They

Re:

[kingkade]

You're right, that is another way of looking at it. The point is the copyright holder is the only one with the right to make such a decision to share their work, not you and your friend.

Re:

[Planesdragon]

If not, then why is it considered "stealing" when magnetic bits are manipulated to the same state on hard drives?

Because "unlawful copyright infringement in the Nth degree" is hard for a layman to say?

It's illegal. You can go to jail for it, and will almost certainly be forced to pay actual damages. You might as well complain about why a priest calls aggrivated manslaughter "murder."

Copyright On Origami Cranes

[cmholm]

If someone can copyright musical compositions or words on paper, I suspect I could copyright my particular folding crane, or at least a book illustrating the methodology.

Re:

[truthsearch]

Here are some of my bits. Actually, they're Slashdot's, but I'll let you have them. Sue me.

Re:

[Mr. Droopy Drawers]

Regular expressions are your friend:
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/docs/ActivePerl/5 .8/lib/Pod/perlretut.html [activestate.com]

Re:Crapweasel

[frogstar_robot]

For the billionth time, this is more than the logo. Debian had an understanding that let them call the version in their repository "Firefox" if they used a different logo. The mozilla.com people say that isn't good enough anymore. To use the codebase and call it Firefox Debian must:

1. Submit all patches to mozilla.com for approval. This includes security patches.
2. Debian's policy is to stick with a version of a given package for a release and backport security and stability fixes only. Mozilla.com would rather have everyone running the latest version at all times.

Basically, the codebase ceases to be Open Source if any product compiled from it is to be called Firefox. Very few other projects engage in this sort of control freakery and branding. If all Open Source projects behaved as Mozilla does, we'd have a real problem on our hands.

To pin ALL blame for this on Debian shows no understanding of what the issues are.

Re:

[DaveAtFraud]

2. Debian's policy is to stick with a version of a given package for a release and backport security and stability fixes only. Mozilla.com would rather have everyone running the latest version at all times.

I find it hard to believe that this is a problem. Red Hat has been using the same policy for quite some time:

[root@bend ~]# uname -a
Linux bend.local.davenjudy.org 2.6.17-1.2142_FC4smp #1 SMP Tue Jul 11 22:57:02 EDT 2006 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux
[root@bend ~]# rpm -q firefox
firefox-1.0.8-1.1.fc4

Yeah

Re:

[Trogre]

I find it hard to believe that this is a problem. Red Hat has been using the same policy for quite some time: ...in clear violation of the Mozilla Foundation's policy. The Fedora Project Board might not have a problem with that, but Debian likes to avoid breaking rules where possible.

Re:

[14CharUsername]

Yep that's exactly the issue here. Most of the distros go under the philosophy of "its easier to ask forgiveness than ask permission". So technically Red Hat et al are violating the Mozilla Foundation's policy, and they will keep on doing it until Mozilla demands that they stop. But Mozilla isn't likely to do this unless Red Hat really screws up their version of Firefox so bad that it damages the Firefox brand. And even then this is unlikely, since Linux users tend to track down the source of problems and t

Re:

[nine-times]

Basically, the codebase ceases to be Open Source if any product compiled from it is to be called Firefox. Very few other projects engage in this sort of control freakery and branding. If all Open Source projects behaved as Mozilla does, we'd have a real problem on our hands.

Not really. Trademark enforcement is separate issue than whether something is open-sourced. See, many open-sourced products have trademarks that they don't want other people using. You think the Debian people would like it if someon

It sounds like they had already forked earlier

[dbIII]

If they are developing on an older version it sounds like they have already forked and a dummy spit over a logo has just brought it to a head. Emacs forked over a trivial reason as well - although it took many months to find a new developer to actually do anything with the RMS fork when the existing developer starting including support for stuff like X windows which didn't benefit hurd in any way. Has RMS joined the debian board recently? What changes have their been recently which would make them more i

.com...

[jonasj]

The mozilla.com people say that isn't good enough anymore.

*sigh*

For the millionth time, it's still the same people!

Re:Crapweasel

[dircha]

Do you even use Debian? When was the last time you contributed? What business should it be of yours that a group of volunteers choose to work together under a shared set of values? None of it, that's what.

If you don't want to allow distributions to make changes to software they redistribute to enhance system integration, user experience, and conform to distribution policies, perhaps you should instead spend your time petitioning the Mozilla project to consider going closed source.

And what is your problem with the DFSGs? They were influential in shaping what the very term Open Source means today.

Re:

[JanneM]

The rules of evolution (from Darwin) are such that all species eventually split into seperate species.

Huh? Nope. You need some reason for speciation to occur, some form of genetic isolation (which may or may not mean geographical isolation, either is possible) as well as environmental or lifestyle differences large enough to actually push the groups in different directions, for long enough time for the groups not to be able to merge again.

There is nothing inevitable about those conditions arising, and there

Not really...

[rdwald]

All species diverge into separate species if some sort of reproductive barrier springs up to prevent two groups of such a species from interbreeding. Examples include the founder effect and natural disasters. Unless you think that the "Proto-Eloi" and "Proto-Morlocks" really will have no interbreeding whatsoever for thousands of years, the two groups won't diverge. In the case of humanity, I would actually argue that we're becoming less diverse. With more people moving from continent to continent in the pas

Re:The rules of evolution...

[SpectreHiro]

The rules of evolution (from Darwin) are such that all species eventually split into seperate species.

Where'd you get that idea?

Darwin's theory was beautiful because it was simple - Those specimens most fit to live in a given environment will prevale over specimens that are less fit for that environment. That's its only claim about the future of a species. We can infer that a species will, through natural selection, become more and more fit for its environment, but that's an inferrence. Mutation is a fickle mistress, and the vast majority of her works fail to produce viable specimens, let alone ones that are more fit than their predecessors.

Splitting isn't a necessity, but it is likely when (and only when) a population is isolated. In the absence of isolation, no speciation occurs since any viable mutations are folded back into the common gene pool. That's one of the many wonders of sexual reproduction. I believe you'll agree that if anything, isolation among human populations has nearly vanished in the past hundred years, and this trend looks (quite) likely to continue as we move into the future.

I'll grant that branching of our species is possible, but for the foreseeable future I think it's unlikely, and it's certainly not a foregone conclusion. If Darwin said otherwise, I'd love to hear about it.

Re:

[maxume]

Isolation by hybridization. Check it out:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-06/str i-bse061206.php [eurekalert.org]

Wacky stuff. The parallels between butterfly attraction and pretty people are at least amusing.

Re:

[CTachyon]

What outside species would Homo sapiens hybridize with? Homo neanderthalensis died out, along with the rest of the Homo genus (modulo us). Our closest living relatives are the chimpanzee and the bonobo, and I'm fairly sure that we can't interbreed with either one.

(Dear Lord, I'm sorry about the atheism thing, but I pray to you now, please tell me that we can't interbreed with chimps...)

As far as intra-species mating preferences go, we really don't have the forces in place to speciate by assortative ma

Re:

[maxume]

I didn't mean to imply that humans are going to hybridize, I meant to point out that things genetic are often even more interesting and mysterious than we think.

Re:The rules of evolution...

[SpectreHiro]

Thanks for the interesting article. I've read reports of species that are isolated purely by choice - that is, fully capable of producing viable offspring, but which choose not to based on subtle, aesthetic differences. There are species of grasshopper that inhabit the same area, but which only mate with grasshoppers that sing the right "song". I believe there are also some species of salamander that are genetically compatible, but which will only breed with mates of the right color. This is the first I'd heard of a hybrid species isolating itself, though. Really interesting stuff.

The parallels with humans are amusing, but TBH I think we're in a slightly different boat. First off, in my experience (take that for what it's worth), "beauty" in humans is more strongly related to nurturing rather than nature. I seem to run into absolutely beautiful women in every walk of life, and which are often enough the offspring of unattractive parents. With the advent of cosmetic surgery, genes become even less of a factor.

More importantly, I don't think the concept of beauty in humans is quite as uniform as the media might have us believe. I'm constantly shocked by the rift between what any two men find attractive... and for women, I think matters of physical attraction are even more variable. If we factor in women's sexual preferences, which add more weight to behavior and socio-economic factors, the speciation of "beautiful people" starts to sound really unlikely. Instead, I think we'll tend to see the average human become more "beautiful" as times goes on. Maybe that's just me.

Last, and I may be off base in this, but I think humans tend toward exogamy by nature. Most people I've talked to find "exotic" to be a beauty all its own, and that strikes me as a powerful mechanism working in the favor of species solidarity. Unlike those butterflies, most people seem to prefer a mate that's from a visibly dissimilar tribe, or at least think the idea's exciting.

Anyway, that's enough of my hobbyist-biology blabbering. Thanks again for the interesting article. Now when I seduce bonobos, I can claim that it's a scientific experiment.

Re:

[Baddas]

I think the most likely speciator is distribution between gravity wells.

Once you realize how incredibly hard it is to get across a 1g (or even .38g for mars) gravity well, if you assume that there are going to be three different groups of people, I don't think speciation is out of the question.

The three groups that I would hypothesize are:

"down here"

stuck on the surface in a gravity well of some magnitude and size great enough to be inconvienient, I'd say maybe a Moon-like body or larger

"hanging around"

mic

Re:

[kripkenstein]

Splitting isn't a necessity, but it is likely when (and only when) a population is isolated. In the absence of isolation, no speciation occurs since any viable mutations are folded back into the common gene pool. That's one of the many wonders of sexual reproduction. I believe you'll agree that if anything, isolation among human populations has nearly vanished in the past hundred years, and this trend looks (quite) likely to continue as we move into the future.

I see your point, but I don't completely agr

Re:

[jschrod]

Those specimens most fit to live in a given environment will prevale over specimens that are less fit for that environment.

That's better said as: "Those specimens unfit to live in a given environment will die out." (Competition of different species about scarce ressources are a given part of the environment.)

This formulation explains better why we don't have one species per environmental niche. I.e., what does "prevale" means in your sentence, does it mean that the subfit species die out? Obviously not,

Re:

[MichaelSmith]

The rules of evolution (from Darwin) are such that all species eventually split into seperate species. It's arrogant to suppose that humans are immune!

When that happens we will have exactly the situation we have now, there will be us and them

At the moment we are H Sapiens while they are the other ape species.

When the time comes we may not even consider them to be intelligent.