Slashdot Mirror

The Charter itself is a balancing act between different rights. As you correctly noted, one is free to express one's religion as long as it doesn't impinge on someone else's freedom.

If you're really interested, the leading Supreme Court of Canada case is R. v. Keegstra. As a counter-point, see R. v. Zundel, where the accused was acquitted of spreading falsehoods about the Holocaust because the relevant portions of the Criminal Code were found to be unconstitutional.

You know, considering that case was appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to quote a lower court's opinion. Try this one instead. Schmeiser didn't exactly win his appeal, but he didn't exactly lose, either. The court ruled that because he did not profit from the infusion of roundup-ready canola in his field, there were no damages to Monsanto, and that each party should pay their own legal fees. It wasn't a unanimous decision either. It was decided 5-4 in favour of Monsanto's interests, with the other four judges dissenting and siding with Schmeiser.

By cultivating a plant containing the patented gene and composed of the patented cells without license, the appellants [farmer Schmeiser] deprived the respondents of the full enjoyment of the monopoly. The appellants' involvement with the disputed canola was also clearly commercial in nature.

http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/csc-scc/en/pub/2004/ vol1/html/2004scr1_0339.html

CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada, 2004 SCC 13

Link to the actual Supreme Court of Canada case: http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/csc-scc/en/rec/html/ 2004scc045.wpd.html Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada v. Canadian Association of Internet Providers, 2004 SCC 045

People suggesting Lisp/Scheme: Sure, these languages are extensible, but any extension of Lisp/Scheme you can create with macros or whatever will still look like Lisp/Scheme. If the point of this exercise is to design one's own language, one might not want to base the syntax on Lisp's.

People suggesting using various parser generating tools (yacc, bison, antlr,...): A parser is not a compiler. I guess it's good to use the right tool for each part of the job, but parsing is really the least of his problems.

If the point is designing a language for the fun of it, don't bother writing a compiler, write an interpreter. As others have pointed out, writing an interpreter in a sane high-level language like ML (or Scheme or, I suppose, even Java) is really dead easy if you're not worried about performance. It will probably distract you less from the language design than a compiled implementation would, and be easier to modify as you go along. Plus it will be portable, maybe. If your language becomes wildly popular (or if you feel that performance is the only thing standing between your language and wild popularity) you can write a better interepreter, or a JIT, or a compiler, later on when you're more sure of what you're doing.

If the point is writing a compiler for the fun of it, why not do it all yourself from scratch (except maybe for the parser, for which you can use any of the excellent tools recommended by slashdotters if you don't want to do it by hand)? Compilers aren't really that hard (if you know "compiler theory"), especially if you compile to assembly or C and use an assembler or C compiler to go the rest of the way. Compiling to Parrot assembly/bytecode or JVM or .NET bytecode is also a possibility.

Since you say your language has higher-order features, you will want to read up on implementation techniques for functional languages if you haven't already. For instance, check out the 90-minute Scheme-to-C compiler here.

Best of luck,
CJV

First, there are two kinds of small languages:
1. small languages like lua, io, and scheme that are small in the built-in libraries and in the total distro. These three are great places to start- both are small, OOPish, allow higher-order programming by passing classes, objects, functions and methods as objects.

2. Then there are languages that are big in some ways, but small in syntax. Some of these are easier to extend than so-called "little languages." The reason is usually that their syntax is small, in an isolated place, easy to get at, and meant to be modified. The two best examples for this are Smalltalk and Lisp. Both of these languages satisfy your other requirements and really kick ass for extention. Unlike the above languages, the so-called little-languages, most Smalltalk and Lisp dialects have big, useful libraries. Unlike a big fat language like perl or C++, having a useful library doesn't mean that the language is a huge pain in the ass to extend.

Both Lisp and Smalltalk have a number of implementations. I am a big fan of Squeak Smalltalk, though systems like Little Smalltalk or even GNU Smalltalk maybe worth checking out.

A lot of people here have bad feelings about Lisp-like languages. It's a shame, since Scheme, ISLISP (OpenLisp is a great implementation) and Common Lisp are all *very* powerful languages. You can be quite productive with them once you get over the part about whining about parens. But Lisp may very well be the best option here, there is a long history of people writing custom-syntaxes and language extensions. Look up Common Lisp macros- power almost beyond comprehension, a lot of fun to play with, and with an elegance all its own.

There are examples of people writing a C-like syntaxes for various Scheme implementations. IIRC, Gambit-C (a Scheme to C compiler) comes with one. On Cliki, there are a bunch of other alternative Scheme syntaxes listed.

To, one of the big advantages to using a language in the second category is that syntax extension/modification is done in the language itself, rather than in C. With that comes the familiarity of the language you're creating and the other benefits you gain by using a high-level language like Smalltalk or Common Lisp.

Just some thoughts...

It's mainly used by the police to look for marijuana grow-ops. I just hope the police chopper flying overhead isn't watching my heat signature as I'm taking a dump or viewing internet pr0n. :-) The Court's full decision is here.

C# is just one option for .NET eh?
Hmm... if only there were some other languages that could be compiled to JVM bytecode.

I hope the court wasn't fooled by some shell game with percentages.

Side note: Humans are 95-98% chimpanzees. Can we sue?

Yes, but there's more to it than this. First, Schmeiser took seed from the contaminated crop and used it to plant the subsequent year's crop. It is the second year's crop that was 95-98% percent Roundup resistant. A farmer is entitled to use his own seed. It was not his fault that Monsanto's seed contaminated his field.

Second, Schmeiser didn't use Roundup on his crop. He therefore derived no benefit from the fact that his crop was Roundup resistant. This is undisputed. It is why the Supreme Court of Canada overturned the award of damages and legal fees to Monsanto in spite of its ruling that Schmeiser infringed Monsanto's patent. This is explicit in the court's ruling. You can read Supreme Court of Canada decisions here.

Schmeiser showed that the percentage of Roundup resistant crop in his first crop was gradient in exactly the way that would be expected if it was contaminated by seed from a passing truck or other farmer's field. That is, it was highest near the road and fell off with distance.

What he doesn't say is something that I found in following the link canadians.org to the information page on this issue, there you can find a link to the Judgement from May 21, it found that:

Tests of their 1998 canola crop revealed that 95-98 per cent was Roundup Ready Canola

Their seed ended up on his land through no fault of his, yet they claim they have a right to be paid license fees or to force him to spend his time and money removing corn derived from their migrating seed.

This version of events was determined to be false by the trial court, and that decision was upheld by the Supreme Court. Instead they found that he had saved seed that he knew was Monsanto-patented, (genetically modified to resist Roundup herbicide) and planted it without paying them a license fee.

No damages were assessed, however, because the court found that he did not accrue any extra profit as a result of using the genetically modified canola seed as opposed to regular canola. The reason being that he didn't take advantage of the invention because he didn't use Roundup and therefore had no way of making extra profit based on the patented bits.

(Also, for what it's worth, the case concerned canola, not corn.)

Basically, the only way you can view the Schmeiser decision as unfairly pro-Monsanto is if you believe that genetic modifications should be inherently unpatentable. (Which is not necessarily a silly position--I'm not sure I don't think that.)

Or if you are ignorant of the true facts of the case.

• Schmeiser never purchased Roundup Ready Canola nor did he obtain a licence to plant it. Yet, in 1998, tests revealed that 95 to 98 percent of his 1,000 acres of canola crop was made up of Roundup Ready plants. The origin of the plants is unclear. (from The Salient Facts, paragraph 6)
• The trial judge found that "none of the suggested sources [proposed by Schmeiser] could reasonably explain the concentration or extent of Roundup Ready canola of a commercial quality" ultimately present in Schmeiser's crop (Mosanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser (2001), 202 F.T.R. 78, at para. 118). (further along in the same paragraph)
• Tests of their 1998 canola crop revealed that 95-98 per cent was Roundup Ready Canola. The respondents brought an action against the appellants for patent infringement. The trial judge found the patent to be valid and allowed the action, concluding that the appellants knew or ought to have known that they saved and planted seed containing the patented gene and cell and that they sold the resulting crop also containing the patented gene and cell. (from the beginning of the decision)
• In reaching this conclusion, we emphasize from the outset that we are not concerned here with the innocent discovery by farmers of "blow-by" patented plants on their land or in their cultivated fields. Nor are we concerned with the scope of the respondents' patent or the wisdom and social utility of the genetic modification of genes and cells - a practice authorized by Parliament under the Patent Act and its regulations. (from Introduction, paragraph 2)

sudog, in message #9220976, wrote:

You're wrong. The farmer knew he was saving seed and replanting roundup-ready Monsanto Canola. It's NOT a question of simple cross-pollination and innocent intent. Try reading the fucking decision, granola-eater. It's right here At Lexum

Thanks for providing that link. I read it, and the details of what happen appear to be halfway down the page at paragraphs 59 through 67. After reading that, I see a little behind the Mr. Schmeiser's (the defendent's) intent, but not all of it.

It appears that Mr. Schmeiser's 1997 crop may have been polluted by Monsanto's patented Canola. After he sprayed a patch of his crop with the Roundup herbacide, approimately 60% lived on. He then did what farmers have been doing since intelligent farming began: he took the best of his 1997 crop and saved it for future planting.

Monsanto tested plants growing in public road allowances bordering Mr. Schmeiser's fields in 1997. In March of 1998 Monsanto told Mr. Schmeiser that they thought he was was growing their patented plants. Despite this notice, Mr. Schmeiser still used the seed he had saved from his 1997 crop in his 1998 planting. Those fields, when tested by independent authorities, were shown to be 95% to 98% "Roundup resistent". (I bothers me that the the decision uses that term instead of "contains the Monsanto-patented gene". It pre-supposes [maybe rightfully, I don't know] that this resistence could not possibly come from a different gene or natural process.)

Now, you speak of "innocent intent". Even assuming Monsanto offered to compensate Mr. Schmeiser for polluting his 1997 crop, what kind of a position would that have put him in if he accepted it? He would be setting the precident of having Monsanto approving or disapproving of his seed he harvested from his land. One could reasonably assume that if this pollution occured in 1997, it may very well occur in future years. Would Monsanto compensate him each year this happened? Or, would they eventually say they don't care if he cannot use his own crop the way he sees fit, and he'll just have to sue them for compensation.

That is assuming, of course, Monsanto offered to compensate him in 1997 for polluting his crop. If they did not, can you blame him for telling them to bugger off? If they cannot keep their seed/pollen on the land of the farmers to whom they sold their seed, I think it is tough. That's part of the problem with patenting genes & lifeforms compared to physical inventions: life finds a way to spread, whereas a better mouse trap doesn't replicate itself.

What total bullshit indeed. Go read the fucking decision, here: Lexum, Montreal

... and stop making up your fool mind about things without getting actual facts instead of regurgitated-twice headlines.

You're wrong. The farmer knew he was saving seed and replanting roundup-ready Monsanto Canola. It's NOT a question of simple cross-pollination and innocent intent. Try reading the fucking decision, granola-eater. It's right here At Lexum

Something I never quite understood was the willingness to shout doomsday without so much as a shred of hard evidence: people like you are the reason why the media can whip the public into a frenzy over stupid things and turn something into a political cause which has no right to be so.

Why don't you take up arms against the (in my view) illegal practice of refusing to allow organic farmers to label their foods as non-GM and leave stories like this to the facts?

According to the actual Supreme Court decision, which you can read at the following location:

Here at Lexum

Tests of their 1998 canola crop revealed that 95-98 per cent was Roundup Ready Canola.

I hardly think that seed "infected" the farmer's crop. If more than 90% of the Canola seeds were genetically modified, it seems obvious to me (as it was to the courts) that the farmer knew or ought to have known that the seeds he was using were the roundup-ready variety created by Monsanto.

I was shocked to consider the possibility that the Canadian Supreme Courts (whose opinions I find I've almost always agreed with after reading the decision) would do such a thing, and was relieved to find that Slashdot was, yet again, being Slashdot and over-sensationalising the issue.

I would also like to note that the patent does NOT cover the plant, only the specific gene involved, and that, according to the decision, the farmer may have had available to him a useful defense of innocent intention. Read:

Thus, a defendant in possession of a patented invention in commercial circumstances may rebut the presumption of use by bringing credible evidence that the invention was neither used, nor intended to be used, even by exploiting its stand-by utility.

Seems obvious to me.

The cool part was that the farmer didn't have to pay Monsanto's significant legal expenses.

Move to Canada--we're free here, and our courts don't fuck us unless we fuck someone else first!

Schmeiser claims that Roundup Ready canola seeds infected his own crops

The courts, on the other hand, found that the appellants knew or ought to have known that they saved and planted seed containing the patented gene.

This "they contaminated my crops" claim is purely for the benefit of the media; he knew that he was planting Monsanto canola.

Actually, just a few feet can cuase this, even in a place like a pool. You go from 60' to the surface, you lungs will expand to 3 times the current size if hold a full breath and no exhalation.

Here in Canada, it is perfectly legal to backup a DVD that you own. The recent Supreme Court of Canada case, CCH v. Law Society of Upper Canada, although dealing with print media, suggests that private personal copying would fall under 'fair dealing' (we don't have 'fair use' in Canada). Note: this reasoning was applied in the subsequent Federal Court case regarding P2P downloading.

In the U.S., no one can precisely know unless they challenge the DMCA on the issue of fair use. However, the previous unsuccessful deCSS cases predict that although backing up a DVD may be fair use, circumventing CSS is still illegal.

This is precisely the concern expressed by Godwin: that ancillary legislation, ostensibly crafted to address technological concerns, are simply pretexts to erode rights Americans have enjoyed until now under existing copyright regimes.

Though more likely is the fact that their 'itch' is likely internationalization/localization issues which we [dumb Westerners] don't care about.

There are plenty of i18n/l10n projects out there. Gnome, KDE, Mandrake, OpenOffice and Mozilla all have active projects going. The FSF has the Translation Project. Get out there and localize!

I believe the problem goes both ways. If I were to move to the US (-20 December to February is getting tougher to take every year), I would probably not be allowed to pack my satellite receiver. This issue has as much to with licencing as it does . The US providers are not licenced to carry signals into Canada and Canadian carriers are not licenced to carry signals into the US.

The case that the parent refers to is Bell ExpressVu Limited Partnership v. Rex . At issue is s. 9(1)(c) of the Radiocommunication Act regarding who is allowed to decode signals. Iaccoubucci, J. cited a Federal Court decision regarding lawful right:

42 [...] Instead, it deliberately chose broader language. I therefore agree with the opinion of Letourneau J.A. in the Federal Court of Appeal decision in Norsat, supra, at para. 4, that

[t]he concept of "lawful right" refers to the person who possesses the regulatory rights through proper licensing under the Act, the authorization of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission as well as the contractual and copyrights necessarily pertaining to the content involved in the transmission of the encrypted subscription programming signal or encrypted network feed.

Obviously, the Court is protecting the big guys here and the federal government's interests. The federal government collects cash from licences and the satellite providers & networks [Bell owns CTV, Discovery Channel, TSN etc] maintain their oligopoly. Considering that most TV is crap and satellite TV is mostly reruns anyhow, and the fact the service costs a lot less in Canada than the US, I would not be surprised if Americans imported Canadian receivers. I would, however, be very surprised if US or state law and caselaw would permit that.

C'mon up to Canada for your education. The tuition is about half (or less) of what it is in the states, if you're gay you can get married, and we're about to decriminalize marijuana.

Better yet, you don't have to pay to see our rankings:

1 Toronto
2 Queen's
*3 McGill
*3 Western
5 UBC
6 Montreal
7 Alberta
8 Sherbrooke
9 Ottawa
10 McMaster
11 Dalhousie
12 Saskatchewan
13 Laval
14 Calgary
15 Manitoba

Where I work, we are developping a clustering system using single system images.. Where all the OS is stored on a server and is NFS mounted by each node. Our current tests show that we can easily run 100 nodes on 100mbit ethernet from a single server... And the coolest thing is that the nodes mount the / of the server, so for "small clusters" (under 100 nodes), we have to do a software upgrade only once and all nodes and the server are upgraded... Btw, this whole thing can be done using an almost unmodified Gentoo Linux distribution.

I'm hoping to convince my boss to let us publish detailed docs.. he thinks that if we do everyone will be able to use it and he will loose sales (we are in the hardware business..). Details at our homepage and about an older version (but with more details) at the place where we used to work.

You just can't do this kind of stuff in Windows if you are on a low budget like I am. I cannot afford to purchase MS Visual Studio, and I don't want to. Why-o-why anybody would ever want to use Windows for even amateur sound work is beyond me. There is some amazing sound stuff out there for Linux.

Probably the most amazing Linux sound app I have ever screwed with is Cecilia by the University of Montreal. This program can make really weird Pink Floyd type noises and I really can only use a fraction of its powers.

To get a really pro Linux audio setup kicking you want two good sound cards, probably SB Live! or AC97 at the least. That way you mix you audio on one and record on the other card.

For instance, if you use the GtkGEP + XDrum combo I mentioned above, I haven't figured out how to record the output yet, so I think you need a second sound card and loop the output from card1 into the line in of card2. Then it should be easy to record from card2.

Don't even piss with Windows and try to do sound stuff unless you have a lot of money and even then I'd be rather suspicious of the results. The common app that comes to mind is Cakewalk, but Linux has a mess of midi programs too, probably a lot better than Cakewalk if you are a tech-savvy musician.

On the other hand, I came across a paper which proves quantum key distribution safe against a "collective" attack which allows "quantum memory". I've had trouble understanding how a collective attack works: "each qubit is attached to a separate probe, unentangled to any other probe. The measurement is delayed until after all the classical data is obtained." This paper went way over my head. Maybe someone out in /. land can help with an intuitive explanation because I think the significance of this paper and the safe use of repeaters in quantum key distribution are related.

(4) Related Legislation: The Plant Breeders' Rights Act

The interpretation of an ambiguous law may be informed by the substance and the form of subsequent legislation. The Plant Breeders' Rights Act is of significance to the interpretation of the Patent Act and the issue of its applicabiilty to higher life forms. Although Parliament enacted special legislation for the protection of plant breeders, it did not address other higher life forms. Moreover, the passage of the Plant Breeders' Rights Act demonstrates that mechanisms other than the Patent Act may be used to encourage inventors to undertake innovative activity in the field of biotechnology. Many of the issues that arose with respect to intellectual property protection for plant varieties also arise when considering the patentability of other higher life forms. If a special legislative scheme was needed to protect plant varieties, a subset of higher life forms, a similar scheme may also be necessary to deal with the patenting of higher life forms in general. It is beyond the competence of this Court to address in a comprehensive fashion the issues associated with the patentability of higher life forms.

http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/csc-scc/en/rec/html/ harvard.en.html

ShouldExist is a Scoop community website for people who have innovative ideas to donate. Know-How Wiki is a community website for people who have problems to solve, or who have advice to give on how to solve them. Any kind of problem, really.

In Canada, they've lost all the way to the Supreme Court - One case is Hill v. Church of Scientology of Toronto, 1995. It was a libel case, and the details will look pretty familiar. Holysmokehas an extract and this is the full thing. Umontreal's archive is linked from the official Supreme Court of Canada page.

Great quote: "Every aspect of this case demonstrates the very real and persistent malice of Scientology." - from the Court itself.

I know that there have been many other rulings in Canada against Scientology, but only this one is easily available on-line.

Henry Troup - hwt@igs.net

The Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal,
the Greater Quebec School Board, the Lakeshore
School Board and the Quebec Association of
Protestant School Boards Appellants

v.

The Attorney General of Quebec Respondent

and

The Attorney General for Ontario and
the Attorney General of Newfoundland Interveners

FYI: 48K is relatively small for an SCC decision. In this case, I think it is both concise and broad. It makes it clear that, even though the restriction on advertising is only a side-effect of an otherwise well-meaning law, it's effects on effective free speech are unacceptable.

I think that, among other things, it serves notice that a DMCA-type law would not be accepted in Canada (unless the government were to invoke the dreaded notwithstanding clause).

In a few months or so, it'll be moved into their by-volume section..

In a few months or so, it'll be moved into their by-volume section..

In a few months or so, it'll be moved into their by-volume section..

In a few months or so, it'll be moved into their by-volume section..

In a few months or so, it'll be moved into their by-volume section..

In a few months or so, it'll be moved into their by-volume section..

It doesn't really matter. This decision clearly states that by enforcing laws the government cannot prevent people from demonstrating their dissatisfaction towards a company's services (or lack thereof).

Here is the link to the full decision. There is a convenient short version in the first few pages. Have a read.

If you like learning what you don't know and teaching what you do know, check out the open-content project Wikipedia. If you like problem solving in all its aspects, check out the Web of Knowledge & Know-How

Here is a mirror of early BBC pictures.

H W K! I say, Hitler, Wore, Kakkies!

"The legal system is about rules, not justice."
-- retired lawyer
--

"The legal system is about rules, not justice."
-- retired lawyer
--

SLab is an excellent multitrack recorder/mixer. It is not up to snuff with ProTools yet (though no program is on any platform).

Other Linux audio related links include (sorry if some links are bad, I haven't updated this list in awhile):

Multitrack audio recording/mixing:
Ardour
Slab
Snd

Midi Sequencing:
Jazz++
Rosegarden
Brahms (I THINK this is a sequencer)

Sound editing / effects processing:
MixViews
ecasound

Audio creation (synth emulators):
Ultramaster RS-101 and Juno6 CSound
Cecilia (requires Csound)

Notation:
Lilypond
Rosegarden
Mup

Awesome pages with links to everything you wanted to know about Linux audio:
Applications for Open Sound System
Sound and MIDI software for Linux

No, no one is flaming (or should be flaming) people writing software in their own language. I don't know where you got that from. If you're talking about closed-source apps, I might agree that people might complain about English being the only choice. But with open source - no. The standard "do it yourself" often apply, interpreted as "translate it yourself". No need to rewrite the entire app, if the app was made cleverly. gettext will parse many c programs just fine.

No one expects you to translate your software into 11 zillion different languages. What you might do, however, is to make it easier for translators. This may be such things as not hard-coding US-ASCII everywhere. This may sound simple, but I've seen many programs not accept filenames with non-US-ASCII characters, or where such characters simply break the app.

It might also be to write the strings in your app so that they are easy understandable even out of their context. This helps translators a lot. Avoid TLAs when you can and write easy understandable sentences.

Also try to avoid assuming that all others whould like the same localization as you. Don't hard-code these settings in your application for example:

• AM/PM clock
• Legal paper format
• Weeks begin on Sunday
• Date formats and date strings
• Inches

As for american programmers writing in english: Don't assume that most programmers writing applications in English are american. If you look at the contributor list of many free software projects (like the GNOME and KDE ones) you'll see that a lot of them are not from the US, maybe even the majority. English just happens to be the default language that applications are written in, and then translated into as many other languages as possible.

Disclaimer: I am a Translation Project translator, translating GNU software.

No, no one is flaming (or should be flaming) people writing software in their own language. I don't know where you got that from. If you're talking about closed-source apps, I might agree that people might complain about English being the only choice. But with open source - no. The standard "do it yourself" often apply, interpreted as "translate it yourself". No need to rewrite the entire app, if the app was made cleverly. gettext will parse many c programs just fine.

No one expects you to translate your software into 11 zillion different languages. What you might do, however, is to make it easier for translators. This may be such things as not hard-coding US-ASCII everywhere. This may sound simple, but I've seen many programs not accept filenames with non-US-ASCII characters, or where such characters simply break the app.

It might also be to write the strings in your app so that they are easy understandable even out of their context. This helps translators a lot. Avoid TLAs when you can and write easy understandable sentences.

Also try to avoid assuming that all others whould like the same localization as you. Don't hard-code these settings in your application for example:

• AM/PM clock
• Legal paper format
• Weeks begin on Sunday
• Date formats and date strings
• Inches

As for american programmers writing in english: Don't assume that most programmers writing applications in English are american. If you look at the contributor list of many free software projects (like the GNOME and KDE ones) you'll see that a lot of them are not from the US, maybe even the majority. English just happens to be the default language that applications are written in, and then translated into as many other languages as possible.

Disclaimer: I am a Translation Project translator, translating GNU software.

The Free Translation Project has been handling the internationalization and localization of free software (primarily, but not exclusively GNU software) for quite some time. If you are interested in help internationalizing a program, or in participating in a translation team, it is a good place to start.

I suppose you consider translation important to Open Source projects... but do you have a lot of translators that volunteer for that thankless task? And what would you advise me to do in order to have enough time to have a regular job and do my part to bring Open Source to as many people as possible?