Slashback: Juveniles, Sand, Trickery, MoBos

Your calendar works fine. This episode of Slashback hits midweek instead of Saturday because we'd like to keep our facts straight and your mind alert. So (read more) below for assorted updates on everything from GRAND LARCENY to THE DONUT CRISIS. Actually, those are still secret, but the things we can tell you are below.

Tell me again why my motherboard needs it own OS? Goatbert writes: "Penguin Hardware has posted an interview with John Tsai, head of ABIT's Gentus department. He goes into ABIT's future open source plans and what they plan to do about accusations of GPL violations."

Lifestyles of the young and precocious. PerlDiver writes: "The 'Programming for Kids' thread reminded me of this, and I thought it was worth a story of its own. Former Xerox PARC researcher Ken Kahn has created an amazing tool for teaching kids how to program. Even very young children (old enough to know their letters and numbers) can be started on object-oriented programming with ToonTalk, an animated programming kit that introduces such advanced concepts as recursion, object methods, and functions in a fully visual, direct-manipulation, non-notation-based way. Kids learn by playing with an on-screen toolbox, robots (methods), birds (message passing channels), and bombs (memory deallocation :-). I saw Ken give a ToonTalk demo a few years ago and I was blown away by it. It looks great... sort of PeeWee's Playhouse meets Lego."

Mirror, mirror on the wall -- damn, where was I? Warrior writes "GameSpy was able to get some in-depth information on the closing of Looking Glass Studios by talking to LGS game designer Tim Stellmach. He gave us some good explanations of what happened and who owns what."

Oh, as long as you say it, I guess it's OK! Remember the trouble between CyberPatrol and Network Associates' 'ultra-secure' Gauntlet firewall? The ever-prolific Anonymous Coward wrote us with an interesting bit to sprinkle in that wound: "Peacefire tricked several "parental control" software vendors into revealing their double standards through an amusing gambit: they took anti-gay quotes from several large, well-funded organizations (e.g. Focus on the Family) and put them on "bait" pages on various free Web hosting systems. Then they submitted those pages to the censorware companies as objectionable hate speech which ought to be filtered, and the companies obligingly added them to the blacklists. Next, they submitted the home pages from which they got the quotes. But apparently it's not hate speech if it's on the home page of a political organization with a large legal department ..."

The wheels of government creak ever slowly. teddyfu writes "I found this link regarding the EU's decision to oepn up crypto exports. It seems that decision has only been *postponed*; hopefully the decision will still be made, just at a later date."

Who dares provide House Atriedes with ADSL? Craig E. Engler writes "The first trailer for the SciFi Channel's upcoming miniseries Frank Herbert's Dune has been posted online. ... The site also has the latest news about the miniseries (which has wrapped principal photography and is now in post-production) as well as photos, notes from the director's assistant, and more."

Comments

Purposely violating the GPL

[sillysally]

why does every GPL violator get a "second chance" to rewrite the software so they don't infringe and don't have to release?

GPL authors: if your code gets released in binary form only, you (and only you) have the right to demand that the source code be released. Everyone else can ask, but if it is not released that means the license to copy is revoked. But only the copyright owner can enforce the copyright.

If we wish to encourage the opening of source, why aren't these violations used as the wedge to say, "open, or be sued!"? It seems to me that GPLed software is being used as a fast-time-to-market convenience. It would do a lot to raise awareness of the GPL if it were enforced. These companies would never (or would they?) think of stealing other copyrighted software. Why should they think they can steal GPLed? Let me say it again: if you start with someone elses source code, you know you need a license. IMHO, these violations are not accidental, and should not be treated that way.

----

Blocking Software has a market

[Fly]

The makers of web filtering software are addressing a particular market. We may not agree with them; though there is a double standard, one must realize that many people will accept it, and those are likely the same people who want to buy the software. I respect the rights of parents to control what sort of information their children may access. I would guess that many (not all or even most) parents have no problem with the information presented by Focus On The Family even though it condemns homosexuality. As long as the software meets the needs of the parents, it will sell.

On the other hand, if the software is being used by public entities, then there is a need to provide fair-handedness along with responsibility to the people paying for the public entity.

What would be interesting is to see software the provides filters for various religious affiliations. That would be quite a circus.