That's valued a lot more at the moment than disassembly is, rightly so - I work on my machine every day. I feel like breaking it down maybe once every two years.
I know what you're trying to say, but your words are (amusingly) confusing. It kind of sounds like you work on (as in, modify, tweak) your machine each day, and you have a dance party on about a bi-annual (talk about your confusing words) basis.:-)
Perhaps:
"I use my machine for work every day. I feel like opening my machine and replacing parts only about once every two years."
(Why yes, I have been doing a lot of proofreading lately. How did you guess?)
PS: I am a OSS (not necessarily FOSS as I sell GPL software for Symbian and Andoid) supporter but I know the weaknesses.
There's a common misconception that Free Software (capital "F") equates with "you can't make money on it" or "you can't sell it." Nothing is further from the case.
There's nothing wrong with selling Free Software. In fact, the Free Software Foundation points out in their GPL FAQ that "The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)"
So feel free to develop GPLed software and sell it. It's all good.
even if Google develops a Linux based distro and starts selling it for money (Though I don't wish for this to happen)
Android, or ChromeOS?
(okay, so one could theoretically build the base OS themselves, but when you add-in all of the proprietary apps google layers on top of the OS, and add in the fact that most people buy a new handset that comes with Android pre-installed, for the end user it's pretty close to Google selling [a distro] for money)
A kindred (albeit a bit more all-encompassing, action-happy, and annoyingly alliterating) spirit:
Voila! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition.
The only verdict is vengeance, a vendetta held as a votive not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.
Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose. So let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.
Yeah, but that's only the kind of thing you'd expect to hear from a nation of criminals...
...hey, wait a second.
(As for the US, "it's not illegal until you get caught" is just the mantra of all of the politicians; the rest of us just try to delude ourselves into believing otherwise)
I poked around the site, and found the page describing some JSON APIs and things, but no links to code or developer pages.
So where's the code?
Hmm, okay, that's weird. The project is run by the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, but the disclaimer says:
This software and data are provided to enhance knowledge and encourage progress in the scientific community and are to be used only for research and educational purposes. Any reproduction or use for commercial purpose is prohibited without the prior express written permission of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
So they don't hold copyright to it? Or they didn't write it? Hmmmm....
Naps are awesome because they're that time when you get to be asleep, as compared to the rest of the time when you are running around fixing things for other people who aren't as tech-savvy.
I wish we all could have naps every day. Especially on those days when we're up 'till 3 in the morning fixing some server in a room that sounds like a jet engine is taking off about 3U away from your head.
Sure, maybe it's a contest, but it's about naps. Remember: Sleep is holy!
Would it kill the story submitter to give people like me with no background in open source politics some info on what the heck is LibreOffice, why was it forked and is this latest development good or bad?
Are you sure you're on the right website?
No offense intended, but if you're hanging around/. and aren't at least mildly familiar with what's going on in the FOSS world, you're going to be copy/pasting that comment in a lot of articles.
Savitz writes that people scanning books sometimes get kicked out of thrift stores and retail shops and that libraries are beginning to advertise that no electronic devices are allowed at their sales. 'If it's possible to make a decent living selling books online, then why does it feel so shameful to do this work?' concludes Savitz."
Perhaps the people running these sales want them to have more of a community feel, and either anticipate or know from past experience that allowing professional sellers to come in and take on-the-spot digital assessments of books will disrupt the existing selling environment.
Here are some potential motivations for the ban that I can think up off the top of my head:
People tearing through hundreds of books, treating them carelessly, as every book they buy and flip represents more profit
People being aggressive about getting certain books, making the sale less friendly to casual, non-pros
Some (misguided) impression that it's wrong for resellers to be buying books at a friends-of-the-library sale
A fear that if pros come in, comb through, and cull out the "good deals" quickly, they'll sell fewer books overall.
If you think you can appeal to the guy on the basis of FOSS vs. proprietary software, then do it.
If you think there's a money angle (on initial cost, or on continued maintenance costs), then make it.
If there are things that Plone offers that Confluence does not, make a bullet list of those items.
If you're going to be the one maintaining this thing, spend a Saturday setting an install up in a VM so you can tell your boss all about how you already know how to use this tool. Human costs are often much greater than software costs, so if he thinks that the two offer roughly similar feature sets, your prior knowledge of the tool may tip the scales.
I mean, come on -- small animals love to climb into cars, especially as they are warm and sheltered environments. Wouldn't it be logical to think about animals trying to eat exposed pieces of the car and take preventative steps?
Consult with a chemist, dummies. Use a horrible-tasting additive to make the wire coatings unappealing to animals.
Heck, they even make this kind of thing for humans, too. (Fun Fact: Wikipedia says that denatonium benzoate is the most-bitter compound we know of. Suck on that, lemons!)
But I gotta tell you that in my neighborhood there aren't that many places where I could park under a powerline like this.
Do you think it would be possible for me to run a couple of wires across my driveway between my house and my garage, and then have the car reach its arms up there?
That should be a slick way to solve the problem, and I can almost always get into my driveway, except when the guy next door parks his big rig on the street and the end of it blocks the entry to my driveway.
But say I had an electric vehicle with cleverly designed arms (like the gear on the top of a tram) which could reach up to the power lines, charge up, then fold up again. I could probably get away with doing that for years in the middle of the night, especially if I had signs on my vehicle suggesting some official status.
Wait, so let me get this straight: You design an electric vehicle with special arms whose sole purpose is to reach up its arms at night to recharge, then sit there during the day as the battery drains out, then reach up again a night or so later and recharge again.
if you live near high voltage cables run cables beneath to tap of electricity by induction. People have been prosecuted in the UK for doing this.
How in the world do you prosecute someone for using an induction loop?
I mean, sure, you could prosecute them for trespass or something if you move your stuff onto their property/airspace, but if it's all on your own land, it's just EM waves flowing through the air. If the land owner has to put up with the radiation they didn't ask for, who is to say that they can't use it to induce a current?
Anyhow, I figure you might be trollin' seeing as how you'd have to get really close to get any measurable power via induction, but it is an interesting question in any case...
The Ohio filmmaking community is outraged by a web ad published to YouTube, sponsored by the Ohio Democratic Party. The ad is an attack in response to a recent commercial from the Kasich camp, in which a local actor portrayed a man out of work. The ODP ad features clips from films in which the actor has appeared, in violation of copyright.
Setting aside the incredible hubris associated with speaking for the entire filmmaking community in a state (heck, at least he could have tried to claim something about speaking for a particular group of filmmakers in Ohio, were he the spokesman or president of the body), I am quite appalled at the shoot-from-the-hip nature of his alleged copyright infringement claim.
KC Allen continues:
One film, from Arginate Studios was produced in 2010 as part of an international film contest based in Washington DC, the 48 Hour Film Project, while the other was produced by Whiskey Tent films. No permission to use the clips was asked for or granted by the filmmakers or other responsible, legally permitted parties.
I hope when he says "responsible" he mean "people responsible for granting rights," not "people who act responsibly." I mean, the latter case is kind of a judgment call, no?:-)
And I fully appreciate his (likely) factual claim that no permission was asked for or granted. Of course (as others have pointed out), the authors of the parody work might have a strong fair-use defense.
The filmmakers of the state of Ohio demand an immediate public apology for this lack of respect and egregious violation of their hard work and professionalism.
Here we go again, speaking for a group of people without any evidence that you have the authority or position.
What, do you want me to claim that the Computer Programmers of the Whole Internet demand an immediate public apology from the filmmakers of the State (capitalizing the proper noun) of Ohio?
Then you have the witty comeback from "Modern Esquire":
You're right because no independent film maker has ever splice in footage from other films, tv shows, music, etc. It's called Fair Use. Which is part of the copyright law. There's absolutely no legal basis for your complaints. None.
Well, I wouldn't say "none," because I'm not a copyright lawyer, but yes, it does look like there's a pretty strong defense here.
Then, someone named "Sam" apparently knows the actors and decides to chime in:
You are seriously going to argue that actors don't have the right to not appear in political attack ads based of their completely unrelated narrative work?
I'm not talking about Chip here... if it was only Chip and actually used to illustrate his acting career... you know by including his work with larger companies like 'safe auto' and appearance on 'Lost' instead of editing a string of insults... which according to you add to the debate... I'm talking about Rick and the girls who are clearly recognizable. They have nothing to do with this and now their faces are stuck on an attack ad which nearly the entire central ohio film community finds offensive.
I've got to give Sam credit for at least saying "nearly the entire central ohio film community" as compared to KC Allen's bit of hyperbole. I'm also quite sympathetic to what Sam sees as a potential defamation against "Chip" and "Rick" and the women who feature in the clips. I can be a bit disconcerting to see your video chopped-up and used in a different fashion than it was originally intended. But on the flip side, I believe all of the clips used are from commercial productions, and there's got to be very little expectation of privacy or prevention of people doing things protected under Fair Use with these commercial clips.
Let's think about this one. A big-shot at Microsoft tries to explain what's going on RE: a patent suit they're bringing against a competitor. Remember: it's a patent suit here.
Gutierrez:
People use smartphones for much more as well: they surf the web, play music and videos, and run apps.
They do a lot of common activities, yes.
Consumers expect more and more from their smartphones every day, making their phones resemble not so much a phone as a handheld computer.
So really, their smart phones are acting like ordinary computers, right? So perhaps we could imagine their phones in that same problem space, as they are, according to Mr. Gutierrez, basically computers.
Of course, for certain apps to run efficiently on handheld devices, they must be notified of changes in signal strength and battery power and the device must manage memory for storing data.
Of course! I mean, I and the rest of us people with tech backgrounds totally agree with you! Just as in other domains like pagers, heart monitors, etc..., it would make perfect sense that for other small, mobile devices, things like managing power or signal strength would be relevant and important for the end user to know about.
I mean, any one of us people well-versed in the field of technology would probably come up with something similar to what you did. I mean, "of course" we would!
Given the wide range of functionality smartphones offer, they also need to be able to display relevant choices for users efficiently. Microsoft’s patented technologies tackle all of these challenges.
Maybe Microsoft's patents read on some of this technology, but it sure sounds like you're trying to convince us exactly how necessary and obvious the content of these patents are in the context of computers, and I have to ask: Are you trying to win this case, or sink it?
Slashdot Mirror
That's valued a lot more at the moment than disassembly is, rightly so - I work on my machine every day. I feel like breaking it down maybe once every two years.
I know what you're trying to say, but your words are (amusingly) confusing. It kind of sounds like you work on (as in, modify, tweak) your machine each day, and you have a dance party on about a bi-annual (talk about your confusing words) basis. :-)
Perhaps:
"I use my machine for work every day. I feel like opening my machine and replacing parts only about once every two years."
(Why yes, I have been doing a lot of proofreading lately. How did you guess?)
If Go becomes the dominant language, I'll be all the happier that I've jumped ship to C#/.NET. Ugliest damned labguage I've seen in a long time.
If this is what programming in C#/.NET does to a man, then count me out.
because both C-pound or C-octothorpe sound stupid, while c-sharp is clever
What, the name Coctothorpe doesn't sound awesome to you?
I think it's almost as strong a name as Octopussy...
...now wait a second. What if we named it Octothorpussy? We could shorten that to #Pussy or just #P, and then just colloquially call it "Sharpie".
PS: I am a OSS (not necessarily FOSS as I sell GPL software for Symbian and Andoid) supporter but I know the weaknesses.
There's a common misconception that Free Software (capital "F") equates with "you can't make money on it" or "you can't sell it." Nothing is further from the case.
There's nothing wrong with selling Free Software. In fact, the Free Software Foundation points out in their GPL FAQ that "The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)"
So feel free to develop GPLed software and sell it. It's all good.
I have a feeling Vint Cerf is going to show up and start apologizing again for limiting us to that small pool of addresses.
basically WebKit, IE, Mozilla (I forgot it's engine's name)
I believe the list you're looking for is Webkit, Trident, and Gecko (but don't quote me on that)
even if Google develops a Linux based distro and starts selling it for money (Though I don't wish for this to happen)
Android, or ChromeOS?
(okay, so one could theoretically build the base OS themselves, but when you add-in all of the proprietary apps google layers on top of the OS, and add in the fact that most people buy a new handset that comes with Android pre-installed, for the end user it's pretty close to Google selling [a distro] for money)
A kindred (albeit a bit more all-encompassing, action-happy, and annoyingly alliterating) spirit:
Voila! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition.
The only verdict is vengeance, a vendetta held as a votive not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.
Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose. So let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.
Yeah, but that's only the kind of thing you'd expect to hear from a nation of criminals...
(As for the US, "it's not illegal until you get caught" is just the mantra of all of the politicians; the rest of us just try to delude ourselves into believing otherwise)
You may call us your hat, but we canadians refer to you as our balls...
Wait, so you're saying that Canadians have no balls?
I poked around the site, and found the page describing some JSON APIs and things, but no links to code or developer pages.
So where's the code?
Hmm, okay, that's weird. The project is run by the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, but the disclaimer says:
This software and data are provided to enhance knowledge and encourage progress in the scientific community and are to be used only for research and educational purposes. Any reproduction or use for commercial purpose is prohibited without the prior express written permission of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
So they don't hold copyright to it? Or they didn't write it? Hmmmm....
"Rudolph" began as a 1939 coloring book distributed freely to children by Montgomery Ward.
Right. It was Robert L. May who actually created the character, while working at Montgomery Ward.
(forget the iBankers, the College on the Hill does turn out some very creative types... :-)
Naps are f*cking awesome.
Naps are awesome because they're that time when you get to be asleep, as compared to the rest of the time when you are running around fixing things for other people who aren't as tech-savvy.
I wish we all could have naps every day. Especially on those days when we're up 'till 3 in the morning fixing some server in a room that sounds like a jet engine is taking off about 3U away from your head.
Sure, maybe it's a contest, but it's about naps. Remember: Sleep is holy!
All sorts of odd things are found when you dig into word derivations. "What were they drinking?" is a common thought while reading about such things.
An equally relevant question...
English is like a macrophage. We eat everything up, but instead of getting rid of it, we re-purpose it in some way.
For a good visual image, try The Doomsday Machine from Trek (TOS). There's a good picture of it here.
Would it kill the story submitter to give people like me with no background in open source politics some info on what the heck is LibreOffice, why was it forked and is this latest development good or bad?
Are you sure you're on the right website?
No offense intended, but if you're hanging around /. and aren't at least mildly familiar with what's going on in the FOSS world, you're going to be copy/pasting that comment in a lot of articles.
Savitz writes that people scanning books sometimes get kicked out of thrift stores and retail shops and that libraries are beginning to advertise that no electronic devices are allowed at their sales. 'If it's possible to make a decent living selling books online, then why does it feel so shameful to do this work?' concludes Savitz."
Perhaps the people running these sales want them to have more of a community feel, and either anticipate or know from past experience that allowing professional sellers to come in and take on-the-spot digital assessments of books will disrupt the existing selling environment.
Here are some potential motivations for the ban that I can think up off the top of my head:
If you think you can appeal to the guy on the basis of FOSS vs. proprietary software, then do it.
If you think there's a money angle (on initial cost, or on continued maintenance costs), then make it.
If there are things that Plone offers that Confluence does not, make a bullet list of those items.
If you're going to be the one maintaining this thing, spend a Saturday setting an install up in a VM so you can tell your boss all about how you already know how to use this tool. Human costs are often much greater than software costs, so if he thinks that the two offer roughly similar feature sets, your prior knowledge of the tool may tip the scales.
I mean, come on -- small animals love to climb into cars, especially as they are warm and sheltered environments. Wouldn't it be logical to think about animals trying to eat exposed pieces of the car and take preventative steps?
Consult with a chemist, dummies. Use a horrible-tasting additive to make the wire coatings unappealing to animals.
Heck, they even make this kind of thing for humans, too.
(Fun Fact: Wikipedia says that denatonium benzoate is the most-bitter compound we know of. Suck on that, lemons!)
Okay, now I get it.
But I gotta tell you that in my neighborhood there aren't that many places where I could park under a powerline like this.
Do you think it would be possible for me to run a couple of wires across my driveway between my house and my garage, and then have the car reach its arms up there?
That should be a slick way to solve the problem, and I can almost always get into my driveway, except when the guy next door parks his big rig on the street and the end of it blocks the entry to my driveway.
Wait, so let me get this straight: You design an electric vehicle with special arms whose sole purpose is to reach up its arms at night to recharge, then sit there during the day as the battery drains out, then reach up again a night or so later and recharge again.
And you do this for years...
Brilliant!
How in the world do you prosecute someone for using an induction loop?
I mean, sure, you could prosecute them for trespass or something if you move your stuff onto their property/airspace, but if it's all on your own land, it's just EM waves flowing through the air. If the land owner has to put up with the radiation they didn't ask for, who is to say that they can't use it to induce a current?
Anyhow, I figure you might be trollin' seeing as how you'd have to get really close to get any measurable power via induction, but it is an interesting question in any case...
So apparently a user called "KC Allen" claims on the Vimeo page for the parody-of-the-ad that
The Ohio filmmaking community is outraged by a web ad published to YouTube, sponsored by the Ohio Democratic Party. The ad is an attack in response to a recent commercial from the Kasich camp, in which a local actor portrayed a man out of work. The ODP ad features clips from films in which the actor has appeared, in violation of copyright.
Setting aside the incredible hubris associated with speaking for the entire filmmaking community in a state (heck, at least he could have tried to claim something about speaking for a particular group of filmmakers in Ohio, were he the spokesman or president of the body), I am quite appalled at the shoot-from-the-hip nature of his alleged copyright infringement claim.
KC Allen continues:
One film, from Arginate Studios was produced in 2010 as part of an international film contest based in Washington DC, the 48 Hour Film Project, while the other was produced by Whiskey Tent films. No permission to use the clips was asked for or granted by the filmmakers or other responsible, legally permitted parties.
I hope when he says "responsible" he mean "people responsible for granting rights," not "people who act responsibly." I mean, the latter case is kind of a judgment call, no? :-)
And I fully appreciate his (likely) factual claim that no permission was asked for or granted. Of course (as others have pointed out), the authors of the parody work might have a strong fair-use defense.
The filmmakers of the state of Ohio demand an immediate public apology for this lack of respect and egregious violation of their hard work and professionalism.
Here we go again, speaking for a group of people without any evidence that you have the authority or position.
What, do you want me to claim that the Computer Programmers of the Whole Internet demand an immediate public apology from the filmmakers of the State (capitalizing the proper noun) of Ohio?
Then you have the witty comeback from "Modern Esquire":
You're right because no independent film maker has ever splice in footage from other films, tv shows, music, etc. It's called Fair Use. Which is part of the copyright law. There's absolutely no legal basis for your complaints. None.
Well, I wouldn't say "none," because I'm not a copyright lawyer, but yes, it does look like there's a pretty strong defense here.
Then, someone named "Sam" apparently knows the actors and decides to chime in:
You are seriously going to argue that actors don't have the right to not appear in political attack ads based of their completely unrelated narrative work?
I'm not talking about Chip here... if it was only Chip and actually used to illustrate his acting career... you know by including his work with larger companies like 'safe auto' and appearance on 'Lost' instead of editing a string of insults... which according to you add to the debate... I'm talking about Rick and the girls who are clearly recognizable. They have nothing to do with this and now their faces are stuck on an attack ad which nearly the entire central ohio film community finds offensive.
I've got to give Sam credit for at least saying "nearly the entire central ohio film community" as compared to KC Allen's bit of hyperbole. I'm also quite sympathetic to what Sam sees as a potential defamation against "Chip" and "Rick" and the women who feature in the clips. I can be a bit disconcerting to see your video chopped-up and used in a different fashion than it was originally intended. But on the flip side, I believe all of the clips used are from commercial productions, and there's got to be very little expectation of privacy or prevention of people doing things protected under Fair Use with these commercial clips.
Anyone remember what Italian copyright law says?
The html pages all have "© 2010 - Hal9000 - Tutti i diritti riservati." at the bottom, but it's entirely plausible that they could just mean the contents and derivative works of the website proper, and not the old master images.
Let's think about this one. A big-shot at Microsoft tries to explain what's going on RE: a patent suit they're bringing against a competitor. Remember: it's a patent suit here.
Gutierrez:
People use smartphones for much more as well: they surf the web, play music and videos, and run apps.
They do a lot of common activities, yes.
Consumers expect more and more from their smartphones every day, making their phones resemble not so much a phone as a handheld computer.
So really, their smart phones are acting like ordinary computers, right? So perhaps we could imagine their phones in that same problem space, as they are, according to Mr. Gutierrez, basically computers.
Of course, for certain apps to run efficiently on handheld devices, they must be notified of changes in signal strength and battery power and the device must manage memory for storing data.
Of course! I mean, I and the rest of us people with tech backgrounds totally agree with you! Just as in other domains like pagers, heart monitors, etc..., it would make perfect sense that for other small, mobile devices, things like managing power or signal strength would be relevant and important for the end user to know about.
I mean, any one of us people well-versed in the field of technology would probably come up with something similar to what you did. I mean, "of course" we would!
Given the wide range of functionality smartphones offer, they also need to be able to display relevant choices for users efficiently. Microsoft’s patented technologies tackle all of these challenges.
Maybe Microsoft's patents read on some of this technology, but it sure sounds like you're trying to convince us exactly how necessary and obvious the content of these patents are in the context of computers, and I have to ask: Are you trying to win this case, or sink it?