Definitely sign the petition. I did, even if I'm only from 'North America'.:)
Apparently in the US, computer programs strictly by themselves aren't patentable, but once they start doing something, (method for dimming lights in a greenhouse...) they are. I was reading through some random patent law the other day, the US patent office has strict, brain-dead guidelines as to what is and is not enforced.
My question is, if most source is closed anyhow, how do we demonstrate 'prior art'? And, for that matter, how can you tell the code is really that old? Find an old backup tape as proof? Hope no one asks you if you faked it all yesterday? This could be somewhat hard to do with computer software... --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I agree man, slashdot still sucks these days. I'm still here for historical reasons, to get my news, and also in the hopes that some intelligent, rational conversations will suddenly appear. This hasn't happened very much lately...
At least kuro5hin will be back up RSN, according to the site; I like their entire way of doing things a *lot* better.
Unfortunately, it wasn't as asshole proof as slashdot, because they didn't have so many to test it. (But that's the point: they never wanted them there in the first place...) --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Fortunately, lots of people didn't seem to notice our posts; that's good, because Angband is also highly addictive.:)
Have you tried out Mangband? I messed with Angband, and The Angband Borg, and played Zangband a little, but then I lost interest for a while. (I need to change the behavior of Vampires sleeping in an Inn: waking up in the morning can be fatal!;) --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I've used those little AirFones before, and they're handy, but they aren't cheap.
Also, why does that stupid doubleclick crap interfere with my ability to read the article? Turning off Java/Javascript fixed this, but I am not amused.
This quote is hilarious:
Tenzing, on the other hand, is offering a "cached" or
prepackaged Internet stored in an on-board server computer,
which would periodically forward e-mail to the ground and back.
Wow, they've got the whole internet stored on there! I'm impressed...;)
Of course, you're going to see some of both, but I think the 'bazaar'-style projects would usually have to be simple enough for the average coder to at least understand and modify parts of it, with a positive effect on the codebase. Otherwise, they'll just do something else, and leave the hard stuff to a core development team (cathedral-style) or let the code rot.
However, I think Angband is a good example of some free code that has mutated as people have changed it. There are a few main developers, and they do accept patches, but there are also tons of forks, and some healthy, nifty add-ons. (Zangband, Mangband, the Angband Borg...)
I would love to see the Tk version finally back-ported to Unix, or for that matter, any graphical front-end on top of X would be nice... If I have some more time, I'll try to work on that. I have messed with the Borg code before, and it wasn't that hard to do; I got it to use (and not sell) my Rod of Restoration, and to value items more like a Mage and less like a Paladin... --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Search engines (and any webcrawling 'bots') don't index sites where they find a 'robots.txt' file. This is called the Robot Exclusion Principle.
If you run a web site, check your error log for notes to that effect. (you'll get a random bot from, say, 'inktomi' or something, and they'll check for a robots.txt file, they don't find it, you get a message in your error log, and then your site gets crawled...) --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Linux has a lot of little features that I'd miss otherwise, even on a Sparc.
Probably the biggest one for me is virtual text consoles. I know the Sparc has *a* console, but it sucks! (furthermore, people generally configure it to write some error messages there even in X! That's really stupid...)
Also, the threading should be slightly faster. At least gcc has improved somewhat as well, 'cause it used to really suck on the Sparc platform. (or, for that matter, most non-x86 platforms....)
Of course, Solaris does have some features of its own; I'd happily stick Linux on an Ultra 10, especially if I could get the 3D acceleration to work. But heck, the Ultra 10 is basically a glorified PC with a Sparc processor in it; you can find them with PCI buses and IDE hard drives!
However, on huge, enterprise-level Sparc boxes, of course I'd keep Solaris on there. Heck, the support contract alone is enough to make you do that, much less the superior multiprocessing support, and any other native hardware support they have... --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
You're right; technology is finally making the old laws useless.
Unfortunately, instead of embracing the technology, they've been making worse laws restricting our freedoms, and after the mp3 furor, understand if I'm not anxious to see them try to take away all rights to video as well, because of the potential copyright abuse.
I'd love to see the copyright laws seriously revised, because I would love to have, say, a bunch of e-books, and an archive of old Looney Tunes cartoons, and whatnot. But that's not about to happen anytime soon. Rather, I'm expecting the direct descendent of OOG the caveman to come down and start charging royalties on his "intellectual property rights" for the wheel, and fire. --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I think they should have seen this coming. Any tool can be misused, and the Open Source aspect to it makes it much harder to stop.
DeCSS is GPLed as well; stick the two together, and not only have you created a new (and potentially illegal) tool, but you're obligated to keep distributing it for three years (barring an actual challenge to the GPL)... --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
- AVI is the Microsoft video file format.
- ASF isn't much different
- DIVX is a codec
=> ASF files can be encoded with the DIVX codec.
I'm not even talking about *my* school; I don't even use Windows. But I assure you that it is an incredibly common thing to do, especially in all or mostly Windows environments (many college dorms). The knowledgable users probably run FTP servers too, but the vast multitude don't know what FTP is, or what it stands for... --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
This isn't news, and it isn't something I want to hear about...
It *is* very cool, and arguably fair use, but unfortunately, if the media ever really gets wind of this, we'll see the entire stupid mp3 war over 'mp4', only ten times worse.
Ok, I suppose it's unavoidable, but if you thought all the mp3 stuff we've heard about for the past few years was stupid, well, this will be ten times stupider with the MPAA backing it.
Also, I suppose no one will mention Microsoft in this, even though everyone traffics in '.asf' files. (Just like everyone talks about Napster, even though many college students share their hard drives, and use Windows File Sharing as their mp3-pirating platform...) Of course, the entire format/medium issue is incredibly stupid; it's just a tool. But rational argument hasn't stopped these people so far... --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Nearly 40% of Slashdot posters surveyed said they thought karma was more important to posting than making intelligent, useful points. Only 6% said they thought posters with large amounts of karma treated their fellow posters well, and just 8% said posters did a good job of educating posters about real information related to the topic.
74% said karma whores have too much influence on Slashdot, and more than 80% agreed that slashdot comments are dominated by trollers which seek mass appeal over quality.
The Net is not only a prime battleground for the rising tensions between karma whores and trollers, it's also becoming the primary vehicle for communists who have little voice in mainstream software development houses.
Protests against DeCSS have erupted in more than 100 American mirrors, and issues ranging from the open distribution of technology to globalism to artistic control of culture to iMacs were cited in the survey. Without the news-spreading power of the Net, many of these efforts would probably have faltered.
The survey suggests that slashdot posters are finally getting upset at their unchecked power and are coming to believe -- with amazing unanimity
-- that karma whores need to be more responsible, ethical and regulated.
More than 95% of the survey's participants said they agreed with this statement:
"Karma whores should have more than one purpose. They also owe something to their moderators and the communities in which they operate, and they should sometimes sacrifice some karma for the sake of making things better for their moderators and communities." --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I'll say! He xor's, like, four arrays, full of random-looking hex numbers, and that always offends the critics.
...but they just don't understand true art; sensitive programmers are always misunderstood, and held to arbitrary 'style guidelines', and expected to conform... --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Hopefully Jobs won't whine about this one like he did last time, considering how close these two are.
It'll be nice to have the PPC/PC rivalry about Linux/MacOS X (BSD, that is) for once, though, instead of the dead, beaten horse of the Windows/Mac flamewars.
In my opinion, at least now everybody wins, and is on more or less equal footing. (Look, I have a GUI and a shell prompt! Hey, me too!) --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Yes I am; they are broadcast over the airwaves for free, and there is no charge for decoding them, and there are no monthly fees. Therefore, I "get them for free". They are a "feature", if you will, a feature that I would be willing to pay somebody to remove.
An apt analogy would be Slashdot, and JunkBuster. The only difference is that JunkBuster is free, and a 'free' (DIY Software) TiVo solution would be very nice to have as well. --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
But second, if I wanted a device that would get rid of ads for me, the one thing I *wouldn't* do is pay for a subscription to the *device* to get MORE ADS! Do you see how inane that is?
Of course, the next step is 'product placement', which they do all the time in movies as well... (My favorite is probably the blatant "Sell-Out" section in Wayne's World; that's hilarious...)
...and I don't want to pirate anything. I don't own a TiVo; I haven't been watching TV. But if I *did* have one of these devices, I'd want to use it. What's so illegal about that? I'd do the same with my VCR. Chill out, man... --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Why would I want to *pay for* ads and promotions? I don't want them, and yet I already 'get them for free'; I'll pay a company who gets it, to ensure that I *don't* get ads of any sort.
So; show of hands. Who has already ripped video from their Tivo? From the FAQ, it looks like they're working on this... --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Now that I've seen a picture of one of those Mac Cubes in action, (as it were) I can't believe no one mentioned (or took a picture of) the obvious use for it!
It's a TOASTER! It always was a toaster, and it always will be! Forget NeXT, forget the Amiga, the Cube is the right boxy shape, *and* it has the slots for BREAD!
That's awesome; I want one of those to go with those iMac aquariums Apple sells. In fact, why don't they ditch the whole computer line and go into home furnishings? --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Slashdot Mirror
Definitely sign the petition. I did, even if I'm only from 'North America'. :)
Apparently in the US, computer programs strictly by themselves aren't patentable, but once they start doing something, (method for dimming lights in a greenhouse...) they are. I was reading through some random patent law the other day, the US patent office has strict, brain-dead guidelines as to what is and is not enforced.
My question is, if most source is closed anyhow, how do we demonstrate 'prior art'? And, for that matter, how can you tell the code is really that old? Find an old backup tape as proof? Hope no one asks you if you faked it all yesterday? This could be somewhat hard to do with computer software...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I agree man, slashdot still sucks these days. I'm still here for historical reasons, to get my news, and also in the hopes that some intelligent, rational conversations will suddenly appear. This hasn't happened very much lately...
At least kuro5hin will be back up RSN, according to the site; I like their entire way of doing things a *lot* better.
Unfortunately, it wasn't as asshole proof as slashdot, because they didn't have so many to test it. (But that's the point: they never wanted them there in the first place...)
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I completely agree; I posted on this as well.
:)
;)
Fortunately, lots of people didn't seem to notice our posts; that's good, because Angband is also highly addictive.
Have you tried out Mangband? I messed with Angband, and The Angband Borg, and played Zangband a little, but then I lost interest for a while. (I need to change the behavior of Vampires sleeping in an Inn: waking up in the morning can be fatal!
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
But then I'll try to post, and then...
:)
Well, then I'll ask the stewardess for a stiff drink.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I've used those little AirFones before, and they're handy, but they aren't cheap.
Also, why does that stupid doubleclick crap interfere with my ability to read the article? Turning off Java/Javascript fixed this, but I am not amused.
This quote is hilarious:
Wow, they've got the whole internet stored on there! I'm impressed...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Of course, you're going to see some of both, but I think the 'bazaar'-style projects would usually have to be simple enough for the average coder to at least understand and modify parts of it, with a positive effect on the codebase. Otherwise, they'll just do something else, and leave the hard stuff to a core development team (cathedral-style) or let the code rot.
However, I think Angband is a good example of some free code that has mutated as people have changed it. There are a few main developers, and they do accept patches, but there are also tons of forks, and some healthy, nifty add-ons. (Zangband, Mangband, the Angband Borg...)
I would love to see the Tk version finally back-ported to Unix, or for that matter, any graphical front-end on top of X would be nice... If I have some more time, I'll try to work on that. I have messed with the Borg code before, and it wasn't that hard to do; I got it to use (and not sell) my Rod of Restoration, and to value items more like a Mage and less like a Paladin...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Good call; an empty robots.txt file does have no effect. I was going for a basic explanation, but apparently that was a little too basic.
:)
However, for more info, the other reply I got has a handy link in it!
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Search engines (and any webcrawling 'bots') don't index sites where they find a 'robots.txt' file. This is called the Robot Exclusion Principle.
If you run a web site, check your error log for notes to that effect. (you'll get a random bot from, say, 'inktomi' or something, and they'll check for a robots.txt file, they don't find it, you get a message in your error log, and then your site gets crawled...)
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Linux has a lot of little features that I'd miss otherwise, even on a Sparc.
Probably the biggest one for me is virtual text consoles. I know the Sparc has *a* console, but it sucks! (furthermore, people generally configure it to write some error messages there even in X! That's really stupid...)
Also, the threading should be slightly faster. At least gcc has improved somewhat as well, 'cause it used to really suck on the Sparc platform. (or, for that matter, most non-x86 platforms....)
Of course, Solaris does have some features of its own; I'd happily stick Linux on an Ultra 10, especially if I could get the 3D acceleration to work. But heck, the Ultra 10 is basically a glorified PC with a Sparc processor in it; you can find them with PCI buses and IDE hard drives!
However, on huge, enterprise-level Sparc boxes, of course I'd keep Solaris on there. Heck, the support contract alone is enough to make you do that, much less the superior multiprocessing support, and any other native hardware support they have...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
You're right; technology is finally making the old laws useless.
Unfortunately, instead of embracing the technology, they've been making worse laws restricting our freedoms, and after the mp3 furor, understand if I'm not anxious to see them try to take away all rights to video as well, because of the potential copyright abuse.
I'd love to see the copyright laws seriously revised, because I would love to have, say, a bunch of e-books, and an archive of old Looney Tunes cartoons, and whatnot. But that's not about to happen anytime soon. Rather, I'm expecting the direct descendent of OOG the caveman to come down and start charging royalties on his "intellectual property rights" for the wheel, and fire.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I think they should have seen this coming. Any tool can be misused, and the Open Source aspect to it makes it much harder to stop.
DeCSS is GPLed as well; stick the two together, and not only have you created a new (and potentially illegal) tool, but you're obligated to keep distributing it for three years (barring an actual challenge to the GPL)...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Okay, let's get some history here:
- AVI is the Microsoft video file format.
- ASF isn't much different
- DIVX is a codec
=> ASF files can be encoded with the DIVX codec.
I'm not even talking about *my* school; I don't even use Windows. But I assure you that it is an incredibly common thing to do, especially in all or mostly Windows environments (many college dorms). The knowledgable users probably run FTP servers too, but the vast multitude don't know what FTP is, or what it stands for...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
This isn't news, and it isn't something I want to hear about...
It *is* very cool, and arguably fair use, but unfortunately, if the media ever really gets wind of this, we'll see the entire stupid mp3 war over 'mp4', only ten times worse.
Ok, I suppose it's unavoidable, but if you thought all the mp3 stuff we've heard about for the past few years was stupid, well, this will be ten times stupider with the MPAA backing it.
Also, I suppose no one will mention Microsoft in this, even though everyone traffics in '.asf' files. (Just like everyone talks about Napster, even though many college students share their hard drives, and use Windows File Sharing as their mp3-pirating platform...) Of course, the entire format/medium issue is incredibly stupid; it's just a tool. But rational argument hasn't stopped these people so far...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Bastille and OpenWall.
If you do that right, well, that's pretty good right there.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Nearly 40% of Slashdot posters surveyed said they thought karma was more important to posting than making intelligent, useful points. Only 6% said they thought posters with large amounts of karma treated their fellow posters well, and just 8% said posters did a good job of educating posters about real information related to the topic.
74% said karma whores have too much influence on Slashdot, and more than 80% agreed that slashdot comments are dominated by trollers which seek mass appeal over quality.
The Net is not only a prime battleground for the rising tensions between karma whores and trollers, it's also becoming the primary vehicle for communists who have little voice in mainstream software development houses.
Protests against DeCSS have erupted in more than 100 American mirrors, and issues ranging from the open distribution of technology to globalism to artistic control of culture to iMacs were cited in the survey. Without the news-spreading power of the Net, many of these efforts would probably have faltered.
The survey suggests that slashdot posters are finally getting upset at their unchecked power and are coming to believe -- with amazing unanimity
-- that karma whores need to be more responsible, ethical and regulated.
More than 95% of the survey's participants said they agreed with this statement:
"Karma whores should have more than one purpose. They also owe something to their moderators and the communities in which they operate, and they should sometimes sacrifice some karma for the sake of making things better for their moderators and communities."
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I'll say! He xor's, like, four arrays, full of random-looking hex numbers, and that always offends the critics.
...but they just don't understand true art; sensitive programmers are always misunderstood, and held to arbitrary 'style guidelines', and expected to conform...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
No; only C source code is free speech.
Therefore, you really meant to say...
----------------------------------------
#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
int e=0,i=10;
for(;i--;)
e|=printf("Only C code is free speech. C++ code sucks.\n");
return e;
}
--------------------------
;)
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Hopefully Jobs won't whine about this one like he did last time, considering how close these two are.
It'll be nice to have the PPC/PC rivalry about Linux/MacOS X (BSD, that is) for once, though, instead of the dead, beaten horse of the Windows/Mac flamewars.
In my opinion, at least now everybody wins, and is on more or less equal footing. (Look, I have a GUI and a shell prompt! Hey, me too!)
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Yes I am; they are broadcast over the airwaves for free, and there is no charge for decoding them, and there are no monthly fees. Therefore, I "get them for free". They are a "feature", if you will, a feature that I would be willing to pay somebody to remove.
An apt analogy would be Slashdot, and JunkBuster. The only difference is that JunkBuster is free, and a 'free' (DIY Software) TiVo solution would be very nice to have as well.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
"The new iMac cluster is infinitely expandable..."
"Because there's always room for JELL-O!"
Where's Bill Cosby when you need him?
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I understand his entire *house* has this sort of technology in it...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
First, I never even *watch* TV.
But second, if I wanted a device that would get rid of ads for me, the one thing I *wouldn't* do is pay for a subscription to the *device* to get MORE ADS! Do you see how inane that is?
Of course, the next step is 'product placement', which they do all the time in movies as well... (My favorite is probably the blatant "Sell-Out" section in Wayne's World; that's hilarious...)
...and I don't want to pirate anything. I don't own a TiVo; I haven't been watching TV. But if I *did* have one of these devices, I'd want to use it. What's so illegal about that? I'd do the same with my VCR. Chill out, man...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Oh damn, that's beautiful...
I haven't been to segfault in so long; probably not since they stopped the polls because of the petrified stuff... I'll have to check it out again.
Thanks!
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Why would I want to *pay for* ads and promotions? I don't want them, and yet I already 'get them for free'; I'll pay a company who gets it, to ensure that I *don't* get ads of any sort.
So; show of hands. Who has already ripped video from their Tivo? From the FAQ, it looks like they're working on this...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Now that I've seen a picture of one of those Mac Cubes in action, (as it were) I can't believe no one mentioned (or took a picture of) the obvious use for it!
It's a TOASTER! It always was a toaster, and it always will be! Forget NeXT, forget the Amiga, the Cube is the right boxy shape, *and* it has the slots for BREAD!
That's awesome; I want one of those to go with those iMac aquariums Apple sells. In fact, why don't they ditch the whole computer line and go into home furnishings?
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.