There's a motorway that plays the first bars of the national anthem of Germany when you drive over it. It's installed at the former border between eastern and western Germany. I think the installation is over fifteen years old. Couldn't find a link, though.
I tried to add an entry for WLAN-cards based on the RTL-8185 chipset. The driver seems to be blacklisted and using the NDIS-wrapper for these cards appears to be problematic.
However, the preview for the edited Wiki came out as complete carbage.
Karin Wolff, the minister of education in Hessen, a German state, is a creationist. She succeeded in pushing the lessons about the theory of evolution to a later point. Biology lessons are optional at this later point. Most Germans are not even aware that this happened. I only happen to know it because a friend of mine is a teacher.
Conventional medicine still prescribes things like antibiotics for influenza. Yeah. Kill those bacteria. That'll teach them stupid virii! AFAIK people with influenza are often weakened and prone to catch secondary, bacterial infections. Those infections often do more harm than the primary one.
I agree that the use of antibiotics should be more strictly controlled, but prescribing it in cases of influenza is not totally harebrained. Especially if the patient is elderly or has a weakened immune system.
I think the ultimate goal is not to establish a record, but to use these planes as communication links or surveillance platforms. So who cares how you get the bird up as long as you can do it on short notice and with acceptable costs?
Inheriting simple, abstract base classes is unproblematic enough in my experience. But the mechanism is less powerful than delegates. In Java, you can use an anonymous inner class implementing an interface instead of a delegate to handle callbacks. But in C++, a member class does not have anything like an outer class and it does not automatically have a friend status.
With interfaces and anonymous inner classes, Java has an adequate replacement for delegates. On the other hand, method pointers already exist in C++. They're similar to delegates and are often used to implement the functionality of a delegate. But the mechanism is a lot more problematic and inefficient.
I suspect that the function class uses method pointers internally. These are less efficient than delegates. And AFAIK the mechanism fails completely with some compilers if virtual base classes are used.
Can Haskell interface with our existing C and C++ codebase? Does a compiler exist for ARM architectures? And do you think moving over to Haskell would work for my colleagues? Some of them do not have a formal education in CS and PL and are not too eager to learn something new.
Sorry. Missed a paragraph when pasting. Here's the relevant text:
The largest recorded judgment made thus far in favor of Monsanto as a result of a farmer lawsuit is $3,052,800.00. Total recorded judgments granted to Monsanto for lawsuits amount to $15,253,602.82. Farmers have paid a mean of $412,259.54 for cases with recorded judgments. Startling though these numbers are, they do not begin to tell the whole story. Many farmers have to pay additional court and attorney fees and are sometimes even forced to pay the costs Monsanto incurs while investigating them. Final monetary awards are not available for a majority of the 90 lawsuits CFS researched due to the confidential nature of many of the settlements. No farmer is safe from the long reach of Monsanto. Farmers have been sued after their field was contaminated by pollen or seed from someone else's genetically engineered crop; when genetically engineered seed from a previous year's crop has sprouted, or "volunteered," in fields planted with non-genetically engineered varieties the following year; and when they never signed Monsanto's technology agreement but still planted the patented crop seed. In all of these cases, because of the way patent law has been applied, farmers are technically liable. It does not appear to matter if the use was unwitting or a contract was never signed.
This is all perfectly true. And I mostly agree with the judgement. However, I find it surprising that providing the source code as a download only is considered not to be satisfactory.
AFAIK that is common practice. And it poses a legal risk even to distributors that are acting in good faith. I'm under the impression that the FSF acts very agressively on perceived GPL violations, even if it was not involved in this case.
Maybe that argument was valid a few years back, but it seems unconvincing now. I find it hard to imagine a person that is capable of compiling his software and does not have internet access.
Also note that you can requiere the recipient to pay the cost of copying the source and shipping it on a physical medium. I can't imagine this to be cheaper than renting internet access.
Well - my personal interpretation would be that providing a download link would be ok, but that you would be obliged to keep it valid over the next three years. It would be a violation if the link became invalid within those three years, but until then, no violation has occured.
If this reasoning is not acceptable, you could still avoid to ship the code with the product, if you provide a note that you will ship it upon request. But isn't that just what you're doing with the URL? It's just another form of contact address to get your code shipped.
Interestingly, Kolivas provided a patch that would have made "nice" work properly. According to the article, the patch was turned down, because people relied on the kernel to guess priorities instead of being fair (which sabotated re-nicing).
After a previous conviction, a sheet was included with the phone that contained URLs to the GPL- license and to the source code . The articles do not make any statement on whether the source code contained all modifications, but they do not claim otherwise.
The court decided that providing only an URL to the license was not enough and that the whole license should have been included in printed form.
So far, so good. Now the interesting part is that according to the judge, providing a link to the source code is only acceptable for software that is provided on the internet. For software that comes preinstalled, the source must also be delivered with the device.
This decision seems extremely strange to me. It is not what I read in the GPL v2. Here is the relevant part:
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
a)...
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
c)...
Even with prior art, having a patent invalidated doesn't make economic sense in most situations. For even if you win, you have to pay your attorneys fees yourself (often several $100,000). Also, the process can take several years.
Therefore even patents with solid prior art don't get invalidated most of the time. If you don't believe me, look up "Carmacks Reverse". The algorithm was patented by Creative _after_ John Carmack presented it on a conferece. Creative even threatened John's company because they are using the algorithm he had invented.
From the article: He's happy to lend the money, which he obtains by taking a loan on the equity in his condo. He writes Reiser a check for $84,000 at the beginning of 2004.
if that's true, couldnt that javascript library be considered an SDK? I'm pretty certain that these are services provided by a local server, not library calls. So just call them services instead of something that they aren't.
But I think the approach taken by Apple is quite a good one. Everyone can write software that runs in a sandbox. So people can create nice widgets without compromising the phone (with or without intent, think of malware). Furthermore I'm certain that selected vendors will get access to the internal SDK, but will have to have the software verified.
The fact that the widgets can easily be made to run on other platforms (Smartphones, PDAs) is a nice plus.
Over in Germany, we're paying an extra fee on blank media as a compensation for fair use rights. Also, we were told that CDs cost a lot, but that the extra charge covers the private copies we have an explicit right to create.
Then came the copy protection.
Then came a law that makes it illegal to copy 'protected' media.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a motorway that plays the first bars of the national anthem of Germany when you drive over it. It's installed at the former border between eastern and western Germany. I think the installation is over fifteen years old. Couldn't find a link, though.
There is an excellent article on how the LLC rules were designed:
http://www.xprize.org/blogs/wpomerantz/ng-llc-rules-explained
I tried to add an entry for WLAN-cards based on the RTL-8185 chipset. The driver seems to be blacklisted and using the NDIS-wrapper for these cards appears to be problematic.
However, the preview for the edited Wiki came out as complete carbage.
Karin Wolff, the minister of education in Hessen, a German state, is a creationist. She succeeded in pushing the lessons about the theory of evolution to a later point. Biology lessons are optional at this later point. Most Germans are not even aware that this happened. I only happen to know it because a friend of mine is a teacher.
I'm losing my ability to distinguish between satire and reality.
You're thinking of Trolls, not Orcs.
However, it's worth to follow the link to Yves Rossy.
He has a working civilian version with engines strong enough for ascending.
Yeah. Kill those bacteria. That'll teach them stupid virii! AFAIK people with influenza are often weakened and prone to catch
secondary, bacterial infections. Those infections often do more
harm than the primary one.
I agree that the use of antibiotics should be more strictly controlled,
but prescribing it in cases of influenza is not totally harebrained.
Especially if the patient is elderly or has a weakened immune system.
I think the ultimate goal is not to establish a record, but to
use these planes as communication links or surveillance platforms.
So who cares how you get the bird up as long as you can do it on
short notice and with acceptable costs?
Nokia introduced T9 in 1999 with the Nokia 3210.
Should count as prior art and is widely known.
Inheriting simple, abstract base classes is unproblematic enough
in my experience. But the mechanism is less powerful than delegates.
In Java, you can use an anonymous inner class implementing an interface
instead of a delegate to handle callbacks. But in C++, a member class
does not have anything like an outer class and it does not automatically
have a friend status.
With interfaces and anonymous inner classes, Java has an adequate
replacement for delegates. On the other hand, method pointers already
exist in C++. They're similar to delegates and are often used to
implement the functionality of a delegate. But the mechanism is a lot
more problematic and inefficient.
I suspect that the function class uses method pointers internally.
These are less efficient than delegates. And AFAIK the mechanism
fails completely with some compilers if virtual base classes are
used.
Can Haskell interface with our existing C and C++ codebase?
Does a compiler exist for ARM architectures?
And do you think moving over to Haskell would work for my
colleagues? Some of them do not have a formal education in
CS and PL and are not too eager to learn something new.
Please implement delegates and get rid of the method pointers.
Thank you.
The articles concentrate on the way Monsanto (ab)used the patents.
Is there any mention why they were rejected?
Are they trivial?
Was there prior art?
Or were rejected because they were abused? (Is that possible?)
Sorry. Missed a paragraph when pasting. Here's the relevant text:
The largest recorded judgment made thus far in favor of Monsanto as
a result of a farmer lawsuit is $3,052,800.00. Total recorded judgments
granted to Monsanto for lawsuits amount to $15,253,602.82. Farmers have
paid a mean of $412,259.54 for cases with recorded judgments.
Startling though these numbers are, they do not begin to tell the whole
story. Many farmers have to pay additional court and attorney fees and are
sometimes even forced to pay the costs Monsanto incurs while investigating
them. Final monetary awards are not available for a majority of the 90 lawsuits
CFS researched due to the confidential nature of many of the settlements.
No farmer is safe from the long reach of Monsanto. Farmers have
been sued after their field was contaminated by pollen or seed from someone
else's genetically engineered crop; when genetically engineered seed from a
previous year's crop has sprouted, or "volunteered," in fields planted with
non-genetically engineered varieties the following year; and when they
never signed Monsanto's technology agreement but still planted the patented
crop seed. In all of these cases, because of the way patent law has been
applied, farmers are technically liable. It does not appear to matter if the use
was unwitting or a contract was never signed.
This is all perfectly true. And I mostly agree with
the judgement. However, I find it surprising that
providing the source code as a download only is
considered not to be satisfactory.
AFAIK that is common practice. And it poses a legal
risk even to distributors that are acting in good
faith. I'm under the impression that the FSF acts
very agressively on perceived GPL violations, even
if it was not involved in this case.
Maybe that argument was valid a few years back, but
it seems unconvincing now. I find it hard to imagine
a person that is capable of compiling his software
and does not have internet access.
Also note that you can requiere the recipient to pay
the cost of copying the source and shipping it on a
physical medium. I can't imagine this to be cheaper
than renting internet access.
Well - my personal interpretation would be that providing
a download link would be ok, but that you would be obliged
to keep it valid over the next three years. It would be a
violation if the link became invalid within those three
years, but until then, no violation has occured.
If this reasoning is not acceptable, you could still avoid
to ship the code with the product, if you provide a note
that you will ship it upon request. But isn't that just
what you're doing with the URL? It's just another form of
contact address to get your code shipped.
Interestingly, Kolivas provided a patch that would have
made "nice" work properly. According to the article, the
patch was turned down, because people relied on the
kernel to guess priorities instead of being fair (which
sabotated re-nicing).
After a previous conviction, a sheet was included
... ...
with the phone that contained URLs to the GPL-
license and to the source code . The articles do
not make any statement on whether the source code
contained all modifications, but they do not claim
otherwise.
The court decided that providing only an URL to the
license was not enough and that the whole license
should have been included in printed form.
So far, so good. Now the interesting part is that
according to the judge, providing a link to the
source code is only acceptable for software that
is provided on the internet. For software that comes
preinstalled, the source must also be delivered with
the device.
This decision seems extremely strange to me. It is
not what I read in the GPL v2. Here is the relevant
part:
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it,
under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of
Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the
following:
a)
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost
of physically performing source distribution, a complete
machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
customarily used for software interchange; or,
c)
Even with prior art, having a patent invalidated doesn't
make economic sense in most situations. For even if
you win, you have to pay your attorneys fees yourself
(often several $100,000). Also, the process can take
several years.
Therefore even patents with solid prior art don't get
invalidated most of the time. If you don't believe me,
look up "Carmacks Reverse". The algorithm was patented
by Creative _after_ John Carmack presented it on a
conferece. Creative even threatened John's company
because they are using the algorithm he had invented.
From the article:
He's happy to lend the money, which he obtains by taking a loan on the equity in his condo. He writes Reiser a check for $84,000 at the beginning of 2004.
not library calls. So just call them services instead of something
that they aren't.
But I think the approach taken by Apple is quite a good one. Everyone
can write software that runs in a sandbox. So people can create nice
widgets without compromising the phone (with or without intent, think
of malware). Furthermore I'm certain that selected vendors will get
access to the internal SDK, but will have to have the software verified.
The fact that the widgets can easily be made to run on other platforms
(Smartphones, PDAs) is a nice plus.
Over in Germany, we're paying an extra fee on blank media
as a compensation for fair use rights. Also, we were told
that CDs cost a lot, but that the extra charge covers the
private copies we have an explicit right to create.
Then came the copy protection.
Then came a law that makes it illegal to copy 'protected'
media.
We're still paying the fees.