Is bhagwad someone famous, or someone with particular insight into the Indian ISP situation, or someone who has some other qualification that would make it worth having most of the submission be his blithering speculation on the subject?
It would be really nice of Slashdot were to hire some editors to actually edit the submissions.
We'll just ignore the fact that it came from KDE and give all the credit to Apple. For Steve's sake.
The majority of WebKit code was written by Apple employees. It started as a fork of KDE code, but Apple has been by far the largest contributor since then. Check out the history in its Subversion repository, and you'll see the magnitude of Apple's contribution.
But.. sigh... a nine year decade doesn't make sense. And by counting 2000 to 2010 as a decade you get stuck with a 9 year decade somewhere in your counting
Collecting VAT for sales in the EU is relatively easy. The way the laws work, you can figure out the rate without having to know exactly where the customer lives. You can arrange things so the rate is the rate in the country where you do your payment processing. So, for instance, we are doing that through the UK, and we collect the UK's VAT on all EU sales.
In the US, sales tax is based on where the buyer lives. And it's not just the state they live in that matters--sales taxes are also imposed by counties within the state, cities within the counties, and often there are special taxing districts on top of that. We have to collect tax for sales to people in the state of Washington, because that's where we are, and it is a pain in the ass. I was able to get a table from the state listing the total tax rate for each zip+4 area of the state (although political boundaries don't always match postal boundaries, so there can be more than one rate in effect in a given zip+4 area).
I also was able to get a table that lists every possible address in the state, and gives its tax rate. This is less useful than you would think, because people often don't write their address in the official form. For instance, if someone lives on "Martin Luther King Blvd", that can come in as "MLK Blvd", "King Blvd", and many other variations. A human can figure it out, but a computer program to take human-entered addresses and find them in the table would be very complicated.
What I settled on was using the zip+4 table. From that, I made a table of 5-digit zips. For those that only had one rate in effect in all their +4 areas, that's the rate I use for anyone in the zip. For those that have more than one rate, I take the highest, and that's the rate I use for anyone who gives that zip as a 5-digit zip. If they give zip+4, I use the highest rate in that zip+5.
I use the highest rate in a zip+4 area because I'd rather deal with a consumer calling to complain I charged him the rate for people that in the special taxing district in his area, even though he's two blocks outside it, than deal with the State auditors calling and saying we've under collected taxes. The former is fixed with a quick credit on the customer's credit card, an apology, and maybe a free extension to the subscription. The later ends up with a full audit, where we have to prove, for pretty much everyone who was not charged the maximum rate, that the rate we charged was justified.
In reality, in areas where there are special tax districts, so that some in a zip+4 have a higher rate than others, most consumers would not even notice if they were charged the wrong rate. That's because for in-store purchases, the rate is based on the location of the store, not the location of the customer. When someone sets up a special tax district that is going to raise money by sales taxes, they are going to set it up to hit areas with businesses in them, not primarily residential areas. So, the consumer who lives in an 8.25% part of his zip+4 probably does his in person buying in the 8.35% of that area, and is used to that rate. When he sees it on his online purchase, he will probably have no idea that it is higher than it should be.
There's one feature that, as far as I've been able to tell, is not in any of the major version control systems, whether distributed or not. That's good support for directory-based files.
What I mean by "directory-based files" are documents that are treated as a file by the applications that know about them, and the GUI system, but are actually implemented as a directory. The major example would be MacOS package files. For example, an OmniOutliner document actually consists of a directory with the name of your document, and in that directory there is an XML file with the outline and the files for any attachments to the outline, thumbnails of images, and things like that. In the Finder, the whole directory is treated as a file.
Verson control systems tend to see these as directories with files in them. This leads to a couple problems.
First, if you edit the document, and that causes files to get added to the directory, the VCS won't know that these need to be added to the repository. Same if your editing causes a file to go away--the VCS won't know it needs to treat that as a delete when you commit.
Second, if the VCS stores metadata in each directory (like Subversion does), and the application that writes the document uses the write/rename/rename/delete method of safe updating, it ends up making a new directory, blowing away the metadata.
I would love to see a VCS that handles these directory-based files automatically.
When you are charged with a crime, that is generally a matter of public record, and is often published in the newspaper. If the person is later found not guilty, there is no compensation for the information having been published in the newspaper. Why should there be compensation if the information is tweeted?
Translation: the only button is a power button, it has a battery-sucking colour screen as opposed to an e-ink display, it requires itunes on a mac or PC to use, the only Apple-approved way to run programs is via an app store, it has a non-user-replaceable battery, and it will cost upwards of $1000
...and a year later it will have tremendous market share, and every other major and minor manufacturer of laptops and netbooks will be trying to clone it.
Does this sign the closing of the Mono project? And can anyone tell me, since this fundamentalist stance against the GPL[...]
What the heck are you talking about? First of all, the headline, summary, and cited article all make it clear this is about the license for MonoDevelop, not the license for Mono, so you are starting off massively confused.
Second, what fundamentalist stance against GPL? MonoDevelop is an IDE, with plugin support. It makes sense to avoid making it GPL, so that plug-in authors have the maximal flexibility in their choice of license. This too is clear from the summary and article. This is how other major open source IDEs are licensed. Do you think Eclipse, for example, shows that IBM has a fundamentalist stance against the GPL?
It was built from day one to integrate with Apache, it's not a nasty bolt-on hack like mod_perl. It's in-process so there's no startup overhead like with CGI
I just bought a Samsung TV, and the back of the manual includes a copy of GPLv2, LGPLv2.1, Mozilla PL 1.1, the OpenSSL License, the FreeType license, and the ZLib license.
It also says the GPL code included in the product is the Linux kernel, Busybox, Binutils, U-boot, Wireless_tools, and pump. It lists glibc, ffmpeg, libgphoto2, libpfp, libusb, smpeg, alsa, directfb, and uClibc as being the LGPL code.
It gives an email address to write to ask for the code.
What do you think the differences are between licenses, contracts, covenants not to sue, and promises not to sue? In court, they are pretty much all the same thing.
Where in there does he say that nobody else can be trusted with it?
And do you think RMS is also a greedy pig, since he agrees with Monty on most of these points?
Nice misrepresentation. Monty has been pretty open about his company's finances, and where the money went--mostly into paying people to develop MySQL. If he was a greedy self-centered pig like you claim, he could have done a lot better never having started MySQL, and instead working as a consultant all that time. And he's not saying nobody else can be trusted with it--he's saying Oracle can't be trusted with it.
I thought it was implicit that I want to see specific relevant patents. Last time I checked, writing, compiling, running, and distributing Mono programs does not require using OOXML in any way.
The C# and CLI patents you list are covered by the legally binding Community Promise.
I want to see the alleged patents that cover the non-ECMA portion of Mono.
But De Icaza has said that mono is implementing bits of.net stuff not covered under the patent covenant. That leaves the mono project open to trouble.
It leaves it no more open to trouble than any other open source language project that implements things similar to those parts of.NET. That would be pretty much all of them.
If Microsoft has broad patents on this stuff, they will ensnare far more than Mono.
If the alleged Microsoft patents are narrow, they will most likely just cover Microsoft's implementation. Independent implementations would be unlikely to do it the same way.
Given this, I'm not going to worry about it unless people stop talking in vague generalities and name specific patents. Patent records are public documents. Surely one of Mono's opponents could do a search and find the worrisome patents. Also, note that it is a requirement in the US that a patent owner mark their products with the patents they claim cover it. I downloaded the free.NET development tools from Microsoft, and didn't see any patents listed.
Sorry--it looks like you had an unstated requirement in your original request. You want to stick it in a back pocket, toss it on a table, and soak it with dew and have it still work. With that additional last requirement, I don't think they are there yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Is bhagwad someone famous, or someone with particular insight into the Indian ISP situation, or someone who has some other qualification that would make it worth having most of the submission be his blithering speculation on the subject?
It would be really nice of Slashdot were to hire some editors to actually edit the submissions.
We'll just ignore the fact that it came from KDE and give all the credit to Apple. For Steve's sake.
The majority of WebKit code was written by Apple employees. It started as a fork of KDE code, but Apple has been by far the largest contributor since then. Check out the history in its Subversion repository, and you'll see the magnitude of Apple's contribution.
But.. sigh... a nine year decade doesn't make sense. And by counting 2000 to 2010 as a decade you get stuck with a 9 year decade somewhere in your counting
No, you don't, unless you are a creationist.
Collecting VAT for sales in the EU is relatively easy. The way the laws work, you can figure out the rate without having to know exactly where the customer lives. You can arrange things so the rate is the rate in the country where you do your payment processing. So, for instance, we are doing that through the UK, and we collect the UK's VAT on all EU sales.
In the US, sales tax is based on where the buyer lives. And it's not just the state they live in that matters--sales taxes are also imposed by counties within the state, cities within the counties, and often there are special taxing districts on top of that. We have to collect tax for sales to people in the state of Washington, because that's where we are, and it is a pain in the ass. I was able to get a table from the state listing the total tax rate for each zip+4 area of the state (although political boundaries don't always match postal boundaries, so there can be more than one rate in effect in a given zip+4 area).
I also was able to get a table that lists every possible address in the state, and gives its tax rate. This is less useful than you would think, because people often don't write their address in the official form. For instance, if someone lives on "Martin Luther King Blvd", that can come in as "MLK Blvd", "King Blvd", and many other variations. A human can figure it out, but a computer program to take human-entered addresses and find them in the table would be very complicated.
What I settled on was using the zip+4 table. From that, I made a table of 5-digit zips. For those that only had one rate in effect in all their +4 areas, that's the rate I use for anyone in the zip. For those that have more than one rate, I take the highest, and that's the rate I use for anyone who gives that zip as a 5-digit zip. If they give zip+4, I use the highest rate in that zip+5.
I use the highest rate in a zip+4 area because I'd rather deal with a consumer calling to complain I charged him the rate for people that in the special taxing district in his area, even though he's two blocks outside it, than deal with the State auditors calling and saying we've under collected taxes. The former is fixed with a quick credit on the customer's credit card, an apology, and maybe a free extension to the subscription. The later ends up with a full audit, where we have to prove, for pretty much everyone who was not charged the maximum rate, that the rate we charged was justified.
In reality, in areas where there are special tax districts, so that some in a zip+4 have a higher rate than others, most consumers would not even notice if they were charged the wrong rate. That's because for in-store purchases, the rate is based on the location of the store, not the location of the customer. When someone sets up a special tax district that is going to raise money by sales taxes, they are going to set it up to hit areas with businesses in them, not primarily residential areas. So, the consumer who lives in an 8.25% part of his zip+4 probably does his in person buying in the 8.35% of that area, and is used to that rate. When he sees it on his online purchase, he will probably have no idea that it is higher than it should be.
There's one feature that, as far as I've been able to tell, is not in any of the major version control systems, whether distributed or not. That's good support for directory-based files.
What I mean by "directory-based files" are documents that are treated as a file by the applications that know about them, and the GUI system, but are actually implemented as a directory. The major example would be MacOS package files. For example, an OmniOutliner document actually consists of a directory with the name of your document, and in that directory there is an XML file with the outline and the files for any attachments to the outline, thumbnails of images, and things like that. In the Finder, the whole directory is treated as a file.
Verson control systems tend to see these as directories with files in them. This leads to a couple problems.
First, if you edit the document, and that causes files to get added to the directory, the VCS won't know that these need to be added to the repository. Same if your editing causes a file to go away--the VCS won't know it needs to treat that as a delete when you commit.
Second, if the VCS stores metadata in each directory (like Subversion does), and the application that writes the document uses the write/rename/rename/delete method of safe updating, it ends up making a new directory, blowing away the metadata.
I would love to see a VCS that handles these directory-based files automatically.
Why GIT is Better Than X
Why Mercurial is Better Than X
Why Bazaar is Better Than X
People who are charged but not convicted of copyright infringement should have their names and home towns published on a searchable list
They do.
When you are charged with a crime, that is generally a matter of public record, and is often published in the newspaper. If the person is later found not guilty, there is no compensation for the information having been published in the newspaper. Why should there be compensation if the information is tweeted?
Translation: the only button is a power button, it has a battery-sucking colour screen as opposed to an e-ink display, it requires itunes on a mac or PC to use, the only Apple-approved way to run programs is via an app store, it has a non-user-replaceable battery, and it will cost upwards of $1000
...and a year later it will have tremendous market share, and every other major and minor manufacturer of laptops and netbooks will be trying to clone it.
Does this sign the closing of the Mono project? And can anyone tell me, since this fundamentalist stance against the GPL[...]
What the heck are you talking about? First of all, the headline, summary, and cited article all make it clear this is about the license for MonoDevelop, not the license for Mono, so you are starting off massively confused.
Second, what fundamentalist stance against GPL? MonoDevelop is an IDE, with plugin support. It makes sense to avoid making it GPL, so that plug-in authors have the maximal flexibility in their choice of license. This too is clear from the summary and article. This is how other major open source IDEs are licensed. Do you think Eclipse, for example, shows that IBM has a fundamentalist stance against the GPL?
Quite a few top iPhone games are written using Mono.
So what, if anything, should the community be doing about it?"
They should be getting out their Open Moko phones and having a conference call to discuss the problem.
Maybe if we start calling it GNU/Android instead of just Android, people will realize they should be writing Free software for it.
It was built from day one to integrate with Apache, it's not a nasty bolt-on hack like mod_perl. It's in-process so there's no startup overhead like with CGI
So mod_php is not a nasty bolt-on hack?
I just bought a Samsung TV, and the back of the manual includes a copy of GPLv2, LGPLv2.1, Mozilla PL 1.1, the OpenSSL License, the FreeType license, and the ZLib license.
It also says the GPL code included in the product is the Linux kernel, Busybox, Binutils, U-boot, Wireless_tools, and pump. It lists glibc, ffmpeg, libgphoto2, libpfp, libusb, smpeg, alsa, directfb, and uClibc as being the LGPL code.
It gives an email address to write to ask for the code.
It sure looks like they are trying to comply.
There's pizza without pepperoni? Why would anyone do that?
Maybe they are Italian and prefer an authentic pizza?
What do you think the differences are between licenses, contracts, covenants not to sue, and promises not to sue? In court, they are pretty much all the same thing.
Where in there does he say that nobody else can be trusted with it? And do you think RMS is also a greedy pig, since he agrees with Monty on most of these points?
The ones which can be voided at anytime? Sorry I don't buy them
The Community Promise can't be voided.
Again, why doesn't MS offer a royalty-free permanent irrevocable license to those patents
They did.
Can you effectively fork it? Stallman doesn't think so.
Nice misrepresentation. Monty has been pretty open about his company's finances, and where the money went--mostly into paying people to develop MySQL. If he was a greedy self-centered pig like you claim, he could have done a lot better never having started MySQL, and instead working as a consultant all that time. And he's not saying nobody else can be trusted with it--he's saying Oracle can't be trusted with it.
I thought it was implicit that I want to see specific relevant patents. Last time I checked, writing, compiling, running, and distributing Mono programs does not require using OOXML in any way.
The C# and CLI patents you list are covered by the legally binding Community Promise.
I want to see the alleged patents that cover the non-ECMA portion of Mono.
But De Icaza has said that mono is implementing bits of .net stuff not covered under the patent covenant. That leaves the mono project open to trouble.
It leaves it no more open to trouble than any other open source language project that implements things similar to those parts of .NET. That would be pretty much all of them.
If Microsoft has broad patents on this stuff, they will ensnare far more than Mono.
If the alleged Microsoft patents are narrow, they will most likely just cover Microsoft's implementation. Independent implementations would be unlikely to do it the same way.
Given this, I'm not going to worry about it unless people stop talking in vague generalities and name specific patents. Patent records are public documents. Surely one of Mono's opponents could do a search and find the worrisome patents. Also, note that it is a requirement in the US that a patent owner mark their products with the patents they claim cover it. I downloaded the free .NET development tools from Microsoft, and didn't see any patents listed.
Remember, MS can void its "promises" over .NET at any moment
That's simply wrong as a matter of law. Such promises are legally binding under contract law.
Sorry--it looks like you had an unstated requirement in your original request. You want to stick it in a back pocket, toss it on a table, and soak it with dew and have it still work. With that additional last requirement, I don't think they are there yet.