Does this bombard all exposed functions with garbage data and look for overflows, or does it actually comb source code, look for off-by-one bugs and try to outwit the code by using boundary conditions?
The problem here is not the degree per se (there are already Theology advanced degree courses), but calling it a *Science* degree. Creationism is not science, and should not be equated to one. It is the same reason that makes the advanced degree in Philosophy to be a "Master of Arts", and not "Master of Science"
The word "Science" in a degree is used in its old meaning, which is basically "systematic knowledge", not in its 18th-century and later meaning--that which before then would have been called "natural philosophy". That's why numerous schools offer Bachelor of Science degrees in things we wouldn't think of as "science" nowadays, such as journalism, accounting, English, history, and many others.
Caltech and MIT, for instance, only offer the BS degree as the first degree in a field of study. Yes, you can (and some do!) go to Caltech and get a B.S. in English.
There are 2 ISO standard document formats (not including ASCII et al). Only one of them is open, and that is the format that this bill recommends, ODF. A "non-open standard" is sort of useless as a standard, and is more trouble than it is worth. The non-open ISO document format standard, MOO-XML, should be avoided.
How is one more open than the other? (If you are going to say patents--don't bother. Both are patented, and both are available under nearly identical patent convenants).
Actually, it is favoring all vendors....over just one. With them picking one, non-proprietary format...then, any document application can be considered and used to read/write
ISO ODF is not sufficiently specified to satisfy that. If you had two independent implementations that went by the spec, they would in fact have interoperability problems.
In practice, pretty much all ODF applications don't try to implement ISO ODF. They try to implement OpenOffice ODF. They get the spec for that by looking at what OpenOffice does in those areas where the ISO ODF spec is deficient.
There is work underway to fix this, but that's still a ways off.
Just a thought, if they want any more financing out of all this publicity, they should come up with a better name than Y(4140). Seriously, They are going to get some level of coverage for this, which they can use to try to get more financing. But if they stick with Y(4140), well it may not amount to nearly as much as if they called it say the Mystery Particle of Doom or something.
The way to make money off it would be to sell the naming rights. I'm sure they could make some pretty good money naming it the "Subway $5 Footlong Particle", for instance.
Why don't add a brief summary about what your posts actually mean to the non-legal types, rather than this legalese summary each time?
There was nothing in the summary that would be confusing to anyone who paid attention during their high school civics class, and who reads a newspaper semi-regularly.
Ok, if Washington is anything like my states, there are plenty of roads that need repairs and bridges that need to be built before a bridge that only helps one company
This isn't a bridge that only helps one company. RTFA.
Here's how TomTom can get off the GPL hook, no matter what terms they come to with Microsoft:
Write a library, from scratch, that implements VFAT and is covered by the patent license they get from Microsoft.
Take VFAT out of their Linux kernel.
Use FUSE to mount their VFAT volume, via the user-mode library that they wrote. Or, alternatively, compile the library from #1 into all of the TomTom applications that run under Linux on the TomTom hardware, and give the apps access to the raw volume, and don't even mount the VFAT volume. Essentially, VFAT would be just an application file format they use, with the file being the raw disk volume.
Its worse than than a KDE problem. It goes to the heart of Linux/Unix which
have always been dependent on a multitude of small text files
But not a multitude of small text files that are frequently changed.
Anytime you suggest users re-write their entire code base to get around
a bug you've created your professional pride should well up, grab you by
the wattles and slap you till you spit
This so-called "bug" has been normal Unix behavior for the 29 years I've been using Unix.
These applications can lose data even on a filesystem that uses no caching at all, but immediately writes every change to disk. That means the apps are broken. All that's different here is that modern filesystems have a bigger window in which the application bug can be exposed.
Unlikely to happen, for the same reason you don't see FOSS movies. A large fraction of the work that goes into an MMOG or movie is work for which FOSS makes no sense.
FOSS makes sense for a kernel or a compiler, because if I contribute to making the kernel or compiler better, that gives me back a tool that I use in my future work, and I can also take code fragments from others that contributed and use them in my future work--due to the modularity of software.
For games, an FOSS engine makes sense. FOSS artwork, music, scripting, voice acting, etc., make no sense at all.
I don't know anything about Australian copyright law, but under US law you cannot copyright a fact. A train timetable would certainly qualify.
I don't know anything about Sydney's trains, but unless they have a very sparse system, the train timetable is not a fact. It is a collection of facts, selected and arranged by an author.
In the US, copyrightability of that would depend on the creativity involved in selecting the facts and the arrangement. I agree that a train timetable would probably not qualify. I just want to make sure that it is clear to people that the reason is not because it is facts, but rather because there is almost no creativity in the selection or arrangement of the facts.
First, why not also mention that Sun and IBM are also partners of the company? I'd think Sun being associated with a company attack JBoss would be a lot more interesting than Microsoft, since JBoss directly competes with Sun.
Second, EDT is not a plaintiff's paradise. Defendants have been doing better than plaintiffs there over the last couple of years.
The ads on TPB are very annoying. First, there are the porn ads. Second, there are the talking ads. Finally, there are the deceptive ads, designed to trick people into clicking.
What would be useful, and poetic justice, would be for someone to set up a site that crawls TPB, and republishes all its torrents without all the sleazy ads.
If you intend to violate the law, and I know you intend to violate the law, and I purposefully help you do so, I can be charged.
If you present TPB with irrefutable proof that a given torrent file they host is to illegal content, and is only being used by people who intend to violate the copyright, will they take it down? No. They will leave it up, and call attention to it, thus most likely making it be used even more to violate copyright.
They are certainly not in innocent in a moral or ethical sense.
What qualifies as an "actionable" post? If I say "I think you are an asshole!", is that actionable?
Simple. If it would be actionable if you published it in a newspaper, or a community newsletter, or on the bulletin board at school, etc., then it is probably actionable as a post on the internet. That works the other way, too.
Internet doesn't really change anything here. The real mystery is why so many people seem to think it might.
Can you imagine them going after 170 people at once?
They don't have to go after 170. They can go after as many or as few as they want. If whoever they pick thinks that others should have been picked, that person can bring the others in.
Go read the major scientific journals in areas related to computer science or nearby fields, and read the papers from conferences. You'll find plenty coming out of Microsoft, and very little coming out of Apple.
By almost all measures used to rate academic research institutions (papers published, winning major prizes, elections to national academies, etc), MS Research is near or at the top. In fact, even if you look at absolute numbers, rather than per researcher numbers, MS ranks high, which is remarkable.
When the Kindle service disappears, which can happen at any time, say goodbye to your books
For a good 95% of my books, I never open them again after reading them once. The only reason I haven't sold them to a used bookstore, or donated them to charity, is that I'm too lazy.
Assuming that the percentage stays about the same for the books I buy for Kindle, I will still come out ahead, even if Amazon does something that renders all my purchased books unreadable. I'll have saved enough on the "read once" books to pay for repurchasing in paper the remaining 5% that I will want to reread.
Sorry, I will never trust Microsoft enough to put them in a position to control a key technology. So that means there is no discussing the issue as far as I'm concerned. There is NO rational basis to argue. I don't trust em.
Microsoft controls Mono in the same sense that AT&T controls C and C++.
Slashdot Mirror
Tip: you can avoid looking like an uninformed idiot if you RTFA before posting.
Neither. RTFA, where your questions are answered.
The word "Science" in a degree is used in its old meaning, which is basically "systematic knowledge", not in its 18th-century and later meaning--that which before then would have been called "natural philosophy". That's why numerous schools offer Bachelor of Science degrees in things we wouldn't think of as "science" nowadays, such as journalism, accounting, English, history, and many others.
Caltech and MIT, for instance, only offer the BS degree as the first degree in a field of study. Yes, you can (and some do!) go to Caltech and get a B.S. in English.
How is one more open than the other? (If you are going to say patents--don't bother. Both are patented, and both are available under nearly identical patent convenants).
ISO ODF is not sufficiently specified to satisfy that. If you had two independent implementations that went by the spec, they would in fact have interoperability problems.
In practice, pretty much all ODF applications don't try to implement ISO ODF. They try to implement OpenOffice ODF. They get the spec for that by looking at what OpenOffice does in those areas where the ISO ODF spec is deficient.
There is work underway to fix this, but that's still a ways off.
The way to make money off it would be to sell the naming rights. I'm sure they could make some pretty good money naming it the "Subway $5 Footlong Particle", for instance.
There was nothing in the summary that would be confusing to anyone who paid attention during their high school civics class, and who reads a newspaper semi-regularly.
Just because there is no DRM, and hence no DMCA problem, doesn't mean you are free to reverse engineer the chip. It could be patented.
Your post was off topic. There is no First Amendment issue here.
This isn't a bridge that only helps one company. RTFA.
Here's how TomTom can get off the GPL hook, no matter what terms they come to with Microsoft:
The engineering effort for this would be easy.
But not a multitude of small text files that are frequently changed.
This so-called "bug" has been normal Unix behavior for the 29 years I've been using Unix.
These applications can lose data even on a filesystem that uses no caching at all, but immediately writes every change to disk. That means the apps are broken. All that's different here is that modern filesystems have a bigger window in which the application bug can be exposed.
Unlikely to happen, for the same reason you don't see FOSS movies. A large fraction of the work that goes into an MMOG or movie is work for which FOSS makes no sense.
FOSS makes sense for a kernel or a compiler, because if I contribute to making the kernel or compiler better, that gives me back a tool that I use in my future work, and I can also take code fragments from others that contributed and use them in my future work--due to the modularity of software.
For games, an FOSS engine makes sense. FOSS artwork, music, scripting, voice acting, etc., make no sense at all.
I don't know anything about Sydney's trains, but unless they have a very sparse system, the train timetable is not a fact. It is a collection of facts, selected and arranged by an author.
In the US, copyrightability of that would depend on the creativity involved in selecting the facts and the arrangement. I agree that a train timetable would probably not qualify. I just want to make sure that it is clear to people that the reason is not because it is facts, but rather because there is almost no creativity in the selection or arrangement of the facts.
The main case on this is FEIST PUBLICATIONS, INC. v. RURAL TELEPHONE SERVICE CO., 499 U.S. 340 (1991).
First, why not also mention that Sun and IBM are also partners of the company? I'd think Sun being associated with a company attack JBoss would be a lot more interesting than Microsoft, since JBoss directly competes with Sun.
Second, EDT is not a plaintiff's paradise. Defendants have been doing better than plaintiffs there over the last couple of years.
You need to read more than just the title of the patents.
The ads on TPB are very annoying. First, there are the porn ads. Second, there are the talking ads. Finally, there are the deceptive ads, designed to trick people into clicking.
What would be useful, and poetic justice, would be for someone to set up a site that crawls TPB, and republishes all its torrents without all the sleazy ads.
If you intend to violate the law, and I know you intend to violate the law, and I purposefully help you do so, I can be charged.
If you present TPB with irrefutable proof that a given torrent file they host is to illegal content, and is only being used by people who intend to violate the copyright, will they take it down? No. They will leave it up, and call attention to it, thus most likely making it be used even more to violate copyright.
They are certainly not in innocent in a moral or ethical sense.
The best part is going to be watching the folks at boycottnovell rant about it. This is going to really pop some throbbing veins on their heads.
Simple. If it would be actionable if you published it in a newspaper, or a community newsletter, or on the bulletin board at school, etc., then it is probably actionable as a post on the internet. That works the other way, too.
Internet doesn't really change anything here. The real mystery is why so many people seem to think it might.
They don't have to go after 170. They can go after as many or as few as they want. If whoever they pick thinks that others should have been picked, that person can bring the others in.
Go read the major scientific journals in areas related to computer science or nearby fields, and read the papers from conferences. You'll find plenty coming out of Microsoft, and very little coming out of Apple.
By almost all measures used to rate academic research institutions (papers published, winning major prizes, elections to national academies, etc), MS Research is near or at the top. In fact, even if you look at absolute numbers, rather than per researcher numbers, MS ranks high, which is remarkable.
For a good 95% of my books, I never open them again after reading them once. The only reason I haven't sold them to a used bookstore, or donated them to charity, is that I'm too lazy.
Assuming that the percentage stays about the same for the books I buy for Kindle, I will still come out ahead, even if Amazon does something that renders all my purchased books unreadable. I'll have saved enough on the "read once" books to pay for repurchasing in paper the remaining 5% that I will want to reread.
Microsoft controls Mono in the same sense that AT&T controls C and C++.