Secondly, when used properly and as intended, firearms harm something, somewhere, maybe not a person, maybe not next to you, but their uses are somewhat limited.
You are being nothing short of obtuse. Allow me to spell it out: correct defensive application of a firearm does a net good, by protecting the victim. There is no such redeeming factor for harm caused by tobacco smoke.
These weapons can be produced at will by private citizens.
The guns, sure (though they're no damn good, as you rightly point out), but unless I missed something, 3D printing hasn't made it any easier to get ammunition.
This means if it comes to a revolution (and honestly, I don't know what you are all waiting for)
The average quality of life in the US could be a damn sight worse, let's not forget. Revolution costs the rebels rather a lot. This is even ignoring the political divisions in the US - it's not like there are two clear-cut sides of the people and the government.
they can be produced at the time when needed.
Again, without ammo, this doesn't mean much.
At this point the government is going to kill you on sight anyway, so whether you are breaking gun printing laws or not is irrelevant.
Bullshit. Your average US citizen is pretty unlikely to end up with their cause of death being murdered by the police. I suspect that breaking gun laws greatly increases your odds of a violent encounter with the police.
If crime rates are going down, then why is my local police getting military grade equipment and gear?
I can't think of a clearer example of circular reasoning. It's no better than If there's no god, then why do I pray? The only difference is that rather than implicitly assuming your own infallibility, you're assuming infallibility of the US police.
Anyway, from what I've read, it seems the militiarisation of the police of the USA is indeed a real trend, and it's a worrying one. It may signify a number of things, but it's certainly not a reliable indication of increasing crime rates.
The 2-clause BSD license (which is the one used nowadays) is 7 lines of natural English (excluding the disclaimer) and people still can't understand it...
You can't take BSD code and change it's license.
It's ironic that you're laughing at those who misunderstand the licence, given that you've fundamentally midunderstood the licence.
If your interpretation were correct, it would be functionally comparable to the GPL, and we wouldn't have all those flame-wars.
It's a 'copycenter' licence, not a copyleft licence. You're allowed to release your fork under your choice of licence, whether proprietary, Free/Open Source, or anywhere in between, provided you don't hide the fact that your software is based upon that original BSD 2-clause licensed software.
It's a little confusing, as "must retain the above copyright notice" can easily be misinterpreted the way you did, to mean "you must release your fork under the BSD 2-clause licence".
Ok, so the guys currently at the top of Valve are rich and worked at Microsoft in the early days. Points in their favour, sure, but how do these points allay my concern that their company might not last forever...?
I thought it was clear that the focus of my comment was that airport security isn't easy. I even put I'm no fan of the TSA. You're probably right that the TSA are ineffective/expensive/self-serving/generally completely broken, but that wasn't the focus of my comment.
I couldn't find a source to support "Randomly" pulls aside people for hand raping based entirely on breast size, though.
Not to mention that securing asm is a nightmare, very very time consuming. Even their '13 years' isn't enough.
Indeed, but C doesn't have a great track-record either.
I suspect Menuet's minimalism would be a great point in their favour when it comes to security. I doubt security is that high up their list though. Not to mention that practically speaking, they're not worth anyone's time to attack.
I also so far never had problem with Steam DRM and that's why I am OK with it.
And if/when Valve go bust or turn evil? (I'm aware Gabe said that if Valve go bust they'll unlock the Steam DRM. I don't believe it for a second - I doubt they're even legally in a position to make that call for other companies' games.)
I use Steam too, and yes it works fine now, but that's not to say that by going with Steam you've escaped all the downsides of DRM. They still hold the keys to your gaming locker.
You are suggesting that airport security is an easy problem to solve. I suspect this is very wrong.
I'm no fan of the TSA, but let's not be stupid here - you have to process millions of almost-all-innocent people in the search of a few actual suspects, who will have taken great steps to evade detection, and who did so in the full knowledge of all your techniques. It's not an "A couple of X should be able to take care of that" problem.
Unless I'm missing something big, this is totally false. You need to be forward-looking, not backward-looking.
For most trees that's probably somewhere in the region of 20-50 years. In geological & ecological terms that's nothing, and the net effect is no additional carbon dioxide.
The environment doesn't care how long it took for that carbon to be sequestered. What matters is how much you've released.
You're also ignoring that deforestation kills trees which would otherwise continue to draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. All else equal, is it not better to burn coal than trees?
(That's not to say that banning burning is a good idea, though - I'm sure it's a tiny drop in the ocean compared to traffic pollution.)
the truth is they weren't being lazy about patching it, they just didn't want to have to close the backdoor and only finally patched when the guys who found it went "full disclosure" on their ass
Distinct from laziness... how?
They were reluctant to do the work, right? Sounds like laziness to me.
Or are you saying Oracle had an interest in 'actively leaving holes in', as it were?
The author of TFA clearly doesn't understand what 'the web' actually means. Four times the word 'web' is used, and in each instance, they should have used 'Internet'.
Today's web-technologies do not address the needs of cloud gaming.
You are in no position to assert this, having clearly not read all of ottothecow's comment.
The point isn't about BitTorrent at all - it's about dodgy adverts. No-one is suggesting that GIMP actually use BitTorrent as their primary means of distribution, but the ads on SourceForge can be compared to those on BitTorrent sites.
It is, technically. By technically I mean, it was published once, in a 'free' publication, sent to a few libraries, and thus the public access requirement was met. But since you'll never find it there because it isn't indexed, searchable, or in any way known... it's effectively useless.
That thing about US government works being public domain, should apply to academia. I don't know much about the rule - where's the line drawn? Do NASA lock up their papers?
Why? Compilers are pretty simple; Difficult for a lot of people to conceptualize, yes, but for those who can make that leap of understanding, not terribly difficult to design
Err, no. Let's look at C++ in particular, as it's pretty much a worst case when it comes to compiler implementation.
These guys make a living working on a C++ front-end. A front-end only. Intel licence it because writing their own C++ front-end would be a tremendous effort; C++ is a hugely complex language, for machines (i.e. compiler front-ends) as well as for humans. The optimisation and back-end work is even more effort, especially if you want to be a serious competitor among today's compilers, which gcc certainly does.
Getting these things right is, to put it mildly, not easy. Bugs in optimising compilers really do happen. Here's a compiler-bug warning I ran into just this week.
Let's also not forget the scope of the gcc project: it's not 'just' a C++ -> x86/AMD64/IA-64 compiler, the way ICC is. It reads in source-code in C, C++, Objective-C, Fortran, Java (in theory...), Ada, and Go, and emits machine code for a great many CPU architectures.
Compilers are a legitimate sub-field of computer science, in the same way operating systems are. IBM invested in JikesRVM, a 'Research Virtual Machine' (for Java) for a reason. It's something some academics specialise in. Dismissing the field as "pretty simple" is hardly fair to its researchers and implementers.
Slashdot Mirror
Secondly, when used properly and as intended, firearms harm something, somewhere, maybe not a person, maybe not next to you, but their uses are somewhat limited.
You are being nothing short of obtuse. Allow me to spell it out: correct defensive application of a firearm does a net good, by protecting the victim. There is no such redeeming factor for harm caused by tobacco smoke.
These weapons can be produced at will by private citizens.
The guns, sure (though they're no damn good, as you rightly point out), but unless I missed something, 3D printing hasn't made it any easier to get ammunition.
This means if it comes to a revolution (and honestly, I don't know what you are all waiting for)
The average quality of life in the US could be a damn sight worse, let's not forget. Revolution costs the rebels rather a lot. This is even ignoring the political divisions in the US - it's not like there are two clear-cut sides of the people and the government.
they can be produced at the time when needed.
Again, without ammo, this doesn't mean much.
At this point the government is going to kill you on sight anyway, so whether you are breaking gun printing laws or not is irrelevant.
Bullshit. Your average US citizen is pretty unlikely to end up with their cause of death being murdered by the police. I suspect that breaking gun laws greatly increases your odds of a violent encounter with the police.
Indeed. Unless I'm mistaken, they're not even capable of automatic fire.
I presume three-shot-burst capability means it would count as an assault-weapon in the US legal definition (i.e. as far as civilian ownership goes).
If crime rates are going down, then why is my local police getting military grade equipment and gear?
I can't think of a clearer example of circular reasoning. It's no better than If there's no god, then why do I pray? The only difference is that rather than implicitly assuming your own infallibility, you're assuming infallibility of the US police.
Anyway, from what I've read, it seems the militiarisation of the police of the USA is indeed a real trend, and it's a worrying one. It may signify a number of things, but it's certainly not a reliable indication of increasing crime rates.
The 2-clause BSD license (which is the one used nowadays) is 7 lines of natural English (excluding the disclaimer) and people still can't understand it...
You can't take BSD code and change it's license.
It's ironic that you're laughing at those who misunderstand the licence, given that you've fundamentally midunderstood the licence.
If your interpretation were correct, it would be functionally comparable to the GPL, and we wouldn't have all those flame-wars.
It's a 'copycenter' licence, not a copyleft licence. You're allowed to release your fork under your choice of licence, whether proprietary, Free/Open Source, or anywhere in between, provided you don't hide the fact that your software is based upon that original BSD 2-clause licensed software.
It's a little confusing, as "must retain the above copyright notice" can easily be misinterpreted the way you did, to mean "you must release your fork under the BSD 2-clause licence".
Relevant Wikipedia content.
Ok, so the guys currently at the top of Valve are rich and worked at Microsoft in the early days. Points in their favour, sure, but how do these points allay my concern that their company might not last forever...?
I thought it was clear that the focus of my comment was that airport security isn't easy. I even put I'm no fan of the TSA. You're probably right that the TSA are ineffective/expensive/self-serving/generally completely broken, but that wasn't the focus of my comment.
I couldn't find a source to support "Randomly" pulls aside people for hand raping based entirely on breast size, though.
Not to mention that securing asm is a nightmare, very very time consuming. Even their '13 years' isn't enough.
Indeed, but C doesn't have a great track-record either.
I suspect Menuet's minimalism would be a great point in their favour when it comes to security. I doubt security is that high up their list though. Not to mention that practically speaking, they're not worth anyone's time to attack.
I also so far never had problem with Steam DRM and that's why I am OK with it.
And if/when Valve go bust or turn evil? (I'm aware Gabe said that if Valve go bust they'll unlock the Steam DRM. I don't believe it for a second - I doubt they're even legally in a position to make that call for other companies' games.)
I use Steam too, and yes it works fine now, but that's not to say that by going with Steam you've escaped all the downsides of DRM. They still hold the keys to your gaming locker.
You are suggesting that airport security is an easy problem to solve. I suspect this is very wrong.
I'm no fan of the TSA, but let's not be stupid here - you have to process millions of almost-all-innocent people in the search of a few actual suspects, who will have taken great steps to evade detection, and who did so in the full knowledge of all your techniques. It's not an "A couple of X should be able to take care of that" problem.
Unless I'm missing something big, this is totally false. You need to be forward-looking, not backward-looking.
For most trees that's probably somewhere in the region of 20-50 years. In geological & ecological terms that's nothing, and the net effect is no additional carbon dioxide.
The environment doesn't care how long it took for that carbon to be sequestered. What matters is how much you've released.
You're also ignoring that deforestation kills trees which would otherwise continue to draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. All else equal, is it not better to burn coal than trees?
(That's not to say that banning burning is a good idea, though - I'm sure it's a tiny drop in the ocean compared to traffic pollution.)
Spoken like someone who truly doesn't get it.
Not perfect? That's your fault, not mine!
Others in this thread have submitted reasonable defences of Linus' conduct. You seem just to have missed the point entirely.
Looks like you're right.
I didn't know that.
the truth is they weren't being lazy about patching it, they just didn't want to have to close the backdoor and only finally patched when the guys who found it went "full disclosure" on their ass
Distinct from laziness... how?
They were reluctant to do the work, right? Sounds like laziness to me.
Or are you saying Oracle had an interest in 'actively leaving holes in', as it were?
Slashcomma.org? Interesting idea for a phishing attack...
The author of TFA clearly doesn't understand what 'the web' actually means. Four times the word 'web' is used, and in each instance, they should have used 'Internet'.
Today's web-technologies do not address the needs of cloud gaming.
No need to ignore the rest.
You are in no position to assert this, having clearly not read all of ottothecow's comment.
The point isn't about BitTorrent at all - it's about dodgy adverts. No-one is suggesting that GIMP actually use BitTorrent as their primary means of distribution, but the ads on SourceForge can be compared to those on BitTorrent sites.
I know you're trolling and all, but regarding
It makes me feel so powerful.
This doesn't really hold up given that the torrent still works for everyone else, does it?
I'm using Kubuntu as I type this. It doesn't seem to suffer at the hands of Canonical the way Ubuntu does.
Did you reply to the wrong comment, or are you intentionally hijacking it because it's high up the thread?
GNU/Linux didn't work?
You're right. I misread
our goal is to leapfrog H.265 and VP9, building a codec that will be both higher-quality and free of encumbrances.
to mean it intends merely to be a generation ahead of the current-generation truly-open video codecs, which would be a much weaker claim.
My opinion towards it remains the same, though: truly-open codecs don't have a great track record, but I really hope they succeed.
Looks interesting and all, but it'll take a lot to convince me it's a serious competitor to H.264.
Not to worry, I'm sure he'll direct his rage at the C hackers responsible.
It is, technically. By technically I mean, it was published once, in a 'free' publication, sent to a few libraries, and thus the public access requirement was met. But since you'll never find it there because it isn't indexed, searchable, or in any way known... it's effectively useless.
That thing about US government works being public domain, should apply to academia. I don't know much about the rule - where's the line drawn? Do NASA lock up their papers?
Why? Compilers are pretty simple; Difficult for a lot of people to conceptualize, yes, but for those who can make that leap of understanding, not terribly difficult to design
Err, no. Let's look at C++ in particular, as it's pretty much a worst case when it comes to compiler implementation.
These guys make a living working on a C++ front-end. A front-end only. Intel licence it because writing their own C++ front-end would be a tremendous effort; C++ is a hugely complex language, for machines (i.e. compiler front-ends) as well as for humans. The optimisation and back-end work is even more effort, especially if you want to be a serious competitor among today's compilers, which gcc certainly does.
Getting these things right is, to put it mildly, not easy. Bugs in optimising compilers really do happen. Here's a compiler-bug warning I ran into just this week.
Let's also not forget the scope of the gcc project: it's not 'just' a C++ -> x86/AMD64/IA-64 compiler, the way ICC is. It reads in source-code in C, C++, Objective-C, Fortran, Java (in theory...), Ada, and Go, and emits machine code for a great many CPU architectures.
Compilers are a legitimate sub-field of computer science, in the same way operating systems are. IBM invested in JikesRVM, a 'Research Virtual Machine' (for Java) for a reason. It's something some academics specialise in. Dismissing the field as "pretty simple" is hardly fair to its researchers and implementers.