Tada, they're "life partners" and now the slacker roomate gets cheap healthcare at the expense of the other employees at the firm where dude works.
Because simply saying you're gay is no big deal, right?
Voila, I'm "gay" so I can help my friend out with cheap/free benefits. I don't have to worry about how my family will react to it, or my friends, or co-workers.
If I work in child care or education, I don't have to worry about parents who are "concerned" about their children being in my care, or what kind of "message" I'm spreading to them.
I don't have to worry about guys who are so insecure about their sexuality that they take it out on the "fag", or who freak out in the gym locker room.
If I go to church, I don't have to worry about the majority of my social circle ostracizing me (politely, of course). I don't have to worry about the Bible-thumping loony accusing me of being an abomination and saying he's going to pray for my soul.
Because simply saying you're gay is no big deal, right?
Happily? You're not worried about them being forced into a corner where they have to fight really really hard?
What do you call taking a *ahem*simple contract violation case and blowing it up into a series of libelous attacks on the open source development model, Linux kernel developers, and the Free Software Foundation and the GPL. What, I'm supposed to worry that they're going to start fighting dirty?
The "something" that sparked the case was greed. They're a company suing another company, not a wounded bear protecting its cub. If they have no case, then "backing them into a corner" isn't going to provide them with a magic bullet to slay the dread IBM lawyer-horde.
My guess is, McBride and SCO thought that Microsoft and Sun standing in their corner cheering, media whores and cronies uncritically repeating their pablum, and rising stock prices probably gave them an inflated sense of self-worth; today, they've gotten their first real dose of reality.
...it might have something to do with the fact that, for the first time since this whole ugly debacle began in March, SCO had to get up in front of a judge and make its case, instead of trying it in the (clueless financial) media.
Man, the SCO-story whiners are starting to bug me as much as the JonKatz whiners did, before I removed him from my story preferences two years ago.
Again, if everyone is so pissed off about the SCO coverage, uncheck the "Caldera" topic in your Slashdot preferences and they'll go away (taking your much-vaunted eyeball impressions with them, for the tinfoil hats who think Slashdot is only flogging this case to get hits).
But this case is arguably more important to the Free/Open Source Software community than the Microsoft antitrust trial was, and as long as the suit progresses, and SCO shouts blatant lies about Open Source software, its advocates, and the GPL, expect/. to cover it.
Jay (=
SCO's noncompliance started this!
on
SCOrched Earth
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
However, the rules are the same for both parties and even though SCO is the "Bad Guy" here, don't forget IBM can do the same if SCO fails to comply with THEIR discovery requests.
"If" they fail to comply? SCO filed their Motion to Compel after IBM filed theirs.
IBM is annoyed because, among other things, IBM requested SCO's source code and a description showing what files and parts of files have been copied, in a form making it amenable for searching. SCO responded by printing out large chunks of Linux source code files and effectively said "it's in there, somewhere". (And then had the gall to complain about how much it cost them to print out that code!)
SCO filed their Motion to Compel Discovery in response and are basically saying "Well, we can't know for sure what infringement has occurred until we see the code from IBM."
On one hand, SCO claims in the media to have solid evidence of "line-by-line copying" of "millions of lines" of code, that discovery is progressing along and they're preparing to sue Linux end customers and bill Linux users, making them sound like an unstoppable legal juggernaut (and sending their stock price through the roof).
On the other hand, in the courtroom, they hang their head and say "we're not sure what all has been done to poor poor us", they whine about having to conduct three lawsuits at once -- their suit against IBM, IBM's countersuit, and Red Hat's suit -- and try to play one case off on the other and file delay after delay in all three cases, stalling for as much time as possible before they have to admit that, they have no case, no proof,and no claim.
Groklaw is an amazing read. PJ is smart, she's thorough, and has a great body of volunteers helping her with research into SCO's claims, transcribing legal documents, and tracking down old emails and newsgroup postings. Comparing what SCO says in the media to what they say in court, it's obvious that Darl McBride has a reality-distortion field that makes Steve Jobs' look like a weak soap bubble.
I would add in gentoo, as it is also all based on OSS/GPL. It is also one of the easiest to use with new software that often there isn't a rh/deb/etc package, and if there isn't writing ebuilds is easier than writing rpms. (Honestly can't comment on debs, except by heresay which is that they are tougher than both.)
Just FYI, making.deb packages is extremely easy; making good.debs is a little bit harder, and making Debian Policy-compliant.debs is a lot more difficult.
Any tarball which you can do "./configure; make; make install" to can be made into a.deb, at least from my experience.
Section 2.4 of the Debian New Maintainer's Guide covers what needs to be done for the initial package. Section 9.2 covers new upstream versions.
I maintain a couple of semi-useful packages (all other people's software) for Debian unstable on my own at http://www.crystalwind.org/debs/. They're not 100% policy-compliant, but in my limited testing, they don't seem to mess anything up.
This movie will be eye candy. Look at the way it's being pitched -- not by the supreme acting ability of it's characters, but by the specs of the render farm used to generate the computer graphics.
Yeah, if Wired is the only magazine you read, that is. (And that wasn't even a real article, at least on the website; just a bunch of facts about the render farm.)
Premiere Magazine has a nice bit about the four hobbit actors (Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd and Dom Monaghan) and the friendship they've developed over the course of the three movies. So obviously it's being pitched as a movie where the actors have enjoyed themselves and developed a strong bond over the course of the three movies.
I saw a cover to some bubblegum teen magazine with Orlando Bloom all over it, so obviously it's being pitched as a movie with a bunch of droolworthy male eye candy.
If you ask me, all of the above are true; you can make all sorts of generalizations if you have only part of the data.
If you install an application that requires a few new libraries, removing the package doesn't always get rid of the library. Deborphan helps you find libraries that have no applications listed as dependancies; a simple
for x in `deborphan`; do dpkg -P $x; done (note backticks)
The server that pushes.debs to archive is running debian/sparc (donated by sun btw), so probably the cracker didn't know how to port his leet exploit to sparc (all the comprimised machines were 1386).
You mean there's some value in those "unnecessary" non-i386 arches that Debian supports? Gee, maybe they have a good idea after all...
Instead of me (a man), assume I am an elderly woman. Instead of my house, assume this takes place in a car. You (still) work at McDonalds.
You boil water, I pour it on my lap. ??? Profit
You forgot a few steps...
One of your quality assurance managers testifies that you were aware of the risk of serving dangerously hot coffee and had no plans to either turn down the heat or to post warning about the possibility of severe burns, even though your customers wouldn't think it was possible. (No one drinks boiling water!)
You consistently keep your coffee at 185 degrees, still approximately 20 degrees hotter than at other restaurants. Third degree burns occur at this temperature in just two to seven seconds.
I was not driving my car. I was seated as the passenger in a parked car, holding the coffee cup between my legs while I removed the plastic lid. The cup tipped over and poured the scalding hot coffee into my lap causing third degree burns.
You knew your coffee caused serious injuries; more than 700 incidents of scalding coffee burns, some including children, in the past decade have been settled by you.
I require eight days of hospitalization and multiple surgeries, including skin grafts as a result of being scalded by your coffee.
The jury awards me $2.9 million in punitive damages, the amount generated by two day's worth of your coffee sales. The jury awards me $200,000 in compensatory damages, though the judge reduces that to $160,000, concluding that I was 20% responsible for the incident.
People keep dredging this up as an example of "frivolous litigation gone rampant", when even a cursory attempt at research shows that the facts aren't quite what people think they are. If anything, this is a perfect example of the legal system working as intended.
...the following will be true about Microsoft's music service:
Will require Windows Media Player on Windows to function; files will be DRM'ed out the ass (sidebar: expect WMP for the Mac to join IE in the near future)
Will be playable on only one PC (although you can authorize users who have a Passport account), no ability to burn to CD, but may be downloaded to Microsoft's new portable music player, just like Apple's iTunes (although not as useful)
Will start making promotional deals with everyone under the sun to give away free downloads, just like Apple did with Pepsi
Will make deals with record labels to release exclusive "MSN Music only" content, like download-only albums and exclusive tracks, just like Apple's iTunes (see a pattern developing here?)
In short, they'll rip off every idea Apple had with the iPod, iTunes, and ITMS but make it less consumer-friendly; no rescuing any of the songs you've purchased if you have to migrate to another PC or reformat your hard drive (at least not for free).
Despite dire warnings, we've gone ahead and put computers with Internet access into our adolescent (11, 12, and 15-year-old) childrens' rooms.
Well, if you ignored the dire warnings, I'm assuming it's because you trust your kids to be able to handle the privilege according to your guidelines.
Unfortunately we've had instances where all of these rules - especially that last one [don't lie to us about what you're doing] - have been broken, so now we are looking at getting more specific.
Well without knowing the specifics of how they broke the rule (Were they looking at porn sites? Were they getting frisky in online chat? Were they posting to racist newsgroups?), I can't say for sure what would be the right way to handle it. However, I can think of an easy fix to start with: yank the computers out of their rooms, and put one or two into a public room.
While one could argue that having access to the internet is becoming essential, having private, effectively unmonitored access is still clearly a privilege.
Really, a screen for configuring dvorak or a zillion other layouts, hmm.... "No, let's drop that".
Yes, because everybody knows that the only people who use Linux are North Americans with QWERTY keyboards.
So Anaconda doesn't work on 11 architectures. That's a pretty crappy reason for holding the dominant arch down.
Debian doesn't have a "dominant arch", by definition. If you can't grasp that, then you are not the type of user Debian is targetting. (Or you are welcome to take their distribution and fork it, as Libranet and Knoppix have done.)
Considering that RMS seems to think even Debian isn't really a Free Software(tm) distro, I find it difficult to image that Mandrake qualifies.
What's ironic about that is that Stallman's dispute with the Debian developers revolves around the fact that Debian considers the GNU Free Documentation License "non-free" under the DFSG (Debian Free Software Guidelines). From what I understand, it revolves around the fact that the FDL allows for "non-variant" sections, which cannot be part of the main document (an introduction or dedication) and cannot be changed or removed.
The Debian developers feel that this unfairly restricts people who distribute FDL-licensed documents, as it prevents them from correcting inaccurate or misleading information in a non-variant section, and does not prevent later developers from adding more non-variant sections. You'd end up with a document with many pages of non-variant sections, possibly with contradictory or confusing purposes, much like the obnoxious advertising clause in the original BSD license.
As for Debian not being 100% free, everything in the "main" section of Debian is either GPL, or an open-source license that meets with the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Although Debian does maintain a "non-free" section, with software configured so it can be installed on Debian, it is not included in any official Debian release, and it's likely that Debian may soon remove the "non-free" section from their servers.
The amazing thing is, much of the non-free software that was seen as important when Debian was started has now become acceptable to include in "main" (the QT libraries kept KDE out of "main" for a while; StarOffice gave birth to OpenOffice.org, Netscape gave birth to Mozilla). Hopefully, within a few years a "non-free" section for Debian will be unnecessary.
[E911's] purpose is to help 911 operators quickly determine the location of callers. But it could also be used for targeted marketing if carriers decide to act as middlemen between telemarketers and cell-phone customers in forwarding coupons and ads to wireless phones. That would facilitate just-in-time direct marketing. A telemarketer could beam a coupon for a can of soup to the cell phone of a person the system has spotted outside a grocery store.
If that doesn't make you want to throw your mobile phone away, I don't know what will. The idea that marketing companies will be following mobile phone owners around and beaming them ads and coupons should scare the hell out of anyone who cares a shred about their privacy.
Wait until the spammers get hold of this! Anyone need a "Refill your Viagra order" spam on their cellphone while on a date? Or worse, in a meeting at work?
...because every time this question comes up, an answer is posted.
In short: Telemarketers get the bulk of their sales from people they can pressure into a sale: elderly, mentally infirm, emotionally insecure, whatever reason, some people can't say "no" over the phone. If those people are on the Do Not Call list, then telemarketers will not get those high-pressure sales, and they will lose money.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure, had Slashdot been around back in days of Steampunk,
And when was that, exactly? Last I checked, "Steampunk" was a form of science fiction, not an actual historical era.
Jay (=
(I want my steam-powered android and difference engine, dammit!)
Tada, they're "life partners" and now the slacker roomate gets cheap healthcare at the expense of the other employees at the firm where dude works.
Because simply saying you're gay is no big deal, right?
Voila, I'm "gay" so I can help my friend out with cheap/free benefits. I don't have to worry about how my family will react to it, or my friends, or co-workers.
If I work in child care or education, I don't have to worry about parents who are "concerned" about their children being in my care, or what kind of "message" I'm spreading to them.
I don't have to worry about guys who are so insecure about their sexuality that they take it out on the "fag", or who freak out in the gym locker room.
If I go to church, I don't have to worry about the majority of my social circle ostracizing me (politely, of course). I don't have to worry about the Bible-thumping loony accusing me of being an abomination and saying he's going to pray for my soul.
Because simply saying you're gay is no big deal, right?
Jay (=
Yay, the new trend in /. trolling... if your original post gets moderated into oblivion, just cut and paste it again!
I'm a huge GNOME fan -- haven't even looked at KDE since the 3.0 days -- and your post still stands out as an obvious troll.
Jay (=
Happily? You're not worried about them being forced into a corner where they have to fight really really hard?
What do you call taking a *ahem*simple contract violation case and blowing it up into a series of libelous attacks on the open source development model, Linux kernel developers, and the Free Software Foundation and the GPL. What, I'm supposed to worry that they're going to start fighting dirty?
The "something" that sparked the case was greed. They're a company suing another company, not a wounded bear protecting its cub. If they have no case, then "backing them into a corner" isn't going to provide them with a magic bullet to slay the dread IBM lawyer-horde.
My guess is, McBride and SCO thought that Microsoft and Sun standing in their corner cheering, media whores and cronies uncritically repeating their pablum, and rising stock prices probably gave them an inflated sense of self-worth; today, they've gotten their first real dose of reality.
Jay (=
...it might have something to do with the fact that, for the first time since this whole ugly debacle began in March, SCO had to get up in front of a judge and make its case, instead of trying it in the (clueless financial) media.
/. to cover it.
Man, the SCO-story whiners are starting to bug me as much as the JonKatz whiners did, before I removed him from my story preferences two years ago.
Again, if everyone is so pissed off about the SCO coverage, uncheck the "Caldera" topic in your Slashdot preferences and they'll go away (taking your much-vaunted eyeball impressions with them, for the tinfoil hats who think Slashdot is only flogging this case to get hits).
But this case is arguably more important to the Free/Open Source Software community than the Microsoft antitrust trial was, and as long as the suit progresses, and SCO shouts blatant lies about Open Source software, its advocates, and the GPL, expect
Jay (=
However, the rules are the same for both parties and even though SCO is the "Bad Guy" here, don't forget IBM can do the same if SCO fails to comply with THEIR discovery requests.
,and no claim.
"If" they fail to comply? SCO filed their Motion to Compel after IBM filed theirs.
IBM is annoyed because, among other things, IBM requested SCO's source code and a description showing what files and parts of files have been copied, in a form making it amenable for searching. SCO responded by printing out large chunks of Linux source code files and effectively said "it's in there, somewhere". (And then had the gall to complain about how much it cost them to print out that code!)
SCO filed their Motion to Compel Discovery in response and are basically saying "Well, we can't know for sure what infringement has occurred until we see the code from IBM."
On one hand, SCO claims in the media to have solid evidence of "line-by-line copying" of "millions of lines" of code, that discovery is progressing along and they're preparing to sue Linux end customers and bill Linux users, making them sound like an unstoppable legal juggernaut (and sending their stock price through the roof).
On the other hand, in the courtroom, they hang their head and say "we're not sure what all has been done to poor poor us", they whine about having to conduct three lawsuits at once -- their suit against IBM, IBM's countersuit, and Red Hat's suit -- and try to play one case off on the other and file delay after delay in all three cases, stalling for as much time as possible before they have to admit that, they have no case, no proof
Groklaw is an amazing read. PJ is smart, she's thorough, and has a great body of volunteers helping her with research into SCO's claims, transcribing legal documents, and tracking down old emails and newsgroup postings. Comparing what SCO says in the media to what they say in court, it's obvious that Darl McBride has a reality-distortion field that makes Steve Jobs' look like a weak soap bubble.
Jay (=
I would add in gentoo, as it is also all based on OSS/GPL. It is also one of the easiest to use with new software that often there isn't a rh/deb/etc package, and if there isn't writing ebuilds is easier than writing rpms. (Honestly can't comment on debs, except by heresay which is that they are tougher than both.)
.deb packages is extremely easy; making good .debs is a little bit harder, and making Debian Policy-compliant .debs is a lot more difficult.
.deb, at least from my experience.
Just FYI, making
Any tarball which you can do "./configure; make; make install" to can be made into a
Section 2.4 of the Debian New Maintainer's Guide covers what needs to be done for the initial package. Section 9.2 covers new upstream versions.
I maintain a couple of semi-useful packages (all other people's software) for Debian unstable on my own at http://www.crystalwind.org/debs/. They're not 100% policy-compliant, but in my limited testing, they don't seem to mess anything up.
Jay (=
We must take action before this crap bill is passed!
You apparently missed the part where this bill was passed last week. Only the lack of a presidential signature is keeping it from law at this point.
Jay (=
This movie will be eye candy. Look at the way it's being pitched -- not by the supreme acting ability of it's characters, but by the specs of the render farm used to generate the computer graphics.
Yeah, if Wired is the only magazine you read, that is. (And that wasn't even a real article, at least on the website; just a bunch of facts about the render farm.)
Premiere Magazine has a nice bit about the four hobbit actors (Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd and Dom Monaghan) and the friendship they've developed over the course of the three movies. So obviously it's being pitched as a movie where the actors have enjoyed themselves and developed a strong bond over the course of the three movies.
I saw a cover to some bubblegum teen magazine with Orlando Bloom all over it, so obviously it's being pitched as a movie with a bunch of droolworthy male eye candy.
If you ask me, all of the above are true; you can make all sorts of generalizations if you have only part of the data.
Jay (=
...is deborphan.
If you install an application that requires a few new libraries, removing the package doesn't always get rid of the library. Deborphan helps you find libraries that have no applications listed as dependancies; a simple
for x in `deborphan`; do dpkg -P $x; done (note backticks)
as root should do the trick.
Finally find a good deb source for Gnome 2.4
That would be in unstable; GNOME 2.4 has been there for at least a month.
Jay (=
i'd avoid linux for the sole reason i wouldn't want to be associated with that nut.
Funny, I avoid Microsoft products because I don't want to be associated with Bill Gates.
Because everyone picks their software based on their spokespeople, right?
Jay (=
The server that pushes .debs to archive is running debian/sparc (donated by sun btw), so probably the cracker didn't know how to port his leet exploit to sparc (all the comprimised machines were 1386).
You mean there's some value in those "unnecessary" non-i386 arches that Debian supports? Gee, maybe they have a good idea after all...
Jay (=
Instead of my house, assume this takes place in a car.
You (still) work at McDonalds.
You boil water, I pour it on my lap.
???
Profit
You forgot a few steps...
People keep dredging this up as an example of "frivolous litigation gone rampant", when even a cursory attempt at research shows that the facts aren't quite what people think they are. If anything, this is a perfect example of the legal system working as intended.
Jay (=
In short, they'll rip off every idea Apple had with the iPod, iTunes, and ITMS but make it less consumer-friendly; no rescuing any of the songs you've purchased if you have to migrate to another PC or reformat your hard drive (at least not for free).
Jay (=
Despite dire warnings, we've gone ahead and put computers with Internet access into our adolescent (11, 12, and 15-year-old) childrens' rooms.
Well, if you ignored the dire warnings, I'm assuming it's because you trust your kids to be able to handle the privilege according to your guidelines.
Unfortunately we've had instances where all of these rules - especially that last one [don't lie to us about what you're doing] - have been broken, so now we are looking at getting more specific.
Well without knowing the specifics of how they broke the rule (Were they looking at porn sites? Were they getting frisky in online chat? Were they posting to racist newsgroups?), I can't say for sure what would be the right way to handle it. However, I can think of an easy fix to start with: yank the computers out of their rooms, and put one or two into a public room.
While one could argue that having access to the internet is becoming essential, having private, effectively unmonitored access is still clearly a privilege.
Jay (=
Really, a screen for configuring dvorak or a zillion other layouts, hmm.... "No, let's drop that".
Yes, because everybody knows that the only people who use Linux are North Americans with QWERTY keyboards.
So Anaconda doesn't work on 11 architectures. That's a pretty crappy reason for holding the dominant arch down.
Debian doesn't have a "dominant arch", by definition. If you can't grasp that, then you are not the type of user Debian is targetting. (Or you are welcome to take their distribution and fork it, as Libranet and Knoppix have done.)
Jay (=
Considering that RMS seems to think even Debian isn't really a Free Software(tm) distro, I find it difficult to image that Mandrake qualifies.
What's ironic about that is that Stallman's dispute with the Debian developers revolves around the fact that Debian considers the GNU Free Documentation License "non-free" under the DFSG (Debian Free Software Guidelines). From what I understand, it revolves around the fact that the FDL allows for "non-variant" sections, which cannot be part of the main document (an introduction or dedication) and cannot be changed or removed.
The Debian developers feel that this unfairly restricts people who distribute FDL-licensed documents, as it prevents them from correcting inaccurate or misleading information in a non-variant section, and does not prevent later developers from adding more non-variant sections. You'd end up with a document with many pages of non-variant sections, possibly with contradictory or confusing purposes, much like the obnoxious advertising clause in the original BSD license.
As for Debian not being 100% free, everything in the "main" section of Debian is either GPL, or an open-source license that meets with the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Although Debian does maintain a "non-free" section, with software configured so it can be installed on Debian, it is not included in any official Debian release, and it's likely that Debian may soon remove the "non-free" section from their servers.
The amazing thing is, much of the non-free software that was seen as important when Debian was started has now become acceptable to include in "main" (the QT libraries kept KDE out of "main" for a while; StarOffice gave birth to OpenOffice.org, Netscape gave birth to Mozilla). Hopefully, within a few years a "non-free" section for Debian will be unnecessary.
Jay (=
Red Hat still sells desktop-oriented Linux, in the form of Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS [Workstation].
Jay (=
Top amount of votes was only 1690. Pretty good amount, but really I would expect more...
Well, they had to throw out a bunch of votes for this project; no one could figure out how they got there in the first place...
Jay (=
Say I later start a company to do the stuff I've learned for profit. Would I risk committing a crime by using my personal use version? I think not.
If this hypothetical statement held true, then the Business Software Alliance would never exist.
Many companies, of all sizes, do rationalize their illegitimate use of software in order to save money.
Jay (=
From the article:
[E911's] purpose is to help 911 operators quickly determine the location of callers. But it could also be used for targeted marketing if carriers decide to act as middlemen between telemarketers and cell-phone customers in forwarding coupons and ads to wireless phones. That would facilitate just-in-time direct marketing. A telemarketer could beam a coupon for a can of soup to the cell phone of a person the system has spotted outside a grocery store.
If that doesn't make you want to throw your mobile phone away, I don't know what will. The idea that marketing companies will be following mobile phone owners around and beaming them ads and coupons should scare the hell out of anyone who cares a shred about their privacy.
Wait until the spammers get hold of this! Anyone need a "Refill your Viagra order" spam on their cellphone while on a date? Or worse, in a meeting at work?
Jay (=
...because every time this question comes up, an answer is posted.
In short:
Telemarketers get the bulk of their sales from people they can pressure into a sale: elderly, mentally infirm, emotionally insecure, whatever reason, some people can't say "no" over the phone. If those people are on the Do Not Call list, then telemarketers will not get those high-pressure sales, and they will lose money.
Jay (=
Would you want to employ a lawyer that sued a 12 year-old for downloading music?
It depends, did he win?
Jay (=
Less than one keystroke? You can search for stuff by just thinking about it or something?
:P)
Not quite, but close. Mouse gestures allow you to manipulate your browser using only your mouse.
(And no, I don't mean by clicking on a button...
Jay (=