You're being reasonable while people are trying to get picky.
At first I was going to moderate this, but am replyin instead--so someone 3else up it, please:)
One of the reasons--a big one--that I cose this job as a professor is the large number of non-traditional students (defined here as anyone over 24). They're coming from all types of former jobs, ranging from obsolete industries getting federal TRA (trade readjustment acts) assostamce to "displaced housewifes." They're all giving up *something* to come back to school, and it's not easy at 30 or 40 (I've been there and done that myself). These students tend to do very well, as they have the motivation. They're going to leave with degrees, including engineering, regardless of what their former backgrounds are. They're also a very good influence on the rest of the class.
hawk, who remembered to turn in his dissertation revisions
We're talking about journalism, and you're quoting Salon???
A Salon citation to back something as "well known" for some reason makes me recall Pravda bits that began with, "it is will known that . .." before something such as the soviet invention of the automobile, or that the U.S. bombs canadian babies, or . . .
I'd acknowledge that Salon is a half a step above the National Enquirer, but I wouldn't want to have to defend that position . . .:)
[It's editors response to something along the lines of, "your sole source was someone you know to be a pathological liar and has already admitted lying about this" was approximately, "it's ok because republicans are evil."
For the same reason that "the sky is green" doesn't go over well . . .
>- no CL...nothing underneath. If you wanted to 'troubleshoot' it was a
> matter of restarting and fiddling with intis
wrong on both counts. If you wanted such trouble shooting, there were debuggers with *gasp* CLI's. Playing with inits and rebooting was only to deal with *surprise* problems with inits..
> -The GUI was all. Nuthin' more, nuthin less.
try saying "hypercard". It did things that *still* aren't available on other platforms. The closest I can come to doing some of the useful things I used to do require lisp or a derivative, and still lack the ability to trivially modify the interface (lisp doesn't do it as well; it's just the only way I"ve found that's possible).
but then again, why am I bothering to respond to pure ignorance???
The problem was, it was "developers writing programs to run on next". Unfortunately, much like web banners that merely advertise other sites of banners, they could only sell to other next developers, because noone else bought them . . .
1) what he could do has nothigng to do with the current status of code. It is no basis for interpretation of the current license.
2) I'm not sure that there would be a massive move to a radical change like that. It wouldn't just be the anti-RMS crowd that would balk. Rather, I expect large portions of the folks outside of the Church of Emacs wouldn't use the new version. Many projects used the GPL pretty much by default (LyX and KDE come to mind), and would not have done so with more thought and a fuller understanding of the license. It's not worth the effort that it would take these projects to change licenses, but that doesn't mean that they would blithely move towards a new license.
Hm, now that I'm thinking of it, it's not clear that GPL'd code could automatically be used under a revised GPL that takes away the freedom to dynamically link--but I won't commit to that until I"ve had a long time to mull it over . . .
3) New projects would be less likely to use the GPL and more likely to use a freer license after such a change.
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need legal advice, contact an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.
> The reason that it is RMS that decides what is and what isn't a
> derivative work under the GPL is that RMS wrote the GPL and has the
> power to change it.
no, No, NO! I keep hearing this, and it's 180 degrees from the truth.
There are approximately five billion people whose opinions on the proper
construction of the GPL get consdiered before RMS.
ne of the most basic legal rules of construction is that documents are construed against their author. Another is that the party who worte it is absolutely not an authority on the meaning of the document. THat party had their chance, and his words mean what they say, not what he wants them to say, or later wishes that they said.
Bottom line: RMS opinion on the meaning of the GPL carries absolutely no weight.
Yes, be the first in your town to register at the hardware store. None of those frilly curtains, silly plates and the like. No, get *real* presents: power tools! Drills, saws, compressors.
hawk, who always gives a cordless drill as a wedding present
Even though I'm an economics professor, I don't have time to jump into this whole thing right now (I need to finish some sl9ides for this afternoon's lecture). However, on this narrow point, you've hit on the reason for experimental economcis.
Yes, economics is becoming actual science (in spite of the past. I'm as harsh a critic as annyone). We are now doing experiments to measure such willingness to pay. For example, a friend's dissertation randomly chose people from the phone book and wrote to them, asking them to participate in the experiment. It turns out that most are willing.
At the experiment, each receives their payment ($50-$100), and is asked to bid on the various types of pork--regular, organically grown, grown with hormones, irradiated for safety, etc. He used a "second price" auction, in which the winner only pays as much as the second highest bid, which lets people bid their "true" valuation--you don't have to worry about overbidding in this scheme.
The only cache with his work is that he lied to them. He got approval four years ago, but I don't think he'd get it today. The lie was small--all of the cuts were actually plain old pork chops rather than grown the way he claimed--but this just isn't tolerated. Psychologists have trouble running valid experiments because people know they're being lied to. We've taken a pretty hard line; ifyou're in an econ experiment, you can pretty much count on the truth. It's not just that we're altruists; we need to know tha *actual* responses; we gain nothing by lying (in his case, he saved a few bucks by not having the real meat).
It's like diplomacy: the art of telling someone to go to hell in such a manner that he thanks you for the directions.
Heavy venom is only a few years old, He's been around long enough to know far better methods:)
For an old-style flamewar, go back about three months to alt.folklore.computers and the exchanges between peter seebach (moderator of comp.lang.c or somesuch) and mark crispin (author of pine). Crispin wasn't bad, but seebach showed the ancient art in fine form
The *real* beauty comes from the subtle setup where you allow your opponent (or victim:) to hang himself.
Bah. Humbug. Bring back old usenet, with its multi-day lags and flaming as an artform.
We don't need programs to *warn* of inflamatory writing, but rather to *improve* it. Believe it or not, net.flame was often worth reading. Alas, most of the flamemasters are gone.
> What really bugs me recently is not color mismatches, but sites which
> have some sort of horizontal bar with many repeating vertical color
> streaks.
Say, I don't suppose tha you could explain to our human resources department that blue and grey horizontal stripes (every 3 or 4 pts) aren't a good background for black text . . .
I'm using 2.2, and noticed the same thing with 2.4.
It's stock debian potato with proposed-upgrades and security, except for the cvs version of lyx.
I'm not using KDE; plain old X is fine for me. I need to see how long it will take to get my new machine once ordered; I don't want to spend too much time on this one. However, if 2.4 will work better with my eepro network card . . . I have to have a script force-reloading the netwrokd with five second pauses, and I still need to power down to completely reset the card once a day (warm boot doesn't do it).
The card stayed up under FreeBSD, but I don't have the disk space for the compiles (make world and make lyx together take more space than I have . ..)
hmm, now that I think of it, I used to run X at a -2 nice on macbsd to solve some of these (and xfs at +2 or some such:)
As a rule, I avoid the comments on moderation. However, this morning I"ve noticed a cross a few threads that it seems to be a bad crack day. A couple of troll/flamebaits here, a couple more elsewhere.
Seems a couple of folks who drew moderation today took the "I am your God" comment a bit too literally, and must smite all unbelievers . . .
While I generally prefer FreeBSD, one of the reasons is exactly the desktop responsiveness spoken of. On the same machine, I find FreeBSD far more repsonsive than Linux when using X under load. On Linux, I can feel the lag in system response at a load of about 3--even though that load is from doubly niced makes and there's plenty of physical memory left. Under FreeBSD, I've gotten to loads of 10 without any noticable degradation in response.
NOw if anyone can find a way to quantify this . . .:)
I am a lwyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need legal advice, contact an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.
The illegal distribution argument is now, always was, and always will be a red herring. Although it has been repeated over and over again, it is not even arugable as a legal issue, and any half-way capable judge would impose sanctions on the party raising the claim to pay the other party's fees and costs in defending it.
KDE *was not* GPL software, despite the claims of the authors. By distributing and publishing it they altered the terms of the putative license. That is, their actions override the boilerplate.
RMS has hinted in this direction with his "I supose there's an imp[licit permission," but that's far to soft. Distributing binaries never violated the KDE licesne.
However, this does not get aropund the use of *third party* GPL'd code--as KDE was not GPL, it could not use GPL code in a manner that violates the GPL, which is apparently done in two pieces (kghostview and one other, iirc).
The whole bit on "legal concerns" for the rest of KDE, though, was a matter of willful ignorance of the law on an issue that isn't even debatable.
As a laywer without the described credentials, I'll second werdna. This does not take specialized knowledge in copyright law to see Stallman's behavior as petty and hypertechnical.
For that matter, it doesn't even require legal training--note the description of how KDE has been singled out as needing forgiveness, whereas past alleged violations have not seen such treatment.
I've found that often (but apparently not always) make tries to make all the dependencies for which there is currently no build directories.
Roughtly, if I build X (which takes forever), then delee the source (for the space), and then build xload, I'll end up with the machine making X again. I'm sure there's a simple solution, but I haven't found it yet . . .
Slashdot Mirror
You're being reasonable while people are trying to get picky.
:)
At first I was going to moderate this, but am replyin instead--so someone 3else up it, please
One of the reasons--a big one--that I cose this job as a professor is the large number of non-traditional students (defined here as anyone over 24). They're coming from all types of former jobs, ranging from obsolete industries getting federal TRA (trade readjustment acts) assostamce to "displaced housewifes." They're all giving up *something* to come back to school, and it's not easy at 30 or 40 (I've been there and done that myself). These students tend to do very well, as they have the motivation. They're going to leave with degrees, including engineering, regardless of what their former backgrounds are. They're also a very good influence on the rest of the class.
hawk, who remembered to turn in his dissertation revisions
We're talking about journalism, and you're quoting Salon???
." before something such as the soviet invention of the automobile, or that the U.S. bombs canadian babies, or . . .
:)
A Salon citation to back something as "well known" for some reason makes me recall Pravda bits that began with, "it is will known that . .
I'd acknowledge that Salon is a half a step above the National Enquirer, but I wouldn't want to have to defend that position . . .
[It's editors response to something along the lines of, "your sole source was someone you know to be a pathological liar and has already admitted lying about this" was approximately, "it's ok because republicans are evil."
is to insure that apple will not get advertising in the serious press, but only the rah-rah rags. *That's* why it's a bad move for apple.
> I'm sure this will not go over well but...
For the same reason that "the sky is green" doesn't go over well . . .
>- no CL...nothing underneath. If you wanted to 'troubleshoot' it was a
> matter of restarting and fiddling with intis
wrong on both counts. If you wanted such trouble shooting, there were debuggers with *gasp* CLI's. Playing with inits and rebooting was only to deal with *surprise* problems with inits..
> -The GUI was all. Nuthin' more, nuthin less.
try saying "hypercard". It did things that *still* aren't available on other platforms. The closest I can come to doing some of the useful things I used to do require lisp or a derivative, and still lack the ability to trivially modify the interface (lisp doesn't do it as well; it's just the only way I"ve found that's possible).
but then again, why am I bothering to respond to pure ignorance???
hawk
The problem was, it was "developers writing programs to run on next". Unfortunately, much like web banners that merely advertise other sites of banners, they could only sell to other next developers, because noone else bought them . . .
hawk
>Unix (and Unix-like)
these would be "*nix"
So far, so good. But how is *nix pronounced?
a) Unix
b) splat-nix
c) Unix-like operating system
d) FreeBSD-like operating system
I choose d), though no doubt it would be more popular to go to e), Linux like operating system . . .
hawk, who really should be making slides . . .
He *could* do that, but a couple of things:
1) what he could do has nothigng to do with the current status of code. It is no basis for interpretation of the current license.
2) I'm not sure that there would be a massive move to a radical change like that. It wouldn't just be the anti-RMS crowd that would balk. Rather, I expect large portions of the folks outside of the Church of Emacs wouldn't use the new version. Many projects used the GPL pretty much by default (LyX and KDE come to mind), and would not have done so with more thought and a fuller understanding of the license. It's not worth the effort that it would take these projects to change licenses, but that doesn't mean that they would blithely move towards a new license.
Hm, now that I'm thinking of it, it's not clear that GPL'd code could automatically be used under a revised GPL that takes away the freedom to dynamically link--but I won't commit to that until I"ve had a long time to mull it over . . .
3) New projects would be less likely to use the GPL and more likely to use a freer license after such a change.
hawk, esq.
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need legal advice, contact an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.
> The reason that it is RMS that decides what is and what isn't a
> derivative work under the GPL is that RMS wrote the GPL and has the
> power to change it.
no, No, NO! I keep hearing this, and it's 180 degrees from the truth.
There are approximately five billion people whose opinions on the proper
construction of the GPL get consdiered before RMS.
ne of the most basic legal rules of construction is that documents are construed against their author. Another is that the party who worte it is absolutely not an authority on the meaning of the document. THat party had their chance, and his words mean what they say, not what he wants them to say, or later wishes that they said.
Bottom line: RMS opinion on the meaning of the GPL carries absolutely no weight.
hawk, esq.
Yes, be the first in your town to register at the hardware store. None of those frilly curtains, silly plates and the like. No, get *real* presents: power tools! Drills, saws, compressors.
hawk, who always gives a cordless drill as a wedding present
Even though I'm an economics professor, I don't have time to jump into this whole thing right now (I need to finish some sl9ides for this afternoon's lecture). However, on this narrow point, you've hit on the reason for experimental economcis.
Yes, economics is becoming actual science (in spite of the past. I'm as harsh a critic as annyone). We are now doing experiments to measure such willingness to pay. For example, a friend's dissertation randomly chose people from the phone book and wrote to them, asking them to participate in the experiment. It turns out that most are willing.
At the experiment, each receives their payment ($50-$100), and is asked to bid on the various types of pork--regular, organically grown, grown with hormones, irradiated for safety, etc. He used a "second price" auction, in which the winner only pays as much as the second highest bid, which lets people bid their "true" valuation--you don't have to worry about overbidding in this scheme.
The only cache with his work is that he lied to them. He got approval four years ago, but I don't think he'd get it today. The lie was small--all of the cuts were actually plain old pork chops rather than grown the way he claimed--but this just isn't tolerated. Psychologists have trouble running valid experiments because people know they're being lied to. We've taken a pretty hard line; ifyou're in an econ experiment, you can pretty much count on the truth. It's not just that we're altruists; we need to know tha *actual* responses; we gain nothing by lying (in his case, he saved a few bucks by not having the real meat).
hawk, as an econ professor
Mime in your email: 3psi on your bloodpressure
html in your email: 5 psi
java in your email: 20 psi
The look on bill gates' face when he sees these stupid ideas have caused his own email to spam the world: priceless
:)
hawk
It's like diplomacy: the art of telling someone to go to hell in such a manner that he thanks you for the directions.
:)
:) to hang himself.
Heavy venom is only a few years old, He's been around long enough to know far better methods
For an old-style flamewar, go back about three months to alt.folklore.computers and the exchanges between peter seebach (moderator of comp.lang.c or somesuch) and mark crispin (author of pine). Crispin wasn't bad, but seebach showed the ancient art in fine form
The *real* beauty comes from the subtle setup where you allow your opponent (or victim
hawk
\begin{cranky}
;) }
Bah. Humbug. Bring back old usenet, with its multi-day lags and flaming as an artform.
We don't need programs to *warn* of inflamatory writing, but rather to *improve* it. Believe it or not, net.flame was often worth reading. Alas, most of the flamemasters are gone.
While we're at it, ban mime!
\end{cranky}
\ps{newbie! only 13?
hawk, fka hawk@olivetti.atc
I haven't tried 2.4, that should have said 2.0. I guess it's time to give it a try and see what I get . . .
> What really bugs me recently is not color mismatches, but sites which
> have some sort of horizontal bar with many repeating vertical color
> streaks.
Say, I don't suppose tha you could explain to our human resources department that blue and grey horizontal stripes (every 3 or 4 pts) aren't a good background for black text . . .
> Well, if they're dead, they won't eat much...
:)
I'm sure my wife will find that comforting
I'm using 2.2, and noticed the same thing with 2.4.
.)
:)
It's stock debian potato with proposed-upgrades and security, except for the cvs version of lyx.
I'm not using KDE; plain old X is fine for me. I need to see how long it will take to get my new machine once ordered; I don't want to spend too much time on this one. However, if 2.4 will work better with my eepro network card . . . I have to have a script force-reloading the netwrokd with five second pauses, and I still need to power down to completely reset the card once a day (warm boot doesn't do it).
The card stayed up under FreeBSD, but I don't have the disk space for the compiles (make world and make lyx together take more space than I have . .
hmm, now that I think of it, I used to run X at a -2 nice on macbsd to solve some of these (and xfs at +2 or some such
and push a penguin :)
Of course, the penguin that gets pushed gets the best herring.
Then again, the second mouse gets the cheese . . .
which reminds me, I better go check the traps in the attic. I could have four-day dead mice by now . . .
As a rule, I avoid the comments on moderation. However, this morning I"ve noticed a cross a few threads that it seems to be a bad crack day. A couple of troll/flamebaits here, a couple more elsewhere.
Seems a couple of folks who drew moderation today took the "I am your God" comment a bit too literally, and must smite all unbelievers . . .
I like the sound of it.
:)
While I generally prefer FreeBSD, one of the reasons is exactly the desktop responsiveness spoken of. On the same machine, I find FreeBSD far more repsonsive than Linux when using X under load. On Linux, I can feel the lag in system response at a load of about 3--even though that load is from doubly niced makes and there's plenty of physical memory left. Under FreeBSD, I've gotten to loads of 10 without any noticable degradation in response.
NOw if anyone can find a way to quantify this . . .
(unless, of course, it was using the source code . . .)
:)
I am a lwyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need legal advice, contact an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.
The illegal distribution argument is now, always was, and always will be a red herring. Although it has been repeated over and over again, it is not even arugable as a legal issue, and any half-way capable judge would impose sanctions on the party raising the claim to pay the other party's fees and costs in defending it.
KDE *was not* GPL software, despite the claims of the authors. By distributing and publishing it they altered the terms of the putative license. That is, their actions override the boilerplate.
RMS has hinted in this direction with his "I supose there's an imp[licit permission," but that's far to soft. Distributing binaries never violated the KDE licesne.
However, this does not get aropund the use of *third party* GPL'd code--as KDE was not GPL, it could not use GPL code in a manner that violates the GPL, which is apparently done in two pieces (kghostview and one other, iirc).
The whole bit on "legal concerns" for the rest of KDE, though, was a matter of willful ignorance of the law on an issue that isn't even debatable.
hawk, esq.
As a laywer without the described credentials, I'll second werdna. This does not take specialized knowledge in copyright law to see Stallman's behavior as petty and hypertechnical.
For that matter, it doesn't even require legal training--note the description of how KDE has been singled out as needing forgiveness, whereas past alleged violations have not seen such treatment.
hawk, esq., not giving legal advice
I've found that often (but apparently not always) make tries to make all the dependencies for which there is currently no build directories.
Roughtly, if I build X (which takes forever), then delee the source (for the space), and then build xload, I'll end up with the machine making X again. I'm sure there's a simple solution, but I haven't found it yet . . .
Whereas lynx is the One True Browser.
:)
If it doesn't display properly on Lynx, it's wrong
hawk