Slashdot doesn't render correctly in Firefox? I don't see anything wrong with it.
Mozilla has the same problem, and usually a reload or two will usually straighten things out. I've seen a few people mention it and so have I, but we usually get modded down as offtopic B-)
Unless humans as a whole somehow reach perfection, we'll never be able to produce something to completely replace the human element.
Well you are correct that the human element will probably never be completely replaced, afterall factories still need people to turn the machines on and QA inspectors don't they? Of course they are no longer called craftsmen and artisans, they are called "laborers". From reading slashdot I've gathered the equivilent term in the software world is "code monkey".
OO is pretty much ideal for GUI programming. So why not code up your GUI in C++ and leave the rest of your game in C?
I can't say as I blame guy. Twelve years ago, before I decided to make healthcare my career and relegate programming as a hobby I thought C++ was the greatest thing since sliced bread since it wrapped up both the power of C and object orientation all in one nice tidy little package.
But now just when I've got some time on my hands that I want to devote to creating some programs I've got in mind I find someone has gone and mucked the whole thing up with namespaces and what not. Hell, they even changed the way standard header files are included.
But anyway, in the end you are right. Use just enough C++ for the gui and encapsulating the units and get on with the business of actually writing the game (this is aimed as much at me who has been spending way too much time writing macros trying to turn C into the great language that C++ used to be).
Absolutely, especially when you live in countries where people elect the representatives who define what is criminal. It's much too early to predict how this will all shake out in the end but it's probably safe to say that the percentage of people who want to share files today is roughly in the same neighborhood of those who wanted to drink during prohibition.
The *AAs and their government cronies, instead of trying to find ways to meet these wants while still protecting their interests, are doing everything in their power to just stop it completely.
One smart thing to do would be to go back to requiring registration of copyrights and provide a searchable database so people can determine just what is and what is not in the public domain.
Another would be yearly renewals, much the same as car registrations, for a nominal or even no fee. Most people probably wouldn't care if copyright owners kept their rights for eternity as long as they actively showed an interest in doing so.
And finally, two more. Clarify and set in stone the meanings of deravitive works and fair use. Is it seven notes? Six? Obviously if it is one nobody would be able to create another song again. Oh, that brings up another thing...just what is the minimum length of a copyrighted work? There are people out there who claim exclusive rights to one second recordings of doorbell chimes and door creaks. Really now, how much more ridiculous can you get?
To mod or comment...what a choice for such an informative post. But post it shall be. Most likely the case will be settled out of court which would be such a shame because it nothing would be sweeter than to see Disney lose billions due to a law that they themselves pushed into existence.
Or why not stop sharing illegal content ? I'm not a big fan of somebody trying to stop me from making copies of things I buy, but sharing commercial music/video/software/games/etc. is bothe illegal and morally wrong.
People are just reacting to the content producer's overeacting is all. There used to be a nice symbiotic relationship. Producers produced, consumers consumed, and nearly everybody agreed that one side stealing from the other was wrong.
But the digital age changed all of that. Consumers now know exactly what it costs to reproduce a work after the initial production costs are paid which is next to nothing and Producers know that Consumers know this so they have taken every step that they can to protect their traditional never ending revenue streams...even to the point of trying to ensure that these revenue streams last virtually forever. It seems they would rather their creations be totally lost to the sands of time rather than give up of the control they hold.
So what will happen in the end? Who knows? How long can a few hundred thousand enforce their will on millions particularly when a good number of those millions, some of them now 12 year old little girls, will be the ones holding the guns in the not so distand future? I certainly hope the reasonable compromise can be found because I've always held that the tyranny of the majority is just as bad as the tyranny of the few but if it comes down to it is better that a few lose their rights than many.
So how about it? Are you willing to compromise? Will you guarantee that when I buy something from you that it will work? Will you protect my investment in you by ensuring that your work will be compatible with future technological changes? The way it was is if I bought a book and took good care of it, I could read the book forever. It seems that today you want that book to be unreadalbe if I don't buy a new copy, you want it to "disintegrate" every few years just so you can force me to buy another.
Agreed. And the converse is true as well -- there can be tyranny of the minority, with a sympathetic judge. Until we get rid of activist judges who rule based on what they think America should become instead of what the Constitution says about it, if anything, and until, ahem, a certain side of the political spectrum ceases and desists trying to change America through the courts because they know they could never achieve popular opinion for many things, then some additional checks and balances on the Judicial Branch is worth looking into.
Enough checks and balances are already in place. If a large enough majority (75%) feels that "activist" judges are interpreting the Constitution wrong then they can pass an amendendment that clarifies how it should be read.
If you believe USSC, then "precedent" (which the courts set, themselves) says that they can invalidate any law and place restrictions on the activity of the Executive. For democracy in general, this is a Bad Thing.
The Supreme Court is often the only institution standing between the rights of minorities and the tyranny of the majority, and that my friend is a very, very good thing freedom in general.
Copyright protection was to benefit the author and/or inventor, not the public. And what part of exclusive rights don't you get? It covers more than distribution, but also the mere use of a work.
Copyright law covers copying and distribution, not use. If that were not the case you would be violating the creator's rights everytime you listened to music that someone else is playing on their boom box or look at a painting that someone else owns And as others have pointed out, if the laws starts pissing enough people off the Congress critters who made them can be replaced easily enough with ones who will repeal them.
In Change the Law I point out that while the Constitution allows for Congress to enact copyright laws, it doesn't actually require it to do so. Copyright could be repealed tomorrow if we could get enough votes in Congress to do so.
In the end copyright law may very well go the way of Prohibition when all is said and done, which in a way would be sad because it actually did serve a purpose at one time because it balanced the need of the public for knowledge with the need of artists to receive compensation for their work (yes I understand the public performance argument but who wants to sit a listen to an author reading his book aloud?).
It's a shame that no one seems willing to restore that balance with just a few simple changes in the law such as shorter terms to ensure works are not lost to time, and requiring yearly renewals on the line of property taxes and automobile registrations.
And why wasn't illegally "sharing" files a crime to begin with?
Because the original intent of copyright protection as spelled out in the Constitution was to benefit the public not imprison it and it was never intended to cover mere use of a work, only distribution.
The fact that Gore had more votes but lost is a problem of the electoral college because it favors votes of people in rural areas instead of one man one vote. That is a problem that we must fix.
Am I happy Bush won in 2000? Absolutely not! But the Electoral College did exactly what it was supposed to do and that is to protect a large minority from the tyranny of a slim majority. The United States is exactly that, a union of states, and thirty of those states voted for Bush while only twenty voted for Gore. The difference in the popular vote was less than one percent. Think of what would happen if 50.1% of the people always dictated what the other 49.9% had to do.
Besides, you will never get the EC to go away because it would require a Constitutional amendment to do so. And for that to happen the very states it protects would have to agree to give up the protection it provides. Very simply, it ain't gonna happen. Your time would be much better spent changing the mind of the electorate if you want to change election results.
If you can find a law that protects your anonymity as a right, you're really on to something.
Here is Justice Steven's opinion:
"Justice Steven's opinion for the Court note that arguments favoring the ratification of the Constitution advanced in the Federalist Papers were published under fictitious names. Justice Stevens said "quite apart from any threat of persecution, an advocate may believe her ideas will be more persuasive if her readers are unaware of her identity. Anonymity thereby provides a way for a writer who may be personally unpopular to ensure that readers will not prejudge her message simply because they do not like its proponent." Stevens concluded "Under our Constitution, anonymous pamphleteering is not a pernicious, fraudulent practice, but an honorable tradition of advocacy and of dissent. Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority."
Personally I don't use Mandrake (nothing against them), but there could be other benefits to being in the club.
The Mandrake "club" is the very reason I switched my g/f over to Debian despite Mandrake's easy config tools. Unless you become a "premium" member you really don't get anything more, and their number of supported packages is dismal.
Unfortuantly, there are many stupid people that don't understand the consequences of file sharing of copyrighted works
Please spell out those consequences.As far as I can see, the only way to get rid of stupid copyright laws is to share copyrighted works.The government can only afford to jail so many people, and when that number is exceeded the laws will have to be changed no matter how much money the RIAA spends to line Congress' pockets.
Dude, go to the certified distributions list url major linux distros including Red Hat, Mandrake, and Suse are in there!!
Please check facts before posting. Too bad you got modded up.
Of the top ten major distros only two, Mandrake and Suse, are on the LSB list. Fedora, Debian, Slackware, Knoppix, and Gentoo are not.
But I do have a question about LSB certified applications, are they required to run on any LSB certified distro no matter which hardware the distro is running on?
Does Gentoo allow for multiple versions of things to be installed? And does it allow for some form of a virtually package that provides nothing and has the necessary dependencies to pull in everything that is required for complience?
Yes, Gentoo provides virtual packages, and "slots" enable the use of multiple versions.
Unless you lock out every domain except.kids for children who are browsing the Internet it's going to be useless.
There are just too many people who find too many things objectionable, and it would be a whole lot easier to keep the free world out of one domain than it would be to force every site that had something that somebody somewhere did not like into one.
Even if he does veto it, it will be be put right back in front of him again. The overtime bill doesn't just affect IT workers. The majority of licensed healthcare workers get paid by the hour and face losing compensation under the new rules. I and many of the people I work with have been writing our representatives expressing their displeasure and asking them where they stand on the issue.
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot doesn't render correctly in Firefox? I don't see anything wrong with it.
Mozilla has the same problem, and usually a reload or two will usually straighten things out. I've seen a few people mention it and so have I, but we usually get modded down as offtopic B-)
his just confirms what I've always felt about the GPL: it is anti-capitalist...
You want code? You pay code! The GPL is capitalism in its purest form.
But aren't they adapting? Here are some of their major complaints:
I guess not wanting to steal software but also not wanting to have to prove I have a right to use it is just a minor complaint then?
Unless humans as a whole somehow reach perfection, we'll never be able to produce something to completely replace the human element.
Well you are correct that the human element will probably never be completely replaced, afterall factories still need people to turn the machines on and QA inspectors don't they? Of course they are no longer called craftsmen and artisans, they are called "laborers". From reading slashdot I've gathered the equivilent term in the software world is "code monkey".
OO is pretty much ideal for GUI programming. So why not code up your GUI in C++ and leave the rest of your game in C?
I can't say as I blame guy. Twelve years ago, before I decided to make healthcare my career and relegate programming as a hobby I thought C++ was the greatest thing since sliced bread since it wrapped up both the power of C and object orientation all in one nice tidy little package.
But now just when I've got some time on my hands that I want to devote to creating some programs I've got in mind I find someone has gone and mucked the whole thing up with namespaces and what not. Hell, they even changed the way standard header files are included.
But anyway, in the end you are right. Use just enough C++ for the gui and encapsulating the units and get on with the business of actually writing the game (this is aimed as much at me who has been spending way too much time writing macros trying to turn C into the great language that C++ used to be).
Criminalising criminals is a dangerous game?
Absolutely, especially when you live in countries where people elect the representatives who define what is criminal. It's much too early to predict how this will all shake out in the end but it's probably safe to say that the percentage of people who want to share files today is roughly in the same neighborhood of those who wanted to drink during prohibition.
The *AAs and their government cronies, instead of trying to find ways to meet these wants while still protecting their interests, are doing everything in their power to just stop it completely.
One smart thing to do would be to go back to requiring registration of copyrights and provide a searchable database so people can determine just what is and what is not in the public domain.
Another would be yearly renewals, much the same as car registrations, for a nominal or even no fee. Most people probably wouldn't care if copyright owners kept their rights for eternity as long as they actively showed an interest in doing so.
And finally, two more. Clarify and set in stone the meanings of deravitive works and fair use. Is it seven notes? Six? Obviously if it is one nobody would be able to create another song again. Oh, that brings up another thing...just what is the minimum length of a copyrighted work? There are people out there who claim exclusive rights to one second recordings of doorbell chimes and door creaks. Really now, how much more ridiculous can you get?
To mod or comment...what a choice for such an informative post. But post it shall be. Most likely the case will be settled out of court which would be such a shame because it nothing would be sweeter than to see Disney lose billions due to a law that they themselves pushed into existence.
Considering that most of the world is considerably more left-wing than America is (on the whole), that would seem pretty obvious to me.
Europe may be more left-wing than the US, but most of the world is not and many countries even consider America the most decadent country there is.
Or why not stop sharing illegal content ? I'm not a big fan of somebody trying to stop me from making copies of things I buy, but sharing
commercial music/video/software/games/etc. is bothe illegal and morally wrong.
People are just reacting to the content producer's overeacting is all. There used to be a nice symbiotic relationship. Producers produced, consumers consumed, and nearly everybody agreed that one side stealing from the other was wrong.
But the digital age changed all of that. Consumers now know exactly what it costs to reproduce a work after the initial production costs are paid which is next to nothing and Producers know that Consumers know this so they have taken every step that they can to protect their traditional never ending revenue streams...even to the point of trying to ensure that these revenue streams last virtually forever. It seems they would rather their creations be totally lost to the sands of time rather than give up of the control they hold.
So what will happen in the end? Who knows? How long can a few hundred thousand enforce their will on millions particularly when a good number of those millions, some of them now 12 year old little girls, will be the ones holding the guns in the not so distand future? I certainly hope the reasonable compromise can be found because I've always held that the tyranny of the majority is just as bad as the tyranny of the few but if it comes down to it is better that a few lose their rights than many.
So how about it? Are you willing to compromise? Will you guarantee that when I buy something from you that it will work? Will you protect my investment in you by ensuring that your work will be compatible with future technological changes? The way it was is if I bought a book and took good care of it, I could read the book forever. It seems that today you want that book to be unreadalbe if I don't buy a new copy, you want it to "disintegrate" every few years just so you can force me to buy another.
Agreed. And the converse is true as well -- there can be tyranny of the minority, with a sympathetic judge. Until we get rid of activist judges who rule based on what they think America should become instead of what the Constitution says about it, if anything, and until, ahem, a certain side of the political spectrum ceases and desists trying to change America through the courts because they know they could never achieve popular opinion for many things, then some additional checks and balances on the Judicial Branch is worth looking into.
Enough checks and balances are already in place. If a large enough majority (75%) feels that "activist" judges are interpreting the Constitution wrong then they can pass an amendendment that clarifies how it should be read.
If you believe USSC, then "precedent" (which the courts set, themselves) says that they can invalidate any law and place restrictions on the activity of the Executive. For democracy in general, this is a Bad Thing.
The Supreme Court is often the only institution standing between the rights of minorities and the tyranny of the majority, and that my friend is a very, very good thing freedom in general.
Copyright protection was to benefit the author and/or inventor, not the public. And what part of exclusive rights don't you get? It covers more than distribution, but also the mere use of a work.
Copyright law covers copying and distribution, not use. If that were not the case you would be violating the creator's rights everytime you listened to music that someone else is playing on their boom box or look at a painting that someone else owns And as others have pointed out, if the laws starts pissing enough people off the Congress critters who made them can be replaced easily enough with ones who will repeal them.
In Change the Law I point out that while the Constitution allows for Congress to enact copyright laws, it doesn't actually require it to do so. Copyright could be repealed tomorrow if we could get enough votes in Congress to do so.
In the end copyright law may very well go the way of Prohibition when all is said and done, which in a way would be sad because it actually did serve a purpose at one time because it balanced the need of the public for knowledge with the need of artists to receive compensation for their work (yes I understand the public performance argument but who wants to sit a listen to an author reading his book aloud?).
It's a shame that no one seems willing to restore that balance with just a few simple changes in the law such as shorter terms to ensure works are not lost to time, and requiring yearly renewals on the line of property taxes and automobile registrations.
And why wasn't illegally "sharing" files a crime to begin with?
Because the original intent of copyright protection as spelled out in the Constitution was to benefit the public not imprison it and it was never intended to cover mere use of a work, only distribution.
The fact that Gore had more votes but lost is a problem of the electoral college because it favors votes of people in rural areas instead of one man one vote. That is a problem that we must fix.
Am I happy Bush won in 2000? Absolutely not! But the Electoral College did exactly what it was supposed to do and that is to protect a large minority from the tyranny of a slim majority. The United States is exactly that, a union of states, and thirty of those states voted for Bush while only twenty voted for Gore. The difference in the popular vote was less than one percent. Think of what would happen if 50.1% of the people always dictated what the other 49.9% had to do.
Besides, you will never get the EC to go away because it would require a Constitutional amendment to do so. And for that to happen the very states it protects would have to agree to give up the protection it provides. Very simply, it ain't gonna happen. Your time would be much better spent changing the mind of the electorate if you want to change election results.
There's no right to anonymous free speech -- one of the important issues regarding free speech is the responsibility for what you say.
According to the Supreme Court there is.
If you can find a law that protects your anonymity as a right, you're really on to something.
Here is Justice Steven's opinion:
"Justice Steven's opinion for the Court note that arguments favoring the ratification of the Constitution advanced in the Federalist Papers were published under fictitious names. Justice Stevens said "quite apart from any threat of persecution, an advocate may believe her ideas will be more persuasive if her readers are unaware of her identity. Anonymity thereby provides a way for a writer who may be personally unpopular to ensure that readers will not prejudge her message simply because they do not like its proponent." Stevens concluded "Under our Constitution, anonymous pamphleteering is not a pernicious, fraudulent practice, but an honorable tradition of advocacy and of dissent. Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority."
"Standard Member ($5.50 month/$66 year or 60 year)"
Which gets you nothing but information anybody familiar with Google can find.
Personally I don't use Mandrake (nothing against them), but there could be other benefits to being in the club.
The Mandrake "club" is the very reason I switched my g/f over to Debian despite Mandrake's easy config tools. Unless you become a "premium" member you really don't get anything more, and their number of supported packages is dismal.
Unfortuantly, there are many stupid people that don't understand the consequences of file sharing of copyrighted works
Please spell out those consequences.As far as I can see, the only way to get rid of stupid copyright laws is to share copyrighted works.The government can only afford to jail so many people, and when that number is exceeded the laws will have to be changed no matter how much money the RIAA spends to line Congress' pockets.
No, the IT theme is meant to be like that
It's the table layout, not the theme. They "bleed" into each other on Mozilla, but Konq handles it just fine.
Dude, go to the certified distributions list url major linux distros including Red Hat, Mandrake, and Suse are in there!!
Please check facts before posting. Too bad you got modded up.
Of the top ten major distros only two, Mandrake and Suse, are on the LSB list. Fedora, Debian, Slackware, Knoppix, and Gentoo are not.
But I do have a question about LSB certified applications, are they required to run on any LSB certified distro no matter which hardware the distro is running on?
Does Gentoo allow for multiple versions of things to be installed? And does it allow for some form of a virtually package that provides nothing and has the necessary dependencies to pull in everything that is required for complience?
Yes, Gentoo provides virtual packages, and "slots" enable the use of multiple versions.
Unless you lock out every domain except .kids for children who are browsing the Internet it's going to be useless.
There are just too many people who find too many things objectionable, and it would be a whole lot easier to keep the free world out of one domain than it would be to force every site that had something that somebody somewhere did not like into one.
What are the arguments against .XXX or equivelents not implemented?
.SAFE domain instead?
Because people who want to censor everything they find objectionable should be censoring themselves, not everyone else. Why not a
Even if he does veto it, it will be be put right back in front of him again. The overtime bill doesn't just affect IT workers. The majority of licensed healthcare workers get paid by the hour and face losing compensation under the new rules. I and many of the people I work with have been writing our representatives expressing their displeasure and asking them where they stand on the issue.