This attitude that when it comes to climate science it is a "With us or against us," sort of thing. Either someone accepts that humans are causing climate change, that the results will be catastrophic and so on or they are the ENEMY.
The reason, of course, is because Al Gore et al. have made it so political. It's completely unlike any other scientific debate because so little of it is science and so much of it is "OMG we have to pass all teh legislatures NOW or we're doomed."
While it is true that Kagan was appointed by Obama, nevertheless I expect that Obama himself probably has never actually given an opinion on the subject.
Obama has appointed so many people with power to act for him that he can effectively avoid ever having to take responsibility for any questionable aspects of the agenda that is being pushed by his administration. At the same time, he's always there to take credit for any positive accomplishments. It's a good strategy. Maybe it'll even get him a second term. I just hope that some of the suckers who bought into the "hope and change" will have learned a thing or two before 2012.
Sounds like the typical politician in a debate. Half a meaningless thought on the actual topic followed by a string of promotional sound bites for the product they're selling.
I think you got it backwards. It's the politicians who have adopted PR strategy, not so much the other way around.
That aside, I firmly believe that the GPL is the reason for the success of the Linux kernel and of GNU/Linux... I think that there would have been far fewer contributions to the Linux kernel if its license did not provide equal access for all contributors. A substantial part of Linux was written by commercial entities who would undoubtedly not be willing to invest in a product which their competition could build upon without contributing likewise in return.
This is a popular idea that just hasn't ever been substantiated. It doesn't explain the many non-GPL'd, yet popular, projects which receive corporate support. It also doesn't completely match with the fact that companies often release code under the Apache-2.0 license or a MIT/BSD type of license.
If the popularity of Linux is not due to its license as commonly believed without much evidence, it must be something else. I suspect that it was (like DOS) placed just at the right place and time. That's not to say that Linux is not a good kernel or that it doesn't make for a good operating system with the GNU userland, but like you say, there are more consistent options, like *BSD.
In short, I question the magnitude of credit you and others suggest RMS should be given for the general rise of free software.
They just don't make them like they used it. I'm sure most of us still have beige computers from the early nineties that are still crunching while the shiny computers they make today will die after a few years, if not sooner. I believe the common assumption that Apple computers last longer should also be questioned; I haven't seen much evidence to say that they do. Macs do retain their resale value better than commodity stuff, but that doesn't matter so much if what you're trying to sell doesn't work; it will always be worth a lot less.
If you can take BSD code and re-release it under a proprietary license(as many companies have done), you can take BSD code and re-release it under LGPL-3.
As it turns out, you can do neither (legally). If you're not the copyright owner of something, you have no business licensing it. You can combine BSD code with LGPL-3 code or proprietary code (a right granted by the BSD license), but that doesn't automagically change the license to something else.
I'm a fan of precise language. It has nothing to do with elitism, and of course I realize that applied science encompasses many disciplines. I find nothing wrong with incorporating more specific terms as these areas of research are refined.
I have a real Computer Science degree, so I know what computer science is about...
Except what you go on to describe is software engineering, not computer science. I'm not picking gnats either; the distinction is very real, and I would hope it wouldn't be lost on someone with a "real Computer Science degree."
(best messenger ever. Don't even dare to argue with me on that one because you WILL lose this one)
I didn't realize anybody would waste any amount of brain processing time or storage to form and retain an opinion regarding instant messenger clients... I'm all the more surprised to see how strong you've managed to make yours.
And turn in your programmers' card because you didn't know something as basic as that.
Naw, I say he can keep his card; real programmers don't use php, therefore that is not something he should be expected to know (assuming he is a real programmer).
Isn't there some agency or something that offers a money reward for bringing to light piracy in the workplace? Yeah, your company will hate you and you'll probably need to look for a new job, but if the reward is good enough...
I'm not on Windows, but fortunately I've never considered perl's slim "built-in" library a deterrent. Actually, I'm glad it doesn't come with everything anyone might possibly need. If I need something, it's probably already on CPAN, and it will be installed in a couple of minutes.
I target Windows even though I don't run it, just because it's so easy. The mingw32 toolchain is fantastic. Otherwise, yeah, I probably wouldn't bother...
It doesn't look like he did abuse the system, unless I'm missing some fine point. He thought he had a case (obviously, or he wouldn't have filed), so he tried it in court. He lost. That seems to be the way system is supposed to be working.
Insightful? Yikes. I guess any anti-religion comment here is an automatic +5 Insightful, but seriously... I don't see why people who have moral misgivings regarding abortion should be required to fund it.
You know we live in interesting times when somebody tries to minimize the perceived cost of something by saying, "Hey, it's only $120,000,000,000 per year!"
And I agree with stillpixel. I wouldn't be shocked if Apple themselves had a hand in this.
Oh brother. Apple doesn't care what you do with the iPhone, but they do have to close the holes that enable jailbreaking because they're security holes through which Something Bad could go to Do Something Bad. It's one thing to say that Apple is actively against jailbreaking and otherwise doing whatever you want with the phone (a popular and ridiculous notion often bandied about here), but it's quite another thing to realize that they don't care all that much but still have to close the holes. Thinking that Apple someone had a hand in creating this "worm" for jailbroken iPhones is not only considerably misguided (and unfounded), it's utterly moronic.
Sometimes for the real bad ones you'll need to use the Windows Recovery Console to delete files hidden from the Windows API as well as disable infected drivers/services.
So... it's possible for files to hide themselves from the Windows API? That explains a lot.
I, for one, welcome our newest open source project to the community - Windows 7.
Which demonstrates one impracticality of the GPL. No judge is going to force MS to release the code of Windows 7 or even any part of it (assuming this dubious claim is true).
I guess I am asking, why is it that such a good, arguably superior, distro seems to have to pull teeth just to get a few scraps of publicity, while some others seem to be living in some sort of reality distortion field?
It's the name. Ubuntu is fun to say. Gentoo is fun to say. Suse and Fedora are fun to say.
...considering Mandrivia costs 60 euros and has a MUCH smaller userbase than Ubuntu, which is free and is the de facto desktop distro winner. Shouldn't a linux newcomer just adopt the most supported distro aka Ubuntu?
Mandriva is free, too. Otherwise, you may be right. Ubuntu may be a better distro for a "Linux newcomer". On the other hand, getting support for other distros is not wildly different or inherently worse than getting support for Ubuntu. I hope you realize that Ubuntu might not be everybody's cup of tea, and not everybody is new to Linux. While Ubuntu may be the most popular choice for Linux on the desktop, it is by no means the only practical or best choice for everyone.
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This attitude that when it comes to climate science it is a "With us or against us," sort of thing. Either someone accepts that humans are causing climate change, that the results will be catastrophic and so on or they are the ENEMY.
The reason, of course, is because Al Gore et al. have made it so political. It's completely unlike any other scientific debate because so little of it is science and so much of it is "OMG we have to pass all teh legislatures NOW or we're doomed."
While it is true that Kagan was appointed by Obama, nevertheless I expect that Obama himself probably has never actually given an opinion on the subject.
Obama has appointed so many people with power to act for him that he can effectively avoid ever having to take responsibility for any questionable aspects of the agenda that is being pushed by his administration. At the same time, he's always there to take credit for any positive accomplishments. It's a good strategy. Maybe it'll even get him a second term. I just hope that some of the suckers who bought into the "hope and change" will have learned a thing or two before 2012.
Sounds like the typical politician in a debate. Half a meaningless thought on the actual topic followed by a string of promotional sound bites for the product they're selling.
I think you got it backwards. It's the politicians who have adopted PR strategy, not so much the other way around.
That aside, I firmly believe that the GPL is the reason for the success of the Linux kernel and of GNU/Linux... I think that there would have been far fewer contributions to the Linux kernel if its license did not provide equal access for all contributors. A substantial part of Linux was written by commercial entities who would undoubtedly not be willing to invest in a product which their competition could build upon without contributing likewise in return.
This is a popular idea that just hasn't ever been substantiated. It doesn't explain the many non-GPL'd, yet popular, projects which receive corporate support. It also doesn't completely match with the fact that companies often release code under the Apache-2.0 license or a MIT/BSD type of license.
If the popularity of Linux is not due to its license as commonly believed without much evidence, it must be something else. I suspect that it was (like DOS) placed just at the right place and time. That's not to say that Linux is not a good kernel or that it doesn't make for a good operating system with the GNU userland, but like you say, there are more consistent options, like *BSD.
In short, I question the magnitude of credit you and others suggest RMS should be given for the general rise of free software.
They just don't make them like they used it. I'm sure most of us still have beige computers from the early nineties that are still crunching while the shiny computers they make today will die after a few years, if not sooner. I believe the common assumption that Apple computers last longer should also be questioned; I haven't seen much evidence to say that they do. Macs do retain their resale value better than commodity stuff, but that doesn't matter so much if what you're trying to sell doesn't work; it will always be worth a lot less.
If you can take BSD code and re-release it under a proprietary license(as many companies have done), you can take BSD code and re-release it under LGPL-3.
As it turns out, you can do neither (legally). If you're not the copyright owner of something, you have no business licensing it. You can combine BSD code with LGPL-3 code or proprietary code (a right granted by the BSD license), but that doesn't automagically change the license to something else.
I'm a fan of precise language. It has nothing to do with elitism, and of course I realize that applied science encompasses many disciplines. I find nothing wrong with incorporating more specific terms as these areas of research are refined.
I have a real Computer Science degree, so I know what computer science is about...
Except what you go on to describe is software engineering, not computer science. I'm not picking gnats either; the distinction is very real, and I would hope it wouldn't be lost on someone with a "real Computer Science degree."
(best messenger ever. Don't even dare to argue with me on that one because you WILL lose this one)
I didn't realize anybody would waste any amount of brain processing time or storage to form and retain an opinion regarding instant messenger clients... I'm all the more surprised to see how strong you've managed to make yours.
And turn in your programmers' card because you didn't know something as basic as that.
Naw, I say he can keep his card; real programmers don't use php, therefore that is not something he should be expected to know (assuming he is a real programmer).
Isn't there some agency or something that offers a money reward for bringing to light piracy in the workplace? Yeah, your company will hate you and you'll probably need to look for a new job, but if the reward is good enough...
Or at least, it will fix it on Windows...
I'm not on Windows, but fortunately I've never considered perl's slim "built-in" library a deterrent. Actually, I'm glad it doesn't come with everything anyone might possibly need. If I need something, it's probably already on CPAN, and it will be installed in a couple of minutes.
I target Windows even though I don't run it, just because it's so easy. The mingw32 toolchain is fantastic. Otherwise, yeah, I probably wouldn't bother...
It doesn't look like he did abuse the system, unless I'm missing some fine point. He thought he had a case (obviously, or he wouldn't have filed), so he tried it in court. He lost. That seems to be the way system is supposed to be working.
Insightful? Yikes. I guess any anti-religion comment here is an automatic +5 Insightful, but seriously... I don't see why people who have moral misgivings regarding abortion should be required to fund it.
You know we live in interesting times when somebody tries to minimize the perceived cost of something by saying, "Hey, it's only $120,000,000,000 per year!"
But Noscript can block video tags, so what's your point?
And I agree with stillpixel. I wouldn't be shocked if Apple themselves had a hand in this.
Oh brother. Apple doesn't care what you do with the iPhone, but they do have to close the holes that enable jailbreaking because they're security holes through which Something Bad could go to Do Something Bad. It's one thing to say that Apple is actively against jailbreaking and otherwise doing whatever you want with the phone (a popular and ridiculous notion often bandied about here), but it's quite another thing to realize that they don't care all that much but still have to close the holes. Thinking that Apple someone had a hand in creating this "worm" for jailbroken iPhones is not only considerably misguided (and unfounded), it's utterly moronic.
Sometimes for the real bad ones you'll need to use the Windows Recovery Console to delete files hidden from the Windows API as well as disable infected drivers/services.
So... it's possible for files to hide themselves from the Windows API? That explains a lot.
Mmm, but the gravy is kinda important. Just sayin.
Wow I didn't hear hal was deprecated. Just.. wow.
I, for one, welcome our newest open source project to the community - Windows 7.
Which demonstrates one impracticality of the GPL. No judge is going to force MS to release the code of Windows 7 or even any part of it (assuming this dubious claim is true).
Don't hold your breath.
I guess I am asking, why is it that such a good, arguably superior, distro seems to have to pull teeth just to get a few scraps of publicity, while some others seem to be living in some sort of reality distortion field?
It's the name. Ubuntu is fun to say. Gentoo is fun to say. Suse and Fedora are fun to say.
Mandriva is painful to say.
...considering Mandrivia costs 60 euros and has a MUCH smaller userbase than Ubuntu, which is free and is the de facto desktop distro winner. Shouldn't a linux newcomer just adopt the most supported distro aka Ubuntu?
Mandriva is free, too. Otherwise, you may be right. Ubuntu may be a better distro for a "Linux newcomer". On the other hand, getting support for other distros is not wildly different or inherently worse than getting support for Ubuntu. I hope you realize that Ubuntu might not be everybody's cup of tea, and not everybody is new to Linux. While Ubuntu may be the most popular choice for Linux on the desktop, it is by no means the only practical or best choice for everyone.