I'm not entirely convinced that Mandrake actually serves the niche that everyone says it does. Bear in mind that I'm a SuSE user and have not yet tried any other distros, but I have been plugged in to the local Linux community for a few years now (Sadly we have no LUG, but everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who "did that once", so it usually works out. Kind of an unofficial LUG that doesn't have meetings), and here are my observations regarding newbies:
In my area newbies try one of two distors: SuSE and Mandrake. The ones who start with Mandrake generally try it for a few weeks and then go back to Windows saying something like "Linux isn't ready for the desktop". The ones who start with SuSE generally only use it a little at first, but within 2 years are using Linux as their primary or even exclusive desktop OS. About half of those stick with SuSE, with the other half going on to Slackware or LFS (or even Rock in one instance).
It's important to note, I think, that I haven't yet seen any exceptions to this rule. I haven't seen anyone starting on Mandrake use Linux for more than a month, and I haven't seen anyone starting on SuSE not switch to Linux primarily within 2 years.
I don't know that this necessarily means anything, and certainly my sample size is small (about 20), but it certainly has got me thinking about what, exactly, it means to be a good distro for newbies.
I'm not trying to slam Mandrake here. Obviously there are people who use it and like it, and there has to be some basis in fact for its reputation as a good newbie distro, but I think that perhaps many (most?) of us have misjudged Mandrakes true place in the Linux community.
That said, I hope they can use this to their advantage. Mandrake has certainly made some valuable contributions to the community and it would be truely sad to see them go down while companies like Caldera/SCO remain. I think they can pull out of this if they play their cards right. A friend of mine was able to do so with his construction business when he made it clear to his creditors that he was going to have to file bankruptcy (sp?) if he couldn't work out a deal with them. IIRC he ended up paying roughly 50 cents on the dollar, avoided bankruptcy, and was eventually able to rebuild his business and his life.
Why vouchers? What is the EXACT wording of the settlement with regards to how those vouchers can be used?
I think those questions alone make Apples comlaints legitimate. MS will do everyhting in their power to make sure this settlement works out to their advantage, so I think it's important that the dissenting voices be as loud as possible.
As for me, I'm not prepared to accept this settlement as a good thing until I can read the fine print and determine if I can use these vouchers to help a certain ailing Linux distro. If I can't do that, then this settlement is nothing more than MS trying to further extend their monopoly.
Why should his work become public domain? What gives you the right to it?
Nothing GIVES me that right, and nothing needs to because I already have it.
Ideas are INHERENTLY public domain. I have a NATURAL right to use for myself any idea that comes my way in any way that I wish.
Copyright is a GRANTED right. It is a legal fiction created specifically to abridge my INHERENT, NATURAL rights to use ideas.
I'm not arguing that copyright should be done away with completely. Like most legal fictions there is a good reason for it to exist, and in its most basic form it is good for society. However, it is important to note the actual language of the IP clause in the Constitution (emphasis added by me):
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries
As pointed out elsewhere, the Lord of the Rings was published in 1948, and JRR Tolkein lived roughly 30 years beyond that. Assuming LotR caught on quickly (which I don't think is an unreasonable assumption since if it hadn't it would not still be in print today) JRRT was amply repaid for his investment of time and effort, which is as it should be. A creator should be able to enjoy the fruits of his labor.
However, the purpose of copyright is to PROMOTE progress. Once JRRT had a work he could arguably live off of for the rest of his life, where is the incentive for him to create more? That is the first reason copyright should be for a limited time, but more than that, the time should be limited enough so that the limit is meaningful to the AUTHOR. JRRT proved himself to be an author capable of creating something of significant value to society, and therefore should be encourageed to create more. The origional work should fund further work, and so on, so that our culture is further enriched by the works of a proven author. Copyright for life plus whatever doesn't provide that incentive.
Now, though, we get to the true absurdity of the current situation. Since copyright is currently author's life plus 75 years, where is the incentive for Christopher Tolkein (JRRs son) to create anything? Copyright on LotR will continue long past the day HE dies, so what incentive is there for him to do anything other than sit on his fathers work and collect the royalties? And what about his children? The Tolkein family will be collecting royalty checks long enough to put JRRs great-great-grandchildren through college, and potentially their children as well. Where is the incentive for any of them to create something new? You call this promoting progress? I say it's passively hindering progress.
However, it actively hinders progress as well. LotR is VERY heavily based on Christian, Scandinavian, and Anglo-Saxon mythology (National Geographic did a special on it, check it out if you don't believe me). In other words, LotR is a DERIVED work, which likely wouldn't exist if JRRT hadn't had free access to those ideas. Unfortunately, other authors won't be able to use his works the way he used, for example, Finnish oral histories, for another 50-some years MINIMUM, and quite likely EVER.
That is why the current state of copyright is unconstitutional, and that is why the Supreme Court is WRONG in this judgement. Copyright as it stands today both actively and passively works against the stated purpose for its existance in the Constitution.
Here's an example: Say, you want to watch a movie trailer. So your browser connects to Universal Pictures' server, which demands cryptographic proof that it can "trust" your computer. So your media player software obtains that proof from the OS, and delivers it. What the OS delivers the hash of the media player, signed with the OS key. To guarantee the integrity of the OS, it includes the OS' hash, signed by the bootloader. To guarantee the bootloader's integrity, it includes the bootloader's hash, signed by the BIOS. Voilá, you have crypto proof that your entire system is kosher. Universal's server has only to verify that the BIOS's key is trustable, which they can do by checking it against AMI, or whatever. If that key is compromised (e.g., you crack the key of your BIOS), then they have a problem with a single individual, not a class compromise.
So, what's stopping me, a Linux user, from getting a Windows bootloader checksum and a Windows Media Player hash and telling Mozilla (which of course appears to be IE to the outside viewer) to provide those when Universal asks?
ALL hardware can be emulated in software, and there is no way for Universal to prove that I haven't done that without sending jackbooted thugs to bust into my house and tear my system apart.
Hardware based crypto is all well and good, but no outside application has a direct line to my hardware. It MUST go through my OS first, and I control that. Therefore my hardware is whatever I tell my OS to say it is. Problem solved.
Documentation is available. Plenty of people have been able to figure it out. In the case of that particular question, and this is true of probably 50% of requests for help I've seen on newsgroups and mailing lists, the person asking just doesn't want to take the time to actually read the documentation and find the answer for themselves.
Also of great importance is the attitude of the question, which I will repost with apprpriate highlighting:
I an running Nagios and having a major problem with one of the plugins that is severe enough to make me throw out the software if I can't get it working.
I've asked on the two nagios mailing lists and received no answer. How do I, working for a major corporation, promote this software package if there's nobody that can help me fix it? Where do I look for support for a free product?
He starts off with demand phrased as a threat: "help me or I won't use your software." This software is written for free, and maintained for free. If you're giving something away for free, and someone gets up in your face and starts demanding from you and threatening you, I'm pretty sure your response is going to be something like "hey, I'm doing this for free and I don't need your bullshit." Ethan obviously doesn't need the money, so he offered a list of people who would be willing to put up with sys$manager's bullshit for an appropriate price.
Added to that, sys$manager then starts trying to throw his weight around, saying he's with a major corporation, so you'd better help me because I'm important. More bullshit, see above.
So, we have someone who can't be bothered to read the documentation, and even though this is for a major corporation they demand assistance for free "or else". I think the response was totally appropriate and extremely diplomatic.
Interesting, I'll have to look into that. Unfortunately I don't have the mobo I intend to use for my server yet, so I'm not sure if it has ISA slots or not (The CPU is a slot A Athlon, so the mobo may or may not have an ISA slot).
The main reason I've been thinking of stand-alone radios, though, is ease of setup. I can tune them in using speakers and attach big ass powered antennas as needed (reception really sucks at my house). It just seems easier to do that on a stand-alone box and then just route the sound the the line-in on the sound card.
I would totally agree if he was building the whole thing from scratch, but he's not. Each site already has an existing network, presumably already set up with their own subnets, switches, etc. Throwing a fibre NIC into an existing PC at each site is still going to be the cheapest and least disruptive way of acheiving his stated goals.
I agree that switches would be easier, but that doesn't make it the best solution for this particular situation.
How many different stations do you want to record?
I've been thinking about doing something similar, but I only have 2 stations I want to record off of, which is convenient since my soundcard has 2 inputs. My plan is to get 2 cheap radios with line out and tune each to one of the stations, hook each to one of my line ins, and set up cron jobs to record the shows I want. Seems pretty simple to me.
If I really wanted the radios to be powered down when I'm not recording I could hook theirpower up to relays also controlled by the cron jobs.
I'm sure there are more elegant solutions, but I don't really care that much since this whole assembly will just be stuffed in a closet with my server.
Everyone seems to be focusing on puting fibre switches at each location, which I think is an unnecessary expense. The way I read the question you already have existing network at each location, and you just want to hook them together.
It seems to me that you could just get a few PCI fibre NICs and use them to set up existing machines at each location as bridges. I don't remember how much they cost, but it would definately be cheaper than switches. You'd have to make sure you had the right plugs/jacks, obviously.
It seems to me that it would be a pretty simple thing to do.
All I can say is that I was able to prove otherwise in front of about 15 witnesses, and without using any special tricks. Why you aren't seeing the same behavior, I don't know.
However, if the new behavior is to create an array of N+1 elements, I still say that's wrong. Every other language I've used has had arrays of N elements, 0 to N-1. At the very least N+1 element arrays break compatability with C/C++, and I think we can agree that C/C++ is still important enough that compatability with them is essential for any language claiming compatability with other languages.
You know you are breaking the law when you speed. Why do you speed if it will break the law? The mental math in your head tells you that for speeding 10-15 miles over the limit (which is a guess on the average) you probably can get away by paying only $250-300 for the ticket.
The thing is that you don't necessarily know when you're speeding. In CA there's a thing called the California Basic Speed Law, which basically states that the speed limit is whatever is safe for the conditions. Allow me to illustrate this with a funny, but true, story from my brother-in-law, who is a California Highway Patrol Officer.
He's driving down a freeway in LA when he notices a car that's weaving erratically, like it would if the driver was drunk. Naturally he pulls the car over, and realizes as soon as he looks in the car that the guy isn't drunk; the problem is that he has this gigantic bowl, like a serving bowl you'd use for pasta, full of soup which he is holding and trying to eat out of while driving.
He was going 65, which is the posted limit on that road, and the weather was clear, but my brother-in-law wrote the guy a ticket for 65mph over the limit, since any speed was unsafe for what he was trying to do.
My point is that the law is flexible, and you don't necessarily know when you are breaking it. I'm sure this guy thought he was in the clear since he was driving the speed limit, but now he's been slapped with a felony speeding ticket. The really funny thing is that if he hadn't been eating the soup which caused him to weave, he could have been going 75 and no officer would have batted an eye (CHP policy is to give 10mph of leeway in most cases).
Laws (and Codes) need to take circumstances into consideration. About a year and a half ago my wife fell and hurt her leg bad enough that she couldn't walk, or even stand, and she was certainly in no condition to watch over our 1 year old daughter, so she dragged herself (literally) to the phone and called me at work. Was that a personal phone call which I recieved on Company time on a Company phone? Absolutely, but there's something seriously wrong with a Code of Ethics that can't accomodate that, and I certainly shouldn't be punished to the same extent as the guy who calls up his girlfriend just to chat, consistency be damned.
In the Real World, such poor use of the English language reflects very poorly on the organization.
In the Real World, poor use of the English language doesn't matter one bit. Read some magazine ads, especially ads in magazines for parents and families. If grammar mattered even a little bit, a third of those would never get printed.
Doubtful. I don't own it myself, I was using the school lab machines. I don't know what version it was but I would be extremely surprised if my school rated a beta version. The admins were pretty prompt about applying updates, too.
I still say that behavior you're seeing is wrong, though. (Re)Dim myArray(4) should give an array of 4 elements, 0-based. Anything else breaks the compatability that is supposed to be the guiding princilpal of.NET
Out of curiosity what do you get with this?
Dim myArray(4) As Integer MsgBox("After Dim " & LBound(myArray) & Chr(32) & UBound(myArray))
Basically, I'm wondering if assigning a value to myArray(4) creates that element as if one used a ReDim. I have no way of checking it on my own, and I don't remember trying such a thing.
Sorry, but I know for a fact that Dim works the same as in C, meaning Dim MyArray(4) gives a 4 element array. This is the correct behavior, IMNSHO. ReDim MyArray(4) gives a 5 element array, basically the old VB 1-based array plus a 0 element since VB.NET arrays are 0-based.
In fact, I had to prove it in front of my class for a point on one of my tests.
If they released a fix in the last month that makes Dim act the same way then that's even more braindead, since the change to 0-based arrays was for compatability with the C-style languages that are part of the.NET framework, and in any C-style language declaring myArray(4) gives a 4 element array (0-3).
My problem with VB is the same problem I have with all MS products: features are more important to the developers than stability or consistency. It's the little braindead things like (in VB.NET) 'Dim MyArray(4)' creates a 4 element array (0-3), but 'ReDim MyArray(4)' gives a 5 element array (0-4), that make me hate VB. There were similar stupid things in VB6, but thankfully it's been long enough since I've used it that I can't think of an example off the top of my head.
This is only aggravated by the fact that VB seems to actively encourage unorganized source code, which makes VB source much more difficult to work with.
Anyway, those are my own dislikes about it. I hope that gives you some insight into the general feeling on/.
Well, I forcably switched my family over to Linux about a month ago when Windows had become too unstable to use and I didn't feel like going through the umpteen billion reboots required to get everything reinstalled. So far my wife's only question has been how to open a.zip of pictures a friend sent her, which was quickly and easily answered.
I've built, and continue to maintain, several computers for family and friends. The vast majority of them never install new applications, or new fonts, or change the desktop resolution, or add a new printer or scanner. When they want to do something like that, 9 times out of 10 they call me up, ask for advice on what to get, and then ask me to install it for them. Only one of the machines I support even has a personal finance app installed on it, and that's only because the person who owns it is running a business out of their home.
I'm sure these things are very important to you, but to most users they aren't. I'd bet that 50% of home Windows users could be switched to Linux and would hardly notice the difference.
may be trolling in this, but I've always wondered why this is an issue at all? Why hasn't someone taken the time to make the UI more User-Friendly?
It has been done. The font tool in the KDE Control Center works great for enabling AA and installing new fonts.
Oh, and whatever happened to unifying all these various hacks into one standardized way of doing things. How many ways are there to enable anti-aliased fonts? How many ways are there to make the text readable?
I have no idea how many ways there may be, but unifying them all into one tool is anathema to the OSS developement process. Every single OSS tool has competition, and I think that is vital to the continued health of the community.
Just a fr'instance.. what if some of the info in one of the "eyeballing" pieces was obviously leaked by a defense worker on the inside, in violation of federal law? Wouldnt you _want_ that person removed from the position of spewing information that really doesnt BELONG in the public domain?
What a ridiculous arguement. ALL information belongs in the public domain and is only 'leased' temporarily under copyright. If you believe otherwise you need to actually READ some copyright law and not just take Hillary Rosen's corruption of it at face value.
Information which is clasified under "National Security" is basically the same thing, but with different reasons. However, the governemnt is an agent of the people, and anyhting which 'belongs' to the government in reality belongs to the people INCLUDING ALL OF THE GOVERNMNENTS CLASSIFIED INFORMATION! One should always be extremely suspicious of anyone who tries to hide your own property from you. All too often classified information NEEDS to be brought into the public domain precisely because someone in the government doesn't want it to be.
A lot of the people here who are complaining about this are probably the same people who defend the guy who took pictures of the Spam King's house. You cannot have it both ways.
Absolutely I defend the guy who took pictures of the Spam Kings house. He did absolutely nothing wrong.
As for having it both ways; I really don't think it's OK to punch people in the face, but if you punch me in the face, your god damned right I'm going to punch you back, and no I don't think that makes me a hypocrite.
You cant have the freedoms granted by the government (laughable as they may be at times) without also following whatever rules make those freedoms a reality.
You have the relationship completely backwards. People have rights inherently, they are not granted by the government. The government has NO rights inherently, and is granted rights by the people that submit to its rule, namely the right to abridge CERTAIN of the peoples INHERENT rights in the interest of the common good.
A friend of mine owned a store a while back, and I once asked him why he wouldn't accept credit cards for some purchases. Basically, it costs the vendor money to process a credit card. In his case, he wouldn't take a card for a purchase under $10 because the processing fee ate up too much of his already thin margin, nd it was still uncomfortable for him to do so for purchases under $20.
That right there is the barrier that is preventing micropayments from working. You aren't going to charge me $.03 to look at a page when it costs you $.50 to process the transaction, and I'm not going to pay $.53 just to view one stinking page.
The only way I see micropayments working is someone like Visa buys into it and restructures fees to make micropayments viable, and I don't see that happening any time soon.
Since I quit tutoring when my daughter was born I've had several students come back to me for help, and the vast majority of that has been through email. It works just fine, and yes I do mean for math.
One of the problems with using Netmeeting boils down to the question of why these students can't make it to regular tutoring sessions? If it's because of time constraints, then this solution isn't going to help them much either. If it's a distance issue, like if your school has satalite campuses a significant distance away, then the school needs to put forth the effort to find tutors who live in that area and give them a space to work in, or they need to pay an existing tutor for their travel time to serve that campus. In short, every possible effort should be made to facilitate face-to-face contact between student and tutor. If it's an issue of students who just have occasional questions and don't need a regular tutor session, my school has a Math Lab which serves this purpose wonderfully. It's a room with several tables, tons of whiteboard space, and at least one tutor on duty at all times (7am-8pm, IIRC). At peak times we had 2 tutors on duty, although it was a great hangout place for the people who worked there so there were usually 3 or 4 tutors available if things got crazy. If one student was taking up too much time, we would suggest that they go next door to the tutor center and make a regular tutoring appointment. This was also a convenient place for study groups to meet. At satalite campuses we had a few open hours a week where a tutor would be available, but that really didn't work as well as the lab.
I have already stated that tutoring over email worked fine for me, but the devil is in the details. All of these students were people that I had an existing relationship with; some of them I had tutored face-to-face for 3 or 4 semesters and some are friends I have known for 10 years or more. In short, we know each other. I have a good sense of their learning style and the kinds of metaphors and such that will work for them, and they in turn have a good sense of my communication style, and likely already had or were familiar with my reference materials (the prof who ran the math lab made up some really great cheat sheets for algebra, geometry, trig, and calc that I always kept copies of for my students). When it comes down to it, face-to-face is always better.
Anyway, what I would suggest for your situation is usenet. Set up a newsgroup for your schools math department. If you have something like a math lab, set up a machine for the tutors to use to answer newsgroup questions, hopefully with some sort of automatic alert for new messages, and maybe also get some of the teachers to dedicate some time to answering questions there as well. A newsgroup could serve many of the situations I've listed above. If someone is assigned to check on it regularly it can be very responsive, while at the same time serving those who can't participate during normal hours. It also serves as a database of answers for someone who has a question which has already been answered, and threads are good for bringing together people who are having the same issues, sort of like a per-problem study group. It also makes it easy for others to answer questions, removing a great deal of the burden from the tutors, and provides a convenient forum for announcing events (math contests, math club meetings, etc) and organizing study groups.
Most importantly, though, it doesn't require a fast net connection. As nice as it may be to be able to use something like maple or mathematica over netmeeting, I think you'll be excluding a lot of people just through the connection requirements to make that work well.
Notice also that I said usenet and not http-based discussion group. While those are all well and good, and work well in some circumstances, they are slow over dialup and can be irritating to navigate. That sort of overhead is something you simply don't need.
And, the difference between using HFS and MFS (metadata filesystems) is that keywords are much more like how the human brain is wired.
That isn't true at all.
A room containing file cabinets containing drawers containing folders containing documents is a very "intuitive" paradigm, and one that has been in use by humans, with minor variations, for thousands of years. People fumble with this not because it's difficult to understand, but because they don't want to be bothered with putting forth the minimal effort to do it right, and they aren't going to put forth the effort to make an MFS work right either!
That's exactly my point. It will still take effort on the users part to set up the associations properly. Do you honestly think that someone who can't be bothered to do something as simple as give their file a sensible name and store it in a sensible location is going to do that?
So what if he's still looking at this from an HFS point of view? The problems are still exactly the same because the problem is with the user, not with the technology.
The user still has to assign attributes to their files, and anyone who isn't capable of saving their file under a sensible name in a sensible place is not going to assign sensible attributes either (or, indeed, any attributes at all).
If you install this magical dbfs (whatever it's called, it doesn't really matter since there are several of them in the works and none of them address the real problem) it's not going to magically go through all 7 of your drives and organize everything for you so you can find it. You will still have to go through and manually add appropriate attributes to every one of your 180G of files.
My point is, there isn't anything being done here that can't already be done using existing HFS tools; specifically ls, grep, and find. All you've done is substitute (not replace) attribute lists for filenames. Well, Whoop-a-dee-doo! I can just as easily duplicate your attribute lists with directories and symlinks, so nothing has actually been gained.
Slashdot Mirror
The only appropriate action is to involve your ISP and the authorities. They can then take LEGAL action against the source of the attacks.
And if they don't?
Let me point out that if that always worked we wouldn't be having this discussion at all.
The hole in your arguement is self defense. Killing people is illegal, but if I can prove it was self defense I won't be punished for it.
I'm not entirely convinced that Mandrake actually serves the niche that everyone says it does. Bear in mind that I'm a SuSE user and have not yet tried any other distros, but I have been plugged in to the local Linux community for a few years now (Sadly we have no LUG, but everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who "did that once", so it usually works out. Kind of an unofficial LUG that doesn't have meetings), and here are my observations regarding newbies:
In my area newbies try one of two distors: SuSE and Mandrake. The ones who start with Mandrake generally try it for a few weeks and then go back to Windows saying something like "Linux isn't ready for the desktop". The ones who start with SuSE generally only use it a little at first, but within 2 years are using Linux as their primary or even exclusive desktop OS. About half of those stick with SuSE, with the other half going on to Slackware or LFS (or even Rock in one instance).
It's important to note, I think, that I haven't yet seen any exceptions to this rule. I haven't seen anyone starting on Mandrake use Linux for more than a month, and I haven't seen anyone starting on SuSE not switch to Linux primarily within 2 years.
I don't know that this necessarily means anything, and certainly my sample size is small (about 20), but it certainly has got me thinking about what, exactly, it means to be a good distro for newbies.
I'm not trying to slam Mandrake here. Obviously there are people who use it and like it, and there has to be some basis in fact for its reputation as a good newbie distro, but I think that perhaps many (most?) of us have misjudged Mandrakes true place in the Linux community.
That said, I hope they can use this to their advantage. Mandrake has certainly made some valuable contributions to the community and it would be truely sad to see them go down while companies like Caldera/SCO remain. I think they can pull out of this if they play their cards right. A friend of mine was able to do so with his construction business when he made it clear to his creditors that he was going to have to file bankruptcy (sp?) if he couldn't work out a deal with them. IIRC he ended up paying roughly 50 cents on the dollar, avoided bankruptcy, and was eventually able to rebuild his business and his life.
Why vouchers? What is the EXACT wording of the settlement with regards to how those vouchers can be used?
I think those questions alone make Apples comlaints legitimate. MS will do everyhting in their power to make sure this settlement works out to their advantage, so I think it's important that the dissenting voices be as loud as possible.
As for me, I'm not prepared to accept this settlement as a good thing until I can read the fine print and determine if I can use these vouchers to help a certain ailing Linux distro. If I can't do that, then this settlement is nothing more than MS trying to further extend their monopoly.
Why should his work become public domain? What gives you the right to it?
Nothing GIVES me that right, and nothing needs to because I already have it.
Ideas are INHERENTLY public domain. I have a NATURAL right to use for myself any idea that comes my way in any way that I wish.
Copyright is a GRANTED right. It is a legal fiction created specifically to abridge my INHERENT, NATURAL rights to use ideas.
I'm not arguing that copyright should be done away with completely. Like most legal fictions there is a good reason for it to exist, and in its most basic form it is good for society. However, it is important to note the actual language of the IP clause in the Constitution (emphasis added by me):
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries
As pointed out elsewhere, the Lord of the Rings was published in 1948, and JRR Tolkein lived roughly 30 years beyond that. Assuming LotR caught on quickly (which I don't think is an unreasonable assumption since if it hadn't it would not still be in print today) JRRT was amply repaid for his investment of time and effort, which is as it should be. A creator should be able to enjoy the fruits of his labor.
However, the purpose of copyright is to PROMOTE progress. Once JRRT had a work he could arguably live off of for the rest of his life, where is the incentive for him to create more? That is the first reason copyright should be for a limited time, but more than that, the time should be limited enough so that the limit is meaningful to the AUTHOR. JRRT proved himself to be an author capable of creating something of significant value to society, and therefore should be encourageed to create more. The origional work should fund further work, and so on, so that our culture is further enriched by the works of a proven author. Copyright for life plus whatever doesn't provide that incentive.
Now, though, we get to the true absurdity of the current situation. Since copyright is currently author's life plus 75 years, where is the incentive for Christopher Tolkein (JRRs son) to create anything? Copyright on LotR will continue long past the day HE dies, so what incentive is there for him to do anything other than sit on his fathers work and collect the royalties? And what about his children? The Tolkein family will be collecting royalty checks long enough to put JRRs great-great-grandchildren through college, and potentially their children as well. Where is the incentive for any of them to create something new? You call this promoting progress? I say it's passively hindering progress.
However, it actively hinders progress as well. LotR is VERY heavily based on Christian, Scandinavian, and Anglo-Saxon mythology (National Geographic did a special on it, check it out if you don't believe me). In other words, LotR is a DERIVED work, which likely wouldn't exist if JRRT hadn't had free access to those ideas. Unfortunately, other authors won't be able to use his works the way he used, for example, Finnish oral histories, for another 50-some years MINIMUM, and quite likely EVER.
That is why the current state of copyright is unconstitutional, and that is why the Supreme Court is WRONG in this judgement. Copyright as it stands today both actively and passively works against the stated purpose for its existance in the Constitution.
Here's an example: Say, you want to watch a movie trailer. So your browser connects to Universal Pictures' server, which demands cryptographic proof that it can "trust" your computer. So your media player software obtains that proof from the OS, and delivers it. What the OS delivers the hash of the media player, signed with the OS key. To guarantee the integrity of the OS, it includes the OS' hash, signed by the bootloader. To guarantee the bootloader's integrity, it includes the bootloader's hash, signed by the BIOS. Voilá, you have crypto proof that your entire system is kosher. Universal's server has only to verify that the BIOS's key is trustable, which they can do by checking it against AMI, or whatever. If that key is compromised (e.g., you crack the key of your BIOS), then they have a problem with a single individual, not a class compromise.
So, what's stopping me, a Linux user, from getting a Windows bootloader checksum and a Windows Media Player hash and telling Mozilla (which of course appears to be IE to the outside viewer) to provide those when Universal asks?
ALL hardware can be emulated in software, and there is no way for Universal to prove that I haven't done that without sending jackbooted thugs to bust into my house and tear my system apart.
Hardware based crypto is all well and good, but no outside application has a direct line to my hardware. It MUST go through my OS first, and I control that. Therefore my hardware is whatever I tell my OS to say it is. Problem solved.
Documentation is available. Plenty of people have been able to figure it out. In the case of that particular question, and this is true of probably 50% of requests for help I've seen on newsgroups and mailing lists, the person asking just doesn't want to take the time to actually read the documentation and find the answer for themselves.
Also of great importance is the attitude of the question, which I will repost with apprpriate highlighting:
I an running Nagios and having a major problem with one of the plugins that is severe enough to make me throw out the software if I can't get it working.
I've asked on the two nagios mailing lists and received no answer. How do I, working for a major corporation, promote this software package if there's nobody that can help me fix it? Where do I look for support for a free product?
He starts off with demand phrased as a threat: "help me or I won't use your software." This software is written for free, and maintained for free. If you're giving something away for free, and someone gets up in your face and starts demanding from you and threatening you, I'm pretty sure your response is going to be something like "hey, I'm doing this for free and I don't need your bullshit." Ethan obviously doesn't need the money, so he offered a list of people who would be willing to put up with sys$manager's bullshit for an appropriate price.
Added to that, sys$manager then starts trying to throw his weight around, saying he's with a major corporation, so you'd better help me because I'm important. More bullshit, see above.
So, we have someone who can't be bothered to read the documentation, and even though this is for a major corporation they demand assistance for free "or else". I think the response was totally appropriate and extremely diplomatic.
Does anyone remember the LOTR cartoon?
I've been trying to forget it for years, only to be reminded of it every time an LotR story shows up on slashdot.
Thanks a lot!!!
Interesting, I'll have to look into that. Unfortunately I don't have the mobo I intend to use for my server yet, so I'm not sure if it has ISA slots or not (The CPU is a slot A Athlon, so the mobo may or may not have an ISA slot).
The main reason I've been thinking of stand-alone radios, though, is ease of setup. I can tune them in using speakers and attach big ass powered antennas as needed (reception really sucks at my house). It just seems easier to do that on a stand-alone box and then just route the sound the the line-in on the sound card.
I would totally agree if he was building the whole thing from scratch, but he's not. Each site already has an existing network, presumably already set up with their own subnets, switches, etc. Throwing a fibre NIC into an existing PC at each site is still going to be the cheapest and least disruptive way of acheiving his stated goals.
I agree that switches would be easier, but that doesn't make it the best solution for this particular situation.
How many different stations do you want to record?
I've been thinking about doing something similar, but I only have 2 stations I want to record off of, which is convenient since my soundcard has 2 inputs. My plan is to get 2 cheap radios with line out and tune each to one of the stations, hook each to one of my line ins, and set up cron jobs to record the shows I want. Seems pretty simple to me.
If I really wanted the radios to be powered down when I'm not recording I could hook theirpower up to relays also controlled by the cron jobs.
I'm sure there are more elegant solutions, but I don't really care that much since this whole assembly will just be stuffed in a closet with my server.
Everyone seems to be focusing on puting fibre switches at each location, which I think is an unnecessary expense. The way I read the question you already have existing network at each location, and you just want to hook them together.
It seems to me that you could just get a few PCI fibre NICs and use them to set up existing machines at each location as bridges. I don't remember how much they cost, but it would definately be cheaper than switches. You'd have to make sure you had the right plugs/jacks, obviously.
It seems to me that it would be a pretty simple thing to do.
All I can say is that I was able to prove otherwise in front of about 15 witnesses, and without using any special tricks. Why you aren't seeing the same behavior, I don't know.
However, if the new behavior is to create an array of N+1 elements, I still say that's wrong. Every other language I've used has had arrays of N elements, 0 to N-1. At the very least N+1 element arrays break compatability with C/C++, and I think we can agree that C/C++ is still important enough that compatability with them is essential for any language claiming compatability with other languages.
You know you are breaking the law when you speed. Why do you speed if it will break the law? The mental math in your head tells you that for speeding 10-15 miles over the limit (which is a guess on the average) you probably can get away by paying only $250-300 for the ticket.
The thing is that you don't necessarily know when you're speeding. In CA there's a thing called the California Basic Speed Law, which basically states that the speed limit is whatever is safe for the conditions. Allow me to illustrate this with a funny, but true, story from my brother-in-law, who is a California Highway Patrol Officer.
He's driving down a freeway in LA when he notices a car that's weaving erratically, like it would if the driver was drunk. Naturally he pulls the car over, and realizes as soon as he looks in the car that the guy isn't drunk; the problem is that he has this gigantic bowl, like a serving bowl you'd use for pasta, full of soup which he is holding and trying to eat out of while driving.
He was going 65, which is the posted limit on that road, and the weather was clear, but my brother-in-law wrote the guy a ticket for 65mph over the limit, since any speed was unsafe for what he was trying to do.
My point is that the law is flexible, and you don't necessarily know when you are breaking it. I'm sure this guy thought he was in the clear since he was driving the speed limit, but now he's been slapped with a felony speeding ticket. The really funny thing is that if he hadn't been eating the soup which caused him to weave, he could have been going 75 and no officer would have batted an eye (CHP policy is to give 10mph of leeway in most cases).
Laws (and Codes) need to take circumstances into consideration. About a year and a half ago my wife fell and hurt her leg bad enough that she couldn't walk, or even stand, and she was certainly in no condition to watch over our 1 year old daughter, so she dragged herself (literally) to the phone and called me at work. Was that a personal phone call which I recieved on Company time on a Company phone? Absolutely, but there's something seriously wrong with a Code of Ethics that can't accomodate that, and I certainly shouldn't be punished to the same extent as the guy who calls up his girlfriend just to chat, consistency be damned.
Philips and Thomson are one and the same. (I work for Thomson on a product which was until recently branded Philips)
In the Real World, such poor use of the English language reflects very poorly on the organization.
In the Real World, poor use of the English language doesn't matter one bit. Read some magazine ads, especially ads in magazines for parents and families. If grammar mattered even a little bit, a third of those would never get printed.
Perhaps you have an old beta version?
.NET
Doubtful. I don't own it myself, I was using the school lab machines. I don't know what version it was but I would be extremely surprised if my school rated a beta version. The admins were pretty prompt about applying updates, too.
I still say that behavior you're seeing is wrong, though. (Re)Dim myArray(4) should give an array of 4 elements, 0-based. Anything else breaks the compatability that is supposed to be the guiding princilpal of
Out of curiosity what do you get with this?
Dim myArray(4) As Integer
MsgBox("After Dim " & LBound(myArray) & Chr(32) & UBound(myArray))
Basically, I'm wondering if assigning a value to myArray(4) creates that element as if one used a ReDim. I have no way of checking it on my own, and I don't remember trying such a thing.
Dim or ReDim?
.NET framework, and in any C-style language declaring myArray(4) gives a 4 element array (0-3).
Sorry, but I know for a fact that Dim works the same as in C, meaning Dim MyArray(4) gives a 4 element array. This is the correct behavior, IMNSHO. ReDim MyArray(4) gives a 5 element array, basically the old VB 1-based array plus a 0 element since VB.NET arrays are 0-based.
In fact, I had to prove it in front of my class for a point on one of my tests.
If they released a fix in the last month that makes Dim act the same way then that's even more braindead, since the change to 0-based arrays was for compatability with the C-style languages that are part of the
So, VB.NET will be getting no appology from me.
My problem with VB is the same problem I have with all MS products: features are more important to the developers than stability or consistency. It's the little braindead things like (in VB.NET) 'Dim MyArray(4)' creates a 4 element array (0-3), but 'ReDim MyArray(4)' gives a 5 element array (0-4), that make me hate VB. There were similar stupid things in VB6, but thankfully it's been long enough since I've used it that I can't think of an example off the top of my head.
/.
This is only aggravated by the fact that VB seems to actively encourage unorganized source code, which makes VB source much more difficult to work with.
Anyway, those are my own dislikes about it. I hope that gives you some insight into the general feeling on
Well, I forcably switched my family over to Linux about a month ago when Windows had become too unstable to use and I didn't feel like going through the umpteen billion reboots required to get everything reinstalled. So far my wife's only question has been how to open a .zip of pictures a friend sent her, which was quickly and easily answered.
I've built, and continue to maintain, several computers for family and friends. The vast majority of them never install new applications, or new fonts, or change the desktop resolution, or add a new printer or scanner. When they want to do something like that, 9 times out of 10 they call me up, ask for advice on what to get, and then ask me to install it for them. Only one of the machines I support even has a personal finance app installed on it, and that's only because the person who owns it is running a business out of their home.
I'm sure these things are very important to you, but to most users they aren't. I'd bet that 50% of home Windows users could be switched to Linux and would hardly notice the difference.
may be trolling in this, but I've always wondered why this is an issue at all? Why hasn't someone taken the time to make the UI more User-Friendly?
It has been done. The font tool in the KDE Control Center works great for enabling AA and installing new fonts.
Oh, and whatever happened to unifying all these various hacks into one standardized way of doing things. How many ways are there to enable anti-aliased fonts? How many ways are there to make the text readable?
I have no idea how many ways there may be, but unifying them all into one tool is anathema to the OSS developement process. Every single OSS tool has competition, and I think that is vital to the continued health of the community.
Just a fr'instance.. what if some of the info in one of the "eyeballing" pieces was obviously leaked by a defense worker on the inside, in violation of federal law? Wouldnt you _want_ that person removed from the position of spewing information that really doesnt BELONG in the public domain?
What a ridiculous arguement. ALL information belongs in the public domain and is only 'leased' temporarily under copyright. If you believe otherwise you need to actually READ some copyright law and not just take Hillary Rosen's corruption of it at face value.
Information which is clasified under "National Security" is basically the same thing, but with different reasons. However, the governemnt is an agent of the people, and anyhting which 'belongs' to the government in reality belongs to the people INCLUDING ALL OF THE GOVERNMNENTS CLASSIFIED INFORMATION! One should always be extremely suspicious of anyone who tries to hide your own property from you. All too often classified information NEEDS to be brought into the public domain precisely because someone in the government doesn't want it to be.
A lot of the people here who are complaining about this are probably the same people who defend the guy who took pictures of the Spam King's house. You cannot have it both ways.
Absolutely I defend the guy who took pictures of the Spam Kings house. He did absolutely nothing wrong.
As for having it both ways; I really don't think it's OK to punch people in the face, but if you punch me in the face, your god damned right I'm going to punch you back, and no I don't think that makes me a hypocrite.
You cant have the freedoms granted by the government (laughable as they may be at times) without also following whatever rules make those freedoms a reality.
You have the relationship completely backwards. People have rights inherently, they are not granted by the government. The government has NO rights inherently, and is granted rights by the people that submit to its rule, namely the right to abridge CERTAIN of the peoples INHERENT rights in the interest of the common good.
A friend of mine owned a store a while back, and I once asked him why he wouldn't accept credit cards for some purchases. Basically, it costs the vendor money to process a credit card. In his case, he wouldn't take a card for a purchase under $10 because the processing fee ate up too much of his already thin margin, nd it was still uncomfortable for him to do so for purchases under $20.
That right there is the barrier that is preventing micropayments from working. You aren't going to charge me $.03 to look at a page when it costs you $.50 to process the transaction, and I'm not going to pay $.53 just to view one stinking page.
The only way I see micropayments working is someone like Visa buys into it and restructures fees to make micropayments viable, and I don't see that happening any time soon.
Seriously.
Since I quit tutoring when my daughter was born I've had several students come back to me for help, and the vast majority of that has been through email. It works just fine, and yes I do mean for math.
One of the problems with using Netmeeting boils down to the question of why these students can't make it to regular tutoring sessions? If it's because of time constraints, then this solution isn't going to help them much either. If it's a distance issue, like if your school has satalite campuses a significant distance away, then the school needs to put forth the effort to find tutors who live in that area and give them a space to work in, or they need to pay an existing tutor for their travel time to serve that campus. In short, every possible effort should be made to facilitate face-to-face contact between student and tutor. If it's an issue of students who just have occasional questions and don't need a regular tutor session, my school has a Math Lab which serves this purpose wonderfully. It's a room with several tables, tons of whiteboard space, and at least one tutor on duty at all times (7am-8pm, IIRC). At peak times we had 2 tutors on duty, although it was a great hangout place for the people who worked there so there were usually 3 or 4 tutors available if things got crazy. If one student was taking up too much time, we would suggest that they go next door to the tutor center and make a regular tutoring appointment. This was also a convenient place for study groups to meet. At satalite campuses we had a few open hours a week where a tutor would be available, but that really didn't work as well as the lab.
I have already stated that tutoring over email worked fine for me, but the devil is in the details. All of these students were people that I had an existing relationship with; some of them I had tutored face-to-face for 3 or 4 semesters and some are friends I have known for 10 years or more. In short, we know each other. I have a good sense of their learning style and the kinds of metaphors and such that will work for them, and they in turn have a good sense of my communication style, and likely already had or were familiar with my reference materials (the prof who ran the math lab made up some really great cheat sheets for algebra, geometry, trig, and calc that I always kept copies of for my students). When it comes down to it, face-to-face is always better.
Anyway, what I would suggest for your situation is usenet. Set up a newsgroup for your schools math department. If you have something like a math lab, set up a machine for the tutors to use to answer newsgroup questions, hopefully with some sort of automatic alert for new messages, and maybe also get some of the teachers to dedicate some time to answering questions there as well. A newsgroup could serve many of the situations I've listed above. If someone is assigned to check on it regularly it can be very responsive, while at the same time serving those who can't participate during normal hours. It also serves as a database of answers for someone who has a question which has already been answered, and threads are good for bringing together people who are having the same issues, sort of like a per-problem study group. It also makes it easy for others to answer questions, removing a great deal of the burden from the tutors, and provides a convenient forum for announcing events (math contests, math club meetings, etc) and organizing study groups.
Most importantly, though, it doesn't require a fast net connection. As nice as it may be to be able to use something like maple or mathematica over netmeeting, I think you'll be excluding a lot of people just through the connection requirements to make that work well.
Notice also that I said usenet and not http-based discussion group. While those are all well and good, and work well in some circumstances, they are slow over dialup and can be irritating to navigate. That sort of overhead is something you simply don't need.
And, the difference between using HFS and MFS (metadata filesystems) is that keywords are much more like how the human brain is wired.
That isn't true at all.
A room containing file cabinets containing drawers containing folders containing documents is a very "intuitive" paradigm, and one that has been in use by humans, with minor variations, for thousands of years. People fumble with this not because it's difficult to understand, but because they don't want to be bothered with putting forth the minimal effort to do it right, and they aren't going to put forth the effort to make an MFS work right either!
That's exactly my point. It will still take effort on the users part to set up the associations properly. Do you honestly think that someone who can't be bothered to do something as simple as give their file a sensible name and store it in a sensible location is going to do that?
So what if he's still looking at this from an HFS point of view? The problems are still exactly the same because the problem is with the user, not with the technology.
The user still has to assign attributes to their files, and anyone who isn't capable of saving their file under a sensible name in a sensible place is not going to assign sensible attributes either (or, indeed, any attributes at all).
If you install this magical dbfs (whatever it's called, it doesn't really matter since there are several of them in the works and none of them address the real problem) it's not going to magically go through all 7 of your drives and organize everything for you so you can find it. You will still have to go through and manually add appropriate attributes to every one of your 180G of files.
My point is, there isn't anything being done here that can't already be done using existing HFS tools; specifically ls, grep, and find. All you've done is substitute (not replace) attribute lists for filenames. Well, Whoop-a-dee-doo! I can just as easily duplicate your attribute lists with directories and symlinks, so nothing has actually been gained.