Not sure who or what a RAH is, but that's the stupidest quote I've read in a while. It begins with the epitome of rhetoric, which I classify as sweeping statements based on taking something out of context or gross misunderstanding.
The rights I assume that are in question are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The context missing from the quote is that society is not allowed to alienate the person from his rights. If he goes into the water and plays with sharks, it is his right to pursue happiness right into the shark's belly. The shark is not a part of society, it is an external danger. And if two people are in danger of starvation, you're not dealing with a society. That is pure survival, unless they come up with their own social contract.
Also, regarding Marxian value, I haven't studied Marx enough to know what the point is supposed to be here, but the cook with higher quality output has probably done more work. Either in studying or practice or being an apprentice, in order to be able to prepare food of a higher quality. So their value is related to work. Not necessarily effort, but if nothing else then time spent. A cook doing manual labor still has value, even though it is unused, so the common-sense definition presented doesn't make any more sense than Marx. Take that manual laborer out and give him some equipment and the value returns, as if by magic? No, it was always there.
They *are* paid from taxes. City cops and city firefighters paid from city taxes. These people don't live in the city and didn't pay the taxes.
Your slippery slope argument doesn't make sense. No person would stand around and watch a crime in progress, and despite some sentiment to the contrary cops are people too. Regardless of jurisdiction, a cop would probably do the right thing if someone's life or well-being were clearly in jeopardy.
Showing up to a fire and the family is safely outside, there is no imminent danger and no reason to help someone who specifically refused to pay the taxes.
It was optional for this family becuase they lived outside the city, making it not the city's problem. Same as if I called San Diego fire department from Idaho. Not their problem.
Funny, a slippery slope argument disguised as a fake hijacked account.
Ethanol-fueled (1125189) is not a bot, does not seem to have a history of spamming, and thus is pretty much irrelevant to the discussion. If eldavojohn were to actually do this, Ethan Pearsall from Santa Rosa California would be able to accuse eldavojohn of hacking, which might be illegal where eldavojohn lives. It would be taken as seriously as the locale takes unauthroized computer access.
In the case of Random Digilante, any complaint would not be taken seriously once the contents of the account were revealed. In the USA, Can-Spam would probably get the plaintiff thrown in jail. Outside of the USA, it would probably just be dismissed.
Slippery slope arguments suggest that once we draw a line, it moves very easily. With the current laws in place, it can't move.
Alan Turing and Oscar Wilde had more to fear from their society than from knowledge and facts getting out. You might as well have said that the Salem women accused of witchcraft would have appreciated the advice.
The context of the question, at least as far as I can see, was people treating Google as a friend, telling it secrets and trusting it. He backed up a little and said the famous quote "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." He went on to clarify that if you do need this privacy, you need to know that the information will be retained, and is subject to governmnet sniffing.
His statement in context, and the whole answer to the question instead of a soundbite, can be interpreted as "If you need more privacy than Google can provide, don't use Google." I see his comment in an holistic sense as a simple rephrasing of "Don't do the crime if you don't want the time." Or, if you don't want to get caught, don't do it. Taken in context, he was talking more about the kind of things that end up on Failbook than anything else.
Still, I think he's right. *Maybe* you shouldn't be doing it in the first place, and *maybe* you should try to change society's attitudes towards what you're doing so you're accepted, and *maybe* you should do it as civil disobedience.
I agree, but it gets the issue in the news. Eventually people start asking why they keep doing this, and knowledgeable people should be able to reply with decent, neutral information about copyright problems, enforcement by barratry, settlement letters and why they put the little guy at risk. Add on things like these are the same companies responsible for DRM (can't copy your music where you want to) and levies on blank media used for non-infringing purposes (backup, pictures, your own legally purchased CDs), and it's a great public-relations opportunity.
Even worse, RIAA settlement money goes back into the RIAA coffers, not to the artists. RIAA started this, anyone else now is copyright troll and doesn't even pretend to defend the artists. This is a business model, not copyright enforcement.
The tough part is, the people leading the charge leave it up to other people to explain their actions.
Re:Autotools do not need a book
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In most cases, the MSVS project files are a courtesy for the people who are probably going to be using MSVS. I remember piles of 1990's open-source projects which ran on Windows, and everyone was asking for the project files. What is this other compiler you speak of - Cygwin isn't a compiler it's a fake unix environment, you can't make a Windows program without MSVS they say. Plus, whomever is doing the Windows port probably uses MSVS anyway.
For a true open-source solution, they would provide the command-line build. That way people can use the free version of msvs if they want. But for debugging and patching, and especially if I'm porting, I want to use MSVS because it's what I'm familiar with and it works.
Before.NET, I used to call MSVS the only decent software MS made, with SQL a close second. Not that they were perfect, but they were developed for coders by coders. Then it took 5 years for MSVS.Net to mature, and it's only getting better. But it's the standard, and the guy porting probably uses it, so why not include it.
I've been looking at that picture, I don't see the lights. If someone stopped in front of me, jumped out of the car, and pulled a gun, I really don't think I would have had time for a hidden object game. I watched the video, and would have picked up on the lights and called them out on it, but nope I don't see it. I just watched the video, still don't see it.
Where are the lights?
I didn't have sound on - a helmet would cause directional problems so it would be plausible to understand that a police car was chasing this maniac. YT video doesen't have 3D sound, so it's kind of hard to tell.
Plus there's a real cop car right behind the guy once he backs up and realizes what's happening. Maybe that's where the siren is coming from, and the lights you see are the reflection?
Seriously, I don't see it. He was speeding and deserved a ticket, no question. The wiretap charge was just intimidation for recording the unnecessary show of force.
No it isn't. Then the little guy can't afford protecting copyright. The easy way to protect GPL, for example, requires getting in contact with the infringer and educating them, and getting them to simply comply with the license. While some organizations will help with certain code, DIY types may not be able to get even that far.
Plus, this encourages providers to turn it into a revenue stream when other opportunities for growth dry up and they are simply maintaining obscene profits instead of growing them.
Those hundred people would have to be online, logged in to facebook, and watching for updates instead of being angry when a notification interrupts their Farmville time. A phone rings, that's an alert. How long does it take for your firends to get the message?
I would say a phone tree would win given randomized conditions or multiple trials. A 30-second phone call, including dialing, would get out in 4 minutes. I'm assuming you're calling cell phones, not answering machines. The only difference is that repeat work is needed on the part of interested people. A single person calling 50 people would be inefficient, a phone tree would be much more efficient, and posting on FB would take less time as measured in work but delivery would probably take more time in duration.
I think FB has its uses, but a phone tree is useful for certain situations where FB isn't, and you're suggesting that FB is a perfect replacement. Use the tool that's right for the job. Need a time-critical update? Phone tree. Need a low-priority update? FB is preferred for the job because if you call me to tell me you need an onion for your rabbit or whatever Farmville is all about I'm going to drive to your house and punch you in the face.
ExpertSexChange also shows the results if you click from google. I think it tries to hide them by using a script to set things hidden, but I have NoScript. So if I get a link to a page, I put it in google, click from there to pick up the referrer, and with noscript I scroll down to the bottom past 3/4 of the page and everything's there.
I noticed recently that they changed their terms of use. You grant them an unlimited license to use your content, and also appoint them as a copyright enforcement agent. So every comment has a "this is copyrighted, pay us to be able to copy things" notice attached. And if that comment appears elsewhere they will attempt a takedown.
But what if you post GPL code? It's against the terms of use, since the user has to ensure they own the copyright to things they post, or it's free to use. What if you, who owns the copyright, post the same response on multiple sites? ExpertSexChange will, acting on your explicit agreement, ask the other site to take it down, despite it being your content posted by you.
Now, I know what they're doing, and they are probably only going to stop sites that bulk copy answers instead of one response. But as of right now, you can't re-post anything from MSDN, or snippets from wikipedia, or GPL code, or damn near anything else unless you compose it on the spot. I know what they're trying to do, but it's going to go downhill.
HA HA HA woooooo, good one. You sound like one of those abstinence-only fundies. Seriously, though, using virtual machines is the only option. Build your image and zip/rar/whatever it. Then you script it so the IE icon launches the VM, with your browser of choice set to autorun, and when the app exits it unzips the image over the VM you just used. Do this post-use so startup time is only marginally slow.
You'd have to have a web-based attack that could break the browser, the operating system, AND the hardware (aka the VM software) in order to store anything locally.
What about downloads? Get the link, copy and paste to wget locally. Or better yet wait till you're at work or a friend's house to download things. Or better still don't download anything, just read the docs in the VM and write a clone yourself locally. It's the only way to be sure.
Seriously, everything is a form and everything gets posted back to the server. It even has checks to make sure the user didn't fiddle with the form data before re-posting it. It can do a basic sanity check, or it can do a more secure check if you like, if you're doing secure type stuff.
The problem with form fields is it's trivial for the user to edit it. A little knowledge is all that's required. So you store the user's name somewhere, the user changes the value, now they're logged in as someone else. So you put in there a single random identifier instead. Makes more sense to do it like ASP.NET, with cookieless state. It sends you a GUID type session cookie, and stores everything related to it on the server. Just a value appended to the querystring. And that seems to be the logicial conclusion to this - but the querystring can be sniffed and hijacked. Unless you're using SSL for everything, because the HTTP header (along with cookies) is encrypted. Which you should be doing in the first place.
And then we're back to the problem with history - if it's in the URL, CSS or other history sniffers can get your login credentials or session values from the browser and send them to a remote server, where they are used for evil.
Your best protection is HTTPONLY cookies, unfortunately, and if you can set up a site which posts back everything (like ASP.NET) and verifies it, that might be a decent alternative. But not ideal.
Technically correct, but gp was talking about the context of buying a DRM-encumbered game. So ownership is already there. You buy it, play for a few years, then you get the source. You can rebuild it without DRM, or someone else will. And it will come with a giant "You have to own the original game files" disclaimer. From that perspective, DRM works as it should. A temporary monopoly.
This benefits people who legally own the game but have an encumbered copy. If you don't own the game, you are not affected by the DRM, so there is no solution to be provided. You wait until the copyright expires like everyone else does for every other bit of work. If you are affected, ID provides a reasonable remedy, and in a reasonable time frame, above and beyond what they are required to provide.
That requirement btw is public domain status after a limited time. This is an intermediate step where the owner can make changes or improvements, like fixing the legs on a wobbly table or sawing off a third of it to fit it in a new space. If you aren't affected, the copyright status of the game files affects you as much as if you didn't own the table - which is to say not at all, positively or negatively.
It's more likely a quick and dirty IP filter hack. Maybe they can't get the server admin on the phone, and the app guys are trying to do what they can until the server admin wakes up. Or figures out how to run a server, either way it's all they can do.
Do you remember the story about peer review being highly sensitive to poor refereeing? It was only a few days ago, on this very website. Maybe this is one of those great experiments with an unsupported conclusion and will get peer-reviewed into the bin?
"A new study described at Physicsworld.com claims that a small percentage of shoddy or self-interested referees can have a drastic effect on published article quality. The research shows that article quality can drop as much as one standard deviation when just 10% of referees do not behave 'correctly.' At high levels of self-serving or random behavior, 'the peer-review system will not perform much better than by accepting papers by throwing (an unbiased) coin.' The model also includes calculations for 'friendship networks' (nepotism) between authors and reviewers. The original paper, by a pair of complex systems researchers, is available at arXiv.org. No word on when we can expect it to be peer reviewed."
It's because science says one thing one day, and weeks later says the opposite. Also, scientists argue among themselves about what the conclusion should be.
I can't find the original article off hand, but approximately 33 percent of research turns out to be wrong, according to one study. This article doesn't put a number on it, but estimates a lot higher.
Bottom line, journalism makes science look like a bunch of bumbling clowns because it can't summarize research correctly, and the scientists sometimes do a bad enough job themselves that they don't need help bungling the conclusion. I have this argument all the time with people who don't understand how the scientific method works, and the difference between internet news and peer-reviewed journals.
(if it's blocked put the URL in google and click from there).
Finally, regarding gp post, you seem overly sensitive. I didn't read that as a "here's the obvious, maybe that explains it?" post. But maybe I give people more credit than they deserve.
When it first came out, the.NET 1.0, 1.1, and 2.0 documentation was little more than the output of the Doxygen knock-off Sandcastle. Probably a little souped-up internally. But it was a vague definition of each function, and the parameters.
There was nothing describing when you might want to use each of the 5 or more different ways to accomplish the same thing. There were no instructions on how to properly ensure a database connection was closed. They came out with DAAB http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff649538.aspx to solve that - basically instead of best-practive and education, it's copy and paste this.
It took about 8 years for the documentation to catch up, and now it's fairly decent. But when I'm writing code and have a question, Google gets me to a programming site first, second option is a social.microfot.com website where the question is asked but notsatisfactorily answered, third option is random abandoned blog postings. If I know what I'm looking for, I can use google with "site:microsoft.com" or "site:msdn.microsoft.com" because the MSDN search is terrible (even after having improved, it's still terrible).
Most of the truly useful information that should be in the documentation/reference is posted on the product team blog. It's by design, because they want you to buy the book, published by Microsoft Press.
How many times do you see mountains of undocumented, obfuscated, hacked code? Most of the open code I've seen is not obfuscated and not hacked unless you count compiler-specific #ifdef type workarounds. Using something like Doxygen, you can find where the important bits are fairly easily, and I thoroughly enjoy an IDE that lets you open a project and see where things are defined or referenced. Or just build it and step through for a few minutes to see where things start, and where the code runs.
I learned coding by reading code, so I have no problems with the lack of documentation - it gets in my way and usually gets deleted.
The only problem I have with open code is when it is either hacked, which is rare, or poorly organized. I actually tried to fix a bug in Firefox and gave up, the code was so poorly laid out. Copied code where parts are updated and others are not, with no comment as to the date or reason something changed, so I'd have to dig through code history to figure out what was right. And dig through the overly complicated build to see which files are even used. And the release build system was way too complicated, and mixed in with the rest of the code base. This sort of organization, or lack of really, is not acceptable in any project.
The only consistent issue (not a problem with the code as above) I have had is when the source doesn't build out-of-the-box. If it says the Windows version was compiled with the same compiler I have, I should be able to download and build. I even tolerate "get this version of this library and put it in this folder." But when it says something like "requires libpng" with no version and no info on where to put it, and the build breaks, and I have to figure it out only to find they used an old, incompatible version, that pisses me off. That is incompetence. It is also becoming less common. If you can't build it, it's not open source to me.
Your negativity is not funny, not insightful, and definitely not helping.
When the copyright expires, and it will, I should not have to spend time cracking a protection scheme in order to access public domain works. Creators have a temporary monopoly in exchange for agreeing to give it to the public at some time.
At the time of creation, the creator has the right to copy the work, or allow copying, and I do not. At the time of expiration, the right to copy passes from the creator's hands into mine. There should be no lock which prevents me from exercising my fully legal right at that time.
If you're feeling like adding something about effectively perpetual copyright due to extension, that's fine, but know that copyrights at least in USA are constitutionally limited. It might be a thousand or a million years, but when that time comes the Constitution says it's public domain.
I have seen arguments that, while public domain status is guaranteed there is no requirement that the work be accessible. That might be true. However, I can easily see a court battle which establishes that locking away expired works is abuse of copyright. Unfortunately we won't be able to have that established for 100 years, until someone shows actual harm, and therefore standing to sue. Ultimately, I believe it will be illegal to lock away content due to agreeing upon entering the copyright protection agreement one also agrees to its public domain status once expired. Either that, or the Library of Congress exemptions will water down DRM breaking enough that it's irrelevant. That has already begun.
It's not like a company can claim they were surprised that copyright is limited. Until the US constitution is changed, the *IAA have to accept that their works will be public domain at some point.
Absolutely yes, without question. All of the stupid things I hate about Vista, I could fix by patching and recompiling instead of disassembling, binary patching, and re-doing the whole thing when an unrelated security vulnerability comes through and replaces my patched binary.
Compatibility is a big plus, bugs are a big minus, but I spent enough of my life figuring it out because Linux was not ready. At this point I prefer to deal with Windows problems that I mostly understand rather than learn how to fix Linux problems from next-to-nothing.
Right now, on XP, I get a BSOD in the Battery Class (battc.sys or cmbatt.sys) when the notebook overheats. I can understand random crashes on overheating, but a crash in exactly the same place means the driver is bad. As many crash reports as I've submitted, I'd figure they would have fixed it. When the hardware does something unexpected, you need to handle it. Surely the battery, when running on AC power, is not a vital system that requires a system halt? But to XP it is. Unless I have my patch.
Every time someone says "Dammit, Windows, why don't you..." that can be fixed, with the source. Maybe the user can't, most users can't. Just having the source would help developers immensely, because of the amount of code reuse involved. The functino fails and returns an error code, the caller translates that into a success/fail BOOL, the caller reports one of its app-defined errors, and you get messages like "Cannot open clipboard" when the real error is a locked Excel cell. This helps nobody, and having the source would let many people fix their own problems instead of wasting the afternoon trolling google trying to find a solution.
You're kinda stretching here, confusing two usages. Which language was your first language? The answer in your post is a prepositional phrase, not a sentence. And if there is any implied subject it is because there is a direct question and context in which the subject is unambiguous. It is acceptable informal grammar, but not preferred.
Languages such as Japanese and Spanish have the implied subject rule for discrete sentences without any other context. "Walking to the subway" is a complete sentence which conveys "I am walking to the subway." In English that assumption does not exist without aditional context, and it is a fragment. You seem to have provided an example with context to prove a point about context-free grammar.
"Fixed that for you" does not by itself say who fixed it. The poster's sister might have corrected it, and yelled at the poster until he posted her correction. We know the poster, or at least the account the poster used, not the fixer. Poster could have pasted it into Google, which then replied with "Did you mean....?" with the corrected text, and Google fixed it. You can argue that the post included context, as in the person who posted was also the fixer. But that doesn't support your primary assertion. Outside of context, if you do not make it obvious through context that you are talking about your self, you can't invoke the "when talking about yourself" rule. People have to know you're talking about yourself first. Other languages do this, English does not.
"Left my wallet in El Segundo," is an example. Do you think the speaker left her wallet in El Segundo? You might think it's a reference to the song "I Left my wallet in El Segundo." Or if you're watching The Ladykillers, it becomes obvious later that Mrs. Munson is talking about that song, but The Sheriff does not know who left their wallet in El Segundo. Being unfamiliar with the song, a viewer might think that Mrs. Munson left her wallet, or that a neighborhood boy left her wallet. The context is intentionally ambiguous, a situation which could not have happened unless you were dead wrong about the implied self rule.
Vintermann is correct. And "There Fixed That For Ya!" was tongue in cheek, emphasizing the use of a trite phrase or meme.
I'm really not seeing this. If someone knows that there are bug fixes Ubuntu has not submitted, why can't they go download and diff the source? You say it takes time - isn't it faster to let SVN or whatever SCM tool find the differences for you, than to hunt bugs yourself? You can decide what to to include, but now you have a clear idea of the problem location and the fix needed.
But if they didn't do proper formatting, or go through proper channels - you don't want that fix. So why would you want Ubuntu to submit something that will get rejected? Is it better to say that some people want Ubuntu to fix their code, but to do it the way the maintainer would do it, and only fix things that need fixing, not cosmetic changes?
So then we have the question of licensing. If the source code is under a "make changes all you want but make the changes under the same license" license, and Ubuntu is following that... why not switch to a "submit all patches back to us" license? I think I know - no one wants to be swamped by irrelevant patches. So do a "submit bug fixes back to us" license. How will that work?
Again, if I'm the maintainer and I know Ubuntu has bug fixes, I'm going to download the code, overlay it over mine, see what they did, and then fix their formatting or style or whatever to my liking. Hopefully they will take the hint and use my patch instead of theirs next time they sync. But if I have to change anything about their diff, then I didn't want them to send it to me like that in the first place.
This process has rules, everyone is following them. Except it seems the package maintainers want it done their way or not at all. Well then change the license, simple fix. Until then you made it this way so live with it.
What am I missing here? It takes time? Yeah, it does take time to maintain a package. You can take random patch submissions from people, or you can take a completely functional package that Ubuntu spent a lot of time testing. Maybe you'll find they are doing things better than you are, and you can change your style to match. Or you can call the Ubuntu guy names on slashdot for not putting brackets on their own lines like everyone knows you do. Or for doing that if you're that way.
"Fix my code, my way, and hand it to me, or I will criticise you." Those are the rules, no?
Every time a news article says there's a flaw in Acrobat Reader and that everyone is vulnerable, it reinforces the idea that everyone uses Acrobat and there is no other option.
No such thing as bad publicity, bandwagon propaganda, and all that. They might as well put flaws in on purpose for the free monthly advertising. All it takes is a tiny portion of flaws to appear in Foxit, which does happen sometimes, and Adobe gets to claim that no reader is flaw-free.
Slashdot Mirror
Not sure who or what a RAH is, but that's the stupidest quote I've read in a while. It begins with the epitome of rhetoric, which I classify as sweeping statements based on taking something out of context or gross misunderstanding.
The rights I assume that are in question are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The context missing from the quote is that society is not allowed to alienate the person from his rights. If he goes into the water and plays with sharks, it is his right to pursue happiness right into the shark's belly. The shark is not a part of society, it is an external danger. And if two people are in danger of starvation, you're not dealing with a society. That is pure survival, unless they come up with their own social contract.
Also, regarding Marxian value, I haven't studied Marx enough to know what the point is supposed to be here, but the cook with higher quality output has probably done more work. Either in studying or practice or being an apprentice, in order to be able to prepare food of a higher quality. So their value is related to work. Not necessarily effort, but if nothing else then time spent. A cook doing manual labor still has value, even though it is unused, so the common-sense definition presented doesn't make any more sense than Marx. Take that manual laborer out and give him some equipment and the value returns, as if by magic? No, it was always there.
They *are* paid from taxes. City cops and city firefighters paid from city taxes. These people don't live in the city and didn't pay the taxes.
Your slippery slope argument doesn't make sense. No person would stand around and watch a crime in progress, and despite some sentiment to the contrary cops are people too. Regardless of jurisdiction, a cop would probably do the right thing if someone's life or well-being were clearly in jeopardy.
Showing up to a fire and the family is safely outside, there is no imminent danger and no reason to help someone who specifically refused to pay the taxes.
It was optional for this family becuase they lived outside the city, making it not the city's problem. Same as if I called San Diego fire department from Idaho. Not their problem.
Funny, a slippery slope argument disguised as a fake hijacked account.
Ethanol-fueled (1125189) is not a bot, does not seem to have a history of spamming, and thus is pretty much irrelevant to the discussion. If eldavojohn were to actually do this, Ethan Pearsall from Santa Rosa California would be able to accuse eldavojohn of hacking, which might be illegal where eldavojohn lives. It would be taken as seriously as the locale takes unauthroized computer access.
In the case of Random Digilante, any complaint would not be taken seriously once the contents of the account were revealed. In the USA, Can-Spam would probably get the plaintiff thrown in jail. Outside of the USA, it would probably just be dismissed.
Slippery slope arguments suggest that once we draw a line, it moves very easily. With the current laws in place, it can't move.
How do you distinguish the two? The browser is after all either the vector or the thing that brings the payload in.
It doesn't matter if the PDF vulnerability is in the plugin or the PDF is saved and then loaded, it probably came through the browser.
So I guess you can say the difference is whether someone is using Outlook too?
Alan Turing and Oscar Wilde had more to fear from their society than from knowledge and facts getting out. You might as well have said that the Salem women accused of witchcraft would have appreciated the advice.
The context of the question, at least as far as I can see, was people treating Google as a friend, telling it secrets and trusting it. He backed up a little and said the famous quote "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." He went on to clarify that if you do need this privacy, you need to know that the information will be retained, and is subject to governmnet sniffing.
His statement in context, and the whole answer to the question instead of a soundbite, can be interpreted as "If you need more privacy than Google can provide, don't use Google." I see his comment in an holistic sense as a simple rephrasing of "Don't do the crime if you don't want the time." Or, if you don't want to get caught, don't do it. Taken in context, he was talking more about the kind of things that end up on Failbook than anything else.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6e7wfDHzew
Still, I think he's right. *Maybe* you shouldn't be doing it in the first place, and *maybe* you should try to change society's attitudes towards what you're doing so you're accepted, and *maybe* you should do it as civil disobedience.
I agree, but it gets the issue in the news. Eventually people start asking why they keep doing this, and knowledgeable people should be able to reply with decent, neutral information about copyright problems, enforcement by barratry, settlement letters and why they put the little guy at risk. Add on things like these are the same companies responsible for DRM (can't copy your music where you want to) and levies on blank media used for non-infringing purposes (backup, pictures, your own legally purchased CDs), and it's a great public-relations opportunity.
Even worse, RIAA settlement money goes back into the RIAA coffers, not to the artists. RIAA started this, anyone else now is copyright troll and doesn't even pretend to defend the artists. This is a business model, not copyright enforcement.
The tough part is, the people leading the charge leave it up to other people to explain their actions.
In most cases, the MSVS project files are a courtesy for the people who are probably going to be using MSVS. I remember piles of 1990's open-source projects which ran on Windows, and everyone was asking for the project files. What is this other compiler you speak of - Cygwin isn't a compiler it's a fake unix environment, you can't make a Windows program without MSVS they say. Plus, whomever is doing the Windows port probably uses MSVS anyway.
For a true open-source solution, they would provide the command-line build. That way people can use the free version of msvs if they want. But for debugging and patching, and especially if I'm porting, I want to use MSVS because it's what I'm familiar with and it works.
Before .NET, I used to call MSVS the only decent software MS made, with SQL a close second. Not that they were perfect, but they were developed for coders by coders. Then it took 5 years for MSVS .Net to mature, and it's only getting better. But it's the standard, and the guy porting probably uses it, so why not include it.
I've been looking at that picture, I don't see the lights. If someone stopped in front of me, jumped out of the car, and pulled a gun, I really don't think I would have had time for a hidden object game. I watched the video, and would have picked up on the lights and called them out on it, but nope I don't see it. I just watched the video, still don't see it.
Where are the lights?
I didn't have sound on - a helmet would cause directional problems so it would be plausible to understand that a police car was chasing this maniac. YT video doesen't have 3D sound, so it's kind of hard to tell.
Plus there's a real cop car right behind the guy once he backs up and realizes what's happening. Maybe that's where the siren is coming from, and the lights you see are the reflection?
Seriously, I don't see it. He was speeding and deserved a ticket, no question. The wiretap charge was just intimidation for recording the unnecessary show of force.
No it isn't. Then the little guy can't afford protecting copyright. The easy way to protect GPL, for example, requires getting in contact with the infringer and educating them, and getting them to simply comply with the license. While some organizations will help with certain code, DIY types may not be able to get even that far.
Plus, this encourages providers to turn it into a revenue stream when other opportunities for growth dry up and they are simply maintaining obscene profits instead of growing them.
It's like a dog chasing its tail. Until it is self-aware enough to realize it can already read mail, it will keep growing.
Those hundred people would have to be online, logged in to facebook, and watching for updates instead of being angry when a notification interrupts their Farmville time. A phone rings, that's an alert. How long does it take for your firends to get the message?
I would say a phone tree would win given randomized conditions or multiple trials. A 30-second phone call, including dialing, would get out in 4 minutes. I'm assuming you're calling cell phones, not answering machines. The only difference is that repeat work is needed on the part of interested people. A single person calling 50 people would be inefficient, a phone tree would be much more efficient, and posting on FB would take less time as measured in work but delivery would probably take more time in duration.
I think FB has its uses, but a phone tree is useful for certain situations where FB isn't, and you're suggesting that FB is a perfect replacement. Use the tool that's right for the job. Need a time-critical update? Phone tree. Need a low-priority update? FB is preferred for the job because if you call me to tell me you need an onion for your rabbit or whatever Farmville is all about I'm going to drive to your house and punch you in the face.
ExpertSexChange also shows the results if you click from google. I think it tries to hide them by using a script to set things hidden, but I have NoScript. So if I get a link to a page, I put it in google, click from there to pick up the referrer, and with noscript I scroll down to the bottom past 3/4 of the page and everything's there.
I noticed recently that they changed their terms of use. You grant them an unlimited license to use your content, and also appoint them as a copyright enforcement agent. So every comment has a "this is copyrighted, pay us to be able to copy things" notice attached. And if that comment appears elsewhere they will attempt a takedown.
But what if you post GPL code? It's against the terms of use, since the user has to ensure they own the copyright to things they post, or it's free to use. What if you, who owns the copyright, post the same response on multiple sites? ExpertSexChange will, acting on your explicit agreement, ask the other site to take it down, despite it being your content posted by you.
Now, I know what they're doing, and they are probably only going to stop sites that bulk copy answers instead of one response. But as of right now, you can't re-post anything from MSDN, or snippets from wikipedia, or GPL code, or damn near anything else unless you compose it on the spot. I know what they're trying to do, but it's going to go downhill.
HA HA HA woooooo, good one. You sound like one of those abstinence-only fundies. Seriously, though, using virtual machines is the only option. Build your image and zip/rar/whatever it. Then you script it so the IE icon launches the VM, with your browser of choice set to autorun, and when the app exits it unzips the image over the VM you just used. Do this post-use so startup time is only marginally slow.
You'd have to have a web-based attack that could break the browser, the operating system, AND the hardware (aka the VM software) in order to store anything locally.
What about downloads? Get the link, copy and paste to wget locally. Or better yet wait till you're at work or a friend's house to download things. Or better still don't download anything, just read the docs in the VM and write a clone yourself locally. It's the only way to be sure.
It's not, but we have a name for it: ASP.NET
Seriously, everything is a form and everything gets posted back to the server. It even has checks to make sure the user didn't fiddle with the form data before re-posting it. It can do a basic sanity check, or it can do a more secure check if you like, if you're doing secure type stuff.
The problem with form fields is it's trivial for the user to edit it. A little knowledge is all that's required. So you store the user's name somewhere, the user changes the value, now they're logged in as someone else. So you put in there a single random identifier instead. Makes more sense to do it like ASP.NET, with cookieless state. It sends you a GUID type session cookie, and stores everything related to it on the server. Just a value appended to the querystring. And that seems to be the logicial conclusion to this - but the querystring can be sniffed and hijacked. Unless you're using SSL for everything, because the HTTP header (along with cookies) is encrypted. Which you should be doing in the first place.
And then we're back to the problem with history - if it's in the URL, CSS or other history sniffers can get your login credentials or session values from the browser and send them to a remote server, where they are used for evil.
Your best protection is HTTPONLY cookies, unfortunately, and if you can set up a site which posts back everything (like ASP.NET) and verifies it, that might be a decent alternative. But not ideal.
Technically correct, but gp was talking about the context of buying a DRM-encumbered game. So ownership is already there. You buy it, play for a few years, then you get the source. You can rebuild it without DRM, or someone else will. And it will come with a giant "You have to own the original game files" disclaimer. From that perspective, DRM works as it should. A temporary monopoly.
This benefits people who legally own the game but have an encumbered copy. If you don't own the game, you are not affected by the DRM, so there is no solution to be provided. You wait until the copyright expires like everyone else does for every other bit of work. If you are affected, ID provides a reasonable remedy, and in a reasonable time frame, above and beyond what they are required to provide.
That requirement btw is public domain status after a limited time. This is an intermediate step where the owner can make changes or improvements, like fixing the legs on a wobbly table or sawing off a third of it to fit it in a new space. If you aren't affected, the copyright status of the game files affects you as much as if you didn't own the table - which is to say not at all, positively or negatively.
It's more likely a quick and dirty IP filter hack. Maybe they can't get the server admin on the phone, and the app guys are trying to do what they can until the server admin wakes up. Or figures out how to run a server, either way it's all they can do.
Do you remember the story about peer review being highly sensitive to poor refereeing? It was only a few days ago, on this very website. Maybe this is one of those great experiments with an unsupported conclusion and will get peer-reviewed into the bin?
http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/09/17/1416201/Peer-Review-Highly-Sensitive-To-Poor-Refereeing
"A new study described at Physicsworld.com claims that a small percentage of shoddy or self-interested referees can have a drastic effect on published article quality. The research shows that article quality can drop as much as one standard deviation when just 10% of referees do not behave 'correctly.' At high levels of self-serving or random behavior, 'the peer-review system will not perform much better than by accepting papers by throwing (an unbiased) coin.' The model also includes calculations for 'friendship networks' (nepotism) between authors and reviewers. The original paper, by a pair of complex systems researchers, is available at arXiv.org. No word on when we can expect it to be peer reviewed."
It's because science says one thing one day, and weeks later says the opposite. Also, scientists argue among themselves about what the conclusion should be.
I can't find the original article off hand, but approximately 33 percent of research turns out to be wrong, according to one study. This article doesn't put a number on it, but estimates a lot higher.
Bottom line, journalism makes science look like a bunch of bumbling clowns because it can't summarize research correctly, and the scientists sometimes do a bad enough job themselves that they don't need help bungling the conclusion. I have this argument all the time with people who don't understand how the scientific method works, and the difference between internet news and peer-reviewed journals.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118972683557627104.html
(if it's blocked put the URL in google and click from there).
Finally, regarding gp post, you seem overly sensitive. I didn't read that as a "here's the obvious, maybe that explains it?" post. But maybe I give people more credit than they deserve.
Does that help you understand?
When it first came out, the .NET 1.0, 1.1, and 2.0 documentation was little more than the output of the Doxygen knock-off Sandcastle. Probably a little souped-up internally. But it was a vague definition of each function, and the parameters.
There was nothing describing when you might want to use each of the 5 or more different ways to accomplish the same thing. There were no instructions on how to properly ensure a database connection was closed. They came out with DAAB http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff649538.aspx to solve that - basically instead of best-practive and education, it's copy and paste this.
It took about 8 years for the documentation to catch up, and now it's fairly decent. But when I'm writing code and have a question, Google gets me to a programming site first, second option is a social.microfot.com website where the question is asked but notsatisfactorily answered, third option is random abandoned blog postings. If I know what I'm looking for, I can use google with "site:microsoft.com" or "site:msdn.microsoft.com" because the MSDN search is terrible (even after having improved, it's still terrible).
Most of the truly useful information that should be in the documentation/reference is posted on the product team blog. It's by design, because they want you to buy the book, published by Microsoft Press.
How many times do you see mountains of undocumented, obfuscated, hacked code? Most of the open code I've seen is not obfuscated and not hacked unless you count compiler-specific #ifdef type workarounds. Using something like Doxygen, you can find where the important bits are fairly easily, and I thoroughly enjoy an IDE that lets you open a project and see where things are defined or referenced. Or just build it and step through for a few minutes to see where things start, and where the code runs.
I learned coding by reading code, so I have no problems with the lack of documentation - it gets in my way and usually gets deleted.
The only problem I have with open code is when it is either hacked, which is rare, or poorly organized. I actually tried to fix a bug in Firefox and gave up, the code was so poorly laid out. Copied code where parts are updated and others are not, with no comment as to the date or reason something changed, so I'd have to dig through code history to figure out what was right. And dig through the overly complicated build to see which files are even used. And the release build system was way too complicated, and mixed in with the rest of the code base. This sort of organization, or lack of really, is not acceptable in any project.
The only consistent issue (not a problem with the code as above) I have had is when the source doesn't build out-of-the-box. If it says the Windows version was compiled with the same compiler I have, I should be able to download and build. I even tolerate "get this version of this library and put it in this folder." But when it says something like "requires libpng" with no version and no info on where to put it, and the build breaks, and I have to figure it out only to find they used an old, incompatible version, that pisses me off. That is incompetence. It is also becoming less common. If you can't build it, it's not open source to me.
Your negativity is not funny, not insightful, and definitely not helping.
When the copyright expires, and it will, I should not have to spend time cracking a protection scheme in order to access public domain works. Creators have a temporary monopoly in exchange for agreeing to give it to the public at some time.
At the time of creation, the creator has the right to copy the work, or allow copying, and I do not. At the time of expiration, the right to copy passes from the creator's hands into mine. There should be no lock which prevents me from exercising my fully legal right at that time.
If you're feeling like adding something about effectively perpetual copyright due to extension, that's fine, but know that copyrights at least in USA are constitutionally limited. It might be a thousand or a million years, but when that time comes the Constitution says it's public domain.
I have seen arguments that, while public domain status is guaranteed there is no requirement that the work be accessible. That might be true. However, I can easily see a court battle which establishes that locking away expired works is abuse of copyright. Unfortunately we won't be able to have that established for 100 years, until someone shows actual harm, and therefore standing to sue. Ultimately, I believe it will be illegal to lock away content due to agreeing upon entering the copyright protection agreement one also agrees to its public domain status once expired. Either that, or the Library of Congress exemptions will water down DRM breaking enough that it's irrelevant. That has already begun.
It's not like a company can claim they were surprised that copyright is limited. Until the US constitution is changed, the *IAA have to accept that their works will be public domain at some point.
Absolutely yes, without question. All of the stupid things I hate about Vista, I could fix by patching and recompiling instead of disassembling, binary patching, and re-doing the whole thing when an unrelated security vulnerability comes through and replaces my patched binary.
Compatibility is a big plus, bugs are a big minus, but I spent enough of my life figuring it out because Linux was not ready. At this point I prefer to deal with Windows problems that I mostly understand rather than learn how to fix Linux problems from next-to-nothing.
Right now, on XP, I get a BSOD in the Battery Class (battc.sys or cmbatt.sys) when the notebook overheats. I can understand random crashes on overheating, but a crash in exactly the same place means the driver is bad. As many crash reports as I've submitted, I'd figure they would have fixed it. When the hardware does something unexpected, you need to handle it. Surely the battery, when running on AC power, is not a vital system that requires a system halt? But to XP it is. Unless I have my patch.
Every time someone says "Dammit, Windows, why don't you..." that can be fixed, with the source. Maybe the user can't, most users can't. Just having the source would help developers immensely, because of the amount of code reuse involved. The functino fails and returns an error code, the caller translates that into a success/fail BOOL, the caller reports one of its app-defined errors, and you get messages like "Cannot open clipboard" when the real error is a locked Excel cell. This helps nobody, and having the source would let many people fix their own problems instead of wasting the afternoon trolling google trying to find a solution.
You're kinda stretching here, confusing two usages. Which language was your first language? The answer in your post is a prepositional phrase, not a sentence. And if there is any implied subject it is because there is a direct question and context in which the subject is unambiguous. It is acceptable informal grammar, but not preferred.
Languages such as Japanese and Spanish have the implied subject rule for discrete sentences without any other context. "Walking to the subway" is a complete sentence which conveys "I am walking to the subway." In English that assumption does not exist without aditional context, and it is a fragment. You seem to have provided an example with context to prove a point about context-free grammar.
"Fixed that for you" does not by itself say who fixed it. The poster's sister might have corrected it, and yelled at the poster until he posted her correction. We know the poster, or at least the account the poster used, not the fixer. Poster could have pasted it into Google, which then replied with "Did you mean....?" with the corrected text, and Google fixed it. You can argue that the post included context, as in the person who posted was also the fixer. But that doesn't support your primary assertion. Outside of context, if you do not make it obvious through context that you are talking about your self, you can't invoke the "when talking about yourself" rule. People have to know you're talking about yourself first. Other languages do this, English does not.
"Left my wallet in El Segundo," is an example. Do you think the speaker left her wallet in El Segundo? You might think it's a reference to the song "I Left my wallet in El Segundo." Or if you're watching The Ladykillers, it becomes obvious later that Mrs. Munson is talking about that song, but The Sheriff does not know who left their wallet in El Segundo. Being unfamiliar with the song, a viewer might think that Mrs. Munson left her wallet, or that a neighborhood boy left her wallet. The context is intentionally ambiguous, a situation which could not have happened unless you were dead wrong about the implied self rule.
Vintermann is correct. And "There Fixed That For Ya!" was tongue in cheek, emphasizing the use of a trite phrase or meme.
I'm really not seeing this. If someone knows that there are bug fixes Ubuntu has not submitted, why can't they go download and diff the source? You say it takes time - isn't it faster to let SVN or whatever SCM tool find the differences for you, than to hunt bugs yourself? You can decide what to to include, but now you have a clear idea of the problem location and the fix needed.
But if they didn't do proper formatting, or go through proper channels - you don't want that fix. So why would you want Ubuntu to submit something that will get rejected? Is it better to say that some people want Ubuntu to fix their code, but to do it the way the maintainer would do it, and only fix things that need fixing, not cosmetic changes?
So then we have the question of licensing. If the source code is under a "make changes all you want but make the changes under the same license" license, and Ubuntu is following that... why not switch to a "submit all patches back to us" license? I think I know - no one wants to be swamped by irrelevant patches. So do a "submit bug fixes back to us" license. How will that work?
Again, if I'm the maintainer and I know Ubuntu has bug fixes, I'm going to download the code, overlay it over mine, see what they did, and then fix their formatting or style or whatever to my liking. Hopefully they will take the hint and use my patch instead of theirs next time they sync. But if I have to change anything about their diff, then I didn't want them to send it to me like that in the first place.
This process has rules, everyone is following them. Except it seems the package maintainers want it done their way or not at all. Well then change the license, simple fix. Until then you made it this way so live with it.
What am I missing here? It takes time? Yeah, it does take time to maintain a package. You can take random patch submissions from people, or you can take a completely functional package that Ubuntu spent a lot of time testing. Maybe you'll find they are doing things better than you are, and you can change your style to match. Or you can call the Ubuntu guy names on slashdot for not putting brackets on their own lines like everyone knows you do. Or for doing that if you're that way.
"Fix my code, my way, and hand it to me, or I will criticise you." Those are the rules, no?
Every time a news article says there's a flaw in Acrobat Reader and that everyone is vulnerable, it reinforces the idea that everyone uses Acrobat and there is no other option.
No such thing as bad publicity, bandwagon propaganda, and all that. They might as well put flaws in on purpose for the free monthly advertising. All it takes is a tiny portion of flaws to appear in Foxit, which does happen sometimes, and Adobe gets to claim that no reader is flaw-free.