The main trouble with this as I see it is that it won't only cause a problem for people inside the enclosed room, but for people in the "shadow" of these structures.
Agreed. I wonder why cell phones aren't designed in such a way that they react to a special signal by switching themselves off (or silent). Such a signal could be transmitted at the entrance of cinemas, theatres, hospitals, and airplains, and if it had a very short range of only a few meters, it would not cause any disruption for people outside the building.
Of course, this system would only work if I'm correct in assuming that most people don't intentionally leave their cell phones on in the cinema, but forget to switch it off/silent.
Re:When comments are more than comments...
on
Pet Bugs?
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· Score: 2
Is this a known bug?
No, this is not a bug. Calculations with floating-point numbers are always susceptible to rounding errors, so the second expression could either evaluate to exactly 10.0, or slightly above 10.0, or slightly below 10.0. In the latter case, the integer conversion would yield 9.
There are 10^16 = 10000000000000000 possible credit card numbers, and there are 2^160 = 1461501637330902918203684832716283019655932542976 possible SHA1 hash values. Therefore, the probability for a collision is so exceedingly small that it can be totally ignored.
Only RMS, or a mindless idiot, could possibly agree with ALL of RMS' views.
Since I am not RMS, I guess this makes me a mindless idiot.;-)
I also think that Freedom in Software is more important than recognition for the GNU Project. If RMS disagrees with me on that last point, I'd like to see him admit it publicly!
Of course, I cannot speak for RMS, but I assume that he'd agree wholeheartedly. In his article What's in a name?, he explains the reasoning behind his request to call GNU/Linux "GNU/Linux".
Because even with HTTP 1.1, you'll download one page from a site, and when you go to the next one you have to reconnect and have the new data come down.
HTTP/1.1 allows you to keep a connection open until a timeout expires, but anyway, your suggestion sounds like solving a problem with the transport layer in the content layer. If there is a problem with the performance of HTTP, it should IMHO be solved by rectifying HTTP.
No, you can make the fonts bigger and smaller, you can't scale them.
Since we're comparing technologies, not implementations, you'll surely agree that there is nothing inherent in the technology of HTML that prevents scaling.
That said, the ability of Mozilla to scale all text (but not the images) and to specify a minimum font size is sufficient for me. YMMV, of course.
I'd prefer if I could download all the data from the site (connect once and then burst it down...) and then view it rapidly. Flash allows you to do this.
How would this differ from HTTP/1.1, which can also connect once and then download everything through the same connection?
and you can make the page smoothly scale to whatever resolution you want.
Why would I need Flash for this? I can also scale HTML text.
You develop some GPL software, put it out there, and a competitor takes it, forks, and keeps it closed. The question is what can you sue for? You havent suffered any damages (you were giving it away to start with!), and it is hard to prove anything actually even happened.
I am not a lawyer, and I am not an American, but it seems possible that the copyright owner can claim statutory damages in the case of copyright infringement.
The selling point they are trying to use is simple American economics. I should say to begin with that I don't agree with MSFT's argument, but I do understand it. They are looking at open source as "free beer" and saying that is against the american way, and undermines the free market economy that we have so carefully built up.
I never understood why free software/open source is purportedly against the American way. Microsoft sells a product at a certain price, and Red Hat sells a different product with similar functionality at a lower price. Isn't this a legitimate way of competition in a free market economy?
I don't see car manufacturers whine about how they cannot sell a car for $1,000,000, because everyone would buy from a different manufacturer. In fact, the economy proposed by Microsoft sounds quite communistic to me.
You have a strong point that Microsoft Windows is not ready for the desktop. But I fail to see what this has to do with the desktop viability of Linux.
I have quoted this from an actual proprietary license (some 1980s BBS client).
The license would likely say that it applies to people, not organizations. Even if it did not say it explicitly, it would be trivial to show in court that this is the meaning.
Then wouldn't the same apply to the GPL? I'm pretty sure its meaning is not that a GPLed program can be distributed in binary-only form to all departments and subsidiaries of a large company, which may well comprise ten thousands of people worldwide.
I would like to know what RMS thinks.
I have asked on a GNU mailing list - let's see who reads it.;-)
GPL, however, is based entirely in copyright law: it does not attempt to make you accept a contract as a condition to using the software.
I know that, but I am still not convinced that "using the software" includes distribution within a company.:-) If copyright law doesn't grant you this right, you would have to accept the GPL. As section 5 of the GPL clearly states, you accept it by doing something which the GPL allows, but copyright law does not (e.g., distribution).
I do understand the difference between the GPL and proprietary licenses, but unfortunately I still don't understand your point.:-(
So let me ask again: If I have a propietary licence which does allow me to install the program on as many computers as I like, as long as it is only used by a single person at a time, can all employees of a company use the program simultaneously? If no, why not? If the company is considered a single person, the license doesn't forbit it, so I assume it must be forbitten by copyright law. But on the other hand, the GPL does not allow distribution without source, so if distribution of a GPLed program within a company (without source) is allowed, this must be allowed by copyright law?
Excuse my many questions, but I have the impression that your copyright law is very different from the copyright law in my country, which confuses me...:-)
Re:Mess them up.
on
e-Denounce
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Your comparison with a proprietary license makes absolutely no sense.
Could you please elaborate? Are you saying that, if a prorietary license states that a program may be used by a single person at a time, this program can still be used by all employees of a company simultaneously, because it's then only being used by a single legal person (i.e., the company)?
Beta testers are commonly defined by their contracts/livenses as employees and forbidden from distributing copies of the beta software. So, Lindows has a real point here. They're not publicly distributing their OS or selling it to the public yet, so they don't need to release source yet.
I don't think the GPL distiguishes between public distribution and distribution within an organisation. Whoever recieves the binaries is entitled to recieve the source. This is no different from proprietary licenses - you cannot buy a single license for a prorietary program and then install it on all computers within your company.
What do you think would happen if I copied Microsoft Windows from a friend, and when the police knocked at my door, I'd reply "Sure, I'll pay for a license in a few months. Right now, this product seems like a beta-level project to me; I'll think about complying with the license when it's more stable."
Where I live, buying a new lower-end pc sets you back the equivalent of 2 months average salary. A hardware modem costs on average 5 to 6 times as much as a winmodem.
But if you didn't burden the CPU with modem and other device functionality, you would have to buy a new PC less often, so I doubt that you save money with winmodems in the long run.
Soaking up CPU cycles? C'mon. Even in a power-user thick forum such as this one, how many people utilise their cycles beyond 10 or 20% over time?
Me. My Pentium/166 MHz runs all modern applications just fine, but running five or six large programs simultaneously does utilise more than 20% CPU.
Censorship. Ironically enough, Germany has no First Amendment and you are not guaranteed free speech.
While Germany does not have a First Amendment, it does have an "Artikel 5 Absatz 1 Grundgesetz". Here is my attempt to translate it to English:
Everyone has the right to freely state and distribute his opinion in spoken, written or imaged form and to obtain information from publicly available sources without limit. The freedom of the press and the freedom of reporting on radio and TV are granted. There is no censonship.
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Agreed. I wonder why cell phones aren't designed in such a way that they react to a special signal by switching themselves off (or silent). Such a signal could be transmitted at the entrance of cinemas, theatres, hospitals, and airplains, and if it had a very short range of only a few meters, it would not cause any disruption for people outside the building.
Of course, this system would only work if I'm correct in assuming that most people don't intentionally leave their cell phones on in the cinema, but forget to switch it off/silent.
No, this is not a bug. Calculations with floating-point numbers are always susceptible to rounding errors, so the second expression could either evaluate to exactly 10.0, or slightly above 10.0, or slightly below 10.0. In the latter case, the integer conversion would yield 9.
There are 10^16 = 10000000000000000 possible credit card numbers, and there are 2^160 = 1461501637330902918203684832716283019655932542976 possible SHA1 hash values. Therefore, the probability for a collision is so exceedingly small that it can be totally ignored.
I agree, relating everything you dislike to terrorism is an insult to the victims of 9/11.
But since the BSA applies similar tatics of language abuse, I propose a third point:
* Relating copyright infringement to theft or piracy.
Huh? RMS is actively encouraging people who redistribute GPL'd software to charge as much as possible.
Since I am not RMS, I guess this makes me a mindless idiot. ;-)
Of course, I cannot speak for RMS, but I assume that he'd agree wholeheartedly. In his article What's in a name?, he explains the reasoning behind his request to call GNU/Linux "GNU/Linux".
HTTP/1.1 allows you to keep a connection open until a timeout expires, but anyway, your suggestion sounds like solving a problem with the transport layer in the content layer. If there is a problem with the performance of HTTP, it should IMHO be solved by rectifying HTTP.
Since we're comparing technologies, not implementations, you'll surely agree that there is nothing inherent in the technology of HTML that prevents scaling.
That said, the ability of Mozilla to scale all text (but not the images) and to specify a minimum font size is sufficient for me. YMMV, of course.
How would this differ from HTTP/1.1, which can also connect once and then download everything through the same connection?
Why would I need Flash for this? I can also scale HTML text.
The technology as such doesn't annoy me, but I do consider it completely useless. Everything I need can be done in plain HTML.
I am not a lawyer, and I am not an American, but it seems possible that the copyright owner can claim statutory damages in the case of copyright infringement.
I never understood why free software/open source is purportedly against the American way. Microsoft sells a product at a certain price, and Red Hat sells a different product with similar functionality at a lower price. Isn't this a legitimate way of competition in a free market economy?
I don't see car manufacturers whine about how they cannot sell a car for $1,000,000, because everyone would buy from a different manufacturer. In fact, the economy proposed by Microsoft sounds quite communistic to me.
You have a strong point that Microsoft Windows is not ready for the desktop. But I fail to see what this has to do with the desktop viability of Linux.
True, but once you're down to 2^-92 customers, expect a hard time selling something to a single atom. ;-)
Corporations already do, albeit in a limited domain. It's called a trademark. ;-)
I have quoted this from an actual proprietary license (some 1980s BBS client).
Then wouldn't the same apply to the GPL? I'm pretty sure its meaning is not that a GPLed program can be distributed in binary-only form to all departments and subsidiaries of a large company, which may well comprise ten thousands of people worldwide.
I have asked on a GNU mailing list - let's see who reads it. ;-)
I know that, but I am still not convinced that "using the software" includes distribution within a company. :-) If copyright law doesn't grant you this right, you would have to accept the GPL. As section 5 of the GPL clearly states, you accept it by doing something which the GPL allows, but copyright law does not (e.g., distribution).
I do understand the difference between the GPL and proprietary licenses, but unfortunately I still don't understand your point. :-(
So let me ask again: If I have a propietary licence which does allow me to install the program on as many computers as I like, as long as it is only used by a single person at a time, can all employees of a company use the program simultaneously? If no, why not? If the company is considered a single person, the license doesn't forbit it, so I assume it must be forbitten by copyright law. But on the other hand, the GPL does not allow distribution without source, so if distribution of a GPLed program within a company (without source) is allowed, this must be allowed by copyright law?
Excuse my many questions, but I have the impression that your copyright law is very different from the copyright law in my country, which confuses me... :-)
According to Netcraft, www.fast.org.uk runs Microsoft Windows 2000, which is vulnerable to initial sequence number guessing.
Could you please elaborate? Are you saying that, if a prorietary license states that a program may be used by a single person at a time, this program can still be used by all employees of a company simultaneously, because it's then only being used by a single legal person (i.e., the company)?
In this case, you should be even less concerned about the cost of a new PC. You can get a 386 or even 486 PC for a few bucks on eBay, after all. ;-)
I don't think the GPL distiguishes between public distribution and distribution within an organisation. Whoever recieves the binaries is entitled to recieve the source. This is no different from proprietary licenses - you cannot buy a single license for a prorietary program and then install it on all computers within your company.
If they don't provide the source with the binaries right away, they have to accompany the binaries with a written offer for the source.
What do you think would happen if I copied Microsoft Windows from a friend, and when the police knocked at my door, I'd reply "Sure, I'll pay for a license in a few months. Right now, this product seems like a beta-level project to me; I'll think about complying with the license when it's more stable."
But if you didn't burden the CPU with modem and other device functionality, you would have to buy a new PC less often, so I doubt that you save money with winmodems in the long run.
Me. My Pentium/166 MHz runs all modern applications just fine, but running five or six large programs simultaneously does utilise more than 20% CPU.
The Graphical User Interface (GUI).
1987: MIT releases version 11 of the X Window System, commonly refered to as X11. Microsoft releases version 3.3 of MS-DOS.
While Germany does not have a First Amendment, it does have an "Artikel 5 Absatz 1 Grundgesetz". Here is my attempt to translate it to English:
Everyone has the right to freely state and distribute his opinion in spoken, written or imaged form and to obtain information from publicly available sources without limit. The freedom of the press and the freedom of reporting on radio and TV are granted. There is no censonship.