Oh my god, that's the first thing to make me actually laugh out loud on slashdot in weeks! I know that funny mod points aren't worth much, but if I had any, I'd give you some!:)
Seriously, we're on our, what, third generation of people copying what their elders did with the electric guitar? There's probably still plenty of room for innovation, but I hardly think it's the personification at this late date. And I'm not at all surprised to learn of "purists". There's kids today trying to copy Jimi's version of the Star Spangled Banner note-for-note which rather seems to me to miss the whole point, but whatever.:)
p.s. I never saw Jimi, but I did see the original Dark Side of the Moon tour, so I think I'm old enough to have a little bit of perspective on the matter.:)
I feel like I should be chiming in on this thread, but I'm not exactly sure why.:)
Anyway, I have mixed feelings about this device. After years of sticking with standard tuning, I've recently just started to feel comfortable with changing tunings on the fly. Plus, what do you do with those songs where the change in tuning has become more-or-less part of the intro? Drop down from E to just above D-flat, then ease your way back up to D--it's like the weird moan of some strange jungle beast. Somehow, I doubt the robot will have the same effect.
OOXML is still very likely to become the new de facto standard due to common usage. Whatever they came up with was likely to be a de facto standard of sorts. But blocking this from becoming a de jure standard is still a somewhat surprising victory, and we should celebrate winning a battle, even if the war is far from over.
For that matter, for all its flaws, MSOOXML is an improvement over MS's older formats. While it may not be transparent like ODF, it is, at the least, fairly translucent compared to their earlier, opaque formats. The fact that they've gone as far as they have towards transparency is another sizable and often-overlooked victory.
The vast majority of users want "A computer that does what I want" not "A computer that I have to make do what I want". Hey, me too! If you find one, let me know, okay? I've tried Windows, Linux, Mac, and a bunch of other systems, and nothing I've seen has ever come close!
But seriously, I've seen newbies trying to learn both Linux and Windows, and haven't seen any appreciable difference in the amount that they struggle with those two. It's the established Windows users who don't want to learn a new skill set that are most reluctant to try Linux. Which is reasonable, but it's not because Windows is easier. In fact, for some things, Windows seems to be really hard--I still haven't found where to set focus-follows-mouse and turn off auto-raise, which is something I can do with just a few clicks in Linux. I hate not being able to see the window I'm reading simply because it's not the window I'm trying to type into. I can type; I don't need to see the letters appear on the screen.:)
This is one of thos cliche phrases that are, oh boy, so stupid, it's not funny anymore. i don't pay any city tax! I GLADLY pay to use their services. Road repair, fire and police are all great things that I appreciate, so it's obvious that this is not really a tax. Even if it's mandatory for people who don't use those services. Oh, wait...
I've got no problems with your use and enjoyment of MS software (I used to know a lot of perfectly reasonable people who agreed with you, although that number definitely seems to be shrinking), but why the hell am I forced to subsidize it? The fact is that "MS tax" is a perfectly reasonable way to describe the mandatory, non-negotiable bundling that's usually offered even if you do want the bundle.
Linux will never 'take off' until the Linux people stop answering almost every question with the equivalent of "Go in the kitchen and cook it yourself." Done and done. Oh, and BTW, there are no "the Linux people". You might as well criticise "the Microsoft people" based on the utterly clueless answers you'll get from a salesdroid at Best Buy. (If I based my opinion of MS on them...) But the fact is that Linux has taken off, and there are a wide variety of businesses and indivuduals selling and/or supporting Linux.
I'd say the biggest difference is that with Windows, the cost of support is somewhat built into the price of the system, whereas with Linux, it's frequently (though not always) packaged separately. This means that support for MS systems can be a great deal if you just have one system, but not such a good deal if you have hundreds. With Linux, it's frequently the reverse.
Of course, unpaid support for both systems is pretty problematic. But that's a separate matter. However, even there, Linux leads by having Ubuntu. MS has no equivalent of a free system with free support.
Why not simulate the abacus while your at it?! You mean like this?:)
I study physics and I have not need for an slide rule. I don't think anyone needs, but that doesn't mean they can't be useful and efficient. If you just need some rough ballpark figures, a slide rule can give you answers in less time than it takes that Matlab-running computer to boot, let alone accept input. Physicists with slide rules put a man on the moon!
Give them the slide rules, let them earn the calculators! Heh, I'd endorse that idea, except then I'd get accused of being an old fart (which may be true, but that doesn't mean I want to give people cheap ammo). Anyway, whether we're dealing with slide rules, calculators or even Matlab, I'd like students to have a basic understanding of the principles behind it, so they have a chance of spotting an erroneous result.
Spreading FUD about Google is something that MS is highly motivated to do. Spreading FUD about Yahoo! or MS's own Hotmail system is not.
That said, I'm not sure you're correct. I seem to recall a Yahoo! Mail exploit being publicized fairly recently. As for Hotmail, I'm not sure, but I suspect that it's a generic enough system that any exploits found are interesting as generic exploits more than as Hotmail-specific.
Only a fool would take his chances with such odds. We actually had a fool all lined up to take his chances, but he cleverly arranged to duck out at the last minute. The case is merely stayed, though, so we might see some precedents further on down the road.
The probability of the existence of other universes is unrelated to the probability of the existence of parallell universes. There could easily be $BIGNUM universes without any of them being parallel in the Many-Worlds-Interpretation of QM sense.
Of course, it is worth pointing out that speculation about a creator merely pushes the question of origins back a level: where did this hypothetical creator and his/her/their universe come from?
If Virgin mobile complied with the terms of the copyright license that the photo was provided to them under, then they are not liable for copyright infringement. There, I corrected that for you. And, as corrected, it's both true and irrelevant, since this isn't a copyright infringement suit.
I don't think you have any reason to expect any such thing. I certainly do! Their self-proclaimed mission is to judge licenses. If they're going to judge irrelevantia as well, then I'm simply going to ignore them. (Which I pretty much do already, since I know that the Debian project will make up its own mind about licenses, no matter what the OSI may claim.)
I mean, who the heck appointed these guys the gatekeepers of licensedom? I know I sure didn't. I do like the spec, but I really couldn't give two pins about the certification.
Permissive is a definitive term. So? It's just part of the title. If I were to come out with a license called the "Free Sex with Natalie Portman License", I might expect some comments about the name, but I would expect them to judge the license by its terms, not whatever I might have happened to call it. If I called my license "The OSI is a Bunch of Big Fat Idiots License", I'd expect them to go over the terms with a fine toothed comb to see where I was trying to trick them, but if the concensus was the the license met the spec, I'd expect them to approve it no matter what it was called.
after a few years of trying to sort out what can be used with what, it behooves OSI to try to get as much compatibility as possible in the License before approval. Whatever. If the OSI is no longer going to be judging licenses on the basis of whether or not they meet the OSD, then they're going to become irrelevant to people (like me) whose concern is whether or not a license meets the DFSG, er, OSD. I actually don't care whether something is OSI-certified; what I care about is whether it's free software, by any reasonable definition of the term. So far, OSI-certified has been a reasonable indication of that (though I try to check other sources of opinion, like the FSF and Debian). If they start to reject licenses purely to avoid proliferation or encourage compatibility, I'm going to have to go elsewhere to get a halfway-sane analysis of a license.
That said, there may be good reason to reject this license. The summary and even the linked article don't make it very clear, but it certainly seems possible. The requirement to accept the license merely to use the software does seem like a potential problem, and I'm curious how Debian will react. Nevertheless, the reasons given in the summary (and apparently in the article as well, though I only skimmed it) do not seem like good reasons for rejecting the license.
As a side note: FLOSS developers have historically been less concerned with certification (or whatever OSI wants to call what they do) then they have been with compliance. For example, with POSIX, if you point out something that doesn't meet the spec, chances are it will be fixed. But if you point out that something hasn't been certified to meet the spec, the reaction is likely to be a big "so what?" When it comes to licenses and the OSI, I see no reason to change that attitude.
Since a lot of people who criticised him came from a site which bills itself as "News for nerds, stuff that matters", I hardly think it's out of line for him to refer to them as nerds.:)
On the other hand, this seems like a fairly weak apology overall, considering the amount of vitriol he's heaped upon Linux developers, advocates, supporters and fans in the past. I think he owes a few people (especially PJ) a more personal apology. On the gripping hand, this move clearly shows that he's a hell of a lot more classy than O'Gara (whose career would be over if there were any justice) or Didio.
Sites will often do a Javascript test to see if your browser is claimed to be Flash-capable. If so, your browser is sent Flash code for the advertising. If not, it's sent animated-GIF equivalent advertising.
Installing the FlashBlock extension causes Firefox to (1) claim to be Flash-capable [...]
How could they even make a case without an original source code tree for [unixware] Well, actually, they managed to make a case with no evidence whatsoever. Or, to put it another way, they never did actually manage to make a case. See Groklaw for more details.:)
Which division of Sun? Doesn't sun already have an intel offering of Solaris? Tarantella. And they were purchased not their for general *NIX expertise but for their UNIX/Windows integration skills. For more information, you can start with the Wikipedia articles on The Santa Cruz Operation and SCO Group. They're separate companies, I assure you. The former made XENIX, the latter sued IBM.
I remember SCO's original purchase of the Unix Source code So do a lot of people, but it didn't happen like that according to the recent court ruling in Utah and the plain language of the asset purchase agreement (see "Schedule 1.1(b) Excluded Assets"), where copyrights were specifically excluded. Santa Cruz (not the SCO group-you have to be careful to distinguish who you're talking about in this situation) wanted to buy SysV, but in the end, they couldn't afford it, so instead they became exclusive licensors for SysV, passing along all the revenue to Novell, who in turn remitted a 5% agent's fee back to Santa Cruz. This, along with the Unixware and SCOServer business (and the channel, the part that Caldera really wanted at the time), is what was later sold to Caldera (now the SCO Group). Santa Cruz kept their Tarantella product line, and renamed themselves.
> I think SCO were assholes for not working with the Open source community because I think they had alot to offer, for all of SCO's fault's you cannot deny them the success they had in the marketplace.
Again, two separate companies. Caldera, now dba SCO, was never particularly successful as a Linux vendor compared to Red Hat and SUSE, although they did ok. But their purchase of Unixware and SCOserver didn't catapult them into the lead the way they expected, which is probably in part why they pulled their desperation move. Tarantella, formerly dba SCO, was not only fairly successful in their day, but actually worked pretty well with the open source community, even though some parts of it could have been considered competition.
Documentation for most of this stuff can be found at Groklaw, which uses robots.txt, so you can't necessarily google it. The Wikipedia articles are actually a pretty accurate summary at the moment, although who knows how long that will last.:)
> it is wrong to tell people to steal when you are a role model like he is.
A "role model" whose first big hit was "head like a hole, black as your soul; I'd rather die than give you control!" What the hell were they expecting when they signed him? Didn't they listen to any of his music? And who the hell says he's a role model? Do you know anything about the guy? Have you listened to any of his music? I admire the guy, and he's sure a lot smarter than, say, Ozzy Osbourne, but I wouldn't use him as a role model any more than I'd model myself on Ozzy's getting drunk and biting the head off a bat. The guy's a musician, and if you're using musicians as role models, you're probably broke, have a venereal disease, and are dead of an overdose.:)
With all the truly dangerous things that musicians frequently advocate (e.g. extreme drug use, unprotected sex, violence against women, violent overthrow of the government, or worshiping Jebus), it seems pretty silly to single out for criticism the one who's merely advocating theft.
This has nothing to do with the company that made XENIX. This is a former Linux vendor formerly named Caldera which bought the tree logo and three initials (but not the full name), along with some other stuff, from the Santa Cruz Operation. The Santa Cruz Operation changed its name and ended up getting bought by Sun. As a division of Sun, I believe they're still doing fine.
The bankruptcy is unlikely to end the lawsuits (though it may put them on hold for a bit). SCO and its execs and owners are likely still in big, big trouble. Frankly, I wouldn't take SCO as a gift at this point.
On the other hand, the trademark might be interesting. I imagine that with all the ill-will SCO has garnered over the last few years, the value of the trademark is pretty minimal at this point, so the bankruptcy admininstrators might be willing to let it go for a song, and that would be a pretty entertaining thing to own. Though I suspect it would be risky to try to use it for its intended purpose.:)
> Slashdot readers can actually understand big words and stuff.
Got any evidence to support that claim? And if it does turn out to be true, do you suppose there's any chance we can pass on some of that knowledge to the (cough) "editors"?:)
"Recent additions"? There were seven awarded in the sixties, eight in the seventies, and a full ten awarded in each of the eighties and nineties. Unless you're referring to the split into "short form" and "long form", which was only done a few years ago, I don't see anything recent about it. The first Dramatic Presentation Hugo was in 1958 for The Incredible Shrinking Man. That's a year before I was born, and I'm no spring chicken.
> Another part is that the sci-fi community is still plagued by insecurity and by throwing their lot in with feature films and pop tv, people seem to hope to legitimize something that's already legitimate.
Sounds like there's another part of the community that is insecure and trying to overcompensate by trying to prove that they don't need films and TV, which strikes me as much more stupid. And fairly pathetic.
Of course, Sturgeon's Law applies to films just as much as to any other form of SF, but that's hardly a revelation.
> There's a significant portion of the sci-fi community that considers those categories worthy of scorn.
Speaking as a second generation fan who has been a regular at conventions since he was three, and has voted on numerous Hugo ballots over the years, I have to say that this "significant portion" has done a remarkable job of remaining invisible, at least to me. But at least now that I know these cretins exist, I can adjust my own voting in the future to try to compensate for their idiocy.
> People, as I said, vote for what they think legitimizes and promotes the industry to outsiders
They do that with books too. But more people (significantly more) vote for what they like. And if what they like frequently maps to what the mainstream likes, that only demonstrates that SF is increasingly mainstream these days. Sounds like some people are still trying to carry on a battle that was mostly won by the eighties. Sounds, as I said, like some people who are far too concerned with trying to overcompensate for their own feelings of inferiority. SF is accepted and respected now, so trying to prove that it doesn't need acceptance and respect strikes me as a pointless exercise. Secure, confident people don't run around trying to prove how secure and confident they are; that's something that insecure people do.
Oh c'mon. Next you're going to try to tell me that Canada isn't part of the US!
Ok, maybe it's a protectorate, not an actual state, but everyone knows that's just a convenient legal fiction so that manufacturers can run sweat-shops and still put a "Made in the USA" label on the results. (Australia is part of the US too, right? --If not, why does the PM act like they are?):)
Slashdot Mirror
Oh my god, that's the first thing to make me actually laugh out loud on slashdot in weeks! I know that funny mod points aren't worth much, but if I had any, I'd give you some! :)
Dad? Is that you? :)
:)
:)
Seriously, we're on our, what, third generation of people copying what their elders did with the electric guitar? There's probably still plenty of room for innovation, but I hardly think it's the personification at this late date. And I'm not at all surprised to learn of "purists". There's kids today trying to copy Jimi's version of the Star Spangled Banner note-for-note which rather seems to me to miss the whole point, but whatever.
p.s. I never saw Jimi, but I did see the original Dark Side of the Moon tour, so I think I'm old enough to have a little bit of perspective on the matter.
I feel like I should be chiming in on this thread, but I'm not exactly sure why. :)
Anyway, I have mixed feelings about this device. After years of sticking with standard tuning, I've recently just started to feel comfortable with changing tunings on the fly. Plus, what do you do with those songs where the change in tuning has become more-or-less part of the intro? Drop down from E to just above D-flat, then ease your way back up to D--it's like the weird moan of some strange jungle beast. Somehow, I doubt the robot will have the same effect.
For that matter, for all its flaws, MSOOXML is an improvement over MS's older formats. While it may not be transparent like ODF, it is, at the least, fairly translucent compared to their earlier, opaque formats. The fact that they've gone as far as they have towards transparency is another sizable and often-overlooked victory.
But seriously, I've seen newbies trying to learn both Linux and Windows, and haven't seen any appreciable difference in the amount that they struggle with those two. It's the established Windows users who don't want to learn a new skill set that are most reluctant to try Linux. Which is reasonable, but it's not because Windows is easier. In fact, for some things, Windows seems to be really hard--I still haven't found where to set focus-follows-mouse and turn off auto-raise, which is something I can do with just a few clicks in Linux. I hate not being able to see the window I'm reading simply because it's not the window I'm trying to type into. I can type; I don't need to see the letters appear on the screen.
This is one of thos cliche phrases that are, oh boy, so stupid, it's not funny anymore. i don't pay any city tax! I GLADLY pay to use their services. Road repair, fire and police are all great things that I appreciate, so it's obvious that this is not really a tax. Even if it's mandatory for people who don't use those services. Oh, wait...
I've got no problems with your use and enjoyment of MS software (I used to know a lot of perfectly reasonable people who agreed with you, although that number definitely seems to be shrinking), but why the hell am I forced to subsidize it? The fact is that "MS tax" is a perfectly reasonable way to describe the mandatory, non-negotiable bundling that's usually offered even if you do want the bundle.
I'd say the biggest difference is that with Windows, the cost of support is somewhat built into the price of the system, whereas with Linux, it's frequently (though not always) packaged separately. This means that support for MS systems can be a great deal if you just have one system, but not such a good deal if you have hundreds. With Linux, it's frequently the reverse.
Of course, unpaid support for both systems is pretty problematic. But that's a separate matter. However, even there, Linux leads by having Ubuntu. MS has no equivalent of a free system with free support.
Spreading FUD about Google is something that MS is highly motivated to do. Spreading FUD about Yahoo! or MS's own Hotmail system is not.
That said, I'm not sure you're correct. I seem to recall a Yahoo! Mail exploit being publicized fairly recently. As for Hotmail, I'm not sure, but I suspect that it's a generic enough system that any exploits found are interesting as generic exploits more than as Hotmail-specific.
The probability of the existence of other universes is unrelated to the probability of the existence of parallell universes. There could easily be $BIGNUM universes without any of them being parallel in the Many-Worlds-Interpretation of QM sense.
Of course, it is worth pointing out that speculation about a creator merely pushes the question of origins back a level: where did this hypothetical creator and his/her/their universe come from?
I mean, who the heck appointed these guys the gatekeepers of licensedom? I know I sure didn't. I do like the spec, but I really couldn't give two pins about the certification.
That said, there may be good reason to reject this license. The summary and even the linked article don't make it very clear, but it certainly seems possible. The requirement to accept the license merely to use the software does seem like a potential problem, and I'm curious how Debian will react. Nevertheless, the reasons given in the summary (and apparently in the article as well, though I only skimmed it) do not seem like good reasons for rejecting the license.
As a side note: FLOSS developers have historically been less concerned with certification (or whatever OSI wants to call what they do) then they have been with compliance. For example, with POSIX, if you point out something that doesn't meet the spec, chances are it will be fixed. But if you point out that something hasn't been certified to meet the spec, the reaction is likely to be a big "so what?" When it comes to licenses and the OSI, I see no reason to change that attitude.
Since a lot of people who criticised him came from a site which bills itself as "News for nerds, stuff that matters", I hardly think it's out of line for him to refer to them as nerds. :)
On the other hand, this seems like a fairly weak apology overall, considering the amount of vitriol he's heaped upon Linux developers, advocates, supporters and fans in the past. I think he owes a few people (especially PJ) a more personal apology. On the gripping hand, this move clearly shows that he's a hell of a lot more classy than O'Gara (whose career would be over if there were any justice) or Didio.
Sites will often do a Javascript test to see if your browser is claimed
to be Flash-capable. If so, your browser is sent Flash code for the
advertising. If not, it's sent animated-GIF equivalent advertising.
Installing the FlashBlock extension causes Firefox to (1) claim to be
Flash-capable [...]
http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-talk-balug.org/2006-June/003771.html
> I think SCO were assholes for not working with the Open source community because I think they had alot to offer, for all of SCO's fault's you cannot deny them the success they had in the marketplace.
Again, two separate companies. Caldera, now dba SCO, was never particularly successful as a Linux vendor compared to Red Hat and SUSE, although they did ok. But their purchase of Unixware and SCOserver didn't catapult them into the lead the way they expected, which is probably in part why they pulled their desperation move. Tarantella, formerly dba SCO, was not only fairly successful in their day, but actually worked pretty well with the open source community, even though some parts of it could have been considered competition.
Documentation for most of this stuff can be found at Groklaw, which uses robots.txt, so you can't necessarily google it. The Wikipedia articles are actually a pretty accurate summary at the moment, although who knows how long that will last.
> it is wrong to tell people to steal when you are a role model like he is.
:)
A "role model" whose first big hit was "head like a hole, black as your soul; I'd rather die than give you control!" What the hell were they expecting when they signed him? Didn't they listen to any of his music? And who the hell says he's a role model? Do you know anything about the guy? Have you listened to any of his music? I admire the guy, and he's sure a lot smarter than, say, Ozzy Osbourne, but I wouldn't use him as a role model any more than I'd model myself on Ozzy's getting drunk and biting the head off a bat. The guy's a musician, and if you're using musicians as role models, you're probably broke, have a venereal disease, and are dead of an overdose.
With all the truly dangerous things that musicians frequently advocate (e.g. extreme drug use, unprotected sex, violence against women, violent overthrow of the government, or worshiping Jebus), it seems pretty silly to single out for criticism the one who's merely advocating theft.
This has nothing to do with the company that made XENIX. This is a former Linux vendor formerly named Caldera which bought the tree logo and three initials (but not the full name), along with some other stuff, from the Santa Cruz Operation. The Santa Cruz Operation changed its name and ended up getting bought by Sun. As a division of Sun, I believe they're still doing fine.
Geeze, while you're at it, you ought to at least provide a link to the site MC Hawking's Crib.
The bankruptcy is unlikely to end the lawsuits (though it may put them on hold for a bit). SCO and its execs and owners are likely still in big, big trouble. Frankly, I wouldn't take SCO as a gift at this point.
:)
On the other hand, the trademark might be interesting. I imagine that with all the ill-will SCO has garnered over the last few years, the value of the trademark is pretty minimal at this point, so the bankruptcy admininstrators might be willing to let it go for a song, and that would be a pretty entertaining thing to own. Though I suspect it would be risky to try to use it for its intended purpose.
Our chief weapon is pedantry. And...two! Our two chief weapons are pedantry, suspicion and... Three! Three. Our three chief weapons are...
> Slashdot readers can actually understand big words and stuff.
:)
Got any evidence to support that claim? And if it does turn out to be true, do you suppose there's any chance we can pass on some of that knowledge to the (cough) "editors"?
"Recent additions"? There were seven awarded in the sixties, eight in the seventies, and a full ten awarded in each of the eighties and nineties. Unless you're referring to the split into "short form" and "long form", which was only done a few years ago, I don't see anything recent about it. The first Dramatic Presentation Hugo was in 1958 for The Incredible Shrinking Man. That's a year before I was born, and I'm no spring chicken.
> Another part is that the sci-fi community is still plagued by insecurity and by throwing their lot in with feature films and pop tv, people seem to hope to legitimize something that's already legitimate.
Sounds like there's another part of the community that is insecure and trying to overcompensate by trying to prove that they don't need films and TV, which strikes me as much more stupid. And fairly pathetic.
Of course, Sturgeon's Law applies to films just as much as to any other form of SF, but that's hardly a revelation.
> There's a significant portion of the sci-fi community that considers those categories worthy of scorn.
Speaking as a second generation fan who has been a regular at conventions since he was three, and has voted on numerous Hugo ballots over the years, I have to say that this "significant portion" has done a remarkable job of remaining invisible, at least to me. But at least now that I know these cretins exist, I can adjust my own voting in the future to try to compensate for their idiocy.
> People, as I said, vote for what they think legitimizes and promotes the industry to outsiders
They do that with books too. But more people (significantly more) vote for what they like. And if what they like frequently maps to what the mainstream likes, that only demonstrates that SF is increasingly mainstream these days. Sounds like some people are still trying to carry on a battle that was mostly won by the eighties. Sounds, as I said, like some people who are far too concerned with trying to overcompensate for their own feelings of inferiority. SF is accepted and respected now, so trying to prove that it doesn't need acceptance and respect strikes me as a pointless exercise. Secure, confident people don't run around trying to prove how secure and confident they are; that's something that insecure people do.
Oh c'mon. Next you're going to try to tell me that Canada isn't part of the US!
:)
Ok, maybe it's a protectorate, not an actual state, but everyone knows that's just a convenient legal fiction so that manufacturers can run sweat-shops and still put a "Made in the USA" label on the results. (Australia is part of the US too, right? --If not, why does the PM act like they are?)