Other than my code, which adheres to standards, continues to work in 13 different browsers (visual, audio and text-only), as well as MSIE 6, 7 and 8 with the same exact same codebase (no tricky MSIE-only hacks, different stylesheets or otherwise).. so I never have to touch the code again, because it remains future-compatible.
Yes, you're right. Being a purist, touching the code once and having to do a LOT less work, really has no value.
Whether you want to admit it or not, IE defined the de facto majority standard of the web. The "real" standard was in competition and didn't gain any traction for quite a few years.
You spelled "usage" wrong there.
Standards are defined by standards bodies, like the W3C in the case of web standards. Microsoft's ignorance of those ratified and accepted standards for several years does not change the fact that standards existed before they decided to ignore them and try to create their own.
Microsoft by no means "created" that standard by force-feeding the masses a sub-optimal browser within their core OS itself.
Section 3b is about physical media (e.g., cd, dvd).
Not according to our FSF-appointed attorney (who incidentally, teacher IP and Copyright law). The traditional use of it is for vendor-supplied products which ship with GPL components, but this most-definitely is not limited to physical media distribution.
We've actually used 3b before to leverage a company to provide source for the binary copies of their project they were "beaming" and allowing downloads for, for their users and partners. None of this had to do with "physical" media, because they never shipped their product on physical media.
Incorrect. I am entitled to the source of the binaries they have already distributed. They've pulled all binaries and source from the site, which does not meet GPLv2 guidelines and requirements.
You skipped Section 3b of the GPLv2 verbage. They are not in compliance at this point due to that, and their removal of the source is a direct violation of the SourceForge TOS.
It is nothing more than a fictional novel written by dozens of people (real and imaginary, for example there is zero evidence in the historical record of any civilization that a man named 'Moses' existed at this time who did the deeds he was claimed to do). who wanted to have their say.
Please don't encourage the use of SourceForge for things like this. Not only is SourceForge a dead-end for time-limited projects, it is also full of dead, empty or completely abandoned projects.
A good 60% or more of the projects there have seen no activity at all (because people think creating a project there will automatically write itself), and many projects haven't been touched in 4, 5, 6 or more years.
They've consistently crippled the use of standard OSS tools like CVS, Subversion and Mailman just so they can try to retain control of projects by limiting the ability to use them effectively. They don't support other tools like git and proper MTA support for mailing commits to developers.
Also, quite a few projects have pulled the source to previous releases (a violation of the GPL that these projects were released under; gaim is one of them). Their management of projects and overall administration leaves MUCH to be desired.
Lastly, SourceForge was originally going to be called "Cold Storage", and it was supposed to partner with Freshmeat to permanently archive projects. I've seen many projects vanish from SourceForge, which completely negates the whole policy of its existance.
So while I respect and encourage the use of OSS tools, LAMP, retaining the mindshare of key developers who can help support a candidate they support, I don't think choosing SourceForge to host the project is a wise move.
Do you choose the type of hammer and nails you're going to use, before you draft the plans to build your new house? Do you choose the kind of vehicle you're going to drive before you know your destination and travel route? Of course you don't.
Why choose the hosting service before you've even chosen what kinds of components and requirements the project will need?
In fact, the Bible promotes and encourages murder... such as the part about stoning disobedient children to death and killing adulterous wives, and denouncing those with long hair as being evil (wasn't Jesus depicted with long hair and a beard in almost every representation of him?)
Don't undertake such acts without seriously thinking if that is the best way to achieve your point and not end up in some serious legal troubles. The consequences could be well beyond what you're prepared to deal with.
That attitude is EXACTLY what is causing us to lose our freedoms more and more every single day. Being arrested for standing up for your freedoms and what you believe is right is NEVER wrong. Don't drink the the Kool-Aid being filtered into our water streams, seriously.
This country was founded by people who stood up for what they believed in, were imprisoned, tortured and in killed for those beliefs. Yet they persisted and gave us the country and freedoms we enjoy to this day.
Unfortunately given the corrupt political climate in our current administration, these "Patriots" would be labeled as "Terrorists", and flown off to Gitmo before they could influence enough other people to affect real change.
Remember: Freedom is a muscle. It gets stronger the more you exercise it.
I don't anymore. I commute 275 miles a day... via Amtrak. Of course Bush and McCain are trying to shut down Amtrak nationwide to get more people using oil again, but we'll see what happens there.
Plus it fucks up the environment.
Actually, NOT flying also fucks up the environment. There's scientific evidence out there showing that the contrails provide a lot of protection from higher levels of dangerous radiation hitting the surface of the planet and contributing to global warming. If all of the planes stopped flying, our ecology would be very negatively affected.
Do you really not think that it will be a criminal offense to tamper with the airline safety system? And, clearly, people with good intentions would never do such a thing, so they'll presume you had bad intentions from the start.
My boarding would look like this:
Grab my printed boarding pass and baggage
Board the plane
Find my seat
Look at the seat back
Observe the camera there
Gather my bags and other items
Demand to be let off the plane.
If 1/2 of every flight began doing this, you can bet they'd change the rules (or they'd hide the cameras elsewhere, like they do behind the CRT monitor glass at the ATM machines now)
Speaking of cameras, I tend to fly with one all the time, to take photos of interesting things, people, sights and anything else that enters my artistic eye...
How far of a leap is it from confiscating iPods with content on it potentially in violation of copyright, to asking you to delete photos from your camera or digital media of things that they don't want you to have pictures of? Government buildings, police beatings, car accidents, etc.
They would just take the iPod. Their opinion would be "fuck you and your 8,000+ songs, mp3s, ogg files, Linux.iso images, podcasts, etc.,"
And my response would be "Fine, I'll just copy all of the data back to a new device from my encrypted laptop on the other end. If you take that, I'll grab it from my secure remote copy across the Internet. You will not stop me. The data belongs to me, and it will always be in my possession, regardless if you take my silly little music player."
"Maybe the point isn't to stop copyright infringement at all but to extend their rights to detain and harass citizens."
Nobody has a "right" to detail and harass citizens (or non-citizens for that matter). Anyone trying to convince you of the contrary is simply pursuing their own illegal agenda. At that point you have to step back and wonder what that agenda really is.
Seriously, how are they going to take my ipod of 8,000+ songs, mp3s, ogg files, Linux.iso images, podcasts, etc., hash them all and compare those to the ones in their database?
I change the ID3v2 tags, add missing ID3v1 tags, store lyrics and album art INTO the actual song file itself, and so on. All of these modifications change the hash. Now because my hash doesn't match theirs, I'm somehow guilty of copyright infringement? I don't think so.
Time to replace the stock firmware on the ipod with one that embeds AES-256 onboard and has to be unlocked before you can play any music from it.
Encryption is the only way to stop this madness.
I have nothing to hide, and therefore they have no reason to look.
Stay far, FAR away from Avira. Not only does it hang, seize up and fail to complete its own updates and scans, but it drags system resources down tenfold more than the other alternatives.
It also requires the "questionable" use of quite a few daemons which don't seem to be necessary with the other free AV products (like ClamAV, AVG Free and so on).
That's actually not true anymore. Even when the green LED is no longer blinking and you've told the phone to turn itself off (but the battery is still installed in the phone), it is most-likely still on.
I know some mobile phone firmware engineers who have verified this. "Some" carriers (guess who) require that the phone ALWAYS be on, even if the user interface tells you that the phone is "turned off".
It is still actively broadcasting with the tower, though you can't make or receive calls on that signal.
Why are they blurring faces, but leaving license plates and other identifying information out there for public consumption? I can now see the license plate of the person who cuts me off in traffic every day, search the (cough, ahem) "online database" for their home address and visit them to give them my personal regards.
Are we sure faces is more important at this point? What about stalkers who can abuse this information? (following employees home) Child molesters? People who see which cars pick up which children at the schools and follow their route back to their home? (or search their address, see above).
Won't somebody think of the children!? [tongue in cheek]
"Everything truly important goes with a read receipt request and if I don't receive one then I phone or send snail mail."
You must call and snail mail a lot, because "Read Receipt" is only applicable when you're on a local LAN, and if you're sending mail within your local LAN and people don't receive it, it's an issue for your IT group or Help Desk Mail Administrator.
This "Read Receipt" thing you speak of, does not transcend Internet-bound email. Where would it get sent back from? The first machine that received your email? The first hop? What if there were 20 hops? What then?
At best, the Read Receipt gives you an indication that the email you sent, was received by at least the first hop in your destination. It doesn't in any way, indicate that a person at the final destination opened and read that email. Check the RFC.
"A way to do this is to produce your own power with solar panels or wind turbines, and in fact a lot of people are already doing that (and pushing electricity back into the system as a net supplier!)."
And you know what the net benefit is of that? Higher power bills for the remaining people who do not generate their own power.
I didn't believe it either, but NPR did a story on it a few days ago. Basically the power companies are REQUIRED to pay higher prices back for people who sell them back power... up to 7x in some cases. This means that the additional cost they pay OUT, comes right out of the pockets of everyone else. It's only $2-$3 per-month for most people, but that could still mean quite a bit if spread over a small town of subscribers.
It's funny... we start using corn to produce ethanol, and people in Haiti and Darfur end up starving. We go green by producing our own power, and we end up paying more for it anyway.
Seems like there's always someone looking to get ahead, by screwing over everyone else in the process.
You missed one of the slickest features of GrandCentral, one which is not highly advertised...
Let's say you have your Work, Mobile and Home numbers registered with GrandCentral.
You receive a call to your GrandCentral number, which rings in your office at 4:50pm, and you need to catch the train down the road at 5:30, and it's a 20-minute walk.
You accept the call in your office, have your conversation, then TRANSPARENTLY switch the call to your cellphone, continue talking there, without ever dropping the call. You take your train home and reach your house just as your cellphone battery is dying. You then transparently transfer the call to your home phone number, and continue to talk there. The whole time, the call was never dropped, nor did you ever lose connection.
THAT, in my opinion, is the slickest part of GrandCentral.
"It is the auto-resizing text input area that most people feel is silly and pointless."
...this time. Remember the last one, and the one before that? It keeps happening over and over and over.
The one that stands out in my mind is the stupid 'green dot' issue, where they removed the per-protocol IM icon and replaced ALL of them with the same, single green dot. It was after hundreds of frustrated and angry people reported dozens of bug reports, did they finally cave and "fix" (read: undo) the "feature" the implemented.
"And this is yet another reason why Open Source has a trouble taking hold in the mainstream."
Let me tell you why we don't have trouble taking hold in the mainstream... Because we're not TRYING to!
Seriously, this is all just myth and FUD from people who wish Linux would help dig them out of their own problems with their proprietary platforms, but they lack the initiative to actually lend a hand.
Donate $1M to Pidgin (or any other OSS application you find useful) and see if they start listening to your feature requests. Better yet, help by testing bugs, writing patches, cleaning up or translating documentation.
Linux does not exist to "take hold in the mainstream", and probably never will. It solves the need for hundreds of thousands of people and thousands of businesses all over the world, all without needing to "take hold". It saves billions of dollars a year across dozens of industries. Still, we haven't "taken hold".
In short, we don't need to take hold, to do what matters with Linux.
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What is this "book" thing you speak of? Is that like a portable 500k text file?
Other than my code, which adheres to standards, continues to work in 13 different browsers (visual, audio and text-only), as well as MSIE 6, 7 and 8 with the same exact same codebase (no tricky MSIE-only hacks, different stylesheets or otherwise).. so I never have to touch the code again, because it remains future-compatible.
Yes, you're right. Being a purist, touching the code once and having to do a LOT less work, really has no value.
You spelled "usage" wrong there.
Standards are defined by standards bodies, like the W3C in the case of web standards. Microsoft's ignorance of those ratified and accepted standards for several years does not change the fact that standards existed before they decided to ignore them and try to create their own.
Microsoft by no means "created" that standard by force-feeding the masses a sub-optimal browser within their core OS itself.
Not according to our FSF-appointed attorney (who incidentally, teacher IP and Copyright law). The traditional use of it is for vendor-supplied products which ship with GPL components, but this most-definitely is not limited to physical media distribution.
We've actually used 3b before to leverage a company to provide source for the binary copies of their project they were "beaming" and allowing downloads for, for their users and partners. None of this had to do with "physical" media, because they never shipped their product on physical media.
Incorrect. I am entitled to the source of the binaries they have already distributed. They've pulled all binaries and source from the site, which does not meet GPLv2 guidelines and requirements.
You skipped Section 3b of the GPLv2 verbage. They are not in compliance at this point due to that, and their removal of the source is a direct violation of the SourceForge TOS.
It is nothing more than a fictional novel written by dozens of people (real and imaginary, for example there is zero evidence in the historical record of any civilization that a man named 'Moses' existed at this time who did the deeds he was claimed to do). who wanted to have their say.
Please don't encourage the use of SourceForge for things like this. Not only is SourceForge a dead-end for time-limited projects, it is also full of dead, empty or completely abandoned projects.
A good 60% or more of the projects there have seen no activity at all (because people think creating a project there will automatically write itself), and many projects haven't been touched in 4, 5, 6 or more years.
They've consistently crippled the use of standard OSS tools like CVS, Subversion and Mailman just so they can try to retain control of projects by limiting the ability to use them effectively. They don't support other tools like git and proper MTA support for mailing commits to developers.
Also, quite a few projects have pulled the source to previous releases (a violation of the GPL that these projects were released under; gaim is one of them). Their management of projects and overall administration leaves MUCH to be desired.
Lastly, SourceForge was originally going to be called "Cold Storage", and it was supposed to partner with Freshmeat to permanently archive projects. I've seen many projects vanish from SourceForge, which completely negates the whole policy of its existance.
So while I respect and encourage the use of OSS tools, LAMP, retaining the mindshare of key developers who can help support a candidate they support, I don't think choosing SourceForge to host the project is a wise move.
Do you choose the type of hammer and nails you're going to use, before you draft the plans to build your new house? Do you choose the kind of vehicle you're going to drive before you know your destination and travel route? Of course you don't.
Why choose the hosting service before you've even chosen what kinds of components and requirements the project will need?
In fact, the Bible promotes and encourages murder... such as the part about stoning disobedient children to death and killing adulterous wives, and denouncing those with long hair as being evil (wasn't Jesus depicted with long hair and a beard in almost every representation of him?)
Oh the irony.
That attitude is EXACTLY what is causing us to lose our freedoms more and more every single day. Being arrested for standing up for your freedoms and what you believe is right is NEVER wrong. Don't drink the the Kool-Aid being filtered into our water streams, seriously.
This country was founded by people who stood up for what they believed in, were imprisoned, tortured and in killed for those beliefs. Yet they persisted and gave us the country and freedoms we enjoy to this day.
Unfortunately given the corrupt political climate in our current administration, these "Patriots" would be labeled as "Terrorists", and flown off to Gitmo before they could influence enough other people to affect real change.
Remember: Freedom is a muscle. It gets stronger the more you exercise it.
I don't anymore. I commute 275 miles a day... via Amtrak. Of course Bush and McCain are trying to shut down Amtrak nationwide to get more people using oil again, but we'll see what happens there.
Actually, NOT flying also fucks up the environment. There's scientific evidence out there showing that the contrails provide a lot of protection from higher levels of dangerous radiation hitting the surface of the planet and contributing to global warming. If all of the planes stopped flying, our ecology would be very negatively affected.
You mean like Mexicans?
American Indians?
Indians (from India)?
American Africans?
I personally think they'll use this against whomever they want to target, and use these cameras as justification for even more monitoring.
Want to stop drunks from boarding your plane? Check the "[X] Detect inebriated passengers" checkbox on the user interface.
Want to stop seat hogs? Check the "[X] Detect overweight seat hogs" checkbox on the user interface.
Crimes aren't stopped now, they are "discovered". You pick a crime and then cherry-pick enough evidence to substantiate your claims.
My boarding would look like this:
If 1/2 of every flight began doing this, you can bet they'd change the rules (or they'd hide the cameras elsewhere, like they do behind the CRT monitor glass at the ATM machines now)
Speaking of cameras, I tend to fly with one all the time, to take photos of interesting things, people, sights and anything else that enters my artistic eye...
How far of a leap is it from confiscating iPods with content on it potentially in violation of copyright, to asking you to delete photos from your camera or digital media of things that they don't want you to have pictures of? Government buildings, police beatings, car accidents, etc.
And my response would be "Fine, I'll just copy all of the data back to a new device from my encrypted laptop on the other end. If you take that, I'll grab it from my secure remote copy across the Internet. You will not stop me. The data belongs to me, and it will always be in my possession, regardless if you take my silly little music player."
Nobody has a "right" to detail and harass citizens (or non-citizens for that matter). Anyone trying to convince you of the contrary is simply pursuing their own illegal agenda. At that point you have to step back and wonder what that agenda really is.
They must be smoking hash was my first thought.
Seriously, how are they going to take my ipod of 8,000+ songs, mp3s, ogg files, Linux .iso images, podcasts, etc., hash them all and compare those to the ones in their database?
I change the ID3v2 tags, add missing ID3v1 tags, store lyrics and album art INTO the actual song file itself, and so on. All of these modifications change the hash. Now because my hash doesn't match theirs, I'm somehow guilty of copyright infringement? I don't think so.
Time to replace the stock firmware on the ipod with one that embeds AES-256 onboard and has to be unlocked before you can play any music from it.
Encryption is the only way to stop this madness.
I have nothing to hide, and therefore they have no reason to look.
All good points, except #2.
Stay far, FAR away from Avira. Not only does it hang, seize up and fail to complete its own updates and scans, but it drags system resources down tenfold more than the other alternatives.
It also requires the "questionable" use of quite a few daemons which don't seem to be necessary with the other free AV products (like ClamAV, AVG Free and so on).
That's actually not true anymore. Even when the green LED is no longer blinking and you've told the phone to turn itself off (but the battery is still installed in the phone), it is most-likely still on.
I know some mobile phone firmware engineers who have verified this. "Some" carriers (guess who) require that the phone ALWAYS be on, even if the user interface tells you that the phone is "turned off".
It is still actively broadcasting with the tower, though you can't make or receive calls on that signal.
Why are they blurring faces, but leaving license plates and other identifying information out there for public consumption? I can now see the license plate of the person who cuts me off in traffic every day, search the (cough, ahem) "online database" for their home address and visit them to give them my personal regards.
Are we sure faces is more important at this point? What about stalkers who can abuse this information? (following employees home) Child molesters? People who see which cars pick up which children at the schools and follow their route back to their home? (or search their address, see above).
Won't somebody think of the children!? [tongue in cheek]
You must call and snail mail a lot, because "Read Receipt" is only applicable when you're on a local LAN, and if you're sending mail within your local LAN and people don't receive it, it's an issue for your IT group or Help Desk Mail Administrator.
This "Read Receipt" thing you speak of, does not transcend Internet-bound email. Where would it get sent back from? The first machine that received your email? The first hop? What if there were 20 hops? What then?
At best, the Read Receipt gives you an indication that the email you sent, was received by at least the first hop in your destination. It doesn't in any way, indicate that a person at the final destination opened and read that email. Check the RFC.
And you know what the net benefit is of that? Higher power bills for the remaining people who do not generate their own power.
I didn't believe it either, but NPR did a story on it a few days ago. Basically the power companies are REQUIRED to pay higher prices back for people who sell them back power... up to 7x in some cases. This means that the additional cost they pay OUT, comes right out of the pockets of everyone else. It's only $2-$3 per-month for most people, but that could still mean quite a bit if spread over a small town of subscribers.
It's funny... we start using corn to produce ethanol, and people in Haiti and Darfur end up starving. We go green by producing our own power, and we end up paying more for it anyway.
Seems like there's always someone looking to get ahead, by screwing over everyone else in the process.
You missed one of the slickest features of GrandCentral, one which is not highly advertised...
Let's say you have your Work, Mobile and Home numbers registered with GrandCentral.
You receive a call to your GrandCentral number, which rings in your office at 4:50pm, and you need to catch the train down the road at 5:30, and it's a 20-minute walk.
You accept the call in your office, have your conversation, then TRANSPARENTLY switch the call to your cellphone, continue talking there, without ever dropping the call. You take your train home and reach your house just as your cellphone battery is dying. You then transparently transfer the call to your home phone number, and continue to talk there. The whole time, the call was never dropped, nor did you ever lose connection.
THAT, in my opinion, is the slickest part of GrandCentral.
Given your definition, my Thinkpad has been doing this for several years (at least 4) using Linux. It's nearly pointless on a 2x2 touchpad, however.
...this time. Remember the last one, and the one before that? It keeps happening over and over and over.
The one that stands out in my mind is the stupid 'green dot' issue, where they removed the per-protocol IM icon and replaced ALL of them with the same, single green dot. It was after hundreds of frustrated and angry people reported dozens of bug reports, did they finally cave and "fix" (read: undo) the "feature" the implemented.
Let me tell you why we don't have trouble taking hold in the mainstream... Because we're not TRYING to!
Seriously, this is all just myth and FUD from people who wish Linux would help dig them out of their own problems with their proprietary platforms, but they lack the initiative to actually lend a hand.
Donate $1M to Pidgin (or any other OSS application you find useful) and see if they start listening to your feature requests. Better yet, help by testing bugs, writing patches, cleaning up or translating documentation.
Linux does not exist to "take hold in the mainstream", and probably never will. It solves the need for hundreds of thousands of people and thousands of businesses all over the world, all without needing to "take hold". It saves billions of dollars a year across dozens of industries. Still, we haven't "taken hold".
In short, we don't need to take hold, to do what matters with Linux.