The reason a term is protected by a trademark is so that it can be used on the trademark holder's products. It doesn't exist to merely prevent others from using it./That/ would be bad faith: registering a term just to bully people who use it with no intention of using it.
Basically, you have to register a cookie with the client which encodes his political view on the matter. Then generate the view accordingly. If he's a Taiwanese patriot, label the region one way; if he's a People's Republican, label it the other way.
That's how you cater to insanity, basically: you allow everyone to live in his little world of personalized preferences.:)
Well, you know, that's kind of like saying that air impedes an airplane. That's true, but it also flows over the wings and provides lift.
Note that we could also say the same thing about proprietary, commercial software too: that licensing restrictions and costs impede its adoption. But they also create the circumstances in which that software is created.
The goal of the GPL has never been rapid adoption of software, but rather adoption under particular circumstances.
Anyway, has there ever been a time between 1991 and now when Linux and free software in general have not grown in user base?
A couple of years ago, I downloaded Hammerfall's then latest album from their website. The whole thing, in MP3's. I don't see why this is a story at all.
Just use lots of funny characters and spaces in your filenames. The shell scripts executed by the infected binary will probably break and not do any harm.
You know, they could send the PIN in two separate letters, in the form of two numbers that have to be added together modulo some power of 10. Both letters then have to pass through the thief's hands, which is harder. Actually you do already get two letters. Your PIN is mailed to you and your card is mailed to you. The number on the card could be that second number.
Since the PIN is useless without the card anyway, why not compute the PIN from the card number plus the additional secret sent in the other mail.
``To calculate your PIN, add 939536 to the last six digits of your client card number. Keep the last six digits of the resulting number, including any zero digits.''
Anticipated objection: if you can't follow these instructions, maybe shouldn't have a bank account.:)
For better security, some personal information could be included, like adding in the last six digits of your social insurance number or some other number, like the account number of your primary checking account or credit card or something.
AMD should make their CPU's software-patchable so that they report they are Genuine Intel. That is to say, the processors, as shipped from the factory, would identify themselves as AMD. But the user could get some freeware patch from the web somewhere that would put something in non-volatile memory on the chip to make it indistinguishable from Intel with respect to these compiler optimizations. AMD could totally dissociated itself from the patch simply by releasing the specs for how to do the job and letting some hackers out there do the work. They are off the hook; all they did was make a flexible piece of firmware that could be programmed by some third party to look like Intel. That third party happens to be a bunch of anonymous hobbyists.:)
The FSF's stance on a GPL'ed program that I wrote is completely irrelevant. Why? Because I didn't assign my copyright to them. Since they are not the copyright holder, they cannot be the plaintiff in any infringment suit related to that program. Only I can be that plaintiff. So if you want to know whether or not it's okay to dynamically link my program, you have to ask me, the owner. I can put it in writing for you that your use of my program in such and such a way is fine according to my interpretation of the license under which I chose to distribute it. Then it doesn't matter what anyone else's interpretation is, even if it had been tested in court.
The GPL motivates development because you are retaining the copyright over your work, and can still do things with it that other people cannot.
You can do things like start a little company that develops some GPL'ed program, and then later be taken over by a larger company for $$$ which makes proprietary verions of that program.
That's because, luckily, the GPL wasn't invented by Stallman, but by a bunch of lawyers kind of working for Stallman.
If you want to contribute to a Free Software Foundation project, your use of GPL won't be good enough for them. They want copyright assignment so that/they/ can put it under the GPL.
The reason they want that is that the program isn't free just because you put it under the GPL. It's still a proprietary program that you, or anyone you wish to license it to under alternate terms, can roll into a machine-language binary with no source code.
Copyright assignment is the real stupid move in free software, not the placement of something under the GPL.
Never assign the copyright for anything non-trivial to/anyone/ without being paid a decent wage for every hour you spent developing it.
And note that putting something under the BSD license is effectively like assigning the copyright to the world (public domain). Consider that if you put something under the BSD license, a GNU project can borrow your stuff without asking any copyright assignment from you!
So BSD licensing would be the second most stupid move in free software. It's not as stupid as assigning the copyright to someone specific, because at least you left freedom for yourself to make arbitrary use of your own work.
An enterprise can always approach the author of a GPLed software component and license it. Then they can do whatever they want, according to the alternate license, like shipping binaries with no source. He would be a fool who would not take money from someone who wants to ship proprietary binaries containing his program or library, under alternate licensing!
But, if there are are too many joint authors, that's a problem. It may be impractical to get everyone to agree to set up the alternate licensing.
If all the authors have assigned their copyright to some organization that is politically against proprietary software, that's also a problem for you. (That's why those FSF people want copyright assignment. They know too damn well that the GPL by itself isn't enough!)
These aren't inherent problems with the GPL, though, only with the specific situation involving the GPL.
Under the right conditions, when there are only a few authors or maybe just one, the key difference between the GPL and BSD is that you have to obtain permission from the authors of the GPLed program for proprietary use. When you do that, you have a bit of advantage too, because that program remains non-free to your competition. If they want the technology, they have to approach those authors and buy it separately from you. Heck, you could even buy the complete, exclusive rights to the GPLed program. Afterward, none of your competitors could make proprietary use of the technology, only the uses permitted by the GPL'ed public releases (which you can continue to make, as the new owner!) So you see, it's pretty damn smart to write GPLed software: you leave yourself open as a nice acquisition target for someone who wants the technology.
That's what kind of makes the BSD license stupid; the authors have just given away the permission to everyone to do anything. It's a good license to put on the smallest possible piece of code that will make a name for you as a great hacker and help you secure future contracts. It's also good for your reference implementation of some spec that you are trying to push onto everyone else, whether it be a data format, protocol, or what have you. Otherwise you're just doing free work for some software venture capitalist, which is stupid. I mean, if you want to help people, go spend time with sick children or something. Doh!
The traditional distinction between audience and artist is very real. Technological change hasn't yet erased the gap between the individual with creativity and talent and the rest of the world.
Even remixes are still done by individuals with talent, who create a record and are distinct from the audience.
In fact, technology just leads to new kinds of instances of ``audience versus individual'' pattern and more of them.
If you display something for public viewing, you can't control which components of it people want to draw their attention to and which they would prefer to ignore. There is exactly one contract in place and it's between the advertizer and the website. The advertizers understand that some people will block the ads, yet they pay the website operators anyway.
Anyone who tells you you are under some kind of contract, even though you weren't asked to agree to any conditions or sign any document, is a guilt-manipulating scumbag. The proper response is to laugh in his face. (But do try to refrain from spitting).
If you think that your web site content is so good that it can earn compensation from the users, then freaking put access controls on it and charge.
The reason website operators go with banner ads is because they know that few would pay for viewing their site.
If a webmaster wants charity from the users of a site, there is a way to do that: suggest donations and provide details how. PayPal or whatever.
That's still not a social contract; it's purely voluntary. The user decides what value, if any, to place on the content.
MAPS isn't doing anything wrong, they simply gather findings and make them available to their subscribers. They exist to serve the interests of those subscribers, not the interests of some random nobodies who wish to send mail to those subscribers. MAPS is under no obligation to provide 24/7 assistance to the ``unfairly'' blacklisted domains. What exactly would be the business case for doing that? Who would pay those operators who wake up at 3:30 a.m. on a Saturday to service a complain?
MAPS subscribers are aware of its limitations and problems and, guess what, they don't care and use the blacklist anyway! A MAPS user doesn't care that some random nobody sometimes gets ``unfairly'' blacklisted and is unable to contact them for an entire weekend. They care most about not getting spam and are glad that MAPS is so strict. In other words, the subscribers share the same values as the MAPS operators! If MAPS were to change the way it operates, those users might well switch to some other service that follows the original policies. MAPS users even accept that sometimes they won't be able to talk to other MAPS users because of the same problem you are having. Yet they remain MAPS users. Therefore, they will hardly be sympathetic to your case.
So basically, your complaint boils down to the existence of difficult people who have very particular rules about being talked to because they don't want to be bothered. The system by which they share those rules with each other isn't what's standing in your way here.
Uh, Google can do whatever they want to manipulate their own search engine. It's, like, one of the perks of private ownership. Y'know, this capitalism thing and all that. Doh!
Try Meta-CVS! The robustness of the switching operations will astound you (back and forth between revisions, branch to branch, etc). The sandbox rearranges itself, adding, deleting and moving files, without skipping a beat.
Local changes of the directory structure are merged against the repository delta. Fix them with a text editor, re-update, and all is well.
There is no bug database for Meta-CVS. I do web searches for it from time to time and find out about people who are happy with it, and don't bother writing to me.
The very rare time someone has an issue, we take it up in e-mail and usually get it resolved.
Take a look at Meta-CVS. This takes care of most the issues people have with CVS. The directory structure versioning in Meta-CVS is insanely better than Subversion's. Why? Because the directory structure is represented as text markup, and so it can be branched and merged. Plus a bunch of nasty corner cases are correctly handled (parellel edits and deletes, concurrent adds of the same file name in the same place, etc).
Atomic commits? I proposed an algorithm for adding these to CVS in a straightforward way. Apparently, the CVSNT guys picked up on it.
Slashdot Mirror
I've never read more than the first sentence of a blog before turning my attention to something wortwhile.
It's a psychological release for the writer, not actually intended to be read by anyone.
As a rule, people who lead interesting lives don't blog.
What is the difference?
/That/ would be bad faith: registering a term just to bully people who use it with no intention of using it.
The reason a term is protected by a trademark is so that it can be used on the trademark holder's products. It doesn't exist to merely prevent others from using it.
The fragments in this Slashdot story are hard to decipher.
Right on your table, in your shaker: sodium chloride!
they could leap 100 story buildings.''
:)
Oh the amusing stupidity of some science journalists.
Basically, you have to register a cookie with the client which encodes his political view on the matter. Then generate the view accordingly. If he's a Taiwanese patriot, label the region one way; if he's a People's Republican, label it the other way.
:)
That's how you cater to insanity, basically: you allow everyone to live in his little world of personalized preferences.
Well, you know, that's kind of like saying that air impedes an airplane. That's true, but it also flows over the wings and provides lift.
Note that we could also say the same thing about proprietary, commercial software too: that licensing restrictions and costs impede its adoption. But they also create the circumstances in which that software is created.
The goal of the GPL has never been rapid adoption of software, but rather adoption under particular circumstances.
Anyway, has there ever been a time between 1991 and now when Linux and free software in general have not grown in user base?
A couple of years ago, I downloaded Hammerfall's then latest album from their website. The whole thing, in MP3's. I don't see why this is a story at all.
Just use lots of funny characters and spaces in your filenames. The shell scripts executed by the infected binary will probably break and not do any harm.
You know, they could send the PIN in two separate letters, in the form of two numbers that have to be added together modulo some power of 10. Both letters then have to pass through the thief's hands, which is harder. Actually you do already get two letters. Your PIN is mailed to you and your card is mailed to you. The number on the card could be that second number.
:)
Since the PIN is useless without the card anyway, why not compute the PIN from the card number plus the additional secret sent in the other mail.
``To calculate your PIN, add 939536 to the last six digits of your client card number. Keep the last six digits of the resulting number, including any zero digits.''
Anticipated objection: if you can't follow these instructions, maybe shouldn't have a bank account.
For better security, some personal information could be included, like adding in the last six digits of your social insurance number or some other number, like the account number of your primary checking account or credit card or something.
Get your friggin' Hans off our island, okay?
AMD should make their CPU's software-patchable so that they report they are Genuine Intel. That is to say, the processors, as shipped from the factory, would identify themselves as AMD. But the user could get some freeware patch from the web somewhere that would put something in non-volatile memory on the chip to make it indistinguishable from Intel with respect to these compiler optimizations. AMD could totally dissociated itself from the patch simply by releasing the specs for how to do the job and letting some hackers out there do the work. They are off the hook; all they did was make a flexible piece of firmware that could be programmed by some third party to look like Intel. That third party happens to be a bunch of anonymous hobbyists. :)
The FSF's stance on a GPL'ed program that I wrote is completely irrelevant. Why? Because I didn't assign my copyright to them. Since they are not the copyright holder, they cannot be the plaintiff in any infringment suit related to that program. Only I can be that plaintiff. So if you want to know whether or not it's okay to dynamically link my program, you have to ask me, the owner. I can put it in writing for you that your use of my program in such and such a way is fine according to my interpretation of the license under which I chose to distribute it. Then it doesn't matter what anyone else's interpretation is, even if it had been tested in court.
The GPL motivates development because you are retaining the copyright over your work, and can still do things with it that other people cannot.
/they/ can put it under the GPL.
/anyone/ without being paid a decent wage for every hour you spent developing it.
You can do things like start a little company that develops some GPL'ed program, and then later be taken over by a larger company for $$$ which makes proprietary verions of that program.
That's because, luckily, the GPL wasn't invented by Stallman, but by a bunch of lawyers kind of working for Stallman.
If you want to contribute to a Free Software Foundation project, your use of GPL won't be good enough for them. They want copyright assignment so that
The reason they want that is that the program isn't free just because you put it under the GPL. It's still a proprietary program that you, or anyone you wish to license it to under alternate terms, can roll into a machine-language binary with no source code.
Copyright assignment is the real stupid move in free software, not the placement of something under the GPL.
Never assign the copyright for anything non-trivial to
And note that putting something under the BSD license is effectively like assigning the copyright to the world (public domain). Consider that if you put something under the BSD license, a GNU project can borrow your stuff without asking any copyright assignment from you!
So BSD licensing would be the second most stupid move in free software. It's not as stupid as assigning the copyright to someone specific, because at least you left freedom for yourself to make arbitrary use of your own work.
An enterprise can always approach the author of a GPLed software component and license it. Then they can do whatever they want, according to the alternate license, like shipping binaries with no source. He would be a fool who would not take money from someone who wants to ship proprietary binaries containing his program or library, under alternate licensing!
But, if there are are too many joint authors, that's a problem. It may be impractical to get everyone to agree to set up the alternate licensing.
If all the authors have assigned their copyright to some organization that is politically against proprietary software, that's also a problem for you. (That's why those FSF people want copyright assignment. They know too damn well that the GPL by itself isn't enough!)
These aren't inherent problems with the GPL, though, only with the specific situation involving the GPL.
Under the right conditions, when there are only a few authors or maybe just one, the key difference between the GPL and BSD is that you have to obtain permission from the authors of the GPLed program for proprietary use. When you do that, you have a bit of advantage too, because that program remains non-free to your competition. If they want the technology, they have to approach those authors and buy it separately from you. Heck, you could even buy the complete, exclusive rights to the GPLed program. Afterward, none of your competitors could make proprietary use of the technology, only the uses permitted by the GPL'ed public releases (which you can continue to make, as the new owner!) So you see, it's pretty damn smart to write GPLed software: you leave yourself open as a nice acquisition target for someone who wants the technology.
That's what kind of makes the BSD license stupid; the authors have just given away the permission to everyone to do anything. It's a good license to put on the smallest possible piece of code that will make a name for you as a great hacker and help you secure future contracts. It's also good for your reference implementation of some spec that you are trying to push onto everyone else, whether it be a data format, protocol, or what have you. Otherwise you're just doing free work for some software venture capitalist, which is stupid. I mean, if you want to help people, go spend time with sick children or something. Doh!
Even remixes are still done by individuals with talent, who create a record and are distinct from the audience.
In fact, technology just leads to new kinds of instances of ``audience versus individual'' pattern and more of them.
Bovine growth hormone is something that occurs naturally in cow milk, whether or not the cow is supplemented.
...'' rather than ``does not contain ... whatsoever ...''
That's probably why they say ``not treated with
http://www.notmilk.com/
You mean, it's not OS/360?
The way I see it: the girl strings along the guy for two years, promises to meet, changes her mind and two years later slaps the guy with this!
Could someone clarify who the aggressor is again?
Was this girl chained to the computer and forced to make herself available for chat and respond?
If you display something for public viewing, you can't control which components of it people want to draw their attention to and which they would prefer to ignore.
There is exactly one contract in place and it's between the advertizer and the website. The advertizers understand that some people will block the ads, yet they pay the website operators anyway.
Anyone who tells you you are under some kind of contract, even though you weren't asked to agree to any conditions or sign any document, is a guilt-manipulating scumbag. The proper response is to laugh in his face. (But do try to refrain from spitting).
If you think that your web site content is so good that it can earn compensation from the users, then freaking put access controls on it and charge.
The reason website operators go with banner ads is because they know that few would pay for viewing their site.
If a webmaster wants charity from the users of a site, there is a way to do that: suggest donations and provide details how. PayPal or whatever.
That's still not a social contract; it's purely voluntary. The user decides what value, if any, to place on the content.
MAPS isn't doing anything wrong, they simply gather findings and make them available to their subscribers. They exist to serve the interests of those subscribers, not the interests of some random nobodies who wish to send mail to those subscribers. MAPS is under no obligation to provide 24/7 assistance to the ``unfairly'' blacklisted domains. What exactly would be the business case for doing that? Who would pay those operators who wake up at 3:30 a.m. on a Saturday to service a complain?
MAPS subscribers are aware of its limitations and problems and, guess what, they don't care and use the blacklist anyway! A MAPS user doesn't care that some random nobody sometimes gets ``unfairly'' blacklisted and is unable to contact them for an entire weekend. They care most about not getting spam and are glad that MAPS is so strict. In other words, the subscribers share the same values as the MAPS operators! If MAPS were to change the way it operates, those users might well switch to some other service that follows the original policies. MAPS users even accept that sometimes they won't be able to talk to other MAPS users because of the same problem you are having. Yet they remain MAPS users. Therefore, they will hardly be sympathetic to your case.
So basically, your complaint boils down to the existence of difficult people who have very particular rules about being talked to because they don't want to be bothered. The system by which they share those rules with each other isn't what's standing in your way here.
Uh, Google can do whatever they want to manipulate their own search engine. It's, like, one of the perks of private ownership. Y'know, this capitalism thing and all that. Doh!
Try Meta-CVS! The robustness of the switching operations will astound you (back and forth between revisions, branch to branch, etc). The sandbox rearranges itself, adding, deleting and moving files, without skipping a beat.
Local changes of the directory structure are merged against the repository delta. Fix them with a text editor, re-update, and all is well.
There is no bug database for Meta-CVS. I do web searches for it from time to time and find out about people who are happy with it, and don't bother writing to me.
The very rare time someone has an issue, we take it up in e-mail and usually get it resolved.
Take a look at Meta-CVS. This takes care of most the issues people have with CVS. The directory structure versioning in Meta-CVS is insanely better than Subversion's. Why? Because the directory structure is represented as text markup, and so it can be branched and merged. Plus a bunch of nasty corner cases are correctly handled (parellel edits and deletes, concurrent adds of the same file name in the same place, etc).
... :)
Atomic commits? I proposed an algorithm for adding these to CVS in a straightforward way. Apparently, the CVSNT guys picked up on it.
What's left? Fast tagging. Ah well
Check out Meta-CVS.