How can you argue that cloning a species to bring it back from extinction is any less natural than hunting it to extinction for hats?
When dealing with ecological issues, we have a tendency to think "this is good because it's natural," or "this is bad because it's un-natural". It's important to keep in mind that not all ecological damage is caused by evil scientists in laboratories. Slash and burn farming and reckless land development have had catastrophic effects on ecosystems worldwide. A single village pissing in a stream can have a signifigant ecological impact downstream. It doesn't take a PhD. to mess up the planet.
As far as I'm concerned, saying that this experiment is "interfering with evolution" is a straw man of an argument. The question we should be asking is how to we keep from unbalancing the systems we have. Cloning the bird isn't likely to have much of an effect, since it's unlikely they'll ever restore the population to viable levels, but it's an interesting experiment.
The announcement was up last night on PHP's home page, although I don't recall an announcement to the PHP mailing list. (Of course, I haven't been checking it as regularly these days. Both I and the list are swamped.)
I'm pretty excited about the new benchmarks. I hope that the/. effect is indicative of interest in the tool: it's really a very intuitive environment. Not something you'd want to write system utilities in (although I'm told it's been done), but for scripting web pages, it's terrific. Check it out.
Hear hear. I'm glad that there are still some critical readers left on Slashdot.
By the way, for a good summary of the technology involved in producing the Cassini probe (and why you shouldn't panic about the plutonium on board), check out this letter on Brill's Content. It was written (by a friend - go Chris go!) in reaction to one of the many paranoia inducing articles that's been circulating about the probe.
... called Sunstroke. It was pretty light on the science - the portrayal of the AI controlling the satellite was particularly laughable. However, the graphic portrayals of how human bodies react to being microwaved did earn it a halfway decent gross-out factor.
I don't think she meant to suggest that Red Hat owned Linux. Rather, she meant that in the same way that my OS is Linux, or Fred's is OpenBSD, Red Hat's is Linux.
I don't think he meant to cast doubts on whether or not it's real source code. I think he was just writing for people who might not know the term. It probably would have read better if he'd written,
Linux is also a favorite among techies because the "source code" is open to anyone and everyone.
With respect, Bruce, I don't think this is an omission on ESR's part. The percentage of the market which cares enough about open-source drivers is so tiny as to be statistically insignifigant for hardware vendors. No Gateway, Dell, or (shudder) Packard Bell is going to quibble about whether or not their newest OEMed machine is carrying open-sourced device drivers.
For the open source community, this is a different story. I occasionally dream that the entire computer buying community suddenly gets wise and starts asking for real change in the industry, but I'm not holding my breath.
And Linux is no closer to hitting everyone's desktop than Microsoft is to releasing NT's source code.
Are you on crack? The Linux user base is orders of magnitude bigger than it was in those days. We're a hell of a long way to World Domination(tm), but the Empire of the Penguin isn't gonna be built in a day.
I don't think I buy it. The actual wording states,
Compilation, repackaging, dissemination, or other use of the WHOIS database in its entirety, or a substantial portion thereof, is not allowed without NSI's prior written permission.
I guess you could argue that "other use" prevents spamming, but that seems unneccessarily broad, especially when coupled with the repackaging and dissemination bit. Specifically dissemination - that means that no-one has the right to redistribute this information without NSI's permission.
Yeah, this license might have an effect on spam, but its effect on the availiabilty of the information in general is chilling.
On the other hand, if you're interested in a language that actually enforces object integrity and type safety, maybe you should give Java (or half a dozen other OO languages) a look.
And if you're interested in finding a DB which supports foreign keys or rollbacks, maybe you should look beyond MySQL too.
Don't get me wrong: I use both PHP and MySQL nearly to the exclusion of everything else. But that's just because it happens to be suitable to everything I need to do. Remember the adage, "When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail." Well, when all you have are nails, you start to wonder why you'd need anything that isn't a hammer.
I thought it was contradictory. We cannot be help responsible yet they own it?? Also, don't use it to harm kids!?!
That's not really contradictory. They're saying that they have the right to do anything they want with your intellectual property, including sell it, but that they're not responsible for it. It sucks, but there's no contradiction there.
And, what is a sublicenceable right?
(insert standard not-a-lawyer disclaimer here)
It means that the rights given to them (read - that they gave to themselves) can be extended to any party interested in sublicensing the content. In English, they can sell the same rights they've given themselves to anyone they choose.
Re:The real difference between Emacs and Word
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RMS Responds
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· Score: 1
And unlike 'check everything at the end', spell as you go lets you improve your spelling skills at the time when you are thinking about it.
That's just a difference between how you and I write. In general, I tend to be a pretty good speller (please don't bother searching my posts for typos: I'm quite sure they exist). When I'm writing, I don't consciously think about how to spell a word unless I'm unsure: it comes to mind as easily of my SSN or home phone. I want to be concentrating on what I'm trying to say.
Nine out of every ten things I that I write which are longer than a page in length are written using EditPlus (Windows) or vim (for Linux), then spell-checked and formatted in another program - say, Word. Restricting my options (ooh - neat fonts. And grammar checking as I go!) at the beginning of a writing project keeps me focused on the important part: writing.
Taco & Hemos and the rest of the Slashdot crew have done a fantastic job of keeping this site up. If y'all think that the Andover acquisition is a good thing and will lead to better content, I'm all for it.
However, I still have to say that I'm a little sad. I know that you have a guarantee of complete freedom to run the site the way you want it, but never again will Slashdot be the little basement operation we've grown to love. Americans and geeks love underdogs, and Slashdot doesn't get to wear that hat anymore.
Feh. Enough of my being maudlin. You guys have a good thing going, and now you have the resources to make it better. Run with it, my boys! Be free like little chickens!
Metcalfe's comments about emacs
on
RMS Responds
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· Score: 3
Stallman's EMACS was brilliant in the 1970s, but today we demand more, specifically Microsoft Word, which can't be written over a weekend, no matter how much Coke you drink. - Bob Metcalfe
RMS was too gracious in his response to take issue with Bob's comments on Emacs. Using information taken directly from the Emacs homepage:
Emacs runs on pretty much any hardware that can run [Free|Net|Open]BSD, Solaris, SunOS, Ultrix, or Linux.
Emacs has a free (of course) API called Emacs LISP (or elisp, for short) enabling you to write pretty much any extension you want. Even, as the homepage notes, a web browser that runs inside emacs.
Emacs has interactive/context sensitive modes for editing a wide variety of documents, including HTML, Lisp, C++, Prolog...
All this is by way of saying that anyone (Bob Metcalfe) who asserts that Emacs could be written in a night is partaking in something a whole lot stronger than Coca-Cola.
One: because the software that Red Hat distributes is GPL'ed, the authors get credit for it. That's a form (however small) of remuneration. For many, like me, that's enough.
Two: Red Hat isn't selling GPL'ed software, they're selling tech support for it. If they can make a bundle by supporting a bunch of folks trying to recompile their kernel, more power to them.
Three: Red Hat has invested a hell of a lot of money in the development of GPL software, as reported previously. I'd say that's a pretty good return for the community.
Imagine it's 2008 and everyone uses Linux, which is free (as in beer). Imagine some entrepreneur raising a case that this "predatory pricing" prevents him developing a new OS and narrows consumer choice.
(Disclaimer: Dammit Jim, I'm a geek, not a lawyer.)
This would actually be pretty difficult to argue. The reason the "predatory pricing" argument is used against Microsoft is because of the government's (perfectly reasonable) argument that pushing IE onto the desktop was a good way to enforce dependence on Microsoft and their retail products. If Microsoft had just ceded the browser market to Netscape, people might have started moving to other platforms which Netscape supported, which would have been disasterous for MS.
The interesting thing here is that the reverse of the argument doesn't apply to Linux. MS hopes that if you're using IE, you'll stick with Windows, and drop a bundle on the MS stable of products (including Windows). Linux distribution companies - Red Hat, Debian, etc. - can make money off their manuals, recoup the cost of distribution media, and sell tech support, but they can't actually charge for the OS. The ancillary costs for the consumer are all tech-support costs, something which just about every major software company charges for at some level.
The answer is to LET the Microsofts make their billions - let them become fat, stodgy and arrogant. Because this sows the seeds of their own destruction
In other words: when a company engages in anti-competitive practices, then violates a consent decree they signed to stop doing it, the answer is to let them make billions off of it, because sooner or later they'll get clumsy and not be able to do it anymore.
I'm not sure I buy that.
In a webbed world, top-down government is unnecessary, and relying on it to "solve" our problems just perpetuates this outmoded system known as politics.
As fashionable as it may be to declare the immanence of the dawn of a post-political era, it's worth keeping a couple basic things in mind. (Warning: strong personal bias follows)
People live together in societies because it's easier than living alone.
Societies have laws to keep their members from mistreating each other any more than necessary.
Companies mistreat each other just like people do.
All the DOJ is doing is trying to uphold the laws we have, and the consent decree that Microsoft signed four years ago. You call it an example of top-down government. I call it the state reminding MS to follow the rules it agreed to.
This actually happens two scenarios in Unreal. In the first, you come across a "dead" Skaarj which hops to its feet and attacks once you get close enough. In the other, the Skaarj drops when you shoot it and plays dead for a few seconds. That scared the living hell out of me.
Even better, though, was the way you could blow the legs off the Krall. I'll never forget when the lot of them ambushed me, so I turned and leveled one, only to find him pulling himself along with his hands after me. Wow.
Clearly, it doesn't, but I think there's an intellectual property issue that make most GPL advocates feel a little queasy.
Specifically, I think that the notion that someone can make a profit of someone's code without rewarding them in any way. Speaking personally, I wouldn't mind seeing my code used in someone else's project, but I might if I didn't receive some kind of recognition, monetary or otherwise. The GPL protects that interest by ensuring that others using the code must treat my code the same way I did, rather than making a few bucks off it and hiding it.
Anyway, that's my only beef with (some of the versions of) the BSD license, and why I tend to prefer the GPL. YMMV.
Have you tried a Mac based KDE theme? When I installed Caldera OpenLinux 2.2 off the CD, KDE offered to theme itself after either Windows, Mac, BeOS, or it's default settings.
We all know that they are perfectly above the law because they are the ones that hold the power of coercion and they can buy whoever they need to, or get them killed as a last resort (Mary Mahoney).
Whatever. Let me know when the black helicopters come for you.
Re:Have you looked at PBS lately?
on
PBS Goes Digital
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· Score: 1
The total line in their financial report for grants is about $41 million of a $448 million budget. That's less than 10% of their expenses, and less than a single tank costs these days. - Gleef
Hear hear. I used to work for an organization which employed less than 20 people as part of a federally funded project. Our budget was approximately $12 million over the first three years of our operation. And do you know what my co-worker (who had been in the procurement field all her life) called it? "Budget dust."
For the purpose of comparison: if Gleef's numbers are correct (had some difficulty finding the relelvant info in the financial report), Ken Starr's four year investigation of Clinton cost about as much money as a year of PBS. Can you actually tell me with a straight face that it did more good for the US than PBS does?
The point of Java was "write once run everywhere"...
Enh. Kinda. Java is actually a pretty bitchin' programming language in and of itself, even without the portability consideration. Compiling a list of Java's virtues is left as an exercise for the reader (and an easy one, since various Sun folks have done it for you).
I haven't read any of these press releases yet, but I'm not convinced I can see how this is much different from releasing an app that only runs under KDE. I'm aware of MS's attempts to screw with Java before, but at what point does "embrace and extend" become "grapple and smother"?
Slashdot Mirror
How can you argue that cloning a species to bring it back from extinction is any less natural than hunting it to extinction for hats?
When dealing with ecological issues, we have a tendency to think "this is good because it's natural," or "this is bad because it's un-natural". It's important to keep in mind that not all ecological damage is caused by evil scientists in laboratories. Slash and burn farming and reckless land development have had catastrophic effects on ecosystems worldwide. A single village pissing in a stream can have a signifigant ecological impact downstream. It doesn't take a PhD. to mess up the planet.
As far as I'm concerned, saying that this experiment is "interfering with evolution" is a straw man of an argument. The question we should be asking is how to we keep from unbalancing the systems we have. Cloning the bird isn't likely to have much of an effect, since it's unlikely they'll ever restore the population to viable levels, but it's an interesting experiment.
The announcement was up last night on PHP's home page, although I don't recall an announcement to the PHP mailing list. (Of course, I haven't been checking it as regularly these days. Both I and the list are swamped.)
/. effect is indicative of interest in the tool: it's really a very intuitive environment. Not something you'd want to write system utilities in (although I'm told it's been done), but for scripting web pages, it's terrific. Check it out.
I'm pretty excited about the new benchmarks. I hope that the
By the way, for a good summary of the technology involved in producing the Cassini probe (and why you shouldn't panic about the plutonium on board), check out this letter on Brill's Content. It was written (by a friend - go Chris go!) in reaction to one of the many paranoia inducing articles that's been circulating about the probe.
... called Sunstroke. It was pretty light on the science - the portrayal of the AI controlling the satellite was particularly laughable. However, the graphic portrayals of how human bodies react to being microwaved did earn it a halfway decent gross-out factor.
I don't think she meant to suggest that Red Hat owned Linux. Rather, she meant that in the same way that my OS is Linux, or Fred's is OpenBSD, Red Hat's is Linux.
Or something. Hey, I've never met Ms. London.
With respect, Bruce, I don't think this is an omission on ESR's part. The percentage of the market which cares enough about open-source drivers is so tiny as to be statistically insignifigant for hardware vendors. No Gateway, Dell, or (shudder) Packard Bell is going to quibble about whether or not their newest OEMed machine is carrying open-sourced device drivers.
For the open source community, this is a different story. I occasionally dream that the entire computer buying community suddenly gets wise and starts asking for real change in the industry, but I'm not holding my breath.
Are you on crack? The Linux user base is orders of magnitude bigger than it was in those days. We're a hell of a long way to World Domination(tm), but the Empire of the Penguin isn't gonna be built in a day.
Yeah, this license might have an effect on spam, but its effect on the availiabilty of the information in general is chilling.
I think that the official definition of "non-linear browsing" runs something along the lines of, "You can't do anything useful with it."
Seriously, this might be fun if you're heavily dosed, but then, so is watching Silly Putty talk to you.
And, presumably, wouldn't be able to pronounce it's own name.
Maybe you shouldn't.
On the other hand, if you're interested in a language that actually enforces object integrity and type safety, maybe you should give Java (or half a dozen other OO languages) a look.
And if you're interested in finding a DB which supports foreign keys or rollbacks, maybe you should look beyond MySQL too.
Don't get me wrong: I use both PHP and MySQL nearly to the exclusion of everything else. But that's just because it happens to be suitable to everything I need to do. Remember the adage, "When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail." Well, when all you have are nails, you start to wonder why you'd need anything that isn't a hammer.
It's turtles all the way down, man.
That's not really contradictory. They're saying that they have the right to do anything they want with your intellectual property, including sell it, but that they're not responsible for it. It sucks, but there's no contradiction there.
(insert standard not-a-lawyer disclaimer here)
It means that the rights given to them (read - that they gave to themselves) can be extended to any party interested in sublicensing the content. In English, they can sell the same rights they've given themselves to anyone they choose.
That's just a difference between how you and I write. In general, I tend to be a pretty good speller (please don't bother searching my posts for typos: I'm quite sure they exist). When I'm writing, I don't consciously think about how to spell a word unless I'm unsure: it comes to mind as easily of my SSN or home phone. I want to be concentrating on what I'm trying to say.
Nine out of every ten things I that I write which are longer than a page in length are written using EditPlus (Windows) or vim (for Linux), then spell-checked and formatted in another program - say, Word. Restricting my options (ooh - neat fonts. And grammar checking as I go!) at the beginning of a writing project keeps me focused on the important part: writing.
Obviously, YMMV.
Taco & Hemos and the rest of the Slashdot crew have done a fantastic job of keeping this site up. If y'all think that the Andover acquisition is a good thing and will lead to better content, I'm all for it.
However, I still have to say that I'm a little sad. I know that you have a guarantee of complete freedom to run the site the way you want it, but never again will Slashdot be the little basement operation we've grown to love. Americans and geeks love underdogs, and Slashdot doesn't get to wear that hat anymore.
Feh. Enough of my being maudlin. You guys have a good thing going, and now you have the resources to make it better. Run with it, my boys! Be free like little chickens!
- Emacs runs on pretty much any hardware that can run [Free|Net|Open]BSD, Solaris, SunOS, Ultrix, or Linux.
- Emacs has a free (of course) API called Emacs LISP (or elisp, for short) enabling you to write pretty much any extension you want. Even, as the homepage notes, a web browser that runs inside emacs.
- Emacs has interactive/context sensitive modes for editing a wide variety of documents, including HTML, Lisp, C++, Prolog...
All this is by way of saying that anyone (Bob Metcalfe) who asserts that Emacs could be written in a night is partaking in something a whole lot stronger than Coca-Cola.There are three answers to that question.
One: because the software that Red Hat distributes is GPL'ed, the authors get credit for it. That's a form (however small) of remuneration. For many, like me, that's enough.
Two: Red Hat isn't selling GPL'ed software, they're selling tech support for it. If they can make a bundle by supporting a bunch of folks trying to recompile their kernel, more power to them.
Three: Red Hat has invested a hell of a lot of money in the development of GPL software, as reported previously. I'd say that's a pretty good return for the community.
(Disclaimer: Dammit Jim, I'm a geek, not a lawyer.)
This would actually be pretty difficult to argue. The reason the "predatory pricing" argument is used against Microsoft is because of the government's (perfectly reasonable) argument that pushing IE onto the desktop was a good way to enforce dependence on Microsoft and their retail products. If Microsoft had just ceded the browser market to Netscape, people might have started moving to other platforms which Netscape supported, which would have been disasterous for MS.
The interesting thing here is that the reverse of the argument doesn't apply to Linux. MS hopes that if you're using IE, you'll stick with Windows, and drop a bundle on the MS stable of products (including Windows). Linux distribution companies - Red Hat, Debian, etc. - can make money off their manuals, recoup the cost of distribution media, and sell tech support, but they can't actually charge for the OS. The ancillary costs for the consumer are all tech-support costs, something which just about every major software company charges for at some level.
In other words: when a company engages in anti-competitive practices, then violates a consent decree they signed to stop doing it, the answer is to let them make billions off of it, because sooner or later they'll get clumsy and not be able to do it anymore.
I'm not sure I buy that.
As fashionable as it may be to declare the immanence of the dawn of a post-political era, it's worth keeping a couple basic things in mind. (Warning: strong personal bias follows)
All the DOJ is doing is trying to uphold the laws we have, and the consent decree that Microsoft signed four years ago. You call it an example of top-down government. I call it the state reminding MS to follow the rules it agreed to.
This actually happens two scenarios in Unreal. In the first, you come across a "dead" Skaarj which hops to its feet and attacks once you get close enough. In the other, the Skaarj drops when you shoot it and plays dead for a few seconds. That scared the living hell out of me.
Even better, though, was the way you could blow the legs off the Krall. I'll never forget when the lot of them ambushed me, so I turned and leveled one, only to find him pulling himself along with his hands after me. Wow.
Specifically, I think that the notion that someone can make a profit of someone's code without rewarding them in any way. Speaking personally, I wouldn't mind seeing my code used in someone else's project, but I might if I didn't receive some kind of recognition, monetary or otherwise. The GPL protects that interest by ensuring that others using the code must treat my code the same way I did, rather than making a few bucks off it and hiding it.
Anyway, that's my only beef with (some of the versions of) the BSD license, and why I tend to prefer the GPL. YMMV.
Have you tried a Mac based KDE theme? When I installed Caldera OpenLinux 2.2 off the CD, KDE offered to theme itself after either Windows, Mac, BeOS, or it's default settings.
Whatever. Let me know when the black helicopters come for you.
Hear hear. I used to work for an organization which employed less than 20 people as part of a federally funded project. Our budget was approximately $12 million over the first three years of our operation. And do you know what my co-worker (who had been in the procurement field all her life) called it? "Budget dust."
For the purpose of comparison: if Gleef's numbers are correct (had some difficulty finding the relelvant info in the financial report), Ken Starr's four year investigation of Clinton cost about as much money as a year of PBS. Can you actually tell me with a straight face that it did more good for the US than PBS does?
Enh. Kinda. Java is actually a pretty bitchin' programming language in and of itself, even without the portability consideration. Compiling a list of Java's virtues is left as an exercise for the reader (and an easy one, since various Sun folks have done it for you).
I haven't read any of these press releases yet, but I'm not convinced I can see how this is much different from releasing an app that only runs under KDE. I'm aware of MS's attempts to screw with Java before, but at what point does "embrace and extend" become "grapple and smother"?