To me, the moral imperative of the Hellmouth series has always been simple: get these stories out to a wider audience. That's what they were sent.
So to get the comments out to a wider audience, you are going to publish a book and sell it for ~$15... Will that REALLY get it to a wider audiance? Is the publisher going to do any publicity on the book? Are you going to be on Oprah? Or is the book just going to sit on bookstore shelves, being bought only by those/. readers who feel for whatever reason they should buy a copy?
How about posting the entire content of the book to a website so people can read it online for free. If you're not making a profit, then why not? It can't hurt profits if there aren't supposed to be any. And that might help get to a wider audience.
If you want to suggest that this is just to "get the word out" I'd like to hear about how you plan on announcing this to the people you wish to hear these words. Obviously you don't really intend this to be for/. readers only, you want this to be for those who don't read Slashdot and for those who aren't Internet savvy. Don't just publize this on Slashdot if you want to get the word out, get it in the public eye.
The millions have spoken: Use AOL. Watch Titannic. Who cares? The masses don't necessarily make the correct descisions. And I wouldn't say Windows is the friendliest. "DX.exe has caused a general protection fault is module kernel32.dll" - not very friendly. Or helpful. It then goes on to say that if the problem continues, contact the vendor. Not helpful, as I don't really know what went wrong.
In my mind, a friendly platform should allow you to have many apps running at once without one trashing the others. At least as of Win98SE, when IE crashes, it no longer brings down the entire OS... A Java applet caused IE 4 to crash on Win98, and Win98 responded by crashing and burning. That's not friendly.
Under Linux, whenever Netscape crashes, I usually don't lose everything else. Except when I move the window - then it'll freeze everything solid. No, really! I'm now afraid to move any Netscape window for fear of corrupting my file systems... I have no clue why that happens, but it does on occasion. I have yet to have it happen to a non-Netscape 4 window...
Basically, if the millions decided to jump off the Grand Canyon, would you do it too? There are plenty of stupid fads which were very popular, but when people look back at them, they just seem foolish.
Back up that claim, and then zealots will have to either agree to points or point out flaws in your arguments. Just saying something and expecting people to back it up without claims is foolish.
One other thing: Linux is easier to secure than NT.
I once got the fun task of "securing" an NT server, which meant to go through a 20-odd page check list. This was bad enough, but some of the instructions were contradictory... page 1 would have you remove the nobody group, page 4 would ask you to change properties about that group, page 9 would say to add it...
Plus there are a lot of registry hacking requirements... changing hex numbers in poorly named registry keys. I have NO idea what they do...
It wasn't too much fun. I have no idea whether or not the server is very secure... it is, however, obscure, so maybe we can keep secure like that...
(Yay, Slashdot's stopped eating HTML on preview! Still eats &entities; though...)
Cool, Slashdot now eats markup in preview as opposed to just messing up entites. Here's my comment with markup so that's it's more readable.
If what you say is correct, that what the judge MEANT to do was saying that providing links to material that you are aware is illegal (creating a database of links to illegal sites) then that is illegal.
In other words, if I had a database of all the places where you could learn to make bombs on the Web, then that page would be illegal - it's links which are SUPPOSED to be to illegal sites. However, if on my link page, I have a link to a site which just happens to decide to post, oh, I don't know, DeCSS, than that would not be illegal, as I was not actively promoting the link as illegal.
I could be wrong though. Also, IANAJL (J = Japanese, figure the rest out:)), so I might be understanding this wrong. I can say that based on what you said, if such a ruling was passed in the US (and IANAL here either), then linking to sites which happened to have illegal content would not be criminal. But compiling a large list of illegal sites would be.
If what you say is correct, that what the judge MEANT to do was saying that providing links to material that you are aware is illegal (creating a database of links to illegal sites) then that is illegal. In other words, if I had a database of all the places where you could learn to make bombs on the Web, then that page would be illegal - it's links which are SUPPOSED to be to illegal sites. However, if on my link page, I have a link to a site which just happens to decide to post, oh, I don't know, DeCSS, than that would not be illegal, as I was not actively promoting the link as illegal. I could be wrong though. Also, IANAJL (J = Japanese, figure the rest out:)), so I might be understanding this wrong. I can say that based on what you said, if such a ruling was passed in the US (and IANAL here either), then linking to sites which happened to have illegal content would not be criminal. But compiling a large list of illegal sites would be.
Because opening GIF's requires the decompression algorithm... I suppose you could hardcode YOUR code to do only open uncompressed. In other words, if you choose not to use the alogrithm, you lock yourself to only these uncompressed and very large GIF files.
Eh, WHAT? GIF uses a compression algorithm patented by Unisys. That's all. You can actually create GIF files which DON'T use the compression algroithm (although you can't open then again...) which are therefore free from the patent.
These GIF files tend to be about 4 times the size they would be if they were uncompressed, so this techinique often isn't used...
Besides, I already can put.gif at the end of any file I want, but it won't DO anything. And very few people are dumb enough to try and execute image files as if they were programs...
They didn't make the GIF format, just patented the compression scheme used. I believe Compu-Serve (while it was still Compu-Serve and not part of AOL) created the format, and specified that the compression use the LHZ or whatever it's called compression algorithm which Unisys owned the patent to.
There's a problem with this though: I recently recoded a bunch of pages (well, actually, the one JavaScript file they all use) to make use of some of the changes in Mozilla. BUT - why would other people? Mainly, I had to change the part that detected IE and make it detect Mozilla >= 5.x. But will most other sites? Probably not until Mozilla is out of beta. And that'll be for a long time, but it would be nice to see pages become standards complaint...
Not that it really matters, because in theory, HTML is being phased out in favor of XML and XSLT. I don't have any XML/XSLT docs to try out on Mozilla, so I don't know how well it works on that.
Yeah, but they've had two years to get there haven't they? By the time the pre-beta release is made, IE 7.2 will be out, everyone will have stopped caring (I gave up on it around M12, and only recently looked at Netscape 6 preview), and it'll be obsolete. My main gripe is with the skins and the fact that they slow the thing to a crawl. I also don't like skins... but that's another thing.
Plus the new "tinderbox" and side panel thing are a royal pain... all in all, I like IE better - well, from a usability standpoint. I REALLY don't like using something that apparently decides that my entire computer is the sandbox for online content... stupid ActiveX.
Eh, I'll keep using Netscape 4.72, be mad that it won't properly display half the sites online, and it isn't fully standards compliant. Maybe around M256 we'll have a useful and stable product, but I'm not holding my breath.
Uh, George Lucas was directly involved in Space Balls. I think he even directed it. He authorized it. Not a legal problem. And BTW, parady isn't exactly covered by fair use - Weird Al has to pay for the music he steals, although not the words (usually).
How in hell do POSIX and X11 apply to IE? They don't. It DOES have some standards problems - oh, no it doesn't - MS changed the standards to meet IE. Blah.
The weird thing is, I find Mozilla runs a hell of a lot faster under Windows then it does under Linux, at least on my box. I can't say which is more stable, but I've never crashed the Windows version and I have crashed the Linux version many times. Of course, running the Windows version for all of one minute doesn't really count in that area...
Personally, I wish they'd screw the "skins" and just use the OS's standard UI (well, except for Linux which doesn't have one, grr) to do the stuff. I find the skins just annoying and slow.
Re:See a sampling of questions asked of Jeeves...
on
AskJeeves Interview
·
· Score: 1
This seems to be the questions that it has stored, not the actual text people are asking. In other words, even if everyone on Slashdot went over and asked "How are you doing?", that wouldn't show up - instead the "question" Fine, would you like to ask another question or whatever would display. I wouldn't be surprised if some questions like "Is Jeeves well-endowed?" are hardcoded never to make it on that page.
Wasn't my point. I'm not holding any point of view on this, violation or non-violation. I'll let people directly involved with it come to a conclusion, whatever it may be. My only point was that the original post, serveral places down, was indeed a flame. He got called a troll, and then that person was accused of not answering the question, and all I was saying is that he wasn't TRYING to answer the question.
As I don't really know what's going on with this, I can't answer the question. From what I've seen, it looks like Bruce acted hastily, trying to raise some muck, but that's only based on what I've seen from/. comments. Take that as you will.
Also, Anarchist - a person who promtes anarchy, as by flouting or ignoring rules, duties, or accepted standards of conduct.
In other words, if someone supporting the GPL claims to be an anarchist, they CANNOT support the GPL since it is after all a rule/duty. I suppose who could argue that the GPL goes against the "accepted standards of conduct" but since those standards include the existance of software licenses, I'd have to disagree with that view.
In other words, Be is being an "anarchist" when the violate the GPL! Yay for them! Support them in their cause!
Oh well, whatever. I'm sure that just like RMS uses "free" in a strange way, people who call themselves "anarchists" use anarchy is a strange way. I'm sure someone can find holes in my views, that's OK. Not disrespect to anyone really intended, just my current POV.
Eh, that still was a flame. The basic question "How do you know there was a violation?" could have been asked without trying to start a flame war.
And before you accuse me of dodging the question, I don't really care, and don't want to take the time to figure it out. As I don't use BeOS, I don't really feel the need to go out of my way to determine if there really is a GPL violation. I'm sure Bruce and Be will work that out, one way or another.
The following is basically the exact text of the story, along with the basic markup used.
This belongs in the "probably unintentional, but egg on their face" department.
BeOS has a C library called libroot.so . This library contains a number of components under the GNU LGPL license, and Be is distributing the source code for these components in their FTP archive. They also have some proprietary components in that library, which they distribute in object form. It looks as if Be is making an honest effort to comply with the LGPL license.
Bruno Haible tipped me off that my Electric Fence program, a malloc() debugging tool, is also part of Be's libroot.so . Electric Fence is under the GPL, not the LGPL. That license would not allow it to be part of a library with proprietary components, although Be could distribute it in a separate library.
It turns out that not only is Electric Fence in Be's libroot.so, but Be is distributing it in object-code form, without source, as if it were one of their proprietary components. Of course this is also against the license. The archive that contains it is here on their FTP site. My files extract from that archive into src/kit/malloc/obj.i586.dyn/{ef_malloc.o,ef_page.o ,ef_print.o,efence.o}
I'm assuming this is an honest mistake by one of their engineers, and will be quickly fixed. It's an example of why it is important to keep track of where your software came from and what license it's under, and read the license when you use somebody else's code.
For a long, LONG time the number one bug on the Java developer page was that Graphics.drawImage() take way too long. The new Java2D spec was SO SLOW that it wasn't even funny. Many people were using Java 1.1 just because of the insane speed hit things graphical took under Java 1.2/w Java2D. Since most Java apps are either applets or involve using the AWT, that's a lot of them.
(Although the bug is listed as resolved, so maybe...)
Scratch that - it ate my HTML entities anyway! Hey, wanna fix that Taco? Otherwise we can't use & or in our posts! Either that or change them to entities for us!
Eh, what does Microsoft have to do with porting stuff to Windows? As long as they don't restrict what you can create that runs under Windows (and they don't as that WOULD be suicide) then if it's technically possible to do it under Windows (and neccesary to do it), it'll evenutally be done.
Netscape 6 is available under Windows - I doubt MS was much interested in helping that along. Except for the stuff MS does themselves which have a tendency to either be exclusively for Windows or only work well under Windows, MS really has nothing to do with whether things go to other platforms.
(Well, OK, they have deals with some groups, some things are Windows only, etc., but for an API, if you want it under Windows, chances are you can create under Windows. The big issue is really doing stuff on things OTHER than Windows...)
To be fair, I'm a CS undergrad, I've used it as a sophomore IN HIGHSCHOOL so yes, it can be understood by people in our educational system. It still is poorly designed. It's a COM interface so it gets points for inter-language usability. However, it's poorly documented. You really need to buy a book on it.
WHY did this article change from Mr. Boddy to Prof. Plumb? And why are both names misspelled? Does (is it Parker Brothers?) whoever owns Clue regularly come by and read Slashdot? Whatever.
Slashdot Mirror
So to get the comments out to a wider audience, you are going to publish a book and sell it for ~$15... Will that REALLY get it to a wider audiance? Is the publisher going to do any publicity on the book? Are you going to be on Oprah? Or is the book just going to sit on bookstore shelves, being bought only by those /. readers who feel for whatever reason they should buy a copy?
How about posting the entire content of the book to a website so people can read it online for free. If you're not making a profit, then why not? It can't hurt profits if there aren't supposed to be any. And that might help get to a wider audience.
If you want to suggest that this is just to "get the word out" I'd like to hear about how you plan on announcing this to the people you wish to hear these words. Obviously you don't really intend this to be for /. readers only, you want this to be for those who don't read Slashdot and for those who aren't Internet savvy. Don't just publize this on Slashdot if you want to get the word out, get it in the public eye.
In my mind, a friendly platform should allow you to have many apps running at once without one trashing the others. At least as of Win98SE, when IE crashes, it no longer brings down the entire OS... A Java applet caused IE 4 to crash on Win98, and Win98 responded by crashing and burning. That's not friendly.
Under Linux, whenever Netscape crashes, I usually don't lose everything else. Except when I move the window - then it'll freeze everything solid. No, really! I'm now afraid to move any Netscape window for fear of corrupting my file systems... I have no clue why that happens, but it does on occasion. I have yet to have it happen to a non-Netscape 4 window...
Basically, if the millions decided to jump off the Grand Canyon, would you do it too? There are plenty of stupid fads which were very popular, but when people look back at them, they just seem foolish.
Back up that claim, and then zealots will have to either agree to points or point out flaws in your arguments. Just saying something and expecting people to back it up without claims is foolish.
I once got the fun task of "securing" an NT server, which meant to go through a 20-odd page check list. This was bad enough, but some of the instructions were contradictory... page 1 would have you remove the nobody group, page 4 would ask you to change properties about that group, page 9 would say to add it...
Plus there are a lot of registry hacking requirements... changing hex numbers in poorly named registry keys. I have NO idea what they do...
It wasn't too much fun. I have no idea whether or not the server is very secure... it is, however, obscure, so maybe we can keep secure like that...
(Yay, Slashdot's stopped eating HTML on preview! Still eats &entities; though...)
If what you say is correct, that what the judge MEANT to do was saying that providing links to material that you are aware is illegal (creating a database of links to illegal sites) then that is illegal.
In other words, if I had a database of all the places where you could learn to make bombs on the Web, then that page would be illegal - it's links which are SUPPOSED to be to illegal sites. However, if on my link page, I have a link to a site which just happens to decide to post, oh, I don't know, DeCSS, than that would not be illegal, as I was not actively promoting the link as illegal.
I could be wrong though. Also, IANAJL (J = Japanese, figure the rest out :)), so I might be understanding this wrong. I can say that based on what you said, if such a ruling was passed in the US (and IANAL here either), then linking to sites which happened to have illegal content would not be criminal. But compiling a large list of illegal sites would be.
If what you say is correct, that what the judge MEANT to do was saying that providing links to material that you are aware is illegal (creating a database of links to illegal sites) then that is illegal. In other words, if I had a database of all the places where you could learn to make bombs on the Web, then that page would be illegal - it's links which are SUPPOSED to be to illegal sites. However, if on my link page, I have a link to a site which just happens to decide to post, oh, I don't know, DeCSS, than that would not be illegal, as I was not actively promoting the link as illegal. I could be wrong though. Also, IANAJL (J = Japanese, figure the rest out :)), so I might be understanding this wrong. I can say that based on what you said, if such a ruling was passed in the US (and IANAL here either), then linking to sites which happened to have illegal content would not be criminal. But compiling a large list of illegal sites would be.
Because opening GIF's requires the decompression algorithm... I suppose you could hardcode YOUR code to do only open uncompressed. In other words, if you choose not to use the alogrithm, you lock yourself to only these uncompressed and very large GIF files.
These GIF files tend to be about 4 times the size they would be if they were uncompressed, so this techinique often isn't used...
Besides, I already can put .gif at the end of any file I want, but it won't DO anything. And very few people are dumb enough to try and execute image files as if they were programs...
They didn't make the GIF format, just patented the compression scheme used. I believe Compu-Serve (while it was still Compu-Serve and not part of AOL) created the format, and specified that the compression use the LHZ or whatever it's called compression algorithm which Unisys owned the patent to.
Not that it really matters, because in theory, HTML is being phased out in favor of XML and XSLT. I don't have any XML/XSLT docs to try out on Mozilla, so I don't know how well it works on that.
Plus the new "tinderbox" and side panel thing are a royal pain... all in all, I like IE better - well, from a usability standpoint. I REALLY don't like using something that apparently decides that my entire computer is the sandbox for online content... stupid ActiveX.
Eh, I'll keep using Netscape 4.72, be mad that it won't properly display half the sites online, and it isn't fully standards compliant. Maybe around M256 we'll have a useful and stable product, but I'm not holding my breath.
Uh, George Lucas was directly involved in Space Balls. I think he even directed it. He authorized it. Not a legal problem. And BTW, parady isn't exactly covered by fair use - Weird Al has to pay for the music he steals, although not the words (usually).
How in hell do POSIX and X11 apply to IE? They don't. It DOES have some standards problems - oh, no it doesn't - MS changed the standards to meet IE. Blah.
Personally, I wish they'd screw the "skins" and just use the OS's standard UI (well, except for Linux which doesn't have one, grr) to do the stuff. I find the skins just annoying and slow.
This seems to be the questions that it has stored, not the actual text people are asking. In other words, even if everyone on Slashdot went over and asked "How are you doing?", that wouldn't show up - instead the "question" Fine, would you like to ask another question or whatever would display. I wouldn't be surprised if some questions like "Is Jeeves well-endowed?" are hardcoded never to make it on that page.
For more fun, try asking it the flight velocity of an unladen swallow. Or how Jeeve's day is.
What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
How are you today?
As I don't really know what's going on with this, I can't answer the question. From what I've seen, it looks like Bruce acted hastily, trying to raise some muck, but that's only based on what I've seen from /. comments. Take that as you will.
In other words, if someone supporting the GPL claims to be an anarchist, they CANNOT support the GPL since it is after all a rule/duty. I suppose who could argue that the GPL goes against the "accepted standards of conduct" but since those standards include the existance of software licenses, I'd have to disagree with that view.
In other words, Be is being an "anarchist" when the violate the GPL! Yay for them! Support them in their cause!
Oh well, whatever. I'm sure that just like RMS uses "free" in a strange way, people who call themselves "anarchists" use anarchy is a strange way. I'm sure someone can find holes in my views, that's OK. Not disrespect to anyone really intended, just my current POV.
And before you accuse me of dodging the question, I don't really care, and don't want to take the time to figure it out. As I don't use BeOS, I don't really feel the need to go out of my way to determine if there really is a GPL violation. I'm sure Bruce and Be will work that out, one way or another.
This belongs in the "probably unintentional, but egg on their face" department.
BeOS has a C library called libroot.so . This library contains a number of components under the GNU LGPL license, and Be is distributing the source code for these components in their FTP archive. They also have some proprietary components in that library, which they distribute in object form. It looks as if Be is making an honest effort to comply with the LGPL license.
Bruno Haible tipped me off that my Electric Fence program, a malloc() debugging tool, is also part of Be's libroot.so . Electric Fence is under the GPL, not the LGPL. That license would not allow it to be part of a library with proprietary components, although Be could distribute it in a separate library.
It turns out that not only is Electric Fence in Be's libroot.so, but Be is distributing it in object-code form, without source, as if it were one of their proprietary components. Of course this is also against the license. The archive that contains it is here on their FTP site. My files extract from that archive into src/kit/malloc/obj.i586.dyn/{ef_malloc.o,ef_page.o ,ef_print.o,efence.o}
I'm assuming this is an honest mistake by one of their engineers, and will be quickly fixed. It's an example of why it is important to keep track of where your software came from and what license it's under, and read the license when you use somebody else's code.
Thanks
Bruce
(Although the bug is listed as resolved, so maybe...)
Scratch that - it ate my HTML entities anyway! Hey, wanna fix that Taco? Otherwise we can't use & or in our posts! Either that or change them to entities for us!
The other option is to change from HTML Formatted to extrans or plain text.
(For more information about HTML entities, visit W3C and look up the HTML spec. &, <, and &>gt; are by far the most useful entities...)
Netscape 6 is available under Windows - I doubt MS was much interested in helping that along. Except for the stuff MS does themselves which have a tendency to either be exclusively for Windows or only work well under Windows, MS really has nothing to do with whether things go to other platforms.
(Well, OK, they have deals with some groups, some things are Windows only, etc., but for an API, if you want it under Windows, chances are you can create under Windows. The big issue is really doing stuff on things OTHER than Windows...)
To be fair, I'm a CS undergrad, I've used it as a sophomore IN HIGHSCHOOL so yes, it can be understood by people in our educational system. It still is poorly designed. It's a COM interface so it gets points for inter-language usability. However, it's poorly documented. You really need to buy a book on it.
WHY did this article change from Mr. Boddy to Prof. Plumb? And why are both names misspelled? Does (is it Parker Brothers?) whoever owns Clue regularly come by and read Slashdot? Whatever.