This is ridiculous. Counting also the Katz interview posting today, this is the third time this year, and its only the start of February, that a Katz piece has been posted in such a way as to avoid the Katz Repellent. Is this being done on purpose? If you don't like Katz, the chances are you don't feel indifferent, you hate him so much you would be pleased to hear he was dead! Wake up/. , I suspect the Katz Repellent is the most popular exclude box you provide. If you want to force Katz down everyones's pipe (and lose eyeballs in the process), just remove the Katz Repellent altogether. It is starting to look like a conspiracy. Are you getting a share in the profits of his book or something?
Show us that you want to do the right thing. Do something about this before the interview answers are posted, so this doesn't happen a fourth time this year (or ever again).
Just yesterday I was thinking of buying some 'smart drugs' to improve my memory. I'm sending them straight to/. instead - you covered this when Space Imaging launched their website several months ago! Maybe the Slash code should automatically search and suggest stories that could be the same whenever you make a submission? Or was it your aim to cover someone else's coverage of a story you had already run, to show how far behind the competition is?
Or is it OK to rerun stories over and over because there are so many new readers that haven't seen what was posted anything more than four months ago?
People can't get over Gibson for a number of reasons. First because he practically invented modern cyberpunk. I have not read Neal Stephenson, but from what I see in the comments, he writes cyberpunk novels. Well, cyberpunk basically didn't exist before Gibson, so Gibson is one of the giants whose shoulders Stephenson stands on. Gibson, in turn, is standing on the shoulders of Philip K Dick and John Brunner. Would anyone care to add to that list?
But he didn't just invent it, he writes about it in a compelling and convincing manner, drawing out the social and psychological impact of the worlds he descibes. He explores the deeper issues, rather than just moving on the plot. And then he weaves the philosophical issues in to the plot. Gibson isn't just trying to write page-turning sci-fi, he's trying to write literature. And IMHO succeeding. Neuromancer, for example, isn't just held in high regard by the fans. It won the Hugo, the Nebula and the Philip K Dick Memorial, that's a lot of critical acclaim. That, I feel, makes it very hard to justify your claim that Gibson's stories are not well written.
The question he was asked about the nanites which he answered by saying he might notice peoples' clothes illustrates a point you seem to have missed. Gibson is an artist, not a scientist. In fact he doesn't seem to be interested in science or technology, but the effects that they have upon people and the world. It seems that you dislike him because he isn't a geek. Why do you consider him to be "hard" science fiction? He doesn't really write about science or technology, just situations. In his recent appearance on BBC Radio's 'Desert Island Disks' he accepted the suggestion by the interviewer that he writes about "the cutting edge of the now". That really sums it up for me.
There are _no_ upgrades for PlayStation. It has only the best kind of upgrades - improved understanding of the hardware on the part of the programmer. Compare Ridge Racer 1 to Final Fantasy 8. They look like they run on completely different machines.
Perhaps PS2 will break through that price/performance point at last. But for now, Do not underestimate the power!
Anything that helps to bring non-PC type computing to mass attention is a good thing. PCs really suck, I look forward to being able to buy an inexpensive computing device that does the job and doesn't allow me to waste my money on crappy upgrades that I really don't need, the better.
And what is the chance that MS will port Windows to PS2? Infinitessimally small I hope. What is the chance that Linux and *BSD will get ported to it? Pretty damn good, I hope. End the idiocy of PCs everywhere! Who knows, we might not have to put up with adverts claiming a CPU upgrade will increase the speed of your Inet connection;-) And without the technical details of the hardware being required knowledge, we might not have to put up with people that don't know what they are talking about boasting to their colleagues about their computer - and getting it all cringefully wrong.
Its Science Fiction not Science Prediction. The only point at which Sci-Fi can be judged is when something is found not to be viable (and we still don't know that someone won't come along in the future and work it out). Good Sci-Fi is about general/philosophical ideas.
I read a few of A. E. Van Vogt's novels when I was younger, and throughly enjoyed them. I particularly remember one (whose title I forget) where society is dominated by women by making men wear coloured spectacles, and this guy finds that clear adhesive tape over a the 'lenses' nullifies the effect and is set free. I'm sure that wasn't meant as a prophecy. It was a very exciting read.
Right, I'm off to find out what that book was called and give it another read. Its sad to think that I only got round to this because of the author's death.
This _should_ be done. I admit I haven't read any of his books, the reason being his inane 'Chaos Manor' column in Byte, which sadly continues in the on-line version. If I were to read about one more of his Mac Hypercard apps, or how much he loves M$, or how important he feels are quality SCSI terminators. Grrrrrr!
I did think of the abuse angle, but thought it wasn't a problem assuming that meta-moderation has no automatic effect upon the system (about which I could be terribly wrong).
As I understand it, there are many more meta-moderators at one time than there are moderators. My guess is that pretty much every moderation gets meta-moderated quite a number of times. I imagine that statistically there are many more good meta-moderators than bad/rogue meta-moderators. The each good meta-moderator's work would have the same 'extra' weight as any bad meta-moderator under the proposed scheme, so a bad bit of meta-moderation would quickly get counteracted.
I assume that fair and unfair is each worth one meta-moderation point, and all meta-moderations of a moderation are added together to get the meta score, therefore a whole group of moderators with the same opinion of a comment would only get a negative effect from the system if the majority of meta-moderators that saw that moderation thought that moderation was unfair.
I don't think meta moderation works that way. I think that moderation adds the points instantly, so if four people give a comment from a logged in user Interesting, it gets a total score of five right away. These moderations will soon get meta moderated. If a particular moderation gets an unfair, I think that moderator loses some karma, which in turn reduces their likelyhood of getting to moderate again.
Or is it just that the/. administrators get a list of users who have receive a lot of unfair meta moderations, and then decide whether any of those users need to be banned from moderating? Can anyone explain? I would read the source, but 'learn PERL' is quite a way down my todo list.
In meta-moderation, the message at the top of the page states that duplicates are fine. I say _some_ duplicates are fine. I understand that one is moderating a moderation, not the displayed comment. But as the moderation is a discrete value, it really should be the case that if several people moderate a comment as, for example, Interesting, then only one instance of Interesting should appear on a meta moderation page, and a meta moderation of Fair or Unfair should be applied to all the moderations with the same value. This would further increase the amount of meta moderation done without adding any user effort. Maybe I am just unlucky, but I see this kind of duplicate almost every day.
The short answer to why this is pollution of Java rather than MS improving their own product is that J++ is not a clean-room implementation, it is based on source code licensed from Sun, and that license requires that products derrived from that source conform to Sun's view of what a full standard Java distribution should. In this case MS refused to ship the RMI (Remote Method Invocation) classes and built in their own COM/DCOM stuff instead.
A lot of the current crop of IT managers feel emotionally attached to MS, because of successes they had with projects based on Windows 3.11. These people are highly resistant to any move away from MS, and a tool like J++ is a perfect way for them to appear to be moving forward in the eyes of their superiors, whilst actually keeping their organisation dependant on the Win32 platform.
OK, what is the definition of troll? The above got moderated as troll, why? There is a lot of strong anti-Katz sentiment on/., is it troll behaviour to dislike a/. contributor these days? If so, perhaps the / code should be changed so that anyone who checks an exclude based on contributor in account setup gets all their posts instantly moderated to troll? I thought troll meant a comment posted in order to annoy as many other/. readers as possible, the above was clearly intended to be a genuine request to the/. crew.
OK, I already checked the box to exclude stories posted by Katz. Please/., implement a checkbox that excludes stories about Katz too. Seeing his name turn up on the front page has totally ruined my day, and I would be pretty sure that's the case for all the rest of the people that have this exclude checked. BTW, I would love to know just what proportion of the/. readership has this checked, and some demographics would be cool too, though I know its not in the database.
This claim is just BS. One cannot give reasonable doubt to whether the complainant really believed that this was anything but BS. If they called the police and accused someone of some crime, which the police investigated, they would be guilty of wasting police time, which is a crimal offence in the UK. If it is true that the US police took part in a raid on MIT or whatever, these people should be facing ten in the pen for making cops do this crap when they could have been doing something useful like catching someone guilty of a violent crime...
This might be more of an issue (for Linux) if the software ever gets to the same kind of level of ease of installation and use, and ubiquity, as Windows. Developer support will only remain important whilst the software
a) has bugs b) has a large proportion of its users who are also capable developers.
If ubiquity is achieved, it is likely that the majority of users (even the technically proficient ones) will value packaging and other 'added-value features' over whether it is open source. Withdrawing developer support from a product isn't going to have an enormous effect for a company that sells 99.9% of its products to people that are motivated by the desire to have useful software, not open source ideology. It will cost them more in support, and quality will degrade, but profits are unlikely to take a nose-dive in such a climate.
Red Hat plays fair, but is it the developer's choice of distribution? RPMs are useful for beginners, but don't encourage users to get involved in the source. I am talking about when the user experience is ten times more user-orientated than it is now.
One should also consider whether there is the need to protect the GPL. If you believe in everything the GPL stands for, then YES. But there seem to be a lot of people around at the moment who appear to think that the GPL is the best licence because it is the most in your face. Perhaps these people don't know what the GPL means, or what the alternative open source licenses do differently. Have the BSDs suffered in any way because their open source code isn't 'protected' from being used, modified or otherwise, in closed source software?
I just want to know, _why_ do people want to have a robot about the house? Is this something to do with the kids that were the right age to have Transformers or something? I just have no desire to have a robot.
And please, nobody say 'Because it would be cool!'. An actual reason please... What would it do?
One semi-reasonable reason why the Weather Channel may have the right to stop you parsing their data is that you are offering a competing service to theirs, but using their resources to provide it.
I don't know how weather data is shared in the USA, but if they have paid to recieve the National Weather Advisory's interpretation of recent raw weather data, and they are paying for the bandwidth to answer your software agent's request for the page that contains it on their site, it seems reasonable that they might object. The weather must be public domain, but any particular measurement of it, and certainly any interpretation of it may not be. You can read their web page and then talk to a friend about it because that is a kind of reasonable use. Connecting to their server, parsing out the information you want, then representing it without acknowledgement (for their resources that you have used) doesn't seem so reasonable.
Perhaps they have a statement on their web-site somewhere that explains how they feel about this kind of thing? Kind of like attaching a license to a web site. I suspect this is the answer to the eBay question too. Someone suggested that eBay doesn't have a robots.txt. I was under the impression that you can put one in any directory to affect robot behaviour from there downwards. Is that correct, and if so, does eBay really have no robots.txt files anywhere on its server?
As for your particular case, perhaps Weather Channel would be more than happy for you to use their service to build your page if you provided a link back to their site in an acknowledgement on the page? That doesn't sound unreasonable to me.
The consensus of the discussion is that most will boycott. But that is just the consensus of those that wish to or dare to explicitly express their opinion.
I would like to see a poll:
Will you take part in a boycott of Amazon, as proposed by RMS? Yes No Wouldn't have bought from Amazon anyway sucks blah blah
It would be great to see just how big Stallman's geek army is, and whether it contains the majority of/.ers or not. Of course it would still only contain the results of those that can be bothered to vote...
and make sure that people in poorer countries have to pay up for the pharmaceutical research done in richer countries (much of it at public expense)
This is an investment made by the government on behalf of your nation. They are hoping that the profits on the product whose research they help to fund will generate a bigger tax revenue, thus reducing the tax burden on individual citizens.
If you disagree with the idea of the governemt investing in industry in general, you are out of luck. The only system that really agrees with that view, communism, invests totally in industry, through state ownership. I suppose you could vote for the Green Party.
This thread has provoked me to think about the viral nature of the GPL. I began to wonder of its effect on commercial use of Linux.
There is a very vocal group who would like to see Linux replace Windows as the PC desktop OS of the majority of all users worldwide (and throughout the Universe;0) ). By far the biggest use of PCs is in the workplace. Additionally, a large proportion of PCs in the workplace are used to run software custom written for their organisation. It is not usual to release the source because the users would have no use for it, and it could prove a security risk to the organisation because it would make it much easier to make trojans among other things. It may also contain business secrets or actually embody the main value in the business - I know of a business that operates a software porting service, which is actually 99% automated by their in-house software.
What I want to ask is, can a business run in-house closed source software across their organisation on any of the current Linux distributions, developing using the development libraries provided? Are all the core libraries (libc5, glibc2.x, gtk, gnomelibs, kdelibs, maybe even the kernel api) licensed such that you can link a non-GPL program to them?
Is there a web-site anywhere which audits distros for this sort of thing? Are any distros particularly good or bad with this respect? Red Hat has links with big corporate suppliers, but does their distro provide for this important business requirement? Caldera and Corel are aimed right at this market, so is there a full audit of these? This of course not only applies to all the libraries, but what the libraries themselves link to. It is a pretty complex problem.
If this audit information exists, and it reveals any problems for closed source in-house business software, is it documented anywhere so that in-house developers can work safely without infringing? Or is it simply the case that these people cannot work with a GNU/Linux distribution?
One more thing. If libraries that are GPLed rather than LGPLed cannot be linked to by an appropriately open license, what is the situation with a shell script that calls GPLed programs? A shell script is open to inspection by nature, but must it also be available for free distribution by anyone to whom it is distributed?
It looks to me from my current knowledge of the situation that the safest option is to use a BSD rather than Linux. But you don't see hordes advocating BSD Everywhere (tm).
I didn't fully illustrate my thoughts. The GPL is an ideological license. If a developer built a user base under the GPL, then released future versions only under a closed source license, I suspect few of their users would buy in. Someone would likely create newer modified versions of the last GPL version. The original developer might make some money, but not a huge amount. That isn't going to appeal to many commercial software companies. If you are actually selling software. If you are Sun, you might be able to increase demand for your hardware products by getting a large number of users for some software that works all over the place but probably best on your own. This is like the service industry model. When I wrote the first comment I was unaware that the original author could release the same software under the GPL and any other licenses of their choosing. This is good, but it leaves a couple of things.First, this only works for the original author, not any subsequent maintainers or forkers, who might feasibly transform a program beyond recognition. The other concern is the 'viral' nature of GPL code. Can anyone clarify for me, is it the case that if you use a library that is GPLed, your code must also be GPLed? If that is the case, that makes it impossible for a closed source project to use GTK for example (unless the library's originator licenses it to you under special license - does anyone know of a famous example of this?). I personally don't think that limiting the amount of software written with a library is a good thing.
The GPL was designed as a defense against commercial software, it seems. Its one of these 'property is theft' things - anyone care to explain what that means?
The GPL basically turns the traditional license on its head - it protects the users instead of the producers. So long as they don't break the license, there is nothing to stop anyone that gets hold of something GPLd from doing something the author doesn't like. Because it provides some safety for users, it is attractive to developers who want to gain users.
Personally I like the idea behind the BSD license - that it promotes the use of quality code by allowing anyone to borrow bits for use in anything, regardless of the next license, so long as it is acreditted. I think the GPL's political nature will ultimately prevent its apparent greatest ambition - to move to a world where everything is GPLed. It works fine for hobby projects, labour of love stuff, like Linux. But at the same time it excludes the larger part of the software producing world - industry - from benefitting unless they are prepared to change their whole business model to the one advocated by RMS and his wandering carrier bags. But it is doing us a great service by bring the whole open source thing back into relatively common use, like it was when Unix was young.
Thanks for asking the question. I will make the effort to look at the Artistic license and see if I can learn from it. It sounds like a fair solution.
I made a tape of the programme. The only mention of the programme at the BBC's website is on today's schedule. I am thinking about typing up a transcript and putting it on the web. Does anyone have an opinion about that? Am I likely to get in trouble? I haven't come across transcripts of other interviews but I would imagine William Gibson does a few interviews like this each year. Is there any demand?
Why is it that some C++ advocates hate Java so much? Maybe I just haven't read enough comments, Usenet postings, etc, but I haven't seen Java advocates laying into C++ ever. Look at that last line - "I'm not frightened of pointers, thanks." Well I'm not frightened of pointers either, but I don't feel like an idiot for advocating Java, which seems to be the suggestion. I use and like C++ too, but the removal of pointers from Java does so much more than make it easier on a superficial level to learn. I'm sure you know this already, but it doesn't make your point for you. Do C++ advocates feel under some kind of threat from Java? Some of them certainly react to it as though it has them cornered (which I'm sure it doesn't). Or do C++ advocates feel that Java is a dumbing-down language, like VB? I hope this isn't taken as inflamatory, I really would like to know.
Coaxial, you are the voice of reason. Thankyou for speaking in defence of Linux. When Linus began Linux, he set out to build a free Unix-like operating system, not a contestant for dominating OS of the Universe. He wanted Unix, but now so many people who want an alternative to MS have attached their allegiance to Linux. However, they don't want a Unix-like OS, they want an OS for everyone.
Unix isn't about dumbing down, it is about empowerment through knowledge. The more I learn about Unix, the more I discover I can do. Most of the things I am thinking of here cannot be expressed efficiently in a GUI (OK I can think of a way to make a GUI environment for shell-scripting, but it doesn't speed things). Unix isn't about catering to the consumer.
Essentially, to cater for the consumer, you would have to remove most of the things that make Linux so great. The multi-user environment is fundamental to Linux security, both from the outside world and poor-quality local code, but logging in and maintaining user accounts gets in the way of the consumer, so throw it away! Then we don't need to worry about file permissions and ownership, after all they just get in the way of the consumer, so throw them away! The consumer finds it inconvenient and difficult to build from source, so throw away the development tools, and open source! Eventually you end up with a free Win9x.
I'm not saying that consumers shouldn't be allowed to use Linux. I'm saying that consumer interests should not be allowed to damage Linux. If you manage to create a Linux distribution that caters for the consumer without damaging the source tree by removing things, just by setting things up so that they are easier, it will likely get Linux publicity. It will give the wider populace the impression that Linux is a low-end OS that doesn't doesn't have powerful (OS) features, and probably with masses of people that find clicking difficult, low stability.
Let consumers have Linux. But don't prevent anyone from having a free Unix-like operating system. Don't let the one of the most brightest public displays of open source go out.
Slashdot Mirror
This is ridiculous. Counting also the Katz interview posting today, this is the third time this year, and its only the start of February, that a Katz piece has been posted in such a way as to avoid the Katz Repellent. Is this being done on purpose? If you don't like Katz, the chances are you don't feel indifferent, you hate him so much you would be pleased to hear he was dead! Wake up /. , I suspect the Katz Repellent is the most popular exclude box you provide. If you want to force Katz down everyones's pipe (and lose eyeballs in the process), just remove the Katz Repellent altogether. It is starting to look like a conspiracy. Are you getting a share in the profits of his book or something?
Show us that you want to do the right thing. Do something about this before the interview answers are posted, so this doesn't happen a fourth time this year (or ever again).
Just yesterday I was thinking of buying some 'smart drugs' to improve my memory. I'm sending them straight to /. instead - you covered this when Space Imaging launched their website several months ago! Maybe the Slash code should automatically search and suggest stories that could be the same whenever you make a submission? Or was it your aim to cover someone else's coverage of a story you had already run, to show how far behind the competition is?
Or is it OK to rerun stories over and over because there are so many new readers that haven't seen what was posted anything more than four months ago?
People can't get over Gibson for a number of reasons. First because he practically invented modern cyberpunk. I have not read Neal Stephenson, but from what I see in the comments, he writes cyberpunk novels. Well, cyberpunk basically didn't exist before Gibson, so Gibson is one of the giants whose shoulders Stephenson stands on. Gibson, in turn, is standing on the shoulders of Philip K Dick and John Brunner. Would anyone care to add to that list?
But he didn't just invent it, he writes about it in a compelling and convincing manner, drawing out the social and psychological impact of the worlds he descibes. He explores the deeper issues, rather than just moving on the plot. And then he weaves the philosophical issues in to the plot. Gibson isn't just trying to write page-turning sci-fi, he's trying to write literature. And IMHO succeeding. Neuromancer, for example, isn't just held in high regard by the fans. It won the Hugo, the Nebula and the Philip K Dick Memorial, that's a lot of critical acclaim. That, I feel, makes it very hard to justify your claim that Gibson's stories are not well written.
The question he was asked about the nanites which he answered by saying he might notice peoples' clothes illustrates a point you seem to have missed. Gibson is an artist, not a scientist. In fact he doesn't seem to be interested in science or technology, but the effects that they have upon people and the world. It seems that you dislike him because he isn't a geek. Why do you consider him to be "hard" science fiction? He doesn't really write about science or technology, just situations. In his recent appearance on BBC Radio's 'Desert Island Disks' he accepted the suggestion by the interviewer that he writes about "the cutting edge of the now". That really sums it up for me.
There are _no_ upgrades for PlayStation. It has only the best kind of upgrades - improved understanding of the hardware on the part of the programmer. Compare Ridge Racer 1 to Final Fantasy 8. They look like they run on completely different machines.
Perhaps PS2 will break through that price/performance point at last. But for now, Do not underestimate the power!
Anything that helps to bring non-PC type computing to mass attention is a good thing. PCs really suck, I look forward to being able to buy an inexpensive computing device that does the job and doesn't allow me to waste my money on crappy upgrades that I really don't need, the better.
And what is the chance that MS will port Windows to PS2? Infinitessimally small I hope. What is the chance that Linux and *BSD will get ported to it? Pretty damn good, I hope. End the idiocy of PCs everywhere! Who knows, we might not have to put up with adverts claiming a CPU upgrade will increase the speed of your Inet connection ;-) And without the technical details of the hardware being required knowledge, we might not have to put up with people that don't know what they are talking about boasting to their colleagues about their computer - and getting it all cringefully wrong.
Its Science Fiction not Science Prediction. The only point at which Sci-Fi can be judged is when something is found not to be viable (and we still don't know that someone won't come along in the future and work it out). Good Sci-Fi is about general/philosophical ideas.
I read a few of A. E. Van Vogt's novels when I was younger, and throughly enjoyed them. I particularly remember one (whose title I forget) where society is dominated by women by making men wear coloured spectacles, and this guy finds that clear adhesive tape over a the 'lenses' nullifies the effect and is set free. I'm sure that wasn't meant as a prophecy. It was a very exciting read.
Right, I'm off to find out what that book was called and give it another read. Its sad to think that I only got round to this because of the author's death.
This _should_ be done. I admit I haven't read any of his books, the reason being his inane 'Chaos Manor' column in Byte, which sadly continues in the on-line version. If I were to read about one more of his Mac Hypercard apps, or how much he loves M$, or how important he feels are quality SCSI terminators. Grrrrrr!
I did think of the abuse angle, but thought it wasn't a problem assuming that meta-moderation has no automatic effect upon the system (about which I could be terribly wrong).
As I understand it, there are many more meta-moderators at one time than there are moderators. My guess is that pretty much every moderation gets meta-moderated quite a number of times. I imagine that statistically there are many more good meta-moderators than bad/rogue meta-moderators. The each good meta-moderator's work would have the same 'extra' weight as any bad meta-moderator under the proposed scheme, so a bad bit of meta-moderation would quickly get counteracted.
I assume that fair and unfair is each worth one meta-moderation point, and all meta-moderations of a moderation are added together to get the meta score, therefore a whole group of moderators with the same opinion of a comment would only get a negative effect from the system if the majority of meta-moderators that saw that moderation thought that moderation was unfair.
I don't think meta moderation works that way. I think that moderation adds the points instantly, so if four people give a comment from a logged in user Interesting, it gets a total score of five right away. These moderations will soon get meta moderated. If a particular moderation gets an unfair, I think that moderator loses some karma, which in turn reduces their likelyhood of getting to moderate again.
Or is it just that the /. administrators get a list of users who have receive a lot of unfair meta moderations, and then decide whether any of those users need to be banned from moderating? Can anyone explain? I would read the source, but 'learn PERL' is quite a way down my todo list.
In meta-moderation, the message at the top of the page states that duplicates are fine. I say _some_ duplicates are fine. I understand that one is moderating a moderation, not the displayed comment. But as the moderation is a discrete value, it really should be the case that if several people moderate a comment as, for example, Interesting, then only one instance of Interesting should appear on a meta moderation page, and a meta moderation of Fair or Unfair should be applied to all the moderations with the same value. This would further increase the amount of meta moderation done without adding any user effort. Maybe I am just unlucky, but I see this kind of duplicate almost every day.
The short answer to why this is pollution of Java rather than MS improving their own product is that J++ is not a clean-room implementation, it is based on source code licensed from Sun, and that license requires that products derrived from that source conform to Sun's view of what a full standard Java distribution should. In this case MS refused to ship the RMI (Remote Method Invocation) classes and built in their own COM/DCOM stuff instead.
A lot of the current crop of IT managers feel emotionally attached to MS, because of successes they had with projects based on Windows 3.11. These people are highly resistant to any move away from MS, and a tool like J++ is a perfect way for them to appear to be moving forward in the eyes of their superiors, whilst actually keeping their organisation dependant on the Win32 platform.
OK, what is the definition of troll? The above got moderated as troll, why? There is a lot of strong anti-Katz sentiment on /., is it troll behaviour to dislike a /. contributor these days? If so, perhaps the / code should be changed so that anyone who checks an exclude based on contributor in account setup gets all their posts instantly moderated to troll? I thought troll meant a comment posted in order to annoy as many other /. readers as possible, the above was clearly intended to be a genuine request to the /. crew.
OK, I already checked the box to exclude stories posted by Katz. Please /., implement a checkbox that excludes stories about Katz too. Seeing his name turn up on the front page has totally ruined my day, and I would be pretty sure that's the case for all the rest of the people that have this exclude checked. BTW, I would love to know just what proportion of the /. readership has this checked, and some demographics would be cool too, though I know its not in the database.
This claim is just BS. One cannot give reasonable doubt to whether the complainant really believed that this was anything but BS. If they called the police and accused someone of some crime, which the police investigated, they would be guilty of wasting police time, which is a crimal offence in the UK. If it is true that the US police took part in a raid on MIT or whatever, these people should be facing ten in the pen for making cops do this crap when they could have been doing something useful like catching someone guilty of a violent crime...
This might be more of an issue (for Linux) if the software ever gets to the same kind of level of ease of installation and use, and ubiquity, as Windows. Developer support will only remain important whilst the software
a) has bugs
b) has a large proportion of its users who are also capable developers.
If ubiquity is achieved, it is likely that the majority of users (even the technically proficient ones) will value packaging and other 'added-value features' over whether it is open source. Withdrawing developer support from a product isn't going to have an enormous effect for a company that sells 99.9% of its products to people that are motivated by the desire to have useful software, not open source ideology. It will cost them more in support, and quality will degrade, but profits are unlikely to take a nose-dive in such a climate.
Red Hat plays fair, but is it the developer's choice of distribution? RPMs are useful for beginners, but don't encourage users to get involved in the source. I am talking about when the user experience is ten times more user-orientated than it is now.
One should also consider whether there is the need to protect the GPL. If you believe in everything the GPL stands for, then YES. But there seem to be a lot of people around at the moment who appear to think that the GPL is the best licence because it is the most in your face. Perhaps these people don't know what the GPL means, or what the alternative open source licenses do differently. Have the BSDs suffered in any way because their open source code isn't 'protected' from being used, modified or otherwise, in closed source software?
I just want to know, _why_ do people want to have a robot about the house? Is this something to do with the kids that were the right age to have Transformers or something? I just have no desire to have a robot.
And please, nobody say 'Because it would be cool!'. An actual reason please... What would it do?
One semi-reasonable reason why the Weather Channel may have the right to stop you parsing their data is that you are offering a competing service to theirs, but using their resources to provide it.
I don't know how weather data is shared in the USA, but if they have paid to recieve the National Weather Advisory's interpretation of recent raw weather data, and they are paying for the bandwidth to answer your software agent's request for the page that contains it on their site, it seems reasonable that they might object. The weather must be public domain, but any particular measurement of it, and certainly any interpretation of it may not be. You can read their web page and then talk to a friend about it because that is a kind of reasonable use. Connecting to their server, parsing out the information you want, then representing it without acknowledgement (for their resources that you have used) doesn't seem so reasonable.
Perhaps they have a statement on their web-site somewhere that explains how they feel about this kind of thing? Kind of like attaching a license to a web site. I suspect this is the answer to the eBay question too. Someone suggested that eBay doesn't have a robots.txt. I was under the impression that you can put one in any directory to affect robot behaviour from there downwards. Is that correct, and if so, does eBay really have no robots.txt files anywhere on its server?
As for your particular case, perhaps Weather Channel would be more than happy for you to use their service to build your page if you provided a link back to their site in an acknowledgement on the page? That doesn't sound unreasonable to me.
The consensus of the discussion is that most will boycott. But that is just the consensus of those that wish to or dare to explicitly express their opinion.
/.ers or not. Of course it would still only contain the results of those that can be bothered to vote...
I would like to see a poll:
Will you take part in a boycott of Amazon, as proposed by RMS?
Yes
No
Wouldn't have bought from Amazon anyway
sucks blah blah
It would be great to see just how big Stallman's geek army is, and whether it contains the majority of
and make sure that people in poorer countries have to pay up for the pharmaceutical research done in richer countries (much of it at public expense)
This is an investment made by the government on behalf of your nation. They are hoping that the profits on the product whose research they help to fund will generate a bigger tax revenue, thus reducing the tax burden on individual citizens.
If you disagree with the idea of the governemt investing in industry in general, you are out of luck. The only system that really agrees with that view, communism, invests totally in industry, through state ownership. I suppose you could vote for the Green Party.
This thread has provoked me to think about the viral nature of the GPL. I began to wonder of its effect on commercial use of Linux.
;0) ). By far the biggest use of PCs is in the workplace. Additionally, a large proportion of PCs in the workplace are used to run software custom written for their organisation. It is not usual to release the source because the users would have no use for it, and it could prove a security risk to the organisation because it would make it much easier to make trojans among other things. It may also contain business secrets or actually embody the main value in the business - I know of a business that operates a software porting service, which is actually 99% automated by their in-house software.
There is a very vocal group who would like to see Linux replace Windows as the PC desktop OS of the majority of all users worldwide (and throughout the Universe
What I want to ask is, can a business run in-house closed source software across their organisation on any of the current Linux distributions, developing using the development libraries provided? Are all the core libraries (libc5, glibc2.x, gtk, gnomelibs, kdelibs, maybe even the kernel api) licensed such that you can link a non-GPL program to them?
Is there a web-site anywhere which audits distros for this sort of thing? Are any distros particularly good or bad with this respect? Red Hat has links with big corporate suppliers, but does their distro provide for this important business requirement? Caldera and Corel are aimed right at this market, so is there a full audit of these? This of course not only applies to all the libraries, but what the libraries themselves link to. It is a pretty complex problem.
If this audit information exists, and it reveals any problems for closed source in-house business software, is it documented anywhere so that in-house developers can work safely without infringing? Or is it simply the case that these people cannot work with a GNU/Linux distribution?
One more thing. If libraries that are GPLed rather than LGPLed cannot be linked to by an appropriately open license, what is the situation with a shell script that calls GPLed programs? A shell script is open to inspection by nature, but must it also be available for free distribution by anyone to whom it is distributed?
It looks to me from my current knowledge of the situation that the safest option is to use a BSD rather than Linux. But you don't see hordes advocating BSD Everywhere (tm).
I didn't fully illustrate my thoughts. The GPL is an ideological license. If a developer built a user base under the GPL, then released future versions only under a closed source license, I suspect few of their users would buy in. Someone would likely create newer modified versions of the last GPL version. The original developer might make some money, but not a huge amount. That isn't going to appeal to many commercial software companies. If you are actually selling software. If you are Sun, you might be able to increase demand for your hardware products by getting a large number of users for some software that works all over the place but probably best on your own. This is like the service industry model. When I wrote the first comment I was unaware that the original author could release the same software under the GPL and any other licenses of their choosing. This is good, but it leaves a couple of things.First, this only works for the original author, not any subsequent maintainers or forkers, who might feasibly transform a program beyond recognition. The other concern is the 'viral' nature of GPL code. Can anyone clarify for me, is it the case that if you use a library that is GPLed, your code must also be GPLed? If that is the case, that makes it impossible for a closed source project to use GTK for example (unless the library's originator licenses it to you under special license - does anyone know of a famous example of this?). I personally don't think that limiting the amount of software written with a library is a good thing.
The GPL was designed as a defense against commercial software, it seems. Its one of these 'property is theft' things - anyone care to explain what that means?
The GPL basically turns the traditional license on its head - it protects the users instead of the producers. So long as they don't break the license, there is nothing to stop anyone that gets hold of something GPLd from doing something the author doesn't like. Because it provides some safety for users, it is attractive to developers who want to gain users.
Personally I like the idea behind the BSD license - that it promotes the use of quality code by allowing anyone to borrow bits for use in anything, regardless of the next license, so long as it is acreditted. I think the GPL's political nature will ultimately prevent its apparent greatest ambition - to move to a world where everything is GPLed. It works fine for hobby projects, labour of love stuff, like Linux. But at the same time it excludes the larger part of the software producing world - industry - from benefitting unless they are prepared to change their whole business model to the one advocated by RMS and his wandering carrier bags. But it is doing us a great service by bring the whole open source thing back into relatively common use, like it was when Unix was young.
Thanks for asking the question. I will make the effort to look at the Artistic license and see if I can learn from it. It sounds like a fair solution.
I made a tape of the programme. The only mention of the programme at the BBC's website is on today's schedule.
I am thinking about typing up a transcript and putting it on the web. Does anyone have an opinion about that? Am I likely to get in trouble? I haven't come across transcripts of other interviews but I would imagine William Gibson does a few interviews like this each year. Is there any demand?
Why is it that some C++ advocates hate Java so much? Maybe I just haven't read enough comments, Usenet postings, etc, but I haven't seen Java advocates laying into C++ ever. Look at that last line - "I'm not frightened of pointers, thanks." Well I'm not frightened of pointers either, but I don't feel like an idiot for advocating Java, which seems to be the suggestion. I use and like C++ too, but the removal of pointers from Java does so much more than make it easier on a superficial level to learn. I'm sure you know this already, but it doesn't make your point for you. Do C++ advocates feel under some kind of threat from Java? Some of them certainly react to it as though it has them cornered (which I'm sure it doesn't). Or do C++ advocates feel that Java is a dumbing-down language, like VB? I hope this isn't taken as inflamatory, I really would like to know.
Coaxial, you are the voice of reason. Thankyou for speaking in defence of Linux. When Linus began Linux, he set out to build a free Unix-like operating system, not a contestant for dominating OS of the Universe. He wanted Unix, but now so many people who want an alternative to MS have attached their allegiance to Linux. However, they don't want a Unix-like OS, they want an OS for everyone.
Unix isn't about dumbing down, it is about empowerment through knowledge. The more I learn about Unix, the more I discover I can do. Most of the things I am thinking of here cannot be expressed efficiently in a GUI (OK I can think of a way to make a GUI environment for shell-scripting, but it doesn't speed things). Unix isn't about catering to the consumer.
Essentially, to cater for the consumer, you would have to remove most of the things that make Linux so great. The multi-user environment is fundamental to Linux security, both from the outside world and poor-quality local code, but logging in and maintaining user accounts gets in the way of the consumer, so throw it away! Then we don't need to worry about file permissions and ownership, after all they just get in the way of the consumer, so throw them away! The consumer finds it inconvenient and difficult to build from source, so throw away the development tools, and open source! Eventually you end up with a free Win9x.
I'm not saying that consumers shouldn't be allowed to use Linux. I'm saying that consumer interests should not be allowed to damage Linux. If you manage to create a Linux distribution that caters for the consumer without damaging the source tree by removing things, just by setting things up so that they are easier, it will likely get Linux publicity. It will give the wider populace the impression that Linux is a low-end OS that doesn't doesn't have powerful (OS) features, and probably with masses of people that find clicking difficult, low stability.
Let consumers have Linux. But don't prevent anyone from having a free Unix-like operating system. Don't let the one of the most brightest public displays of open source go out.