You're allowed to modify the header files and distribute the modified header files. If you had actually checked how these header files are generated, they're to clean up the linux source to remove stuff that isn't needed for Android, or that conflicts with Android.
I don't disagree with the fact that you may change and redistribute header files which are under GPL. I disagreed with what the original poster was saying, which was that (1) header files are non-copyrightable, and (2) the header files in question are covered by the LGPL. (Note that if (1) was actually true, then (2) would be irrelevant.)
And yes, I did read the article. The claim that Google is making that the "cleaned" header files contain no copyrightable information seems a bit doubtful to me, but the lawyers can hash that one out.
No real risks, just header files which are not even copyrightable and things explicitly permitted by the lesser (lib) GPL licence anyway, noting to read here just Florian Mueller posting as anonymous for the FUD..
Header files are almost certainly copyrightable. There seems to be some debate about whether you can restrict use of the header files for compilation based on the copyright, although the GPL assumes that you can (that's what the whole LGPL thing is about.)
Some of the linux header files are LGPL, but most are GPLv2; what the LGPL allows would not apply.
Now does that make it "right" for me to copy little indie game company's concept when they pitch an idea to me? I would say no, but that is why you need a good NDA agreement before shopping an idea. Without legally protected content (patent, trademark, or copyright protected), you need a good contract to make the other side legally obligated to not disclose your idea in the form of their own game.
It's really not even that unlikely that the team that developed the game for Capcom didn't know that the idea had been pitched to them earlier - it's just as likely that they independently decided to clone the original game after it was released. An NDA probably would not have helped much since they could see the concept in the publicly released game.
There are several tools you can use to make the whole "required registration for everything" a little less annoying:
http://www.bugmenot.com/ has usernames and passwords that people have submitted for a bunch of sites. Very handy when you want to read something in a web forum (or other site, but I've found forums to be the worst) that has really obnoxious registration requirements.
http://mytrashmail.com/ is an anonymous email service that lets you use a temporary email address, without requiring registration of any kind. It's good when you need to sign up for a website that insists on a verifying your email address, so you don't have to risk giving them a useful address.
Finally, if you use a password manager (I've been using KeePassX, it's pretty good and cross-platform), then you don't have to remember passwords anymore, so there's no reason to use a weak password for anything. I don't have any idea what most of my passwords are.
For the record, I tend to think that anyone that votes straight-ticket anything qualifies as an "unreasoning moron."
In theory I'd like to agree with you, but in practice when the only options are a Republican (in the party's current incarnation) and a Democrat, I'd have to consider anyone voting for the Republican an unreasoning moron. People love to claim that both parties are equally bad, but that's simply not the case and hasn't been for decades.
I cannot imagine that in every single one of the dozens of state and local races, there is not a single case where the Republican is not more qualified than the Democrat for the position in question. If your national representatives are of the type that always vote party-line, then maybe you can make a case that it you can reasonably vote based solely on party affiliation for those. But if you just voted 'D' down the line, then I stand by my statement; you just bought into the propaganda and didn't actually think for yourself.
There's a more sensible model that isn't threatened by free distribution, and it happens to be the same model that people in nearly every other industry have relied on for centuries: it's the one where you just get paid for working. You find a customer, or a group of customers, who benefits from the work you do (whether it's fixing cars, painting houses, or writing books), and then you exchange your labor for their money. They pay you to write a book, you write it and provide a single copy, and then the transaction is over; distribution of any further copies is their problem, not yours. If you want to continue to be a professional writer, you find some more customers and offer to write a second book.
I have never seen a practical example of how this could work for popular entertainment. Does anyone seriously think that a large number of people would put up the money up front for an author to write a novel, or to create a big-budget movie, or perform and create an album, without any assurance of what the end product is going to be? I buy a large number of novels, for instance, but there's only a handful of authors who I would trust enough to give them money in advance based on the promise that they're going to create a good product. And of course, it would be to my advantage not to join in paying for it, because if there's no copyright I'll get it for free if someone else puts up the money.
You're retarded. You've voted in two presidential elections, so you make this statement? Really?
You are aware that presidential elections are not the only elections that are held in the US, right? Someone who has voted straight-ticket Republican for the last 6 or 8 years has done enough voting that you can say that there's a pattern.
(For the record, I tend to think that anyone that votes straight-ticket anything qualifies as an "unreasoning moron.")
She is unelectable, why the hell does the media pay so much attention to her? She has to be the most hated political figure in the US for the left/left leaning middle. The dumbest thing the republicans could possibly do is run her in 2012.
Don't forget, the Democrats came really close to running Hillary Clinton in the last election, and you could say almost exactly the same thing about her if you just switch the parties. Just because it would be stupid does not mean they won't do it.
Flying is literally the only option for me and I would guess most people.
On planet earth, where I live, staying home rarely takes more time or money than travelling. You're using the definition of "literally" that really means "not literally." What you're really saying is that you would rather fly somewhere than not.
You said viable alternatives to flying. Any of those are alternatives, you just don't like the inconveniences that go with them. Every choice you make has consequences, you need to learn to take responsibility for them rather than claim that you have no control over them. If you want to get the policies changed: good. So do I. Vote, make a stink about it, whatever it takes. But don't just submit passively and then bitch about it on Slashdot and claim that you had no choice.
That is, unfortunately, not true everywhere. I live in an apartment complex, which is in an area with several large complexes. The city provides residential recycling pickup, but for some reason not for apartments. You would think that it would be trivial to just add a bin next to the dumpster for recyclables -- certainly a lot cheaper than picking up from every house -- but for some reason the city's not interested.
Which makes you wonder... are companies still paying the same amount for advertising in the Yellow Pages that they were ten years ago? If they are, maybe someone ought to clue them in that their only impressions are going to the kind of people that aren't able to use a computer. For some companies that may make sense, but I would bet that advertising in the phone book is a net loss for a lot of businesses.
Probably because it's not worth driving down to somewhere that will take your new phone book off your hands. Recycling makes sense in bulk, but it's too much of a hassle to do for a single book.
Depends, I'd love to hand minnesota ~$300 extra this year if it would help fix the damn roads, or build a train, or make the buses work
So you'd be happy to pay an extra $300 in taxes, as long as you're on the receiving end of the benefits?
That's not an unreasonable opinion to hold (if the government is going to grab more of your money, there ought to be something in it for you), but it doesn't exactly contradict the parent's point.
The Unix model of vi-editable ASCII config file (with N possible layouts) creates some of the fragility for X, when something like XML is more appropriate.
What do you mean by this? Do you mean that X is fragile because it's hard to parse the ASCII config file or correctly handle the configuration options? (If so, I'd like to see some evidence, since I don't think I've ever seen a problem with X caused by that.) Or do you mean that it can be hard for a user to create a correct config file? I can see that, but it's only a factor if your users are actually creating a config file by hand. If it's not necessary to have a configuration built by hand, then you might as well just create a decent GUI for configuring X. (I think they exist, but honestly I've never had any trouble just editing the config file.)
The widespread use of loopholes by companies/"rich" people always really pissed me off. They constantly complain so much of their wealth is being taken, yet they pull crap like this.
This is why I always laugh when a politician claims that they want to increase taxes on the "super-rich." Raising taxes doesn't hurt the super-rich; their legions of lawyers and accountants make sure of that. Increasing taxes hurts the people that are well-to-do, but not well-to-do enough to buy laws that favor them.
Wouldn't the ability to have a proper blocking plugin or two be far more suitable than maintaining a hosts file (* x machines)?
There are several places online that provide updated hosts files suitable for blocking. I have my own system set up to update my hosts file once a week. As far as I know, nobody's bothered to put together a package that does that in a user-friendly way, but it certainly wouldn't be hard to do. It doesn't take any effort on my part now that I have the (rather trivial) scripts set up.
I set it up that way because the Chrome adblocking plugins were originally pretty poor. More recently on another system, I've tried using the adblock plugins and they seem to work fine, but I haven't bothered on my desktop because the updated hosts file does a perfectly good job of killing the ads on the sites that I use.
Please clarify what tools you recommend using on both feature phones and smartphones to keep track of how many anytime minutes or international minutes as opposed to unmetered minutes have been used on the plan.
At least with my service, you can dial #646# to get current minute information. Or there's a phone number you can call. Or you can check online. I would be willing to bet that smartphones have other options too (can't speak to them because I don't use one.)
If you meant "keep track in your head, and never lend the phone to someone else for an urgent call", then what makes you expect this skill, which I compare to counting cards in blackjack at the casino, to be widespread?
Are you seriously telling me that you can't keep track at all of how long you talk on the phone? I don't bother using the tools I mentioned because I'm at least capable of knowing how long I spent on the phone to within an hour or so, so I know that I'm under my limit. That's hardly card counting. If you can't keep track of it over the course of a month, then check your minutes once a week or something.
Even if that's beyond your ability (or anyone else's), I still stand by my statement. If you make an agreement to pay when you go over a certain number of minutes -- and assuming that the money is valuable enough to you that you do not want to go over your limit -- then not keeping track of how much time you've used, by whatever means necessary, is stupid. I really get sick of this notion that the government is there to save us from our own laziness and stupidity.
Even if you don't that's not exactly the cell phone companies fault as you signed up to do business with them.
Are you claiming that people should do without cell phones instead?
I would kind of agree that if you enter an agreement that places limits on how much you use your cell phone without being charged extra, and then are too stupid to keep track of how much you have used it, you probably shouldn't be using a cell phone.
And LEDs don't require you to use a hazmat suit to pick up pieces if you break one (since they contain Mercury).
The mercury hazard of CFL bulbs is way overblown. The amount of mercury in a single light bulb is equivalent to that in a few cans of tuna - and presumably you're not eating the bulb after you break it. Just open a window and clean up the mess.
You could probably do that; however, then retrieving the original plaintext password would only require matching up the MD5 hashes of a set of 3-character strings. Which would kind of defeat the point.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't disagree with the fact that you may change and redistribute header files which are under GPL. I disagreed with what the original poster was saying, which was that (1) header files are non-copyrightable, and (2) the header files in question are covered by the LGPL. (Note that if (1) was actually true, then (2) would be irrelevant.)
And yes, I did read the article. The claim that Google is making that the "cleaned" header files contain no copyrightable information seems a bit doubtful to me, but the lawyers can hash that one out.
No real risks, just header files which are not even copyrightable and things explicitly permitted by the lesser (lib) GPL licence anyway, noting to read here just Florian Mueller posting as anonymous for the FUD..
Header files are almost certainly copyrightable. There seems to be some debate about whether you can restrict use of the header files for compilation based on the copyright, although the GPL assumes that you can (that's what the whole LGPL thing is about.)
Some of the linux header files are LGPL, but most are GPLv2; what the LGPL allows would not apply.
Crick is mentioned in every single page of the first page of results that I get.
He is mentioned first on the following pages on the first page of results:
http://www.experiment-resources.com/who-discovered-dna.html
http://www.brighthub.com/science/genetics/articles/13872.aspx
Although the parent's claim that people usually say Crick first is obviously wrong, it doesn't look to me like many people only credit Watson.
Not that I remembered either name from my schooling. It's been way too long since I took biology.
It's really not even that unlikely that the team that developed the game for Capcom didn't know that the idea had been pitched to them earlier - it's just as likely that they independently decided to clone the original game after it was released. An NDA probably would not have helped much since they could see the concept in the publicly released game.
There are several tools you can use to make the whole "required registration for everything" a little less annoying:
http://www.bugmenot.com/ has usernames and passwords that people have submitted for a bunch of sites. Very handy when you want to read something in a web forum (or other site, but I've found forums to be the worst) that has really obnoxious registration requirements.
http://mytrashmail.com/ is an anonymous email service that lets you use a temporary email address, without requiring registration of any kind. It's good when you need to sign up for a website that insists on a verifying your email address, so you don't have to risk giving them a useful address.
Finally, if you use a password manager (I've been using KeePassX, it's pretty good and cross-platform), then you don't have to remember passwords anymore, so there's no reason to use a weak password for anything. I don't have any idea what most of my passwords are.
Who or what defines "universal importance"?
If the earth vanished, it also wouldn't "matter" to the universe. The only ones it would matter to would be us.
I cannot imagine that in every single one of the dozens of state and local races, there is not a single case where the Republican is not more qualified than the Democrat for the position in question. If your national representatives are of the type that always vote party-line, then maybe you can make a case that it you can reasonably vote based solely on party affiliation for those. But if you just voted 'D' down the line, then I stand by my statement; you just bought into the propaganda and didn't actually think for yourself.
I have never seen a practical example of how this could work for popular entertainment. Does anyone seriously think that a large number of people would put up the money up front for an author to write a novel, or to create a big-budget movie, or perform and create an album, without any assurance of what the end product is going to be? I buy a large number of novels, for instance, but there's only a handful of authors who I would trust enough to give them money in advance based on the promise that they're going to create a good product. And of course, it would be to my advantage not to join in paying for it, because if there's no copyright I'll get it for free if someone else puts up the money.
You are aware that presidential elections are not the only elections that are held in the US, right? Someone who has voted straight-ticket Republican for the last 6 or 8 years has done enough voting that you can say that there's a pattern.
(For the record, I tend to think that anyone that votes straight-ticket anything qualifies as an "unreasoning moron.")
Don't forget, the Democrats came really close to running Hillary Clinton in the last election, and you could say almost exactly the same thing about her if you just switch the parties. Just because it would be stupid does not mean they won't do it.
On planet earth, where I live, staying home rarely takes more time or money than travelling. You're using the definition of "literally" that really means "not literally." What you're really saying is that you would rather fly somewhere than not.
You said viable alternatives to flying. Any of those are alternatives, you just don't like the inconveniences that go with them. Every choice you make has consequences, you need to learn to take responsibility for them rather than claim that you have no control over them. If you want to get the policies changed: good. So do I. Vote, make a stink about it, whatever it takes. But don't just submit passively and then bitch about it on Slashdot and claim that you had no choice.
That is, unfortunately, not true everywhere. I live in an apartment complex, which is in an area with several large complexes. The city provides residential recycling pickup, but for some reason not for apartments. You would think that it would be trivial to just add a bin next to the dumpster for recyclables -- certainly a lot cheaper than picking up from every house -- but for some reason the city's not interested.
Which makes you wonder ... are companies still paying the same amount for advertising in the Yellow Pages that they were ten years ago? If they are, maybe someone ought to clue them in that their only impressions are going to the kind of people that aren't able to use a computer. For some companies that may make sense, but I would bet that advertising in the phone book is a net loss for a lot of businesses.
Probably because it's not worth driving down to somewhere that will take your new phone book off your hands. Recycling makes sense in bulk, but it's too much of a hassle to do for a single book.
So you'd be happy to pay an extra $300 in taxes, as long as you're on the receiving end of the benefits?
That's not an unreasonable opinion to hold (if the government is going to grab more of your money, there ought to be something in it for you), but it doesn't exactly contradict the parent's point.
What do you mean by this? Do you mean that X is fragile because it's hard to parse the ASCII config file or correctly handle the configuration options? (If so, I'd like to see some evidence, since I don't think I've ever seen a problem with X caused by that.) Or do you mean that it can be hard for a user to create a correct config file? I can see that, but it's only a factor if your users are actually creating a config file by hand. If it's not necessary to have a configuration built by hand, then you might as well just create a decent GUI for configuring X. (I think they exist, but honestly I've never had any trouble just editing the config file.)
This is why I always laugh when a politician claims that they want to increase taxes on the "super-rich." Raising taxes doesn't hurt the super-rich; their legions of lawyers and accountants make sure of that. Increasing taxes hurts the people that are well-to-do, but not well-to-do enough to buy laws that favor them.
There are several places online that provide updated hosts files suitable for blocking. I have my own system set up to update my hosts file once a week. As far as I know, nobody's bothered to put together a package that does that in a user-friendly way, but it certainly wouldn't be hard to do. It doesn't take any effort on my part now that I have the (rather trivial) scripts set up.
I set it up that way because the Chrome adblocking plugins were originally pretty poor. More recently on another system, I've tried using the adblock plugins and they seem to work fine, but I haven't bothered on my desktop because the updated hosts file does a perfectly good job of killing the ads on the sites that I use.
If you don't think it already is, you haven't been paying attention for the last twenty years.
At least with my service, you can dial #646# to get current minute information. Or there's a phone number you can call. Or you can check online. I would be willing to bet that smartphones have other options too (can't speak to them because I don't use one.)
Are you seriously telling me that you can't keep track at all of how long you talk on the phone? I don't bother using the tools I mentioned because I'm at least capable of knowing how long I spent on the phone to within an hour or so, so I know that I'm under my limit. That's hardly card counting. If you can't keep track of it over the course of a month, then check your minutes once a week or something.
Even if that's beyond your ability (or anyone else's), I still stand by my statement. If you make an agreement to pay when you go over a certain number of minutes -- and assuming that the money is valuable enough to you that you do not want to go over your limit -- then not keeping track of how much time you've used, by whatever means necessary, is stupid. I really get sick of this notion that the government is there to save us from our own laziness and stupidity.
I would kind of agree that if you enter an agreement that places limits on how much you use your cell phone without being charged extra, and then are too stupid to keep track of how much you have used it, you probably shouldn't be using a cell phone.
Obviously the Martians went to Gliese 581 after we discovered them. They've just realized that they didn't move far enough away.
The mercury hazard of CFL bulbs is way overblown. The amount of mercury in a single light bulb is equivalent to that in a few cans of tuna - and presumably you're not eating the bulb after you break it. Just open a window and clean up the mess.
You could probably do that; however, then retrieving the original plaintext password would only require matching up the MD5 hashes of a set of 3-character strings. Which would kind of defeat the point.