Yes, if *all* you want to do is I/O, you're right.
But if my understanding of the question is correct, the poster wants to create an MP3 player or something that might actually have a use for an OS anyway. Once we already have an OS, can we make it behave as a USB non-host device? That seems to be the question.
Even plagiarism sounds better than piracy, semantically.
Plagarism is totally different than "piracy". Plagarism is when you pass off someone else's work as your own. It is possible, then, to commit plagarism (which is not, AFAIK, illegal, at least in general) on a Free work, if you claim that, e.g., you wrote Emacs. This doesn't take away from the fact that you are entirely within your rights to distribute Emacs. However, it is illegal to distribute copies of MS Word, even if you acknowledge that MS wrote it.
Hm. The analogy you suggested works further: Linux and *BSD are basically the same, except for certain details. US Republicans and Democrats are basically the same, except for certain details.
Another analogy I once suggested: the various *BSDs are like the myriad of leftist political groups: no one really knows what the difference between them is, but they really seem to like nothing better than fighting among themselves.
Those "facts" come from the "National Center for Policy Analysis," which is described here as a 'a "communications and research foundation dedicated to providing free market solutions to today's public policy problems.' In summary, this seems to be a rather conservative group.
In this case, as is often the case, there are very few objective 'facts'; one can find studies that say pretty much whatever you want. Please, give opinions, but do not try to pass them off as some objective truth.
I do wish the site designer had stuck to the issue, namely the erosion of civil liberties as a result of this war, rather than just calling for pacifism.
As the site designer, I think that an end to the war *is* the issue. It requires incredible hubris to say that a website is not about what it is clearly about. A nonsarcastic group that I am in has three main points of unity:
Calling for an end to the war.
Fighting racism.
Preservation of civil liberties.
It is certainly possible to fight for any one or two of these issues in a vacuum from the others. [Hell, Bush claims to be anti-racist.] But, I think that all three of these points are incredibly important, and had them all in mind when creating SOS. It is not an "inability to distinguish" that causes me to do so; it is a concious choice. Dead people [the UN World Food Program estimates that literally millions of Afghanis will die of hunger this winter if food aid can't be brought in] don't care about wiretaps.
Further, I see the three above-listed issues as interrelated. I care about *people*, and see all people as important. The military doesn't. Bigots don't. The civil-liberties-destroyers don't.
While I totally respect your right to disagree, please don't tell me what I think. The NY Times has insisted since 11 Sep that anyone in favor of peace is "confused." Believe it or not, some people really *have* thought about the issues, and decided that killing people is not the best way to stop death.
Just wondering if anyone had seen any evidence for this other than the one InteractiveWeek article that's been floating around. Seems like *some* other media should've picked up on the story and called the FBI for comment or something.
I can totally believe that the FBI would love to do this, given the chance. I just need a little more evidence before I am to go around saying that they *are* doing it.
Ah, but, unfortunately, we are not fully at 1984 yet. That is why some friends and I have formed the Students for an Orwellian Society (SOS). Because 2001 is 17 years too late.
I used to work for empirix on a product which I think is still called e-Test Suite. One of the components, e-Load, does precisely what you describe, and there are some other nifty tools in there too.
I could, for example, write MarkOS, a from-the-ground-up operating system coded in Haskel, and release it under the GPL, while at the same time selling MarkOS-QPro with portions of the kernel rewritten in Forth, under an ultra-restrictive-I-now-own-your-first-born-and-yo u-don't-get-the-source licence.
You could, as I understand it, not even bother writing MarkOS-QPro, and release the original MarkOS under both the GPL and your restrictive license, since you are the original copyright holder and can do whatever you want. But I cannot download MarkOS off the 'Net under the GPL and then try to relicense it to someone else under any non-GPL terms.
Some of the my most memorable journeys have been long train trips. ...
Besides, you know how much we get pissed-off when some Yuppie asshole's cell-phone starts ringing when we are trying to enjoy a nice restaurant or theatre performance?
I dunno, but whenever I take Amtrak (which is actually quite frequently -- I go between NY and MA a couple times each semester), there are always a ton of people making and recieving calls on the train. And it really pisses me off when the person sitting behind me starts talking really loudly into eir cellphone. And the conversations are all the same: "Hello... I'm on the train... We're currently in [wherever] and we should be [somewhere else] in about n minutes. Can you come pick me up?" The same damn phonecall (made by a different person) every few minutes. And now Amtrak is starting to advertise that the fact you can use your phone is an advantage of the train over the airplane. Grrr.
But, from Manhattan to where my parents live in southern MA, it's actually quicker to take the train than fly... no getting to/from all these airports and waiting around, and I don't have to make reservations weeks in advance. Now, if all these "service improvements" they've been instituting recently actually improved service, I'd be happy...
Only 3 G's? That's incredible! Most of us have to pay many many g's to buy a network
...and ¥3000 (I assume we're using yen, since this is in Japan) is way less than even $3000 would be... about $25. Gee, that's less than I pay for service on a network. If I could have my own network for that little, I'd drop Sprint in an instant.
If they're not supporting the issues that you believe in, what is the point in supporting them? I'd rather let the people whom they represent do the supporting.
Ah, but they *are* supporting issues that I believe in -- just not all of them. Probably no organization on the planet supports everything that I do; that's why I support more than one organization.
For whatever reason, the ACLU hasn't really gotten involved in much online stuff (with the notable exception of their lead in fighting the Communications Decency Act). Perhaps it's because they don't understand the issues; perhaps it's because they feel comfortable leaving the work to others; perhaps it's because they have only finite resources. The ACLU is also notorious for only taking on cases that they feel they can win.
Even though they're (much to my dismay) not taking any initiaitive on Dmitry's case, the ACLU is still doing a number of other wonderful things and still deserves your support. See their webpage for more info.
If you were to actually read the linked article, you'd notice that they didn't burn a computer but actually two empty cases: one obtained especially for the purpose directly from NeXT, and one taken from an otherwise non-working machine.
Couldn't we make these things give a small (or large if you don't like cell phone users) electric shock to their owner? That way we wouldn't need to worry about any noise polution whatsoever.
They have already developed a similar (though somewhat less violent) thing... it's called vibrate mode. I leave my phone on vibrate, and it has the double benefit that:
Other people aren't disturbed when someone calls me, and if I'm busy I can totally ignore the call without anyone else knowing.
When someone else's phone rings, I know it's not mine, so I don't have to run around checking my phone to see if someone's calling me or not.
The EFF clearly believes that negotiation is a correct, effective solution to the problem. This makes sense, as they're largely a group of lawyers. However EFF is but one component in the people planning the protest. And, many of the planners (I'd even venture to say most, judging from list traffic) are not calling off the protest.
It seems to mee that this meeting is pretty clearly a stalling tactic. Adobe and EFF can schedule all the meetings they want -- I'd even encourage this -- but it seems that this particular meeting (it was "granted" on the precondition that EFF call off the protest) was designed only to thwart the potentially strong movement that is growing around this man's arrest.
So, please continue to join me, and many others, in San Jose or your local planned protest. -- // mlc, user 16290
The problems with net voting do not just extend to the "obvious" (to the/. crowd, anyway) authentication, security, and other technical challenges. The real problems, IMHO, are much much bigger. I see two key problems: [my comments apply specifically to US but may have parallels in other places.]
In current society, access to computers is not evenly spread throughout all socioeconomic and racial classes. Poorer people are less likely to own home PCs than richer people. Even ignoring this effect, white people and asians of any given income level are more likely to own PCs than black and latino/a people of the same income. For statistics and pointers to sources, google turned up this; plenty more info exists on the 'net.
It's no brilliant observation to note that people of different classes and races tend to vote for different candidates. So, any voting mechanism that makes it easier for some given type of people, who are likely to vote in a certain way, will have an "unfair" bias on the election's results.
With Net voting, the anonymity and "sanctity" of the ballot box can be entirely lost. Imagine either of the following scenarios:
Since many of its workers are low-income and do not own home PCs, Company X sets up terminals for its workers to use to vote when they come to work. However, there are posters around for the favorite candidate of X's CEO and managers. The bosses clearly make it known who their favorite is. Do we have a fair election here? (What we have is, in effect, the privitization of the polling place. This frightens me.)
[blatent gender stereotypes ensue. switch the genders or make the people the same gender if you like in this example.] Mr. & Mrs. Y have been married for n years; however, recently there has been some trouble in the relationship and Mr. Y has been beating Mrs. Y. Mr. Y favors some kind of conservative, "traditional values" candidate. Mrs. Y would really rather vote for a candidate more supportive of women's rights. However, Mr. and Mrs. Y sit down to vote together, perhaps because Mr. Y thinks he has to show Mrs. Y how to use the computer or whatever. As Mr. Y stands over Mrs. Y's shoulder, perhaps after having had a drink or two on his way home from work, who do you think Mrs. Y is going to vote for?
Now, I love technology. I'm working this summer to bring technology to people who might not otherwise have access. But the problems with Net voting extend far beyond the ones that technology alone can solve, and my desire to see a fair election far outweighs my desire to avoid trekking over to the polling place. Net voting is not a good solution. The study refernced in the article makes some better ones, as does the Center for Voting and Democracy.
MySQL is Free, released under the GPL, with client library under the LGPL. Either you're thinking of some previous licence that MySQL used to be under, or you don't understand the GPL. Unless your application needs to be linked with the MySQL server, you can basically do whatever you want.
You do not need a license to include the client code in commercial programs. The client part of MySQL licensed with the LGPL GNU Library General Public License. The mysql command-line client includes code from the readline library that is under the GPL.
Technically, blocking those isn't censorship. It's simply following the law.
Since when are law-following and censorship mutually exclusive? In China, for example, failure to censor is illegal. In the US, look up the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which made it illegal to criticize the government. So, again, censorship was following the law.
Even now, censorship is following the law. The Communications Decency Act, when it was in effect, was a legal censor. Legal censorship is not even always "bad": one could argue (correctly, I think) that anti-child-porn statues are a form of censorship, but I'm inclined to agree that preventing the exploitation of children to young to know what they're doing is worth the limits these laws place on freedom of expression.
in the 'normal' setup, the actual files containing the data for MySQL databases are readable only by root or the mysql user. In order for *anyone* to get at the database, they have to go through the MySQL daemon (which works, as it is usually running as user mysql) -- // mlc, user 16290
This doesn't mean unions are always a good thing - only that they can be.
This is precisely the point! Not all unions are good. Not all unions are bad. Some unions are good in certain areas and bad in others. I think that, in general, a union can be a positive force for its members. However, the stereotype of the violent, self-interested union is certainly true sometimes. Making generalizations that start with "All" is a huge mistake. -- // mlc, user 16290
Slashdot Mirror
But if my understanding of the question is correct, the poster wants to create an MP3 player or something that might actually have a use for an OS anyway. Once we already have an OS, can we make it behave as a USB non-host device? That seems to be the question.
Plagarism is totally different than "piracy". Plagarism is when you pass off someone else's work as your own. It is possible, then, to commit plagarism (which is not, AFAIK, illegal, at least in general) on a Free work, if you claim that, e.g., you wrote Emacs. This doesn't take away from the fact that you are entirely within your rights to distribute Emacs. However, it is illegal to distribute copies of MS Word, even if you acknowledge that MS wrote it.
Another analogy I once suggested: the various *BSDs are like the myriad of leftist political groups: no one really knows what the difference between them is, but they really seem to like nothing better than fighting among themselves.
See, e.g., the Death Penalty Information Center here. The page is annoyingly titled "Facts" again, but progressives aren't perfect either.
Those "facts" come from the "National Center for Policy Analysis," which is described here as a 'a "communications and research foundation dedicated to providing free market solutions to today's public policy problems.' In summary, this seems to be a rather conservative group.
In this case, as is often the case, there are very few objective 'facts'; one can find studies that say pretty much whatever you want. Please, give opinions, but do not try to pass them off as some objective truth.
As the site designer, I think that an end to the war *is* the issue. It requires incredible hubris to say that a website is not about what it is clearly about. A nonsarcastic group that I am in has three main points of unity:
- Calling for an end to the war.
- Fighting racism.
- Preservation of civil liberties.
It is certainly possible to fight for any one or two of these issues in a vacuum from the others. [Hell, Bush claims to be anti-racist.] But, I think that all three of these points are incredibly important, and had them all in mind when creating SOS. It is not an "inability to distinguish" that causes me to do so; it is a concious choice. Dead people [the UN World Food Program estimates that literally millions of Afghanis will die of hunger this winter if food aid can't be brought in] don't care about wiretaps.Further, I see the three above-listed issues as interrelated. I care about *people*, and see all people as important. The military doesn't. Bigots don't. The civil-liberties-destroyers don't.
While I totally respect your right to disagree, please don't tell me what I think. The NY Times has insisted since 11 Sep that anyone in favor of peace is "confused." Believe it or not, some people really *have* thought about the issues, and decided that killing people is not the best way to stop death.
I can totally believe that the FBI would love to do this, given the chance. I just need a little more evidence before I am to go around saying that they *are* doing it.
Ah, but, unfortunately, we are not fully at 1984 yet. That is why some friends and I have formed the Students for an Orwellian Society (SOS). Because 2001 is 17 years too late.
The quicktime has no video.
I used to work for empirix on a product which I think is still called e-Test Suite. One of the components, e-Load, does precisely what you describe, and there are some other nifty tools in there too.
You could, as I understand it, not even bother writing MarkOS-QPro, and release the original MarkOS under both the GPL and your restrictive license, since you are the original copyright holder and can do whatever you want. But I cannot download MarkOS off the 'Net under the GPL and then try to relicense it to someone else under any non-GPL terms.
I dunno, but whenever I take Amtrak (which is actually quite frequently -- I go between NY and MA a couple times each semester), there are always a ton of people making and recieving calls on the train. And it really pisses me off when the person sitting behind me starts talking really loudly into eir cellphone. And the conversations are all the same: "Hello... I'm on the train... We're currently in [wherever] and we should be [somewhere else] in about n minutes. Can you come pick me up?" The same damn phonecall (made by a different person) every few minutes. And now Amtrak is starting to advertise that the fact you can use your phone is an advantage of the train over the airplane. Grrr.
But, from Manhattan to where my parents live in southern MA, it's actually quicker to take the train than fly... no getting to/from all these airports and waiting around, and I don't have to make reservations weeks in advance. Now, if all these "service improvements" they've been instituting recently actually improved service, I'd be happy...
Ah, but they *are* supporting issues that I believe in -- just not all of them. Probably no organization on the planet supports everything that I do; that's why I support more than one organization.
The indictment itself is available as PDF from the US Department of "Justice".
Even though they're (much to my dismay) not taking any initiaitive on Dmitry's case, the ACLU is still doing a number of other wonderful things and still deserves your support. See their webpage for more info.
If you were to actually read the linked article, you'd notice that they didn't burn a computer but actually two empty cases: one obtained especially for the purpose directly from NeXT, and one taken from an otherwise non-working machine.
They have already developed a similar (though somewhat less violent) thing... it's called vibrate mode. I leave my phone on vibrate, and it has the double benefit that:
--
It seems to mee that this meeting is pretty clearly a stalling tactic. Adobe and EFF can schedule all the meetings they want -- I'd even encourage this -- but it seems that this particular meeting (it was "granted" on the precondition that EFF call off the protest) was designed only to thwart the potentially strong movement that is growing around this man's arrest.
So, please continue to join me, and many others, in San Jose or your local planned protest.
// mlc, user 16290
--
It's no brilliant observation to note that people of different classes and races tend to vote for different candidates. So, any voting mechanism that makes it easier for some given type of people, who are likely to vote in a certain way, will have an "unfair" bias on the election's results.
Now, I love technology. I'm working this summer to bring technology to people who might not otherwise have access. But the problems with Net voting extend far beyond the ones that technology alone can solve, and my desire to see a fair election far outweighs my desire to avoid trekking over to the polling place. Net voting is not a good solution. The study refernced in the article makes some better ones, as does the Center for Voting and Democracy.
--
From MySQL's licensing policy page:
--
.za is South Africa, not Zaire.
// mlc, user 16290
--
Technically, blocking those isn't censorship. It's simply following the law.
Since when are law-following and censorship mutually exclusive? In China, for example, failure to censor is illegal. In the US, look up the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which made it illegal to criticize the government. So, again, censorship was following the law.
Even now, censorship is following the law. The Communications Decency Act, when it was in effect, was a legal censor. Legal censorship is not even always "bad": one could argue (correctly, I think) that anti-child-porn statues are a form of censorship, but I'm inclined to agree that preventing the exploitation of children to young to know what they're doing is worth the limits these laws place on freedom of expression.
--
in the 'normal' setup, the actual files containing the data for MySQL databases are readable only by root or the mysql user. In order for *anyone* to get at the database, they have to go through the MySQL daemon (which works, as it is usually running as user mysql)
// mlc, user 16290
--
This doesn't mean unions are always a good thing - only that they can be.
This is precisely the point! Not all unions are good. Not all unions are bad. Some unions are good in certain areas and bad in others. I think that, in general, a union can be a positive force for its members. However, the stereotype of the violent, self-interested union is certainly true sometimes. Making generalizations that start with "All" is a huge mistake.
// mlc, user 16290
--