Who on earth would feel good about cheating a pole dancer out of their money? These attractive women are letting you watch them naked or nearly-naked, for only a couple of dollars an hour.
Too many supposedly educated people treat women like mysterious, illogical animals that can be controlled with the right phrases, gestures, or chemicals. When they can't get a women to sleep with them after dressing nice and buying one dinner, they decide that women must not enjoy sex (after all, logic states that if they do, and he dressed nice, they would go to bed with them!). When a girl actually warms up to them and wants to know them better, they complain about how much she talks about meaningless things...
I'm not saying that I don't like strip clubs, adult videos, or anything of the stort - They're fun, and when everyone involved is shown the respect they deserve (as human beings), nobody gets hurt. But when people like the parent poster think it's "useful" to try to trick a dancer into thinking she's getting more money, it's simply a sign of of male chauvinism and a complete lack of respect for the woman involved.
Go ahead, flame me. I wish I could be proud of my profession for having more enlightened thinkers, but from what I can tell there are just as many misogynist geeks as there are sexist auto mechanics.
-Elentar
(BTW, think you could configure your phone to auto-dial or auto-answer based on a certain dog bark? That would be cool...)
As opposed to dirty drug-infested cowtowns (alcohol) or dirty drug-infested cities, or dirty drug-infested redneck towns, or just plain dirty drug-infested _any place_.
Or, if you prefer, dirty Christian-infested towns. Why it's illegal to smoke a joint but perfectly legal for zealots to brainwash children, to deny adults the right to make their own medical choices, to teach women that they are secondary to men, to send the poor and minorities off to die while the rich laugh, to allow corporations to dictate legislation and to force the values of a few hypocrites onto people who don't agree with them, I will never understand.
I live in Santa Cruz, and I believe in letting people live the life they have chosen for themselves, to the greatest extent possible. You will never find me living in a bible town in Georgia, because I refuse to surround myself with backward, living-in-denial unhappy religious fanatics taking out their unnatural angst in the area I live in.
To those of you who practice religion and let it simply influence your innate sense of moral purpose, I give my compliments. If you must chose one, always chose the Covenenant of Grace over the Covenant of Works.
I can't seem to find anywhere on Google an explanation of why a vacuum-tube wouldn't be considered a solid-state device. It doesn't have any moving parts, and the only distinction some sites make are that a vacuum tube has to be replaced more often. So why do we only call silicon-based circuits "solid-state"?
-Elentar
Re:CRM114 Discriminator works better for me
on
DSPAM v2.10 Released
·
· Score: 1
One important thing about CRM114 is that the mail you report as spam must be _identical_ to when it first arrived and was passed through as a false positive (or false negative). I've been using CRM114 for about a month now, and for the first couple weeks I had the same experience as the above poster - it quickly got to a level around 80% accuracy, but had many false positives and negatives.
Then, I switched from using forwarding to using two folders on my imap server (learn-spam and learn-nonspam). Once an hour, I use the server-side command line tool to process those folders and do the appropriate things to the messages inside. CRM114 became much, much more accurate in a matter of a few days and has since been very good.
So, my advice is to disregard the instructions on the CRM114 website about forwarding, and either make a webpage with a text box that calls the back-end process, or use imap and have a cron job process two folders. You could also write a plugin for your favourite mail client that sends the image to the server, and a daemon for the server that sends it to the CRM114 learning tool...
Well, that's a good point, and perhaps we could all live in a culture in which there was a good job for everyone. A culture in which you received everything you needed from the government, and were given a job that allowed you to work happily.
Or not. Because communism failed, and there's only the government going around offering to give that dyslexic/learning impaired/antisocial person a better job that will not involve their handicap.
A simple barcode scanner and/or a digital camera would work great for a pawn shop owner that can't read properly. The police could have photos of all the items and closeups of the serial numbers, and this particular problem would be solved.
You don't have to change the person, you can just change the job, or change the tools used to do the job. But American culture is consumer culture, throw-away culture, and employees that are too old to travel, too sick to insure, too much into their families to work weekends and too handicapped to compete are given a pink slip* and replaced by someone younger, healthier or cheaper. Or technology itself is used to replace them, instead of making their jobs better.
-Elentar, ranting about a distant tangent from the main topic
*: I've never seen a pink slip. The last job that gave me one (they called it a RIF) sent me a stack of about 20 pieces of paper to sign, all white.
I obviously don't know your specific pawnshop, but those that I have seen usually are run by people who can't or don't want to fit into a more 'normal' job, such as ex-convicts, handicapped people, people with learning disabilities, or just people who dislike being wave slaves.
Imagine if the owner of your shop is dyslexic. Reading serial numbers all day long is hard enough for anyone, but if you can't even be sure that you're reading them right... on top of that, some guy comes in and yells at you because you have trouble reading, and then six months later your shop is vandalized for no reason.
Sure, it's possible that the pawn shop could have been a front for a fencing operation. But don't you think that that's a little obvious, and that the regular police visits might discourage it? And if there had *not* been any pawn shops for the thief to go to, you wouldn't have gotten your bike back at all. These places expose themselves to the kind of treatment you delivered so that honest people can exchange goods and so that victims have a better chance of finding their stolen items.
I've found that while some of the Clie models allow basic synchronization with the Palm hotsync manager (which iSync still requires), most of them do not. The PEG-SJ20 is one of the units that works, and I believe the older 6xx series may also be supported. None of the current in-production units work, though.
Actually, that depends on the state. In California, where a large number of unemployed tech workers undoubtedly reside, it IS legal to start a company while on unemployment - you just aren't allowed to have income from it. The important factor is whether you are doing work for which you ever intend to get paid; volunteering time at a charity and working hard for a company that doesn't pay you is exactly the same, as far as unemployment is concerned. This comes directly from an Employment Development Department worker after I asked specifically about it.
In case it's not obvious, you can be a founder of a company and benefit from a company phone, company-provided internet connection, company computer/laptop, company PDA and even a company car - anything that's a legitimate business expense - and still not be an employee and not receive any pay. And none of those items are "double taxed" like paying an actual salary is. So take advantage of the perks of being a founder!
The single greatest expense for a small company is the employees, so you'd be surprised how often this comes up.
Who needs fancy Japanese computer parking systems? Just study Shaolin Kung-Fu and park your car with the flick of a wrist!
For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, I highly highly highly recommend seeing the movie Shaolin Soccer. You can't buy it legally here on account of Disney buying the rights and shutting down vendors, but you can probably get it shipped.
Odds are that this is an attempt by upper management to find an excuse to trim the fat in the IT department. I've worked in IT for a decade, and spent the last couple freelancing. Companies generally have bloated, inefficient IT departments that exist simply to buy more crap and then fail to maintain it. Most of the time, upper management ignores the bloat as the cost of having technology be a part of their business - but if they wanted to get a feel for how much bloat and wasted time there really was, scheduling a 'speak frankly to the CIO' dinner would be a great way to do it.
I once had the opportunity to showcase my department's prototype at the executive Christmas dinner - I set up the demonstration, dropped a sheet over it and helped myself to a glass of wine from the open bar. As the executives mingled, I mingled with them, simply introducing myself as being 'with the blah-blah department'. Amazingly, everyone treated me as an equal, freely discussed various upcoming projects and plans with me and listened to my thoughts on our own and competitor's products and market positions. Because it was an exclusive event, they all assumed that I was as important as they were (because if I wasn't, it would have reduced their own importance, perhaps!).
So if you want to really make a difference, try to arrange to be at an exclusive corporate event for whatever reason you can come up with. Dress appropriately, know the names of everyone there, and don't be afraid of the people you talk to - they're just as human as you are, and one time most of them were nobodies too.
As mentioned in my reply to another comment, it's nice to know that other communities aren't quite as paranoid and protective as they are here in Santa Cruz, California.
Obviously, hosting a one-time Linux Bake Sale or something would pass nearly anywhere, but just lingering around on a regular basis would definitely get you in trouble, here. I live in the more conservative part of town, where the schools are generally more concerned with unknown characters, but it's definitely not as open here as it is for you.
May I ask which totalitarian country do you happen to live in?
Santa Cruz, California. Which, now that Arnie is at the helm, IS becoming more totalitarian...
Seriously, though, if a person was loitering around outside school grounds, someone would call the police here and they'd be told to move along. Especially a scary geek character like the ones that caused all the havoc at Columbine.:-P
Even church groups would have a hard time sticking around, here - there's a lot of militant anti-church people in this town. They might not complain so much around a high school, though. Grade school is definitely out.
I'm somewhat relieved to know that communities aren't quite so paranoid in other parts of the country, even if it does mean religious nonsense littering the pavement...
I hate to break it to you, but standing around outside a school is enough to get you arrested in most communities, all by itself. Nevermind that you're passing out unmarked bags to random children. Containing food items that could have been tampered with (a little acid on the soda can, perhaps?).
You'd probably be okay putting up a flyer on telephone poles, though.
I suppose that what I wrote is as insightful to some as your post is flamebait to others. And vice-versa.
Some people don't respond to prose, considering statements so brief to be simplistic and naive. However, I find my statement to be no less simple than the one it followed, vis. "While they are certainly tinkerers, they are hardly students." Too many people, in my opinion, take for granted that education ends when you leave a formal school.
The idea was that you were supposed to read what I had written and find humour in it, and then think about why you at first agreed with the idea that no professional could ever also be a student. Or maybe you did not agree in the first place - but then you have already experience the insight, and ought to recognize it.
I will always be a student. I will graduate life when I am dead, and perhaps move on to post-graduate work. Until then, every day will see my continued education and I will always assume that every flower, fruit and stone I see holds some undiscovered secret within.
Furthermore, I am a hacker. I take nothing for granted - not the way software functions, nor the way the laws of physics are applied. I will always question the reality around me and seek to refine the answers that I have found.
Some others want to silence my nature and force me to take their word as the final truth - they are the high-school dropouts of this world, ignorant to every new truth that passes them by. But I can learn from them as well.
There is no negative consequence in my life, only education and experience. I have no regrets. My first day of life and my last are equally valuable to me, no matter how many years seperate them.
Besides, anyone who believes that hours of creativity (and programming is an art, not a science, as far as I'm concerned) can be compensated by a paycheck is deluding themselves. Free software allows a programmer to trade one esoteric thing for another - creativity for community, perseverance for recognition. And the programmer who does so will be fulfilled by it, and can thus tolerate selling other of their works for money.
If they're not licensing protocols under the duress of the U.S. Government, how much less are they going to interoperate voluntarily?
Did you mean to say that Microsoft is not licensing their protocols because the U.S. Government is under "Coercion illegally applied" or "Forcible confinement?" Microsoft certainly is guilty of coercing users and could be broadly guilty of forcibly confining those same users within a single set of choices (via its monopoly), but neither case seems to provide any impetus for Microsoft to license their protocols.
Or perhaps you meant that Microsoft is under illegal coercion by the U.S. Government? If this were the case, who could blame them for being protective of their protocols, at least as long as the unlawful treatment continues?
Of course, neither of these are true and I suspect that the intended word might have been "impulsion", "injunction" or just plain "order'. And yes, I had more fun writing this than you did reading it.
I absolutely agree. Giving away *GPL*'d software is exactly what is needed to gain progress for the open-source movement. What I'm saying, though, is that it needs to be identified as GPL'd software. The recepient needs to know that we're not just giving away any software, we're giving away software whose creators intended it to be free.
In my mind, that's a big difference. If I'm accused of offering "a free copy of any software you want", I can be nailed for copyright violation. "A free copy of any GPL software you want," on the other hand, makes it clear that I'm not breaking the law.
We shouldn't crush consumers under the full weight of the open-source idealogy (let them find out if they want to), but we also shouldn't group open-source software with commercial applications and then give away only some of that group of applications.
As a final note, I'll use the RIAA as an example - many sites hosting freely distributable MP3s have received lawsuit threats, cease-and-desist letters and other such actions, simply because their offerings are not clearly marked as being free. OSS should not be subject to the same mistakes.
I agree with the numerous posts here about not evangelizing to the masses (or as I like to put it, don't get all RMS on them). Salesmen do that, people don't like it.
However, simply giving copies of the software away and saying that it's just a free copy is also a bad idea, and I'll tell you why: It gives the commercial software industry a lever against open source. If we appear to be encouraging the free copying of *any* software, we could be accused of the same things that P2P developers have been - they only provided the tools for copyright violation, but they have been found liable for it.
So, the GPL (or variant) should at least be mentioned - 'It's GPL or open source software, free to copy to whomever you like.' That way, we're encourage an alternative to commercial licenses, not encouraging the copying itself.
For those like me who wondered if printers really had gotten down to PCMCIA size (Card Information Structure), he is referring to something called a Continuous Inking System. Seems to usually be done as a hack in which a regular printer has a larger supply of ink from external bottles. Check out this for more info.
Mozilla Mail is bloated. Even split off from the browser, it's huge. It does do almost everything conceivable in a mail client, but that's not what I want. It's just too big and slow.
My favorite client is Mail.app on Mac OS X. LDAP name completion? Got it. Multiple personalities? Got it. Spam filtering (I do server-side, but most people don't)? Got it. Adequate IMAP support? Got it.
It could stand some improvements in the IMAP department - specifically, storing Sent Mail and Drafts where I want them, instead of in it's own folders. And updating all message counts, not just Inbox, during it's check cycle. But you know what? There's a command-line tool for running Applescript, and you can just create a cron task to update all your Imap folders for you through that. Works like a dream.
The Linux community seems to produce 'superstar' programmers and single applications that are great, but never a system that works truly well. Case in point: Palm devices and conduits. For the Mac and PC, Palm controls the conduit technology, and anyone can write for it. On Linux, every bloody developer uses a different solution! You can't manage it all from one place! Evolution is a great example - last I checked, it uses a _dead project_ for it's Palm connectivity, one that nobody else uses.
I love Linux for developing and for servers. It's more flexible than anything else out there. But it will never have the benefit of a single overarching design that ties everything together, and that's exactly what Apple has going for it with Mac OS X.
I have several friends with at least one Tivo each. We have had 'watch-your-favorite-broadcast' parties before, whether for sports, James Bond marathons, Monty Python, the latest episode of Futurama, Junkyard Wars, etc. Usually, there's one of us who has their Tivo set to record the show, and then we all go over there *whenever we decide* and play it back during the party.
I know of many people who watch sports that way, even with just a VCR. If you're the kind of person with so much free time that you can just sit in front of the TV whenever the networks think you ought to, then maybe you watch live TV. For many of us, the ability to easily time-shift your programs to a more convenient slot is great, and nobody cares that it was technically broadcast hours or days before.
Actually, it's only 4 lines. Slashdot adds the rest, depending on your preferences. I find it annoying as well, but since I dislike signatures that appear to be part of the post, I chose to keep the bracketing lines.
I'll try reducing it to 2 lines for this post, and see how it looks. Function over form, right?
So, if they're following the airline business model, does that mean that you can watch the movie for free, but you have to buy a ticket in order to listen to it too?
Slashdot Mirror
Who on earth would feel good about cheating a pole dancer out of their money? These attractive women are letting you watch them naked or nearly-naked, for only a couple of dollars an hour.
Too many supposedly educated people treat women like mysterious, illogical animals that can be controlled with the right phrases, gestures, or chemicals. When they can't get a women to sleep with them after dressing nice and buying one dinner, they decide that women must not enjoy sex (after all, logic states that if they do, and he dressed nice, they would go to bed with them!). When a girl actually warms up to them and wants to know them better, they complain about how much she talks about meaningless things...
I'm not saying that I don't like strip clubs, adult videos, or anything of the stort - They're fun, and when everyone involved is shown the respect they deserve (as human beings), nobody gets hurt. But when people like the parent poster think it's "useful" to try to trick a dancer into thinking she's getting more money, it's simply a sign of of male chauvinism and a complete lack of respect for the woman involved.
Go ahead, flame me. I wish I could be proud of my profession for having more enlightened thinkers, but from what I can tell there are just as many misogynist geeks as there are sexist auto mechanics.
-Elentar
(BTW, think you could configure your phone to auto-dial or auto-answer based on a certain dog bark? That would be cool...)
As opposed to dirty drug-infested cowtowns (alcohol) or dirty drug-infested cities, or dirty drug-infested redneck towns, or just plain dirty drug-infested _any place_.
Or, if you prefer, dirty Christian-infested towns. Why it's illegal to smoke a joint but perfectly legal for zealots to brainwash children, to deny adults the right to make their own medical choices, to teach women that they are secondary to men, to send the poor and minorities off to die while the rich laugh, to allow corporations to dictate legislation and to force the values of a few hypocrites onto people who don't agree with them, I will never understand.
I live in Santa Cruz, and I believe in letting people live the life they have chosen for themselves, to the greatest extent possible. You will never find me living in a bible town in Georgia, because I refuse to surround myself with backward, living-in-denial unhappy religious fanatics taking out their unnatural angst in the area I live in.
To those of you who practice religion and let it simply influence your innate sense of moral purpose, I give my compliments. If you must chose one, always chose the Covenenant of Grace over the Covenant of Works.
-Elentar
I can't seem to find anywhere on Google an explanation of why a vacuum-tube wouldn't be considered a solid-state device. It doesn't have any moving parts, and the only distinction some sites make are that a vacuum tube has to be replaced more often. So why do we only call silicon-based circuits "solid-state"?
-Elentar
One important thing about CRM114 is that the mail you report as spam must be _identical_ to when it first arrived and was passed through as a false positive (or false negative). I've been using CRM114 for about a month now, and for the first couple weeks I had the same experience as the above poster - it quickly got to a level around 80% accuracy, but had many false positives and negatives.
Then, I switched from using forwarding to using two folders on my imap server (learn-spam and learn-nonspam). Once an hour, I use the server-side command line tool to process those folders and do the appropriate things to the messages inside. CRM114 became much, much more accurate in a matter of a few days and has since been very good.
So, my advice is to disregard the instructions on the CRM114 website about forwarding, and either make a webpage with a text box that calls the back-end process, or use imap and have a cron job process two folders. You could also write a plugin for your favourite mail client that sends the image to the server, and a daemon for the server that sends it to the CRM114 learning tool...
-Elentar
Well, that's a good point, and perhaps we could all live in a culture in which there was a good job for everyone. A culture in which you received everything you needed from the government, and were given a job that allowed you to work happily.
Or not. Because communism failed, and there's only the government going around offering to give that dyslexic/learning impaired/antisocial person a better job that will not involve their handicap.
A simple barcode scanner and/or a digital camera would work great for a pawn shop owner that can't read properly. The police could have photos of all the items and closeups of the serial numbers, and this particular problem would be solved.
You don't have to change the person, you can just change the job, or change the tools used to do the job. But American culture is consumer culture, throw-away culture, and employees that are too old to travel, too sick to insure, too much into their families to work weekends and too handicapped to compete are given a pink slip* and replaced by someone younger, healthier or cheaper. Or technology itself is used to replace them, instead of making their jobs better.
-Elentar, ranting about a distant tangent from the main topic
*: I've never seen a pink slip. The last job that gave me one (they called it a RIF) sent me a stack of about 20 pieces of paper to sign, all white.
I obviously don't know your specific pawnshop, but those that I have seen usually are run by people who can't or don't want to fit into a more 'normal' job, such as ex-convicts, handicapped people, people with learning disabilities, or just people who dislike being wave slaves.
Imagine if the owner of your shop is dyslexic. Reading serial numbers all day long is hard enough for anyone, but if you can't even be sure that you're reading them right... on top of that, some guy comes in and yells at you because you have trouble reading, and then six months later your shop is vandalized for no reason.
Sure, it's possible that the pawn shop could have been a front for a fencing operation. But don't you think that that's a little obvious, and that the regular police visits might discourage it? And if there had *not* been any pawn shops for the thief to go to, you wouldn't have gotten your bike back at all. These places expose themselves to the kind of treatment you delivered so that honest people can exchange goods and so that victims have a better chance of finding their stolen items.
-Elentar
I've found that while some of the Clie models allow basic synchronization with the Palm hotsync manager (which iSync still requires), most of them do not. The PEG-SJ20 is one of the units that works, and I believe the older 6xx series may also be supported. None of the current in-production units work, though.
Cheers,
-Elentar
Actually, that depends on the state. In California, where a large number of unemployed tech workers undoubtedly reside, it IS legal to start a company while on unemployment - you just aren't allowed to have income from it. The important factor is whether you are doing work for which you ever intend to get paid; volunteering time at a charity and working hard for a company that doesn't pay you is exactly the same, as far as unemployment is concerned. This comes directly from an Employment Development Department worker after I asked specifically about it.
In case it's not obvious, you can be a founder of a company and benefit from a company phone, company-provided internet connection, company computer/laptop, company PDA and even a company car - anything that's a legitimate business expense - and still not be an employee and not receive any pay. And none of those items are "double taxed" like paying an actual salary is. So take advantage of the perks of being a founder!
The single greatest expense for a small company is the employees, so you'd be surprised how often this comes up.
Cheers,
-Elentar
Exactly right! Somebody ought to play that on TV as a public service announcement...
-Elentar
Who needs fancy Japanese computer parking systems? Just study Shaolin Kung-Fu and park your car with the flick of a wrist!
For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, I highly highly highly recommend seeing the movie Shaolin Soccer. You can't buy it legally here on account of Disney buying the rights and shutting down vendors, but you can probably get it shipped.
-Elentar
Odds are that this is an attempt by upper management to find an excuse to trim the fat in the IT department. I've worked in IT for a decade, and spent the last couple freelancing. Companies generally have bloated, inefficient IT departments that exist simply to buy more crap and then fail to maintain it. Most of the time, upper management ignores the bloat as the cost of having technology be a part of their business - but if they wanted to get a feel for how much bloat and wasted time there really was, scheduling a 'speak frankly to the CIO' dinner would be a great way to do it.
I once had the opportunity to showcase my department's prototype at the executive Christmas dinner - I set up the demonstration, dropped a sheet over it and helped myself to a glass of wine from the open bar. As the executives mingled, I mingled with them, simply introducing myself as being 'with the blah-blah department'. Amazingly, everyone treated me as an equal, freely discussed various upcoming projects and plans with me and listened to my thoughts on our own and competitor's products and market positions. Because it was an exclusive event, they all assumed that I was as important as they were (because if I wasn't, it would have reduced their own importance, perhaps!).
So if you want to really make a difference, try to arrange to be at an exclusive corporate event for whatever reason you can come up with. Dress appropriately, know the names of everyone there, and don't be afraid of the people you talk to - they're just as human as you are, and one time most of them were nobodies too.
-Elentar
As mentioned in my reply to another comment, it's nice to know that other communities aren't quite as paranoid and protective as they are here in Santa Cruz, California.
Obviously, hosting a one-time Linux Bake Sale or something would pass nearly anywhere, but just lingering around on a regular basis would definitely get you in trouble, here. I live in the more conservative part of town, where the schools are generally more concerned with unknown characters, but it's definitely not as open here as it is for you.
Maybe I should move to Seattle.
-Elentar
Seriously, though, if a person was loitering around outside school grounds, someone would call the police here and they'd be told to move along. Especially a scary geek character like the ones that caused all the havoc at Columbine. :-P
Even church groups would have a hard time sticking around, here - there's a lot of militant anti-church people in this town. They might not complain so much around a high school, though. Grade school is definitely out.
I'm somewhat relieved to know that communities aren't quite so paranoid in other parts of the country, even if it does mean religious nonsense littering the pavement...
-Elentar
I hate to break it to you, but standing around outside a school is enough to get you arrested in most communities, all by itself. Nevermind that you're passing out unmarked bags to random children. Containing food items that could have been tampered with (a little acid on the soda can, perhaps?).
You'd probably be okay putting up a flyer on telephone poles, though.
-Elentar
I suppose that what I wrote is as insightful to some as your post is flamebait to others. And vice-versa.
Some people don't respond to prose, considering statements so brief to be simplistic and naive. However, I find my statement to be no less simple than the one it followed, vis. "While they are certainly tinkerers, they are hardly students." Too many people, in my opinion, take for granted that education ends when you leave a formal school.
The idea was that you were supposed to read what I had written and find humour in it, and then think about why you at first agreed with the idea that no professional could ever also be a student. Or maybe you did not agree in the first place - but then you have already experience the insight, and ought to recognize it.
-Elentar
I will always be a student. I will graduate life when I am dead, and perhaps move on to post-graduate work. Until then, every day will see my continued education and I will always assume that every flower, fruit and stone I see holds some undiscovered secret within.
Furthermore, I am a hacker. I take nothing for granted - not the way software functions, nor the way the laws of physics are applied. I will always question the reality around me and seek to refine the answers that I have found.
Some others want to silence my nature and force me to take their word as the final truth - they are the high-school dropouts of this world, ignorant to every new truth that passes them by. But I can learn from them as well.
There is no negative consequence in my life, only education and experience. I have no regrets. My first day of life and my last are equally valuable to me, no matter how many years seperate them.
Besides, anyone who believes that hours of creativity (and programming is an art, not a science, as far as I'm concerned) can be compensated by a paycheck is deluding themselves. Free software allows a programmer to trade one esoteric thing for another - creativity for community, perseverance for recognition. And the programmer who does so will be fulfilled by it, and can thus tolerate selling other of their works for money.
-Elentar
Did you mean to say that Microsoft is not licensing their protocols because the U.S. Government is under "Coercion illegally applied" or "Forcible confinement?" Microsoft certainly is guilty of coercing users and could be broadly guilty of forcibly confining those same users within a single set of choices (via its monopoly), but neither case seems to provide any impetus for Microsoft to license their protocols.
Or perhaps you meant that Microsoft is under illegal coercion by the U.S. Government? If this were the case, who could blame them for being protective of their protocols, at least as long as the unlawful treatment continues?
Of course, neither of these are true and I suspect that the intended word might have been "impulsion", "injunction" or just plain "order'. And yes, I had more fun writing this than you did reading it.
-Elentar
I absolutely agree. Giving away *GPL*'d software is exactly what is needed to gain progress for the open-source movement. What I'm saying, though, is that it needs to be identified as GPL'd software. The recepient needs to know that we're not just giving away any software, we're giving away software whose creators intended it to be free.
In my mind, that's a big difference. If I'm accused of offering "a free copy of any software you want", I can be nailed for copyright violation. "A free copy of any GPL software you want," on the other hand, makes it clear that I'm not breaking the law.
We shouldn't crush consumers under the full weight of the open-source idealogy (let them find out if they want to), but we also shouldn't group open-source software with commercial applications and then give away only some of that group of applications.
As a final note, I'll use the RIAA as an example - many sites hosting freely distributable MP3s have received lawsuit threats, cease-and-desist letters and other such actions, simply because their offerings are not clearly marked as being free. OSS should not be subject to the same mistakes.
--Elentar
I agree with the numerous posts here about not evangelizing to the masses (or as I like to put it, don't get all RMS on them). Salesmen do that, people don't like it.
However, simply giving copies of the software away and saying that it's just a free copy is also a bad idea, and I'll tell you why: It gives the commercial software industry a lever against open source. If we appear to be encouraging the free copying of *any* software, we could be accused of the same things that P2P developers have been - they only provided the tools for copyright violation, but they have been found liable for it.
So, the GPL (or variant) should at least be mentioned - 'It's GPL or open source software, free to copy to whomever you like.' That way, we're encourage an alternative to commercial licenses, not encouraging the copying itself.
--Elentar
For those like me who wondered if printers really had gotten down to PCMCIA size (Card Information Structure), he is referring to something called a Continuous Inking System. Seems to usually be done as a hack in which a regular printer has a larger supply of ink from external bottles. Check out this for more info.
-Elentar
Mozilla Mail is bloated. Even split off from the browser, it's huge. It does do almost everything conceivable in a mail client, but that's not what I want. It's just too big and slow.
My favorite client is Mail.app on Mac OS X. LDAP name completion? Got it. Multiple personalities? Got it. Spam filtering (I do server-side, but most people don't)? Got it. Adequate IMAP support? Got it.
It could stand some improvements in the IMAP department - specifically, storing Sent Mail and Drafts where I want them, instead of in it's own folders. And updating all message counts, not just Inbox, during it's check cycle. But you know what? There's a command-line tool for running Applescript, and you can just create a cron task to update all your Imap folders for you through that. Works like a dream.
The Linux community seems to produce 'superstar' programmers and single applications that are great, but never a system that works truly well. Case in point: Palm devices and conduits. For the Mac and PC, Palm controls the conduit technology, and anyone can write for it. On Linux, every bloody developer uses a different solution! You can't manage it all from one place! Evolution is a great example - last I checked, it uses a _dead project_ for it's Palm connectivity, one that nobody else uses.
I love Linux for developing and for servers. It's more flexible than anything else out there. But it will never have the benefit of a single overarching design that ties everything together, and that's exactly what Apple has going for it with Mac OS X.
-Elentar
I have several friends with at least one Tivo each. We have had 'watch-your-favorite-broadcast' parties before, whether for sports, James Bond marathons, Monty Python, the latest episode of Futurama, Junkyard Wars, etc. Usually, there's one of us who has their Tivo set to record the show, and then we all go over there *whenever we decide* and play it back during the party.
I know of many people who watch sports that way, even with just a VCR. If you're the kind of person with so much free time that you can just sit in front of the TV whenever the networks think you ought to, then maybe you watch live TV. For many of us, the ability to easily time-shift your programs to a more convenient slot is great, and nobody cares that it was technically broadcast hours or days before.
-Elentar
Actually, it's only 4 lines. Slashdot adds the rest, depending on your preferences. I find it annoying as well, but since I dislike signatures that appear to be part of the post, I chose to keep the bracketing lines.
I'll try reducing it to 2 lines for this post, and see how it looks. Function over form, right?
-Elentar
You know what I hate? Words like "Monetized."
If a product doesn't warrant being discussed with proper, complete sentences then it is certainly doomed.
-Elentar
So, if they're following the airline business model, does that mean that you can watch the movie for free, but you have to buy a ticket in order to listen to it too?
-Elentar