If you are too successful you are handicapped. Otherwise do as you please.
There are good and bad parts to lock-in, when competitors abound the consumer can choose. When there is no choice then everyone loses, so limitations are put in place to limit the amount of loss.
It may not make sense, or you may not agree, but it is the way the law works in the US.
I wish OSX was available on non-Macs, but it is not. If OSX was a required part of going about daily business, and new bundling was added it would be illegal. As it is with little market share and bundling always being the way it is not.
If the Hardware mark-up was too extreme than an un-bundling could be forced too, perhaps splitting the company into and OS and Hardware division, requiring the OS devision to sell to anyone.
This time everyone could put it on the computer they already have (especially if it can run Vista).
This time it is OSX which is a great OS. Last time it was OS 7 that from my experience wasn't really any better than Windows 95 (both crashed a lot had weak/no memory protections, bad multi-tasking (worse on Apple) and generally sucked.
OSX is something that people have seen and thought was cool for years now, and people running XP at home probably envy their wealthier/smarter/stupider/whatever friends running OSX and would like to switch.
It is still probably a bad Idea for Apple. They would either need to spend more developing OSX, deal with crappy drivers (22% of Vista crashes from one vendors drivers), or have a lot of people buying it that can't run it. Every sale of OSX that is to someone who chose a clone over Apple brand would cost them in profit to make up for the sale to the person that was not going to be an Apple sale previously. It would also be disruptive to their current business model which is very profitable.
If someone sells me a print do I automatically have the right to re-distribute it willy-nilly?
Also, if a person or even a company makes free wifi available I am not allowed automatic access to it either. The law seems to require additional permission the way things have been shaking out lately.
I am assuming that there are a lot of jackholes in this country (at least where I am). This policy causes an increase in a certain kind of jackhole meeting that costs me money (it decreases another type that could save me more at the same time, I don't really know what the net is).
If either driver is responsible there will be no accident. My point is that as a responsible driver this still costs me directly in money and indirectly in time. I cannot say "well I'm a good driver this won't effect me". Because it does.
Increases in tickets by cops at redlights would help me by pulling jackholes out of my insurance pool, but these tickets don't even do that.
Also, why don't they increase the all-red time to decrease accidents instead of increasing the yellow time? If we assume 2 cars always run the red an extra second all red should be more effective in decreasing accidents than an extra second of yellow. After all, as a good driver what I really want is less insurance costs.
Your still going to have to pay if costs increase (assuming a net increase in cost).
Jackhole A slamming on the breaks (due to driving too fast/not looking at the light close enough) getting rear-ended by jackhole B doing the same is going to cost everyone in the area where the jackholes live increased insurance costs (even more if Jackhole B was not insured.
It will take a little bit of time for the students to find games they want to play that will run.
Also, I am too lazy to RTFA, but they could be upgrading from some awful Windows setup that was impossible/hard to lock down (something from the 9X line, or some library software that must be admin). Fixing those types of things for Windows costs money in software and maybe hardware. The move over to Linux "only" costs training.
There is a real perception amongst people that Linux is "impossible" to do anything or use, that alone should buy some time (if the school is small enough). Once someone realizes there are games it will be back to the old situation.
I would rather live in a nice neighborhood on the outskirts of a city with everything I need (except work) a short walk away.
Lancaster is not that safe (though the rates a little lower than Philly for the same year). If you cut the bad parts of Philly out (which I do, though a job at a university would make that impossible), you are left with a nice city. I am sure Lancaster or any oher city is similar. But as a remarkably segregated city (on all levels, not just race), it is very easy to avoid the bad parts. It's not like New York or DC where from one block to the next it goes nice to dangerous.
Of course the quality of life is a pure value judgment and I don't mean to imply otherwise vs a small town (which as a Delawarean I find hard to call 55,000 as including).
I am not the OP, but I live in Philadelphia. I am not in center city but I am under 30 minutes away by train (hourly not subway or anything).
I am in a very safe diverse neighborhood Warning, that link is clearly posted as a propaganda piece against Wikipedia rules, try not to choke on the good vibes man.
Livable 3 bedroom row homes start under $200,000 and center city pays quite well (compared to housing cost). The city taxes can be steep though (4% I think wage tax, and 1% sales tax (on top of state)). There is quick access (under 30 minutes by car) to suburban style shopping, with day to day needs being in walking distance.
I would strongly look into if a job in Philadelphia offers itself. I moved from northern Delaware because it was too expensive to buy a house in a safe area there.
The west side (south of Germantown Ave) is better than the East.
It's funny. When I first used Linux RedHat was like Ubuntu is now. I remember going to borders to get a book about it and some "old guy" (probably actually a sophomore in college) sneered about my book choice and said something to the effect of "it's OK, but I wish people would use Slackware". As a new user there appeared to be pretty much the same anti-RedHat as sentiment I see against Ubuntu now. Of course it's reputation of good hardware detection and easy configuration made it very dominant with new users at just the right time (major buzz for this new Linux thing in the media everybody trying RedHat).
I did eventually install Slackware and it was kind of neat to have everything available, but nothing running by default (recommended install method was to copy entire disk, I believe it was version 10). But it was hardly the awakening all the Slackers made it our to be.
So are Canada and Mexico expected to sell oil to us at a discount because they like us?
Oil is a global market, it does not matter where you buy it, the price is the same. The clearest illustration of that is the cost of oil in oil independent countries during the last oil crunch (if memory serves correct England would meet this criteria).
If we had had oil independence, then nationalizing oil could reduce cost buy forcing it to be sold below market value (regulations could do this too, even if it were still private, though I prefer my socialism honest).
Even so, this is purely robbing Peter to pay Paul (forcing lower sale price to Americans than foreigners would increase our trade deficit). Giving the money to Paul could technically be better (he may need it more) but it does not directly create a net positive, and actually in the case of oil creates a negative.
Additionally a significant portion of our increase from $.89 gallon is taxes and inflation. Along with old and insufficient refining infrastructure and newer regulations.
According to <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/13/news/economy/gas_gallon/index.htm?cnn=yes">this</a> 2/3's the price of gas is the cost of the oil. Leaving current cost with free crude $1.00. With a reasonably priced crude (say $40.00/barrel (the cost per barrel of TFAs reserve, leaving no room for profit) $1.80 (double your.89). Using the cost from the article of getting oil from ground to surface, excluding all overhead and transportation to refineries ($24), we are still at $1.50, more than half again your suggested price, and still above it with a complete elimination of tax ($.40/gallon).
The days of sub $1.00/gallon gas are well past us, and I recommend you file them in the fantasy part of the brain with the tooth fairy.
The cheapest chip there that played blu-ray was $240.00.
It also used 95W and needs a memmory controller (I think). It does look like the issue of hardware playback support will be mooted soon, but not yet.
The great thing about computers is that you can get cheap, fast, and efficient. You just need to set a stable target and wait. I will continue to do so until I can get what I want for cheap. And it will be coming soon.
As far as GPU acceleration goes, you appear correct. It looks like buying coreavc is the way to go if the CPU can't go it alone.
From what I can find online NOBODY has h.264 accelerated playback in Linux, and the best solution is to use a hack that loads a commercial software decoder made for Windows.
Until I read this I thought my next HTPC would be ATI if things ever came to be, but now it may be VIA.
I will build my next PC as soon as I find a fairly inexpensive card/chipset that will do HDMI out, and hardware H.264 in Linux. I don't care whether it is good closed source (like Nvidia graphics)or open source support either, Just that it works well and is fairly low power usage (pegging a fast multi-core CPU does not count).
Until Nvidia offers feature parity with Windows on Linux or enough is opened for the community to do it themselves they deserve a hard time.
If someone knows a good solution for this let me know so I can stop waiting.
I tend to agree with your assertion that not all lost potential sales are contrary to the actual step 2. Which is probably why it is worded that way and not as i worded it. But I will also add that in what I will call traditional copy-right law back-ups could very well have been excluded (by could i mean very easily could have been ruled to).
The assertion by consumers that they are buying an object to do with as they please, but the "useful art" within is not to be copied could very well have been seen to exclude them making a backup copy. Since that assertion is the basis of the right of first sale applying to books I think a good argument could be made that just as when you lose or destroy a book you have no expectation of a clean copy the same could be said for software, music, ect. The re-installation argument your sibling post made would not fall into this category, since the original object was sold with the idea to be installed.
If that line of thought was followed you could ban format and time shifting, essentially eliminating what I am going to call consumer fair use (academic, satirical, and reviews would still be allowed. Step three's "reasonable" would be where they fell IMO).
I do think they concept of "normal" exploitation would be much more along the lines of sell to somebody and they can enjoy the art however they please, this of course would weaken the right of first sale.
All of this though does not mean that the original language is too opaque, simply that laws meant to apply to very broad subjects need to be interpreted. Were each of the tests to be tens or hundreds of pages long it would not be any better, and may still leave holes. After all, how is a 1967 law expected to properly account for iPods, Ring tones, Tivos, Sling Boxes and more.
Also as an international treaty it was probably not meant to be too specific, after all, countries do have some say.
With representatives of the recording industry claiming ipods to be worth thousands of dollars I tend to agree that we better get this under control and clarified. </mindless ranting> Why is the comment box so small? It makes it a lot harder to read your post and be coherent (not that I ever really tried anyway).
These steps read fairly clear to me (though the law associated may not).
1) not the default, this is for exceptions, (sounds redundant though).
2) Does not cost the owner in lost sales/reduced sale price
3) This reads as a ban on things like fanfic, where the character of the original work can be altered by additional information
The problem with the law is that one person's interpretations of this becomes law for future reference, and it takes years of training to have a moderate understanding of that background, and the ability to find the specifics when you need it.
When I went to download a "Linux ISO" from a news group this weekend I was getting connections constantly dieing.
I used to reliably get 400+KB/s using 4 connections of SSL to port 8080. This weekend it would hit that, then drop to zero. Flickering like that with an average speed of about 125KB/s. I also upped to 6 connections (otherwise it was a little under 100 KB/s).
I tried doing it as one connection too, but it was even worse.
It is still on par with reasonably priced DSL in my area, though Cavalier Telephone just started offering a 10mbit/1mbit connection that I will try out if I can do it without a contract (I don't know the actual speed it will be, and at least with Comcast I can switch to FiOS if/when it becomes available.
I would previously sometimes slow down to 250 KB/s, but it was at times that I imagine were probably busy (4-7 PM on a weekday for example), this weekend it was all the time.
Port 25 would be open between the mail relay (in the DMZ) and the internet.
It would be blocked between the DMZ and the internal network. This would not prevent infection (as I said), but would prevent the further spread/sending of spam by zombies.
Have the mail server not accept mail on port 25 (internal computers can be properly configured).
Block all port 25 traffic at any point where is can be done.
The only computer that needs port 25 if the companies mail relay. It can sit in the DMZ and no port 25 traffic and be allowed in or out. This should prevent the further spread, but not the infection.
The only easy ways I can think to do that are: 1) block all exe's on the mail and block all webmail sites (not practical) 2) Make sure all users have show extensions set and educate them (good luck)(this assumes that it is a.jpg.exe with an image as the thumbnail)
Perhaps virus software can detect double extensions and warn/prevent running them. This would too require some level of education for the user, or they will still run it, but it would be far less invasive than current real time scanning.
I think a large part of the problem is that hiding extensions is bad, and was a mistake to implement.
I think far smarter would be to show them, and make them immutable if people changing them was much a problem, or do what Gnome does, where right-click rename defaults to only renaming the file.
And they have that fancy BIOS that could be a lot of fun too.
It doesn't even need to be China. The potential payout is enough that organized crime anywhere could pull it off, though in a country like China it is probably easier to bribe enough people to slip your stuff into the assembly line.
If you take it to mean the author simply said GPL and did not mean "Gnu General Public License" then you have no protection at all.
I think you have a few things that would protect you both legally and in likely feelings of the author.
1) The meaning of GPL is quite clear in the context (Linux magazine, license for code) (This I think is legal protection).
2) It appears clear that the author does not look at this as a project, but a cool little tool they developed and wanted to share/brag about(the lack of any other reference anywhere else) (this would be a non-legal protection)
The author did leave an email and ask to contact, of course 4 year old email addresses at places of employment are often wrong. And yet...
I would email the guy, and lacking a response call him myself. License sloppiness should be punished, since it can be as damaging to the community as shared source style licenses. And a (one not a horde of assholes) stranger calling to clarify what you meant in a 4 year old article would be appropriate in my mind.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually it is like this:
If you are too successful you are handicapped. Otherwise do as you please.
There are good and bad parts to lock-in, when competitors abound the consumer can choose. When there is no choice then everyone loses, so limitations are put in place to limit the amount of loss.
It may not make sense, or you may not agree, but it is the way the law works in the US.
I wish OSX was available on non-Macs, but it is not. If OSX was a required part of going about daily business, and new bundling was added it would be illegal. As it is with little market share and bundling always being the way it is not.
If the Hardware mark-up was too extreme than an un-bundling could be forced too, perhaps splitting the company into and OS and Hardware division, requiring the OS devision to sell to anyone.
This time everyone could put it on the computer they already have (especially if it can run Vista).
/whatever friends running OSX and would like to switch.
This time it is OSX which is a great OS. Last time it was OS 7 that from my experience wasn't really any better than Windows 95 (both crashed a lot had weak/no memory protections, bad multi-tasking (worse on Apple) and generally sucked.
OSX is something that people have seen and thought was cool for years now, and people running XP at home probably envy their wealthier/smarter/stupider
It is still probably a bad Idea for Apple. They would either need to spend more developing OSX, deal with crappy drivers (22% of Vista crashes from one vendors drivers), or have a lot of people buying it that can't run it. Every sale of OSX that is to someone who chose a clone over Apple brand would cost them in profit to make up for the sale to the person that was not going to be an Apple sale previously. It would also be disruptive to their current business model which is very profitable.
If someone sells me a print do I automatically have the right to re-distribute it willy-nilly?
Also, if a person or even a company makes free wifi available I am not allowed automatic access to it either. The law seems to require additional permission the way things have been shaking out lately.
You are correct.
I am assuming that there are a lot of jackholes in this country (at least where I am). This policy causes an increase in a certain kind of jackhole meeting that costs me money (it decreases another type that could save me more at the same time, I don't really know what the net is).
If either driver is responsible there will be no accident. My point is that as a responsible driver this still costs me directly in money and indirectly in time. I cannot say "well I'm a good driver this won't effect me". Because it does.
Increases in tickets by cops at redlights would help me by pulling jackholes out of my insurance pool, but these tickets don't even do that.
Also, why don't they increase the all-red time to decrease accidents instead of increasing the yellow time? If we assume 2 cars always run the red an extra second all red should be more effective in decreasing accidents than an extra second of yellow. After all, as a good driver what I really want is less insurance costs.
Your still going to have to pay if costs increase (assuming a net increase in cost).
Jackhole A slamming on the breaks (due to driving too fast/not looking at the light close enough) getting rear-ended by jackhole B doing the same is going to cost everyone in the area where the jackholes live increased insurance costs (even more if Jackhole B was not insured.
It will take a little bit of time for the students to find games they want to play that will run.
Also, I am too lazy to RTFA, but they could be upgrading from some awful Windows setup that was impossible/hard to lock down (something from the 9X line, or some library software that must be admin). Fixing those types of things for Windows costs money in software and maybe hardware. The move over to Linux "only" costs training.
There is a real perception amongst people that Linux is "impossible" to do anything or use, that alone should buy some time (if the school is small enough). Once someone realizes there are games it will be back to the old situation.
Except storm for example has less than 50% sending out spam. This would lead me to believe that checking only port 25 is not going to work.
Better to check all ports when nothing should be going on.
I would rather live in a nice neighborhood on the outskirts of a city with everything I need (except work) a short walk away.
Lancaster is not that safe (though the rates a little lower than Philly for the same year). If you cut the bad parts of Philly out (which I do, though a job at a university would make that impossible), you are left with a nice city. I am sure Lancaster or any oher city is similar. But as a remarkably segregated city (on all levels, not just race), it is very easy to avoid the bad parts. It's not like New York or DC where from one block to the next it goes nice to dangerous.
Of course the quality of life is a pure value judgment and I don't mean to imply otherwise vs a small town (which as a Delawarean I find hard to call 55,000 as including).
I am not the OP, but I live in Philadelphia. I am not in center city but I am under 30 minutes away by train (hourly not subway or anything).
I am in a very safe diverse neighborhood Warning, that link is clearly posted as a propaganda piece against Wikipedia rules, try not to choke on the good vibes man.
Livable 3 bedroom row homes start under $200,000 and center city pays quite well (compared to housing cost). The city taxes can be steep though (4% I think wage tax, and 1% sales tax (on top of state)). There is quick access (under 30 minutes by car) to suburban style shopping, with day to day needs being in walking distance.
I would strongly look into if a job in Philadelphia offers itself. I moved from northern Delaware because it was too expensive to buy a house in a safe area there.
The west side (south of Germantown Ave) is better than the East.
Missed funny button, unmodding.
Is it a bug in the new system that I couldn't say y"yes I want to unmod"?
It's funny. When I first used Linux RedHat was like Ubuntu is now. I remember going to borders to get a book about it and some "old guy" (probably actually a sophomore in college) sneered about my book choice and said something to the effect of "it's OK, but I wish people would use Slackware". As a new user there appeared to be pretty much the same anti-RedHat as sentiment I see against Ubuntu now. Of course it's reputation of good hardware detection and easy configuration made it very dominant with new users at just the right time (major buzz for this new Linux thing in the media everybody trying RedHat).
I did eventually install Slackware and it was kind of neat to have everything available, but nothing running by default (recommended install method was to copy entire disk, I believe it was version 10). But it was hardly the awakening all the Slackers made it our to be.
So are Canada and Mexico expected to sell oil to us at a discount because they like us?
.89). Using the cost from the article of getting oil from ground to surface, excluding all overhead and transportation to refineries ($24), we are still at $1.50, more than half again your suggested price, and still above it with a complete elimination of tax ($.40/gallon).
Oil is a global market, it does not matter where you buy it, the price is the same. The clearest illustration of that is the cost of oil in oil independent countries during the last oil crunch (if memory serves correct England would meet this criteria).
If we had had oil independence, then nationalizing oil could reduce cost buy forcing it to be sold below market value (regulations could do this too, even if it were still private, though I prefer my socialism honest).
Even so, this is purely robbing Peter to pay Paul (forcing lower sale price to Americans than foreigners would increase our trade deficit). Giving the money to Paul could technically be better (he may need it more) but it does not directly create a net positive, and actually in the case of oil creates a negative.
Additionally a significant portion of our increase from $.89 gallon is taxes and inflation. Along with old and insufficient refining infrastructure and newer regulations.
According to <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/13/news/economy/gas_gallon/index.htm?cnn=yes">this</a> 2/3's the price of gas is the cost of the oil. Leaving current cost with free crude $1.00. With a reasonably priced crude (say $40.00/barrel (the cost per barrel of TFAs reserve, leaving no room for profit) $1.80 (double your
The days of sub $1.00/gallon gas are well past us, and I recommend you file them in the fantasy part of the brain with the tooth fairy.
The cheapest chip there that played blu-ray was $240.00.
It also used 95W and needs a memmory controller (I think). It does look like the issue of hardware playback support will be mooted soon, but not yet.
The great thing about computers is that you can get cheap, fast, and efficient. You just need to set a stable target and wait. I will continue to do so until I can get what I want for cheap. And it will be coming soon.
As far as GPU acceleration goes, you appear correct. It looks like buying coreavc is the way to go if the CPU can't go it alone.
The real meat of it for me is the video playback.
From what I can find online NOBODY has h.264 accelerated playback in Linux, and the best solution is to use a hack that loads a commercial software decoder made for Windows.
Until I read this I thought my next HTPC would be ATI if things ever came to be, but now it may be VIA.
I will build my next PC as soon as I find a fairly inexpensive card/chipset that will do HDMI out, and hardware H.264 in Linux. I don't care whether it is good closed source (like Nvidia graphics)or open source support either, Just that it works well and is fairly low power usage (pegging a fast multi-core CPU does not count).
Until Nvidia offers feature parity with Windows on Linux or enough is opened for the community to do it themselves they deserve a hard time.
If someone knows a good solution for this let me know so I can stop waiting.
I tend to agree with your assertion that not all lost potential sales are contrary to the actual step 2. Which is probably why it is worded that way and not as i worded it. But I will also add that in what I will call traditional copy-right law back-ups could very well have been excluded (by could i mean very easily could have been ruled to).
The assertion by consumers that they are buying an object to do with as they please, but the "useful art" within is not to be copied could very well have been seen to exclude them making a backup copy. Since that assertion is the basis of the right of first sale applying to books I think a good argument could be made that just as when you lose or destroy a book you have no expectation of a clean copy the same could be said for software, music, ect. The re-installation argument your sibling post made would not fall into this category, since the original object was sold with the idea to be installed.
If that line of thought was followed you could ban format and time shifting, essentially eliminating what I am going to call consumer fair use (academic, satirical, and reviews would still be allowed. Step three's "reasonable" would be where they fell IMO).
I do think they concept of "normal" exploitation would be much more along the lines of sell to somebody and they can enjoy the art however they please, this of course would weaken the right of first sale.
All of this though does not mean that the original language is too opaque, simply that laws meant to apply to very broad subjects need to be interpreted. Were each of the tests to be tens or hundreds of pages long it would not be any better, and may still leave holes. After all, how is a 1967 law expected to properly account for iPods, Ring tones, Tivos, Sling Boxes and more.
Also as an international treaty it was probably not meant to be too specific, after all, countries do have some say.
With representatives of the recording industry claiming ipods to be worth thousands of dollars I tend to agree that we better get this under control and clarified.
</mindless ranting>
Why is the comment box so small? It makes it a lot harder to read your post and be coherent (not that I ever really tried anyway).
1) Wouldn't comparing to google docs make more sense?
2) It is not like other google services, they plan on charging people like google apps premiere, where adds are optional.
These steps read fairly clear to me (though the law associated may not).
1) not the default, this is for exceptions, (sounds redundant though).
2) Does not cost the owner in lost sales/reduced sale price
3) This reads as a ban on things like fanfic, where the character of the original work can be altered by additional information
The problem with the law is that one person's interpretations of this becomes law for future reference, and it takes years of training to have a moderate understanding of that background, and the ability to find the specifics when you need it.
It's not 24/7 torrenting.
It is 5 minutes or less of fast access.
When I went to download a "Linux ISO" from a news group this weekend I was getting connections constantly dieing.
I used to reliably get 400+KB/s using 4 connections of SSL to port 8080. This weekend it would hit that, then drop to zero. Flickering like that with an average speed of about 125KB/s. I also upped to 6 connections (otherwise it was a little under 100 KB/s).
I tried doing it as one connection too, but it was even worse.
It is still on par with reasonably priced DSL in my area, though Cavalier Telephone just started offering a 10mbit/1mbit connection that I will try out if I can do it without a contract (I don't know the actual speed it will be, and at least with Comcast I can switch to FiOS if/when it becomes available.
I would previously sometimes slow down to 250 KB/s, but it was at times that I imagine were probably busy (4-7 PM on a weekday for example), this weekend it was all the time.
I miss communicated.
Port 25 would be open between the mail relay (in the DMZ) and the internet.
It would be blocked between the DMZ and the internal network. This would not prevent infection (as I said), but would prevent the further spread/sending of spam by zombies.
Have the mail server not accept mail on port 25 (internal computers can be properly configured).
.jpg.exe with an image as the thumbnail)
Block all port 25 traffic at any point where is can be done.
The only computer that needs port 25 if the companies mail relay. It can sit in the DMZ and no port 25 traffic and be allowed in or out. This should prevent the further spread, but not the infection.
The only easy ways I can think to do that are:
1) block all exe's on the mail and block all webmail sites (not practical)
2) Make sure all users have show extensions set and educate them (good luck)(this assumes that it is a
Perhaps virus software can detect double extensions and warn/prevent running them. This would too require some level of education for the user, or they will still run it, but it would be far less invasive than current real time scanning.
I think a large part of the problem is that hiding extensions is bad, and was a mistake to implement.
I think far smarter would be to show them, and make them immutable if people changing them was much a problem, or do what Gnome does, where right-click rename defaults to only renaming the file.
There is.
Type "Pizza 12345" where 12345 is yoour zip code in google.
I just discovered 3 pizza places I didn't know about within 10 blocks.
No menu or anything though.
Where do you think Apples are made?
And they have that fancy BIOS that could be a lot of fun too.
It doesn't even need to be China. The potential payout is enough that organized crime anywhere could pull it off, though in a country like China it is probably easier to bribe enough people to slip your stuff into the assembly line.
How long until all the good cards have their bar codes recognized?
Sounds like a big leg up to me. Not that money doesn't do the same anyway.
Interesting. Is this still the case today?
Does compiz count?
I think that was pretty major, and I am pretty sure it came out of Novell.
If you take it to mean the author simply said GPL and did not mean "Gnu General Public License" then you have no protection at all.
I think you have a few things that would protect you both legally and in likely feelings of the author.
1) The meaning of GPL is quite clear in the context (Linux magazine, license for code) (This I think is legal protection).
2) It appears clear that the author does not look at this as a project, but a cool little tool they developed and wanted to share/brag about(the lack of any other reference anywhere else) (this would be a non-legal protection)
The author did leave an email and ask to contact, of course 4 year old email addresses at places of employment are often wrong. And yet...
I would email the guy, and lacking a response call him myself. License sloppiness should be punished, since it can be as damaging to the community as shared source style licenses. And a (one not a horde of assholes) stranger calling to clarify what you meant in a 4 year old article would be appropriate in my mind.