The author of a work can place conditions on the uses of that work which involve copying it (that's why it's called copyright).
If you want to copy the work but don't want to follow the author's rules then you're out of luck and you'll have to do the work yourself.
Programmers can use the LGPL which says "dynamic linking is OK," or the GPL which says "Dynamic linking is NOT okay unless you open your sorce code".
SloMedia have dynamically linked to a piece of code which the author has said is not available for dynamic linking unless the linking program's source is released (GPL)
SloMedia should have written their own code if they don't want to abide by the programmer's wishes.
SloMedia should loose in court once the court is aware that the decision to use the GPL rather than the LGPL is a conscious declaration by the author that SloMedia's use of the code is not allowed.
SloMedia might have got away with it if the GPL'd code was not in DLL's which means that they personally must have copied the code at least into a DLL-wrapper.
The weak point of the GPL on this issue would be if they had simply said "If you happen to have made this code into a DLL and have it lying around, then our program will detect and use it". This is a difficult issue for the GPL since SloMedia would not then have done any copying of the work and it would be hard to apply the author's rules on them.
But they didn't.
Well, that's what it looks like to me.
RMS (the gun-nut) has an article on this topic which may be useful.
I've interviewed people for jobs and given them Perl in a Nutshell and asked them to do simple programs. C programmers have no real trouble. Perl can be programmed almost as if it was C.
To program Perl as if it was Perl is much harder and I've yet to master it after two years of using it, but I did learn to produce useful programs in it in an afternoon.
At least in the UK. I'm pretty sure you can't copyright factual infomation even in the US. Unless there is some creative input (and who wants that in their list of CD tracks?) then the content of the database is no one's property - intellectual or otherwise.
What you describe is the way patents in science are supposed to work: you patent the process and not the product, so tough luck if someone finds another way to make the product. This has all been eroded by the genetics crowd who need control of the product to make their business plans work.
I think theft is good because it's not fair that people can own things that I don't have. If it costs nothing to make a copy of that thing then it's doubly unfair. The cost to produce it is irrelevent as that had to be paid whether I stole to thing or not.
I think that about covers the pro-Napster arguments.
I could fill a page about the advantages a micro-payment version of Napster where the money goes to the artists (with a cut - just a cut - to the service).
As it stands Napster is a waste of bandwidth and the sooner it's shut down the better.
How can the GPL be made to be enforceable while clickwraps shouldn't be?
Interesting question. The bottom line is that they should both be but that the concept of an "unreasonable contract" should be upheld by courts. If a contract requires the sacrifice of your first-born, no court will find you guilty if you don't, for example.
The issue is "what rights are copyright holders allowed to hold on to, and what rights do users have automatically?". Before the DMCA these questions were quite well settled but now it's all open warfare again.
If it's fair use to share a recording with a few of your friends
It's not. Unless by "share" you mean "play to them", and even then you might be in trouble if you have a lot of friends.
It is fair use to make copies for your own use, e.g., use in the car, on your pocket mp3 player etc. Fair use never covers giving a copy to someone else unless the copyright holder says its okay.
You can get huge quantities of wood by multiple clicking on the Wood miracle as you cast it. This is not a cheat, the game was designed to allow it and there are hidden drawbacks (which I'll leave you to find) but there is NO shortage of wood in B&W.
After a while you have stacks of villages, but still have generic messages that don't tell you where to look.
You're falling into a trap which the game sets for you (and is related to the wood issue). One option is to just train your creature to look after the villages for you. It can be done.
What I said was: It is very rare to find code which can be reused safely if it's more than 100-200 lines long. The reason it's not safe is that code longer than that is unlikly to exactly fit what you want to do
It is rare but not unheard of. I put it to you that there is not a single case of code re-use in the 10000+ line league (which I think includes IE's lousy HTML code which can't handle <H1> tags in tables) where the use of that unmodified code has not resulted in problems of the sort OOP is supposed to prevent, ie unexpected side-effects.
Come back in a few years when you know what you're talking about.
I know it's an April Fools but... The moon is moving away from the Earth. The physics involved are that the moon raises the tidal bulge on the Earth and the Earth's rotation moves that bulge forwards (in relation to the moon's orbital motion) this means that the mass in the bulge is ahead of the moon and accelerates it slightly. Increasing orbital velocity increases obital radius. QED.
It may be what you would call a daemon; I'd apply a broader definition (ie, anything that provides another program with functionality).
I disagree about code reuse. It's the 100 - 200 lines of code where it's not worth reusing code, it's easier to write more specialize code for this.
No. The bigger the task the less likly it is that a non-specialised piece of code is the correct solution. I can write generalised list and string functions in tiny little chunks and use them over and over again. I can't write a CAD system and hope to use it in anything other than subsequent versions of the same CAD system.
Look through Art of Computer Programming: it's not full of example wordprocessors and missile control systems, it's full of small reusable examples which can apply to almost any computing task.
You seem to think that it's wrong to use specilaize applications instead of one, all-encompasing, application.
That is the opposite of what I believe. What I'm attacking is blindly reusing large binaries (such as MS DLLs). Care is needed when reusing code to make sure that the code will behave in its new environment and not have unexpected side effects. The bigger the chunk of code the harder this is. Fact of life.
Things are better if you have the source code and can check it, but in the context of MS that's irrelevent.
why would you use stdio.h, or iostream.h, what about std::string
This bit had me laughing. Why would I use any of those? I write in Perl, PHP, Forth, and Assembler. Haven't used C/C++ in years and don't miss them. In fact, in 23 years of programming I've only used them about 10 times each; I've used Occam more often. I do remember having to write by own string code, though, since the std lib stuff is junk.
I assume that you meant service in NT's meaning, a background process.
I don't see why putting something in the background makes it a service. A service to me is when one program asks another to do something for it and return the result (or display it etc.).
Why use HTML other then in browsers? Help files,
I browse help files with my browser. As you said why re-invent the wheel? Using a separate program to read help files is one way in which KDE/Gnome/Windows all stink.
There is a bug in the code, cheel out! it's not the end of the world. It's fixed, too.
Well, its fixed if you speak English. The rest of the world will have to wait. It's not the fact of the bug, it's the fact of the long list of bugs. I'm dumping BIND after the most recent fiasco and I dumpped Windows some years ago. There are only so many strikes a company/project can have before I walk away and I don't understand this infinite "give them another chance" attitude that is being repeated all through this discussion.
I'm saying that it's good that you can reuse code.
As a programmer I'm not convinced of the arguments on this one. It is very rare to find code which can be reused safely if it's more than 100-200 lines long. The reason it's not safe is that code longer than that is unlikly to exactly fit what you want to do (e.g. using HTML engine to read email) and it may do strange thnings when placed into a new environment.
I'm for cautious code reuse but I'm totally against blind code reuse which is very common in Windows programming, due partly to the examples one finds in books on the topic which in turn is due to the philosophy handed down from offical MS courses.
But then you said:A lot of programs use it to render HTML
Do you want to try again?
You've one of the best HTML rendering engines avilable, will you use it, or write your own?
But, even if I could use Opera to render HTML in another program, why would I want to? The only time I want to render HTML is when I'm on the web and then I'll be using my browser.
Of course, if I had brain damage I might want to use HTML in email and let the "HTML" engine execute any old code it feels like (because executing code is something you want your HTML-email reader to do-right?). On the other hand I could just delete all my files myself.
IE is an application,
Not according to MS it isn't: it's part of the OS.
Basically you're saying that if buggy code is accessed by lots of programs and so spreads the bugs through every application you use that it's okay because at least no one had to re-write the buggy code. You're not George Bush by any chance?
I was trying to get at the idea, without actually stating it, that although aggression is often the first resort when answering aggression (including mine) there have been others such as Ghandi and Jesus who have suggested that the opposite approach is better. Ghandi seems to have had the most success, while alive, in this idea while most "followers" of Jesus (even in his lifetime) just plain ignore what was the central plank of his teaching.
I think it is odd that people so often avoid facing up to the fact that using a gun in defence is an act of aggression. If you never question things like that then you'll never ask the question "well, is there another way?". Regardless of what answer you arrive at I think you'll be better off for having asked the question.
Personally, living in Northern Ireland has left me with the conclusion that there often is no better way but that the gun is a crap answer too.
What? Do you polish it or something? What the hell other sort of use has a gun than aggression?
Really, though, you are trying to claim that guns are a tool like DeCSS when they are in fact a tool like a lockpick. They have a very few legitimate uses but the main use is immoral (but not always illegal in the case of a gun).
I'm not an engineer either but I have done some geology and I know that deep sea rigs use flexible bores, and many visible rigs on the surface are actually drilling miles away across the sea bed, and in multiple places at the same time.
Aren't they all 'obvious' after you've already seen someone else implement it?
That is exactly the problem with the "obvious" criterion, but isn't one-click obvious after you are told about cookies? Once the server can recognise an account holder one-click shopping is a bit of a "duh" option.
Define "ruinous" - I pay 40% but I'm on 50000 pounds per year at the moment. If I was worse off the percentage falls dramatically. The 60% I'm left with is plenty and the Govt needs money to do the things it does. The old system didn't work so the fact that the current system has problems isn't enough to throw it out.
As to cuisine, I'm from Northern Ireland and I'd swap all the pretentious crap the French and Italians serve up for a good Ulster-fry or a bowl of Irish-stew any day of the week.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, that's what it looks like to me.
RMS (the gun-nut) has an article on this topic which may be useful.
TWW
That's exactly what I think it looks like. I've never worked out what the hell it's supposed to be.
TWW
TWW
Yes.
To program Perl as if it was Perl is much harder and I've yet to master it after two years of using it, but I did learn to produce useful programs in it in an afternoon.
TWW
TWW
TWW
I think that about covers the pro-Napster arguments.
I could fill a page about the advantages a micro-payment version of Napster where the money goes to the artists (with a cut - just a cut - to the service).
As it stands Napster is a waste of bandwidth and the sooner it's shut down the better.
TWW
Interesting question. The bottom line is that they should both be but that the concept of an "unreasonable contract" should be upheld by courts. If a contract requires the sacrifice of your first-born, no court will find you guilty if you don't, for example.
The issue is "what rights are copyright holders allowed to hold on to, and what rights do users have automatically?". Before the DMCA these questions were quite well settled but now it's all open warfare again.
TWW
It's not. Unless by "share" you mean "play to them", and even then you might be in trouble if you have a lot of friends.
It is fair use to make copies for your own use, e.g., use in the car, on your pocket mp3 player etc. Fair use never covers giving a copy to someone else unless the copyright holder says its okay.
TWW
You need stupid amounts of wood.
You can get huge quantities of wood by multiple clicking on the Wood miracle as you cast it. This is not a cheat, the game was designed to allow it and there are hidden drawbacks (which I'll leave you to find) but there is NO shortage of wood in B&W.
After a while you have stacks of villages, but still have generic messages that don't tell you where to look.
You're falling into a trap which the game sets for you (and is related to the wood issue). One option is to just train your creature to look after the villages for you. It can be done.
TWW
Since Kaplan used to work for the MPAA in their legal department, I think that's a safe bet.
TWW
Same here, I've used Linux-Opera for a couple of months now and it's very good.
TWW
It is rare but not unheard of. I put it to you that there is not a single case of code re-use in the 10000+ line league (which I think includes IE's lousy HTML code which can't handle <H1> tags in tables) where the use of that unmodified code has not resulted in problems of the sort OOP is supposed to prevent, ie unexpected side-effects.
Come back in a few years when you know what you're talking about.
TWW
TWW
It may be what you would call a daemon; I'd apply a broader definition (ie, anything that provides another program with functionality).
I disagree about code reuse. It's the 100 - 200 lines of code where it's not worth reusing code, it's easier to write more specialize code for this.
No. The bigger the task the less likly it is that a non-specialised piece of code is the correct solution. I can write generalised list and string functions in tiny little chunks and use them over and over again. I can't write a CAD system and hope to use it in anything other than subsequent versions of the same CAD system.
Look through Art of Computer Programming: it's not full of example wordprocessors and missile control systems, it's full of small reusable examples which can apply to almost any computing task.
You seem to think that it's wrong to use specilaize applications instead of one, all-encompasing, application.
That is the opposite of what I believe. What I'm attacking is blindly reusing large binaries (such as MS DLLs). Care is needed when reusing code to make sure that the code will behave in its new environment and not have unexpected side effects. The bigger the chunk of code the harder this is. Fact of life.
Things are better if you have the source code and can check it, but in the context of MS that's irrelevent.
why would you use stdio.h, or iostream.h, what about std::string
This bit had me laughing. Why would I use any of those? I write in Perl, PHP, Forth, and Assembler. Haven't used C/C++ in years and don't miss them. In fact, in 23 years of programming I've only used them about 10 times each; I've used Occam more often. I do remember having to write by own string code, though, since the std lib stuff is junk.
TWW
I don't see why putting something in the background makes it a service. A service to me is when one program asks another to do something for it and return the result (or display it etc.).
Why use HTML other then in browsers? Help files,
I browse help files with my browser. As you said why re-invent the wheel? Using a separate program to read help files is one way in which KDE/Gnome/Windows all stink.
There is a bug in the code, cheel out! it's not the end of the world. It's fixed, too.
Well, its fixed if you speak English. The rest of the world will have to wait. It's not the fact of the bug, it's the fact of the long list of bugs. I'm dumping BIND after the most recent fiasco and I dumpped Windows some years ago. There are only so many strikes a company/project can have before I walk away and I don't understand this infinite "give them another chance" attitude that is being repeated all through this discussion.
I'm saying that it's good that you can reuse code.
As a programmer I'm not convinced of the arguments on this one. It is very rare to find code which can be reused safely if it's more than 100-200 lines long. The reason it's not safe is that code longer than that is unlikly to exactly fit what you want to do (e.g. using HTML engine to read email) and it may do strange thnings when placed into a new environment.
I'm for cautious code reuse but I'm totally against blind code reuse which is very common in Windows programming, due partly to the examples one finds in books on the topic which in turn is due to the philosophy handed down from offical MS courses.
TWW
But then you said:A lot of programs use it to render HTML
Do you want to try again?
You've one of the best HTML rendering engines avilable, will you use it, or write your own?
But, even if I could use Opera to render HTML in another program, why would I want to? The only time I want to render HTML is when I'm on the web and then I'll be using my browser.
Of course, if I had brain damage I might want to use HTML in email and let the "HTML" engine execute any old code it feels like (because executing code is something you want your HTML-email reader to do-right?). On the other hand I could just delete all my files myself.
IE is an application,
Not according to MS it isn't: it's part of the OS.
Basically you're saying that if buggy code is accessed by lots of programs and so spreads the bugs through every application you use that it's okay because at least no one had to re-write the buggy code. You're not George Bush by any chance?
TWW
TWW
I think it is odd that people so often avoid facing up to the fact that using a gun in defence is an act of aggression. If you never question things like that then you'll never ask the question "well, is there another way?". Regardless of what answer you arrive at I think you'll be better off for having asked the question.
Personally, living in Northern Ireland has left me with the conclusion that there often is no better way but that the gun is a crap answer too.
TWW
Yes, yes, yes. Personal protection in the form of meeting aggression with aggression. You're still being aggressive (opposite of passive).
TWW
What? Do you polish it or something? What the hell other sort of use has a gun than aggression?
Really, though, you are trying to claim that guns are a tool like DeCSS when they are in fact a tool like a lockpick. They have a very few legitimate uses but the main use is immoral (but not always illegal in the case of a gun).
TWW
TWW
That is exactly the problem with the "obvious" criterion, but isn't one-click obvious after you are told about cookies? Once the server can recognise an account holder one-click shopping is a bit of a "duh" option.
TWW
As to cuisine, I'm from Northern Ireland and I'd swap all the pretentious crap the French and Italians serve up for a good Ulster-fry or a bowl of Irish-stew any day of the week.
TWW