Except for the fact that if the children cannot be party to the GPL due to their age, then their rights to the software revert to what is legally acceptable -- which is NO right to use the code.
Don't forget -- the GPL *gives* you rights you would not otherwise have. It does not take away any rights you have normally.
Dell lives on razor thin margins and is eating Gateway alive in the market.
Which is a shame. It's been my experience that not only are Gateway computers more stable and of generally higher quality, but that their tech support is head-and-shoulders above Dell.
That would probably also mean that Slackware is useless for C++ development. GCC 2.95 is just not very standards compliant for C++ development. But it is a very stable C compiler.
Let me rephrase for him: Slackware 8.1 does not use GCC 3.1 by default. It does include GCC 3.1, so if you need to do C++ development, all you need to do is fetch it off one of the disks and install it.
If they are humans, they can have 2 clean-room reverse-engineering feats at level 1! =D
No, unfortunately. The Clean-Room Reverse Engineering feat has prerequisites of Int 12+, Wis 11+, at least 5 ranks in Knowledge (Engineering), and at least 5 ranks in Profession (Lawyer).
Since you can't have more than 4 ranks in any one skill at first level, said human will have to wait until at least 3rd level, before they can get two of them (although they can obtain one of them at 2nd).
costomers want to feel safe knowing that they are not being taped as they enter and exit the store.
Please. Unless the customers are trying out the sex toys in the shop, they don't have any more of a right to privacy than Joe Average entering Walgreens or CVS.
Biased in the direction you prefer is different from unbiased.
That's true, but let's put it this way: Fox News actually presents _both_ sides of the story before putting the news corporation's spin on the story.
The bias of places like CNN, as well as the Big Three networks is readily evident because they don't even _give_ the other side a hearing. When was the last time you heard the phrase "left wing conspiracy" on CNN? And how many times you have the phrase "right wing conspiracy?" Chances are, you're probably _never_ heard the former, but you're all too familiar with the latter.
Actually, Fox News is rather unbiased (at least, when compared to MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, etc.).
That's why Fox News is _killing_ CNN in the "pure" news business (CNN still has a wide variety of other news-related ventures, while Fox News is still fairly small).
After all, it just costs USD 4 billion for the first mission
You're off by quite a bit. The Mars Direct plan would cost about $50 billion USD to get off the ground. However, according to Zubrin, that cost is also spread out over about a ten year span. Note that the $50 billion gets us a year-and-a-half long stay on the surface of Mars. This is also doable with current or almost-current technology.
However, the "Battleship Galactica" approach that NASA in the early 90s wanted to take, which was to build some massive support ship, with separate landers, building everything in orbit, would've been $500 billion - and netted us only a 30-day stay on the planet surface. And it would've required invention of an awful lot of stuff.
1) Microsoft is not on a crusade against Open Source, or Free Software. It is on a crusade against the GPL. Notice the BSD license is perfectly valid under this license.
I wonder... would it be perfectly legitimate to write a BSD-compatible version of the protocol/software, and then simply relicense it as GPL?
I mean, the original license is compatible, it's just that the BSD not only allows open source software to move to a more restrictive, closed license but also to move to a different open source license.
It was. The jury awarded $200,000 in compensatory damages, but this amount was reduced to $160,000 because the jury also found that Liebeck was 20% at fault for the spill.
That's it? 20%?
I'd crank that up to at _least_ 33%, if not somewhere more in the vicinity of 40% or so.
It is, indeed. But that's not what this woman did. This woman wasn't even driving the goddamned car. She was a passenger. Her son was driving, and he stopped the car at her request so she could take the lid off the coffee and add cream and sugar. She held the coffee between her legs to pry the lid off, at which point it spilled.
I hereby lower my stupidity rating of this woman. However, that still doesn't change the fact that holding a hot beverage in a styrofoam/plastic cup between your legs, in such a manner as to make the liquid free and capable of pouring out of the cup, is not an amazingly bright idea. Hot liquids, flexible cups, and removing the one thing that is holding a flexible cup into its preferred shape, are things that do not mix well (typically, the cover on a cup of coffee is made of more rigid plastic than the cup itself, and therefore is more capable of keeping the cup in a cup-like form).
She was not driving. She was not holding the coffee between her legs while she was driving. The car was not even MOVING when this incident occurred.
See my statement above - it makes me feel slightly better about the intelligence of the average human, but only slightly.
Do you routinely assume that beverages served to you for your consumption are capable of inflicting full-thickness third-degree burns in 2-7 seconds should they touch your skin? I'm aware that I should treat my coffee as if it were a hot beverage, not as if it were hydrocholoric fucking acid.
Yes, frankly, I do. I assume that any hot liquid that is sold to me hot is, well, hot - at least until I can verify the temperature. I don't buy hot chocolate and then take a big gulp, because I don't know exactly how hot that hot chocolate really is.
Furthermore, if the coffee really was as hot as you indicate, then this woman should clearly have known - styrofoam (or plastic) might be a good insulator, but it ain't _that_ good. Unless she handed McDonalds an insulated mug to pour the coffee in, she should have been able to get some rough idea of the temperature of its contents. Hot coffee is bad enough to hold in a styrofoam or plastic cup when it's at a reasonably hot temperature - when it's capable of scalding like you describe, holding that cup ought to be _painful._
Don't even try to convince me that a plastic or styrofoam cup is capable of reducing the temperature of 185-degree coffee to something that doesn't trigger warning bells in the sensory nerves of the average human being.
So the question isn't really whether one coffee burn is cause for suit, it's whether a repeated pattern of coffee-related injuries constitutes reckless conduct on the part of McDonald's.
I dunno. It may be a legitimate question to ask, but I think the personal responsibility of the person involved should be a mitigating factor with regards to damages.
It would be one thing if the woman in question was sitting at a table in the restaurant, reading a newspaper, misjudged where the coffee was and spilled it into her lap. It is entirely another thing to have a cup of potentially-scalding hot coffee wedged between your legs while driving (and, frankly, if you aren't assuming that hot coffee can burn you, you are being stupid).
McDonalds was at fault for making their coffee so hot for no good reason; however, I think in this particular case the damages awarded to the woman were totally outrageous considering how negligent she was in the role she played.
PC users don't upgrade their OS's every time one particular app gets upgraded (although it helps).
To be fair, you're comparing apples and oranges. The last time the PC world saw such a tremendous shift in the capabilities of the base operating system was August 1995, when Windows 95 was released. After that, it's been incremenetal upgrades to the OS.
In late 1995, quite a lot of people were upgrading their applications (at least, the ones from MS) in order to take advantage of what Windows 95 offered. In this case, the particulars may be different, but the essence is the same: a lot of people want to upgrade their software to take advantage of what Mac OS X brings them.
Oh, you mean like GM(?) did when a drunk rear-ended some kids car at 60 mph and the kid burned to death?
I vaguely recall that. I believe that particular instance was a special case: the family was able to prove that the particular model of car had a design defect that GM knew about and which seriously compromised the safety of the automobile in a common type of collision.
However, you still miss my point. GM wasn't held liable for the actions of the drunk driver ("Well, you sold him the car, you should've known he'd get blasted and tool around in it!"), GM was being held responsible for their actions regarding the design of their cars to survive collisions.
Funny, Smith and Wesson was forced into a deal with the government to prevent a suit.
No, S&W chose to enter into a deal with the government in order to avoid a potential government lawsuit. In exchange for the deal, S&W got "favored" status to sell their weapons to the government over other gun dealers. Rather than stand up for Second Amendment rights, S&W caved.
Accordingly, they were promptly villified and boycotted by the gun industry and many of their former customers, and their business has taken severe hits because of that boycott.
Unfortunately, that won't happen here because the "software piracy" issue is something that the entire commercial software industry cares about. The only reason S&W took such a hit was because their position was a 100% reversal of the position of the rest of the industry. There's no way Blizzard is going to get villified by any other commercial software company, and even most of their customers will either be ignorant of, or don't care about, Blizzard shutting down OSS servers.
And also, odd that you would use the example - since municipal gun suits are still trying to get off the ground. Check it out [overlawyered.com].
Yes, that's the point - they're still trying to get off the ground. And in numerous jurisdictions, municipal gun suits have been thrown out because the manufacturer cannot be held liable for the illegal use of its products. The theory behind the decisions is that holding gun manufacturers responsible would be like holding Honda responsible when some idiot, hammered on vodka, hops into his Civic and plows into an oncoming car.
You should be able to. In Settings->Advanced, one of the ATI-installed Tabs is called "Other" or "Misc" or something, and has some blue circle-checkboxes in it that allow you to turn off the icon in the system tray.
Slashdot Mirror
Look at your keyboard.
;)
OK, mine has 101 keys, is made by IBM, and clicks when I type.
Lisa Simpson: "Dad, do you know that the Chinese use the same word for crisis and opportunity?"
Homer: "Yup - crisi-tunity!"
"Rights" as in privledges, yes. Privledges which are revoked if you cannot or are unwilling to accept the license.
Shoe feels funny on the other foot, eh?
Except for the fact that if the children cannot be party to the GPL due to their age, then their rights to the software revert to what is legally acceptable -- which is NO right to use the code.
Don't forget -- the GPL *gives* you rights you would not otherwise have. It does not take away any rights you have normally.
Why?
Dell lives on razor thin margins and is eating Gateway alive in the market.
Which is a shame. It's been my experience that not only are Gateway computers more stable and of generally higher quality, but that their tech support is head-and-shoulders above Dell.
But the fat one balances the two skinny ones!
That would probably also mean that Slackware is useless for C++ development. GCC 2.95 is just not very standards compliant for C++ development. But it is a very stable C compiler.
Let me rephrase for him: Slackware 8.1 does not use GCC 3.1 by default. It does include GCC 3.1, so if you need to do C++ development, all you need to do is fetch it off one of the disks and install it.
its not the light that bends
"Then you will see, it is not the light that bends, it is only yourself."
If they are humans, they can have 2 clean-room reverse-engineering feats at level 1! =D
No, unfortunately. The Clean-Room Reverse Engineering feat has prerequisites of Int 12+, Wis 11+, at least 5 ranks in Knowledge (Engineering), and at least 5 ranks in Profession (Lawyer).
Since you can't have more than 4 ranks in any one skill at first level, said human will have to wait until at least 3rd level, before they can get two of them (although they can obtain one of them at 2nd).
costomers want to feel safe knowing that they are not being taped as they enter and exit the store.
Please. Unless the customers are trying out the sex toys in the shop, they don't have any more of a right to privacy than Joe Average entering Walgreens or CVS.
How is this a troll?
Biased in the direction you prefer is different from unbiased.
That's true, but let's put it this way: Fox News actually presents _both_ sides of the story before putting the news corporation's spin on the story.
The bias of places like CNN, as well as the Big Three networks is readily evident because they don't even _give_ the other side a hearing. When was the last time you heard the phrase "left wing conspiracy" on CNN? And how many times you have the phrase "right wing conspiracy?" Chances are, you're probably _never_ heard the former, but you're all too familiar with the latter.
Actually, Fox News is rather unbiased (at least, when compared to MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, etc.).
That's why Fox News is _killing_ CNN in the "pure" news business (CNN still has a wide variety of other news-related ventures, while Fox News is still fairly small).
The initial investment should be between $20-$30 billion, with 2 billion per each mission (I am quoting Zubrin's book now, no more memory games!).
Ah. It's been a while since I've read it, and my memory has never been what it used to be.
:)
After all, it just costs USD 4 billion for the first mission
You're off by quite a bit. The Mars Direct plan would cost about $50 billion USD to get off the ground. However, according to Zubrin, that cost is also spread out over about a ten year span. Note that the $50 billion gets us a year-and-a-half long stay on the surface of Mars. This is also doable with current or almost-current technology.
However, the "Battleship Galactica" approach that NASA in the early 90s wanted to take, which was to build some massive support ship, with separate landers, building everything in orbit, would've been $500 billion - and netted us only a 30-day stay on the planet surface. And it would've required invention of an awful lot of stuff.
1) Microsoft is not on a crusade against Open Source, or Free Software. It is on a crusade against the GPL. Notice the BSD license is perfectly valid under this license.
I wonder... would it be perfectly legitimate to write a BSD-compatible version of the protocol/software, and then simply relicense it as GPL?
I mean, the original license is compatible, it's just that the BSD not only allows open source software to move to a more restrictive, closed license but also to move to a different open source license.
It was. The jury awarded $200,000 in compensatory damages, but this amount was reduced to $160,000 because the jury also found that Liebeck was 20% at fault for the spill.
That's it? 20%?
I'd crank that up to at _least_ 33%, if not somewhere more in the vicinity of 40% or so.
It is, indeed. But that's not what this woman did. This woman wasn't even driving the goddamned car. She was a passenger. Her son was driving, and he stopped the car at her request so she could take the lid off the coffee and add cream and sugar. She held the coffee between her legs to pry the lid off, at which point it spilled.
I hereby lower my stupidity rating of this woman. However, that still doesn't change the fact that holding a hot beverage in a styrofoam/plastic cup between your legs, in such a manner as to make the liquid free and capable of pouring out of the cup, is not an amazingly bright idea. Hot liquids, flexible cups, and removing the one thing that is holding a flexible cup into its preferred shape, are things that do not mix well (typically, the cover on a cup of coffee is made of more rigid plastic than the cup itself, and therefore is more capable of keeping the cup in a cup-like form).
She was not driving. She was not holding the coffee between her legs while she was driving. The car was not even MOVING when this incident occurred.
See my statement above - it makes me feel slightly better about the intelligence of the average human, but only slightly.
Do you routinely assume that beverages served to you for your consumption are capable of inflicting full-thickness third-degree burns in 2-7 seconds should they touch your skin? I'm aware that I should treat my coffee as if it were a hot beverage, not as if it were hydrocholoric fucking acid.
Yes, frankly, I do. I assume that any hot liquid that is sold to me hot is, well, hot - at least until I can verify the temperature. I don't buy hot chocolate and then take a big gulp, because I don't know exactly how hot that hot chocolate really is.
Furthermore, if the coffee really was as hot as you indicate, then this woman should clearly have known - styrofoam (or plastic) might be a good insulator, but it ain't _that_ good. Unless she handed McDonalds an insulated mug to pour the coffee in, she should have been able to get some rough idea of the temperature of its contents. Hot coffee is bad enough to hold in a styrofoam or plastic cup when it's at a reasonably hot temperature - when it's capable of scalding like you describe, holding that cup ought to be _painful._
Don't even try to convince me that a plastic or styrofoam cup is capable of reducing the temperature of 185-degree coffee to something that doesn't trigger warning bells in the sensory nerves of the average human being.
So the question isn't really whether one coffee burn is cause for suit, it's whether a repeated pattern of coffee-related injuries constitutes reckless conduct on the part of McDonald's.
I dunno. It may be a legitimate question to ask, but I think the personal responsibility of the person involved should be a mitigating factor with regards to damages.
It would be one thing if the woman in question was sitting at a table in the restaurant, reading a newspaper, misjudged where the coffee was and spilled it into her lap. It is entirely another thing to have a cup of potentially-scalding hot coffee wedged between your legs while driving (and, frankly, if you aren't assuming that hot coffee can burn you, you are being stupid).
McDonalds was at fault for making their coffee so hot for no good reason; however, I think in this particular case the damages awarded to the woman were totally outrageous considering how negligent she was in the role she played.
Apple turned around and bought NeXT instead.
Apple offered ~$120 million for Be. Gassee asked for $200 million. Apple wound up buying NeXT for $400 million.
Think what you will, but it's a fairly obvious "20/20 hindsight" conclusion that price was not the determining factor.
PC users don't upgrade their OS's every time one particular app gets upgraded (although it helps).
To be fair, you're comparing apples and oranges. The last time the PC world saw such a tremendous shift in the capabilities of the base operating system was August 1995, when Windows 95 was released. After that, it's been incremenetal upgrades to the OS.
In late 1995, quite a lot of people were upgrading their applications (at least, the ones from MS) in order to take advantage of what Windows 95 offered. In this case, the particulars may be different, but the essence is the same: a lot of people want to upgrade their software to take advantage of what Mac OS X brings them.
Oh, you mean like GM(?) did when a drunk rear-ended some kids car at 60 mph and the kid burned to death?
I vaguely recall that. I believe that particular instance was a special case: the family was able to prove that the particular model of car had a design defect that GM knew about and which seriously compromised the safety of the automobile in a common type of collision.
However, you still miss my point. GM wasn't held liable for the actions of the drunk driver ("Well, you sold him the car, you should've known he'd get blasted and tool around in it!"), GM was being held responsible for their actions regarding the design of their cars to survive collisions.
It's a big difference.
Who taught you it was illegal to write a product that is compatible at the protocol level with someone elses?
Commercial interests, with the help of the government, of course.
Funny, Smith and Wesson was forced into a deal with the government to prevent a suit.
No, S&W chose to enter into a deal with the government in order to avoid a potential government lawsuit. In exchange for the deal, S&W got "favored" status to sell their weapons to the government over other gun dealers. Rather than stand up for Second Amendment rights, S&W caved.
Accordingly, they were promptly villified and boycotted by the gun industry and many of their former customers, and their business has taken severe hits because of that boycott.
Unfortunately, that won't happen here because the "software piracy" issue is something that the entire commercial software industry cares about. The only reason S&W took such a hit was because their position was a 100% reversal of the position of the rest of the industry. There's no way Blizzard is going to get villified by any other commercial software company, and even most of their customers will either be ignorant of, or don't care about, Blizzard shutting down OSS servers.
And also, odd that you would use the example - since municipal gun suits are still trying to get off the ground. Check it out [overlawyered.com].
Yes, that's the point - they're still trying to get off the ground. And in numerous jurisdictions, municipal gun suits have been thrown out because the manufacturer cannot be held liable for the illegal use of its products. The theory behind the decisions is that holding gun manufacturers responsible would be like holding Honda responsible when some idiot, hammered on vodka, hops into his Civic and plows into an oncoming car.
is turn the friggin icon off
You should be able to. In Settings->Advanced, one of the ATI-installed Tabs is called "Other" or "Misc" or something, and has some blue circle-checkboxes in it that allow you to turn off the icon in the system tray.