I hate being Mr-RMS-protector and GPL-Anti-Basher, but the amount of bad "information" and people throwing completely unrelated things around infuriates me.
As some others have tried to say, this has nothing to do with the GPL putting the idea in some sort of "forced distribution" form as the author of the original comment would have you believe.
The GPL doesn't put restrictions on the distribution of ideas, only their implementations.
Here's an analogy as I see it:
Say I'd patented the idea of drawing pictures on a computer screen, and up until now the web (and computers in general) were only text base. Yes I'm stretching, but go with me for a second. I want to put pictures in a W3C standard, but I don't want to give up my right to charge money for my one-handed picture-viewing slideshow program. I submit it to the W3C standard and say "It's okay for people to use my patented idea for free for web applications." Now someone goes and makes a graphics-enabled web browser and distributes it under the GPL. Someone else then takes that GPL code and turns it into a GPL'd one-handed slideshow program -- a right the GPL affords them. Suddenly they are in violation of my patent. But the original author of the graphical web browser didn't break my patent, and the person who modified it into the slideshow program didn't disobey the license on the web browser..
And that's the problem being addressed as I see it. Note how it has nothing to do with the GPL "virally infecting" the patented idea?
Next time, read the article (and perhaps the GPL) before getting on your little pedastal. Thank you, please drive thru.
It's called "Open Source", a few of you may have heard of it.
There's a big group that controls a bunch of it called GNU -- they're wacky and pronounce the 'g' in GNU.
There's even a open source kernel called "Linux" started by some European guy. He works for some other company that does processors but spends a lot of time on the Linux thing.
Anyways, just wanted to point some folks at some other volunteer possibilities..
This is the second anti-RMS comment I've had to respond to in the past couple hours (first one).
What the heck does this have to do with RMS? RMS talks about freedom of software. This isn't even related to him in the slightest.
If you read the article, you'd see that the National Infrastructure Advisory Council "advises the President of the United States on the security of information systems for critical infrastructure supporting other sectors of the economy, including banking and finance, transportation, energy, manufacturing, and emergency government services." And while RMS might have feelings about this, software Freedom doesn't come in to play.
I really wish bashing RMS wasn't so trendy on/. these days.
If the window is loaded, but not shown, then everyone wins except the advertiser. As far as you're concerened, you saw no pop-up. As far as the web site is concerned, they get paid. As far as someone like doubleclick is concerned (or any other advertising-helper company), they pushed the impression and get paid by the actual advertiser. The advertiser loses, doubly, though. They have to pay for an impression that was never "impressed" upon the user.
As far as I'm concerned, this is fine. I don't like companies that would want pop-ups. This is like blocking spam as far as I'm concerned. I don't feel bad that the spammer paid for the bandwidth and I didn't read their spam. And in the same way, they're forcing ME to PAY for the bandwidth for getting their advertisement. It's not a big deal now, but what do I do when my I have a transfer limit on my broadband and actually start PAYING for downloading their ad.
I must say, that might be a *good* thing about this whole data transfer cap. People are going to get damn pissed when they start getting billed for receiving spam.
As for graphics, there is a QT binding for perl that will allow you to do cross platform GUI work (and it looks nice, too)
As for speed, making C/C++ plugins for perl is not hard, and if you can break out your high-speed numerical pieces into small bits of code, it's relatively easy to call them from perl.
That said, perl isn't that slow. After you break out a few critical routines into their own XSUB modules, I bet you'd be surprised how fast perl is.
Also, perl 5.8 has very good threading support, and it isn't a global mutex around the interpreter like it is with some other interpreted languages.
One thing a lot of people don't seem to realize (or just don't think about often), is that the GPL only applies to code, not the ideas behind the code.
Say, for instance, I want to use the GNU readline library (it's the library that gives the text-interface to a lot of programs the same feel. bash, mysql text interface, and others.. ). It's GPL, not LGPL. But I don't want my program to be GPL'd. What do I do? I rewrite the functionality. There's absolutely no problem with doing this.
By GPLing the code from government sponsored works, it only means you can't copy/paste the code into your non-GPL program. It doesn't mean you can't take the idea behind the code (and even look in the code to get the idea) and then recode the idea.
Basically, anyone complaining about code like this released under the GPL is just lazy and looking to make a quick buck.. do we know any companies like this?:)
NONONONONONONO. This will *NOT* make RMS happy, but it will make Bill Gates happy.
Public domain is NOT the same as Free software. It's nowhere NEAR Free software. With public domain, anyone can take my code and change the license and sell it to me with a restrictive license.
This makes Bill happy as a pig in the mud because he can take what I wrote (or paid for with my taxes), embrace, extend, and sell back to me. This means I'm paying twice for it, as I already paid for it with my taxes.
This is exactly the kind of crap that RMS is trying to stop. With Free software, you cannot embrace and extend it unless you give the source code back with it. This means that you can't make software that is intentionally incompatible with other stuff, because people can just look at the source and make new, compatible software.
No, of course not. This is just a client side program that tries to grab your MAC address and send it along with handshaking data when the connection is established. The server can't actually see you MAC address in the data you send.
When you're dialed up it won't be able to find a MAC address. They could try and use something else unique, like your intel number on p3's and higher (sorry, forgot the actual name), or they could hash together a bunch of information from your bios and stuff.
There's no way it could get any information off the server you're dialed into. Hell, they may not even be running ethernet (MAC addresses are how ethernet addresses packets. It's not used by TCP/IP or UDP/IP)
There's really no need to change your MAC address.
They're violating the simple rule about never trusting the client. All you have to do is modify this third-party program to have it spit out a random MAC address each time and *poof* the system is worthless. You don't even have to change your MAC address. And since MAC addresses are only used at the Ethernet level, not at the [TCP|UDP]/IP level, it doesn't matter that the server thinks your MAC address is different than it is.
From the SearchKing (can anyone say that with a straight face?) press release regarding the suit (bold font added):
Bob Massa, president of SearchKing., Inc. and PR Ad Network, filed a lawsuit today against Google on the grounds the organization arbitrarily and purposefully devalued his companies' and his customers' web sites, causing his business to suffer financially. Massa is asking that the court grant preliminary and permanent injunctions against Google.
from dictionary.com: arbitrary - Determined by chance, whim, or impulse, and not by necessity, reason, or principle purposeful - Having a purpose; intentional
From what I can tell, it's pretty tough to do something arbitrarily and purposefully.
I wanted to go back and read more of the page.. but it seems that this web hosting site has been/.'d.. I think that's about my daily recommended dose of irony for the day...
Those are some gigantic heatsinks. The processor heatsink alone is frigheting enough. But there does seem to be one solution that can be even quieter and can cool both Pentiums AND Athlons...
Uhh... it's a passive heatsink. It's a piece of metal that sits there. Tough to get much cooler..
It's not done downloading yet.. it's at 49%.. but eventually it'll be done:) And this is more than most people are going to get from the boeing site in the next few hours.. ooh! 50%:)
Yet another mis-use of government to keep a bad business model alive..
Seems like MS is still stuck in the "New Economy".. If you don't want to lose money, don't sell something for less than it costs you. Plain and simple math.
So, I sent Mr McVoy an email back stating that wasn't sure exactly why I couldn't post his pricelist. He responded that it was on the price sheet and that I had missed it. He was correct about that. I had checked the top and bottom of the price listing and seen nothing regarding redistribution.
This is one of the emails I got back:
[my email quoted] > But I suppose I'll take it down. And you're causing your company more > material damages in what you're doing than what I'm doing. [his email] Actually, every time you slashdot kiddies get your undies in a bundie our sales go up. Thanks.
I just got this email from Larry McVoy informing me I had to take down the price listing. Here's the email I received:
That was clearly marked as confidential not to be disclosed. See page 7 right above the price list. Posting it is a blatent violation of our copyright and causes our company material damage. If our lawyers find that link still working tomorrow morning at 8am, you'll be the first entity we have sued for copyright violation. Ask around, what you are doing is serious with serious legal exposure for you.
I'm not exactly sure why I'm not allowed to post it, as nothing says "you may not post this", but it is copyrighted to them, but I don't really know what that means. They're probably just using the fact that they have more lawyers than me (greater than zero vs. zero) to bully me around.. but ah well. I suppose I don't really care about BK anymore.
Here's the actual prices for BitKeeper in PDF as they were sent to me from BitKeeper. I was interested in using it for my personal projects until this licensing garbage came along, and I had inquired on the pricing model..
If you want the short version, it's $5,800 for a single license, and then $1,200 / year starting the second year (the first year's included in the base price) for service and upgrades (and you have to keep it current. You can't just pay $1,200 3 years down and try and get upgrades).
So anyone who says that an Open Source developer should just "buy themselves a copy", isn't really understanding that you don't go to Best Buy and plunk down $50.
nono. The short answer is that it's $5800 to buy a copy of BitKeeper, and another $1200 / year after the first year if you want to keep support and upgrades. While this is far from $100K, it's still not cheap for individuals.
Slashdot Mirror
Jesus christ..
I hate being Mr-RMS-protector and GPL-Anti-Basher, but the amount of bad "information" and people throwing completely unrelated things around infuriates me.
As some others have tried to say, this has nothing to do with the GPL putting the idea in some sort of "forced distribution" form as the author of the original comment would have you believe.
The GPL doesn't put restrictions on the distribution of ideas, only their implementations.
Here's an analogy as I see it:
Say I'd patented the idea of drawing pictures on a computer screen, and up until now the web (and computers in general) were only text base. Yes I'm stretching, but go with me for a second. I want to put pictures in a W3C standard, but I don't want to give up my right to charge money for my one-handed picture-viewing slideshow program. I submit it to the W3C standard and say "It's okay for people to use my patented idea for free for web applications." Now someone goes and makes a graphics-enabled web browser and distributes it under the GPL. Someone else then takes that GPL code and turns it into a GPL'd one-handed slideshow program -- a right the GPL affords them. Suddenly they are in violation of my patent. But the original author of the graphical web browser didn't break my patent, and the person who modified it into the slideshow program didn't disobey the license on the web browser..
And that's the problem being addressed as I see it. Note how it has nothing to do with the GPL "virally infecting" the patented idea?
Next time, read the article (and perhaps the GPL) before getting on your little pedastal. Thank you, please drive thru.
It's called "Open Source", a few of you may have heard of it.
There's a big group that controls a bunch of it called GNU -- they're wacky and pronounce the 'g' in GNU.
There's even a open source kernel called "Linux" started by some European guy. He works for some other company that does processors but spends a lot of time on the Linux thing.
Anyways, just wanted to point some folks at some other volunteer possibilities..
DON'T PLAY IT.
Jesus christ, people..
/. these days.
This is the second anti-RMS comment I've had to respond to in the past couple hours (first one).
What the heck does this have to do with RMS? RMS talks about freedom of software. This isn't even related to him in the slightest.
If you read the article, you'd see that the National Infrastructure Advisory Council "advises the President of the United States on the
security of information systems for critical infrastructure supporting
other sectors of the economy, including banking and finance, transportation, energy, manufacturing, and emergency government
services." And while RMS might have feelings about this, software Freedom doesn't come in to play.
I really wish bashing RMS wasn't so trendy on
IBM was the one who released Eclipse source. GNU and certainly not that wacko crackpot RMS had nothing to do with it. Very misleading topic!!
Whoa! Whoa! and Whoa! there buddy. Speaking of crackpots, you've been smoking from yours a little too heavily.
This post has nothing to do with the fine work the folks at IBM have done on Eclipse. That's old news.
This article is about the GNU components that have been released to allow Eclipse to run with all Free components.
I know it's trendy to bash RMS, and the Slashdot editors, but let's save that for when they are actually doing stupid stuff.
If the window is loaded, but not shown, then everyone wins except the advertiser. As far as you're concerened, you saw no pop-up. As far as the web site is concerned, they get paid. As far as someone like doubleclick is concerned (or any other advertising-helper company), they pushed the impression and get paid by the actual advertiser. The advertiser loses, doubly, though. They have to pay for an impression that was never "impressed" upon the user.
As far as I'm concerned, this is fine. I don't like companies that would want pop-ups. This is like blocking spam as far as I'm concerned. I don't feel bad that the spammer paid for the bandwidth and I didn't read their spam. And in the same way, they're forcing ME to PAY for the bandwidth for getting their advertisement. It's not a big deal now, but what do I do when my I have a transfer limit on my broadband and actually start PAYING for downloading their ad.
I must say, that might be a *good* thing about this whole data transfer cap. People are going to get damn pissed when they start getting billed for receiving spam.
Cuz even in the 24th century, they still can't handle a good, old-fashioned slashdotting...
I have one of these, and the remote administration isn't enabled by default.
So for Aunt Tilly, there's no real danger unless the malicious person is on the network.
Anyone remember the Bud Ice commercials? "...I REPEAT! THAT CALL WAS PLACED FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE!!"
In defense of my previous post:
As for graphics, there is a QT binding for perl that will allow you to do cross platform GUI work (and it looks nice, too)
As for speed, making C/C++ plugins for perl is not hard, and if you can break out your high-speed numerical pieces into small bits of code, it's relatively easy to call them from perl.
That said, perl isn't that slow. After you break out a few critical routines into their own XSUB modules, I bet you'd be surprised how fast perl is.
Also, perl 5.8 has very good threading support, and it isn't a global mutex around the interpreter like it is with some other interpreted languages.
Perl? :)
Platform independent, it's highly creative, and damn if you can't prototype stuff quickly.
One thing a lot of people don't seem to realize (or just don't think about often), is that the GPL only applies to code, not the ideas behind the code.
:)
Say, for instance, I want to use the GNU readline library (it's the library that gives the text-interface to a lot of programs the same feel. bash, mysql text interface, and others.. ). It's GPL, not LGPL. But I don't want my program to be GPL'd. What do I do? I rewrite the functionality. There's absolutely no problem with doing this.
By GPLing the code from government sponsored works, it only means you can't copy/paste the code into your non-GPL program. It doesn't mean you can't take the idea behind the code (and even look in the code to get the idea) and then recode the idea.
Basically, anyone complaining about code like this released under the GPL is just lazy and looking to make a quick buck.. do we know any companies like this?
NONONONONONONO. This will *NOT* make RMS happy, but it will make Bill Gates happy.
Public domain is NOT the same as Free software. It's nowhere NEAR Free software. With public domain, anyone can take my code and change the license and sell it to me with a restrictive license.
This makes Bill happy as a pig in the mud because he can take what I wrote (or paid for with my taxes), embrace, extend, and sell back to me. This means I'm paying twice for it, as I already paid for it with my taxes.
This is exactly the kind of crap that RMS is trying to stop. With Free software, you cannot embrace and extend it unless you give the source code back with it. This means that you can't make software that is intentionally incompatible with other stuff, because people can just look at the source and make new, compatible software.
No, of course not. This is just a client side program that tries to grab your MAC address and send it along with handshaking data when the connection is established. The server can't actually see you MAC address in the data you send.
When you're dialed up it won't be able to find a MAC address. They could try and use something else unique, like your intel number on p3's and higher (sorry, forgot the actual name), or they could hash together a bunch of information from your bios and stuff.
There's no way it could get any information off the server you're dialed into. Hell, they may not even be running ethernet (MAC addresses are how ethernet addresses packets. It's not used by TCP/IP or UDP/IP)
There's really no need to change your MAC address.
They're violating the simple rule about never trusting the client. All you have to do is modify this third-party program to have it spit out a random MAC address each time and *poof* the system is worthless. You don't even have to change your MAC address. And since MAC addresses are only used at the Ethernet level, not at the [TCP|UDP]/IP level, it doesn't matter that the server thinks your MAC address is different than it is.
From the SearchKing (can anyone say that with a straight face?) press release regarding the suit (bold font added):
/.'d.. I think that's about my daily recommended dose of irony for the day...
Bob Massa, president of SearchKing., Inc. and PR Ad Network, filed a lawsuit today against Google on the grounds the organization arbitrarily and purposefully devalued his companies' and his customers' web sites, causing his business to suffer financially. Massa is asking that the court grant preliminary and permanent injunctions against Google.
from dictionary.com:
arbitrary - Determined by chance, whim, or impulse, and not by necessity, reason, or principle
purposeful - Having a purpose; intentional
From what I can tell, it's pretty tough to do something arbitrarily and purposefully.
I wanted to go back and read more of the page.. but it seems that this web hosting site has been
Those are some gigantic heatsinks. The processor heatsink alone is frigheting enough. But there does seem to be one solution that can be even quieter and can cool both Pentiums AND Athlons...
Uhh... it's a passive heatsink. It's a piece of metal that sits there. Tough to get much cooler..
It's not done downloading yet.. it's at 49%.. but eventually it'll be done :) And this is more than most people are going to get from the boeing site in the next few hours.. ooh! 50% :)
http://xaxxon.slackworks.com/lb03235.mov
mirror of the movie on the boeing site..
err, did you read the article beyond the first paragraph? It SHIPS with a 1.1 cable, but it supports USB2.0 *AND* IEEE1394.
Please read *carefully* before posting.
Thank you and have a nice day.
Yet another mis-use of government to keep a bad business model alive..
Seems like MS is still stuck in the "New Economy".. If you don't want to lose money, don't sell something for less than it costs you. Plain and simple math.
So, I sent Mr McVoy an email back stating that wasn't sure exactly why I couldn't post his pricelist. He responded that it was on the price sheet and that I had missed it. He was correct about that. I had checked the top and bottom of the price listing and seen nothing regarding redistribution.
This is one of the emails I got back:
[my email quoted]
> But I suppose I'll take it down. And you're causing your company more
> material damages in what you're doing than what I'm doing.
[his email]
Actually, every time you slashdot kiddies get your undies in a bundie our
sales go up. Thanks.
Just thought I'd share that..
I just got this email from Larry McVoy informing me I had to take down the price listing. Here's the email I received:
That was clearly marked as confidential not to be disclosed. See page 7
right above the price list. Posting it is a blatent violation of our
copyright and causes our company material damage. If our lawyers find
that link still working tomorrow morning at 8am, you'll be the first
entity we have sued for copyright violation. Ask around, what you are
doing is serious with serious legal exposure for you.
I'm not exactly sure why I'm not allowed to post it, as nothing says "you may not post this", but it is copyrighted to them, but I don't really know what that means. They're probably just using the fact that they have more lawyers than me (greater than zero vs. zero) to bully me around.. but ah well. I suppose I don't really care about BK anymore.
Hrmm.. what I want to know is why subversion doesn't use subversion for their source control..
Here's the actual prices for BitKeeper in PDF as they were sent to me from BitKeeper. I was interested in using it for my personal projects until this licensing garbage came along, and I had inquired on the pricing model..
If you want the short version, it's $5,800 for a single license, and then $1,200 / year starting the second year (the first year's included in the base price) for service and upgrades (and you have to keep it current. You can't just pay $1,200 3 years down and try and get upgrades).
So anyone who says that an Open Source developer should just "buy themselves a copy", isn't really understanding that you don't go to Best Buy and plunk down $50.
nono. The short answer is that it's $5800 to buy a copy of BitKeeper, and another $1200 / year after the first year if you want to keep support and upgrades. While this is far from $100K, it's still not cheap for individuals.