In intellectual property cases, a good offense is probably the best defense. At least this way, if they lose their declarative judgement, they can minimize the amount of damages. But I don't see that being a problem, in this case: the JibJab parody is grounded in the orignal work, not simply capitalizing off it. The criticism in the clip is that this land ISN'T your land AND my land, but just "my land", in that each candidate is saying "I deserve respect and you don't."
But yeah. I think Woody is up in heaven, proud of JibJab for their work.
Damn near every network - including allegedly liberal networks like CNN - peddled the government propaganda to the American public without so much as a question during the Iraq conflict. The first "sensitive" footage about Iraq that hit the airwaves didn't come up until well after the invasion was over.
I'm glad that CBS had the cajones to break the Abu Gharib prison scandal. If they hadn't reported it, the public would've never heard about it.
I keep hearing conservative criticism that all the coverage of the war is negative, and then I shake my head in disgust. After World War II, official statistics report that 0 Americans died during the reconstruction and aftermath in Germany. However, numerous reports have been floating around for years that contradict these numbers. Why did "0" Americans die in the aftermath of World War II? Because the US government decided not to report those numbers to the American public.
Flash forward to Vietnam. If the press hadn't been in Vietnam, how many American deaths would've been reported?
I'll give you a hint: NOT MANY.
War is heartless. I consider it the duty of the press to make that reality known. People die. Many people. Families are left broken and in pain. But if the government doesn't have to tell us that, why would it?
I want to hear the news. I want to know if 900 or 1,000 or 5,000 soldiers and marines died in Iraq. If the media won't report that these people died, we'll never know. Their memory will be forgotten, and the public will see little but through rose-colored lenses.
I want to see the harsh realities. Those realities are news. Refusing to show "sensitive" things doesn't give us news - it gives us dillusion. And dillusion brings us little security.
I want American soldiers and marines who die in Iraq to be known by their names - not as Anonymous Cowards.
The FCC has decided that the only after-school specials will meet their criteria for decency on the airwaves. Starting tomorrow, all networks will begin airing Full House and Saved by the Bell. All day. Every day.
In other news:
Dustin Diamond, reportedly thirty seconds from hanging himself in a closet, quit his failing career as a comedian and signed on with NBC to film ten new seasons of Saved by the Bell.
Maybe instead of flipping out about the content of programs on TV, we should teach our children to respect one another? Jesus didn't waste his type chastizing the prostitutes; he taught people the importance of mutual respect and understanding.
If we teach our kids that getting a tax break is more important than sacrificing a little to help those who are not as lucky as ourselves, our kids are going to turn out to be MUCH worse than kids who watch "trash" on television - our kids are going to be selfish, callous, and uncompassionate. And I worry quite a bit more about the callous and greedy than I do about the kids who like watching action films.
Teach your children the value of other people. The greed and selfishness I see in the world today is far more indecent than anything I see on television.
What, does this mean that we won't be able to hear about the actual events that occur in Iraq, since that's too violent for our poor, virgin American ears and eyes?
The problem with this policy is that it ignores the fact that the world is a violent place. Maybe things aren't so bad out by the FCC building in DC, but if the FCC took a stroll out through the city of DC alone at night, they'd probably get mugged. If they meandered through the streets of Darfur in Sudan, they'd get shot. If they stepped out into the neighborhoods of Fallujah, they'd be blown up.
The world isn't violent because of what's on TV or the Internet. The world is a violent place because people can't get it through their damn head that maybe - JUST MAYBE - if we all started to respect one another and chill out occasionally, we'd live in a happier place. But no. Wars and gang shootings aren't happening because of human frailty, selfishness, or obstinance. No. It's because some guy got shot on network TV last night.
Ya know, as much as I dislike Microsoft, wishing that the OS gets hacked doesn't help ANY of us.
If, as you hope, thousands (or millions) of XP machines get compromised, you're going to have enormous bot armies at the disposal of a few crackers. That is going to be an absolute mess. It would be one thing if microsoft.com was getting hit by a DDoS, but what if the DNS root servers get hit? What if kernel.org is the target of a script kiddie? For those of us on cable modems, it sure will suck when all our bandwidth is getting eaten up by the bot armies next door.
Seriously. I wish a lot of nasty things on Microsoft, but that's just going to create a pain in the ass for all of us. I want to see Microsoft out of the public sector, but if Microsoft actually starts improving their product, and perhaps even listening to its users, that'll be a good thing.
I've got FreeBSD and Windows XP SP 2 running side-by-side. I installed various incarnations of SP 2, from the original technical preview, to the current release candidate. I just installed the newest private build from Microsoft yesterday. When I was using the technical preview, a lot of software - especially CD and DVD burning software - was completely borked. Now things seem to be working better.
The improvements to Internet Explorer are really the main thing that caught my attention. Microsoft finally wisened up and started turning features like ActiveX off by default, and now has permissions completely locked down for the local computer. All I can say is, THANK GOD.
I normally have a lot of criticism for Microsoft, but this service pack is one of the few Windows builds I have to compliment them on. They've made a lot of steps forward in terms of security. However, as long as they rely on a complex, feature-filled package by default, we're going to see security holes in the default installations of Windows.
The real test is going to be when we roll this out hardcore at the office. Since the company has a lot of DCOM applications, I suspect many of them will break. This isn't really anything new to Linux and Unix users; when you install new libraries, you often have to recompile binaries for compatibility. However, in Windows enterprises, this is going to amount to absolute chaos - especially given that most businesses don't have access to source code to recompile.
This service pack is a good baby step in a long journey. In the meantime, I'm going to be busy dealing with broken applications.
I think all those naughty SCO investors will get coal in their stockings this year instead of dividends.
In other news, Santa's elves will send Darl a summons for giving Santa cookies that contain portions made from recipes pilfered from the Keebler elves.
If you look at all the FAQs on Sveasoft's site, they make it clear that, if a pre-release build gets out, since the code is GPL, they're not going to stop it. At the same time, however, the first people who get to see that code happen to be the pay the subscription.
I payed for a subscription, because the stock firmware on my Belkin router is AWEFUL. I probably could've found the modified firmware (even the pre-release binaries and source) on any number of websites if I cared, but paying $20 a year isn't a bad deal at all.
I love getting stuff for free (as in beer), but seriously people - if we're not willing to help open source and free software developers, the projects are going to whither away. These people are making a hell of a product. If you're not going to be submitting patches, give them some cash to help the project prosper.
SCO has gotten into the nasty habit of claiming ownership (and inventership) to damn near every obvious computer science practice known to man. They're like the software vendor's version of Kim Il Jong of North Korea. The guy claims to have invented the Internet, the television, radar, automobiles, and any other technology the country has.
...suing a company that has all its intellectual property assets under the GPL. Are the lawyers going to try to get their fees from Bob Young's enormous collection of Tux plushies?
The wide availability of free open source software has spoiled a lot of us. I mean...when it comes down to it, I don't LIKE to pay for software, because I don't have a lot of money. However, if I see a product that I like, and also works well, I don't mind paying for it.
Case in point: I use FreeBSD, and I have a SBLive 5.1 sound card, with a SPDIF output. If I were in Windows, Creative's drivers allow me to use the SPDIF output without any trouble. However, FreeBSD's stock pcm driver, while adequate, doesn't support SPDIF output on the 4-STABLE kernel tree. I routinely had to switch between analog and digital output for sound.
I'd used oss in Linux a while back, so I downloaded the FreeBSD build and gave it a whirl. The trial copy worked great, so I bought a license.
Granted, I didn't want to spend any money, but it did exactly what I wanted it to do, and some. So I consider that a worthwhile investment.
I think it's understandable to have reservations about paying money for software owned by Big Evil Corporations(tm), because you don't want to feed the beast. However, when it comes to development on open source and free open source platforms, if the developers aren't getting paid, new features aren't going to be appearing magically. Having software that's free (in terms of beer and speech) may mean that you don't have to pay MONEY for it, but you still should be contributing something.
For my part, I can't write code for crap. I've made several attempts to learn C, but they generally result in disaster. Since I can't contribute patches back to developers, I don't mind buying boxed copies of the software, or books, to help pay for development.
I learned my packet filtering basics on FreeBSD. I've looked at ipchains and iptables/netfilter, but the ipfilter/pf packages just seem to be the packages that best encompass my beliefs of how firewalls should be constructed. I've always liked the syntax and organization; I suppose that's one of the major reasons I've stuck with FreeBSD for so long.
OpenBSD felt "more" secure than FreeBSD, but in terms of desktop use, FreeBSD just offered more. I'll run OpenBSD on my servers, but for my desktop I want FreeBSD.
I can really empathize with you. I'm about to finish my undergrad, and I've been having trouble finding a full-time job. I've worked part-time in a netadmin position for several years, but whenever I call or email an employer, they want someone with 2-3+ years experience in a full-time job. It's such a pain.
However, I suspect the way I got this job will end up being the same way I get my next one. I started in this position six years ago. I was in high school at the time. I did some tech work for one of my teachers, and he knew the person running the network here, and hooked me up. Networking is the key. It's not even a bad idea to pass up internship-style jobs. In those jobs, you'll get an incredible amount of experience, though pay is a bit lower than you might like.
Being qualified is equally as important as being known, but being known is what gets you a job. So, while you're waiting for a good job, do some work for people you know. Install cable modems and DSL service. Run antivirus scans. Do small little jobs like that. If you do some work for a small business owner, you might take a look at the systems they're running and say "ya know, I can write an application for you that will do that better." Give them some details, and quote them a price. If you impress them enough, they'll take you up on your offer. You'll find, after a while, that the people you help will say "Wow, you're really bright and talented. I should introduce you to some people." Then they'll point you in the direction of a job.
And in the meantime, you can charge them $30-60 an hour for your regular tech work, even more for your programming work (if you don't just hammer out a contract for the whole job), and have enough money to pay the bills.
from Scott Richter? I want to find out which credit card he uses to buy the pills to make his girlfriend THANK HIM TON1GHT!@!
Seriously though. If I could get a dirty hard drive, getting a spammer's drive would be a fun project...as long as I could figure out his favorite personal email address.
Um, while this is a blatant troll job here, it's certainly not a good one.
The problem is, Ken Brown HASN'T made a great case. The guy contacted a bunch of Unix hackers pretending to be writing a book about the Unix timeline, when in reality his only agenda was to come up with some load of hooey about Linus stealing source from Minix. And the sad part is, he was repeatedly given information quite to the contrary, and completely ignored all of that data. I mean...when Dr. Tanenbaum comes right out and says "Well, while I don't approve of Linus adding tons of functionality to Linux, because I'm a minimalist, I will say that Linus didn't steal any of my source code", and yet, Brown completely disregards Dr. Tanenbaum's answer, you know the guy is hardly a credible author.
No, the only hatchet job I've seen is one carried out by Ken Brown against Linus. Brown set out with an agenda: to try and say that Linux was pirated, so that he could lend credence to the SCO case, to Microsoft, and to all of the anti-open source/free software zealots out there. The guy got lambasted by computer scientists because he was dead wrong, and he should've seen it coming. I mean...his claims are about as good as the wackjobs who routinely crop up to claim that the Earth is flat. Those guys get tons of PR, because EVERYBODY AND THEIR DOG KNOWS THEY'RE WRONG. Then, after they're properly put in their place, they leave the spotlight and we resume our lives, until the next idiot comes along with another worthless and asinine assertation.
Ken Brown was recently offered a position at the Jason Blair Institute for Fabrication and Fraud. Officially duties include making up interview transcripts and inventing names for alleged contributers.
Good to see you're finally back up in action. A lot of students on my campus used TeacherReviews, so we were pretty disappointed when the site went down. Hope things stay on the up and up.
Too many companies and programmers seem to lack a good understanding of what "beta" software really is, because a lot of software they release as beta-grade is really alpha-grade. While there are fairly extensive breakdowns of the development process, I think you can basically divide the quality assurance cycle of a product into four main points.
Pre-alpha grade software is software that is only being tested internally. It probably doesn't work at all. Perhaps some modules work, but it'll mostly be broken until later builds.
Alpha-grade software is software with new features that has yet to be tested, perhaps with the exception of some internal testing. As a result, when you participate with in an alpha test for a piece of software, you're getting a bug-ridden product to say the least. Things probably won't work the way they should; the software will probably crash; and to say the very least, that build shouldn't be rolled out onto a production machine.
Beta-grade software is software that is more-or-less finished, but is being released for a wider test to work out any undiscovered bugs from the previous development stages. A beta-grade product should be production ready, but generally you won't want to roll it out until the final release builds are made.
Your post-beta, or gold stage, is really just the final builds of the product. By that time, any of those builds are ready for market, but they may run through a few compilations just to do last-minute checks.
A lot of companies attach the term "beta" on alpha-grade software simply because they think it'll drum up more PR for the product. In reality, they're just giving their customers a load of bull. That being said, I've found a lot of beta products to be incredibly solid. Mozilla and Opera are two great examples. While they may crash occasionally, or I might find a bug or two if I dig really hard, I could see those beta builds being out on the market.
In the case of this kid, I think it's pretty cut-and-dry that he should bite the bullet. If you get caught plagiarizing, then you get busted. The fact that he didn't get caught before isn't evidence of negligence or discrimination, but rather his own luck in previous instances.
When I submitted the story today, I had hoped to generate a debate about the rights-and-wrongs of plagiarism, but also about the issue of whether or not universities should be requiring the usage of online plagiarism-checking services.
I'm pretty torn about online plagiarism-checking services. I think plagiarism is bad. I mean...every style book has a reasonable method of documenting where you got a quote from, and you can quote a whole paragraph in if it's relevant. For that matter, for most university papers, you can paraphrase a paragraph as long as you (a) cite the original source after you do so and (b) provide some more analysis to suppliment the material you used.
On the flip side, I do feel a bit violated when I have to submit these papers. One at least one site, the user agreement you MUST agree to states that the site basically inherits ownership of the paper. Now, that really bothers me. I post all of my academic papers (as well as personal poetry and other writings) on my own personal website. Based upon those user agreements, this site could post my paper, with our without indication that I authored it, or even sell it, without even informing me. Worse, if a professor requires that I use the service, I don't have a choice in the matter. I am forced to either (a) take a failing grade on the paper (and potentially the class), or (b) give up what intellectual property rights I have over my paper. That really irks me.
I don't have anything to hide; I don't rip off other people's work for my papers. At the same time though, I know other students DO rip off other authors' writings. I don't think it should be a professor's responsibility to be a source checker. If a fifty page paper has forty to eighty sources, the professor shouldn't have the responsibility to hunt down all of those sources. At the same time though, schools are putting their students in an academic guilty-until-proven-innocent situation.
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In intellectual property cases, a good offense is probably the best defense. At least this way, if they lose their declarative judgement, they can minimize the amount of damages. But I don't see that being a problem, in this case: the JibJab parody is grounded in the orignal work, not simply capitalizing off it. The criticism in the clip is that this land ISN'T your land AND my land, but just "my land", in that each candidate is saying "I deserve respect and you don't."
But yeah. I think Woody is up in heaven, proud of JibJab for their work.
Damn near every network - including allegedly liberal networks like CNN - peddled the government propaganda to the American public without so much as a question during the Iraq conflict. The first "sensitive" footage about Iraq that hit the airwaves didn't come up until well after the invasion was over.
I'm glad that CBS had the cajones to break the Abu Gharib prison scandal. If they hadn't reported it, the public would've never heard about it.
I keep hearing conservative criticism that all the coverage of the war is negative, and then I shake my head in disgust. After World War II, official statistics report that 0 Americans died during the reconstruction and aftermath in Germany. However, numerous reports have been floating around for years that contradict these numbers. Why did "0" Americans die in the aftermath of World War II? Because the US government decided not to report those numbers to the American public.
Flash forward to Vietnam. If the press hadn't been in Vietnam, how many American deaths would've been reported?
I'll give you a hint: NOT MANY.
War is heartless. I consider it the duty of the press to make that reality known. People die. Many people. Families are left broken and in pain. But if the government doesn't have to tell us that, why would it?
I want to hear the news. I want to know if 900 or 1,000 or 5,000 soldiers and marines died in Iraq. If the media won't report that these people died, we'll never know. Their memory will be forgotten, and the public will see little but through rose-colored lenses.
I want to see the harsh realities. Those realities are news. Refusing to show "sensitive" things doesn't give us news - it gives us dillusion. And dillusion brings us little security.
I want American soldiers and marines who die in Iraq to be known by their names - not as Anonymous Cowards.
This just in:
The FCC has decided that the only after-school specials will meet their criteria for decency on the airwaves. Starting tomorrow, all networks will begin airing Full House and Saved by the Bell. All day. Every day.
In other news:
Dustin Diamond, reportedly thirty seconds from hanging himself in a closet, quit his failing career as a comedian and signed on with NBC to film ten new seasons of Saved by the Bell.
Maybe instead of flipping out about the content of programs on TV, we should teach our children to respect one another? Jesus didn't waste his type chastizing the prostitutes; he taught people the importance of mutual respect and understanding.
If we teach our kids that getting a tax break is more important than sacrificing a little to help those who are not as lucky as ourselves, our kids are going to turn out to be MUCH worse than kids who watch "trash" on television - our kids are going to be selfish, callous, and uncompassionate. And I worry quite a bit more about the callous and greedy than I do about the kids who like watching action films.
Teach your children the value of other people. The greed and selfishness I see in the world today is far more indecent than anything I see on television.
What, does this mean that we won't be able to hear about the actual events that occur in Iraq, since that's too violent for our poor, virgin American ears and eyes?
The problem with this policy is that it ignores the fact that the world is a violent place. Maybe things aren't so bad out by the FCC building in DC, but if the FCC took a stroll out through the city of DC alone at night, they'd probably get mugged. If they meandered through the streets of Darfur in Sudan, they'd get shot. If they stepped out into the neighborhoods of Fallujah, they'd be blown up.
The world isn't violent because of what's on TV or the Internet. The world is a violent place because people can't get it through their damn head that maybe - JUST MAYBE - if we all started to respect one another and chill out occasionally, we'd live in a happier place. But no. Wars and gang shootings aren't happening because of human frailty, selfishness, or obstinance. No. It's because some guy got shot on network TV last night.
Ya know, as much as I dislike Microsoft, wishing that the OS gets hacked doesn't help ANY of us.
If, as you hope, thousands (or millions) of XP machines get compromised, you're going to have enormous bot armies at the disposal of a few crackers. That is going to be an absolute mess. It would be one thing if microsoft.com was getting hit by a DDoS, but what if the DNS root servers get hit? What if kernel.org is the target of a script kiddie? For those of us on cable modems, it sure will suck when all our bandwidth is getting eaten up by the bot armies next door.
Seriously. I wish a lot of nasty things on Microsoft, but that's just going to create a pain in the ass for all of us. I want to see Microsoft out of the public sector, but if Microsoft actually starts improving their product, and perhaps even listening to its users, that'll be a good thing.
I've got FreeBSD and Windows XP SP 2 running side-by-side. I installed various incarnations of SP 2, from the original technical preview, to the current release candidate. I just installed the newest private build from Microsoft yesterday. When I was using the technical preview, a lot of software - especially CD and DVD burning software - was completely borked. Now things seem to be working better.
The improvements to Internet Explorer are really the main thing that caught my attention. Microsoft finally wisened up and started turning features like ActiveX off by default, and now has permissions completely locked down for the local computer. All I can say is, THANK GOD.
I normally have a lot of criticism for Microsoft, but this service pack is one of the few Windows builds I have to compliment them on. They've made a lot of steps forward in terms of security. However, as long as they rely on a complex, feature-filled package by default, we're going to see security holes in the default installations of Windows.
The real test is going to be when we roll this out hardcore at the office. Since the company has a lot of DCOM applications, I suspect many of them will break. This isn't really anything new to Linux and Unix users; when you install new libraries, you often have to recompile binaries for compatibility. However, in Windows enterprises, this is going to amount to absolute chaos - especially given that most businesses don't have access to source code to recompile.
This service pack is a good baby step in a long journey. In the meantime, I'm going to be busy dealing with broken applications.
I think all those naughty SCO investors will get coal in their stockings this year instead of dividends.
In other news, Santa's elves will send Darl a summons for giving Santa cookies that contain portions made from recipes pilfered from the Keebler elves.
If you look at all the FAQs on Sveasoft's site, they make it clear that, if a pre-release build gets out, since the code is GPL, they're not going to stop it. At the same time, however, the first people who get to see that code happen to be the pay the subscription.
I payed for a subscription, because the stock firmware on my Belkin router is AWEFUL. I probably could've found the modified firmware (even the pre-release binaries and source) on any number of websites if I cared, but paying $20 a year isn't a bad deal at all.
I love getting stuff for free (as in beer), but seriously people - if we're not willing to help open source and free software developers, the projects are going to whither away. These people are making a hell of a product. If you're not going to be submitting patches, give them some cash to help the project prosper.
SCO has gotten into the nasty habit of claiming ownership (and inventership) to damn near every obvious computer science practice known to man. They're like the software vendor's version of Kim Il Jong of North Korea. The guy claims to have invented the Internet, the television, radar, automobiles, and any other technology the country has.
Now, if SCO starts killing triplets...
...suing a company that has all its intellectual property assets under the GPL. Are the lawyers going to try to get their fees from Bob Young's enormous collection of Tux plushies?
The wide availability of free open source software has spoiled a lot of us. I mean...when it comes down to it, I don't LIKE to pay for software, because I don't have a lot of money. However, if I see a product that I like, and also works well, I don't mind paying for it.
Case in point: I use FreeBSD, and I have a SBLive 5.1 sound card, with a SPDIF output. If I were in Windows, Creative's drivers allow me to use the SPDIF output without any trouble. However, FreeBSD's stock pcm driver, while adequate, doesn't support SPDIF output on the 4-STABLE kernel tree. I routinely had to switch between analog and digital output for sound.
I'd used oss in Linux a while back, so I downloaded the FreeBSD build and gave it a whirl. The trial copy worked great, so I bought a license.
Granted, I didn't want to spend any money, but it did exactly what I wanted it to do, and some. So I consider that a worthwhile investment.
I think it's understandable to have reservations about paying money for software owned by Big Evil Corporations(tm), because you don't want to feed the beast. However, when it comes to development on open source and free open source platforms, if the developers aren't getting paid, new features aren't going to be appearing magically. Having software that's free (in terms of beer and speech) may mean that you don't have to pay MONEY for it, but you still should be contributing something.
For my part, I can't write code for crap. I've made several attempts to learn C, but they generally result in disaster. Since I can't contribute patches back to developers, I don't mind buying boxed copies of the software, or books, to help pay for development.
I learned my packet filtering basics on FreeBSD. I've looked at ipchains and iptables/netfilter, but the ipfilter/pf packages just seem to be the packages that best encompass my beliefs of how firewalls should be constructed. I've always liked the syntax and organization; I suppose that's one of the major reasons I've stuck with FreeBSD for so long.
OpenBSD felt "more" secure than FreeBSD, but in terms of desktop use, FreeBSD just offered more. I'll run OpenBSD on my servers, but for my desktop I want FreeBSD.
Typo. I should've said "It's not a bad idea to take up internship-style jobs." My bad.
I can really empathize with you. I'm about to finish my undergrad, and I've been having trouble finding a full-time job. I've worked part-time in a netadmin position for several years, but whenever I call or email an employer, they want someone with 2-3+ years experience in a full-time job. It's such a pain.
However, I suspect the way I got this job will end up being the same way I get my next one. I started in this position six years ago. I was in high school at the time. I did some tech work for one of my teachers, and he knew the person running the network here, and hooked me up. Networking is the key. It's not even a bad idea to pass up internship-style jobs. In those jobs, you'll get an incredible amount of experience, though pay is a bit lower than you might like.
Being qualified is equally as important as being known, but being known is what gets you a job. So, while you're waiting for a good job, do some work for people you know. Install cable modems and DSL service. Run antivirus scans. Do small little jobs like that. If you do some work for a small business owner, you might take a look at the systems they're running and say "ya know, I can write an application for you that will do that better." Give them some details, and quote them a price. If you impress them enough, they'll take you up on your offer. You'll find, after a while, that the people you help will say "Wow, you're really bright and talented. I should introduce you to some people." Then they'll point you in the direction of a job.
And in the meantime, you can charge them $30-60 an hour for your regular tech work, even more for your programming work (if you don't just hammer out a contract for the whole job), and have enough money to pay the bills.
from Scott Richter? I want to find out which credit card he uses to buy the pills to make his girlfriend THANK HIM TON1GHT!@!
Seriously though. If I could get a dirty hard drive, getting a spammer's drive would be a fun project...as long as I could figure out his favorite personal email address.
Um, while this is a blatant troll job here, it's certainly not a good one.
The problem is, Ken Brown HASN'T made a great case. The guy contacted a bunch of Unix hackers pretending to be writing a book about the Unix timeline, when in reality his only agenda was to come up with some load of hooey about Linus stealing source from Minix. And the sad part is, he was repeatedly given information quite to the contrary, and completely ignored all of that data. I mean...when Dr. Tanenbaum comes right out and says "Well, while I don't approve of Linus adding tons of functionality to Linux, because I'm a minimalist, I will say that Linus didn't steal any of my source code", and yet, Brown completely disregards Dr. Tanenbaum's answer, you know the guy is hardly a credible author.
No, the only hatchet job I've seen is one carried out by Ken Brown against Linus. Brown set out with an agenda: to try and say that Linux was pirated, so that he could lend credence to the SCO case, to Microsoft, and to all of the anti-open source/free software zealots out there. The guy got lambasted by computer scientists because he was dead wrong, and he should've seen it coming. I mean...his claims are about as good as the wackjobs who routinely crop up to claim that the Earth is flat. Those guys get tons of PR, because EVERYBODY AND THEIR DOG KNOWS THEY'RE WRONG. Then, after they're properly put in their place, they leave the spotlight and we resume our lives, until the next idiot comes along with another worthless and asinine assertation.
Ken Brown was recently offered a position at the Jason Blair Institute for Fabrication and Fraud. Officially duties include making up interview transcripts and inventing names for alleged contributers.
Well, the good news is, RBC and Baystar are giving all of their employees a year's supply of SCO brand toilet paper for free. Two-ply.
White Castle and Taco Bell to invest in joint biopower enterprise.
how does Japan manage to stay lightyears ahead of everyone else in wireless?
By protecting their secrets with giant anime robots.
Either that, or they found some ancient, advanced, lost wireless technology and got a patent on it.
Good to see you're finally back up in action. A lot of students on my campus used TeacherReviews, so we were pretty disappointed when the site went down. Hope things stay on the up and up.
Too many companies and programmers seem to lack a good understanding of what "beta" software really is, because a lot of software they release as beta-grade is really alpha-grade. While there are fairly extensive breakdowns of the development process, I think you can basically divide the quality assurance cycle of a product into four main points.
Pre-alpha grade software is software that is only being tested internally. It probably doesn't work at all. Perhaps some modules work, but it'll mostly be broken until later builds.
Alpha-grade software is software with new features that has yet to be tested, perhaps with the exception of some internal testing. As a result, when you participate with in an alpha test for a piece of software, you're getting a bug-ridden product to say the least. Things probably won't work the way they should; the software will probably crash; and to say the very least, that build shouldn't be rolled out onto a production machine.
Beta-grade software is software that is more-or-less finished, but is being released for a wider test to work out any undiscovered bugs from the previous development stages. A beta-grade product should be production ready, but generally you won't want to roll it out until the final release builds are made.
Your post-beta, or gold stage, is really just the final builds of the product. By that time, any of those builds are ready for market, but they may run through a few compilations just to do last-minute checks.
A lot of companies attach the term "beta" on alpha-grade software simply because they think it'll drum up more PR for the product. In reality, they're just giving their customers a load of bull. That being said, I've found a lot of beta products to be incredibly solid. Mozilla and Opera are two great examples. While they may crash occasionally, or I might find a bug or two if I dig really hard, I could see those beta builds being out on the market.
In the case of this kid, I think it's pretty cut-and-dry that he should bite the bullet. If you get caught plagiarizing, then you get busted. The fact that he didn't get caught before isn't evidence of negligence or discrimination, but rather his own luck in previous instances.
When I submitted the story today, I had hoped to generate a debate about the rights-and-wrongs of plagiarism, but also about the issue of whether or not universities should be requiring the usage of online plagiarism-checking services.
I'm pretty torn about online plagiarism-checking services. I think plagiarism is bad. I mean...every style book has a reasonable method of documenting where you got a quote from, and you can quote a whole paragraph in if it's relevant. For that matter, for most university papers, you can paraphrase a paragraph as long as you (a) cite the original source after you do so and (b) provide some more analysis to suppliment the material you used.
On the flip side, I do feel a bit violated when I have to submit these papers. One at least one site, the user agreement you MUST agree to states that the site basically inherits ownership of the paper. Now, that really bothers me. I post all of my academic papers (as well as personal poetry and other writings) on my own personal website. Based upon those user agreements, this site could post my paper, with our without indication that I authored it, or even sell it, without even informing me. Worse, if a professor requires that I use the service, I don't have a choice in the matter. I am forced to either (a) take a failing grade on the paper (and potentially the class), or (b) give up what intellectual property rights I have over my paper. That really irks me.
I don't have anything to hide; I don't rip off other people's work for my papers. At the same time though, I know other students DO rip off other authors' writings. I don't think it should be a professor's responsibility to be a source checker. If a fifty page paper has forty to eighty sources, the professor shouldn't have the responsibility to hunt down all of those sources. At the same time though, schools are putting their students in an academic guilty-until-proven-innocent situation.
How is a street team going to perform to a laptop anyway?
;)
Daaaaaaamn sucka, you got served!