Lexis/Nexis (a legal/news/other full-text database service) has boolean searching with the most useful search feature I have ever seen: it allows you to search for two keywords and define how close to each other they have to be.
So if you want to find text about Bush and Anthrax, but not just articles in which the two happen to be mentioned generally, you can search for
bush w/10 anthrax
and you will get "Bush said he did not have anthrax", but you most likely won't get an article that mentions them in separate paragraph or sections.
This is what I did with my work laptop which has to run lotus notes- there's an option when you get to the partioning section of the install that lets you choose to install on top of the windows partition. Down side is you need a boot floppy and the red-hat system partition is limited to 2 gigs (which I gather is the max file size on a dos partition). But it works flawlessly on top of my windows 98 install on my work thinkpad. Also, the windows partition is automatically mounted as/initrd/loopfs so you can access all the files on the windows partition anyway.
That's redhat 7.1, I am assuming the option still exists for 7.2.
Brybuy
Re:Demonstrates what is wrong with current IP laws
on
Ultima Revived
·
· Score: 2
What's really wrong with this is that they own our childhood memories of the games we played. We were too young to consent to filling our minds with proprietary stories. Same situation with TSR/online modules and WotC/Apprentice. These people are heartless bastards if they understand this and don't care.
Intellectual property may be ok for consenting adults, but I say no more ip for unsuspecting children. I can't believe I'm actually saying we have to do it for the children!
Yeah, but they'd already have my money. If there was a trusted third party I'd feel safe giving them my money since I know that even if the company itself is evil, the trusted third party will intervene and say "hey, these people paid now give them their source code". It's like escrow transactions for ebay auctions, just on a larger and somewhat different scale.
It looks like a company's distribution model is outmoded! Computers are making perfect digital copies of photographs easy to distribute over the internet. We need to ban these so called "digital cameras" (more like digital crowbars if you ask us) before even one more dollar of profits has to die! We must outlaw all disruptive technology!
I think this is a great model, and I've been thinking a lot about it. The only flaw I can come up with is this: What happens if they change their mind when they have 19999 users? In other words, there ought to be some sort of service for people who want to use a model like this to guarantee that once 20000 people actually subscribe, the source comes out. Perhaps if a trusted third party would hold a copy of the source for them and be given the legal right to release it when, in their judgement, the terms of the protocol have been fulfilled.
I wanted to check out transgaming's web page to see if they do something like this but it seems to have been slashdotted. Any karma-working-girls out there have a mirror or a link to the google cache?
Enlightened self interest will stop the bleeding until we can fully rehabilitate the public sphere. First explain to corporations why closed standards hurt their profits, then make people understand why proprietary information hurts their freedom.
You can get all of the courses from ArsDigita University online now. This was a one-year program based loosely on MIT's undergraduate computer science curriculum. It's got Real (unfortunately) video of all the lectures, problem sets and solutions. Pick a course, do them all in order. They're really quite good.
Yeah, I bought a 15 gig 5400 rpm Maxtor for my machine for $80 at staples which seemed like a sweet deal for a poor student. Disk started chewing and all my data was gone- this is for everyone:
Back up your data now! Don't wait until later!
Anyway, I RMA'd it and they replaced it with a 7200 RPM drive which was a pleasant surprise and
*knocks on wood
it's still running just fine, albeit after only about 60 days. But that's longer than the last one worked...
The policy at your University sounds very backwards. I can certainly understand the need to occasionally assess your individual skill to make sure they don't dilute the value of their diplomas, but without cooperation I don't even see how Computer Science can be taught non-cooperatively.
I attended ArsDigita University last year, and it was explicitly the opposite of what you describe. Although there were individual tests and grades, the lab (where pretty much all interaction took place barring lectures) was built with about 40 computer workstations in an open-plan type office, with no walls separating the students from each other or the faculty. Most of the programming projects were collaborative group projects which were broken down into individual chores within the groups, and as a result we were able to do some pretty interesting things in a pretty short period of time, like building a Java-based Gnutella client in our January Java Class (which, like all of the ADU lectures and course materials, are available freely online, although the lectures are recorded in the unfortunate realvideo format). Here is a picture of some students collaborating intensely (or at least looking at something really interesting on Kevin's monitor:)
Having someone nearby to talk to when you're going crazy trying to find what to someone else will be a really obvious bug, or to bounce your design ideas off of, or to help you recall the syntax for a rarely-used but difficult-to-remember-the-name-of linux command can be absolutely invaluable. This experience is hardly exceptional, as any number of books and websites devoted to Extreme Programming will tell you.
There is a little friction when it comes time to decide who deserves what grade and why, since those within the group know better than the faculty who was really responsible for the work that actually got done, but this pales in comparison to the acceleration in learning that happens when you discuss specific pieces of code with another interested human being.
Hence, I think you are right in thinking that your administration is wrong.
So, this may be what they are counting on. Make the source actually be secure with no back doors- and count on the difficulty of actually compiling your entire os from source to deter people from actually *using* the secure version. Oh, and make a big fat server available from which you can download the binaries- source is available on papyrus if you send a S.A.S.E., thank you.
if only we had face recognition 5 years ago...
on
Biometrics in Airports
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
maybe we would have caught this guy sooner, assuming we didn't accidentally lock up weird al yankovic first.
Yeah, but who is in the business of establishing legal rights? Congress. They sold all the rights to the record companies already. Now all you get is a license. Congratulations, licensee. Get used to reading small print.
But defacing some web site doesn't harm the United States government
I agree with this statement, unless you hack a major commerce site (the government's revenue source) or a major news site (the government's propaganda outlet). In either of those cases, you're actually threatening the government. The safest thing to do is probably to hack a government information website, since there's very little of value there and most likely no one will even see it for weeks.
Again, you seem to be mistaking the public distibution of true facts with the threat of revealing embarassing information unless the victim pays up. The latter is blackmail, and is unrelated to this situation.
I think maybe what you're groping for is that the fsf didn't like what KDE was doing and tried to persuade them to change. They did so by referring to their standard for the freedom of software and identifying the ways in which Qt and KDE were not up to snuff. Product comparison != blackmail, I'm quite sure of it. This is getting dull, Craig.
It was pure blackmail against folks who, and everyone in Stallman camp knew that, were writing FREE software, just as free as any GNU package.
Blackmail is when you tell someone you're going to reveal something embarassing about them if they don't pay you. Capitalism is when people don't use a product if it does not meet their needs. Now which one do you think the fsf engaged in again?
Well, KDE/Qt *wasn't* free in the sense that the debian/fsf people wanted it to be. They chose to vote with their feet, and then the KDE people apparently decided it *was* worth it and GPL'd QT.
People keep saying the GPL takes away freedom. It doesn't. It guarantees that everyone who comes after you has the same freedoms you had. The only thing it stops you from doing is taking part or all of your information and making it proprietary; that is, not sharing it with anyone for personal gain. This is not extreme. This is not even fair. This is basic decency. I personally think it's awful that a license even needs to be written to convince people of this, but our society doesn't glorify sharing so much as it glorifies the individual accumulation of wealth.
Freedom is a lack of obligation;
That's an interesting definition of freedom. I think of freedom as being more about maximizing the quantity and quality of options available to individuals. The GPL *is* about freedom- what you refuse to see is that it's not just about *your* freedom to be a dick and take someone's free software proprietary, but everyone's freedom to build on other people's accumulated knowledge.
the GPL does not define "freedom", it forces obligations on people, and uses the very Copyright they despise as a tool for control.
This is a rather infantile interpretation of the goals of the GPL. Two points here: 1. in a world without copyright the GPL would be meaningless, so it's consistent to use the copyright system against itself and at the same time clamor for its abolition (incidentally you imply here that all GPLsters believe in the abolition of copyright aaaaand... that's a canard), and secondly, the GPL doesn't use copyright to control information, but to be sure that everyone can use it in any way that doesn't keep others from using it.
The GPL is about power, not freedom; buy into the GPL myth, and you're just exchanging one master (Mr. Gates) for another (Mr. Stallman).
Come on dude, what is this, a Craig Mundie press release? How does Stallman become your "master"? Gates will embrace you then add proprietary extensions to your software so that you become incompatible and must upgrade whether you like it or not and by the way, copy his software and go to jail or at least pay ridiculous BSA fines. Stallman makes sure you have source to all your software and you can modify it for any purpose, and only asks one little thing in return: that you not be a dick and take free information and make it proprietary.
To sum up, only a very selfish person would not see that the GPL creates freedom for everyone by taking away your right to take other people's freedoms away. My right to swing my fist ends at the tip of your nose, and there's a good reason for that.
Slashdot Mirror
Lexis/Nexis (a legal/news/other full-text database service) has boolean searching with the most useful search feature I have ever seen: it allows you to search for two keywords and define how close to each other they have to be.
So if you want to find text about Bush and Anthrax, but not just articles in which the two happen to be mentioned generally, you can search for
bush w/10 anthrax
and you will get "Bush said he did not have anthrax", but you most likely won't get an article that mentions them in separate paragraph or sections.
This is what I did with my work laptop which has to run lotus notes- there's an option when you get to the partioning section of the install that lets you choose to install on top of the windows partition. Down side is you need a boot floppy and the red-hat system partition is limited to 2 gigs (which I gather is the max file size on a dos partition). But it works flawlessly on top of my windows 98 install on my work thinkpad. Also, the windows partition is automatically mounted as /initrd/loopfs so you can access all the files on the windows partition anyway.
That's redhat 7.1, I am assuming the option still exists for 7.2.
Brybuy
What's really wrong with this is that they own our childhood memories of the games we played. We were too young to consent to filling our minds with proprietary stories. Same situation with TSR/online modules and WotC/Apprentice. These people are heartless bastards if they understand this and don't care.
Intellectual property may be ok for consenting adults, but I say no more ip for unsuspecting children. I can't believe I'm actually saying we have to do it for the children!
Bryguy
Yeah, but they'd already have my money. If there was a trusted third party I'd feel safe giving them my money since I know that even if the company itself is evil, the trusted third party will intervene and say "hey, these people paid now give them their source code". It's like escrow transactions for ebay auctions, just on a larger and somewhat different scale.
Bryguy
It looks like a company's distribution model is outmoded! Computers are making perfect digital copies of photographs easy to distribute over the internet. We need to ban these so called "digital cameras" (more like digital crowbars if you ask us) before even one more dollar of profits has to die! We must outlaw all disruptive technology!
Love,
Hillary Rosen and Jack Valenti
"We've got you by the balls, so keep paying"
I think this is a great model, and I've been thinking a lot about it. The only flaw I can come up with is this: What happens if they change their mind when they have 19999 users? In other words, there ought to be some sort of service for people who want to use a model like this to guarantee that once 20000 people actually subscribe, the source comes out. Perhaps if a trusted third party would hold a copy of the source for them and be given the legal right to release it when, in their judgement, the terms of the protocol have been fulfilled.
I wanted to check out transgaming's web page to see if they do something like this but it seems to have been slashdotted. Any karma-working-girls out there have a mirror or a link to the google cache?
bryguy
It'll be running Netscape 6.1 (it has a spell checker for email - what can I say?),
Pine has a spellchecker for email. I've been using it for almost a decade.
screw X11, think of the marketing opportunities for X10!
It could be worked in submliminally, like this:
"time for meeting [buy an X10-cam] with your boss"
"loading zap!2000 [buy 2000 X10s put them everywhere]"
"time for kinky [tape your babysitter] sex with your [keep an eye on her] mistress at the Ritz"
Enlightened self interest will stop the bleeding until we can fully rehabilitate the public sphere. First explain to corporations why closed standards hurt their profits, then make people understand why proprietary information hurts their freedom.
Bryguy
Nice tuxedo to die in!
You can get all of the courses from ArsDigita University online now. This was a one-year program based loosely on MIT's undergraduate computer science curriculum. It's got Real (unfortunately) video of all the lectures, problem sets and solutions. Pick a course, do them all in order. They're really quite good.
Bryguy
Yeah, I bought a 15 gig 5400 rpm Maxtor for my machine for $80 at staples which seemed like a sweet deal for a poor student. Disk started chewing and all my data was gone- this is for everyone:
Back up your data now! Don't wait until later!
Anyway, I RMA'd it and they replaced it with a 7200 RPM drive which was a pleasant surprise and
*knocks on wood
it's still running just fine, albeit after only about 60 days. But that's longer than the last one worked...
Bryguy
And whenever Hilary Rosen sends a memo:
Red Valkyrie shot the potion!
but without cooperation I don't even see how Computer Science can be taught non-cooperatively.
Obviously I meant "taught at all"...
The policy at your University sounds very backwards. I can certainly understand the need to occasionally assess your individual skill to make sure they don't dilute the value of their diplomas, but without cooperation I don't even see how Computer Science can be taught non-cooperatively.
:)
I attended ArsDigita University last year, and it was explicitly the opposite of what you describe. Although there were individual tests and grades, the lab (where pretty much all interaction took place barring lectures) was built with about 40 computer workstations in an open-plan type office, with no walls separating the students from each other or the faculty. Most of the programming projects were collaborative group projects which were broken down into individual chores within the groups, and as a result we were able to do some pretty interesting things in a pretty short period of time, like building a Java-based Gnutella client in our January Java Class (which, like all of the ADU lectures and course materials, are available freely online, although the lectures are recorded in the unfortunate realvideo format). Here is a picture of some students collaborating intensely (or at least looking at something really interesting on Kevin's monitor
Having someone nearby to talk to when you're going crazy trying to find what to someone else will be a really obvious bug, or to bounce your design ideas off of, or to help you recall the syntax for a rarely-used but difficult-to-remember-the-name-of linux command can be absolutely invaluable. This experience is hardly exceptional, as any number of books and websites devoted to Extreme Programming will tell you.
There is a little friction when it comes time to decide who deserves what grade and why, since those within the group know better than the faculty who was really responsible for the work that actually got done, but this pales in comparison to the acceleration in learning that happens when you discuss specific pieces of code with another interested human being.
Hence, I think you are right in thinking that your administration is wrong.
Bryon
So, this may be what they are counting on. Make the source actually be secure with no back doors- and count on the difficulty of actually compiling your entire os from source to deter people from actually *using* the secure version. Oh, and make a big fat server available from which you can download the binaries- source is available on papyrus if you send a S.A.S.E., thank you.
bryguy
Yeah, but who is in the business of establishing legal rights? Congress. They sold all the rights to the record companies already. Now all you get is a license. Congratulations, licensee. Get used to reading small print.
This is exactly the point of p2p networks and why they have legitimate uses- to overcome short-term bandwidth bottlenecks. Take note, napsta-haters.
Bryguy
But defacing some web site doesn't harm the United States government
I agree with this statement, unless you hack a major commerce site (the government's revenue source) or a major news site (the government's propaganda outlet). In either of those cases, you're actually threatening the government. The safest thing to do is probably to hack a government information website, since there's very little of value there and most likely no one will even see it for weeks.
Bryguy
w0w, wot a 7337 rx0r!
Again, you seem to be mistaking the public distibution of true facts with the threat of revealing embarassing information unless the victim pays up. The latter is blackmail, and is unrelated to this situation.
I think maybe what you're groping for is that the fsf didn't like what KDE was doing and tried to persuade them to change. They did so by referring to their standard for the freedom of software and identifying the ways in which Qt and KDE were not up to snuff. Product comparison != blackmail, I'm quite sure of it. This is getting dull, Craig.
Bryguy
It was pure blackmail against folks who, and everyone in Stallman camp knew that, were writing FREE software, just as free as any GNU package.
Blackmail is when you tell someone you're going to reveal something embarassing about them if they don't pay you. Capitalism is when people don't use a product if it does not meet their needs. Now which one do you think the fsf engaged in again?
Bryguy
Well, KDE/Qt *wasn't* free in the sense that the debian/fsf people wanted it to be. They chose to vote with their feet, and then the KDE people apparently decided it *was* worth it and GPL'd QT.
bryguy
People keep saying the GPL takes away freedom. It doesn't. It guarantees that everyone who comes after you has the same freedoms you had. The only thing it stops you from doing is taking part or all of your information and making it proprietary; that is, not sharing it with anyone for personal gain. This is not extreme. This is not even fair. This is basic decency. I personally think it's awful that a license even needs to be written to convince people of this, but our society doesn't glorify sharing so much as it glorifies the individual accumulation of wealth.
Freedom is a lack of obligation;
That's an interesting definition of freedom. I think of freedom as being more about maximizing the quantity and quality of options available to individuals. The GPL *is* about freedom- what you refuse to see is that it's not just about *your* freedom to be a dick and take someone's free software proprietary, but everyone's freedom to build on other people's accumulated knowledge.
the GPL does not define "freedom", it forces obligations on people, and uses the very Copyright they despise as a tool for control.
This is a rather infantile interpretation of the goals of the GPL. Two points here: 1. in a world without copyright the GPL would be meaningless, so it's consistent to use the copyright system against itself and at the same time clamor for its abolition (incidentally you imply here that all GPLsters believe in the abolition of copyright aaaaand... that's a canard), and secondly, the GPL doesn't use copyright to control information, but to be sure that everyone can use it in any way that doesn't keep others from using it.
The GPL is about power, not freedom; buy into the GPL myth, and you're just exchanging one master (Mr. Gates) for another (Mr. Stallman).
Come on dude, what is this, a Craig Mundie press release? How does Stallman become your "master"? Gates will embrace you then add proprietary extensions to your software so that you become incompatible and must upgrade whether you like it or not and by the way, copy his software and go to jail or at least pay ridiculous BSA fines. Stallman makes sure you have source to all your software and you can modify it for any purpose, and only asks one little thing in return: that you not be a dick and take free information and make it proprietary.
To sum up, only a very selfish person would not see that the GPL creates freedom for everyone by taking away your right to take other people's freedoms away. My right to swing my fist ends at the tip of your nose, and there's a good reason for that.
Bryguy