Of course there are restrictions, otherwise it would be public domain. The restrictions under the BSD license are much less restrictive than those of the GPL, though. IIRC, the BSD license basically says you can do whatever you want, but you have to retain the copyright notice (with author's name) that is included with the code. In this case, it seems that the GPL zealots have failed to comply even with that requirement in their zeal to rebrand the code as GPL.
Doing anything to the code, up to and including redistributing it under a new license, while failing to comply with the terms of the old license is infringement.
What kind of soulless bastard needs a written code of ethics to know what's right and wrong? Who really thinks that snooping around other peoples' data is the right thing to do?
Unless you were raised by wolves, you already know the difference between right and wrong. Looking through someone's email is just as wrong as looking through their postal mail or peeping through their windows. You don't need to take any ethics classes to know that it's wrong.
It wouldn't be a big deal if you were right, but unfortunately it doesn't appear that way.
From TFA:
The plant is promising enough that companies across the world are looking at planting millions of acres of jatropha in the next few years, in places as far flung as Brazil, China, India and Swaziland. A company based in Singapore has announced plans to plant two million hectares, about 4.9 million acres, of jatropha in the Philippines.
1.) Post a question that is answered in the summary (or better yet, the title). 2.) Use a Slashdot meme in an unfunny way. 3.) Be kdawson. 4.) Post obvious karma whores, such as "text of article in case of Slashdotting". 5.) Write your comments in list form.
This is a noxious fast-growing weed, apparently kept in check in its native environment due to the fact that the soil and weather conditions there are terrible for growing anything. However, TFA mentions that various companies are looking at planting this thing all over the place, including areas that have good soil and growth-friendly climates.
So what happens when we start planting this thing everywhere? Could this turn into the next kudzu?
if i have physical access to the machine and have a bootable CD i have no need to crack any passwords i can just reset the password and carry on, You can do this with a Linux box as well, as well as practically any other system, so I'm not sure what your point is here.
Physical access to a box pretty much means you have root access to that box. This is why physical security is such an important part of overall system security.
norad:~# You may be able to crack it, but you're cheating. Clearly, working at NORAD you have access to ultra top-secret military-grade cryptographic techniques not available to your average cracker.
There's no way RMS could convert to Linux in 15 minutes or less. Hell, he'd spend at least 15 days trying to convince people to call it GNU/Linux before he would even begin the install.
Seriously. This article is basically "Guy with 15 servers converts 13 of them to Linux." 13 whole servers. Damn, Microsoft must be quaking in their boots over this one.
As a subscriber, you can see posts all the way back as far as they have them. I just clicked on your name, and went back to the beginning. You may need to set the date to show the year in your preferences, though.
I'm with you on the editors (remember how kdawson would put almost everything into the Enlightenment category?), and the overall quality of the site over time. I pretty much agree with your other points as well.
On another note, something that may only be funny to me:
I was browsing your comment history briefly, and noticed that the VERY FIRST comment that Slashdot shows you having posted is from January 1999, and is complaining about the QUALITY OF AN ARTICLE ON SLASHDOT! That is just hilariously awesome.
Very interesting. I saw that page, but didn't see any slogan at all on it, so I skipped it. I didn't think to check the alt text for the image.
I could argue that the alt text may have been a mistake, but given the text plus your memory, I guess I'll just say I stand corrected. I don't remember exactly how long I've been reading this site, but I'm fairly certain it was since at least 1997, and I couldn't remember the slogan ever being different, but then my memory for detail obviously isn't as good as yours.
That's a really nice rant, and I agree with you somewhat in your general assertion that Slashdot has drifted pretty far away from being a nerd site (WTF is up with the Politics section, for example). However, I have some issues:
1.) I haven't been around quite as long as you have, but I don't recall the slogan ever being "News for Nerds on the Stuff that Matters". That may have been the original intent, but I don't think that was ever the actual slogan. The oldest page from Slashdot I could find on web.archive.org is from November, 1998, which was prior to the Andover.net buyout (thereby presumably before the major corporate influence began). On that page, the slogan is "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters."
Now, I grant you, prior to maybe 5 or 6 years ago, the "stuff that matters FOR NERDS" was sort of implied, but that hasn't really been the case for a long, long time.
2.) Jack Thompson has been going after the gaming industry for a long time. Seeing his long, slow descent into madness is of great interest to gaming nerds, even if not to you particularly. Even if you decide that the site should be limited only to things that the typical nerd would care about (not your decision or mine to make), this still would fit that category.
So, even though I agree with you that Slashdot in general has strayed pretty far from its roots (but what site this old hasn't), I disagree with you about this particular story.
Aernt there are plenty of normal places around the word (i.e. not uranium mines/dumps) where the levels are naturally higher? There are, but they're mostly uninhabitable due to being overrun by giant dinosaurs.
ed is a bloated mess! It's 47K for god's sake! I use cat for all of my text editing needs. At a lean 19k, it's far more efficient than ed. Hell, if you're comfortable with that much bloat, you might as well just use emacs. At least then you get an operating system included.
As for general favorite bloat-free software, I'd have to go with/usr/bin/yes. Often I find myself needing something to tell me I'm correct about a tough decision, or to provide me motivation to do something, or just for some general personal validation. For that and more, I trust yes. Sure, some people would use more unsure methods such as researching problems, talking to themselves in a mirror, or taking action to better themselves. I'm not much of a gambler though, and I don't like to sweat. So, I use yes. Yes always gives me the answer I need, as many times as I need to hear it. Yes is the perfect solution to life's problems. Take for example the following conversation with yes:
Should I buy that new sports car I've had my eye on? y Am I really a good person, even after all those felonies? y Should I have another beer? y Am I sober enough to drive? y Do you love me? y Oh yes, you little scamp, I love you too! y y y y y y y y y ^C
I completely agree. They should begin forming a committee, with supporting sub-committees, to discuss forming the standard for creating standards immediately.
Maybe if they are able to recover more money, that the California taxpayers will eventually have to pay, the California voters will get pissed off and vote out the clowns that passed legislation they should have known would be doomed. It's bad enough to waste time and money passing blatantly unconstitutional laws, but even worse when similar laws have already been struck down by the courts in other jurisdictions. Were they hoping that every game publisher in the country would just let their law slide and not bother to challenge it, even though those same publishers had already successfully challenged similar laws?
In response to Schwartz, Netapp CEO Dan Warmenhoven declared that he was not in fact lying. Rather, Schwartz was the one lying, indicating further that Schwartz's pants were on fire. Schwartz angrily denied this with a fuming "nuh uh!" and indicated Warmenhoven was a chicken. Warmenhoven then retorted by comparing himself to rubber and Mr. Schwartz to glue.
Stay tuned for the next exciting installment, where Schwartz will compare his father's fighting ability and overall physical prowess with that of Warmenhoven's father.
My guess would be that they're "canceling" it by moving it into black ops. Either that or it didn't work and they don't want to say they're canceling it because it sucked.
I hope your mother gets diarrhea tonight. Seriously? Is that the best you could come up with? That has to be the weakest "your mother" joke I've ever heard. If you're going to post flamebait at least try and put a little pride in your work.
Sites with obvious political biases tend to be frequented only by people with similar political biases. In todays "party uber alles" political culture, these sites are basically echo chambers for members of the particular political party they align with. If one of these sites decided to switch to a third party, it would probably lose a vast majority of its readers as they all went in search of a site for their party. This would happen even if the political philosophy of the site didn't change at all.
The biggest problem with third parties today other than finances is perception. People don't support third parties in any great numbers because all of the major third parties are out on the fringes of the political spectrum. Most people hang out in the political middle, so a 3rd party that caters to the far left (like the Greens) or the far right (like the Libertarians) aren't going to have a whole lot of luck winning elections on the national level. They can only win in localities where the population is heavily skewed toward one end of the political spectrum or the other.
"The first BETA release of Penelope (Eudora 8.0.0b1) is now available for download."
That says to me that Penelope and Eudora are the same thing, even though there's all this press that says they aren't. Are they intentionally trying to confuse people?
Slashdot Mirror
Of course there are restrictions, otherwise it would be public domain. The restrictions under the BSD license are much less restrictive than those of the GPL, though. IIRC, the BSD license basically says you can do whatever you want, but you have to retain the copyright notice (with author's name) that is included with the code. In this case, it seems that the GPL zealots have failed to comply even with that requirement in their zeal to rebrand the code as GPL.
Doing anything to the code, up to and including redistributing it under a new license, while failing to comply with the terms of the old license is infringement.
What kind of soulless bastard needs a written code of ethics to know what's right and wrong? Who really thinks that snooping around other peoples' data is the right thing to do?
Unless you were raised by wolves, you already know the difference between right and wrong. Looking through someone's email is just as wrong as looking through their postal mail or peeping through their windows. You don't need to take any ethics classes to know that it's wrong.
From TFA: The plant is promising enough that companies across the world are looking at planting millions of acres of jatropha in the next few years, in places as far flung as Brazil, China, India and Swaziland. A company based in Singapore has announced plans to plant two million hectares, about 4.9 million acres, of jatropha in the Philippines.
Now now, he never said he went to the prom with another person. He was in the A/V club, so he was helping out with the sound board.
5 ways to piss off Slashdot readers:
1.) Post a question that is answered in the summary (or better yet, the title).
2.) Use a Slashdot meme in an unfunny way.
3.) Be kdawson.
4.) Post obvious karma whores, such as "text of article in case of Slashdotting".
5.) Write your comments in list form.
This is a noxious fast-growing weed, apparently kept in check in its native environment due to the fact that the soil and weather conditions there are terrible for growing anything. However, TFA mentions that various companies are looking at planting this thing all over the place, including areas that have good soil and growth-friendly climates.
So what happens when we start planting this thing everywhere? Could this turn into the next kudzu?
i can just reset the password and carry on, You can do this with a Linux box as well, as well as practically any other system, so I'm not sure what your point is here.
Physical access to a box pretty much means you have root access to that box. This is why physical security is such an important part of overall system security.
Ha, I've got these fools beat! I don't even USE a password on my Windows box. I'd like to see you try and crack MY password!
Yes.
Also with this one.
There's no way RMS could convert to Linux in 15 minutes or less. Hell, he'd spend at least 15 days trying to convince people to call it GNU/Linux before he would even begin the install.
Seriously. This article is basically "Guy with 15 servers converts 13 of them to Linux." 13 whole servers. Damn, Microsoft must be quaking in their boots over this one.
This story is utterly pointless.
As a subscriber, you can see posts all the way back as far as they have them. I just clicked on your name, and went back to the beginning. You may need to set the date to show the year in your preferences, though.
I'm with you on the editors (remember how kdawson would put almost everything into the Enlightenment category?), and the overall quality of the site over time. I pretty much agree with your other points as well.
On another note, something that may only be funny to me:
I was browsing your comment history briefly, and noticed that the VERY FIRST comment that Slashdot shows you having posted is from January 1999, and is complaining about the QUALITY OF AN ARTICLE ON SLASHDOT! That is just hilariously awesome.
The comment.
Very interesting. I saw that page, but didn't see any slogan at all on it, so I skipped it. I didn't think to check the alt text for the image.
I could argue that the alt text may have been a mistake, but given the text plus your memory, I guess I'll just say I stand corrected. I don't remember exactly how long I've been reading this site, but I'm fairly certain it was since at least 1997, and I couldn't remember the slogan ever being different, but then my memory for detail obviously isn't as good as yours.
That's a really nice rant, and I agree with you somewhat in your general assertion that Slashdot has drifted pretty far away from being a nerd site (WTF is up with the Politics section, for example). However, I have some issues:
1.) I haven't been around quite as long as you have, but I don't recall the slogan ever being "News for Nerds on the Stuff that Matters". That may have been the original intent, but I don't think that was ever the actual slogan. The oldest page from Slashdot I could find on web.archive.org is from November, 1998, which was prior to the Andover.net buyout (thereby presumably before the major corporate influence began). On that page, the slogan is "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters."
Now, I grant you, prior to maybe 5 or 6 years ago, the "stuff that matters FOR NERDS" was sort of implied, but that hasn't really been the case for a long, long time.
2.) Jack Thompson has been going after the gaming industry for a long time. Seeing his long, slow descent into madness is of great interest to gaming nerds, even if not to you particularly. Even if you decide that the site should be limited only to things that the typical nerd would care about (not your decision or mine to make), this still would fit that category.
So, even though I agree with you that Slashdot in general has strayed pretty far from its roots (but what site this old hasn't), I disagree with you about this particular story.
ed is a bloated mess! It's 47K for god's sake! I use cat for all of my text editing needs. At a lean 19k, it's far more efficient than ed. Hell, if you're comfortable with that much bloat, you might as well just use emacs. At least then you get an operating system included.
/usr/bin/yes. Often I find myself needing something to tell me I'm correct about a tough decision, or to provide me motivation to do something, or just for some general personal validation. For that and more, I trust yes. Sure, some people would use more unsure methods such as researching problems, talking to themselves in a mirror, or taking action to better themselves. I'm not much of a gambler though, and I don't like to sweat. So, I use yes. Yes always gives me the answer I need, as many times as I need to hear it. Yes is the perfect solution to life's problems. Take for example the following conversation with yes:
As for general favorite bloat-free software, I'd have to go with
Should I buy that new sports car I've had my eye on? y
Am I really a good person, even after all those felonies? y
Should I have another beer? y
Am I sober enough to drive? y
Do you love me? y
Oh yes, you little scamp, I love you too! y
y
y
y
y
y
y
y
y
^C
I completely agree. They should begin forming a committee, with supporting sub-committees, to discuss forming the standard for creating standards immediately.
Maybe if they are able to recover more money, that the California taxpayers will eventually have to pay, the California voters will get pissed off and vote out the clowns that passed legislation they should have known would be doomed. It's bad enough to waste time and money passing blatantly unconstitutional laws, but even worse when similar laws have already been struck down by the courts in other jurisdictions. Were they hoping that every game publisher in the country would just let their law slide and not bother to challenge it, even though those same publishers had already successfully challenged similar laws?
In response to Schwartz, Netapp CEO Dan Warmenhoven declared that he was not in fact lying. Rather, Schwartz was the one lying, indicating further that Schwartz's pants were on fire. Schwartz angrily denied this with a fuming "nuh uh!" and indicated Warmenhoven was a chicken. Warmenhoven then retorted by comparing himself to rubber and Mr. Schwartz to glue.
Stay tuned for the next exciting installment, where Schwartz will compare his father's fighting ability and overall physical prowess with that of Warmenhoven's father.
My guess would be that they're "canceling" it by moving it into black ops. Either that or it didn't work and they don't want to say they're canceling it because it sucked.
Sites with obvious political biases tend to be frequented only by people with similar political biases. In todays "party uber alles" political culture, these sites are basically echo chambers for members of the particular political party they align with. If one of these sites decided to switch to a third party, it would probably lose a vast majority of its readers as they all went in search of a site for their party. This would happen even if the political philosophy of the site didn't change at all.
The biggest problem with third parties today other than finances is perception. People don't support third parties in any great numbers because all of the major third parties are out on the fringes of the political spectrum. Most people hang out in the political middle, so a 3rd party that caters to the far left (like the Greens) or the far right (like the Libertarians) aren't going to have a whole lot of luck winning elections on the national level. They can only win in localities where the population is heavily skewed toward one end of the political spectrum or the other.
So what's up with the mozilla wiki then? I quote:
"The first BETA release of Penelope (Eudora 8.0.0b1) is now available for download."
That says to me that Penelope and Eudora are the same thing, even though there's all this press that says they aren't. Are they intentionally trying to confuse people?