One of the first sentences in that posting is "One horrible consequence of the NASM licence is that we cannot link to GPL'd
code.
It should be obvious that the real culprit is the GPL, and the sentence should read: "One horrible consequence of the GPL licence is that we cannot link GPL'd code to any non-GPL'd code". And no, this is not flamebait, it's a statement of fact. This is a major drawback of the GPL, and it is bound to become more and more of a problem.
This particular one isn't, I merely used it to illustrate that you can get anything past the patent office, no matter how ridiculous or trivial it is. Once you've got the patent all you need is to have just a little bit more money than the guy you're sueing, and you're golden.
The goal of the patent was to further innovation by making sure that inventors can profit from their (non-trivial) inventions. These days the patent system is abused by sneaking trivial broad patents through the patent system, then making money by sueing others. Unfortunately the american legal system is such that in most cases the party with the most expensive lawyers wins.
OTOH the entire world finds it strange that that sort of thing is permitted in the US. Nazis are scum, they should all be shot (you've got guns enough, after all). While you're at it, shoot the KKK too.
As far as freedom is concerned, other parts of the world simply have different ideas about what is and what isn't "proper behaviour". In the US you tolerate nazis and the KKK, in Europe we tolerate topless sunbathing on public beaches and saying "fuck" on prime time TV. I know I'd rather see a nice pair of boobs than some hitler-wanabee. Which do you prefer?
In my opinion the American patent model is very good, leaving as much of the judging to the justice system as posssible
Which is NOT good, since big corporations can afford lawyers, and I can't. Nowadays the mere threat of legal action is sufficient to get a small developer to back down, even if the company's claim is unwarranted.
Oh, and in response to everyone who has said that the patent office is 'stupid', just because they do not have a staff skilled in
computers does not mean they are stupid. It amazes me that so many people believe that just because they are good with them,
that computer skill is the final judge of intellegence.
Computer skills, no. Common sense, yes. The patent office grants patents for such drivel as faster than light communication and extracting energy from other dimensions to increase plant-growth. All you need to do is to make a trivial invention seem very complex. The patent office lacks common sense and time. Anybody with a highschool-diploma and 15 minutes of time could have dismissed the above patent. The USPO did not.
getting unauthorized
access to a network not only does not harm anyone by itself but furthermore doesn't need to involve any "bad"
intentions like wanting to harm the company or making money on the data acquired in that way
Kinda makes you wonder why they would bother tracking down and prosecuting those "hackers that don't do any harm", doesn't it?
And BTW, showing a child your penis in a park doesn't do anybody any harm either. You still go to jail though.
Hackers freak out any company that has an internet connection, that's why they hire a security firm in the first place. If that firm then lets convicted felon-hackers handle the case, those clients freak out even more.
While I would rather let my child be in a room with a hacker than a child molester, I'm sure that many companies would rather have a child-molester try to break into their network than a convicted hacker.
They *know* the child-molester will fail. They can only hope that the hacker does not succeed and sell their data to the
highest bidder.
this is a very different situation from what you mentioned.
Why?
Are you saying that child molesters can never better their ways? Once a child molester always a child molester? How about: "once a thief always a thief"?
Then how about: "once a hacker, always a hacker"? Can a company that hires a felon convicted for hacking be sure that this hacker will not turn against the company? Or is it OK to hire this hacker, as long as you keep him away from the financial department's computers? How about the clients, can they be sure that this hacker will not probe their systems just a little bit further than what they hired him for?
You think you spot a pedophile by just looking?!?
That's a remarkably dangerous statement there. You're basically saying that you can spot a criminal by the way they look. A long ago time there was a "science" called craniology which tried to predict criminal behaviour by measuring a person's skull. Obviously nonsense, but apparently the basic idea behind it persists even today, in you.
Why is this even on slashdot? Just because it involves hackers? This is no different from any other company running a background check and deciding not to hire someone with a criminal record. Of course these people are supposed to have "paid their debt to society", and
start over with a clean slate, but that's not how things work in the real world. We all know it. We may say we don't like the practice, but we would all gladly do the same. Would you hire a convicted child-molester as your babysitter, even if he just served 20 years and "paid his debt"? I didn't think so. If you can't practice what you preach, don't preach...
Sjeesh man, if you want to spread FUD, at least get some of the basic facts straight. You made at least 3 significant mistakes in your reasoning:
"library namespace" isn't an issue here. For one thing a namespace has nothing to with it, and the issue at hand is about add-ons, not libraries (there is a subtle distinction in BeOS).
It is perfectly possible to LINK mozilla under BeOS, it just won't RUN since it can't load all of its add-ons (BTW, I wouldn't call 50 megs of add-ons "non-trivial", I'd describe it as "bloated").
It is perfectly possible to get Mozilla to run on BeOS, since the 32 meg limit applies only to add-ons, not to libraries. By *really* linking against these add-ons (they are required anyway, so it doesn't really make a difference), you can have Mozilla run on BeOS.
Next time you post, don't make such an ass of yourself.
Sure, and people will actually buy a new harddrive and install QNX on it to watch DVD, instead of buying a $180 DVD/CD/MP3 player at Fry's that requires no installation or maintenance, works with their TV, and comes with a remote control.
Be IPO'd with a stockprice of $6, has been in the $3 range, and all the industry "experts" such as your distinguished self have predicted the imminent downfall of Be for years. Yet it still hasn't happened.
No it's that most of us Linux users *DON'T CARE* all that much about the desktop market
You make it seem as though "most of us Linux users" are running servers. We're not.
Besides, if "most of us Linux users" don't care about the desktop market, why is so much attention being paid to desktop-candy?
"the size of a frisbee"?? I think they're being a little
conservative there. In 10 years we will be able to pack supercomputer-power in a wristwatch. More likely is that wireless networking will be so pervasive and fast that you don't even need to have so much power on your wrist, you will simply access your home server from anywhere in the world.
Two people have already given pretty accurate translations. What interests me is why you attribute something you can't even read to a "Fourth Reich Fanatic", just because it happens to be in German.
The posted text is actually a lyric from a song (see http://private.freepage.de/schdreu/slimecd3.htm) by a band that protests against fascism.
A common misconception. RISC processors often have large amounts of registers, which means you don't need to generate all that extra code to push registers to memory and back like you would have to do on Intel's low register count processors. This is why for example on BeOS, PowerPC executables are typically half the size of x86 executables. People often think that RISC processors have very few instructions, but that is no longer true. RISC processors like the PowerPC have "complex" instructions like multiply and divide just like their CISC cousins. I'm not too familiar with RISC processors other than the PowerPC, but I'd even dare say the PowerPC has more complex instructions than most RISC processors. How does "add operands a and b, treat them as a pointer, get the 8 bits they point to, put them in the upper 8 bits of operand 3 and zero the rest" sound? That's a single instruction.
Slashdot Mirror
You obviously have no idea what a nazi is. Come back when you have a clue...
It should be obvious that the real culprit is the GPL, and the sentence should read: "One horrible consequence of the GPL licence is that we cannot link GPL'd code to any non-GPL'd code". And no, this is not flamebait, it's a statement of fact. This is a major drawback of the GPL, and it is bound to become more and more of a problem.
I can see why the moderators would label this "interesting". It deserves a whole new category: "Interesting, many spelling errors".
This particular one isn't, I merely used it to illustrate that you can get anything past the patent office, no matter how ridiculous or trivial it is. Once you've got the patent all you need is to have just a little bit more money than the guy you're sueing, and you're golden.
The goal of the patent was to further innovation by making sure that inventors can profit from their (non-trivial) inventions. These days the patent system is abused by sneaking trivial broad patents through the patent system, then making money by sueing others. Unfortunately the american legal system is such that in most cases the party with the most expensive lawyers wins.
OTOH the entire world finds it strange that that sort of thing is permitted in the US. Nazis are scum, they should all be shot (you've got guns enough, after all). While you're at it, shoot the KKK too.
As far as freedom is concerned, other parts of the world simply have different ideas about what is and what isn't "proper behaviour". In the US you tolerate nazis and the KKK, in Europe we tolerate topless sunbathing on public beaches and saying "fuck" on prime time TV. I know I'd rather see a nice pair of boobs than some hitler-wanabee. Which do you prefer?
Which is NOT good, since big corporations can afford lawyers, and I can't. Nowadays the mere threat of legal action is sufficient to get a small developer to back down, even if the company's claim is unwarranted.
Oh, and in response to everyone who has said that the patent office is 'stupid', just because they do not have a staff skilled in computers does not mean they are stupid. It amazes me that so many people believe that just because they are good with them, that computer skill is the final judge of intellegence.
Computer skills, no. Common sense, yes. The patent office grants patents for such drivel as faster than light communication and extracting energy from other dimensions to increase plant-growth. All you need to do is to make a trivial invention seem very complex. The patent office lacks common sense and time. Anybody with a highschool-diploma and 15 minutes of time could have dismissed the above patent. The USPO did not.
Flamebait?! Come on moderators, you could at least mark it "offtopic", or "not funny" or something!
Kinda makes you wonder why they would bother tracking down and prosecuting those "hackers that don't do any harm", doesn't it?
And BTW, showing a child your penis in a park doesn't do anybody any harm either. You still go to jail though.
While I would rather let my child be in a room with a hacker than a child molester, I'm sure that many companies would rather have a child-molester try to break into their network than a convicted hacker. They *know* the child-molester will fail. They can only hope that the hacker does not succeed and sell their data to the highest bidder.
Why?
Are you saying that child molesters can never better their ways? Once a child molester always a child molester? How about: "once a thief always a thief"? Then how about: "once a hacker, always a hacker"? Can a company that hires a felon convicted for hacking be sure that this hacker will not turn against the company? Or is it OK to hire this hacker, as long as you keep him away from the financial department's computers? How about the clients, can they be sure that this hacker will not probe their systems just a little bit further than what they hired him for?
You think you spot a pedophile by just looking?!? That's a remarkably dangerous statement there. You're basically saying that you can spot a criminal by the way they look. A long ago time there was a "science" called craniology which tried to predict criminal behaviour by measuring a person's skull. Obviously nonsense, but apparently the basic idea behind it persists even today, in you.
Why is this even on slashdot? Just because it involves hackers? This is no different from any other company running a background check and deciding not to hire someone with a criminal record. Of course these people are supposed to have "paid their debt to society", and start over with a clean slate, but that's not how things work in the real world. We all know it. We may say we don't like the practice, but we would all gladly do the same. Would you hire a convicted child-molester as your babysitter, even if he just served 20 years and "paid his debt"? I didn't think so. If you can't practice what you preach, don't preach...
Not mine, and I bought it for $179 at Fry's. Oh, and it plays video CDs, too.
- "library namespace" isn't an issue here. For one thing a namespace has nothing to with it, and the issue at hand is about add-ons, not libraries (there is a subtle distinction in BeOS).
- It is perfectly possible to LINK mozilla under BeOS, it just won't RUN since it can't load all of its add-ons (BTW, I wouldn't call 50 megs of add-ons "non-trivial", I'd describe it as "bloated").
- It is perfectly possible to get Mozilla to run on BeOS, since the 32 meg limit applies only to add-ons, not to libraries. By *really* linking against these add-ons (they are required anyway, so it doesn't really make a difference), you can have Mozilla run on BeOS.
Next time you post, don't make such an ass of yourself.Sure, and people will actually buy a new harddrive and install QNX on it to watch DVD, instead of buying a $180 DVD/CD/MP3 player at Fry's that requires no installation or maintenance, works with their TV, and comes with a remote control.
Be IPO'd with a stockprice of $6, has been in the $3 range, and all the industry "experts" such as your distinguished self have predicted the imminent downfall of Be for years. Yet it still hasn't happened.
uh, what? Above you accuse BeNews of being clueless, and now you display your own ignorance by saying that the Video Toaster killed the Amiga? Dude...
You make it seem as though "most of us Linux users" are running servers. We're not.
Besides, if "most of us Linux users" don't care about the desktop market, why is so much attention being paid to desktop-candy?
"the size of a frisbee"?? I think they're being a little conservative there. In 10 years we will be able to pack supercomputer-power in a wristwatch. More likely is that wireless networking will be so pervasive and fast that you don't even need to have so much power on your wrist, you will simply access your home server from anywhere in the world.
Since when is Asus a German company? Dude, if you're looking for excuses, at least get your facts straight.
Two people have already given pretty accurate translations. What interests me is why you attribute something you can't even read to a "Fourth Reich Fanatic", just because it happens to be in German. The posted text is actually a lyric from a song (see http://private.freepage.de/schdreu/slimecd3.htm) by a band that protests against fascism.
You didn't even understand a word of what he was saying, did you?
That's hardly Niac's fault. It's (American) society.
Meant to say "than most CISC" processors, of course.
A common misconception. RISC processors often have large amounts of registers, which means you don't need to generate all that extra code to push registers to memory and back like you would have to do on Intel's low register count processors. This is why for example on BeOS, PowerPC executables are typically half the size of x86 executables. People often think that RISC processors have very few instructions, but that is no longer true. RISC processors like the PowerPC have "complex" instructions like multiply and divide just like their CISC cousins. I'm not too familiar with RISC processors other than the PowerPC, but I'd even dare say the PowerPC has more complex instructions than most RISC processors. How does "add operands a and b, treat them as a pointer, get the 8 bits they point to, put them in the upper 8 bits of operand 3 and zero the rest" sound? That's a single instruction.