I know what you mean but steel reinforcement does not support the concrete. It adds tensile strength where the concrete needs it. In an earthquake the building may well be subjected to both in quick succession or simultaneously and so the two can fail unless the building is designed to cope with earthquake-type stresses. That costs extra and that is why the buildings tend to fail.
How flexible are you expecting this stuff to be? I doubt it will give us buildings that bend like reeds thus staircases are not going to be bending enough to be useless. More likely it gives a greater flexibility around joints within specific small tolerances. Thus the building core: stairs etc. remains intact for longer and permits a greater number of people to escape. Most buildings are already designed in this way anyway with the core escape zone built to withstand more than the rest of the building.
I was beginning to wonder if anyone else would point that out. I am truly bored of 3D, I had to endure the crap they threw up in the 80s and this time around it doesn't look like they've learned anything. Sure the stereoscopic technology has improved somewhat but it's still largely un-viewable to those of us with visual impairment (such as colour-blindness) and the way it is being used is still just a gimmick.
Everybody used to use cheques here (UK) but they are now almost completely replaced by plastic and bank transfers.
Why? Because people prefer carrying plastic than cheque books. Because people hate having to pay them in. Because cheques bounce. Because banks charge businesses to both write and receive cheques. Because there is a greater chance of fraud. Because it takes around three days for the money to arrive in your account and even then it is not guaranteed to have cleared.
You forgot to mention: because the retailers stopped accepting cheques or at the very least look at you as if you have just crapped on their carpet when you pull your chequebook out.
Not that I am entirely against the move away from cheques. I have a client who pays by cheque and it's a real PiTA! I don't begrudge them doing so but it sure is easier for me when someone pays by EFT. Even considering that though, there's no way I would want the scheme mentioned in TFS!
It seems I spoke to soon. Bragg and other FAC members were definitely painted in the programme as not wanting to criminalise fans for downloading but further looking on the FAC website revealed this which says..
We the undersigned wish to express our support for Lily Allen in her campaign to alert music lovers to the threat that illegal downloading presents to our industry and to condemn the vitriol that has been directed at her in recent days.
Our meeting also voted overwhelmingly to support a three-strike sanction on those who persistently download illegal files, sanctions to consist of a warning letter, a stronger warning letter and a final sanction of the restriction of the infringer's bandwidth to a level which would render file-sharing of media files impractical while leaving basic email and web access functional.
Signed:... Billy Bragg
So it seems they are against cutting people off but are happy with bandwidth choking with no evidence?
> Forget the Internet. For about 50p you could post a USB memory stick. It would take about a day to get to the recipient if you sent it first-class.
It doesn't have to be in the post either. Before Sir Tim had his great idea we used to share music on cassette tapes in the playground. If they cut Internet access the sharing will simply move offline and go underground. This of course is where DRM comes in but we all know how well copy protection has worked for the software market.
A few people have commented about the BBC's Panorama programme last night. There was a great quote on there from Billy Bragg (who opposes the DE bill):
"The music industry is thriving. The record industry is dead on its feet"
It is lame to argue that what you steal has no value. It is lamer still to argue that you are less corrupt than those you steal from.
Your argument is a good one and largely I agree with it. Aside from this one glaring error: Copyright infringement is not theft, stealing or any other term related to deprivation of property!
*Sigh* You'd think that a \. user would have figured this one out by now wouldn't you?
Actually TFA and TFS both seem to have headlines which differ to what Fry said. Fry's remarks seem to focus mostly on the cost of assessing the software not switching (or the software itself). His entire argument seems to be "it will cost money to give it consideration, therefore it's a bad idea." What a plonker!
As others have said the cost of assessment + proprietary licences is likely to be higher than that of assessment + oss licences in both the long and short term. If my government deployed software without fully assessing it I would be concerned. So any software regardless of licence should be assessed and the cost of that assessment is part of the project cost not the solution cost. This guy is either being seriously misquoted or he is a shill.
Yeah I looked there (and at a number of others) too. Bear in mind thought the UKDPS is not a government agency (AFAIK) but simply a service provider. I think that there are few laws on what you may change your name to, it's just that no DPS will do it for you if you want to be change your name to "Lord Microsoft".
You can (again AFAIK) name your child "Lord Microsoft" though, although why you want to beats me.
Having creamed a vast fortune off us by re-selling other people's content (often at a considerable mark-up and with unfair practices), Murdoch is again whining that the world is changing and he can't see how to work the new one to his advantage.
Well guess what? That's one of the reasons it's changing.
> He was never a lord. He took advantage of the fact that it's perfectly legal to change your name by deed poll to anything you want - so he changed his name to Lord David Sutch.
Under UK law you don't need a deed poll to change your name. It's perfectly legal to do so without any formal record. There are restrictions on what you can do if you happen to change your name that way (you cannot stand for parliament for example) and most institutions will require evidence of your change of name but legally, you don't need a deed poll.
With regards changing your name to Lord... you will find that most Deed Poll services will not accept such a change these days (probably because of Sutch). This is similar to the fact that they won't accept "offensive" or trademarked names.
Well one reason I have dual setup is that I am developing something which spec says should be designed for a minimum 1440x900 in mind. My laptop can only manage 1280 so I have a second monitor on dual-head and use it to design the app to make good use of the larger desktop size.
And to small shop cashiers on behalf of your customers:
Put your phone down when you are serving and have the decency to tell us how much the total is. To continue speaking on your phone while just holding out your hand will lose you customers.
> > It would be illegal for most of us to distribute a copy.
> It would be perfectly legal if Firefox paid for the license.
But it wouldn't be legal for us to redistribute unless we also paid for the licence. There answer is that an h264 plugin could be made which could then be downloaded (and licenced) by individuals but that defeats the object of HTML5 which is to enable video to be viewed by your site visitors without the need for external plugins. HTML5+h264 is not a lot better than HTML4+flash really, in terms of freedom.
In this case it's not a slashvertisement. That is I (the submitter) have no connection to the project at all. I just thought it was interesting that somebody was trying to produce a PC that a) only uses hardware that has free software drivers and b) has attempted a design-by-consensus approach.
I agree. The Darwin Awards are just not funny. Laughing when somebody slips on a banana skin loses it's edge when they slide to their death if you ask me.
That said I have long enjoyed laughing at heroic failures of the kind listed in this book and its sequel. Some of them are listed here. e.g.
The least successful animal rescue The [UK] firemens strike of 1978 made possible one of the great animal rescue attempts of all time. Valiantly, the British Army had taken over emergency fire fighting and on 14 January they were called out by an elderly lady to retrieve her cat which had become trapped up a tree. They arrived quickly and soon discharged their duty. So grateful was the lady that she invited them all for tea (and Sherry?). Driving off later, with fond farewells completed, they ran over the cat and killed it.
I recall a great one about an escaped lion being beaten up by an old lady and having to be treated for shock (I guess Dreamworks based the Madagascar scene on it) and also the least successful attempt to light a fire in which the guy burns down the house and his car and garden.
The pages about some topics of nuclear physics were removed from the university textbooks. In some cases the textbooks were collected and destroyed. Knowledge do can be a dangerous thing. Knowledge isn't necessarily dangerous in and of itself. What you do with said knowledge is more important. Yeah, yeah: "Guns don't kill people rappers do" etc. but are you really trying to make an analogy between censorship and copyright infringement prevention? Regardless of one's views on the censorship you mention (without references BTW) I'm not aware of anyone suggesting U2's music is a threat under anti-terrorism laws?
Now after some secret international consultations the Open Source is about to go this way. MySQL was already bought first by "Sun", then by "Oracle". PHP will be bought before long by "IBM". And yet MySQL remains free. I have access to the source code and can continue to deploy it as part of free software projects. Sun bought StarOffice and turned it into one of the largest open source projects. IBM is a huge proponent and supporter of free and open source software. What exactly is the concern here?
Network computing will be available only to selected ones, who have an access to the proprietary IDE, like Visual Studio, etc. Cobblers. Network computing has nothing to do with an IDE. Even if you are referring to some kind of networked development, it's doubtful that the IDE will play a big part. IDEs are generally related to language and OS. Development environment is pretty much irrelevant.
More about these international consultations from this podcast http://feeds.tvo.org/tvo/searchengine from Canada. Thanks but given the lack of informed view in the rest of your post - I'll pass.
Actually the new World Order is in the making. Ooh that's a short step from Godwin's Law isn't it?
Just to back the parent up - there are definitely more ways to contribute than coding. Find your particular niche skill and find how it might help.
* You may not think of yourself as a documenter but can't you post useful bug reports? * You may not think of yourself as a programmer but can't you contribute to user wish lists and feedback? * You may not think of yourself as a teacher but can't you give advice on forums?
I code free software as part of my job and my hobby but I've found other ways to contribute outside of coding as well (I don't do all of these myself):
* Advocacy : tell your friends & help them * Artwork : I recently came up with a couple of additional "playgrounds" for Ktuberling for my kids. They liked them so much I'm considering submitting them to the project. It was really easy - draw the objects in inkscape and edit a text file. Okay you need the graphics skills but just saying it wasn't a programming task * Translations : We participate in a multi-cultural web and sometimes your language won't be the first language of those behind the project. They may have made a sterling effort but the grammar needs tidying or something - you could help with that. * Packaging : some packages are only available in rpm or deb or just source and they need packagers to make them available in other formats * Testing : you can use software so can you not test it?
You've made a good start asking here but really - just go out there and do it. Browse the forums, read the help wanted section on Sourceforge and don't forget you can and should engage with the developers of free software.
> All these arsehats who go on about the Y2K being a load of scare mongering paranoia are the ones who don't have a clue about just how much work went on in 1999 trying to sort the issues out!
Hear hear!
I worked at a large manufacturers during 1999 and was tasked with the Y2K stuff. This basically included six months worth of work fixing the stuff that would have an issue followed by six months of sending replies to customers who were told they had to be concerned by the media and the industry that rose up surrounding Y2K.
Yeah there was an awful lot of largely unappreciated work that went on to make sure Y2K didn't happen but there was also an awful lot of unnecessary hype and faff that created the hysteria that in turn created the backlash when the predicted disaster didn't happen.
In the spirit of Apollo 13 I've always thought of Y2K as a sucessful failure. Successful in that we worked hard and avoided it. Failure in that we waited way too late to do anything about it in the first place and that we let the politicians and the media create the level of hysteria they did.
Slashdot Mirror
> Steel reinforced concrete is called "rebar"
No. That is the shortened name for the steel reinforcement bars placed within the concrete
I know what you mean but steel reinforcement does not support the concrete. It adds tensile strength where the concrete needs it. In an earthquake the building may well be subjected to both in quick succession or simultaneously and so the two can fail unless the building is designed to cope with earthquake-type stresses. That costs extra and that is why the buildings tend to fail.
How flexible are you expecting this stuff to be? I doubt it will give us buildings that bend like reeds thus staircases are not going to be bending enough to be useless. More likely it gives a greater flexibility around joints within specific small tolerances. Thus the building core: stairs etc. remains intact for longer and permits a greater number of people to escape. Most buildings are already designed in this way anyway with the core escape zone built to withstand more than the rest of the building.
I was beginning to wonder if anyone else would point that out. I am truly bored of 3D, I had to endure the crap they threw up in the 80s and this time around it doesn't look like they've learned anything. Sure the stereoscopic technology has improved somewhat but it's still largely un-viewable to those of us with visual impairment (such as colour-blindness) and the way it is being used is still just a gimmick.
Everybody used to use cheques here (UK) but they are now almost completely replaced by plastic and bank transfers.
Why? Because people prefer carrying plastic than cheque books. Because people hate having to pay them in. Because cheques bounce. Because banks charge businesses to both write and receive cheques. Because there is a greater chance of fraud. Because it takes around three days for the money to arrive in your account and even then it is not guaranteed to have cleared.
You forgot to mention: because the retailers stopped accepting cheques or at the very least look at you as if you have just crapped on their carpet when you pull your chequebook out.
Not that I am entirely against the move away from cheques. I have a client who pays by cheque and it's a real PiTA! I don't begrudge them doing so but it sure is easier for me when someone pays by EFT. Even considering that though, there's no way I would want the scheme mentioned in TFS!
It seems I spoke to soon. Bragg and other FAC members were definitely painted in the programme as not wanting to criminalise fans for downloading but further looking on the FAC website revealed this which says..
We the undersigned wish to express our support for Lily Allen in her campaign to alert music lovers to the threat that illegal downloading presents to our industry and to condemn the vitriol that has been directed at her in recent days.
Our meeting also voted overwhelmingly to support a three-strike sanction on those who persistently download illegal files, sanctions to consist of a warning letter, a stronger warning letter and a final sanction of the restriction of the infringer's bandwidth to a level which would render file-sharing of media files impractical while leaving basic email and web access functional.
Signed: ...
Billy Bragg
So it seems they are against cutting people off but are happy with bandwidth choking with no evidence?
Yours,
Consfused.
> Forget the Internet. For about 50p you could post a USB memory stick. It would take about a day to get to the recipient if you sent it first-class.
It doesn't have to be in the post either. Before Sir Tim had his great idea we used to share music on cassette tapes in the playground. If they cut Internet access the sharing will simply move offline and go underground. This of course is where DRM comes in but we all know how well copy protection has worked for the software market.
A few people have commented about the BBC's Panorama programme last night. There was a great quote on there from Billy Bragg (who opposes the DE bill):
"The music industry is thriving. The record industry is dead on its feet"
Every day I have to fire up a Microsoft Access database program to clock in.
Sorry, but after reading that far I couldn't see the rest through the tears of laughter. But thanks for brightening up my Monday.
It is lame to argue that what you steal has no value. It is lamer still to argue that you are less corrupt than those you steal from.
Your argument is a good one and largely I agree with it. Aside from this one glaring error: Copyright infringement is not theft, stealing or any other term related to deprivation of property!
*Sigh* You'd think that a \. user would have figured this one out by now wouldn't you?
Google have tried network infrastructure before - they even made it free to use: http://www.google.com/tisp/
Actually TFA and TFS both seem to have headlines which differ to what Fry said. Fry's remarks seem to focus mostly on the cost of assessing the software not switching (or the software itself). His entire argument seems to be "it will cost money to give it consideration, therefore it's a bad idea." What a plonker!
As others have said the cost of assessment + proprietary licences is likely to be higher than that of assessment + oss licences in both the long and short term. If my government deployed software without fully assessing it I would be concerned. So any software regardless of licence should be assessed and the cost of that assessment is part of the project cost not the solution cost. This guy is either being seriously misquoted or he is a shill.
Yeah I looked there (and at a number of others) too. Bear in mind thought the UKDPS is not a government agency (AFAIK) but simply a service provider. I think that there are few laws on what you may change your name to, it's just that no DPS will do it for you if you want to be change your name to "Lord Microsoft".
You can (again AFAIK) name your child "Lord Microsoft" though, although why you want to beats me.
Having creamed a vast fortune off us by re-selling other people's content (often at a considerable mark-up and with unfair practices), Murdoch is again whining that the world is changing and he can't see how to work the new one to his advantage.
Well guess what? That's one of the reasons it's changing.
> He was never a lord. He took advantage of the fact that it's perfectly legal to change your name by deed poll to anything you want - so he changed his name to Lord David Sutch.
Under UK law you don't need a deed poll to change your name. It's perfectly legal to do so without any formal record. There are restrictions on what you can do if you happen to change your name that way (you cannot stand for parliament for example) and most institutions will require evidence of your change of name but legally, you don't need a deed poll.
With regards changing your name to Lord... you will find that most Deed Poll services will not accept such a change these days (probably because of Sutch). This is similar to the fact that they won't accept "offensive" or trademarked names.
Well one reason I have dual setup is that I am developing something which spec says should be designed for a minimum 1440x900 in mind. My laptop can only manage 1280 so I have a second monitor on dual-head and use it to design the app to make good use of the larger desktop size.
And to small shop cashiers on behalf of your customers:
Put your phone down when you are serving and have the decency to tell us how much the total is.
To continue speaking on your phone while just holding out your hand will lose you customers.
You know, whatever argument you are trying to make will be a lot easier to read if you fix the shift keys on your keyboard.
> > It would be illegal for most of us to distribute a copy.
> It would be perfectly legal if Firefox paid for the license.
But it wouldn't be legal for us to redistribute unless we also paid for the licence. There answer is that an h264 plugin could be made which could then be downloaded (and licenced) by individuals but that defeats the object of HTML5 which is to enable video to be viewed by your site visitors without the need for external plugins. HTML5+h264 is not a lot better than HTML4+flash really, in terms of freedom.
In this case it's not a slashvertisement. That is I (the submitter) have no connection to the project at all. I just thought it was interesting that somebody was trying to produce a PC that a) only uses hardware that has free software drivers and b) has attempted a design-by-consensus approach.
I agree. The Darwin Awards are just not funny. Laughing when somebody slips on a banana skin loses it's edge when they slide to their death if you ask me.
That said I have long enjoyed laughing at heroic failures of the kind listed in this book and its sequel. Some of them are listed here.
e.g.
I recall a great one about an escaped lion being beaten up by an old lady and having to be treated for shock (I guess Dreamworks based the Madagascar scene on it) and also the least successful attempt to light a fire in which the guy burns down the house and his car and garden.
The pages about some topics of nuclear physics were removed from the university textbooks. In some cases the textbooks were collected and destroyed. Knowledge do can be a dangerous thing.
Knowledge isn't necessarily dangerous in and of itself. What you do with said knowledge is more important. Yeah, yeah: "Guns don't kill people rappers do" etc. but are you really trying to make an analogy between censorship and copyright infringement prevention? Regardless of one's views on the censorship you mention (without references BTW) I'm not aware of anyone suggesting U2's music is a threat under anti-terrorism laws?
Now after some secret international consultations the Open Source is about to go this way. MySQL was already bought first by "Sun", then by "Oracle". PHP will be bought before long by "IBM".
And yet MySQL remains free. I have access to the source code and can continue to deploy it as part of free software projects. Sun bought StarOffice and turned it into one of the largest open source projects. IBM is a huge proponent and supporter of free and open source software. What exactly is the concern here?
Network computing will be available only to selected ones, who have an access to the proprietary IDE, like Visual Studio, etc.
Cobblers. Network computing has nothing to do with an IDE. Even if you are referring to some kind of networked development, it's doubtful that the IDE will play a big part. IDEs are generally related to language and OS. Development environment is pretty much irrelevant.
More about these international consultations from this podcast http://feeds.tvo.org/tvo/searchengine from Canada.
Thanks but given the lack of informed view in the rest of your post - I'll pass.
Actually the new World Order is in the making.
Ooh that's a short step from Godwin's Law isn't it?
Just to back the parent up - there are definitely more ways to contribute than coding. Find your particular niche skill and find how it might help.
* You may not think of yourself as a documenter but can't you post useful bug reports?
* You may not think of yourself as a programmer but can't you contribute to user wish lists and feedback?
* You may not think of yourself as a teacher but can't you give advice on forums?
I code free software as part of my job and my hobby but I've found other ways to contribute outside of coding as well (I don't do all of these myself):
* Advocacy : tell your friends & help them
* Artwork : I recently came up with a couple of additional "playgrounds" for Ktuberling for my kids. They liked them so much I'm considering submitting them to the project. It was really easy - draw the objects in inkscape and edit a text file. Okay you need the graphics skills but just saying it wasn't a programming task
* Translations : We participate in a multi-cultural web and sometimes your language won't be the first language of those behind the project. They may have made a sterling effort but the grammar needs tidying or something - you could help with that.
* Packaging : some packages are only available in rpm or deb or just source and they need packagers to make them available in other formats
* Testing : you can use software so can you not test it?
You've made a good start asking here but really - just go out there and do it. Browse the forums, read the help wanted section on Sourceforge and don't forget you can and should engage with the developers of free software.
> All these arsehats who go on about the Y2K being a load of scare mongering paranoia are the ones who don't have a clue about just how much work went on in 1999 trying to sort the issues out!
Hear hear!
I worked at a large manufacturers during 1999 and was tasked with the Y2K stuff. This basically included six months worth of work fixing the stuff that would have an issue followed by six months of sending replies to customers who were told they had to be concerned by the media and the industry that rose up surrounding Y2K.
Yeah there was an awful lot of largely unappreciated work that went on to make sure Y2K didn't happen but there was also an awful lot of unnecessary hype and faff that created the hysteria that in turn created the backlash when the predicted disaster didn't happen.
In the spirit of Apollo 13 I've always thought of Y2K as a sucessful failure. Successful in that we worked hard and avoided it. Failure in that we waited way too late to do anything about it in the first place and that we let the politicians and the media create the level of hysteria they did.
> until we can find some actual data.
Whilst nowehre near complete - this is a start..
https://wiki.koumbit.net/AndroidFreeSoftware
> You know SAAB's history right? Once upon a time SAAB, the car company, was part of the SAAB aircraft manufacturing company.
That's what I was thinking. That and the fact that the acronym is expanded in the TFS "Swedish Aircraft Company" (anglicised)
sheesh