Why doesn't Warner Brothers sue the MPAA?
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NYT On DeCSS Case
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· Score: 5
"Without the guarantee of that protection, a Warner Brothers executive testified in court, the industry would never have begun releasing movies in digital format."
Then why doesn't Warner Brothers sue the MPAA (or dvdcca) for selling them a dodgy protection mechism that could never have worked? They did get that "guarantee" they're talking about, right?
No matter how hard you try, you can't prevent people from making perfect copies of digital data. You can however prevent people from reading it if you have a brain to use encryption properly (why the heck are they making keys available before people are allowed to use them?)
This was intentional but it can still be a problem
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Hole in GNU GPL?
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· Score: 1
At one of RMS's talks, he more or less said that this was intentional and that it would be wrong, or too much to ask for people or companies to release their modifications if they were only using it internally.
To a certain extent I have no problem with this. What they do internally is their business. But certain types of programs are affected in a much more serious way. Consider a piece of software that allows website builders to easily create dynamic content. This type of software would be useful for running online shopping sites. If you want to build an online shopping site, the attractive thing to do is take this free piece of software as a base and tailor it to your needs - and of course, don't let the competition have all your code enhancements - from a business perspective that would be silly. So, here we have a piece of software under the GPL that will encourage people to keep their code enhancements to themselves. How unfortunate for the author.
The problem is that the GPL only prevents the company from distributing their modifications. They are not distributing them, but they are letting users connect to their server and execute code containing the modifications (which is no longer completely "internal"). Shouldn't that situation be protected by the GPL as well?
I forgot to mention that listing files in a UNIX directory requires 3 key strokes, all with the same finger:
"l" "s" *enter*
So, even if you alias "l" -> "ls", you still have to jump to the *enter* key with the same finger.
My point about vi is not about typing the name of the vi executable, but using all the vi commands within the program.
Vi is an incredibly powerful editor but before you can experience the power, you need to train your fingers use all key commands in command mode and colon mode. Vi is operated entirely from the keyboard. What I found when I switched to Dvorak is that even though I knew where all the Dvorak keys were, my fingers still went for the old key locations. For example, h-j-k-l are the standard vi cursor keys which are conveniently located side by side on a qwerty keyboard. On a dvorak keyboard they are scattered all over the place.
There are hundreds of keystroke commands for vi that I've stored in my fast access memory, but they need to be re-learnt for a dvorak keyboard. This is difficult, besides, the vi keystrokes are optimised for the qwerty keyboard. Even if you learn them for dvorak, they don't feel optimal.
Another problem I found when programming is that the "{" and "}" keys are too far away, and these two keys are used a LOT in popular programming languages such as Java, perl, C, C++ etc.
But apart from all that, the reasons I gave "for" using a dvorak keyboard lead me to want to switch to it again at some point in the future. But unfortunately, not until I give up my beloved UNIX command line.
I learnt dvorak once and was surprised to reach a speed of 60wpm in less than three weeks (my qwerty speed is much faster but that's because I've practiced it more). It is definately much more efficient for typing English sentences, but not much good for programming (see below).
The reason you can type English sentences much faster is because dvorak was designed to take advantage of the way English words are spelt:
1. All vowels are on the left side of the keyboard and nearly all consonants are on the right side of the keyboard. This means that (compared with qwerty) if a particular character is typed with the left hand, the next character in the word is more likely to be typed by the right hand. By alternating hands more frequently, this gives the idle hand more time to move to where its next character will be.
2. All the common letters are on the home row so you don't have to move your hands as much. For example, look at the layout of the keyboard: http://www.ccsi.com/~mbrooks/dvorak/layout.html and work out how to type the word "the". Then compare with qwerty. I picked a small word because that makes the exercise easier. Pick a larger word if you wish and count how many times you need to stretch beyond the home row.
3. Even when you do need to stretch beyond the home row, there are easy regions to stretch to and hard regions to stretch to. Dvorak puts all the rare characters in the hard to reach places.
Qwerty, on the other hand seems to have been designed to make it easy to type the word "qwerty". If you're a one fingered typist.
But back to dvorak and UNIX hackers. I said before that dvorak makes it easy to type English sentences. Anyone who programs knows that programming doesn't involve many English sentences, or even English words. The UNIX command line is full of cryptic commands with all the vowels taken out. For example "ls" on the qwerty keyboard is easy to type because you alternate hands: "l" in the right hand, and "s" in the left. Because dvorak assumes that most words have consonants separated by vowels, you end up having to type all of "ls" with one hand, and unfortunately with the same finger in this case. Since this is one of the most popular commands in UNIX, this can be irritating.
For the moment, I have switched back to qwerty because too many things in UNIX are difficult to do with a dvorak keyboard (especially vi!). I plan to switch back to dvorak again in the future once I have an operating system as powerful as UNIX/Linux but which doesn't rely on typing in cryptic commands. For example, www.jos.org, a Java based operating system (shameless plug!).
What I look for in a license is the ability to freely share code between different projects. I release my code under the GPL because that gives me a huge amount of code to share with.
The TGPL restricts you from reusing existing GPL code. If you redistribute your work under GPL, then you can reuse existing GPL code but you also lose any benifits provided by the TGPL.
I do think the free software community needs a mechanism to help programmers get payed for what they're doing. It is clear that the free software community is not self supporting - free software programmers are either supported by paying jobs, or by parents who have paying jobs.
The TGPL is a good attempt at supporting free software developers but I think a better solution would support both of these goals:
1. to help free software programmers make well earned money 2. to allow code to be freely shared between different projects
It is no surprise that the TGPL overlooks the second goal - both goals are at opposite ends of human motivation. But a balance should be possible. Actually, SourceXChange, CoSource and the Free Software Bazaar are evidence that it is possible. Even though these already exist, it would be interesting to see something like TGPL that supports goal (2).
That was a personal attack on Sengan and I don't think it should have been posted publicly. Did you know that you can hide all articles posted by Sengan in your user preferences?
1. Normal reading at high speeds 2. Dynamic reading
The first one can give you speeds of up to 1000 wpm (words per minutes) but usually around 700 wpm. The average reader reads at around 250 wpm. This technique is simple enough that anyone can do it:
* First, move your finger under each line as you read it. This stops you from pausing or rereading sentences because you think you didn't understand what you just read. 99.999% of the time you _will_ understand what you just read if you keep reading on. And, you will understand it _better_ if you don't pause because your mind has less time to wander. In other words, your mind is forced to stay on the job.
* Anticipate what is coming next. Even when you are forced to read fast (by following your finger), there are still times when your mind can wander. If you are constantly thinking of what will come next, it will also help to keep your mind on the job. It can be a fun skill to practice.
* Practice moving your finger much faster than normal. Then slow down to your normal speed. You will find that what you think is your normal speed is actualy twice the speed that you usually do. If you never give yourself the chance to read at these speeds, you will never get good at it (obvious huh?)
* Don't say the words in your head as you read them. This is difficult to try, so don't. You'll find that when you read at fast enough speeds, you won't have time to say each word.
The other technique for speed reading requires special training such as Evelyn Wood, but here's the general idea (basically what Evelyn Wood teaches):
When you are taught to read, you are trained to focus on one word at a time. By the time you become an adult, you don't even realise that you can focus on much wider areas than that. It is possible to focus on a whole paragraph in one go. The strange thing is that when you're looking about your surroundings, you are expanding your focus, but as soon as you look at a book, your focus automatically reduces itself to a single word (because that's what it has been trained to do). Amazingly, if you turn your book upside down so that you don't recognize any of the words, your focus will expand again, you will even notice things on either side of the book you're looking at. Of course, when you turn your book up the right way again, all you can see is one word...
The Evelyn Wood training course tries to un-train your eyes so that they allow a much broader focus. A broader focus allows you to move down the page quicker, but your brain must also be trained to recognise whole groups of words at a time to keep up with the speed that you're moving down the page. They teach this too. This technique gives you around 2000 wpm (higher if you pratice) which is equivalent to reading a page in 10 to 20 seconds (depending on the size of the page).
I hear that the fastest reader in the world reads at 25000 words per minute and he has is own speed reading course. Has anyone taken it? ("Mega Speed Reading" I think it was called)
Slashdot Mirror
"Without the guarantee of that protection, a Warner Brothers executive testified in court, the industry would never have begun releasing movies in digital format."
Then why doesn't Warner Brothers sue the MPAA (or dvdcca) for selling them a dodgy protection mechism that could never have worked? They did get that "guarantee" they're talking about, right?
No matter how hard you try, you can't prevent people from making perfect copies of digital data. You can however prevent people from reading it if you have a brain to use encryption properly (why the heck are they making keys available before people are allowed to use them?)
http://www.progsoc.uts.edu.au/~rheise/
At one of RMS's talks, he more or less said that this was intentional and that it would be wrong, or too much to ask for people or companies to release their modifications if they were only using it internally.
To a certain extent I have no problem with this. What they do internally is their business. But certain types of programs are affected in a much more serious way. Consider a piece of software that allows website builders to easily create dynamic content. This type of software would be useful for running online shopping sites. If you want to build an online shopping site, the attractive thing to do is take this free piece of software as a base and tailor it to your needs - and of course, don't let the competition have all your code enhancements - from a business perspective that would be silly. So, here we have a piece of software under the GPL that will encourage people to keep their code enhancements to themselves. How unfortunate for the author.
The problem is that the GPL only prevents the company from distributing their modifications. They are not distributing them, but they are letting users connect to their server and execute code containing the modifications (which is no longer completely "internal"). Shouldn't that situation be protected by the GPL as well?
I forgot to mention that listing files in a UNIX directory requires 3 key strokes, all with the same finger:
"l"
"s"
*enter*
So, even if you alias "l" -> "ls", you still have to jump to the *enter* key with the same finger.
My point about vi is not about typing the name of the vi executable, but using all the vi commands within the program.
Vi is an incredibly powerful editor but before you can experience the power, you need to train your fingers use all key commands in command mode and colon mode. Vi is operated entirely from the keyboard. What I found when I switched to Dvorak is that even though I knew where all the Dvorak keys were, my fingers still went for the old key locations. For example, h-j-k-l are the standard vi cursor keys which are conveniently located side by side on a qwerty keyboard. On a dvorak keyboard they are scattered all over the place.
There are hundreds of keystroke commands for vi that I've stored in my fast access memory, but they need to be re-learnt for a dvorak keyboard. This is difficult, besides, the vi keystrokes are optimised for the qwerty keyboard. Even if you learn them for dvorak, they don't feel optimal.
Another problem I found when programming is that the "{" and "}" keys are too far away, and these two keys are used a LOT in popular programming languages such as Java, perl, C, C++ etc.
But apart from all that, the reasons I gave "for" using a dvorak keyboard lead me to want to switch to it again at some point in the future. But unfortunately, not until I give up my beloved UNIX command line.
I learnt dvorak once and was surprised to reach a speed of 60wpm in less than three weeks (my qwerty speed is much faster but that's because I've practiced it more). It is definately much more efficient for typing English sentences, but not much good for programming (see below).
The reason you can type English sentences much faster is because dvorak was designed to take advantage of the way English words are spelt:
1. All vowels are on the left side of the keyboard and nearly all consonants are on the right side of the keyboard. This means that (compared with qwerty) if a particular character is typed with the left hand, the next character in the word is more likely to be typed by the right hand. By alternating hands more frequently, this gives the idle hand more time to move to where its next character will be.
2. All the common letters are on the home row so you don't have to move your hands as much. For example, look at the layout of the keyboard: http://www.ccsi.com/~mbrooks/dvorak/layout.html and work out how to type the word "the". Then compare with qwerty. I picked a small word because that makes the exercise easier. Pick a larger word if you wish and count how many times you need to stretch beyond the home row.
3. Even when you do need to stretch beyond the home row, there are easy regions to stretch to and hard regions to stretch to. Dvorak puts all the rare characters in the hard to reach places.
Qwerty, on the other hand seems to have been designed to make it easy to type the word "qwerty". If you're a one fingered typist.
But back to dvorak and UNIX hackers. I said before that dvorak makes it easy to type English sentences. Anyone who programs knows that programming doesn't involve many English sentences, or even English words. The UNIX command line is full of cryptic commands with all the vowels taken out. For example "ls" on the qwerty keyboard is easy to type because you alternate hands: "l" in the right hand, and "s" in the left. Because dvorak assumes that most words have consonants separated by vowels, you end up having to type all of "ls" with one hand, and unfortunately with the same finger in this case. Since this is one of the most popular commands in UNIX, this can be irritating.
For the moment, I have switched back to qwerty because too many things in UNIX are difficult to do with a dvorak keyboard (especially vi!). I plan to switch back to dvorak again in the future once I have an operating system as powerful as UNIX/Linux but which doesn't rely on typing in cryptic commands. For example, www.jos.org, a Java based operating system (shameless plug!).
:-)
--
Ryan Heise
What I look for in a license is the ability to freely share code between different projects. I release my code under the GPL because that gives me a huge amount of code to share with.
The TGPL restricts you from reusing existing GPL code. If you redistribute your work under GPL, then you can reuse existing GPL code but you also lose any benifits provided by the TGPL.
I do think the free software community needs a mechanism to help programmers get payed for what they're doing. It is clear that the free software community is not self supporting - free software programmers are either supported by paying jobs, or by parents who have paying jobs.
The TGPL is a good attempt at supporting free software developers but I think a better solution would support both of these goals:
1. to help free software programmers make well earned money
2. to allow code to be freely shared between different projects
It is no surprise that the TGPL overlooks the second goal - both goals are at opposite ends of human motivation. But a balance should be possible. Actually, SourceXChange, CoSource and the Free Software Bazaar are evidence that it is possible. Even though these already exist, it would be interesting to see something like TGPL that supports goal (2).
That was a personal attack on Sengan and I don't think it should have been posted publicly. Did you know that you can hide all articles posted by Sengan in your user preferences?
There are two types of speed reading:
1. Normal reading at high speeds
2. Dynamic reading
The first one can give you speeds of up to 1000 wpm (words per minutes) but usually around 700 wpm. The average reader reads at around 250 wpm. This technique is simple enough that anyone can do it:
* First, move your finger under each line as you read it. This stops you from pausing or rereading sentences because you think you didn't understand what you just read. 99.999% of the time you _will_ understand what you just read if you keep reading on. And, you will understand it _better_ if you don't pause because your mind has less time to wander. In other words, your mind is forced to stay on the job.
* Anticipate what is coming next. Even when you are forced to read fast (by following your finger), there are still times when your mind can wander. If you are constantly thinking of what will come next, it will also help to keep your mind on the job. It can be a fun skill to practice.
* Practice moving your finger much faster than normal. Then slow down to your normal speed. You will find that what you think is your normal speed is actualy twice the speed that you usually do. If you never give yourself the chance to read at these speeds, you will never get good at it (obvious huh?)
* Don't say the words in your head as you read them. This is difficult to try, so don't. You'll find that when you read at fast enough speeds, you won't have time to say each word.
The other technique for speed reading requires special training such as Evelyn Wood, but here's the general idea (basically what Evelyn Wood teaches):
When you are taught to read, you are trained to focus on one word at a time. By the time you become an adult, you don't even realise that you can focus on much wider areas than that. It is possible to focus on a whole paragraph in one go. The strange thing is that when you're looking about your surroundings, you are expanding your focus, but as soon as you look at a book, your focus automatically reduces itself to a single word (because that's what it has been trained to do). Amazingly, if you turn your book upside down so that you don't recognize any of the words, your focus will expand again, you will even notice things on either side of the book you're looking at. Of course, when you turn your book up the right way again, all you can see is one word...
The Evelyn Wood training course tries to un-train your eyes so that they allow a much broader focus. A broader focus allows you to move down the page quicker, but your brain must also be trained to recognise whole groups of words at a time to keep up with the speed that you're moving down the page. They teach this too. This technique gives you around 2000 wpm (higher if you pratice) which is equivalent to reading a page in 10 to 20 seconds (depending on the size of the page).
I hear that the fastest reader in the world reads at 25000 words per minute and he has is own speed reading course. Has anyone taken it? ("Mega Speed Reading" I think it was called)