I'd rather just be able to drag & drop files I wanted to use on the player onto the player's icon under My Computer, rather than having to use a media player to manage it.
I need it to do a good job of scanning my computer for media.
Why not store all your media in a single location? That's a much simpler solution.
That isn't exactly true. What the US generally requires is laws that match the internationally accepted standards. Under these standards, no patent is enforceable outside of the country it was acquired in (except EU patents which are enforceable in any EU country); if you want to enforce a patent in a country you need to get one from that country's patent office -- that's the way it works. As Monsanto don't have patents in these countries (I believe), there's nothing they can do about it other than apply for a patent... and if it's too long since their work was originally published (which I think it is), then that's tough luck.
Also, the general standard for patent laws excludes the government: the government is allowed to use any patented invention they feel like for their own purposes (e.g. feeding their citizens).
Now copyright's a different matter entirely, but isn't relevant here.
Also note that by the average salary quoted in the article, the average African could more easily afford to take 6 months off work to learn how to use open source software than pay for Windows.
The biggest thing over there - and the one thing every African knows how to use - is the windows based computers at the internet cafes in the larger cities. People walk days just to use them. Saying that they do not have the knowledge to use computers is not only an insult to them and a racist comment in itself, but completely goes against the standing facts that keep Spam filters against Nigerian - yes Nigeria is in Africa - Spam from hitting your inbox.
Oh, please, read the article before commenting. They weren't saying that Africans can't use computers, or anything like that... the general point was that computers are a scarce resource, and that it would take extra time for the people to learn to use open source software rather than the Windows systems they're used to, and therefore it isn't a good idea for them to do it. They're just raising the same old TCO issues again.
Of course in a region where time is worth less money than over here in Europe or in America, the argument doesn't hold anything like as much water, but that's not going to stop them.
The parent comment is a copy of another poster's comment with the sense of every statement reversed. A rather bizarre form of trolling, but trolling nonetheless.
Too true. Only today I fixed an article that described "artex" as a type of wallpaper (it isn't, it's a fluid that sticks to walls or ceilings and dries into a solid surface, similar to plaster but much more versatile). The point is, it's an utterly dull subject. So nobody's bothered correcting the blatant error that a minute's research with google would tell you.
If you disagree, then explain to me how one could connect to a machine behind a NAT device if said machine has initiated *no* connections to the Internet.
Send a source routed packet with the destination in the private range and an intermediate host set to the IP address of the NAT device.
Most NAT devices will drop such a packet, but this is only because they have a firewall integrated and most firewalls drop source routed packets as a potential source of trouble.
Usually it's not that they explicitly charge extra for the static IP address: it's just that they offer a 'home' service and an 'office' service, the only difference between the two is that 'office' has static IP, and there's a price difference between the two services.
Not necessarily. Many ISPs provide non-core services that they don't offer support for; for instance, my ISP runs an NTP server, but the only support they provide is a single web page giving details of its address; if you phone up the tech support people and ask about it, they don't even know it exists.
Because it isn't advertised as part of the provided service, they don't have to support it. An IPv6 gateway would be similar -- all they need to do is put some text somewhere telling you how to access it, and warning you that it's an experimental service. If it stops working sometimes, that's your problem for using an experimental service.
With first serial rights, can a condition appear where the writer's story gets stuck in copyright limbo becasue the magazine never actually publishes it?
Yes, and the same as can happen with film rights (and frequently does -- studios often buy film rights to a story and then never produce the film, whereas it's rarer for a magazine).
And would this be resolved by the one year deal because if they don't publish it after a year you get your story back?
Yes. Most contracts have a time limit on the period during which the magazine has the right to publish the story, after that you'd be free to sell to another magazine. In this case the one year would take effect.
In reality, purchased stories are almost always printed, except when the magazine goes out of business -- at which point, the license may be cancelled anyway.
(S (NP I) (VP 've (VP played (PRT around) (PP with (NP (NP the LinkGrammar parser) (SBAR (WHNP that) (S (NP they) (VP 've (VP based (NP it) (PP on))))))) (PP before)))) [sorry for bad formatting,/. complained about using too much whitespace]
Looks fine to me, and to Link Grammar. The antecedent of "it" isn't clear, sure, but I think it should be fairly obvious from context that it should be "grammar checker" from the previous quoted sentence.
(Note in case you failed to understand because of a lack of information: Link Grammar is a sentence parser, not a grammar checker. The AbiWord developers have added a grammar checker that uses Link Grammar as its parser.)
If you feel that you get the advantages of the GPL "rammed down your throat" at every opportunity, isn't that because you're looking at a lot of GPL code?
No, it's because every time I come to a forum like this and mention that I release software under a BSD-like license, I get GPL advocates telling me that it would be better for me to use the GPL.
If you want to re-use other people's code, you'll have to abide by their licenses anyway - winging about it won't help...
Well, yes. I just wish people would stop ranting and trolling about it. It's not that big a deal...
Well, that's true. However, nobody here was talking about patches to the code, they were talking about integrating existing functions from other systems (e.g. the LinkGrammar parser). This is exactly what is required in order for OpenOffice to do this, so to suggest that they can't because of Sun's licensing restrictions is clearly wrong.
That's an interesting fact, but I don't think they would be able to enforce it. The problem is that RISC OS is a generic term describing what the product is (an Operating System for Reduced Instruction Set Computers). Also, the fact that RISC OS Ltd are called RISC OS Ltd suggests that they have at least some rights to the name.
Also whether or not the source is the same, the API will be the same, and that is still owned by Castle and will need licencing.
APIs are generally held not to be copyrightable. This is how come, e.g. wine can implement a version of the Windows API without MS's consent. It might be possible to patent an API, but I don't believe there are any patents in question here.
Remember, title on stolen goods cannot be transferred by a third party. If you buy a big ticket item on eBay and it turns out to be stolen, the police will confiscate it from you without any reparation.
This is not completely true. See, for example, the Wikipedia article on "bad faith":
Possession of property - The law of detinue allows a person who has lost possession of personal property to regain possession of that property, even if it had been transferred to another after its loss or conversion. However, the court will only order such a remedy if the person with possession of the property obtained it in bad faith - for example that they obtained it for free or for nominal consideration. In other words, a person buying a stereo out of the back of someone's car has no defence to a claim in detinue where a person buying a stereo from a pawnbroker would most likely be able to show that the transaction was made in good faith even if it later turned out the pawnbroker didn't have good title to the goods.
The problem I have with spyware is that so much of it is so slimey. It'll install itself and then put all sorts of trickey checks in to ensure it's not unloaded. It'll have a reinstaller in the services, and in the startup group, and in the "run" section, and add itself to the "run once" section each time it runs, and latch on to explorer and so on.
I do remember trying to remove one particular piece of slime from a Win98 machine and discovering it was being started by the "Load=" line in WIN.INI. WIN.INI, for christ's sake! I was scratching my head for ages over that one, trying to figure out which precise registry key I'd missed...
Having played with the sentence parser that it seems to be based on, I think slashdot's servers would melt within seconds of installing it. It isn't exactly fast. Some sentences took 30 seconds or more to process on my P2-400 (so that's probably about 5 seconds on a decent spec machine -- still *way* too long for installing on a server).
Even though GPL'd code can't be committed to OpenOffice.Org's main LGPL'd code base. Anyone can release a GPL only fork of the office suite with a built in GPL grammer checker.
True enough, but even that's not necessary, as the code referenced is distributed under a BSD-like license. The article submitter's on drugs or something.
The problem with OpenOffice.org is *not* that it's LGPL'd, but rather that for code to be integrated into OpenOffice.org, Sun requires you turn your copyright over to Sun.
No, they don't. See here for details of the procedure used in situations where copyright isn't being handed over, along with a list of modules that have been integrated into OpenOffice without copyright assignment. Basically, you have to tell Sun about it, so that their lawyers can check the module's license over to make sure it's acceptable for inclusion, and then they grab a copy of the source of the module and stick it in CVS. Simple enough.
Slashdot Mirror
I need it to burn CD's
Why not use a CD writing application for this?
I need it to sync with my portable player.
I'd rather just be able to drag & drop files I wanted to use on the player onto the player's icon under My Computer, rather than having to use a media player to manage it.
I need it to do a good job of scanning my computer for media.
Why not store all your media in a single location? That's a much simpler solution.
That isn't exactly true. What the US generally requires is laws that match the internationally accepted standards. Under these standards, no patent is enforceable outside of the country it was acquired in (except EU patents which are enforceable in any EU country); if you want to enforce a patent in a country you need to get one from that country's patent office -- that's the way it works. As Monsanto don't have patents in these countries (I believe), there's nothing they can do about it other than apply for a patent... and if it's too long since their work was originally published (which I think it is), then that's tough luck.
Also, the general standard for patent laws excludes the government: the government is allowed to use any patented invention they feel like for their own purposes (e.g. feeding their citizens).
Now copyright's a different matter entirely, but isn't relevant here.
Also note that by the average salary quoted in the article, the average African could more easily afford to take 6 months off work to learn how to use open source software than pay for Windows.
The biggest thing over there - and the one thing every African knows how to use - is the windows based computers at the internet cafes in the larger cities. People walk days just to use them. Saying that they do not have the knowledge to use computers is not only an insult to them and a racist comment in itself, but completely goes against the standing facts that keep Spam filters against Nigerian - yes Nigeria is in Africa - Spam from hitting your inbox.
Oh, please, read the article before commenting. They weren't saying that Africans can't use computers, or anything like that... the general point was that computers are a scarce resource, and that it would take extra time for the people to learn to use open source software rather than the Windows systems they're used to, and therefore it isn't a good idea for them to do it. They're just raising the same old TCO issues again.
Of course in a region where time is worth less money than over here in Europe or in America, the argument doesn't hold anything like as much water, but that's not going to stop them.
The irony is, in North America, you're unlikely to find Nescafe anywhere except vending machines.
Why is that ironic? Nescafe is very definitely a European thing, and is very common in much of Europe, particularly Britain.
You think of American coffee, you think of overpriced espressos served from expensive-looking bean-to-cup machines... probably in a Starbucks.
The parent comment is a copy of another poster's comment with the sense of every statement reversed. A rather bizarre form of trolling, but trolling nonetheless.
Too true. Only today I fixed an article that described "artex" as a type of wallpaper (it isn't, it's a fluid that sticks to walls or ceilings and dries into a solid surface, similar to plaster but much more versatile). The point is, it's an utterly dull subject. So nobody's bothered correcting the blatant error that a minute's research with google would tell you.
Nothing, but the sentence being compared with would be more like:
"My neighbour's four years old daughter is in the garden," which is clearly wrong.
If you disagree, then explain to me how one could connect to a machine behind a NAT device if said machine has initiated *no* connections to the Internet.
Send a source routed packet with the destination in the private range and an intermediate host set to the IP address of the NAT device.
Most NAT devices will drop such a packet, but this is only because they have a firewall integrated and most firewalls drop source routed packets as a potential source of trouble.
If you can't address a node, how can you attack it?
Source routing.
Usually it's not that they explicitly charge extra for the static IP address: it's just that they offer a 'home' service and an 'office' service, the only difference between the two is that 'office' has static IP, and there's a price difference between the two services.
If they run it, they have to support it.
Not necessarily. Many ISPs provide non-core services that they don't offer support for; for instance, my ISP runs an NTP server, but the only support they provide is a single web page giving details of its address; if you phone up the tech support people and ask about it, they don't even know it exists.
Because it isn't advertised as part of the provided service, they don't have to support it. An IPv6 gateway would be similar -- all they need to do is put some text somewhere telling you how to access it, and warning you that it's an experimental service. If it stops working sometimes, that's your problem for using an experimental service.
With first serial rights, can a condition appear where the writer's story gets stuck in copyright limbo becasue the magazine never actually publishes it?
Yes, and the same as can happen with film rights (and frequently does -- studios often buy film rights to a story and then never produce the film, whereas it's rarer for a magazine).
And would this be resolved by the one year deal because if they don't publish it after a year you get your story back?
Yes. Most contracts have a time limit on the period during which the magazine has the right to publish the story, after that you'd be free to sell to another magazine. In this case the one year would take effect.
In reality, purchased stories are almost always printed, except when the magazine goes out of business -- at which point, the license may be cancelled anyway.
What's wrong with that sentence?
/. complained about using too much whitespace]
Constituent tree:
(S (NP I) (VP 've (VP played (PRT around) (PP with (NP (NP the LinkGrammar parser) (SBAR (WHNP that) (S (NP they) (VP 've (VP based (NP it) (PP on))))))) (PP before)))) [sorry for bad formatting,
Looks fine to me, and to Link Grammar. The antecedent of "it" isn't clear, sure, but I think it should be fairly obvious from context that it should be "grammar checker" from the previous quoted sentence.
(Note in case you failed to understand because of a lack of information: Link Grammar is a sentence parser, not a grammar checker. The AbiWord developers have added a grammar checker that uses Link Grammar as its parser.)
If you feel that you get the advantages of the GPL "rammed down your throat" at every opportunity, isn't that because you're looking at a lot of GPL code?
No, it's because every time I come to a forum like this and mention that I release software under a BSD-like license, I get GPL advocates telling me that it would be better for me to use the GPL.
If you want to re-use other people's code, you'll have to abide by their licenses anyway - winging about it won't help...
Well, yes. I just wish people would stop ranting and trolling about it. It's not that big a deal...
Well, that's true. However, nobody here was talking about patches to the code, they were talking about integrating existing functions from other systems (e.g. the LinkGrammar parser). This is exactly what is required in order for OpenOffice to do this, so to suggest that they can't because of Sun's licensing restrictions is clearly wrong.
But it wont be RISC OS, as Castle own the name.
That's an interesting fact, but I don't think they would be able to enforce it. The problem is that RISC OS is a generic term describing what the product is (an Operating System for Reduced Instruction Set Computers). Also, the fact that RISC OS Ltd are called RISC OS Ltd suggests that they have at least some rights to the name.
Also whether or not the source is the same, the API will be the same, and that is still owned by Castle and will need licencing.
APIs are generally held not to be copyrightable. This is how come, e.g. wine can implement a version of the Windows API without MS's consent. It might be possible to patent an API, but I don't believe there are any patents in question here.
This is not completely true. See, for example, the Wikipedia article on "bad faith":
[emphasis mine]
All failures of the capitalist system are caused by the involvement of too much government.
Not true: the current state of Microsoft, for example, is a failure caused by the involvement of too little government.
The problem I have with spyware is that so much of it is so slimey. It'll install itself and then put all sorts of trickey checks in to ensure it's not unloaded. It'll have a reinstaller in the services, and in the startup group, and in the "run" section, and add itself to the "run once" section each time it runs, and latch on to explorer and so on.
I do remember trying to remove one particular piece of slime from a Win98 machine and discovering it was being started by the "Load=" line in WIN.INI. WIN.INI, for christ's sake! I was scratching my head for ages over that one, trying to figure out which precise registry key I'd missed...
Yes, actually, I do.
;)
Well you're a bonehead th... never mind.
Prefer my brain.
:)
Warning: Sentence fragment.
Sorry, but that's a perfectly valid sentence. It might not mean what the OP wanted it to mean, but that doesn't change the fact that it's just fine.
Having played with the sentence parser that it seems to be based on, I think slashdot's servers would melt within seconds of installing it. It isn't exactly fast. Some sentences took 30 seconds or more to process on my P2-400 (so that's probably about 5 seconds on a decent spec machine -- still *way* too long for installing on a server).
Even though GPL'd code can't be committed to OpenOffice.Org's main LGPL'd code base. Anyone can release a GPL only fork of the office suite with a built in GPL grammer checker.
True enough, but even that's not necessary, as the code referenced is distributed under a BSD-like license. The article submitter's on drugs or something.
The problem with OpenOffice.org is *not* that it's LGPL'd, but rather that for code to be integrated into OpenOffice.org, Sun requires you turn your copyright over to Sun.
No, they don't. See here for details of the procedure used in situations where copyright isn't being handed over, along with a list of modules that have been integrated into OpenOffice without copyright assignment. Basically, you have to tell Sun about it, so that their lawyers can check the module's license over to make sure it's acceptable for inclusion, and then they grab a copy of the source of the module and stick it in CVS. Simple enough.