Not the features they describe. Nobody could reproduce Falling Water's blueprints but they could commission someone to do something identical to it.
Besides, it's arbitrary what is and that was my point. Some things are blessed and their creators enjoy government protected monopoly rights, other nearly identical things are not and their creators enjoy day jobs.
Your veiled insults are charming, thank you, they enhance the conversation.
You miss my point about factual books. If we really wanted to protect the source of knowledge we'd work out a way to pay royalties on scientific knowledge. But we don't. It's perfectly legal to take a factual book someone else wrote and rewrite it in your own words, describing all the same things but with slightly different wording.
Further, my point was that copyright was arbitrary, like patents and other 'IP'. The words of a lunatic are protected, but not the findings of a genius. Algorithms aren't patentable, unless you implement them as software. Copyrights allow independent creation of identical works resulting in two people owning separate copyright on their own work. Patents are first-come-first-served. Even if by all accounts someone overheard the inventor describe the machine to a friend yesterday he'd get the patent and the inventor would get nothing.
If I invent something and you write a book about it, your work is protected far longer than mine even though by most reckonings 'Soul of a New Machine' was easier to write than the computer was to design.
What written works would you want if you were trapped on a deserted island? Time magazine (60s and 70s issues) or Wikipedia? One was written for profit and wouldn't have existed without copyright, the other existed as soon as people had a collaborative place to create it.
If we really wanted to reward people how about we take the money spent enforcing copyright, building DRM, etc, and simply give it, as a tax-free gift, to those whose inventions/creations have most enriched our lives in the last year. Obviously it's good for the life of the creator as some works have staying power. Or, we could just monitor what works people had/requested to see what was in demand and divvy it up that way. No monopolies. No ability to keep someone from accessing to work.
What's the link? If it's any good I'll talk about it at least, and may buy it if I really like it.
As for how you make money, why do authors deserve a perpetual income from a one-time creation?
Write a book, get lifelong monopoly rights. Write a song, get lifetime royalties but no control. Build a chair, sell it once. Design a neat house, watch everyone design their own with your neat idea while you get nothing. Do someone's accounting and have no rights to the figures. Spend time and resources compiling a factual text and find all the facts duplicated on someone's website.
It's a little arbitrary what's blessed.
Why do you, by virtue of the specific way you make marks on paper, deserve society footing the bill for your copyright protection?
Without chair-builder's monopoly rights, do carpenters stop making chairs? Without control over similar designs, do architects stop designing houses? Without protection for facts, do news agencies quit reporting?
Some profit motives (like writing games) goes away, but others remain (sponsoring a game to sell console hardware). id Software wouldn't have the incentive to write Quake, but what if Sony had them write it for the Playstation, to encourage gamers to use their product? Sony payed a lot for temporary exclusivity of Grand Theft Auto (not technologically enforced - simply because only the playstation port was released).
You've got the right to hit mute, even if ads are how the publishers make their money in the long run.
Turn it back on and clear the block list. Then block only annoying ads.
They'll be able to see viewing statistics for the ads and they should realize that some users are blocking some of the ads. Blocking the real garbage keeps from rewarding the jerks, and gives the people who play nice a better chance. If they investigate they might find that giant pulsing banners aren't popular...
And your webserver is a stupid piece of hardware that's making unauthorized copies of your copyrighted webpages? You should go sue readers for copyright violation unless they have your signed authorization to view that page. Seriously, riches await you!
Your router gave me permission. I couldn't use it unless it did - it's perfectly capable of recognizing and ignoring outsiders. It gave me an IP and let me on, because you bought one configured to do that.
There are laws that prevent people for asking that old lady for candy until she has none herself?
Oh, no. There actually aren't.
Nobody is doing anything illegal, they're asking someone else's machine for permission and it's being granted. This is how it should work, because if you didn't give them permission, they'd leave.
Yes, because you'd obviously be okay if you could sue the convicted pedophile. They're rich, and of course, they wouldn't be broken by the same overzealous prosecution that broke you...
But arguments are like puppies, and Slashdot is like a unlocked car being driven by thousands of lunatics simultaneously. Both need crazy analogies like a fish needs a a radio!
Stacked access points, yours inside the public one, so all requests go out through the same pipe but your network remains private.
You should statistically analyze your browsing habits and write a web-spider that starts at a Wikipedia article or a google search for a topic you like, and then just randomly follows links from those opened pages in the same pattern you would.
Of course it's for network latency testing. Run a few.
"Oh my god, you gave that man a donut, and your fingerprints are still on it! If he kills the president with it they'll come after you!"
By that logic they should just arrest the CEO of the ISP. After all, if letting someone use your connection to commit a "crime" comes back to you, it should go all the way up. He probably set up the whole business just to have traffic to mask his own vile browsing habits.
If you're worried about the DA and police conspiring to screw you over (not at all uncommon) you need to worry a lot more. They don't need some browsing records, they simply need eyewitness testimony (from a cop, they're incorruptible of course) to charge you with nearly anything, from reckless endangerment to murder.
If that happens they'll throw the book at you for jaywalking, mistakes on your taxes, and anything else they think might stick, regardless of your actual guilt.
You're 100% screwed if they try. You're no more screwed with the public router than without. Doesn't seem like there's much of a reason not to keep it open.
Bullshit. Web-servers authorize you, in the eyes of the law.
If I hacked into your machine and retrieved your index.html file it would be a crime. If I ask your machine if it has a webserver then ask the webserver for the file and it gives it to me, it's not a crime.
There are already laws against 'hacking'. If someone hacked your private wireless you'd have a complaint. If your private wireless malfunctions and grants access to people against your wishes you should take it up with the manufacturer.
If you had a robot at the door saying "Hello, welcome, here is your name-tag, you may stay n-hours (the lease) and consume our resources without asking for more permission", would that still be theft?
You need to realize that your wireless *is* that robot. It answers anyone who asks "can I use your internet connection" and sends them network data so that they may connect.
If you don't want to share it, maybe you shouldn't buy a robot that's so free to share with everyone.
Exactly, and if that protocol, DHCP, tells you how to use that access point we're supposed to think that it did so against the wishes of its owner?
We already have laws against much of 'hacking' a system, so let's keep using that. If we 'hack' their wireless, it could be a crime. If we ask and it lets us in, that's not much of a hack...
Full-blown x86 ASM with all addressing modes, etc, may be a bit complex for a new student. But assembly itself is as simple as it can get, if very tedious.
I'd start by describing simple operations. Load a number, store a number, add or subtract, branch if, etc.
Then walk through a simple program, like to multiply one number by another
set a = # set b = #:start set a = a + b set b = b - 1 jump to start unless b == 0
At that point it's just a discussion of steps. Then you replace it with real instructions and the class can see what a computer actually does. It doesn't "sort" a list, it load a character and another, subtracts one from the other, branching if they aren't zero, and then tries the next character, then the next string, and so forth, until the list is sorted.
By seeing the tiny instructions that things break down into, people can see how complex a sort statement could be, and yet how like lego, it's all just simple things repeated.
Then you explain cycles, how time is measured, and the general issues of making sure (via some restaurant metaphor or something) two things are done at once, and that both then take a same amount of time or someone is left waiting, etc.
At that point you mention big-O notation, explaining in general the concept of O(n), O(n^2), etc. The math isn't as important as the idea that each of these tiny instructions you've shown them takes a finite amount of time and at some point, it's possible to count them in a formulaic way and compare that number to another program.
At this point the students don't even know this is assembly code, or that other methods of programming exist. It's just a concept of simple repeated instructions being used to make computer programs.
Sometime after they're comfortable with the general idea of this, I discuss labels, then subroutines, and then the idea of APIs (collections of useful subroutines) and other languages (more concise ways to describe these instructions).
They might not learn what a register is from this, or how to actually write runnable ASM, but it'll give them a grounding in programming that they'll never get if they jump into Java (or other GCing, no-pointer, type-anal language).
That's about an hour of material, for people who haven't programmed before and don't know anything about it.
Then it's self-documenting AND you can use it elsewhere. Also, if you delay shipping you merely change the date in one place.
Similarly, if you write:
if ((a == b) == true)...
or:
if ((a == b) == MyBooleanTrue)...
that's redundant (and more redundant).
But if you write:
ExpectedResult = true// library in dev, this may change if (a == ExpectedResult)...
it's a good thing.
Variable and constant names are your first line of documentation. A date (2008...) looks much like any other. GoLiveDate does not look like Christmas, even if they are on the same day.
That, and what's the cost to reimplement the system or port the data knowing what you now do?
Even if Outlook/Exchange were totally a black box, you could still write a screen scraper (like UI testing apps do) and export the data as maildir + data which could be stored in a DB, for anything not email related (calendar, etc).
You might have a huge clunky 500kloc business system that is essential to the company. But could it be replaced by an off-the-shelf CRM, issue-tracking, and a much smaller leaned reimplementation of the essential functionality in a modern fashion?
This is an example of throwing good money after bad. They built the system, it barely works with the efforts of a team of geniuses - it MUST be good. Something that good has to be valuable, and hard to create (see the value), so it could never be rewritten in.
It's a joke how some companies do software engineering.
I mentioned writing a nifty test CRUD/RWUD website in Rails and how I thought my clients would like something similar. A coworker cited some 'rails is doomed' article on how rails can't scale and explained how it wasn't right to do the job in less than Java, because it's what banks use, and then he keeps going on about enterprise beans...
Many clients I've worked with seem to have started a project with him.
They pick the safe industry standard language, Java or C++, and a host of third-party additions for both. Then they proceed to UML-diagram their software patterns and it gets really crazy. A hundred-thousand lines of support code later and they're ready for the actual business logic.
It'd be a joke, if it wasn't everywhere. And infectious. Once they've wasted a fortune on development they'll never investigate something cheaper.
In other companies, the sysadmin is also a hobbyist programmer. In a few slack weeks he rewrites the system in Rails, and because hardware has increased ten-thousand fold in terms of speed and storage since the original was spec'ed, it performs better than the original did even if it doesn't "scale" well.
Anyways, it's all dependent on the client being able to see what of their code/data they really need. If they say it's ALL the most precious, every last line of it, they're doomed. It can be really hard for them to admit they might have been wrong all that time.
Nonsense. The "huge" cost of finding replacement software is $0. If it exists, it's most-likely free.
As for retraining users... Dump them on a website they want (sports scores, gossip, etc) and watch them figure it out. Sit them in front of an office app 90% like the one they're "trained" on and watch them be totally unable to find the File menu. These people can't be retrained because they aren't trying. People who do try rarely need more than a 15 minute 'get up to speed' intro.
Power users who write Office macros, script the app in VB, use all the weird features, they'd take a while to switch over. People who just write the odd document, bold stuff, etc, won't even notice unless you freak them out about it.
This claptrap about retraining is the biggest joke. The only people who can't learn are those who don't care to try. If your employees don't care to try to do what you tell them then they aren't very good employees and should be let go. It's not a question of intelligence, a parrot could use most office apps, but rather a question of motivation.
As for the CIO, some are MS happy, but I've rarely seen one that would care if the 95% of the company that hardly needs a computer were using etch-a-sketches as long as the costs were lower. You are providing some sort of evidence for your lower-cost and less-maintenance claims, right?
Wah! Wah! They won't give you everything totally for free.
If you want a clue what a virus is, go catch SARS. You don't have to explicitly link it into your DNA, it does that for you if someone else nearby has it. Then it kills you. Fucking retard.
We have multiple terms for a reason. If you mean self-perpetuating, just say that. You'd still be wrong, as the GPL is just some words in a file. It doesn't do anything, perpetuating or not. Programmers who think RMS's code sharing is a good idea perpetuate it, often even if they aren't using any GPLed code themselves.
Exactly. As long as there's anyone at the top he can be removed. If he's a figure-head, those who control him are the real 'top'. Eventually, people willing to be the head of a tyranny will dwindle, if only because a billion bodies are heaped at the bottom of the stairs.
However, if we *ever* let a displaced tyrant live, the jig is up. It's too bad that Pinochet got to live out his days, for example.
Pft. Their patent is trivial, of course they're trolls.
Sure, they tried to push the tech. And it was so simple Apple didn't need them!
Anyone who patents anything less than a complex new invention is a troll. That our industry is such that nearly everyone who holds a patent is a troll isn't, imho, relevant. We choose our own behavior.
Sorry, but patenting breathing makes you a patent troll, even if you intend to fight Microsoft or some other evil empire with it. Try patenting something that not only isn't blatantly obvious, but would actually be a challenge for someone skilled in the industry to make.
That patent law doesn't require this just means we should work to end *all* patent law. It's worse in software where 'X, on the internet!' is a valid patent, but it's horrible everywhere.
Nor have 'they' taken a sizable number of refugees, or anything. The Palestinians are the Arab world's sacrifice to make Israel appear evil.
Israel should have kept going, conquering a larger piece of the surrounding countries. Then, if bothered about the Palestinians, they could have given them a chunk of Egypt and been done with the whole issue.
The individual Palestinians, many of whom weren't born when this started, are as much victims as the Israelis are, of the Arab governments in the area and their genocidal policies.
But, I'd have voted for military presence in Rwanda, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and others (not Iraq, but now I think the UN is needed there). Just because you're killing your own people is no reason for us to let you stay in power. Frankly, I have absolutely no respect for the self-government of a group who denies that right to others.
Slashdot Mirror
Not the features they describe. Nobody could reproduce Falling Water's blueprints but they could commission someone to do something identical to it.
Besides, it's arbitrary what is and that was my point. Some things are blessed and their creators enjoy government protected monopoly rights, other nearly identical things are not and their creators enjoy day jobs.
Your veiled insults are charming, thank you, they enhance the conversation.
You miss my point about factual books. If we really wanted to protect the source of knowledge we'd work out a way to pay royalties on scientific knowledge. But we don't. It's perfectly legal to take a factual book someone else wrote and rewrite it in your own words, describing all the same things but with slightly different wording.
Further, my point was that copyright was arbitrary, like patents and other 'IP'. The words of a lunatic are protected, but not the findings of a genius. Algorithms aren't patentable, unless you implement them as software. Copyrights allow independent creation of identical works resulting in two people owning separate copyright on their own work. Patents are first-come-first-served. Even if by all accounts someone overheard the inventor describe the machine to a friend yesterday he'd get the patent and the inventor would get nothing.
If I invent something and you write a book about it, your work is protected far longer than mine even though by most reckonings 'Soul of a New Machine' was easier to write than the computer was to design.
What written works would you want if you were trapped on a deserted island? Time magazine (60s and 70s issues) or Wikipedia? One was written for profit and wouldn't have existed without copyright, the other existed as soon as people had a collaborative place to create it.
If we really wanted to reward people how about we take the money spent enforcing copyright, building DRM, etc, and simply give it, as a tax-free gift, to those whose inventions/creations have most enriched our lives in the last year. Obviously it's good for the life of the creator as some works have staying power. Or, we could just monitor what works people had/requested to see what was in demand and divvy it up that way. No monopolies. No ability to keep someone from accessing to work.
I know blueprints are protected, but the features they describe (cosy breakfast nook) are not.
What's the link? If it's any good I'll talk about it at least, and may buy it if I really like it.
As for how you make money, why do authors deserve a perpetual income from a one-time creation?
Write a book, get lifelong monopoly rights. Write a song, get lifetime royalties but no control. Build a chair, sell it once. Design a neat house, watch everyone design their own with your neat idea while you get nothing. Do someone's accounting and have no rights to the figures. Spend time and resources compiling a factual text and find all the facts duplicated on someone's website.
It's a little arbitrary what's blessed.
Why do you, by virtue of the specific way you make marks on paper, deserve society footing the bill for your copyright protection?
Without chair-builder's monopoly rights, do carpenters stop making chairs? Without control over similar designs, do architects stop designing houses? Without protection for facts, do news agencies quit reporting?
Some profit motives (like writing games) goes away, but others remain (sponsoring a game to sell console hardware). id Software wouldn't have the incentive to write Quake, but what if Sony had them write it for the Playstation, to encourage gamers to use their product? Sony payed a lot for temporary exclusivity of Grand Theft Auto (not technologically enforced - simply because only the playstation port was released).
You've got the right to hit mute, even if ads are how the publishers make their money in the long run.
Turn it back on and clear the block list. Then block only annoying ads.
They'll be able to see viewing statistics for the ads and they should realize that some users are blocking some of the ads. Blocking the real garbage keeps from rewarding the jerks, and gives the people who play nice a better chance. If they investigate they might find that giant pulsing banners aren't popular...
And your webserver is a stupid piece of hardware that's making unauthorized copies of your copyrighted webpages? You should go sue readers for copyright violation unless they have your signed authorization to view that page. Seriously, riches await you!
Your router gave me permission. I couldn't use it unless it did - it's perfectly capable of recognizing and ignoring outsiders. It gave me an IP and let me on, because you bought one configured to do that.
Take it up with Linksys.
There are laws that prevent people for asking that old lady for candy until she has none herself?
Oh, no. There actually aren't.
Nobody is doing anything illegal, they're asking someone else's machine for permission and it's being granted. This is how it should work, because if you didn't give them permission, they'd leave.
Comprende DHCP?
Yes, because you'd obviously be okay if you could sue the convicted pedophile. They're rich, and of course, they wouldn't be broken by the same overzealous prosecution that broke you...
But arguments are like puppies, and Slashdot is like a unlocked car being driven by thousands of lunatics simultaneously. Both need crazy analogies like a fish needs a a radio!
I agree about the routers though.
Stacked access points, yours inside the public one, so all requests go out through the same pipe but your network remains private.
You should statistically analyze your browsing habits and write a web-spider that starts at a Wikipedia article or a google search for a topic you like, and then just randomly follows links from those opened pages in the same pattern you would.
Of course it's for network latency testing. Run a few.
"Oh my god, you gave that man a donut, and your fingerprints are still on it! If he kills the president with it they'll come after you!"
By that logic they should just arrest the CEO of the ISP. After all, if letting someone use your connection to commit a "crime" comes back to you, it should go all the way up. He probably set up the whole business just to have traffic to mask his own vile browsing habits.
If you're worried about the DA and police conspiring to screw you over (not at all uncommon) you need to worry a lot more. They don't need some browsing records, they simply need eyewitness testimony (from a cop, they're incorruptible of course) to charge you with nearly anything, from reckless endangerment to murder.
If that happens they'll throw the book at you for jaywalking, mistakes on your taxes, and anything else they think might stick, regardless of your actual guilt.
You're 100% screwed if they try. You're no more screwed with the public router than without. Doesn't seem like there's much of a reason not to keep it open.
Bullshit. Web-servers authorize you, in the eyes of the law.
If I hacked into your machine and retrieved your index.html file it would be a crime. If I ask your machine if it has a webserver then ask the webserver for the file and it gives it to me, it's not a crime.
There are already laws against 'hacking'. If someone hacked your private wireless you'd have a complaint. If your private wireless malfunctions and grants access to people against your wishes you should take it up with the manufacturer.
You're dense.
If you had a robot at the door saying "Hello, welcome, here is your name-tag, you may stay n-hours (the lease) and consume our resources without asking for more permission", would that still be theft?
You need to realize that your wireless *is* that robot. It answers anyone who asks "can I use your internet connection" and sends them network data so that they may connect.
If you don't want to share it, maybe you shouldn't buy a robot that's so free to share with everyone.
Hmmm?
Personal responsibility?
Yours, for the taking.
Exactly, and if that protocol, DHCP, tells you how to use that access point we're supposed to think that it did so against the wishes of its owner?
We already have laws against much of 'hacking' a system, so let's keep using that. If we 'hack' their wireless, it could be a crime. If we ask and it lets us in, that's not much of a hack...
Full-blown x86 ASM with all addressing modes, etc, may be a bit complex for a new student. But assembly itself is as simple as it can get, if very tedious.
:start
I'd start by describing simple operations. Load a number, store a number, add or subtract, branch if, etc.
Then walk through a simple program, like to multiply one number by another
set a = #
set b = #
set a = a + b
set b = b - 1
jump to start unless b == 0
At that point it's just a discussion of steps. Then you replace it with real instructions and the class can see what a computer actually does. It doesn't "sort" a list, it load a character and another, subtracts one from the other, branching if they aren't zero, and then tries the next character, then the next string, and so forth, until the list is sorted.
By seeing the tiny instructions that things break down into, people can see how complex a sort statement could be, and yet how like lego, it's all just simple things repeated.
Then you explain cycles, how time is measured, and the general issues of making sure (via some restaurant metaphor or something) two things are done at once, and that both then take a same amount of time or someone is left waiting, etc.
At that point you mention big-O notation, explaining in general the concept of O(n), O(n^2), etc. The math isn't as important as the idea that each of these tiny instructions you've shown them takes a finite amount of time and at some point, it's possible to count them in a formulaic way and compare that number to another program.
At this point the students don't even know this is assembly code, or that other methods of programming exist. It's just a concept of simple repeated instructions being used to make computer programs.
Sometime after they're comfortable with the general idea of this, I discuss labels, then subroutines, and then the idea of APIs (collections of useful subroutines) and other languages (more concise ways to describe these instructions).
They might not learn what a register is from this, or how to actually write runnable ASM, but it'll give them a grounding in programming that they'll never get if they jump into Java (or other GCing, no-pointer, type-anal language).
That's about an hour of material, for people who haven't programmed before and don't know anything about it.
Have you seen these image browsing bookmarklets?
:)
Many of them are even useful for other things than what they suggest.
2008-03-13 is indeed a magic number.
...
...
// library in dev, this may change ...
Instead of:
if date > "2008...."
write:
GoLiveDate = "2008..."
if date > GoLiveDate
Then it's self-documenting AND you can use it elsewhere. Also, if you delay shipping you merely change the date in one place.
Similarly, if you write:
if ((a == b) == true)
or:
if ((a == b) == MyBooleanTrue)
that's redundant (and more redundant).
But if you write:
ExpectedResult = true
if (a == ExpectedResult)
it's a good thing.
Variable and constant names are your first line of documentation. A date (2008...) looks much like any other. GoLiveDate does not look like Christmas, even if they are on the same day.
That, and what's the cost to reimplement the system or port the data knowing what you now do?
Even if Outlook/Exchange were totally a black box, you could still write a screen scraper (like UI testing apps do) and export the data as maildir + data which could be stored in a DB, for anything not email related (calendar, etc).
You might have a huge clunky 500kloc business system that is essential to the company. But could it be replaced by an off-the-shelf CRM, issue-tracking, and a much smaller leaned reimplementation of the essential functionality in a modern fashion?
This is an example of throwing good money after bad. They built the system, it barely works with the efforts of a team of geniuses - it MUST be good. Something that good has to be valuable, and hard to create (see the value), so it could never be rewritten in.
It's a joke how some companies do software engineering.
I mentioned writing a nifty test CRUD/RWUD website in Rails and how I thought my clients would like something similar. A coworker cited some 'rails is doomed' article on how rails can't scale and explained how it wasn't right to do the job in less than Java, because it's what banks use, and then he keeps going on about enterprise beans...
Many clients I've worked with seem to have started a project with him.
They pick the safe industry standard language, Java or C++, and a host of third-party additions for both. Then they proceed to UML-diagram their software patterns and it gets really crazy. A hundred-thousand lines of support code later and they're ready for the actual business logic.
It'd be a joke, if it wasn't everywhere. And infectious. Once they've wasted a fortune on development they'll never investigate something cheaper.
In other companies, the sysadmin is also a hobbyist programmer. In a few slack weeks he rewrites the system in Rails, and because hardware has increased ten-thousand fold in terms of speed and storage since the original was spec'ed, it performs better than the original did even if it doesn't "scale" well.
Anyways, it's all dependent on the client being able to see what of their code/data they really need. If they say it's ALL the most precious, every last line of it, they're doomed. It can be really hard for them to admit they might have been wrong all that time.
Nonsense. The "huge" cost of finding replacement software is $0. If it exists, it's most-likely free.
As for retraining users... Dump them on a website they want (sports scores, gossip, etc) and watch them figure it out. Sit them in front of an office app 90% like the one they're "trained" on and watch them be totally unable to find the File menu. These people can't be retrained because they aren't trying. People who do try rarely need more than a 15 minute 'get up to speed' intro.
Power users who write Office macros, script the app in VB, use all the weird features, they'd take a while to switch over. People who just write the odd document, bold stuff, etc, won't even notice unless you freak them out about it.
This claptrap about retraining is the biggest joke. The only people who can't learn are those who don't care to try. If your employees don't care to try to do what you tell them then they aren't very good employees and should be let go. It's not a question of intelligence, a parrot could use most office apps, but rather a question of motivation.
As for the CIO, some are MS happy, but I've rarely seen one that would care if the 95% of the company that hardly needs a computer were using etch-a-sketches as long as the costs were lower. You are providing some sort of evidence for your lower-cost and less-maintenance claims, right?
Wah! Wah! They won't give you everything totally for free.
If you want a clue what a virus is, go catch SARS. You don't have to explicitly link it into your DNA, it does that for you if someone else nearby has it. Then it kills you. Fucking retard.
We have multiple terms for a reason. If you mean self-perpetuating, just say that. You'd still be wrong, as the GPL is just some words in a file. It doesn't do anything, perpetuating or not. Programmers who think RMS's code sharing is a good idea perpetuate it, often even if they aren't using any GPLed code themselves.
Exactly. As long as there's anyone at the top he can be removed. If he's a figure-head, those who control him are the real 'top'. Eventually, people willing to be the head of a tyranny will dwindle, if only because a billion bodies are heaped at the bottom of the stairs.
However, if we *ever* let a displaced tyrant live, the jig is up. It's too bad that Pinochet got to live out his days, for example.
Pft. Their patent is trivial, of course they're trolls.
Sure, they tried to push the tech. And it was so simple Apple didn't need them!
Anyone who patents anything less than a complex new invention is a troll. That our industry is such that nearly everyone who holds a patent is a troll isn't, imho, relevant. We choose our own behavior.
Sorry, but patenting breathing makes you a patent troll, even if you intend to fight Microsoft or some other evil empire with it. Try patenting something that not only isn't blatantly obvious, but would actually be a challenge for someone skilled in the industry to make.
That patent law doesn't require this just means we should work to end *all* patent law. It's worse in software where 'X, on the internet!' is a valid patent, but it's horrible everywhere.
Nor have 'they' taken a sizable number of refugees, or anything. The Palestinians are the Arab world's sacrifice to make Israel appear evil.
Israel should have kept going, conquering a larger piece of the surrounding countries. Then, if bothered about the Palestinians, they could have given them a chunk of Egypt and been done with the whole issue.
The individual Palestinians, many of whom weren't born when this started, are as much victims as the Israelis are, of the Arab governments in the area and their genocidal policies.
But, I'd have voted for military presence in Rwanda, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and others (not Iraq, but now I think the UN is needed there). Just because you're killing your own people is no reason for us to let you stay in power. Frankly, I have absolutely no respect for the self-government of a group who denies that right to others.
What possible connection does that have?
'Copy this hunting lodge on your own land.' might be a valid analogy, but yours is not.