If you are writing software for a closed source product, you shouldn't incorporate any GPLed source code into your product, period.
That depends whether the product is to be distributed, I believe. IANAL, but from my reading of the GPL, it's fine to use GPLed software in an effectively closed product as long as you don't distribute it in source or binary form.
So let me get this straight, in order to avoid having to undergo free registration to download the file, you're offering a torrent of it that we can't download without free registration.
The interesting bit isn't what he has to say about Java. It's the fact that he's the last person on earth who thinks 'if programming languages were cars' is a novel and useful analogy.
Handles Word files fairly well, though not perfectly. As you'd expect, the more complex the file, the less perfectly it handles it. Yes, it can handle both import and export.
Simple. Trap the virus, release relevant patches, then after a short grace period, re-engineer the virus to snoop the user's credit card details and make a small payment into my bank account on a daily basis, causing the fine to continue until the security hole is fixed.
The BBC story on the subject also attributes religious feelings in churches to the sound produced by the infrasound generated by the largest organ pipes in many churches and cathedrals.
That can generally be addressed with the system itself, though. Just using the first letter of each word in a sequence may be weak, but don't do that. Use the house number of the last three places you lived to select which letter to take from each word. Use the character to the right of the first letter on the keyboard. Hell, even go with the simple system used in my original post, which takes the first letter of each word (as defined by me) in the artist's name, then the first letter of the first word of the song, the second letter of the second, and so on. Words which I think should be capitalised due to the rhythm get capital letters, the third and fourth consonants are converted to numerals using a system based on one used for memory tricks in a book I once read. That's the great thing about a system like this - you can write the source information out in plaintext, but the chances of anyone working out exactly what the password is from that is pretty much zero. My housemate has a full list of his password seeds sitting on his desktop in plain text, but without the encoding process to get to the password, I'm probably better off just guessing at random.
For what it's worth, if the brief analysis I've done on user passwords at work is anything to go by, your password will automatically not be among the first ones broken, as long as it isn't 1234.
What's so hard about remembering passwords?
on
Users feel Password Rage
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Build a system for generating passwords from other information that's easier to remember. Books and their authors. Songs. Quotes from your favourite movies. American Football players. It's easy enough to build a quick and easy set of rules for which letters should be capitalised, where numbers should appear and so on. And it's a hell of a lot easier for me to remember that my root password is American Pie than it is to remember that it's dm7aO2Eg, or that my password for the database server at work is One Week rather than bl31eOWs. There's a huge range of subject matter to pick from, and although the passwords aren't random and do have patterns that make them slightly weaker than genuinely random , they're a damn sight better than the ones most people use, they won't succumb to a dictionary attack, they're easy to remember, and they meet the requirements set down by any password security checker.
Yes, but that was in the past, which is a different country, and besides, Babbage is dead.
These days, if you demonstrate a new type of potato peeler in England, people will look on unimpressed, but probably use it if it's really that much better. If you demonstrate it in the US, you'll be sued for patent infringement by upwards of seventeen companies with overly broad patents ('handled device for doing stuff in the kitchen').
That depends why you're shutting down the websites (or, as in this case, mostly adding an extra page to explain the patent problem). Obviously your MEP isn't going to be jumping up in outrage at the fact that the Gimp website is showing a different homepage for the day. This is about spreading awareness among people who are going to be hit by software patents, but don't yet know it.
The idea that the best way to protest is by doing absolutely nothing (making sure that websites that are up every day stay up), which you're suggesting, is frankly laughable. What you're suggesting is only of any relevance if we wait until the decisions have been made and don't bother protesting until we're directly effected by the new laws - and until the sites that we're trying to keep up are illegal. Call me old-fashioned if you will, but despite anything Lord Rees-Mogg might have to say (and judging by the synopsis of the book at Amazon he has many offensive and misguided things to say) attempting to address problems proactively is far better than merely being reactive.
If the politicians have a problem with how we choose to provide our services to the world, then if the laws back them up, they can arrest us, confiscate our property, drive our companies out of business or whatever. We've already seen some of this happen in the US. I'd rather try to avoid that in Europe, if you don't mind.
Hmm. If everything can have a unique ID, and an RFID tag to go with it, then my cunning solution is to insist that each RFID tag has its own unique ID (and tag) as well. Privacy intrusion defeated by the power of recursion!
Slashdot has a large contingent of non-American readers. It's News for Nerds, not News for Nerds Who Live in the United States of America. Stories about Brazil's attitude to open source and the UK's plans for built-in monitoring of cars make the front page, so why not this sort of demonstration?
Anyway, plenty of people outside the US have protested against the many moronic decisions taken there in recent years (DMCA, Skylarov etc.) - I'm sure there are plenty of people in the US who'd like to reciprocate. Stupid software laws are bad wherever they're passed.
Amen to that. Not to mention the fact that this isn't even the first time this stale old 'joke' has been rolled out for this story. Redundant and unfunny.
Except, of course, for the fact that you're excluding >50% of the voting population, on grounds of gender and/or sexual preference. Not particularly democratic...
Slashdot Mirror
That depends whether the product is to be distributed, I believe. IANAL, but from my reading of the GPL, it's fine to use GPLed software in an effectively closed product as long as you don't distribute it in source or binary form.
So let me get this straight, in order to avoid having to undergo free registration to download the file, you're offering a torrent of it that we can't download without free registration.
I see a flaw in the logic somewhere...
Because Google doesn't cope well with vagueness. Try searching for "Single female geeks with body temperature of 40C or greater".
The interesting bit isn't what he has to say about Java. It's the fact that he's the last person on earth who thinks 'if programming languages were cars' is a novel and useful analogy.
As is pointed out in the comments to the blog, you can always use SQLJ.
The article reads:
This should instead read:
Hope this helps.
Forget that - sue the victims (or their families, I guess) for presenting the kids with such a tempting target.
Handles Word files fairly well, though not perfectly. As you'd expect, the more complex the file, the less perfectly it handles it. Yes, it can handle both import and export.
Simple. Trap the virus, release relevant patches, then after a short grace period, re-engineer the virus to snoop the user's credit card details and make a small payment into my bank account on a daily basis, causing the fine to continue until the security hole is fixed.
A plan with no drawbacks, I feel.
While we're on the topic of religious software wars, you might want to try Links instead of Lynx.
Although you should probably also bear in mind that the default installation of the google toolbar contains spyware.
The BBC story on the subject also attributes religious feelings in churches to the sound produced by the infrasound generated by the largest organ pipes in many churches and cathedrals.
United States 14.24;
England and Wales 0.41;
Japan 0.05
And the sales figures for GTA: Vice City
United States: 5,221,935
England and Wales: 800,000 (extrapolating from full UK figures)
Japan: 0
Which just goes to prove that Take 2/Rockstar have a lot to answer for, the murdering scum.
That can generally be addressed with the system itself, though. Just using the first letter of each word in a sequence may be weak, but don't do that. Use the house number of the last three places you lived to select which letter to take from each word. Use the character to the right of the first letter on the keyboard. Hell, even go with the simple system used in my original post, which takes the first letter of each word (as defined by me) in the artist's name, then the first letter of the first word of the song, the second letter of the second, and so on. Words which I think should be capitalised due to the rhythm get capital letters, the third and fourth consonants are converted to numerals using a system based on one used for memory tricks in a book I once read. That's the great thing about a system like this - you can write the source information out in plaintext, but the chances of anyone working out exactly what the password is from that is pretty much zero. My housemate has a full list of his password seeds sitting on his desktop in plain text, but without the encoding process to get to the password, I'm probably better off just guessing at random.
For what it's worth, if the brief analysis I've done on user passwords at work is anything to go by, your password will automatically not be among the first ones broken, as long as it isn't 1234.
Build a system for generating passwords from other information that's easier to remember. Books and their authors. Songs. Quotes from your favourite movies. American Football players. It's easy enough to build a quick and easy set of rules for which letters should be capitalised, where numbers should appear and so on. And it's a hell of a lot easier for me to remember that my root password is American Pie than it is to remember that it's dm7aO2Eg, or that my password for the database server at work is One Week rather than bl31eOWs. There's a huge range of subject matter to pick from, and although the passwords aren't random and do have patterns that make them slightly weaker than genuinely random , they're a damn sight better than the ones most people use, they won't succumb to a dictionary attack, they're easy to remember, and they meet the requirements set down by any password security checker.
Yes, but that was in the past, which is a different country, and besides, Babbage is dead.
These days, if you demonstrate a new type of potato peeler in England, people will look on unimpressed, but probably use it if it's really that much better. If you demonstrate it in the US, you'll be sued for patent infringement by upwards of seventeen companies with overly broad patents ('handled device for doing stuff in the kitchen').
That depends why you're shutting down the websites (or, as in this case, mostly adding an extra page to explain the patent problem). Obviously your MEP isn't going to be jumping up in outrage at the fact that the Gimp website is showing a different homepage for the day. This is about spreading awareness among people who are going to be hit by software patents, but don't yet know it.
The idea that the best way to protest is by doing absolutely nothing (making sure that websites that are up every day stay up), which you're suggesting, is frankly laughable. What you're suggesting is only of any relevance if we wait until the decisions have been made and don't bother protesting until we're directly effected by the new laws - and until the sites that we're trying to keep up are illegal. Call me old-fashioned if you will, but despite anything Lord Rees-Mogg might have to say (and judging by the synopsis of the book at Amazon he has many offensive and misguided things to say) attempting to address problems proactively is far better than merely being reactive.
If the politicians have a problem with how we choose to provide our services to the world, then if the laws back them up, they can arrest us, confiscate our property, drive our companies out of business or whatever. We've already seen some of this happen in the US. I'd rather try to avoid that in Europe, if you don't mind.
Hmm. If everything can have a unique ID, and an RFID tag to go with it, then my cunning solution is to insist that each RFID tag has its own unique ID (and tag) as well. Privacy intrusion defeated by the power of recursion!
Slashdot has a large contingent of non-American readers. It's News for Nerds, not News for Nerds Who Live in the United States of America. Stories about Brazil's attitude to open source and the UK's plans for built-in monitoring of cars make the front page, so why not this sort of demonstration?
Anyway, plenty of people outside the US have protested against the many moronic decisions taken there in recent years (DMCA, Skylarov etc.) - I'm sure there are plenty of people in the US who'd like to reciprocate. Stupid software laws are bad wherever they're passed.
But just imagine a BeowAAAAAAAAARRRRGGHH!
Ooh, now I can sing soprano again...
A wonderful idea, other than for the fact that Wine Is Not an Emulator. From the Wine FAQ:
We got a socialist government? When did that happen - I thought New Labour were still in power...
Amen to that. Not to mention the fact that this isn't even the first time this stale old 'joke' has been rolled out for this story. Redundant and unfunny.
Except, of course, for the fact that you're excluding >50% of the voting population, on grounds of gender and/or sexual preference. Not particularly democratic...
So you still have the receipt for your toilet? Excellent. Care to scan it and make it available for Slashdot readers everywhere? :)