Not for a project the size of this, besides which it's more important that the threat exists than anything else.
And if I forked OpenBSD without building a substantial supportive community first, "SquigBSD" wouldn't have the support needed to be viable in the long term. There's simply no way I could do anything like a hundredth of the coding and maintenance necessary.
But in any case, the important issue is that a fork be possible, a fork that would be viable and would take the momentum away from those who are doing so much damage at the moment. The threat of such a thing coming to pass would, hopefully, do the job of reining in the insane behavior we're seeing at the moment.
What have you done to justify such a somber and pointlessly judgmental outlook on such a highly successful and respected project?
Turned on the TV and watched.
Do you really think you can only judge the damage being done to a project's credibility if you're living on some gold lined cloud somewhere?
Theo is actively alienating pretty much the whole of the non-BSD free software community. He's lying, he's insulting, and he's making outrageous claims that defy logic and reason. Theo is also the most prominent figure associated with OpenBSD, and even if he wasn't, his actions are backed by the bulk of the OpenBSD community.
First off, Theo is the FOUNDER of OpenBSD, and the FOUNDER of the OpenSSH project.
You don't get it, do you? This is WHY it's so damaging to OpenBSD and the free software community in general.
What do you think would have happened to the USA had President George Washington decided to invade Canada and Mexico? How long would the Union have survived, or remained viable as a free, democratic, republic?
Try reading the rest of the sentence you snipped. Projects don't fork themselves, for a viable fork to exist it must have an organized body of people behind it. And for the threat of a fork to exist, there must be a visibly organized body of people stating they'll back a fork if necessary.
IS-95/CDMA2000 has supported R-UIMs, the Qualcomm equivalent of the SIM card, for about five years now, but Verizon doesn't issue R-UIMs. They can provide them, they choose not to.
I see the BSD trolls are out modding down anything that points out how ridiculous they're making themselves look. What the hell is going? How did OpenBSD sink this low?
To paraphrase you "I don't really care what you say, I'm going to randomly quote a paragraph from what you said and then write about something else."
I mean, in all seriousness, what the hell does anything you wrote have to do with either the paragraph you quoted or anything else I wrote in the comment you're replying to?
This is something I'm finding from the pro-Theo camp, they're not interested in how utterly insane the BSD community looking at the moment thanks to rants like Theo's, they're just blindly lashing out at anyone with a dissenting view. They're absolutely not interested in addressing the fact that the OpenBSD team is looking increasingly ridiculous, increasingly unstable, and definitely not a group anyone in their right mind would trust.
What's the basis for OP's claim that some in the BSD license side are claiming that the BSD is "viral"? "Viral," in the context of the GPL, means that derivative works of an original, GPL-licensed work, must also be licensed under the GPL.
That's EXACTLY what Theo and others have been arguing is the case with the BSD license - that once something is licensed under the BSD license, all derivative works of that BSD licensed work must also be licensed under the BSD license, even if a dual licensing option is provided. And you don't even need me to quote Theo on this, it's right up there in the title of this story. And here's where this particular meme started to seriously gain ground, with Theo arguing that even code that's dual licensed (as in, the authors have actually said "Alternatively, this software may be distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License ("GPL") version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation") still must continue to be licensed under the BSD license.
Here's what Theo has to say about the above instance:
It may seem that the licenses let one _distribute_ it under either
license, but this interpretation of the license is false -- it is
still illegal to break up, cut up, or modify someone else's legal
document, and, it cannot be replaced by another license because it may
not be removed. Hence, a dual licensed file always remains dual
licensed, every time it is distributed.
Here's a suggestion: Read what Theo is saying. Then understand why people like me are concerned. Quit it with the kneejerk flaming of anyone who has a concern about the way Theo is presenting his argument and Theo's argument itself.
I think you might be able to safely say that for the NetBSD/OpenBSD split, but if you combine those as one project that went wrong due to egos, you're still looking at three separate development paths that evolved because of technical issues. The NetBSD people were just trying to get their system up and running on their hardware, and would have had problems keeping up with the FreeBSD development schedule. OpenBSD grew out of that, but also reflects Theo's (rightful) concern with code quality (which has ended up translating into security, a term easier for outsiders to understand.)
The major odd one out indeed is DragonFly BSD, it's an entirely different design and required a significant amount of experimentation of the type you just can't do on a live kernel. It's hard to see how the design could have occurred within the confines of the FreeBSD project. In some ways, it's a shame we're not seeing that kind of imaginative design work resulting in the occasional Linux fork. It would be a shame if this kind of innovation was stifled because people were worried that others might see them as ego maniacs, and there's no practical way to incorporate that work into an existing project. Matt Dillon certainly doesn't deserve that.
Well, kinda, the thing is Theo was once, well, let's use the word "passionate", about code. Not about fighting people over licensing issues where both parties have more in common than they have against one another.
Oh, nice rhetorical technique...Next you'll say there isn't a problem at all
Well, right now, in all honesty, there's little evidence of a problem. There may be a misunderstanding about licensing, but that's a long way from there being actual copyright-infringing kernels being around.
The copyright infringement by either team is less of an issue than the seriously out of control behavior by the OpenBSD group, who on either side, whether violating copyrights themselves or accusing others of doing so, are lying, insulting, and just plain alienating the very groups they would benefit from working with.
That's the real issue here, the one that's actually serious.
To paraphrase you "I don't really care what you say, I'm going to randomly quote a paragraph from what you said and then write about something else."
I mean, in all seriousness, what the hell does anything you wrote have to do with either the paragraph you quoted or anything else I wrote in the comment you're replying to?
This is something I'm finding from the pro-Theo camp, they're not interested in how utterly insane they're looking at the moment, they're just blindly lashing out at anyone with a dissenting view. They're absolutely not interested in addressing the fact that the OpenBSD team is looking increasingly ridiculous, increasingly unstable, and definitely not a group anyone in their right mind would trust.
Wait, so as long as one admits to violating copyrights and stops doing it, it's ok to abuse anyone whose copyrights you violated, to lie about them, to insult them, to generally do what you can to alienate a similar community with similar ideals?
And where did I say copyright law no longer applies to the OpenBSD team? Because I don't see it.
In both cases, where the OpenBSD team violated the copyrights of the Linux community, and where one person in the Linux community proposed a patch that, had it been accepted, may have violated the copyrights of the OpenBSD team in some instances, the OpenBSD team's behavior is utterly unprofessional, dishonest, insulting, abusive, and ultimately alienating. That's the issue here. This is why the OpenBSD community needs to take a good, hard, look at the way they do things and consider reforms before the group destroys any ounce of credibility it still has.
I don't want OpenBSD forked, I want the possibility out there, and the possibility means ensuring there's an organized group willing to take the reins should it be necessary. I believe that the threat of forking should be enough to prevent it from happening - at least, prevent it if the current leadership remain viable project leaders.
And if it forks specifically because OpenBSD's leadership are unable to behave responsibly, well, that's better than the project collapsing altogether, which is the inevitable result of the leadership and community continuing to behave as it does today.
Note the difference in terms of how the Linux and OpenBSD communities handled that case.
The Linux community waited until OpenBSD developers were violating copyrights before raising the issue. In this case, the OpenBSD people complained about a diff posted to a mailing list that hadn't even been accepted
The Linux community raised the issue with two relevant mailing lists and a small group of other concerned parties. The OpenBSD people had the supposed BSD violation (that wasn't, because the diff hadn't been accepted at that stage) up on undeadly.org within 24 hours.
The Linux community made no specific allegations, and offered help with completing the driver. The OpenBSD people have essentially insulted the Linux community throughout this discussion.
And on the defensive side:
The OpenBSD community went through hoops to claim that there never was a copyright violation because, like, the guy who put the code in the CVS repository intended, like, to change it and stuff. The Linux community has generally refrained from claiming that, if accepted, the diffs wouldn't violate any copyrights, except to point out that Theo is overreaching in that some of the files can, actually, be relicensed because they're dual licensed (an argument Theo has tried to counter by making the bizarre claim that a dual licensed file with a specific statement saying that the license of the GPL can be used instead of the BSD license must perpetually remain under the BSD license.)
The OpenBSD community, and Theo in particular, accused the Linux team of being "Inhuman". The Linux developers have made no such insults against their BSD accusers, despite having more cause to.
Further, to make things even more ridiculous, many on the BSD side claimed at the time of the bcw violation that this was somehow evidence that the BSD license was "superior" because it wasn't viral, and BSD code could be incorporated into Linux without violating any licenses. They're now arguing the exact opposite, some even claiming the BSD license is viral.
This is pretty straightforward. There are no infringing Linux kernels out there.
At the same time, the level of hysteria raised by the OpenBSD community, and the distortion of truth and double standards exhibited by its leadership, not to mention the insults and constant attempts to alienate similar groups, really raise serious questions as to OpenBSD's long term viability. Cooler heads need to prevail, and make a commitment to fork the project should its current leadership continue to spiral out of control.
OpenBSD is a respected operating system that is relied upon by communities and businesses across the world. It deserves, and demands, a stable leadership committed to creating the best operating system they can. The current OpenBSD leadership isn't that. This must change.
Perens wasn't claiming any "authority" in the sense you were describing, which is why you can't get the answers you want out of him. He was describing what Open Source is, based upon community consensus (ie, that it's the same thing in practical terms as Free Software, but described with a development model bias instead of freedom bias.) This is a little like you claiming a car is a grapefruit, someone else saying "No, look at this dictionary, it defines it as a small motorized vehicle with four wheels", and you claiming the authors of the dictionary do not have the authority to define it as that. That's irrelevent! They've done the research, they know what it means, they're not lying when they give it that definition. They have the authority to say that's what it commonly means, just as Bruce does.
While you continue to ask questions like this, you'll never get useful answers. Open Source is what it is. Most people, in the real world, who know enough about computing to understand concepts like "source code", define Open Source the same way Russ Nelson, Bruce Perens, ESR, Michael Tiemann, Linus Torvalds, RedHat, Canonical, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, Apple Computer, the BBC, Theo De Raadt, the majority of people on Slashdot, Hans Reiser, my boss, various governmental and intergovernmental agencies, and I define it, and we expect it to mean that when we read the phrase. That makes it the definition. That means Bruce Perens' definition is valid. We're not being unreasonable, we're not redefining a term that was in heavy use at the time ("open source" existed, as various Google Groups searches can verify, but it was rarely used and not in any sense that contradicts the OSI definition.) And it means people who use it to mean "source available, but under a restrictive license" are misleading the majority.
We have a clear hierarchy here, and it's worth following it to be fair to the majority. There's source available, and that is made up of open source/free software and shared source. These are not unreasonable definitions, and someone who complains they are because someone had the audacity to describe open source, which somehow means they're trying to impose a definition on the majority, isn't helping.
Nope, QNX is not going to be Free Software, let alone licensed under anything compatible with the GPL. It will be an infringement of the copyrights of both Linux and QNX to incorporate one's code into the other.
this is way better than not having access to the source code at all.
Actually, it may not be. One of the problems with non-Free source is that there's the risk of code tainting. Someone who's exposed to encumbered source code may later find it harder to prove they didn't infringe copyrights if they've released code that's similar.
This was one of the complaints levied against Sun's Java policy back when it was shared source and Sun had to jump through several hoops to reassure everyone on the subject. It may well have been one of the issues that Sun considered important when they finally relented and went GPL.
The best that can be said for this is that it's possible it'll act as a thin end of a wedge for QNX that means they'll eventually realize splitting the community into commercial and non-commercial groups, and having their code untouched by communities worried about the risk of tainting, is bad and they'll go the whole way, adopting a good copyleft for those willing to share their changes, and an alternative license - with money changing hands - for those unwilling (as TrollTech has with QT, and Sun has with Java.)
Sun as the company with the biggest example of such a project needs to show the way here.
Get a DECT cordless phone. DECT frequencies are reserved for DECT, there's no chance any variant of Wifi will ever run on them (except in some form that co-exists, ie DECT does actually have a data mode, but nobody ever uses it.
Get Wifi phones, so your cordless phone system is part of your Wifi network rather than competing with it. This is somewhat expensive, and complex if you're not already using VoIP: you'll need to set up an Asterisk server and get something to hook that up to your POTS or ISDN line if you're not a current VoIP user.
Switch to a GSM operator that offers UMA and offers landline like rates over it. UMA is a system that treats your Wifi network and Internet connection as a virtual GSM tower (complete with handover from GSM to Wifi and vice versa while you're on a call and moving in and out of range.) T-Mobile USA does this right now, if you're in the US. Downside? Lack of phones right now, but that should improve over time.
The fourth alternative, as you say, is 5.8GHz but range and wall penetration make that option somewhat unappealing
You haven't used any logic or reason. All you've done is "No it isn't" responses.
If you seriously haven't met any women capable of learning something technical, then I suspect you've never gotten out of your parent's basement (and your mother, presumably, is a lunatic, or else you're an orphan.) Hell, there are three female computer programmers in the cubicles in front of me as I type this. My wife is the one who does most of the handyman stuff. I cannot think of a single woman friend or colleague who genuinely fits your weird-ass stereotype.
Get out into the real world. This is not the 1950s any more. And, erm, be careful what you say.
You didn't say violent, and I think she'd be fairly rational in trying the old "kicking ass" technique as clearly logic and reason isn't helping you learn.
Well, kinda, but that's largely the result of a media that generally has been manipulated by the right for the last 15-20 years and generally repeats conservative talking points and framing. Liberals have found it harder to frame issues than conservatives have.
Liberals are generally standing up for the more unpopular issues and aren't looking for things to be terrified of. I spend a fair amount of time debunking various inane "OMG! The US is about to be invaded by... {insert current bugbear here}" chain emails that are increasingly fanatical and insane (the latest involves a Mexican-Canadian overpass, that I thought was someone taking an old Onion story seriously until I did some Googling and found it all over the websites of the right. There is no logic, no sanity, no rationality to this "conspiracy" and yet right wingers the country over are trying to interpret all kinds of facts to fit it.)
Note, I'm not saying the left doesn't have its own insane conspiracy theories, it's just the left doesn't seem to have that same fear thing going. The left's has to do with the right being increasingly unhinged and manipulative to an extreme, whereas the right's has to do with actual invasions by groups that, in reality, pose little or no threat.
So the right is cowardly. Their use of framing, to portray Bush as some heroic figure, a "war president", to suggest the principle of "shoot first, ask questions later" is anything other than the response of an immature teen holding a gun while peeing in his pants, is how they get away with it. It is the confusion of using violence with the very often opposite principle of bravery.
We're actually on Slashdot, not dotbackslash, but that aside, you've taken the GP's point, claimed he made a different one (due to some patronizing logic involving being on a geek's website), and then "addressed his point" without actually challenging his logic.
I believe conditioning is largely right. Most women I've met that are willing to learn will learn anything, and willingless to learn is every bit a social issue.
I also think that if you told my wife any of your prejudices, she'd kick your ass.
I was trying to make sense of the comment I was responding to. FreePascal is ported to many platforms, but so is the GCC (and by implication GNAT.) So the comment that Pascal is somehow on many more platforms than ADA makes little sense unless you assume you're talking about implementations. There certainly are more Pascal implementations than ADA implementations, but that's of questionable usefulness because they're mostly incompatible with one another.
Well, there's GNAT. And generally most Pascal compilers are incompatible with one another, as Pascal itself is a somewhat ill-defined language which is unusable in its most "agreed upon" form, so having support for "Pascal" across a range of platforms is of questionable usefulness.
this is only one field in a database they ALREADY keep about you.
They're planning to store all this DNA in a database? Heh. I'm wondering how much space they'd need if they really did that, and how expensive it'll be to do per-person. I'm actually inclined to think they'll store the DNA physically right now, though perhaps we should encourage them to store it all on computers just to bump the costs up to a prohibitive level...
Slashdot Mirror
Not for a project the size of this, besides which it's more important that the threat exists than anything else.
And if I forked OpenBSD without building a substantial supportive community first, "SquigBSD" wouldn't have the support needed to be viable in the long term. There's simply no way I could do anything like a hundredth of the coding and maintenance necessary.
But in any case, the important issue is that a fork be possible, a fork that would be viable and would take the momentum away from those who are doing so much damage at the moment. The threat of such a thing coming to pass would, hopefully, do the job of reining in the insane behavior we're seeing at the moment.
Turned on the TV and watched.
Do you really think you can only judge the damage being done to a project's credibility if you're living on some gold lined cloud somewhere?
Theo is actively alienating pretty much the whole of the non-BSD free software community. He's lying, he's insulting, and he's making outrageous claims that defy logic and reason. Theo is also the most prominent figure associated with OpenBSD, and even if he wasn't, his actions are backed by the bulk of the OpenBSD community.
You don't get it, do you? This is WHY it's so damaging to OpenBSD and the free software community in general.
What do you think would have happened to the USA had President George Washington decided to invade Canada and Mexico? How long would the Union have survived, or remained viable as a free, democratic, republic?
Try reading the rest of the sentence you snipped. Projects don't fork themselves, for a viable fork to exist it must have an organized body of people behind it. And for the threat of a fork to exist, there must be a visibly organized body of people stating they'll back a fork if necessary.
IS-95/CDMA2000 has supported R-UIMs, the Qualcomm equivalent of the SIM card, for about five years now, but Verizon doesn't issue R-UIMs. They can provide them, they choose not to.
I see the BSD trolls are out modding down anything that points out how ridiculous they're making themselves look. What the hell is going? How did OpenBSD sink this low?
To paraphrase you "I don't really care what you say, I'm going to randomly quote a paragraph from what you said and then write about something else."
I mean, in all seriousness, what the hell does anything you wrote have to do with either the paragraph you quoted or anything else I wrote in the comment you're replying to?
This is something I'm finding from the pro-Theo camp, they're not interested in how utterly insane the BSD community looking at the moment thanks to rants like Theo's, they're just blindly lashing out at anyone with a dissenting view. They're absolutely not interested in addressing the fact that the OpenBSD team is looking increasingly ridiculous, increasingly unstable, and definitely not a group anyone in their right mind would trust.
That's EXACTLY what Theo and others have been arguing is the case with the BSD license - that once something is licensed under the BSD license, all derivative works of that BSD licensed work must also be licensed under the BSD license, even if a dual licensing option is provided. And you don't even need me to quote Theo on this, it's right up there in the title of this story. And here's where this particular meme started to seriously gain ground, with Theo arguing that even code that's dual licensed (as in, the authors have actually said "Alternatively, this software may be distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License ("GPL") version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation") still must continue to be licensed under the BSD license.
Here's what Theo has to say about the above instance:
Here's a suggestion: Read what Theo is saying. Then understand why people like me are concerned. Quit it with the kneejerk flaming of anyone who has a concern about the way Theo is presenting his argument and Theo's argument itself.
I think you might be able to safely say that for the NetBSD/OpenBSD split, but if you combine those as one project that went wrong due to egos, you're still looking at three separate development paths that evolved because of technical issues. The NetBSD people were just trying to get their system up and running on their hardware, and would have had problems keeping up with the FreeBSD development schedule. OpenBSD grew out of that, but also reflects Theo's (rightful) concern with code quality (which has ended up translating into security, a term easier for outsiders to understand.)
The major odd one out indeed is DragonFly BSD, it's an entirely different design and required a significant amount of experimentation of the type you just can't do on a live kernel. It's hard to see how the design could have occurred within the confines of the FreeBSD project. In some ways, it's a shame we're not seeing that kind of imaginative design work resulting in the occasional Linux fork. It would be a shame if this kind of innovation was stifled because people were worried that others might see them as ego maniacs, and there's no practical way to incorporate that work into an existing project. Matt Dillon certainly doesn't deserve that.
Well, kinda, the thing is Theo was once, well, let's use the word "passionate", about code. Not about fighting people over licensing issues where both parties have more in common than they have against one another.
Well, right now, in all honesty, there's little evidence of a problem. There may be a misunderstanding about licensing, but that's a long way from there being actual copyright-infringing kernels being around.
The copyright infringement by either team is less of an issue than the seriously out of control behavior by the OpenBSD group, who on either side, whether violating copyrights themselves or accusing others of doing so, are lying, insulting, and just plain alienating the very groups they would benefit from working with.
That's the real issue here, the one that's actually serious.
To paraphrase you "I don't really care what you say, I'm going to randomly quote a paragraph from what you said and then write about something else."
I mean, in all seriousness, what the hell does anything you wrote have to do with either the paragraph you quoted or anything else I wrote in the comment you're replying to?
This is something I'm finding from the pro-Theo camp, they're not interested in how utterly insane they're looking at the moment, they're just blindly lashing out at anyone with a dissenting view. They're absolutely not interested in addressing the fact that the OpenBSD team is looking increasingly ridiculous, increasingly unstable, and definitely not a group anyone in their right mind would trust.
Wait, so as long as one admits to violating copyrights and stops doing it, it's ok to abuse anyone whose copyrights you violated, to lie about them, to insult them, to generally do what you can to alienate a similar community with similar ideals?
And where did I say copyright law no longer applies to the OpenBSD team? Because I don't see it.
In both cases, where the OpenBSD team violated the copyrights of the Linux community, and where one person in the Linux community proposed a patch that, had it been accepted, may have violated the copyrights of the OpenBSD team in some instances, the OpenBSD team's behavior is utterly unprofessional, dishonest, insulting, abusive, and ultimately alienating. That's the issue here. This is why the OpenBSD community needs to take a good, hard, look at the way they do things and consider reforms before the group destroys any ounce of credibility it still has.
I don't want OpenBSD forked, I want the possibility out there, and the possibility means ensuring there's an organized group willing to take the reins should it be necessary. I believe that the threat of forking should be enough to prevent it from happening - at least, prevent it if the current leadership remain viable project leaders.
And if it forks specifically because OpenBSD's leadership are unable to behave responsibly, well, that's better than the project collapsing altogether, which is the inevitable result of the leadership and community continuing to behave as it does today.
Here you go.
Note the difference in terms of how the Linux and OpenBSD communities handled that case.
- The Linux community waited until OpenBSD developers were violating copyrights before raising the issue. In this case, the OpenBSD people complained about a diff posted to a mailing list that hadn't even been accepted
- The Linux community raised the issue with two relevant mailing lists and a small group of other concerned parties. The OpenBSD people had the supposed BSD violation (that wasn't, because the diff hadn't been accepted at that stage) up on undeadly.org within 24 hours.
- The Linux community made no specific allegations, and offered help with completing the driver. The OpenBSD people have essentially insulted the Linux community throughout this discussion.
And on the defensive side:Further, to make things even more ridiculous, many on the BSD side claimed at the time of the bcw violation that this was somehow evidence that the BSD license was "superior" because it wasn't viral, and BSD code could be incorporated into Linux without violating any licenses. They're now arguing the exact opposite, some even claiming the BSD license is viral.
This is pretty straightforward. There are no infringing Linux kernels out there.
At the same time, the level of hysteria raised by the OpenBSD community, and the distortion of truth and double standards exhibited by its leadership, not to mention the insults and constant attempts to alienate similar groups, really raise serious questions as to OpenBSD's long term viability. Cooler heads need to prevail, and make a commitment to fork the project should its current leadership continue to spiral out of control.
OpenBSD is a respected operating system that is relied upon by communities and businesses across the world. It deserves, and demands, a stable leadership committed to creating the best operating system they can. The current OpenBSD leadership isn't that. This must change.
Perens wasn't claiming any "authority" in the sense you were describing, which is why you can't get the answers you want out of him. He was describing what Open Source is, based upon community consensus (ie, that it's the same thing in practical terms as Free Software, but described with a development model bias instead of freedom bias.) This is a little like you claiming a car is a grapefruit, someone else saying "No, look at this dictionary, it defines it as a small motorized vehicle with four wheels", and you claiming the authors of the dictionary do not have the authority to define it as that. That's irrelevent! They've done the research, they know what it means, they're not lying when they give it that definition. They have the authority to say that's what it commonly means, just as Bruce does.
While you continue to ask questions like this, you'll never get useful answers. Open Source is what it is. Most people, in the real world, who know enough about computing to understand concepts like "source code", define Open Source the same way Russ Nelson, Bruce Perens, ESR, Michael Tiemann, Linus Torvalds, RedHat, Canonical, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, Apple Computer, the BBC, Theo De Raadt, the majority of people on Slashdot, Hans Reiser, my boss, various governmental and intergovernmental agencies, and I define it, and we expect it to mean that when we read the phrase. That makes it the definition. That means Bruce Perens' definition is valid. We're not being unreasonable, we're not redefining a term that was in heavy use at the time ("open source" existed, as various Google Groups searches can verify, but it was rarely used and not in any sense that contradicts the OSI definition.) And it means people who use it to mean "source available, but under a restrictive license" are misleading the majority.
We have a clear hierarchy here, and it's worth following it to be fair to the majority. There's source available, and that is made up of open source/free software and shared source. These are not unreasonable definitions, and someone who complains they are because someone had the audacity to describe open source, which somehow means they're trying to impose a definition on the majority, isn't helping.
Nope, QNX is not going to be Free Software, let alone licensed under anything compatible with the GPL. It will be an infringement of the copyrights of both Linux and QNX to incorporate one's code into the other.
This was one of the complaints levied against Sun's Java policy back when it was shared source and Sun had to jump through several hoops to reassure everyone on the subject. It may well have been one of the issues that Sun considered important when they finally relented and went GPL.
The best that can be said for this is that it's possible it'll act as a thin end of a wedge for QNX that means they'll eventually realize splitting the community into commercial and non-commercial groups, and having their code untouched by communities worried about the risk of tainting, is bad and they'll go the whole way, adopting a good copyleft for those willing to share their changes, and an alternative license - with money changing hands - for those unwilling (as TrollTech has with QT, and Sun has with Java.)
Sun as the company with the biggest example of such a project needs to show the way here.
Not unless they switch from QNX. QNX is not going open source, it's a shared source scheme (specifically, commercial use requires payment.)
The fourth alternative, as you say, is 5.8GHz but range and wall penetration make that option somewhat unappealing
You haven't used any logic or reason. All you've done is "No it isn't" responses.
If you seriously haven't met any women capable of learning something technical, then I suspect you've never gotten out of your parent's basement (and your mother, presumably, is a lunatic, or else you're an orphan.) Hell, there are three female computer programmers in the cubicles in front of me as I type this. My wife is the one who does most of the handyman stuff. I cannot think of a single woman friend or colleague who genuinely fits your weird-ass stereotype.
Get out into the real world. This is not the 1950s any more. And, erm, be careful what you say.
You didn't say violent, and I think she'd be fairly rational in trying the old "kicking ass" technique as clearly logic and reason isn't helping you learn.
Well, kinda, but that's largely the result of a media that generally has been manipulated by the right for the last 15-20 years and generally repeats conservative talking points and framing. Liberals have found it harder to frame issues than conservatives have.
Liberals are generally standing up for the more unpopular issues and aren't looking for things to be terrified of. I spend a fair amount of time debunking various inane "OMG! The US is about to be invaded by... {insert current bugbear here}" chain emails that are increasingly fanatical and insane (the latest involves a Mexican-Canadian overpass, that I thought was someone taking an old Onion story seriously until I did some Googling and found it all over the websites of the right. There is no logic, no sanity, no rationality to this "conspiracy" and yet right wingers the country over are trying to interpret all kinds of facts to fit it.)
Note, I'm not saying the left doesn't have its own insane conspiracy theories, it's just the left doesn't seem to have that same fear thing going. The left's has to do with the right being increasingly unhinged and manipulative to an extreme, whereas the right's has to do with actual invasions by groups that, in reality, pose little or no threat.
So the right is cowardly. Their use of framing, to portray Bush as some heroic figure, a "war president", to suggest the principle of "shoot first, ask questions later" is anything other than the response of an immature teen holding a gun while peeing in his pants, is how they get away with it. It is the confusion of using violence with the very often opposite principle of bravery.
We're actually on Slashdot, not dotbackslash, but that aside, you've taken the GP's point, claimed he made a different one (due to some patronizing logic involving being on a geek's website), and then "addressed his point" without actually challenging his logic.
I believe conditioning is largely right. Most women I've met that are willing to learn will learn anything, and willingless to learn is every bit a social issue.
I also think that if you told my wife any of your prejudices, she'd kick your ass.
I was trying to make sense of the comment I was responding to. FreePascal is ported to many platforms, but so is the GCC (and by implication GNAT.) So the comment that Pascal is somehow on many more platforms than ADA makes little sense unless you assume you're talking about implementations. There certainly are more Pascal implementations than ADA implementations, but that's of questionable usefulness because they're mostly incompatible with one another.
Well, there's GNAT. And generally most Pascal compilers are incompatible with one another, as Pascal itself is a somewhat ill-defined language which is unusable in its most "agreed upon" form, so having support for "Pascal" across a range of platforms is of questionable usefulness.
They're planning to store all this DNA in a database? Heh. I'm wondering how much space they'd need if they really did that, and how expensive it'll be to do per-person. I'm actually inclined to think they'll store the DNA physically right now, though perhaps we should encourage them to store it all on computers just to bump the costs up to a prohibitive level...