...Because, after all, look at all the amazing
work they've done here on Earth to make our
planet more inhabitable.
True humanitarians, all. They certainly
have our best interests at heart, and would
NEVER screw us all just for a quick
buck.
Why, this whole SCO vs IBM thing only hurts
my head because I can't grasp, in their infinite
wisdom, benevolence, and humanitarianism, how
they can both have my best interests
at heart. But I have no doubt they do,
naturally.
Because I'm sorry, if you need more then
the 5-20mbps throughput you'll get from 802.11b/g
network...then you don't need a home network.
You need an office network, at home.
I agree, many people could do just fine with
802.11g. Just because we "need" 100 megabit
(or better) doesn't necessarily mean we need
an office network at home.
Personally, I run everything 100btx, and
have seriously considered upgrading my
switches and a machine or two to allow a
gigabit drop to (at least) my file server.
Why? Not because I "need" it, but rather,
because it doesn't cost much more than a
far lower lever of performance (in the case
of wireless, it actually costs more).
The only factor keeping me from
going to pure gigabit invovles the cost
of decent switches (and I currently
use two 8-port)
But why should I waste a full minute
transferring a CD image from my fileserver,
when I could have it in six second? Hell,
why should I copy it locally at all, when
I could simply mount it remotely without an
unreasonably penalty to performance?
So yes, a home LAN has perfectly valid
reasons to use wired connects. Speed,
price (for 100btx, currrently all parts
involved come dirt-cheap), reliability,
security (perhaps the most important...
Those folks who would get by just
fine on an 802.11g link most likely would
not have any clue what they need to do to
improve their LAN's security). Why would
anyone choosing to give up some (or all)
of those for the sake of an hour's work
running wires?
Incidentally, run WEP. The highest level
you have available. The method you describe
of "securing" your wireless LAN would take
around 30 seconds of passive snooping to
find the right subnet.
Anyone running their own personal mail server
or a small buisness (less than ~100 email
accounts on a DSL or even fractional T1s)
should use their ISPs
Why?
No seriously... Why? Why should I use my ISP's
mail server rather than running my own? So when
one of their weekly server configuration screwups
occurs, I can miss important messages? In my
experience, actualy connectivity outages occur
FAR less often, and for much shorter periods,
than "Oh dear, server X has gone down, I guess
we should mention it on the customer service
web page and ignore it for a few days".
Nevermind the whole privacy thang (ie, my trust
in my ISP varies with the inverse of how
long it takes me to get a competent
tech on the phone when I have a problem),
I just want a reliable place to dump my
mail (If I need privacy, I use GPG).
Though, in fairness, many ISPs seem to have
more problems keeping their DNS up than in
keeping email (for receipt) up. Of course,
not having the ability to resolve
pop.blah.com doesn't do me any
more good than that host itself going
down.:-(
You know, at first, I thought that McBride
was insane -- totally reckless or totally
corrupt. But now, I'm starting to think the
man is just stupid.
I've pondered SCO's motivation in this, and
come up with two possible answers...
First, SCO realizes it will soon die, and
in a manner similar to some dying humans, it
has gone a tad batty. Started giving houses,
boats, and cars to 3rd cousins, while suing
its brother over a 25-cent bet made a decade
ago. All the while trying to reconcile itself
with its creator ("Our Shareholders, Who art
on Wall Street, hallowed be Thy Capital") by
not actually "dying" but rather getting "bought
out". A sort of "saving face" in failing
miserably as a corporate entity.
Second, SCO thinks it might win. Since IBM
hasn't already bought and dismantled them,
we can presume with reasonable confidence that
SCO has nothing. So I suspect their
"hundred lines of code" will amount to a
coincidentally-identical textbook implementation
of some common algorithm, and they've bet the
farm that they'll get a judge who can't tell the
difference. "Why yes, Mr. McBride, it would
appear that IBM did release code
substantially similar to your... now what
did you call it... ''quicksort'' routine. For
shame, IBM!".
I just have difficulty considering both
McBride and SCO's entire legal
department as either stupid or insane.
A few of them, sure, but the whole lot
of 'em? Not likely. So, they have
either decided to save face in death,
or bet it all on a spin of the
roulette-wheel-o'-US-justice (Hey, if
OJ got off, Bush won in 2000, and the
xrispies have gotten to "Roe" of "Roe vs
Wade", anything can happen). Nothing else
makes any sense.
can get away with what they do is
because their work is parody
I kinda expected someone to point
that out...
While I don't completely disagree with you
(ie, US law does seem to specifically allow
parodies), works such as "Bored of the Rings"
no more parody Tolkien than a typical
slash-fiction of star-trek parodies that
show.
Derivative works with baudy humor do not a
parody make.
With Mad's stuff, sure, I can see it clearly
as an outright parody. But quite a lot that
tries to call itself "parody" I would consider
as a completely separate work based on the
same core ideas.
To decide whether a use is "fair use"
or not, courts consider:
Applying your criteria to the legendary
National Lampoon's "Bored of the Rings",
it appears to fit into each categories
exactly the same way a Harry Potter
derivative would... Namely, "for profit",
"derivative", "almost none beyond
generalities", and "increases it"
(ala dojinshi).
So, why can I buy the National
Lampoon's derivative works, but not
an interesting retelling of Harry Potter
"regionalized" for Bulgaria?
Well, screw you, Rowling. If you can
steal substantial portions of Nancy Stouffer's
work, others should have the right to do
the same to you.
Time to start looking for copies of as
many Harry Potter rip-offs as possible,
as well as making a point of reading
HP:OotP at the library rather than
dropping 7-10 bucks or so to buy it when
it hits pulp.
I guess I'll be creating a throw-away yahoo
or hotmail address for this.
No good. Yahoo currently
blocks the confirmation email (see
http://tinyurl.com/fg3f)
from the FTC as spam (how ironic...
or deliberate?).
Just wait a week (assuming you don't live
on the "favored" half of the continent,
west of the Mississippi) and use their
direct call-in registration. No compromise
in privacy there, since they need to know
your phone number to block it anyway.
It looks cool and all, but $400
is a little much for a 233mhz system
without video.
I agree completely.
I've looked around for something similar,
not so much caring about footprint (though
preferably not full PC-size) as fanless
operation with a moderate level of performance
(PII/300 level or so). Although such systems
use mostly low-cost OEM parts, they always
cost WAY more than their level of performance
would suggest.
Someone want to make a killing? Take a system
like this Norhtec GP, kill the frills, splurge
a tad on form factor, and sell it for under
$200. And if you can kill the HDD and make it
use something like a 1GB solid-state IDE, all
the better.
For some reason, companies producing tiny PCs
like this seem to pretend that people might
actually use it as their primary PC. I don't
need USB, or 128MB of ram, or a 10GB HDD, or
a high-end 3d video card. As long as it has
ethernet, keyboard, maybe mouse, and
standard svga, 32MB ram and enough IDE-like
disk space to throw Linux on, it will suffice
for what I (and most people looking for a small,
easy, low power, low maintenance (ie, fanless),
low noise PC solution) need. Perfect for
NAT boxen, car MP3 players, test-beds for
crap you don't want on your "real" machine,
instrumentation frontends, cheap-n'-dirty
laptop substitute, or just about
anything you wouldn't need a full modern
machine for anyway.
What is this world comming to, is the whole
planet gonna be owned by a bunch of people?
The world itself already does have
everything allocated to some "owner". Just
try to go out and find something you can
legally just claim. Hell, even try to
visit the North Pole, supposedly not
owned by any country, yet "restricted" from
any visitors (by whom, one may well ask?).
Let me know if you make it within even half
a degree without a representative of some
military (of a government which clearly has
no jurisdiction there, by international
treaty) ventilating your corpse.
The problem at hand deals with something
far more insidious than mere physical
ownership - Namely, someone may already
"own" your very thoughts and ideas.
You don't even need to have signed them
away (ie, to your employer), or ever have
heard of the "owned" idea or anything
related to it. Your parents may have
raised you in complete isolation on an
island in the South Pacific, yet if you
have a particular idea and try to make use
of it, someone can sue you into oblivion
for that idea.
Life sucks, eh? Well, get ready for it to
suck even more, since apparently the sheeple
of Earth haven't yet suffered enough at the
hands of their Corporate Masters to revolt.
100 hour work weeks won't do it, as long
as people can eat. Lack of even appreciation
or a heart-felt "thanks" for people literally
sacrificing their bodies and souls to their
Corporate Masters won't do it. Not until it
all comes crashing down, until we realize that
we can't "eat" a litigation/service economy,
will people insist on change.
But eventually, they will. And "pretty"
will not describe the situation.
And if you think I overdramatize the
situation, how many unpaid hours did
you work last week? Assuming, of
course, you had the "luxury" of working,
not having recently found your supposedly
"unneeded" position curiously occupied by
two H1B's or "interns" for a total of
2/3rds of your former salary.
Livin' the American dream. Can I wake
up, now? Please?
It's faster in all the others, too, except
single processor integer performance
First, I really don't mean this as an
anti-Apple rant, and will readily admit
the G5s look rather impressive, from
the point of view of a coder who tends
to write a lot of seriously CPU-intensive
apps. I can truly appreciate having the
ability to obtain the SVD of an arbitrary
1k by 1k matrix 41% faster.
However...
99% of the desktop machines out there have
only one processor.
Additionally, outside of special, generally
very-domain-specific FPU-heavy apps, well
over 90% of code consists of integer ops (not
counting heavy-3d games, for which the simple
matter of availability makes the PC the
choice without a second thought, and most
of the 3d math occurs on the video card
anyway).
Thus...
Apple rocks - As long as your primary
use consists of serious number crunching.
For gaming, for word processing, for
doing your taxes, for surfing the web,
for just about anything short of "hard"
physical system simulation, Apple's
own (arguably biased at least somewhat
in their favor) testing shows them to
fall behind.
Oh, and Apples have better color
coordination. I secretly resent having
a white mouse, a black keyboard, a beige
monitor, and a purple case.
How much work does it really take to tell
the device "load ebook reader", and *poof*,
you have a "dedicated" book with a great
screen? And if you don't want to read, you
tell it to load a graphing calculator, or
an MP3 player, or Mozilla...
I see your point, but don't see why it really
limits the product - These things already
contain the most expensive hardware required, and
only need a few software tweaks to make them
FAR more useful. Convenience has its place,
but if I ever start buying $700 items to save
me ONE miserable little click on an icon...
Just kill me where I stand.
Fine, make it default to "just" displaying
ebooks. But give me the option of using
it as an oversized PDA, thankyouverymuch.
Re:Now I've heard everything The JunkMac
on
iBox Episode 2
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Today they are offering a special on an iMac
hybrid that has a modern flat-screen stuck on
the front of an old bulbous blue first-gen
iMac that has an orange mouse.
Thank you, for reminding me why people
really stay loyal to Apple.
Not because of better hardware (since even their
"new" machines will fall woefully short of a PC
with a mid-end AMD)...
Not because of price (since those same new
machines will cost more than a fully decked
out dual Opteron)...
But because of color coordination.
"Mauve... I think I'll paint the ceiling Mauve.
It'll match this season's iMac".
Took over 8 hours to rip using EAC though... owch.
Buy a cheap older Plextor drive, download a copy
of BlindWrite, and tell it to use the "alternative
read method".
That 8-hour rip due to a "defective" disk will
drop to 15-30 minutes... Soft C1/C2 correction
takes FAR less time (and wear on the drive from
constant re-seeks) than letting the drive do
it.
Check out strings usr/sbin/udhcpd, and then
compare that with the source of udhcp. Good
number of things missing from the source. I
want my code back.
Ah, now, if true (I don't disbelieve you, but
I have no way to verify it myself), you have
made the best point of anyone responding
to me thus far. Something beyond mere
nitpicking - A real, verifiable violation
beyond just an oversight on the last page
of a product manual.
THAT I will gladly call "foul" for, and
demand Linksys start playing well with
others.
Incidentally, why post as AC? I almost didn't
see your comment (sub threshold)... Mods -
boost this guy a few points, please.
We assume that GNU/Linux firmware engineers
lead to GPL violations because there are plenty
of firmware engineers like you out there.
Ah, thank you for setting the tone. I do
so hate to respond offensively without
provocation.
If you perform *commerical* redistribution then
a clause extended strictly to *non-profit*
redistribution does not apply
The word "profit" does not occur anywhere
in the GPL2. The word "commercial" occurs
only as a parenthetical clarification
of section 3c. Perhaps you'd like to
read the text of the document you
claim to speak for?
Look, get a clue. You can use GPL'd
code in commerical products which include
non-GPL'd components. Both legally and
ethically. Simple as that. I agree Linksys
made an error in this case, but to hear
the RMS zealots talk, you'd think Linksys
had put a hit out on Linus himself. They
made a MINOR oversight. They should
correct it. Aside from that, relax. Use your energy coding, rather than bitching.
And just in case some people consider me your
typical corporate shill, check out some of
my other Slashdot comments - I feel as
anti-corporate as the rest of you. But I
also won't damn someone who, with a slightly
different take on the situation, we could
consider on "our" side.
but never seen any of them produce an
actual legal loophole in the GPL. I'd bet
that you're no different.
Not to get into the "intent vs wording"
point that Beryllium sphere brought up...
One phrase satisfies your somewhat snidely-worded
request - "user-space drivers".
As long as you pick a base platform that will
run an unmodified Linux kernel (which, as a
hardware designer and manufacturer, Linksys
had the luxury of doing), basically all
GPL issues vanish. Boot it, and run the
"real" code in user mode. No intermingling
of proprietary and GPL'd code whatsoever,
end of problem.
Now, a number of people have pointed out that
a company would need to (offer to) distribute
the source even if they don't modify anything.
As I responded
here (though I meant to reply to lmfr, not xtal),
this seems like a VERY petty distinction. It
reduces the GPL to little more than an
agreement to mirror already available code,
since no obligation to release the proprietary
user-space code would exist.
But, in fairness, I agree that it makes a
valid technicality. Linksys should have
handled this a tad differently. But I
really think our efforts would better go
toward promoting open source and following
up on "real" violations, than in pissing on
Linksys for what amounts to little more than
an oversight in the product manual.
"There is only a violation if they modified existing GPL code."
No, there's a violation if they distribute GPL programs
Picking nits. The only "source" a company
must provide consists of that actually under
the GPL. Considering the preexisting availability
of the source to the Linux kernel, you'd have a
hard time demonstrating a GPL violation for
nothing more than failing to make yet another
mirror of commonly available code.
Why does everyone always assume that any
embedded device running Linux must have,
in some way, violated the GPL?
I worked eight years as a firmware engineer.
In the last three, I dealt almost exclusively
with Linux.
And I can assure you that we didn't need
to change any GPL'd code to get what we wanted.
Even on fairly custom hardware, we could find
preexisting GPL'd code to do 99% of what we
needed (and wrote user-space drivers where
possible, and modules where not). No need to
release anything if you don't
change anything, to comply with
the GPL.
Whether ethical or not, plenty of legal ways
of circumventing the intent of the GPL exist.
And, like it or not, eliminating those
loopholes (which would basically require
forcing any program that runs under linux
to use the GPL) would kill Linux in the
business world.
Why don't you try doing something positive,
for a change.
Some people do consider such actions as
"positive". Community action for a specific
cause, namely, hurting SCO where it matters (the
pocketbook, for cost of bandwidth), and screw what
the "law" says. In case you haven't looked around
lately, "they" write the laws - All the SCOs
and Disneys and the RIAAs and Enrons and Haliburtons
and Martha Stewarts. But whether they like it or
not, real live actual humans still live on
this planet. Not slave labor, and not just a
consumer pool.
What about legitimate people who want to
make use of their products?
Banks and other large corporations who chose
to support the Nazis during WWII suffered
greatly from having to make various post-war
reparations for their involvement.
Some of us, who truly believe in freedom of ideas,
see SCO's tactics as nothing short of a morally
unsupportable "first strike" on free software,
with Linux merely the scapegoat they would lock
up in concentration camps to the detriment
of us all.
We've already had countless minor skirmishes
with the **AA, which they generally win in the
courts, but WE win in the real-world. A
few "legal" POWs to the US court system, and
we all have Metallica's entire catalog on our
HDDs, despite not even liking them, just to
make a point.
Make no mistake, a war will come
(Senator Kelly... Sorry, couldn't resist,
the tone of my text just got way too heavy
G), as companies try to hang on to
outdated ideas and practices. Not a war with
bullets and bombs (though I have little
doubt that some extremists on both sides
will resort (and have already done so) to
violence), but a war that most people will
never hear about beyond "and SCO's web site
went down for a few hours today as...".
why can't you make an RFID tag that deactivates
when placed over a big magnetic field?
You can.
You can also make one resistant to a
given (reasonable) strength magnetic field,
thus reinstating the privacy issue.
You want to make absolutely sure you have
no RFID tags in your stuff? Put it in
the microwave for 15 seconds.
Obviously, you can't do this on metal
things or larger objects, but for clothing,
money (yes, money, which will very soon have
RFID tags in it), food (good to microwave
anyway), etc, it works just fine.
Interestingly, relating to food (or drugs),
imagine a tag inserted into a pill without
the taker knowing... Ultimate prisoner
(and unwitting "suspect") tracking, eh?
Anytime they walk through a store checkout,
the FBI records their position.
And of course, why stop at prisoners and
suspects when they could just track all
of us with the same ease?
Heh... Imagine how much easier that would
make crime... "Hey, buddy, check this out...
I just starve myself for three days, all
their damned little tags have left my body
by then... And I can walk right through any
security sensor in use! They just don't
see me! And the human guards... Get this,
They've grown so used to scanning people
by RFID tags that they disbelieve their
own eyes if you don't scan, treat you like
a ghost and won't even acknowledge your
presence! And even the cameras
only track tags, so they won't bother
recording you. I tell ya, this has made
me a rich man, friend".
Which I most certainly do. We apparently
just take pride in different things...
I try to code well enough that I could be
hit by a truck tomorrow and the next guy could
easily pick it up.
See, While certainly an admirable goal, I
code for speed and lack of bugs. Readability
of something the end user will never see (no
GPL used in most corporate coding environment)
comes after functionality. Not to say
I don't make my code as readible as possible,
but if I need to use a hideous mishmash of
inline assembly, compiler macros (who ever
came up with the idea of C++ templates when
we had macros all along?) broken loops, and
even the dreaded "goto" (very rarely will I
stoop that low) to get an extra 1%
performance boost, start praying the code
doesn't fall on your shoulders
when I move on to my next project.
Has the side effect of me being able to
read code I wrote 2 years ago, which is
great as I'm on a very long term project.
A project over 2 years? Wow.
Anyway, in my experience, two years later
the project has either died or management has
deemed it "done" (With the exception of the
long term legacy maintenance "punishment"
projects they give newbies, wherein it
doesn't matter how well you code,
because as the expression goes, "adding a
teaspoon of wine to a barrel of raw sewage
still leaves you with just a barrel of raw
sewage").
And for the idea of code reuse in other
projects a few years later... Either
someone will have found a better way to
solve the same problem, your carefully
thought out APIs no longer meet the
"new" corporate standard, or the
spiffy programming-language of the
week that you just have to implement
the new killer app in has changed, making
your entire well-written, debugged, and
optimized personal library useless.
So yes, I most certainly do take
pride in my work. I care about results,
I care about efficiency. I do not
care about my employer who, if I have
stopped working for them, most likely
decided to "restructure their core employment
processes" or some such crap. Pride?
I take pride in knowing that, after they
stop paying me, they stop benefitting
from my work. Companies like the idea
of IP... Well, let them have to start paying
"creative" employees in perpetuity for
their ideas, and we'll see just how long
they keep riding the IP gravy-train.
That doesn't do your company any
good when you leave them.
Sorry, explain the part where that
matters to me?
Sure, theoretically if everyone
didn't leave an unmanageable mess when
they left, we wouldn't always have to
deal with a similar unmanageable mess
when taking over a new project. However,
that reasoning very rarely works... If
everyone agreed not to fight, we'd have
no wars; If everyone agreed to share all
resources equally, we'd have no hunger
or poverty; If everyone would stop driving
poorly, we'd have far fewer highway accidents.
However, we still have wars, hunger, poverty,
and automobile accidents, because it only
takes a few uncooperative folks to bring
down any system predicated on cooperation.
Sorry to get a bit "deep" on a seemingly
shallow issue, but you need to consider
"real" human behavior in adopting any new
system that involves humans. Thus, while
political systems have for the most part
failed over time, religions have thrived.
Not because religions do anything "better"
(or anything at all, for that matter),
but because they manipulate humans using
real behavior rather than idealized situations.
Slashdot Mirror
Space should be left to corperations
...Because, after all, look at all the amazing
work they've done here on Earth to make our
planet more inhabitable.
True humanitarians, all. They certainly have our best interests at heart, and would NEVER screw us all just for a quick buck.
Why, this whole SCO vs IBM thing only hurts my head because I can't grasp, in their infinite wisdom, benevolence, and humanitarianism, how they can both have my best interests at heart. But I have no doubt they do, naturally.
Yeah. Corporations love us. Feel the fuzzies.
I'd like to see some examples of innovations for profit being counter-productive for humanity...
DRM.
The Ford Pinto.
Any weapons research whatsoever (by a contractor, to satisfy the "for profit" condition).
Religion (and if you don't consider this either an "innovation" or "for profit", I have a bridge to sell you).
Lawyers.
Need I go on?
Because I'm sorry, if you need more then the 5-20mbps throughput you'll get from 802.11b/g network...then you don't need a home network. You need an office network, at home.
I agree, many people could do just fine with 802.11g. Just because we "need" 100 megabit (or better) doesn't necessarily mean we need an office network at home.
Personally, I run everything 100btx, and have seriously considered upgrading my switches and a machine or two to allow a gigabit drop to (at least) my file server.
Why? Not because I "need" it, but rather, because it doesn't cost much more than a far lower lever of performance (in the case of wireless, it actually costs more). The only factor keeping me from going to pure gigabit invovles the cost of decent switches (and I currently use two 8-port)
But why should I waste a full minute transferring a CD image from my fileserver, when I could have it in six second? Hell, why should I copy it locally at all, when I could simply mount it remotely without an unreasonably penalty to performance?
So yes, a home LAN has perfectly valid reasons to use wired connects. Speed, price (for 100btx, currrently all parts involved come dirt-cheap), reliability, security (perhaps the most important... Those folks who would get by just fine on an 802.11g link most likely would not have any clue what they need to do to improve their LAN's security). Why would anyone choosing to give up some (or all) of those for the sake of an hour's work running wires?
Incidentally, run WEP. The highest level you have available. The method you describe of "securing" your wireless LAN would take around 30 seconds of passive snooping to find the right subnet.
Anyone running their own personal mail server or a small buisness (less than ~100 email accounts on a DSL or even fractional T1s) should use their ISPs
:-(
Why?
No seriously... Why? Why should I use my ISP's mail server rather than running my own? So when one of their weekly server configuration screwups occurs, I can miss important messages? In my experience, actualy connectivity outages occur FAR less often, and for much shorter periods, than "Oh dear, server X has gone down, I guess we should mention it on the customer service web page and ignore it for a few days".
Nevermind the whole privacy thang (ie, my trust in my ISP varies with the inverse of how long it takes me to get a competent tech on the phone when I have a problem), I just want a reliable place to dump my mail (If I need privacy, I use GPG).
Though, in fairness, many ISPs seem to have more problems keeping their DNS up than in keeping email (for receipt) up. Of course, not having the ability to resolve pop.blah.com doesn't do me any more good than that host itself going down.
You know, at first, I thought that McBride was insane -- totally reckless or totally corrupt. But now, I'm starting to think the man is just stupid.
I've pondered SCO's motivation in this, and come up with two possible answers...
First, SCO realizes it will soon die, and in a manner similar to some dying humans, it has gone a tad batty. Started giving houses, boats, and cars to 3rd cousins, while suing its brother over a 25-cent bet made a decade ago. All the while trying to reconcile itself with its creator ("Our Shareholders, Who art on Wall Street, hallowed be Thy Capital") by not actually "dying" but rather getting "bought out". A sort of "saving face" in failing miserably as a corporate entity.
Second, SCO thinks it might win. Since IBM hasn't already bought and dismantled them, we can presume with reasonable confidence that SCO has nothing. So I suspect their "hundred lines of code" will amount to a coincidentally-identical textbook implementation of some common algorithm, and they've bet the farm that they'll get a judge who can't tell the difference. "Why yes, Mr. McBride, it would appear that IBM did release code substantially similar to your... now what did you call it... ''quicksort'' routine. For shame, IBM!".
I just have difficulty considering both McBride and SCO's entire legal department as either stupid or insane. A few of them, sure, but the whole lot of 'em? Not likely. So, they have either decided to save face in death, or bet it all on a spin of the roulette-wheel-o'-US-justice (Hey, if OJ got off, Bush won in 2000, and the xrispies have gotten to "Roe" of "Roe vs Wade", anything can happen). Nothing else makes any sense.
can get away with what they do is because their work is parody
I kinda expected someone to point that out...
While I don't completely disagree with you (ie, US law does seem to specifically allow parodies), works such as "Bored of the Rings" no more parody Tolkien than a typical slash-fiction of star-trek parodies that show.
Derivative works with baudy humor do not a parody make.
With Mad's stuff, sure, I can see it clearly as an outright parody. But quite a lot that tries to call itself "parody" I would consider as a completely separate work based on the same core ideas.
To decide whether a use is "fair use" or not, courts consider:
Applying your criteria to the legendary National Lampoon's "Bored of the Rings", it appears to fit into each categories exactly the same way a Harry Potter derivative would... Namely, "for profit", "derivative", "almost none beyond generalities", and "increases it" (ala dojinshi).
So, why can I buy the National Lampoon's derivative works, but not an interesting retelling of Harry Potter "regionalized" for Bulgaria?
Well, screw you, Rowling. If you can steal substantial portions of Nancy Stouffer's work, others should have the right to do the same to you.
Time to start looking for copies of as many Harry Potter rip-offs as possible, as well as making a point of reading HP:OotP at the library rather than dropping 7-10 bucks or so to buy it when it hits pulp.
I guess I'll be creating a throw-away yahoo or hotmail address for this.
No good. Yahoo currently blocks the confirmation email (see http://tinyurl.com/fg3f) from the FTC as spam (how ironic... or deliberate?).
Just wait a week (assuming you don't live on the "favored" half of the continent, west of the Mississippi) and use their direct call-in registration. No compromise in privacy there, since they need to know your phone number to block it anyway.
It looks cool and all, but $400 is a little much for a 233mhz system without video.
I agree completely.
I've looked around for something similar, not so much caring about footprint (though preferably not full PC-size) as fanless operation with a moderate level of performance (PII/300 level or so). Although such systems use mostly low-cost OEM parts, they always cost WAY more than their level of performance would suggest.
Someone want to make a killing? Take a system like this Norhtec GP, kill the frills, splurge a tad on form factor, and sell it for under $200. And if you can kill the HDD and make it use something like a 1GB solid-state IDE, all the better.
For some reason, companies producing tiny PCs like this seem to pretend that people might actually use it as their primary PC. I don't need USB, or 128MB of ram, or a 10GB HDD, or a high-end 3d video card. As long as it has ethernet, keyboard, maybe mouse, and standard svga, 32MB ram and enough IDE-like disk space to throw Linux on, it will suffice for what I (and most people looking for a small, easy, low power, low maintenance (ie, fanless), low noise PC solution) need. Perfect for NAT boxen, car MP3 players, test-beds for crap you don't want on your "real" machine, instrumentation frontends, cheap-n'-dirty laptop substitute, or just about anything you wouldn't need a full modern machine for anyway.
What is this world comming to, is the whole planet gonna be owned by a bunch of people?
The world itself already does have everything allocated to some "owner". Just try to go out and find something you can legally just claim. Hell, even try to visit the North Pole, supposedly not owned by any country, yet "restricted" from any visitors (by whom, one may well ask?). Let me know if you make it within even half a degree without a representative of some military (of a government which clearly has no jurisdiction there, by international treaty) ventilating your corpse.
The problem at hand deals with something far more insidious than mere physical ownership - Namely, someone may already "own" your very thoughts and ideas.
You don't even need to have signed them away (ie, to your employer), or ever have heard of the "owned" idea or anything related to it. Your parents may have raised you in complete isolation on an island in the South Pacific, yet if you have a particular idea and try to make use of it, someone can sue you into oblivion for that idea.
Life sucks, eh? Well, get ready for it to suck even more, since apparently the sheeple of Earth haven't yet suffered enough at the hands of their Corporate Masters to revolt. 100 hour work weeks won't do it, as long as people can eat. Lack of even appreciation or a heart-felt "thanks" for people literally sacrificing their bodies and souls to their Corporate Masters won't do it. Not until it all comes crashing down, until we realize that we can't "eat" a litigation/service economy, will people insist on change.
But eventually, they will. And "pretty" will not describe the situation.
And if you think I overdramatize the situation, how many unpaid hours did you work last week? Assuming, of course, you had the "luxury" of working, not having recently found your supposedly "unneeded" position curiously occupied by two H1B's or "interns" for a total of 2/3rds of your former salary.
Livin' the American dream. Can I wake up, now? Please?
It's faster in all the others, too, except single processor integer performance
First, I really don't mean this as an anti-Apple rant, and will readily admit the G5s look rather impressive, from the point of view of a coder who tends to write a lot of seriously CPU-intensive apps. I can truly appreciate having the ability to obtain the SVD of an arbitrary 1k by 1k matrix 41% faster.
However...
99% of the desktop machines out there have only one processor.
Additionally, outside of special, generally very-domain-specific FPU-heavy apps, well over 90% of code consists of integer ops (not counting heavy-3d games, for which the simple matter of availability makes the PC the choice without a second thought, and most of the 3d math occurs on the video card anyway).
Thus...
Apple rocks - As long as your primary use consists of serious number crunching. For gaming, for word processing, for doing your taxes, for surfing the web, for just about anything short of "hard" physical system simulation, Apple's own (arguably biased at least somewhat in their favor) testing shows them to fall behind.
Oh, and Apples have better color coordination. I secretly resent having a white mouse, a black keyboard, a beige monitor, and a purple case.
How much work does it really take to tell the device "load ebook reader", and *poof*, you have a "dedicated" book with a great screen? And if you don't want to read, you tell it to load a graphing calculator, or an MP3 player, or Mozilla...
I see your point, but don't see why it really limits the product - These things already contain the most expensive hardware required, and only need a few software tweaks to make them FAR more useful. Convenience has its place, but if I ever start buying $700 items to save me ONE miserable little click on an icon... Just kill me where I stand.
Fine, make it default to "just" displaying ebooks. But give me the option of using it as an oversized PDA, thankyouverymuch.
Today they are offering a special on an iMac hybrid that has a modern flat-screen stuck on the front of an old bulbous blue first-gen iMac that has an orange mouse.
;-)
Thank you, for reminding me why people really stay loyal to Apple.
Not because of better hardware (since even their "new" machines will fall woefully short of a PC with a mid-end AMD)...
Not because of price (since those same new machines will cost more than a fully decked out dual Opteron)...
But because of color coordination.
"Mauve... I think I'll paint the ceiling Mauve. It'll match this season's iMac".
Welcome to the world of Stetford Users.
(Karma hell, here I come).
Took over 8 hours to rip using EAC though... owch.
Buy a cheap older Plextor drive, download a copy of BlindWrite, and tell it to use the "alternative read method".
That 8-hour rip due to a "defective" disk will drop to 15-30 minutes... Soft C1/C2 correction takes FAR less time (and wear on the drive from constant re-seeks) than letting the drive do it.
No fair! Step 3 actually exists here...
"Subtract step 2, $35, from step 1, $50".
Net, $15.
Check out strings usr/sbin/udhcpd, and then compare that with the source of udhcp. Good number of things missing from the source. I want my code back.
Ah, now, if true (I don't disbelieve you, but I have no way to verify it myself), you have made the best point of anyone responding to me thus far. Something beyond mere nitpicking - A real, verifiable violation beyond just an oversight on the last page of a product manual.
THAT I will gladly call "foul" for, and demand Linksys start playing well with others.
Incidentally, why post as AC? I almost didn't see your comment (sub threshold)... Mods - boost this guy a few points, please.
We assume that GNU/Linux firmware engineers lead to GPL violations because there are plenty of firmware engineers like you out there.
Ah, thank you for setting the tone. I do so hate to respond offensively without provocation.
If you perform *commerical* redistribution then a clause extended strictly to *non-profit* redistribution does not apply
The word "profit" does not occur anywhere in the GPL2. The word "commercial" occurs only as a parenthetical clarification of section 3c. Perhaps you'd like to read the text of the document you claim to speak for?
Look, get a clue. You can use GPL'd code in commerical products which include non-GPL'd components. Both legally and ethically. Simple as that. I agree Linksys made an error in this case, but to hear the RMS zealots talk, you'd think Linksys had put a hit out on Linus himself. They made a MINOR oversight. They should correct it. Aside from that, relax. Use your energy coding, rather than bitching.
And just in case some people consider me your typical corporate shill, check out some of my other Slashdot comments - I feel as anti-corporate as the rest of you. But I also won't damn someone who, with a slightly different take on the situation, we could consider on "our" side.
but never seen any of them produce an actual legal loophole in the GPL. I'd bet that you're no different.
Not to get into the "intent vs wording" point that Beryllium sphere brought up...
One phrase satisfies your somewhat snidely-worded request - "user-space drivers".
As long as you pick a base platform that will run an unmodified Linux kernel (which, as a hardware designer and manufacturer, Linksys had the luxury of doing), basically all GPL issues vanish. Boot it, and run the "real" code in user mode. No intermingling of proprietary and GPL'd code whatsoever, end of problem.
Now, a number of people have pointed out that a company would need to (offer to) distribute the source even if they don't modify anything. As I responded here (though I meant to reply to lmfr, not xtal), this seems like a VERY petty distinction. It reduces the GPL to little more than an agreement to mirror already available code, since no obligation to release the proprietary user-space code would exist.
But, in fairness, I agree that it makes a valid technicality. Linksys should have handled this a tad differently. But I really think our efforts would better go toward promoting open source and following up on "real" violations, than in pissing on Linksys for what amounts to little more than an oversight in the product manual.
"There is only a violation if they modified existing GPL code."
No, there's a violation if they distribute GPL programs
Picking nits. The only "source" a company must provide consists of that actually under the GPL. Considering the preexisting availability of the source to the Linux kernel, you'd have a hard time demonstrating a GPL violation for nothing more than failing to make yet another mirror of commonly available code.
Why does everyone always assume that any embedded device running Linux must have, in some way, violated the GPL?
I worked eight years as a firmware engineer. In the last three, I dealt almost exclusively with Linux.
And I can assure you that we didn't need to change any GPL'd code to get what we wanted. Even on fairly custom hardware, we could find preexisting GPL'd code to do 99% of what we needed (and wrote user-space drivers where possible, and modules where not). No need to release anything if you don't change anything, to comply with the GPL.
Whether ethical or not, plenty of legal ways of circumventing the intent of the GPL exist. And, like it or not, eliminating those loopholes (which would basically require forcing any program that runs under linux to use the GPL) would kill Linux in the business world.
Why don't you try doing something positive, for a change.
Some people do consider such actions as "positive". Community action for a specific cause, namely, hurting SCO where it matters (the pocketbook, for cost of bandwidth), and screw what the "law" says. In case you haven't looked around lately, "they" write the laws - All the SCOs and Disneys and the RIAAs and Enrons and Haliburtons and Martha Stewarts. But whether they like it or not, real live actual humans still live on this planet. Not slave labor, and not just a consumer pool.
What about legitimate people who want to make use of their products?
Banks and other large corporations who chose to support the Nazis during WWII suffered greatly from having to make various post-war reparations for their involvement.
Some of us, who truly believe in freedom of ideas, see SCO's tactics as nothing short of a morally unsupportable "first strike" on free software, with Linux merely the scapegoat they would lock up in concentration camps to the detriment of us all.
We've already had countless minor skirmishes with the **AA, which they generally win in the courts, but WE win in the real-world. A few "legal" POWs to the US court system, and we all have Metallica's entire catalog on our HDDs, despite not even liking them, just to make a point.
Make no mistake, a war will come (Senator Kelly... Sorry, couldn't resist, the tone of my text just got way too heavy G), as companies try to hang on to outdated ideas and practices. Not a war with bullets and bombs (though I have little doubt that some extremists on both sides will resort (and have already done so) to violence), but a war that most people will never hear about beyond "and SCO's web site went down for a few hours today as...".
Pick a side.
why can't you make an RFID tag that deactivates when placed over a big magnetic field?
You can.
You can also make one resistant to a given (reasonable) strength magnetic field, thus reinstating the privacy issue.
You want to make absolutely sure you have no RFID tags in your stuff? Put it in the microwave for 15 seconds.
Obviously, you can't do this on metal things or larger objects, but for clothing, money (yes, money, which will very soon have RFID tags in it), food (good to microwave anyway), etc, it works just fine.
Interestingly, relating to food (or drugs), imagine a tag inserted into a pill without the taker knowing... Ultimate prisoner (and unwitting "suspect") tracking, eh? Anytime they walk through a store checkout, the FBI records their position.
And of course, why stop at prisoners and suspects when they could just track all of us with the same ease?
Heh... Imagine how much easier that would make crime... "Hey, buddy, check this out... I just starve myself for three days, all their damned little tags have left my body by then... And I can walk right through any security sensor in use! They just don't see me! And the human guards... Get this, They've grown so used to scanning people by RFID tags that they disbelieve their own eyes if you don't scan, treat you like a ghost and won't even acknowledge your presence! And even the cameras only track tags, so they won't bother recording you. I tell ya, this has made me a rich man, friend".
It's called taking pride in your work.
Which I most certainly do. We apparently just take pride in different things...
I try to code well enough that I could be hit by a truck tomorrow and the next guy could easily pick it up.
See, While certainly an admirable goal, I code for speed and lack of bugs. Readability of something the end user will never see (no GPL used in most corporate coding environment) comes after functionality. Not to say I don't make my code as readible as possible, but if I need to use a hideous mishmash of inline assembly, compiler macros (who ever came up with the idea of C++ templates when we had macros all along?) broken loops, and even the dreaded "goto" (very rarely will I stoop that low) to get an extra 1% performance boost, start praying the code doesn't fall on your shoulders when I move on to my next project.
Has the side effect of me being able to read code I wrote 2 years ago, which is great as I'm on a very long term project.
A project over 2 years? Wow.
Anyway, in my experience, two years later the project has either died or management has deemed it "done" (With the exception of the long term legacy maintenance "punishment" projects they give newbies, wherein it doesn't matter how well you code, because as the expression goes, "adding a teaspoon of wine to a barrel of raw sewage still leaves you with just a barrel of raw sewage").
And for the idea of code reuse in other projects a few years later... Either someone will have found a better way to solve the same problem, your carefully thought out APIs no longer meet the "new" corporate standard, or the spiffy programming-language of the week that you just have to implement the new killer app in has changed, making your entire well-written, debugged, and optimized personal library useless.
So yes, I most certainly do take pride in my work. I care about results, I care about efficiency. I do not care about my employer who, if I have stopped working for them, most likely decided to "restructure their core employment processes" or some such crap. Pride? I take pride in knowing that, after they stop paying me, they stop benefitting from my work. Companies like the idea of IP... Well, let them have to start paying "creative" employees in perpetuity for their ideas, and we'll see just how long they keep riding the IP gravy-train.
They get paid by the hour not the thought.
Whoah, you get paid by the hour???
By which you don't actually mean "one unit of pay for each of those up-to-24-hour increments I come in to work"?
Cool. Can I have your job?
That doesn't do your company any good when you leave them.
Sorry, explain the part where that matters to me?
Sure, theoretically if everyone didn't leave an unmanageable mess when they left, we wouldn't always have to deal with a similar unmanageable mess when taking over a new project. However, that reasoning very rarely works... If everyone agreed not to fight, we'd have no wars; If everyone agreed to share all resources equally, we'd have no hunger or poverty; If everyone would stop driving poorly, we'd have far fewer highway accidents. However, we still have wars, hunger, poverty, and automobile accidents, because it only takes a few uncooperative folks to bring down any system predicated on cooperation.
Sorry to get a bit "deep" on a seemingly shallow issue, but you need to consider "real" human behavior in adopting any new system that involves humans. Thus, while political systems have for the most part failed over time, religions have thrived. Not because religions do anything "better" (or anything at all, for that matter), but because they manipulate humans using real behavior rather than idealized situations.