There's a 4th option there that you missed: slides that support your talk, but are not a requirement for your talk.
My challenge to presenters is to find a way to reduce the number of slides in your PPT deck to only those that directly supputort what you're talking about. If it's not related to the point, isn't supportive, take out the slide.
Here's what I often encourage: if you're giving an hour-long talk, you'll probably talk for 45 minutes, and 15 minutes QA. You have 5 slides. I'll spot you a free name and title slide, and a free "if you have questions here's my email" slide. So you actually have 7 slides for those 45 minutes.
That's quite a feat. But I've given lots of presentations like this, and the comments I've received have all been very positive. The audience feels more engaged to what I'm actually saying, and not the pretty text and animations on my slides.
If you're going to copy/paste your troll posts, at least do yourself the courtesy of updating the games you claim to play. As it is, I don't believe a word you say here. For example, Patapon 2 was released well over a year ago (North America: May 2009) and not "a few months ago" like your post implies. And I know you're in North America, because Patapon 2 was download-only for NA only. So there.
As for the rest of your troll:
Sony has lost a lot of credibility in my eyes due to recent experiences.
I bought a PS3 a few months ago, and it's quite a nice machine... but it has some really odd decisions. You have to have the system on to charge the controllers by plugging them into the system. If you plug them into your laptop instead, they seem to unregister with the system and you have to pair them back up.
I call bullshit on this one. I often charge my PS3 controllers using the USB port on my Mac Mini, which also sits next to the television. I've done this with an original model PS3, and a 1-year-old PS3. It doesn't cause the controllers to unregister.
Then I decided to buy a game from PSN. I needed the latest firmware, which took a few minutes to download and a few minutes to install. Then I downloaded the game, which would only transfer at about 1.5Mbps, since Sony's servers are slow. Then the game had to install. All told it took 2.5 hours to play, mostly because of the slow download.
I think your Internet connection is 1.5MBps, because my transfers from PSN have been faster than that.
Then I saw a game on sale for my PSP that I wanted to play. Patapon 2, only a download. So I went and bought a memory stick for my PSP to hold the game (since my model was from when all games were on discs and they only gave 32MB memory sticks). So I download the new firmware, try to install it... nope. The battery has to be charged.
My battery didn't charge, it's dead because it's 5 years old and never used. Having the system plugged into the wall isn't enough, you have to have a charged battery too.
FYI, the battery needs to be charged to a certain level because the firmware update needs to complete uninterrupted. It's the firmware. So the concept is if your AC power gets disconnected while running the firmware update, the battery has to have enough left in it that the firmware update will complete before the battery runs out. Yes, the PSP won't let you update the firmware without a decent battery charge (note: doesn't need to be 100%) but it's to keep you from accidentally bricking your PSP.
I work at a university, but as staff (not faculty). A few years ago, I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine (Computer Science professor). As part of his Compiler class, the students construct a simple language then develop a compiler for it. I suggested that his students should be asked to create their language with these limitations: each instruction could only be 80 characters long (max) and could only be written using:
the letters A to Z
the digits 0 to 9
the special characters: space, equals, plus, minus, star, slash, parentheses, dollar, period, comma, colon, single-quote
Look familiar? It's the character set from a punch card. LISP and FORTRAN were built using this.
I thought it would be interesting for students to construct a language and compiler with the same limitations from early computing. It keeps the focus on the language, keeping it simple. Would it help the students to build a better understanding of how early programming languages developed, or how languages evolve when (in a follow-up assignment) the students are allowed to incorporate more characters, including upper and lower case letters? And knowing more about computing, could students construct a (functional) punch-card-based language that was better than LISP or FORTRAN?
Well, I thought it would have been interesting.
My friend's response was "what's the point in that?" But after watching this video from the BBC, I think it would have done some good. I'd be interested to hear if anyone else did this in one of their Compiler courses, and what it was like.
P.S.
Anyone else chuckled after reading the name Charles Nutter?
Yes, but probably not for the reasons you did. I chuckled because I used to work with Charlie, was good friends with him at the University job he mentioned in his blog post, and was glad to see him land somewhere doing something he loved to do (JRuby). We should all be that lucky. Go, Charlie.
I think I'll go email him now, catch up on things.
[..] the idea that perhaps we ought to build forgetting into the Internet.
Back in the heady days of the Dot-Com Boom, before the Crash, a friend and I almost set up a dot-com site that would advertise write-only storage. We even had the patter written up for a mocked web site, ready to go into production.
The site would have advertised our high-tech write-only "/dev/null" storage to allow our users the ability to store as much information as they liked. There was no limit on quota, or file type. You could upload MP3s, documents, whatever to our "/dev/null" storage system. We'd award prizes (from advertisers) to the top uploaders each month.
The only catch, and we were very open about this, was that the system was truly write-only. You could write anything you wanted to the system. But you couldn't read it back. Ever. Sure, we'd track what files (filenames, type, etc.) you uploaded to the system - but you could never read them. Such was the forward thinking of the "/dev/null" storage.
Our site encouraged users to upload things that society didn't really need to remember anymore. Things like instructions on how to build an atomic bomb, or whatever. Put it into our "/dev/null" system, delete your local copy, and it's gone forever. Or at least, that was the concept of the site.:-)
(Ultimately, we canned the idea due to bandwidth costs.)
So, staff at The Saratogian have used Windows software for years and years and years. They moved to Linux for a day and found that things were different, and "different" was hard to learn. Why am I not surprised?
Here's what they said in TFA:
News Editor Paul Tackett has been working days and nights, on top of his usual job, to set up most of the day's pages in a layout program called Scribus.... For today's print edition, Tackett has duplicated the familiar components of The Saratogian from scratch, with the goal being that you won't know the difference between the look of today's paper and tomorrow's....
That sure sounds hard. Tackett had to spend days to reproduce templates and layouts that have been built up over years. Yes, doing that kind of work would be hard for anyone. I give this guy huge credit for accomplishing it. But I also give kudos out to Scribus for being able to support it.
You know, moving from one environment that you know really well to one that you don't - it's always hard. We Linux users have trouble, too, moving from Linux to Windows. Don't believe me? I did it for my work, and I'm constantly finding things in Windows that "just don't work right" or "work stupidly".
Linux is just easier for me. But I've been using Linux at home since 1993, and running Linux at work since 2002. Until 2009, that is, when I was "asked" to move to Windows for work.
This whole "move to Linux in a day" thing is a neat "publicity stunt within the journalism industry" (their words) but migrating in that short a time is very very hard to do. If you're going to move an organization to Linux, there are ways to do it so you won't stress your users too much.
Do what I did with my old 802.11b WAP: Unplug the WAN cable, open up the access, mark the network name as "Free Wi-Fi", and leave it plugged in. I was surprised how many people had connected to it after only a few weeks!:-)
Then I gave it away to my father-in-law. His WAP had just died, and he needed another one. I tried to convince him to just buy a new WAP that supported better security and faster speeds, but he didn't want to spend the money. But I did get him to lock it down by client MAC address.
But you mentioned other equipment like cards and adapters. I'd send those to recycling. I just did the same with some 10/100 PCMCIA cards, and some 10/100 ISA boards. I suppose I originally kept them because "someone" might want them "some day". Never happened.
I'll admit, I was really impressed with the linked video. Until I watched it again and realized that it's faked. The person "controlling" the action isn't quite in sync with what's on screen. Sometimes the actor is slightly ahead of the "game" (could be lag, I thought) and other times isn't keeping up with what's on screen.
Even the linked video comments that the video is likely a scripted demo. But I'm not convinced it's real yet. (I'm sure it works, but clearly not ready for prime-time, nor even E3.)
In WW2, soldiers used a device called a Bangalore Torpedo or Bangalore Mine to clear obstacles - barbed wire, barriers, etc - without coming under fire. Basically, it was a long tube filled with TNT. Screw it together, push it along (from behind cover) and detonate to clear the area and make a safe path. We used them during the Normandy invasion, for example.
This robot version is, really, just the next-generation version of the Bangalore. You deploy the robot (which might be under fire, but the operator is safely out of the way) to the barrier, launch an obstacle clearing system, and detonate to clear the area and make a safe path.
Nope, that is wishful thinking/poor reading of the license.. I challenge you to find a device that uses GPL code in it.. that includes at time of delivery a copy of the source code in machine readable form.. You cannot because its not a requirement.. nor is it a requirement for software..
True, embedded devices that use GPL'd code do not (often) provide a source code option when you acquire/purchase/etc the device. Providing source code at that time would meet 3a, and you point out this does not always happen.
But check the documentation for the embedded device that contains GPL'd source code, and you'll see a mention about the GPL'd code in it. And there's an offer there about the source code. This meets 3b of the GNU GPL:
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange;
Maybe it's not very obvious in the manual, but it's there.
For example: I bought my television about 2 years ago. We flipped through the manual after we got it, and found a notice that some code used in the device [listed] was under the GNU LGPL, and there was an offer to obtain source code direct from them. (I think they put it on their web site.) Of course, they also listed the project's web site to get the original source code.
So...I write a program. I decide to GPL it. I put up the program on my website, and also on the same website, I put up "source.tgz". I have just violated the GPL? Because I can't ensure that my website will be up for 3 years? You're disagreeing with the GNU FAQ, which says that's OK. I wonder why.
In the example you gave, distributing the source code alongside (i.e. on the same web site) meets 3a of the GNU GPL: a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange.
That's a different scenario than what you're replying to. The person above wrote:
Huh? How does a link to the source code in the app not satisfy 3b? It's an offer, it's free, it's machine-readable, and it's customarily used for s/w distribution.
So this example - linking to the source code on a separate web site from inside an App - is different from your case. The keyword is accompany. If you don't provide or offer the source code at the same time you distribute the binary (3a) then you need to include an offer to provide the source code upon request, valid for at least 3 years (3b).
"... but it locks up every Ubuntu and XP machine I've come across in high-speed access mode. I have read that if I low-level format it that it could be fixed, though my current one doesn't support it. My Google-fu must be weak because I cannot seem to find a USB flash reader that specifies that it will do low-level formatting."
I wonder if GNU Shred would be something to try, at the device level? Let's say your flash drive shows up as/dev/sdc, then you'd do this:
shred -v -n 1/dev/sdc
(You might even try -n 3.) I think this would work, but I don't know what wear leveling would do when shredding a USB flash drive.
Once you run shred, you'll have wiped the entire flash drive. That means you'll need to repartition the device and lay down a new filesystem.
Interesting, so it's not enough merely to offer to provide the source, it has to be available right alongside the compiled program from the same supplying site.
That would certainly meet 3a, yes.
This would seem to indicate that the way to be fully compliant would be for Apple to host the source with the app so you could get both at the same time.
It doesn't necessarily need to be in the same container as the "binary" App. I suppose one possible solution using the App Store would be to have a separate App that provides the source code... buy/download the "binary" App, and you get access to the "source" App too. Or even just a link/mention in the "binary" App that source code is available in the "source" App. (Same concept as Red Hat's RPMs, SRPMs.)
Indeed, they have already taken the app down because it is a GPL violation. There are other GPL apps on the store though that are in compliance, with the source available via developer website linked within the app - it's not a fundamental incompatibility with the app store, it seems to be a developer issue.
Actually, linking to a separate web site from within an App is not exactly meeting the terms of the GNU GPL. IMO, this might work under certain circumstances, but should be avoided where possible. Section 3 of the GPL says:
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
And 3c doesn't apply to the Apple App Store at all.
So a developer would need to comply with 3a (include the source code at the time of distributing the binary - i.e. as part of the App, etc.) or 3b (include a written offer to provide the source code upon request.)
But providing a link to a separate web site for users to get the source code doesn't exactly meet either of these.
This example is similar to a question in the GNU GPL FAQ: Can I put the binaries on my Internet server and put the source on a different Internet site?Only if you make special arrangements with that other site for them to keep the source code available, then that would be ok. If that linked web site is owned & managed by the developer/maintainer of the App, then that's a default positive arrangement. But the developer should not link to some other site, and say "Get the source code from these guys" without making arrangements ahead of time. That's why the preference is to do either 3a or 3b.
For those interested: PLATO was actually created around 1960 as an electronic instruction platform. But it wasn't until around 1973 that things really started to take off for PLATO. That's because the system had developed features like talking to others across a distance via terminals, graphics displays, etc. that wouldn't hit mainstream for a few years.
My Mom worked for CDC PLATO in the late '70s (or was it early '80s?) working in a group that provided English as a Second Language programs. I got my exposure to the PLATO system through her, but I didn't really care about the ESL stuff.
It was an impressive system, especially considering its time, featuring touch screen, networking, etc.
Now I begin my bi annual ritual of backing up my data, and making a new live CD
Why create a CD? It's better to use LiveUSB Creator to put the LiveCD bootable image onto a USB flash drive. There's even a nice GUI, works on Linux (of course) or Windows. Here's the How-to..
And 1GB flash drives are cheap and plentiful these days... if you can even buy a flash drive that small anymore.
We watched the LOST finale last night. It was good, and I was satisfied. I'm definitely going to buy the Blu-ray set for season 6 and watch everything again. Yep, still a fan.
The ending was really confusing, though. Here are my thoughts:
I think everything that happened on the Island was Real, the flashbacks/flashforwards were Real throughout the show, but the season 6 Flashsideways was the "much later after they all died" construct. That's how I interpreted Ben/Hurley's "You were a great #1"/"And you were a great #2" exchange.
I think the writers were trying to wrap things up for the fans, get everyone together that we've wanted to have together (Sayid & Shannon, etc.) The only way they could do that was in some sort of "afterlife" thing, which is what Christian and Jack were talking about. All that was unnecessary. I think the fans would have preferred not to have the happy ending, anyway. What happened, happened - right?
Having watched it to the end, I wish they'd managed the Flashsideways differently. It really should have been an alternate reality, and MiB should have been in that coffin instead of Christian, showing he made it off when the Island sank with the Swan bomb. And all the happy people in the church would have been his followers - like Sayid and Claire in Season 6 - taking over the world, person by person. The Flashsideways should have been MiB's construct - but when Jack defeated him on the Island in the Real timeline, that should have broken the Flashsideways.
In my mind, I think that would have been way cooler. Would have worked with Jack's bleeding neck injury, too, since what happens on the Island would show to affect the Flashsideways.
I guess I was satisfied with the finale, but not as satisfied as I wanted to be.
You wasted thousands of man-hours of innovation, but not for the reasons you think. You run a company with a long history and well-known culture of quashing real innovation (because, let's all be honest, Microsoft is big enough with enough smart people working there that real good ideas do see development - they just never seem to see release...). The development teams are so political (with the Office team at the top of the heap, as I understand it) resulting in corporate politics determining what ideas actually make it to market rather than the merits of the actual idea. How many innovative ideas have been canned by internal policy and infighting?
I find it interesting that the little "fortune" at the bottom of my Slashdot page for today is: Why did the Roman Empire collapse? What is the Latin for office automation?
"64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. [...] Concerned users are being advised to disable Windows Aero until Microsoft can issue a fix."
I recall that Microsoft made a huge deal about the new Aero look, back when Windows Vista was released, touting it as some kind of major revolution for PC computing (even though it was "just" a GUI.) They even used bullsh*t "hype" language that it would "enable you to manage the windows on your desktop by arranging them in a visually striking yet convenient way", which is another way of saying "you can arrange windows on your desktop." Oh boy.
That Microsoft is advising users to disable Aero seems like a black eye for Microsoft:
"Yeah, that huge feature we said was really important to computing? Just turn it off, it's buggy."
"When you're doing something for a potential client or for a client, having little imperfections like that, imperfections that are uncontrollable, does not make a good impression. That concerns me that there's little things like that that still crop up."
Microsoft Office isn't really compatible with itself. I've posted this one before, but I guess I'll mention it again:
In a meeting from about a year ago, one of the attendees sent out some notes for us to read beforehand. We all dutifully printed out our copy of the document, and brought it with us to the meeting.
Despite the fact that the document was created with Microsoft Office, and that we all run Microsoft Office, there were 3 different versions of the printed document at the meeting. You could tell by looking around the table that one version of the notes (printed from Microsoft Office for Macintosh) arranged the text around a table in a weird way. Another version (printed by Microsoft Office 2007) put a page break in a different place and put an extra blank line between a table and its caption. The original version (Microsoft Office 2003) was formatted as intended.
This was a simple 3-page document in "DOC" format, with an enumerated list of paragraphs, so it didn't take long for us to realize our copies printed out differently, and to figure out the correlation between versions of Word and how the document printed out.
I think it just goes to show: if you have a document that absolutely must preserve formatting, send it as a PDF.
According to the Facebook statistics page the average account has 130 friends. If 1 in 300 accounts are compromised and you have circa 130 friends then the odds are quite high that the personal data you have "only available to friends" is going to become available to some fairly unfriendly people shortly.
Does anyone out there actually give complete and correct information to Facebook? I work with university students, and it's scary how much "private" information they put out there, just because there's a box for it on a FB web form. I'm an 83-year-old grandmother, at least as far as FB's data collection goes. A bunch of other [optional] stuff was left blank.
Although it is interesting that that 83-year-old went to the same high school and university that I did....
I wonder if it could be a piece of debris from the asteroid that made a close pass to Earth about a week ago, in a spiral orbit since then. Just because it made a big light show doesn't mean the material was huge. The piece of debris could have started out the size of a softball, and (if it made it to the ground at all) could have been smaller than the size of a pea upon impact.
No, if you bothered to READ my previous post, you'd see that I buy tons of games that DON'T have DRM. I only have no intention of buying it due to DRM.
The presence of DLC causes me to pirate games I would otherwise (joyfully) pay for.
That statement disturbs me. Yes, having to pay for "DLC" that was already on-disc is a total sham, a ripoff. But if you don't like DLC (or in this case, paying to unlock content) then don't buy it.
But saying that DLC "causes me to pirate games" [emphasis mine] is utter nonsense. By extension, do you pirate other software?
Slashdot Mirror
There's a 4th option there that you missed: slides that support your talk, but are not a requirement for your talk.
My challenge to presenters is to find a way to reduce the number of slides in your PPT deck to only those that directly supputort what you're talking about. If it's not related to the point, isn't supportive, take out the slide.
Here's what I often encourage: if you're giving an hour-long talk, you'll probably talk for 45 minutes, and 15 minutes QA. You have 5 slides. I'll spot you a free name and title slide, and a free "if you have questions here's my email" slide. So you actually have 7 slides for those 45 minutes.
That's quite a feat. But I've given lots of presentations like this, and the comments I've received have all been very positive. The audience feels more engaged to what I'm actually saying, and not the pretty text and animations on my slides.
If you're going to copy/paste your troll posts, at least do yourself the courtesy of updating the games you claim to play. As it is, I don't believe a word you say here. For example, Patapon 2 was released well over a year ago (North America: May 2009) and not "a few months ago" like your post implies. And I know you're in North America, because Patapon 2 was download-only for NA only. So there.
As for the rest of your troll:
Sony has lost a lot of credibility in my eyes due to recent experiences. I bought a PS3 a few months ago, and it's quite a nice machine... but it has some really odd decisions. You have to have the system on to charge the controllers by plugging them into the system. If you plug them into your laptop instead, they seem to unregister with the system and you have to pair them back up.
I call bullshit on this one. I often charge my PS3 controllers using the USB port on my Mac Mini, which also sits next to the television. I've done this with an original model PS3, and a 1-year-old PS3. It doesn't cause the controllers to unregister.
Then I decided to buy a game from PSN. I needed the latest firmware, which took a few minutes to download and a few minutes to install. Then I downloaded the game, which would only transfer at about 1.5Mbps, since Sony's servers are slow. Then the game had to install. All told it took 2.5 hours to play, mostly because of the slow download.
I think your Internet connection is 1.5MBps, because my transfers from PSN have been faster than that.
Then I saw a game on sale for my PSP that I wanted to play. Patapon 2, only a download. So I went and bought a memory stick for my PSP to hold the game (since my model was from when all games were on discs and they only gave 32MB memory sticks). So I download the new firmware, try to install it... nope. The battery has to be charged. My battery didn't charge, it's dead because it's 5 years old and never used. Having the system plugged into the wall isn't enough, you have to have a charged battery too.
FYI, the battery needs to be charged to a certain level because the firmware update needs to complete uninterrupted. It's the firmware. So the concept is if your AC power gets disconnected while running the firmware update, the battery has to have enough left in it that the firmware update will complete before the battery runs out. Yes, the PSP won't let you update the firmware without a decent battery charge (note: doesn't need to be 100%) but it's to keep you from accidentally bricking your PSP.
I work at a university, but as staff (not faculty). A few years ago, I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine (Computer Science professor). As part of his Compiler class, the students construct a simple language then develop a compiler for it. I suggested that his students should be asked to create their language with these limitations: each instruction could only be 80 characters long (max) and could only be written using:
Look familiar? It's the character set from a punch card. LISP and FORTRAN were built using this.
I thought it would be interesting for students to construct a language and compiler with the same limitations from early computing. It keeps the focus on the language, keeping it simple. Would it help the students to build a better understanding of how early programming languages developed, or how languages evolve when (in a follow-up assignment) the students are allowed to incorporate more characters, including upper and lower case letters? And knowing more about computing, could students construct a (functional) punch-card-based language that was better than LISP or FORTRAN?
Well, I thought it would have been interesting.
My friend's response was "what's the point in that?" But after watching this video from the BBC, I think it would have done some good. I'd be interested to hear if anyone else did this in one of their Compiler courses, and what it was like.
P.S. Anyone else chuckled after reading the name Charles Nutter?
Yes, but probably not for the reasons you did. I chuckled because I used to work with Charlie, was good friends with him at the University job he mentioned in his blog post, and was glad to see him land somewhere doing something he loved to do (JRuby). We should all be that lucky. Go, Charlie.
I think I'll go email him now, catch up on things.
[..] the idea that perhaps we ought to build forgetting into the Internet.
Back in the heady days of the Dot-Com Boom, before the Crash, a friend and I almost set up a dot-com site that would advertise write-only storage. We even had the patter written up for a mocked web site, ready to go into production.
The site would have advertised our high-tech write-only "/dev/null" storage to allow our users the ability to store as much information as they liked. There was no limit on quota, or file type. You could upload MP3s, documents, whatever to our "/dev/null" storage system. We'd award prizes (from advertisers) to the top uploaders each month.
The only catch, and we were very open about this, was that the system was truly write-only. You could write anything you wanted to the system. But you couldn't read it back. Ever. Sure, we'd track what files (filenames, type, etc.) you uploaded to the system - but you could never read them. Such was the forward thinking of the "/dev/null" storage.
Our site encouraged users to upload things that society didn't really need to remember anymore. Things like instructions on how to build an atomic bomb, or whatever. Put it into our "/dev/null" system, delete your local copy, and it's gone forever. Or at least, that was the concept of the site. :-)
(Ultimately, we canned the idea due to bandwidth costs.)
So, staff at The Saratogian have used Windows software for years and years and years. They moved to Linux for a day and found that things were different, and "different" was hard to learn. Why am I not surprised?
Here's what they said in TFA:
That sure sounds hard. Tackett had to spend days to reproduce templates and layouts that have been built up over years. Yes, doing that kind of work would be hard for anyone. I give this guy huge credit for accomplishing it. But I also give kudos out to Scribus for being able to support it.
You know, moving from one environment that you know really well to one that you don't - it's always hard. We Linux users have trouble, too, moving from Linux to Windows. Don't believe me? I did it for my work, and I'm constantly finding things in Windows that "just don't work right" or "work stupidly".
Linux is just easier for me. But I've been using Linux at home since 1993, and running Linux at work since 2002. Until 2009, that is, when I was "asked" to move to Windows for work.
This whole "move to Linux in a day" thing is a neat "publicity stunt within the journalism industry" (their words) but migrating in that short a time is very very hard to do. If you're going to move an organization to Linux, there are ways to do it so you won't stress your users too much.
Do what I did with my old 802.11b WAP: Unplug the WAN cable, open up the access, mark the network name as "Free Wi-Fi", and leave it plugged in. I was surprised how many people had connected to it after only a few weeks! :-)
Then I gave it away to my father-in-law. His WAP had just died, and he needed another one. I tried to convince him to just buy a new WAP that supported better security and faster speeds, but he didn't want to spend the money. But I did get him to lock it down by client MAC address.
But you mentioned other equipment like cards and adapters. I'd send those to recycling. I just did the same with some 10/100 PCMCIA cards, and some 10/100 ISA boards. I suppose I originally kept them because "someone" might want them "some day". Never happened.
I'll admit, I was really impressed with the linked video. Until I watched it again and realized that it's faked. The person "controlling" the action isn't quite in sync with what's on screen. Sometimes the actor is slightly ahead of the "game" (could be lag, I thought) and other times isn't keeping up with what's on screen.
Even the linked video comments that the video is likely a scripted demo. But I'm not convinced it's real yet. (I'm sure it works, but clearly not ready for prime-time, nor even E3.)
In WW2, soldiers used a device called a Bangalore Torpedo or Bangalore Mine to clear obstacles - barbed wire, barriers, etc - without coming under fire. Basically, it was a long tube filled with TNT. Screw it together, push it along (from behind cover) and detonate to clear the area and make a safe path. We used them during the Normandy invasion, for example.
This robot version is, really, just the next-generation version of the Bangalore. You deploy the robot (which might be under fire, but the operator is safely out of the way) to the barrier, launch an obstacle clearing system, and detonate to clear the area and make a safe path.
Nope, that is wishful thinking/poor reading of the license.. I challenge you to find a device that uses GPL code in it.. that includes at time of delivery a copy of the source code in machine readable form.. You cannot because its not a requirement.. nor is it a requirement for software..
True, embedded devices that use GPL'd code do not (often) provide a source code option when you acquire/purchase/etc the device. Providing source code at that time would meet 3a, and you point out this does not always happen.
But check the documentation for the embedded device that contains GPL'd source code, and you'll see a mention about the GPL'd code in it. And there's an offer there about the source code. This meets 3b of the GNU GPL:
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange;
Maybe it's not very obvious in the manual, but it's there.
For example: I bought my television about 2 years ago. We flipped through the manual after we got it, and found a notice that some code used in the device [listed] was under the GNU LGPL, and there was an offer to obtain source code direct from them. (I think they put it on their web site.) Of course, they also listed the project's web site to get the original source code.
So...I write a program. I decide to GPL it. I put up the program on my website, and also on the same website, I put up "source.tgz". I have just violated the GPL? Because I can't ensure that my website will be up for 3 years? You're disagreeing with the GNU FAQ, which says that's OK. I wonder why.
In the example you gave, distributing the source code alongside (i.e. on the same web site) meets 3a of the GNU GPL: a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange.
That's a different scenario than what you're replying to. The person above wrote:
Huh? How does a link to the source code in the app not satisfy 3b? It's an offer, it's free, it's machine-readable, and it's customarily used for s/w distribution.
So this example - linking to the source code on a separate web site from inside an App - is different from your case. The keyword is accompany. If you don't provide or offer the source code at the same time you distribute the binary (3a) then you need to include an offer to provide the source code upon request, valid for at least 3 years (3b).
"... but it locks up every Ubuntu and XP machine I've come across in high-speed access mode. I have read that if I low-level format it that it could be fixed, though my current one doesn't support it. My Google-fu must be weak because I cannot seem to find a USB flash reader that specifies that it will do low-level formatting."
I wonder if GNU Shred would be something to try, at the device level? Let's say your flash drive shows up as /dev/sdc, then you'd do this:
shred -v -n 1 /dev/sdc
(You might even try -n 3.) I think this would work, but I don't know what wear leveling would do when shredding a USB flash drive.
Once you run shred, you'll have wiped the entire flash drive. That means you'll need to repartition the device and lay down a new filesystem.
Might work.
Interesting, so it's not enough merely to offer to provide the source, it has to be available right alongside the compiled program from the same supplying site.
That would certainly meet 3a, yes.
This would seem to indicate that the way to be fully compliant would be for Apple to host the source with the app so you could get both at the same time.
It doesn't necessarily need to be in the same container as the "binary" App. I suppose one possible solution using the App Store would be to have a separate App that provides the source code ... buy/download the "binary" App, and you get access to the "source" App too. Or even just a link/mention in the "binary" App that source code is available in the "source" App. (Same concept as Red Hat's RPMs, SRPMs.)
Emphasis mine:
Indeed, they have already taken the app down because it is a GPL violation. There are other GPL apps on the store though that are in compliance, with the source available via developer website linked within the app - it's not a fundamental incompatibility with the app store, it seems to be a developer issue.
Actually, linking to a separate web site from within an App is not exactly meeting the terms of the GNU GPL. IMO, this might work under certain circumstances, but should be avoided where possible. Section 3 of the GPL says:
And 3c doesn't apply to the Apple App Store at all.
So a developer would need to comply with 3a (include the source code at the time of distributing the binary - i.e. as part of the App, etc.) or 3b (include a written offer to provide the source code upon request.)
But providing a link to a separate web site for users to get the source code doesn't exactly meet either of these.
This example is similar to a question in the GNU GPL FAQ: Can I put the binaries on my Internet server and put the source on a different Internet site? Only if you make special arrangements with that other site for them to keep the source code available, then that would be ok. If that linked web site is owned & managed by the developer/maintainer of the App, then that's a default positive arrangement. But the developer should not link to some other site, and say "Get the source code from these guys" without making arrangements ahead of time. That's why the preference is to do either 3a or 3b.
For those interested: PLATO was actually created around 1960 as an electronic instruction platform. But it wasn't until around 1973 that things really started to take off for PLATO. That's because the system had developed features like talking to others across a distance via terminals, graphics displays, etc. that wouldn't hit mainstream for a few years.
My Mom worked for CDC PLATO in the late '70s (or was it early '80s?) working in a group that provided English as a Second Language programs. I got my exposure to the PLATO system through her, but I didn't really care about the ESL stuff.
It was an impressive system, especially considering its time, featuring touch screen, networking, etc.
Now I begin my bi annual ritual of backing up my data, and making a new live CD
Why create a CD? It's better to use LiveUSB Creator to put the LiveCD bootable image onto a USB flash drive. There's even a nice GUI, works on Linux (of course) or Windows. Here's the How-to..
And 1GB flash drives are cheap and plentiful these days ... if you can even buy a flash drive that small anymore.
We watched the LOST finale last night. It was good, and I was satisfied. I'm definitely going to buy the Blu-ray set for season 6 and watch everything again. Yep, still a fan.
The ending was really confusing, though. Here are my thoughts:
I think everything that happened on the Island was Real, the flashbacks/flashforwards were Real throughout the show, but the season 6 Flashsideways was the "much later after they all died" construct. That's how I interpreted Ben/Hurley's "You were a great #1"/"And you were a great #2" exchange.
I think the writers were trying to wrap things up for the fans, get everyone together that we've wanted to have together (Sayid & Shannon, etc.) The only way they could do that was in some sort of "afterlife" thing, which is what Christian and Jack were talking about. All that was unnecessary. I think the fans would have preferred not to have the happy ending, anyway. What happened, happened - right?
Having watched it to the end, I wish they'd managed the Flashsideways differently. It really should have been an alternate reality, and MiB should have been in that coffin instead of Christian, showing he made it off when the Island sank with the Swan bomb. And all the happy people in the church would have been his followers - like Sayid and Claire in Season 6 - taking over the world, person by person. The Flashsideways should have been MiB's construct - but when Jack defeated him on the Island in the Real timeline, that should have broken the Flashsideways.
In my mind, I think that would have been way cooler. Would have worked with Jack's bleeding neck injury, too, since what happens on the Island would show to affect the Flashsideways.
I guess I was satisfied with the finale, but not as satisfied as I wanted to be.
I find it interesting that the little "fortune" at the bottom of my Slashdot page for today is: Why did the Roman Empire collapse? What is the Latin for office automation?
:-)
I recall that Microsoft made a huge deal about the new Aero look, back when Windows Vista was released, touting it as some kind of major revolution for PC computing (even though it was "just" a GUI.) They even used bullsh*t "hype" language that it would "enable you to manage the windows on your desktop by arranging them in a visually striking yet convenient way", which is another way of saying "you can arrange windows on your desktop." Oh boy.
That Microsoft is advising users to disable Aero seems like a black eye for Microsoft:
"Yeah, that huge feature we said was really important to computing? Just turn it off, it's buggy."
> I'm not sure how I'd like this in action, but I'm glad that they're at least trying a somewhat new direction with the 'Unity' interface ...
If you'd like to see it in action, there's a short (1:39) video showing this on YouTube: Ubuntu 10.10 Unity Interface.
"When you're doing something for a potential client or for a client, having little imperfections like that, imperfections that are uncontrollable, does not make a good impression. That concerns me that there's little things like that that still crop up."
Microsoft Office isn't really compatible with itself. I've posted this one before, but I guess I'll mention it again:
In a meeting from about a year ago, one of the attendees sent out some notes for us to read beforehand. We all dutifully printed out our copy of the document, and brought it with us to the meeting.
Despite the fact that the document was created with Microsoft Office, and that we all run Microsoft Office, there were 3 different versions of the printed document at the meeting. You could tell by looking around the table that one version of the notes (printed from Microsoft Office for Macintosh) arranged the text around a table in a weird way. Another version (printed by Microsoft Office 2007) put a page break in a different place and put an extra blank line between a table and its caption. The original version (Microsoft Office 2003) was formatted as intended.
This was a simple 3-page document in "DOC" format, with an enumerated list of paragraphs, so it didn't take long for us to realize our copies printed out differently, and to figure out the correlation between versions of Word and how the document printed out.
I think it just goes to show: if you have a document that absolutely must preserve formatting, send it as a PDF.
According to the Facebook statistics page the average account has 130 friends. If 1 in 300 accounts are compromised and you have circa 130 friends then the odds are quite high that the personal data you have "only available to friends" is going to become available to some fairly unfriendly people shortly.
Does anyone out there actually give complete and correct information to Facebook? I work with university students, and it's scary how much "private" information they put out there, just because there's a box for it on a FB web form. I'm an 83-year-old grandmother, at least as far as FB's data collection goes. A bunch of other [optional] stuff was left blank.
Although it is interesting that that 83-year-old went to the same high school and university that I did....
I wonder if it could be a piece of debris from the asteroid that made a close pass to Earth about a week ago, in a spiral orbit since then. Just because it made a big light show doesn't mean the material was huge. The piece of debris could have started out the size of a softball, and (if it made it to the ground at all) could have been smaller than the size of a pea upon impact.
No, if you bothered to READ my previous post, you'd see that I buy tons of games that DON'T have DRM. I only have no intention of buying it due to DRM.
Wait, you only buy games that don't have DRM, and you pirate games that do have DRM? Your argument is cyclical: You play it, but you're not gonna buy it ... which is why the game companies feel there's a reason to add DRM. Repeat.
The presence of DLC causes me to pirate games I would otherwise (joyfully) pay for.
That statement disturbs me. Yes, having to pay for "DLC" that was already on-disc is a total sham, a ripoff. But if you don't like DLC (or in this case, paying to unlock content) then don't buy it.
But saying that DLC "causes me to pirate games" [emphasis mine] is utter nonsense. By extension, do you pirate other software?