They didn't implement it in three years. A german company called Star Division started it in the mid 80's. It was purchased by Sun in 1999 and released open source three years ago.
So while the open source comunity has done a ton to improve it since then, it - like mozilla - is in large part a gift to the community, which we gladly embraced.
Lindows is not competing with IBM. IBM has shown very little interest in Linux on the desktop. The truth is IBM lost the desktop market to Dell years ago (although they do sell some nice laptops).
Who Lindows is competeing with head-on is Microsoft. Try telling that to a VC:) I don't think he was planning on getting too many investors. He had his own money to invest in the Lindow distro, and development costs were not exorbient because the vast majority of his product was free.
Wow, this is pure religious war fodder! What were they thinking? Linux Journal must be secretly run by MS, plotting to destroy linux from the inside out by fostering infighting!
Oh, and I demand a recount - they were using an inferior plurality tallying method. We all know that more people prefer emacs and it would have won if it's vote wasn't split between GNU emacs and Xemacs.
The untenable downside is vender lock-in. You can only use iTMS files on Apple products, and products that are allowed to licence the Fairplay DRM. We have yet to see how easy this will be. It could be a non-issue. It could be like DVD, where anyone can licence for large fees, and NDA's required, effectively barring out free software implementations. Or it would be like Microsoft, where they refuse to licence any of their proprietary formats resulting in complete vender lockin, except in this case the full force of the DMCA, not just trade secrets, would "protect" against unauthorized implementations. Apple has been playing it's cards very close to it's chest in this regard, and we simply don't know the answer.
I for one don't feel like investing large amounts of money into a music collection, until I know for certian that I will be able to continue using it far into the future.
I have been contemplating joining eMusic for the exact same reason. I haven't because I had a hard time justifying the cost when I would end up buying CD's from all the bands I liked anyway.
I strongly believe that the ability to easily FIND NEW music is the biggest gap in digital music right now, and a huge lost opportunity for independent labels. What I would love would be a subscription based unlimited download service, like eMusic was, that also sold CD's and gave you download credit for everything you purchased. Then people who bought CD's would have a convient venue to discover new music - downloading mp3's for free, and the ones that didn't would have a convient venue for paying for downloaded music.
If you were to integrate (cross link) this with a nice online radio site, like live365.com, then I would be in music heaven.
Because the purpose of this list isn't about which software is the most secure. It's about what system admins need to do with the systems they have, be it Windows or Unix. Even admins running the most secure software in the world need to be vigilent about their system.
Now you could say that a decent system admin should already know everything on this list, and should have fixed it. I agree, but we know for a fact that not all system admins do this, either out of ignorance or lack of time. That is the whole point of the list - if we just fixed these 20 realitively easy things, it would take care of the majority of security problems that exist today.
So consider this list a wake-up call- If any of these points apply to any of your systems, you need to fix them now!
This is pretty cool, and I thank the poster and slashdot editors for putting up the story. I just thought that this was funny:
Apple, Intel, DARPA and Cooligy did not respond to requests for comment.
Well that includes just about everyone mentioned in the article, so exactly where did the information come from? I see, I'm reading a posting about an article about another article about information gleaned from a website. Oh, well at least they told me:)
I agree, especially since in my experience they won't be used effectively. School Executives now-a-days seem to think that it is so important to teach kids "how to use computers" meaning word, excell, and powerpoint. But these kids are in 6th grade - it will be another 6 years until they graduate, and need to use these tools. Do they really think that we will be using the same software six years from now? Wait till high school business classes to teach these things. Besides, kids are good at learning these things themselves.
Here are some valid uses of computers in mid/elementry school:
* Teach them to touch type. Seriously, this will increase their productivity far more than knowing any particular computer program will. And it needs to be taught young, before they develop too many bad habits.
* Educational games can be cool, although when I was a kid they didn't seem to be too educational. How much did I learn from oregon trail, really. Besides all the ways one can die, and the meaning of the term "ford the river", not much. The main benifit of our trips to the computer lab, was that the overworked teachers got some extra time to grade papers:)
* Heck, even teaching elementry students how to program would be more usefull than learning MS Office. Not so that they all become programmers, but because it stretches their mind and makes them think differntly than they may have before.
* Typing up reports, once they get longer than a single page. As they get older, this goes well with how to research, organise, and document your sources. The computer can help with all of these. But I would not use MS word or even Open Office. These packages suck compared to even Apple Works on the old ][e's.
And, well that's all I can think of. In high school there are additional applications, and it's okay to teach the kids specifics apps they will be using in the real world at this point. But if I see one more idiot board of education hack talking about how "technology" (MS Office) is crucial to our kid's life I'm going to puke.
I have a simular experiance, but with opposite motivations. Our school district (or the district I grew up in and my parents still teach in) has been buying the cheapest things that they can get, which usually amounts to wierd PC hardware that is on clearance. Then they don't plan any support, so when something goes wrong the teachers are out of luck. They can send the thing into the central office for repairs, but they will usually just end up sitting there for months and then be returned saying that it can't be fixed. My dad has just stopped trying. I spend several weekends a year helping my dad out with administration and repair problems for his drafting lab PC's. We usually end up having to cover the cost of parts out of our pocket, or the school Tech club funds. If it is something I can't fix easily, then that workstation is out of commision until the district feels like getting another batch of crappy PC's.
Well, watching a violent movie has yet to make me feel violent. But you can bet that a hot sex scene does make me horny. From my experiences, I would guess that most people are the same.
We have problems caused by people not being able to control their both their violent and sexual emotions. So what is backwards about wanting to limit scences do affect on people, and allowing ones that don't?
Re:Theft is not what anybody wants
on
Why Only Music?
·
· Score: 1
You know I have to agree with you. Most of the people I know that pirate movies just don't want to pay for it. And there is no legitimate alternative for that - it cost money to make movies.
Another big motivation I see are people wanting to see the movie as soon as possible. Again there is no good solution to this. Even if they had some sort of prerelease, people would still want it sooner than that. So lets go to the extreme - you put up everything for charge on the web, as soon as it is availble - the script, unedited takes, first draft edits. There would be some hardcore fans that would pay to see that stuff, but to most pirates it would just be an easy source to pirate from. Furthermore, it would make it impossible to include surprises in the plot. It might be an interesting experiment, but I think it is best to just release the movie when it is done.
The other big reason is that they want to watch the movie at home, but the DVD isn't released yet. This I can understand. Sometimes it takes forever for the DVD to come out. Most of this is not because it takes a long time to make the DVD, but an intensional strategy on the part of the studio. Why else would region encoding even exist? This is something that I think the studio's will start reconcidering in light of piracy.
I don't know anyone who pirates because it is more convienient than buying the movie, although this might become more of an issue in the future.
So there is one legitimate alternative that the MPAA could provide to decrease piracy, but the majority is simple done by people that don't want to pay.
You know what, they have little reason to be upset. If they don't want to read the PDA's then they don't have to. A glowing screen a couple rows down isn't that much of a distraction. Especially if they displayed light text on a dark background.
This could have some usefull benefits. For example, I know that actively listening to music is not natural for me - my mind wanders. Having something that points out things in the music may actually help me pay attention to the music more rather than distracting me from it. It may teach me how to critically listen to music. I have also been to a couple concerts where they do project text on a little screen the stage. One of them, the piece was designed around a story and the notes summarized what was happening. The other the composer had made subtitles (not really - more like random adjectives:) for different parts of the piece. In both cases I thought that the text added to the music, not distracted from it.
I don't know which would be more distracting for those who wished the ignore the text. If it was changing often, probably the projector. Otherwise, a single screen would probably be than a bunch of PDA's would be better.
Our thoughts depend on genetic and environmental effects, and nothing else Bullshit. There is no evidence for this.
In the realm of science we choose to limit our knowledge to things that can be proven or disproven. Science is the study of things that we can be nailed down with a high degree of certainty. However, science does not prove that the entire world can be nailed down. In fact, in any deterministic system, Godel's theorem garrentees that there are things that cannot be proven or disproven. (I do not know how this relates to systems with random components, which science is now favoring in light of quantum theory). Any assumption of the existence or non-existance of knowledge outside the realm of science is purely a belief.
Our understanding of the human thought process is extremely limited. We have no scientific proof of free will, and we have no scientific proof that our thoughts are controlled entirely by deterministic laws and randomness. There is humanistic evidence, and valid arguments for both views. You are free to assume either one, but doing so is not scientific - it is a belief.
We really need to be teaching philosophy of science in high school. If people understood the proper place of science, we wouldn't have nearly the number of religous people that think science is evil, or scientists that think science is God.
As if there was an objective way of comparing user interfaces. The only real measure of how good an interface is is how comfortable people feel while using it.
There are indeed objective mesurements of an interface. The better interface is one that takes less time to complete your task, is less prone to errors, and once learned does not require one's attention to be taken from the task at hand. There are laws that allow one to estimate these factors for a given interface, and there are tests that can provide precise emperical data about the quality of an interface.
One of the biggest pet peves of user interface designers is that programmers consider thier work to be a "soft" art, as opposed to a "hard" science. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Just like in any feild, in some ways it is an art, as experience will allow you to jump to a likely solution quicker, but all of the guiding principles are well founded in scientific fact. In fact, half of what the original mac interface designers did was perform rigerous scientific tests to convince Jobs that their carefully designed interface really was measurable better than the random ideas that he would come up with.
That rant asside, there are interfaces that are roughly of equally quality, but different. Also, in different environments, differnent methods may be better than others. For example, it is better to use standard keyboard shortcuts, whatever they happen to be for the desktop you are using. This decreases modal errors (like habitually hitting Ctrl-S to save and getting a search box).
The efficiency of an interface changes as one becomes more familiar with it. Usually what interface designers look at is the limiting factor - how the interface will perform after the user has completely learned it. There are some cases where this is not the case. For example kiosks where most of the users are first time users, or a telemarketing company with high employee turn over. In these cases it is the short-term efficiency that matters. And, yes, what you are used to does factor greatly into this.
But for an artist, it is the long-term efficiency, not short-term efficiency, that matters. So unless the interface you are using is near perfect, there may very well be a better interface than the one you are using.
At first I though that this could be a very interesting case for many points. But its central argument appears to be poorly constructed. They are suing microsoft because their monopoly makes their insecurity a bigger problem. I'm all in agreement with the "monoculture is bad" argument for many reasons, but you can't sue someone for being a monopoly, or for the bad effects being a monopoly. Companies can only be held accountable for leveraging a monopoly, and this case has already been heard and decided on. The fact that we know more bad stuff that can happen because of their monopoly does not provide any more evidence that they are indeed leveraging their monopoly, so why do they think bringing them to court again over the same issues will result in a different ruling. Do they really think they have more resources and motivation to pursue this than the US and state governments combined?
The other two claims are the interesting ones. Can software writers be held accountable for damages caused by flaws in their software? Even if they put an "anti-warrantee" in their license? (I hope not) Are click-through licenses agreements valid in this case? These are all question that would have to be asked.
How much money is it reasonable to ask for, for doing work which I'd end up doing (albeit more slowly) even if I wasn't getting paid?
The fact that you enjoy what you are doing should not factor at all into how much you are getting paid. You do not deserve any less than a normal contracted programmmer (who may also enjoy his job as much as you enjoy this). Furthmore, the fact that they have recieved the fruits of your previous work for no charge makes up for the fact that they do not retain copywrite on the code you write for them.
You deserve no deserve no different wage than a normal programmer. Ask for what is competitive. As for specific number values for that I defer to other slashdoters:)
The best part of this is that the jocks would never be able to hack the nerds clothes, but nerds could hack their letterman jackets all day long and they would never know who was doing it! Oh, sweet revenge:)
Until they decide to just pulverise the first nerd they see:(
Wondering what that guy is doing with your daughter? This sensors on her clothes will monitor everything from body temperature, to heart rate, to surface contact! Using this you can determine if articles have been removed and remotely activate an electric shock - or using the builting GPS, track down the guy and beat him to a pulp the old fasion way!
Furthermore, the dancing images of Hello Kitty displayed on the clothing will ensure that any girl will be dying to have them! Yours for only $199.99!
Well, it's the strength of modular software with perfect forward vision.
Modular design gives the promise that you can improve software by swapping out only the components that you need to change. However, this is only realisable to the extent that you know before hand what sort of things will need to be changed. But often times changes will cut acrossed the boudries of modules. In this case what would be a simple change if one were allowed to refactor the source, becomes much more difficult if one has to reimplement all of the modules that a change effects. Furthermore, with OSS you can tweak the existing modules - something you can't do in modular programming.
Part of this is learning how to make wise decisions about where the module boundries should be, but part of it is just life - your first design will never be perfect no matter how smart you are, and thus redesigns and refactoring are a normal part of the software life cycle. So while modular proprietary software allows some opportunity for third party improvements, Open Source provides much more. (And modular open-source software is the best:)
Probably not. Here's my interpretation of this letter:
SGI carfully verified its code base before releasing it under an open source licence. Most of it was code that was completely original to SGI. However it included a few excedingly common routines that have been around forever, have been release as public domain, published in textbooks and distibuted in BSD software for decades. There is no legal justification for anyone owning this code. We figured that the ATT case was the nail in the coffin of this issue and didn't think anyone would be stupid enough to try to claim ownership of this code again. But unfortunately, we were wrong and these morons think that just because SysV uses these extremely common routines that they must own them. To make things easier for everyone, we are have removed this code, and are looking for any other code that will give these idiots bad ideas, and will remove it as well. We appologise for underestimating the extreme stupidity capable of businessmen and layers.
Yeah, I agree that it mainly depends on the density of the lecture. Same goes for books. There were some "practical" CS classes I took where it would drive me crazy to do anything other than skim the book because of all the unnecisarry fluff and verbage. On the other hand, there was this one theoretical math class I took (differential geometry), where it would take me over 10 minutes to simply parse a single page, and I would normally have to read the chapter a couple more times before fully understanding the concepts. I swear less than half of the text was actual english, the rest pure math. (and at 1/4 inch thick, it was also the most expensive textbook I ever bought:)
The site mentions that a portion of their profits goes towards supporting unnamed emulators. On a different page explaining how to play the game, the only emulator they link to is MAME. Does this mean that they are supporting MAME?
(sorry I don't have url's to the specific pages - the site is slashdoted)
Slashdot Mirror
They didn't implement it in three years. A german company called Star Division started it in the mid 80's. It was purchased by Sun in 1999 and released open source three years ago.
So while the open source comunity has done a ton to improve it since then, it - like mozilla - is in large part a gift to the community, which we gladly embraced.
Lindows is not competing with IBM. IBM has shown very little interest in Linux on the desktop. The truth is IBM lost the desktop market to Dell years ago (although they do sell some nice laptops).
Who Lindows is competeing with head-on is Microsoft. Try telling that to a VC:) I don't think he was planning on getting too many investors. He had his own money to invest in the Lindow distro, and development costs were not exorbient because the vast majority of his product was free.
Look at the Fresco project. They are making resolution independent display system whose widgets are all SVG.
Wow, this is pure religious war fodder! What were they thinking? Linux Journal must be secretly run by MS, plotting to destroy linux from the inside out by fostering infighting!
Oh, and I demand a recount - they were using an inferior plurality tallying method. We all know that more people prefer emacs and it would have won if it's vote wasn't split between GNU emacs and Xemacs.
The untenable downside is vender lock-in. You can only use iTMS files on Apple products, and products that are allowed to licence the Fairplay DRM. We have yet to see how easy this will be. It could be a non-issue. It could be like DVD, where anyone can licence for large fees, and NDA's required, effectively barring out free software implementations. Or it would be like Microsoft, where they refuse to licence any of their proprietary formats resulting in complete vender lockin, except in this case the full force of the DMCA, not just trade secrets, would "protect" against unauthorized implementations. Apple has been playing it's cards very close to it's chest in this regard, and we simply don't know the answer.
I for one don't feel like investing large amounts of money into a music collection, until I know for certian that I will be able to continue using it far into the future.
I have been contemplating joining eMusic for the exact same reason. I haven't because I had a hard time justifying the cost when I would end up buying CD's from all the bands I liked anyway.
I strongly believe that the ability to easily FIND NEW music is the biggest gap in digital music right now, and a huge lost opportunity for independent labels. What I would love would be a subscription based unlimited download service, like eMusic was, that also sold CD's and gave you download credit for everything you purchased. Then people who bought CD's would have a convient venue to discover new music - downloading mp3's for free, and the ones that didn't would have a convient venue for paying for downloaded music.
If you were to integrate (cross link) this with a nice online radio site, like live365.com, then I would be in music heaven.
Because the purpose of this list isn't about which software is the most secure. It's about what system admins need to do with the systems they have, be it Windows or Unix. Even admins running the most secure software in the world need to be vigilent about their system.
Now you could say that a decent system admin should already know everything on this list, and should have fixed it. I agree, but we know for a fact that not all system admins do this, either out of ignorance or lack of time. That is the whole point of the list - if we just fixed these 20 realitively easy things, it would take care of the majority of security problems that exist today.
So consider this list a wake-up call- If any of these points apply to any of your systems, you need to fix them now!
This is pretty cool, and I thank the poster and slashdot editors for putting up the story. I just thought that this was funny:
:)
Apple, Intel, DARPA and Cooligy did not respond to requests for comment.
Well that includes just about everyone mentioned in the article, so exactly where did the information come from? I see, I'm reading a posting about an article about another article about information gleaned from a website. Oh, well at least they told me
I agree, especially since in my experience they won't be used effectively. School Executives now-a-days seem to think that it is so important to teach kids "how to use computers" meaning word, excell, and powerpoint. But these kids are in 6th grade - it will be another 6 years until they graduate, and need to use these tools. Do they really think that we will be using the same software six years from now? Wait till high school business classes to teach these things. Besides, kids are good at learning these things themselves.
Here are some valid uses of computers in mid/elementry school:
* Teach them to touch type. Seriously, this will increase their productivity far more than knowing any particular computer program will. And it needs to be taught young, before they develop too many bad habits.
* Educational games can be cool, although when I was a kid they didn't seem to be too educational. How much did I learn from oregon trail, really. Besides all the ways one can die, and the meaning of the term "ford the river", not much. The main benifit of our trips to the computer lab, was that the overworked teachers got some extra time to grade papers:)
* Heck, even teaching elementry students how to program would be more usefull than learning MS Office. Not so that they all become programmers, but because it stretches their mind and makes them think differntly than they may have before.
* Typing up reports, once they get longer than a single page. As they get older, this goes well with how to research, organise, and document your sources. The computer can help with all of these. But I would not use MS word or even Open Office. These packages suck compared to even Apple Works on the old ][e's.
And, well that's all I can think of. In high school there are additional applications, and it's okay to teach the kids specifics apps they will be using in the real world at this point. But if I see one more idiot board of education hack talking about how "technology" (MS Office) is crucial to our kid's life I'm going to puke.
I have a simular experiance, but with opposite motivations. Our school district (or the district I grew up in and my parents still teach in) has been buying the cheapest things that they can get, which usually amounts to wierd PC hardware that is on clearance. Then they don't plan any support, so when something goes wrong the teachers are out of luck. They can send the thing into the central office for repairs, but they will usually just end up sitting there for months and then be returned saying that it can't be fixed. My dad has just stopped trying. I spend several weekends a year helping my dad out with administration and repair problems for his drafting lab PC's. We usually end up having to cover the cost of parts out of our pocket, or the school Tech club funds. If it is something I can't fix easily, then that workstation is out of commision until the district feels like getting another batch of crappy PC's.
I for one welcome Kibo as our new measument prefix overlord!
oh, it's kibi? nevermind.
Well, watching a violent movie has yet to make me feel violent. But you can bet that a hot sex scene does make me horny. From my experiences, I would guess that most people are the same.
We have problems caused by people not being able to control their both their violent and sexual emotions. So what is backwards about wanting to limit scences do affect on people, and allowing ones that don't?
You know I have to agree with you. Most of the people I know that pirate movies just don't want to pay for it. And there is no legitimate alternative for that - it cost money to make movies.
Another big motivation I see are people wanting to see the movie as soon as possible. Again there is no good solution to this. Even if they had some sort of prerelease, people would still want it sooner than that. So lets go to the extreme - you put up everything for charge on the web, as soon as it is availble - the script, unedited takes, first draft edits. There would be some hardcore fans that would pay to see that stuff, but to most pirates it would just be an easy source to pirate from. Furthermore, it would make it impossible to include surprises in the plot. It might be an interesting experiment, but I think it is best to just release the movie when it is done.
The other big reason is that they want to watch the movie at home, but the DVD isn't released yet. This I can understand. Sometimes it takes forever for the DVD to come out. Most of this is not because it takes a long time to make the DVD, but an intensional strategy on the part of the studio. Why else would region encoding even exist? This is something that I think the studio's will start reconcidering in light of piracy.
I don't know anyone who pirates because it is more convienient than buying the movie, although this might become more of an issue in the future.
So there is one legitimate alternative that the MPAA could provide to decrease piracy, but the majority is simple done by people that don't want to pay.
PS
You know what, they have little reason to be upset. If they don't want to read the PDA's then they don't have to. A glowing screen a couple rows down isn't that much of a distraction. Especially if they displayed light text on a dark background.
:) for different parts of the piece. In both cases I thought that the text added to the music, not distracted from it.
This could have some usefull benefits. For example, I know that actively listening to music is not natural for me - my mind wanders. Having something that points out things in the music may actually help me pay attention to the music more rather than distracting me from it. It may teach me how to critically listen to music. I have also been to a couple concerts where they do project text on a little screen the stage. One of them, the piece was designed around a story and the notes summarized what was happening. The other the composer had made subtitles (not really - more like random adjectives
I don't know which would be more distracting for those who wished the ignore the text. If it was changing often, probably the projector. Otherwise, a single screen would probably be than a bunch of PDA's would be better.
Our thoughts depend on genetic and environmental effects, and nothing else
Bullshit. There is no evidence for this.
In the realm of science we choose to limit our knowledge to things that can be proven or disproven. Science is the study of things that we can be nailed down with a high degree of certainty. However, science does not prove that the entire world can be nailed down. In fact, in any deterministic system, Godel's theorem garrentees that there are things that cannot be proven or disproven. (I do not know how this relates to systems with random components, which science is now favoring in light of quantum theory). Any assumption of the existence or non-existance of knowledge outside the realm of science is purely a belief.
Our understanding of the human thought process is extremely limited. We have no scientific proof of free will, and we have no scientific proof that our thoughts are controlled entirely by deterministic laws and randomness. There is humanistic evidence, and valid arguments for both views. You are free to assume either one, but doing so is not scientific - it is a belief.
We really need to be teaching philosophy of science in high school. If people understood the proper place of science, we wouldn't have nearly the number of religous people that think science is evil, or scientists that think science is God.
As if there was an objective way of comparing user interfaces. The only real measure of how good an interface is is how comfortable people feel while using it.
There are indeed objective mesurements of an interface. The better interface is one that takes less time to complete your task, is less prone to errors, and once learned does not require one's attention to be taken from the task at hand. There are laws that allow one to estimate these factors for a given interface, and there are tests that can provide precise emperical data about the quality of an interface.
One of the biggest pet peves of user interface designers is that programmers consider thier work to be a "soft" art, as opposed to a "hard" science. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Just like in any feild, in some ways it is an art, as experience will allow you to jump to a likely solution quicker, but all of the guiding principles are well founded in scientific fact. In fact, half of what the original mac interface designers did was perform rigerous scientific tests to convince Jobs that their carefully designed interface really was measurable better than the random ideas that he would come up with.
That rant asside, there are interfaces that are roughly of equally quality, but different. Also, in different environments, differnent methods may be better than others. For example, it is better to use standard keyboard shortcuts, whatever they happen to be for the desktop you are using. This decreases modal errors (like habitually hitting Ctrl-S to save and getting a search box).
The efficiency of an interface changes as one becomes more familiar with it. Usually what interface designers look at is the limiting factor - how the interface will perform after the user has completely learned it. There are some cases where this is not the case. For example kiosks where most of the users are first time users, or a telemarketing company with high employee turn over. In these cases it is the short-term efficiency that matters. And, yes, what you are used to does factor greatly into this.
But for an artist, it is the long-term efficiency, not short-term efficiency, that matters. So unless the interface you are using is near perfect, there may very well be a better interface than the one you are using.
Would it be ironic that one of my newest pet peves is the sudden popularity of the word "meme"?
At first I though that this could be a very interesting case for many points. But its central argument appears to be poorly constructed. They are suing microsoft because their monopoly makes their insecurity a bigger problem. I'm all in agreement with the "monoculture is bad" argument for many reasons, but you can't sue someone for being a monopoly, or for the bad effects being a monopoly. Companies can only be held accountable for leveraging a monopoly, and this case has already been heard and decided on. The fact that we know more bad stuff that can happen because of their monopoly does not provide any more evidence that they are indeed leveraging their monopoly, so why do they think bringing them to court again over the same issues will result in a different ruling. Do they really think they have more resources and motivation to pursue this than the US and state governments combined?
The other two claims are the interesting ones. Can software writers be held accountable for damages caused by flaws in their software? Even if they put an "anti-warrantee" in their license? (I hope not) Are click-through licenses agreements valid in this case? These are all question that would have to be asked.
How much money is it reasonable to ask for, for doing work which I'd end up doing (albeit more slowly) even if I wasn't getting paid?
:)
The fact that you enjoy what you are doing should not factor at all into how much you are getting paid. You do not deserve any less than a normal contracted programmmer (who may also enjoy his job as much as you enjoy this). Furthmore, the fact that they have recieved the fruits of your previous work for no charge makes up for the fact that they do not retain copywrite on the code you write for them.
You deserve no deserve no different wage than a normal programmer. Ask for what is competitive. As for specific number values for that I defer to other slashdoters
The best part of this is that the jocks would never be able to hack the nerds clothes, but nerds could hack their letterman jackets all day long and they would never know who was doing it! Oh, sweet revenge :)
:(
Until they decide to just pulverise the first nerd they see
a high tech chastity belt!
Wondering what that guy is doing with your daughter? This sensors on her clothes will monitor everything from body temperature, to heart rate, to surface contact! Using this you can determine if articles have been removed and remotely activate an electric shock - or using the builting GPS, track down the guy and beat him to a pulp the old fasion way!
Furthermore, the dancing images of Hello Kitty displayed on the clothing will ensure that any girl will be dying to have them! Yours for only $199.99!
Well, it's the strength of modular software with perfect forward vision.
:)
Modular design gives the promise that you can improve software by swapping out only the components that you need to change. However, this is only realisable to the extent that you know before hand what sort of things will need to be changed. But often times changes will cut acrossed the boudries of modules. In this case what would be a simple change if one were allowed to refactor the source, becomes much more difficult if one has to reimplement all of the modules that a change effects. Furthermore, with OSS you can tweak the existing modules - something you can't do in modular programming.
Part of this is learning how to make wise decisions about where the module boundries should be, but part of it is just life - your first design will never be perfect no matter how smart you are, and thus redesigns and refactoring are a normal part of the software life cycle. So while modular proprietary software allows some opportunity for third party improvements, Open Source provides much more. (And modular open-source software is the best
Probably not. Here's my interpretation of this letter:
SGI carfully verified its code base before releasing it under an open source licence. Most of it was code that was completely original to SGI. However it included a few excedingly common routines that have been around forever, have been release as public domain, published in textbooks and distibuted in BSD software for decades. There is no legal justification for anyone owning this code. We figured that the ATT case was the nail in the coffin of this issue and didn't think anyone would be stupid enough to try to claim ownership of this code again. But unfortunately, we were wrong and these morons think that just because SysV uses these extremely common routines that they must own them. To make things easier for everyone, we are have removed this code, and are looking for any other code that will give these idiots bad ideas, and will remove it as well. We appologise for underestimating the extreme stupidity capable of businessmen and layers.
Yeah, I agree that it mainly depends on the density of the lecture. Same goes for books. There were some "practical" CS classes I took where it would drive me crazy to do anything other than skim the book because of all the unnecisarry fluff and verbage. On the other hand, there was this one theoretical math class I took (differential geometry), where it would take me over 10 minutes to simply parse a single page, and I would normally have to read the chapter a couple more times before fully understanding the concepts. I swear less than half of the text was actual english, the rest pure math. (and at 1/4 inch thick, it was also the most expensive textbook I ever bought :)
The site mentions that a portion of their profits goes towards supporting unnamed emulators. On a different page explaining how to play the game, the only emulator they link to is MAME. Does this mean that they are supporting MAME?
(sorry I don't have url's to the specific pages - the site is slashdoted)