"You can expect deep freezes and heat waves, no snow and blizzards. On average it will be warmer and dryer, but you can pretty much get anything day to day."
Why dryer? Warmer air holds more moisture. Some of the hottest places on the planet are rain forests. Yeah, some are deserts too, but I think that saying "dryer" is an assumption which may not be true. Maybe the entire planet will experience a monsoon season. I really don't think the models are accurate enough to work that out.
Intel has nothing to lose by open sourcing their drivers because their cards suck. They have no interesting technology in that area and really can only gain some market share among linux users.
nVidia and ATI drive the entire graphics card market with their competition and neither wants to give away any info by open sourcing a driver to the very small number of people who even care. Even if you had full 3D accelleration on Linux, there are hardly any games to take advantage of it.
And breaking the supplier agreements is a big deal. Most people here get all bent out of shape when somebody accidentally violates (in their opinion) some obscure and poorly worded clause in the GPL. A license is a license. Either respect all of them or none of them, not just the ones that give you the things you want for free.
300 people should win against 5 terrorists with box cutters. The fact that they didn't leads me to believe that while they may not have deserved to die, they didn't make much of an effort to live.
As in you can't use the source. At all. For any purpose. Well, sure, it's certainly predictable.
Umm... unless you license it. Then you may be able to use it and not redistribute. Try not to be deliberately obtuse.
And most proprietary projects are half-assed and under-staffed. It's endemic to the entire industry. At least with opensource you can discover it was half-assed before paying through the nose for a disconnected support number.
Most proprietary projects have a goal of being profitable, not simply being a distraction for some programmer who can't get laid or is too cheap to pay for software. Most open source projects are simply knock-off copies of successful commercial packages (ex. Photoshop -> Gimp) or just poorly written to start (ex. GAIM). There certainly isn't a lot of room for profit in developing a substandard product only when you have the free time.
Saying that interested customers can get together to support their own customization and support is just fantasy. Nobody in their right mind would assume that kind of liability.
Actually you're wrong. When you travel in a car you are very easily trackable. The British perfected the art of tracking suspected Republican terrorists in Northern Ireland by recognition of license plate numbers on cars. When travelling on Amtrak I have been asked for photo ID for tickets which were pre-booked and paid for with a credit-card in advance. It is now illegal in many jurisdictions (e.g. NYC) to have your face covered in certain situations. All of these remove the ability to travel anonymously.
There are a few differences. Tracking a license plate only shows where you've been, not where you're going. Same as a "credit wake". Maybe patterns can emerge, but somebody would already have to be watching you to notice them. When you get on a plane or a train, your destination is already a given.
Also, while it may not be possible to travel on Amtrack without ID, you can certainly walk or ride a bicycle (paid for with cash, I assume). The convenience of traveling by train is partially offset by the inconvenience of having to provide ID, which is an Amtrack policy. Their trains, their rules. Whether it is a useful rule in any way is not really part of the discussion as far as the people who provide the transportation are concerned.
Haven't they been telling us for a while now that high-fibre diets decrease the risk of some kinds of cancer? Is this just an actual explanation of the "why"?
"No. I'm still going to release everything I do under the GPL, just to annoy BSD fanboys like you."
I'm not a BSD fanboy, even though it's a better license. Just think of me more as a GPL hater.
"Using the GPL doesn't stop this happening as such, but it does place me back on a level playing field with whoever else is commercialising my software."
So, basically the GPL is a big warning to anybody looking to commercialize software that "look out, anybody else can come along an fork this out from under you"?? That's a great incentive.
It should be "here is my software and my source. Do what you wish." That provides opportunities for other people to use your code for something commercial, hire people, and support the economy over all. Just because it isn't your goal doesn't mean you should reserve the right to deny other people the opportunity.
GPL'd software says "here is my software and my source. But, anything you derive from it has to meet my specific terms. I'm not interested in making money, and you can't do it either."
If you want to release Free software, release under the BSD license. Otherwise you're stubbornly forcing an ideaology on people which most people don't seem to want to be part of (as the backlash over the GPLv3 seems to indicate).
But the scientist, Prof John Toy, uses these words: "It is essential that 'cancer-causing' claims are based only on scientifically proven facts, not scaremongering. There is no definitive evidence that controlled food additives cause cancer.
Replace "cancer" with "global warming" and replace "controlled food additives" with "human activity" and you have almost exactly the argument used by oil companies and many conservatives to claim global warming does not exist.
That doesn't say that global warming does not exist. It says that "human activity" may not cause global warming. Whether or not this is true is certainly debatable, but you're presenting an obviously incorrect conclusion (based on your example) as fact. What it may even say is "yes, there is evidence of global warming but the direct causes are unknown at this time".
When arguing about half-assed statements, you should probably try not to make too many.
Just because we are technically adept, we shouldn't be answering a lawyer's questions for free. We should be working out a $175/hr schedule which includes travel time and meals while we're thinking up questions.
If NewYorkCountryLawyer ever actually gave any legal advice or offered an actual opinion here, maybe my feelings would be different. Generally he just climbs on the anti-RIAA bandwagon for his own career and avoids answering any actual legal questions.
"How are we going to have anything resembling an intelligent conversation here if you are not thinking about someones life being more important than your boss noticing you didn't get to work in time?"
I'm not simply thinking about getting to work on time. I'm thinking about my life and the lives of everybody on the road. The clueless people driving poorly in the left lane because they believe it's their _right_ to be there are a danger. They make other people drive in a less predictable manner, possible outside their capabilities because of their inability to follow the generally agreed upon rules of the road. My life is more likely in danger when following somebody who doesn't know how to drive than if they are already behind me.
"Now which lines did you read between to come up with that one? I'm the one that's saying the guy at the back has to drive within the capabilities of the vehicle and has to be able to stop - I'm not someone else in another thread, website or some old guy you saw driving slowly last week."
Well of course you need to drive within the your limits and the limits of your vehicle. You're generally insane if you push beyond about 6/10ths on a public road. Where you said "Let one idiot sit in front of you being a pain instead of having two dead idiots." implies that all of us who would rather not tolerate the idiots more than we have to are also at fault and, in your opinion, just as dangerous as the original moron. I don't believe that is true and it seems rather arrogant of you to assume so. 6/10ths of my abilities and my vehicle's abilities may exceed what others are capable of. A quick mirror check, downshift, lane change and pass at 75 mph by somebody paying attention is much safer than a 50 mph lane change by the soccer mom who has her mirrors adjusted primarily to check her makeup. But my actions look more aggressive, so you assume they must be dangerous.
I see no reason for everybody on the road to be brought down to the lowest common denominator. It has nothing to do with not valuing their lives, but it has to do with valuing my own as well. I'm not willing to allow them to degrade the quality of my life (as I see it) because they are incapable or unwilling to drive correctly. I'm planning on getting around them so the next time they slam on the brakes because they were startled by something irrelevant on the road I won't have to deal with it. The best way to avoid an accident is not to be there when it happens, and with the types of people I'm thinking about, it will happen.
The "death wish" comes from my desire to get them off the road because they are a hazard to themselves and everybody around them. They don't even have to really die as long as they agree to take the friggin bus. Fucking up my commute is not some inalienable right assigned to them along with their license. Why they desire to coddle and protect these sub-par examples of humanity?
The fact is that somebody driving faster or more aggressively is paying more attention to actually driving than the people who's behavior you seem to be intent on justifying. They would likely brake earlier and hard enough to avoid an incident because they were paying attention to what's going on. And they would probably be happy about it until they were rammed from behind by the same guy _who still wasn't paying attention_.
"People who drive slowly in the wrong place may be annoying idiots - but they do not cause the accident."
And that's just what the lazy, self absorbed twats would have you believe.
Here's a clue: People who are driving fast are paying attention to.... Driving! Yes! They are more than likely paying attention to what is going on around them in order to figure out the fastest route through the rest of the pack. Especially if you think they are driving "aggressively", then they are definitely aware of their surroundings.
It's the cell phone talking, radio fiddling, maps reading, inbred fuckwits cycling between 60 and 75mph in the fast lane that are the real problems. They get absorbed in their discussions of which tampon is most absorbent or which ultra right-wing pundit is more correct and their speed gradually drops off. Then they suddenly notice people forced to pass them on the "wrong" side or somebody 6 inches off their bumper. Then, instead of getting the fuck out of the lane and hopefully dying in a spectacular ball of flame, they punch it back up to a nearly reasonable speed in the fast lane for all of 3 minutes before the cycle starts again.
Saying that they don't cause accidents is bullshit. It's like blaming a murder on the weapon rather than the person weilding it.
Slow, inattentive drivers may not be involved in the accident, but they cause plenty.
Ahhh... and that's another thing. Even using Linux for a few years I still don't have a good idea of where Gnome stops and Metacity starts...
Why would Metacity want to prevent the configurability? Unless it's stupendously hard to code, isn't this the same lack of choices people generally deride Microsoft for?
Oh, I definitely agree that Gnome looks very polished and professional. I was only pointing out that the new GNUstep maintainer does elaborate some reasons why he considers them to be sub-optimal.
FWIW tho, I am still annoyed at how hard it is to find the right variables to change in Gnome to accomplish some tasks. Having Folders open in the same window in the file manager shouldn't be nearly as buried as it is. It doesn't bother me since I hardly ever use it, but it is very annoying and difficult to change for somebody trying out Gnome for the first time.
"He says that he thinks KDE and Gnome are "amateurish" but doesn't bother to explain his reasoning behind the assertion."
He does to some degree. He clearly states that neither look like they started with a clean vision of what the desktop environment should be and have simply "evolved" to what you see now. He also states that the code base which makes up most of Gnome is a nightmare. I can't speak about KDE too much since I don't use it (strikes me too much as Windows, which I don't particularly like).
GNUStep looks something like the Sun OpenWindows desktop used to... Icons and apps minimize to the desktop, not the the taskbar area.
Either way, I just hope that it will finally be easy to customize the behavior of windows... For example:
I want my Xterm window to maximize to the vertical height of the screen without changing width when I double-click the title bar. How would you tell a non-programmer to accomplish that in Gnome or KDE? Will it be easier in GNUStep?
(and I am sure the Gnome answer is to navigate some XML file to find the variable Window.click.title.bar.some.other.arbitrary.and.me aningless.string.that.you.will.not.know.unless.you .coded.it and change the default value from 1 to 3. Excellent usability there)
I imagine that it's slightly tricker than that tho... Pot is illegal to possess in the US, but the music in question is not.
You are purchasing something that was apparently acquired legally in Russia, and is legal to own in the US. Similar to bringing back alcohol from Canada into the US. You have to pay an import tax if the value is above a certain amount (I think, been a long time). Nobody arrests you for having your case of Canadian Mist once you get back to your home in the US.
The two things that seem to be at issue are a) the RIAA's stance on the rights the Russian government has to further delegate distribution rights to Allofmp3.com and b) whether the purchase should be subject to some kind of import tax.
It's a really interesting issue from a legal standpoint, even though IANAL.
"It isn't "pirated" music in the same way that going to Amsterdam to smoke pot isn't a violation FDA rules on restricted drugs."
No. Your pot analogy is more like mail-ordering pot from Amsterdam and then wondering why you're arrested for possession when you receive it back in the US.
Going to Russia to listen to music that you purchase off of Allofmp3.com may be perfectly legal.
Without having RTFA, I would guess that the suit is really a Cease and Desist against allofmp3.com while they renegotiate the "licensing" agreement with whatever Russian agency is claiming to give allofmp3.com authority to operate. The basic RIAA claim is most likely that the Russian agency doesn't have the authority to license Allofmp3.com to distribute any of their copyrighted works.
In the instances I've seen, you don't have to redo parts of the drawing or re-proof it. AutoCad seems to use some reference points that don't render when displaying in AutoCad but do show up in an import. They also show up if you save a DWG as a DXF and then import the DXF. The "import" probably does exactly that rather than try to go from DWG to whatever native format your CAD system is using.
Slashdot Mirror
"You can expect deep freezes and heat waves, no snow and blizzards. On average it will be warmer and dryer, but you can pretty much get anything day to day."
Why dryer? Warmer air holds more moisture. Some of the hottest places on the planet are rain forests. Yeah, some are deserts too, but I think that saying "dryer" is an assumption which may not be true. Maybe the entire planet will experience a monsoon season. I really don't think the models are accurate enough to work that out.
OK, no snow. But how much overall precipitation have you gotten?
Figuring that 1" of rain is about 6" of snow, your winter precipitation is about 33" of rain. How much have you gotten so far?
Intel has nothing to lose by open sourcing their drivers because their cards suck. They have no interesting technology in that area and really can only gain some market share among linux users.
nVidia and ATI drive the entire graphics card market with their competition and neither wants to give away any info by open sourcing a driver to the very small number of people who even care. Even if you had full 3D accelleration on Linux, there are hardly any games to take advantage of it.
And breaking the supplier agreements is a big deal. Most people here get all bent out of shape when somebody accidentally violates (in their opinion) some obscure and poorly worded clause in the GPL. A license is a license. Either respect all of them or none of them, not just the ones that give you the things you want for free.
300 people should win against 5 terrorists with box cutters. The fact that they didn't leads me to believe that while they may not have deserved to die, they didn't make much of an effort to live.
As in you can't use the source. At all. For any purpose. Well, sure, it's certainly predictable.
Umm... unless you license it. Then you may be able to use it and not redistribute. Try not to be deliberately obtuse.
And most proprietary projects are half-assed and under-staffed. It's endemic to the entire industry. At least with opensource you can discover it was half-assed before paying through the nose for a disconnected support number.
Most proprietary projects have a goal of being profitable, not simply being a distraction for some programmer who can't get laid or is too cheap to pay for software. Most open source projects are simply knock-off copies of successful commercial packages (ex. Photoshop -> Gimp) or just poorly written to start (ex. GAIM). There certainly isn't a lot of room for profit in developing a substandard product only when you have the free time.
Saying that interested customers can get together to support their own customization and support is just fantasy. Nobody in their right mind would assume that kind of liability.
Actually you're wrong. When you travel in a car you are very easily trackable. The British perfected the art of tracking suspected Republican terrorists in Northern Ireland by recognition of license plate numbers on cars. When travelling on Amtrak I have been asked for photo ID for tickets which were pre-booked and paid for with a credit-card in advance. It is now illegal in many jurisdictions (e.g. NYC) to have your face covered in certain situations. All of these remove the ability to travel anonymously.
There are a few differences. Tracking a license plate only shows where you've been, not where you're going. Same as a "credit wake". Maybe patterns can emerge, but somebody would already have to be watching you to notice them. When you get on a plane or a train, your destination is already a given.
Also, while it may not be possible to travel on Amtrack without ID, you can certainly walk or ride a bicycle (paid for with cash, I assume). The convenience of traveling by train is partially offset by the inconvenience of having to provide ID, which is an Amtrack policy. Their trains, their rules. Whether it is a useful rule in any way is not really part of the discussion as far as the people who provide the transportation are concerned.
figures my mod points expired yesterday.
This is just about the best explanation of why Open Source much more the sow's ear than the silk purse it pretends to be.
Haven't they been telling us for a while now that high-fibre diets decrease the risk of some kinds of cancer? Is this just an actual explanation of the "why"?
"No. I'm still going to release everything I do under the GPL, just to annoy BSD fanboys like you."
I'm not a BSD fanboy, even though it's a better license. Just think of me more as a GPL hater.
"Using the GPL doesn't stop this happening as such, but it does place me back on a level playing field with whoever else is commercialising my software."
So, basically the GPL is a big warning to anybody looking to commercialize software that "look out, anybody else can come along an fork this out from under you"?? That's a great incentive.
Yeah, selling support on other people's work. That isn't nearly the same as selling a product.
It should be "here is my software and my source. Do what you wish." That provides opportunities for other people to use your code for something commercial, hire people, and support the economy over all. Just because it isn't your goal doesn't mean you should reserve the right to deny other people the opportunity.
GPL'd software says "here is my software and my source. But, anything you derive from it has to meet my specific terms. I'm not interested in making money, and you can't do it either."
If you want to release Free software, release under the BSD license. Otherwise you're stubbornly forcing an ideaology on people which most people don't seem to want to be part of (as the backlash over the GPLv3 seems to indicate).
But the scientist, Prof John Toy, uses these words: "It is essential that 'cancer-causing' claims are based only on scientifically proven facts, not scaremongering. There is no definitive evidence that controlled food additives cause cancer.
Replace "cancer" with "global warming" and replace "controlled food additives" with "human activity" and you have almost exactly the argument used by oil companies and many conservatives to claim global warming does not exist.
That doesn't say that global warming does not exist. It says that "human activity" may not cause global warming. Whether or not this is true is certainly debatable, but you're presenting an obviously incorrect conclusion (based on your example) as fact. What it may even say is "yes, there is evidence of global warming but the direct causes are unknown at this time".
When arguing about half-assed statements, you should probably try not to make too many.
Just because we are technically adept, we shouldn't be answering a lawyer's questions for free. We should be working out a $175/hr schedule which includes travel time and meals while we're thinking up questions.
If NewYorkCountryLawyer ever actually gave any legal advice or offered an actual opinion here, maybe my feelings would be different. Generally he just climbs on the anti-RIAA bandwagon for his own career and avoids answering any actual legal questions.
"How are we going to have anything resembling an intelligent conversation here if you are not thinking about someones life being more important than your boss noticing you didn't get to work in time?"
I'm not simply thinking about getting to work on time. I'm thinking about my life and the lives of everybody on the road. The clueless people driving poorly in the left lane because they believe it's their _right_ to be there are a danger. They make other people drive in a less predictable manner, possible outside their capabilities because of their inability to follow the generally agreed upon rules of the road. My life is more likely in danger when following somebody who doesn't know how to drive than if they are already behind me.
"Now which lines did you read between to come up with that one? I'm the one that's saying the guy at the back has to drive within the capabilities of the vehicle and has to be able to stop - I'm not someone else in another thread, website or some old guy you saw driving slowly last week."
Well of course you need to drive within the your limits and the limits of your vehicle. You're generally insane if you push beyond about 6/10ths on a public road. Where you said "Let one idiot sit in front of you being a pain instead of having two dead idiots." implies that all of us who would rather not tolerate the idiots more than we have to are also at fault and, in your opinion, just as dangerous as the original moron. I don't believe that is true and it seems rather arrogant of you to assume so. 6/10ths of my abilities and my vehicle's abilities may exceed what others are capable of. A quick mirror check, downshift, lane change and pass at 75 mph by somebody paying attention is much safer than a 50 mph lane change by the soccer mom who has her mirrors adjusted primarily to check her makeup. But my actions look more aggressive, so you assume they must be dangerous.
I see no reason for everybody on the road to be brought down to the lowest common denominator. It has nothing to do with not valuing their lives, but it has to do with valuing my own as well. I'm not willing to allow them to degrade the quality of my life (as I see it) because they are incapable or unwilling to drive correctly. I'm planning on getting around them so the next time they slam on the brakes because they were startled by something irrelevant on the road I won't have to deal with it. The best way to avoid an accident is not to be there when it happens, and with the types of people I'm thinking about, it will happen.
The "death wish" comes from my desire to get them off the road because they are a hazard to themselves and everybody around them. They don't even have to really die as long as they agree to take the friggin bus. Fucking up my commute is not some inalienable right assigned to them along with their license. Why they desire to coddle and protect these sub-par examples of humanity?
The fact is that somebody driving faster or more aggressively is paying more attention to actually driving than the people who's behavior you seem to be intent on justifying. They would likely brake earlier and hard enough to avoid an incident because they were paying attention to what's going on. And they would probably be happy about it until they were rammed from behind by the same guy _who still wasn't paying attention_.
"People who drive slowly in the wrong place may be annoying idiots - but they do not cause the accident."
.... Driving! Yes! They are more than likely paying attention to what is going on around them in order to figure out the fastest route through the rest of the pack. Especially if you think they are driving "aggressively", then they are definitely aware of their surroundings.
And that's just what the lazy, self absorbed twats would have you believe.
Here's a clue: People who are driving fast are paying attention to
It's the cell phone talking, radio fiddling, maps reading, inbred fuckwits cycling between 60 and 75mph in the fast lane that are the real problems. They get absorbed in their discussions of which tampon is most absorbent or which ultra right-wing pundit is more correct and their speed gradually drops off. Then they suddenly notice people forced to pass them on the "wrong" side or somebody 6 inches off their bumper. Then, instead of getting the fuck out of the lane and hopefully dying in a spectacular ball of flame, they punch it back up to a nearly reasonable speed in the fast lane for all of 3 minutes before the cycle starts again.
Saying that they don't cause accidents is bullshit. It's like blaming a murder on the weapon rather than the person weilding it.
Slow, inattentive drivers may not be involved in the accident, but they cause plenty.
Ahhh... and that's another thing. Even using Linux for a few years I still don't have a good idea of where Gnome stops and Metacity starts...
Why would Metacity want to prevent the configurability? Unless it's stupendously hard to code, isn't this the same lack of choices people generally deride Microsoft for?
Oh, I definitely agree that Gnome looks very polished and professional. I was only pointing out that the new GNUstep maintainer does elaborate some reasons why he considers them to be sub-optimal.
FWIW tho, I am still annoyed at how hard it is to find the right variables to change in Gnome to accomplish some tasks. Having Folders open in the same window in the file manager shouldn't be nearly as buried as it is. It doesn't bother me since I hardly ever use it, but it is very annoying and difficult to change for somebody trying out Gnome for the first time.
"He says that he thinks KDE and Gnome are "amateurish" but doesn't bother to explain his reasoning behind the assertion."
e aningless.string.that.you.will.not.know.unless.you .coded.it and change the default value from 1 to 3. Excellent usability there)
He does to some degree. He clearly states that neither look like they started with a clean vision of what the desktop environment should be and have simply "evolved" to what you see now. He also states that the code base which makes up most of Gnome is a nightmare. I can't speak about KDE too much since I don't use it (strikes me too much as Windows, which I don't particularly like).
GNUStep looks something like the Sun OpenWindows desktop used to... Icons and apps minimize to the desktop, not the the taskbar area.
Either way, I just hope that it will finally be easy to customize the behavior of windows... For example:
I want my Xterm window to maximize to the vertical height of the screen without changing width when I double-click the title bar. How would you tell a non-programmer to accomplish that in Gnome or KDE? Will it be easier in GNUStep?
(and I am sure the Gnome answer is to navigate some XML file to find the variable Window.click.title.bar.some.other.arbitrary.and.m
right. which never happens. read it again.
the people downloading things from Allofmp3.com are not only in Russia.
I imagine that it's slightly tricker than that tho... Pot is illegal to possess in the US, but the music in question is not.
You are purchasing something that was apparently acquired legally in Russia, and is legal to own in the US. Similar to bringing back alcohol from Canada into the US. You have to pay an import tax if the value is above a certain amount (I think, been a long time). Nobody arrests you for having your case of Canadian Mist once you get back to your home in the US.
The two things that seem to be at issue are a) the RIAA's stance on the rights the Russian government has to further delegate distribution rights to Allofmp3.com and b) whether the purchase should be subject to some kind of import tax.
It's a really interesting issue from a legal standpoint, even though IANAL.
No. Your pot analogy is more like mail-ordering pot from Amsterdam and then wondering why you're arrested for possession when you receive it back in the US.
Going to Russia to listen to music that you purchase off of Allofmp3.com may be perfectly legal.
Without having RTFA, I would guess that the suit is really a Cease and Desist against allofmp3.com while they renegotiate the "licensing" agreement with whatever Russian agency is claiming to give allofmp3.com authority to operate. The basic RIAA claim is most likely that the Russian agency doesn't have the authority to license Allofmp3.com to distribute any of their copyrighted works.
But is it free, open source, and runs under linux? 'cause if it doesn't nobody should use it.
In the instances I've seen, you don't have to redo parts of the drawing or re-proof it. AutoCad seems to use some reference points that don't render when displaying in AutoCad but do show up in an import. They also show up if you save a DWG as a DXF and then import the DXF. The "import" probably does exactly that rather than try to go from DWG to whatever native format your CAD system is using.