Multiplication doesn't care about the sign, if you just throw away the overflow (assuming the usual two's complement representation of signed integers).
This contract was awarded under the previous government, but it's for a 3 year term. So we'll see if there are any differences between the Liberals and Conservatives.
That might be a good idea, but there are still various password systems out there that restrict passwords to 8 characters. I found this using ODBC to connect to MySQL, for example.
The Liberal government of the day signed... so the former government is now revealed to be in the pockets of the multinational copyright mafia...
"Now revealed"? I think that was clear before, and it lost Sarmite Bulte her seat in Parliament. But now, if they are smart opportunists (which they used to be, I'm not so sure they're smart these days) they'll take this opportunity and run with it. Probably the NDP will.
Canada signed it, but hasn't ratified it. It is not law yet. Just like the USA and the Kyoto Protocol, one would hope: signed but never to be ratified.
Except that the current government is now revealed to be in the pockets of the multinational copyright mafia...
I'm sure the French PM's schedule is CRAZY, and like any head of state they would NEVER allow a walk-in visitor.
Pedantic point: The French President is the head of state. The PM is the head of government. In the US one person is the head of state and of government, but not in most other democracies.
I generally agree with you, except I think the searches are getting much cheaper, and material on the net has a long lifetime. So even if it would cost someone thousands of dollars to figure out your real name today, I really do suspect that in five years they'll be able to look it up on Google -- and they'll be able to see the full history of your postings under multiple pseudonyms.
Nobody who 'really cared' could do it right now from mine. Or from the 12-15 previous 'handles' I've had here since 1998.
You may be right that it's impossible right now, but I would guess it won't stay that way. Here are a couple of ways to do it:
1. Download all of the Slashdot archives. (Google has probably done this already.) Look for writing styles that match yours. That will probably be enough to make a pretty good guess at your 12-15 handles, and may be enough to recognize your writing style on some external web site where your name is shown. If not, it will at least give hundreds of messages in which you have released bits and pieces about your history, and those might be enough to uniquely identify you.
2. Break in to the Slashdot logs to find the IP addresses you've been posting from, and to find the email address you used to register. Correlate those with records of postings on other locations, look for revealing information, etc.
You'd better toe the line, though, Mister 'Real Name On Slashdot.'
Of course. I don't have any illusions of anonymity here. But I don't mind taking responsibility for my postings, even though I'm sure they contain errors, and probably embarrassing inconsistencies.
I never use my real name as a handle except where I want people to know who I am. Generally in these cases the online has a basis in real life (a forum discussing a conference or something). But for sites like Slashdot, I can post anything I like and people are not going to be able to associate my comments with me in real life.
That's fairly naive, you know. Right now it's relatively difficult to work out your real name from your Slashdot or other handle, but it will only get easier over time. Certainly anyone who really cared could do it right now. I'd guess in 5 years Google will do it automatically.
1 ISPs will deliberately throttle bandwidth for websites that don't pay up. I doubt this makes sense. In a competitive market, an ISP who deliberately slows down websites will lose customers.
Okay, let's say that ATT decides to throttle bandwidth for Vonage, or it detects Skype use and throttles that. Then users will find that their VOIP service really sucks, but guess what? Regular phone service is fine. Seems like ATT will gain customers, not lose them.
Or suppose Google refuses to pay for fast service, but MSN search does. Then suddenly users will find that Google searches take forever, but MSN is fine. Will the customer change ISPs over that, or search engines? You say Google could move, but that's not possible: it's the Google packets going to the customer over the last mile that are being throttled, not the expensive lines connecting Google to the backbone.
Really? Profits in the entertainment industry are going up? That's not what analysts think.
I think this varies from country to country. In the USA, where the RIAA attacks its customers with lawsuits, profits may not be going up. But in Canada, where we have a private copying right (i.e. it is legal for me to copy music for my own use), profits are going up. Here's Michael Geist talking about a study commissioned by the federal government: In recent years, however, the Canadian copyright industries have outperformed the U.S. with respect to growth rates and contribution to national employment. [...] Warning that "these findings should be treated with caution", the study reports that the Canadian sound recording industry grew steadily from 1999 to 2004, with the GDP contribution jumping from $243 million to $387 million.
The authors of the report believed the propaganda from the CRIA, so they didn't trust the objective data that they collected.
And concluded with the ironic predictive signature: If you're against piracy on Slashdot, you will be modded down.
That's not "ironic". It's just whining. Whenever I have mod points, and I see a whiny "I'm so special I know you'll mod me down" comment, I oblige.
If the Overly Hypocritical Guy wants to improve the quality of discourse on Slashdot, he should start by addressing the points in the posts he responds to, and treating others with respect.
It's all a question about whether L+D is a derived work or not. If it is, then you're not allowed to distribute it without following the GPL. If the copyright holder says it's fine, you're definitely allowed to distribute D on its own, or with X11 if X11 is BSD licensed, but you're not allowed to distribute L with it.
The FSF has an agenda to promote free software, so their opinion would certainly be that L+D is a derived work. Whoever wrote to Kororaa is also of that opinion, and I think someone mentioned that they were kernel contributors. So by bundling the driver with the kernel in a distribution, they think you're violating their copyright.
Could they be wrong? Sure. Do you want to fight over it? Kororaa doesn't.
I think the argument goes as follows. L is Linux which is GPL'd, D is the proprietary driver which is not. L+D is the derived work. You can distribute D if you like, but you can't bundle it with Linux unless you license the whole new thing under the GPL.
All of MP3 may be "somewhat" legal in Russia but it is fully-non legal for Americans (or Canadians, Australians, and anybody else who is lives in a country that's signed on with international copyright laws) to buy music from them, as it says outright in their terms of service.
I don't see any mention of Canada there, just a vague statement that it's up to you to figure out whether it is legal in your country. In fact, Canadians have a right to make copies for private use. This is what the levy on blank media pays for.
It's a $30 program that provides a far sight more chance of recovering a stolen laptop than nothing does. I, for one, think it's worth it, even if it would only have a chance of working work 1/10 of the time.
I think you'd be better off investing in property insurance and a backup scheme. The insurance will replace the hardware, you backup will replace the lost content.
You'll also be protected against physical damage to the computer; the theft protection program won't do that.
Re:I got the CVS cop-out from the cscope maintaine
on
The CVS Cop-Out
·
· Score: 1
There's a difference between a release and a nightly snapshot. A release has had features frozen for a while, so it's much more bug-free than a snapshot.
There's a lot to stop any user from making a release. Doing a release requires cooperation from lots of people to do the testing and fix the bugs. Only the project maintainers are usually in a position to do this. Not doing it means they aren't doing a very good job. If it's not something that interests them, they should recruit a release manager.
So either the open source community cares about quality and should respond to the points this article brings up, or every single person on Slashdot who said "the open source process produces quality software" is lying. Which is it? The open source community has made their bed; now they have to lie in it.
I think the open source process produces quality software, but it is not very good at documentation. I really can't say I've heard anyone on Slashdot claim differently.
I think the difference is that software can be modular, but modular documentation sucks. Documentation really needs much more consistency. It's all UI, whereas most software projects are mainly behind-the-scenes stuff that needn't be consistent.
2-5) Documentation is online, searchable, and updated frequently. We also have a support email address, forum, and irc channel. In-app help is being added soon as well.
Online help isn't too useful to me when I'm offline. "In-app help is being added soon" is very stereotypical OSS.
Re:The diplomatic response
on
The CVS Cop-Out
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I suspect that that is the response this guy received, but he wants an argument.
Slashdot Mirror
it will be years before OSX overtakes Windows
Based on this study and a little extrapolation, I believe it already happened, around 1983.
My math says that Google would be cheaper for anything over $100.
You live in the Bizarro World, don't you? I guess the moderator does too.
OT: Did you get selected, or did you get marked down as a troublemaker?
Multiplication doesn't care about the sign, if you just throw away the overflow (assuming the usual two's complement representation of signed integers).
This contract was awarded under the previous government, but it's for a 3 year term. So we'll see if there are any differences between the Liberals and Conservatives.
That might be a good idea, but there are still various password systems out there that restrict passwords to 8 characters. I found this using ODBC to connect to MySQL, for example.
The Liberal government of the day signed... so the former government is now revealed to be in the pockets of the multinational copyright mafia...
"Now revealed"? I think that was clear before, and it lost Sarmite Bulte her seat in Parliament. But now, if they are smart opportunists (which they used to be, I'm not so sure they're smart these days) they'll take this opportunity and run with it. Probably the NDP will.
Canada signed it, but hasn't ratified it. It is not law yet. Just like the USA and the Kyoto Protocol, one would hope: signed but never to be ratified.
Except that the current government is now revealed to be in the pockets of the multinational copyright mafia...
I'm sure the French PM's schedule is CRAZY, and like any head of state they would NEVER allow a walk-in visitor.
Pedantic point: The French President is the head of state. The PM is the head of government. In the US one person is the head of state and of government, but not in most other democracies.
I generally agree with you, except I think the searches are getting much cheaper, and material on the net has a long lifetime. So even if it would cost someone thousands of dollars to figure out your real name today, I really do suspect that in five years they'll be able to look it up on Google -- and they'll be able to see the full history of your postings under multiple pseudonyms.
Nobody who 'really cared' could do it right now from mine. Or from the 12-15 previous 'handles' I've had here since 1998.
You may be right that it's impossible right now, but I would guess it won't stay that way. Here are a couple of ways to do it:
1. Download all of the Slashdot archives. (Google has probably done this already.) Look for writing styles that match yours. That will probably be enough to make a pretty good guess at your 12-15 handles, and may be enough to recognize your writing style on some external web site where your name is shown. If not, it will at least give hundreds of messages in which you have released bits and pieces about your history, and those might be enough to uniquely identify you.
2. Break in to the Slashdot logs to find the IP addresses you've been posting from, and to find the email address you used to register. Correlate those with records of postings on other locations, look for revealing information, etc.
You'd better toe the line, though, Mister 'Real Name On Slashdot.'
Of course. I don't have any illusions of anonymity here. But I don't mind taking responsibility for my postings, even though I'm sure they contain errors, and probably embarrassing inconsistencies.
I never use my real name as a handle except where I want people to know who I am. Generally in these cases the online has a basis in real life (a forum discussing a conference or something). But for sites like Slashdot, I can post anything I like and people are not going to be able to associate my comments with me in real life.
That's fairly naive, you know. Right now it's relatively difficult to work out your real name from your Slashdot or other handle, but it will only get easier over time. Certainly anyone who really cared could do it right now. I'd guess in 5 years Google will do it automatically.
1 ISPs will deliberately throttle bandwidth for websites that don't pay up. I doubt this makes sense. In a competitive market, an ISP who deliberately slows down websites will lose customers.
Okay, let's say that ATT decides to throttle bandwidth for Vonage, or it detects Skype use and throttles that. Then users will find that their VOIP service really sucks, but guess what? Regular phone service is fine. Seems like ATT will gain customers, not lose them.
Or suppose Google refuses to pay for fast service, but MSN search does. Then suddenly users will find that Google searches take forever, but MSN is fine. Will the customer change ISPs over that, or search engines? You say Google could move, but that's not possible: it's the Google packets going to the customer over the last mile that are being throttled, not the expensive lines connecting Google to the backbone.
Really? Profits in the entertainment industry are going up? That's not what analysts think.
I think this varies from country to country. In the USA, where the RIAA attacks its customers with lawsuits, profits may not be going up. But in Canada, where we have a private copying right (i.e. it is legal for me to copy music for my own use), profits are going up. Here's Michael Geist talking about a study commissioned by the federal government:
In recent years, however, the Canadian copyright industries have outperformed the U.S. with respect to growth rates and contribution to national employment.
[...]
Warning that "these findings should be treated with caution", the study reports that the Canadian sound recording industry grew steadily from 1999 to 2004, with the GDP contribution jumping from $243 million to $387 million.
The authors of the report believed the propaganda from the CRIA, so they didn't trust the objective data that they collected.
And concluded with the ironic predictive signature:
If you're against piracy on Slashdot, you will be modded down.
That's not "ironic". It's just whining. Whenever I have mod points, and I see a whiny "I'm so special I know you'll mod me down" comment, I oblige.
If the Overly Hypocritical Guy wants to improve the quality of discourse on Slashdot, he should start by addressing the points in the posts he responds to, and treating others with respect.
Uh, because it's a lawsuit filed by Torrentspy and not a federal crackdown?
I'll never understand why Slashdotters get so upset that the FBI does its job and enforces the law in this country.
I think the question was why it needs to be a lawsuit. Why isn't the FBI enforcing the law in this case?
It's all a question about whether L+D is a derived work or not. If it is, then you're not allowed to distribute it without following the GPL. If the copyright holder says it's fine, you're definitely allowed to distribute D on its own, or with X11 if X11 is BSD licensed, but you're not allowed to distribute L with it.
The FSF has an agenda to promote free software, so their opinion would certainly be that L+D is a derived work. Whoever wrote to Kororaa is also of that opinion, and I think someone mentioned that they were kernel contributors. So by bundling the driver with the kernel in a distribution, they think you're violating their copyright.
Could they be wrong? Sure. Do you want to fight over it? Kororaa doesn't.
I think the argument goes as follows. L is Linux which is GPL'd, D is the proprietary driver which is not. L+D is the derived work. You can distribute D if you like, but you can't bundle it with Linux unless you license the whole new thing under the GPL.
All of MP3 may be "somewhat" legal in Russia but it is fully-non legal for Americans (or Canadians, Australians, and anybody else who is lives in a country that's signed on with international copyright laws) to buy music from them, as it says outright in their terms of service.
I don't see any mention of Canada there, just a vague statement that it's up to you to figure out whether it is legal in your country. In fact, Canadians have a right to make copies for private use. This is what the levy on blank media pays for.
It's a $30 program that provides a far sight more chance of recovering a stolen laptop than nothing does. I, for one, think it's worth it, even if it would only have a chance of working work 1/10 of the time.
I think you'd be better off investing in property insurance and a backup scheme. The insurance will replace the hardware, you backup will replace the lost content.
You'll also be protected against physical damage to the computer; the theft protection program won't do that.
Tough talk from a guy who thinks that...
That was no guy, that was an anonymous coward.
There's a difference between a release and a nightly snapshot. A release has had features frozen for a while, so it's much more bug-free than a snapshot.
There's a lot to stop any user from making a release. Doing a release requires cooperation from lots of people to do the testing and fix the bugs. Only the project maintainers are usually in a position to do this. Not doing it means they aren't doing a very good job. If it's not something that interests them, they should recruit a release manager.
So either the open source community cares about quality and should respond to the points this article brings up, or every single person on Slashdot who said "the open source process produces quality software" is lying. Which is it? The open source community has made their bed; now they have to lie in it.
I think the open source process produces quality software, but it is not very good at documentation. I really can't say I've heard anyone on Slashdot claim differently.
I think the difference is that software can be modular, but modular documentation sucks. Documentation really needs much more consistency. It's all UI, whereas most software projects are mainly behind-the-scenes stuff that needn't be consistent.
2-5) Documentation is online, searchable, and updated frequently. We also have a support email address, forum, and irc channel. In-app help is being added soon as well.
Online help isn't too useful to me when I'm offline. "In-app help is being added soon" is very stereotypical OSS.
I suspect that that is the response this guy received, but he wants an argument.