Wrong again. Without the GPL (or some other license), you have no rights to a copyrighted work--and under US law, and that of most other states, every work is copyrighted. So you have no rights at all to begin with. The GPL grants you certain rights that you would not otherwise have, provided that you comply with certain requirements. This is no different, really, than proprietary software (which requires payment and that you not pass the work along) or the BSD (which requires credit), but is different from making a work public domain (which gives rights without imposing any requirements).
The genius of the GPL is that it requires you to grant to others the same rights which you have been granted: it compels anyone who accepts its terms to play on a level field. It is a boon to users first of all (for they can be assured of the ability to tweak and improve the software on which they rely), but is secondarily a boon to developers, who know that they may benefit from the improvements others make to their original work. It's very clever.
Nope. Remember that the font is source code which specifies how to draw each character--and your document is itself source code which describes how to draw each page, including those characters. So you'd need to GPL the source code to your document. Which really doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Because ad hominem attacks (e.g. calling someone a zealot) are easier than rational argument. I don't agree with Stallman on everything, and indeed he's one instance of someone who may actually be a zealot in the best sense of the term, but he does have a valid (I won't argue that it's correct, but merely that it's valid) philosophical basis for what he says and does. He's a very smart fellow, and he came up with a license which grants more rights to users than most licenses do, and in addition preserves those rights come hell or high water. I trust that he'll figure out a good upgrade thereto.
Well, emacs keyboard macros are very useful, but essentially they just remember each keystroke you type. You probably want to look into writing elisp functions. It's a pretty simple little language, but is extremely powerful. Most likely, you'll end up with a large number of save-excursion and replace-regexp calls. But once it's written once, it'll be written forever.
If you really wanted to be clever, you'd define a standard interface for mapping vendor HTML into real HTML, and offer the possibility for plug-in modules, and then you'd take over the world:-)
Doh! Forgot that Indiana is one of the few places sane enough to not have DST, and so completely misread your post. I still disagree, of course--I see nothing wrong with the sun rising earlier and setting later--that's what summer's all about.
Of course, we'd all be happier if we kept solar hours anyway: 12 hours of daylight; 12 of night; work eight hours out of the day. Yes, this would mean short winter work days and long summer work days. I could deal.
Ummm...daylight savings time is only in effect during the summer. That '7am' was really 6am, and that '8:30pm' was really 7:30. Daylight savings time doesn't affect winter at all, since it's not in effect.
And of course the sane solution is to just adjust working hours if needed.
No, we really don't need a 'huge, concerted effort' to move away from oil--if supplies dwindle (which they haven't yet), it will get more expensive. As it gets more expensive, people will become more price conscious and will use less of it. E.g. many will choose to live closer to work. This is a gradual process, but so too is the dwindling of oil. I doubt we'll ever run out of oil; eventually it will be tens of thousands of dollars a barrel, but it will be available if it's needed.
But if it's that expensive, suddenly alternatives become relatively less expensive. We might start using horn instead of plastic, or wool instead of polyester.
And of course science, despite your neo-Luddite inclinations, does continue on its forward march: we will make new discoveries, and they will continue to improve our quality of life (which would otherwise stagnate as everything gets more expensive--which is to say, takes more labour and resources to afford).
If the population of the earth keeps growing we won't have enough resources to maintain our current level of living conditions.
Yeah, that's what Malthus thought. Of course, he was wrong. So far population is growing more slowly than productivity (which is why your children have more toys (which are each more complex and expensive) than you ever had. Which is why a family below the poverty line in the US is quite likely to own a colour TV and a car.
We have one huge frontier: the sea. Three quarters of our globe is currently useless to us. Yes, there are challenges, but they pale in comparison to the challenges of space. Space is tremendously empty and requires astronomical amounts of energy to traverse; the sea contains much life, and the sea floor hides untapped mineral resources.
Re:now before anyone gets started
on
10 Technologies MIA
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· Score: 0, Troll
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree.
Your god dies of snakebite and stays dead; my god rises from the dead and lives forever...
Of course, if he'd used embryonic stem cells to do those things, he'd not be a terrorist, but he'd certainly be a mass-murderer, or party to mass murder.
I think your 'friend' (or yourself...whatever) needs to determine what his primary business is. Is he a cafe owner who provides net access on the side, or a net access provider who sells coffee on the side? If the first, he wants to attract customers, and what better way than offering something for free? Also, many cafes these days offer free access anyway: just to compete it might be a good idea.
If, OTOH, he's an access provider, then it doesn't make sense to give away his primary business. But if that is his business, he's probably in trouble: what with all the other free ways to access the net, access providers are going the way of the dodo.
My thought is that computer use should cost, but wireless shouldn't. But that's just me.
Exactly. I want a dumb pipe. In fact, I don't even really need email or Usenet (although I really like having them provided, and consider them a plus). I certainly don't want 'free' web space (I'm paying for it anyway if it's included, and since I've already a significant investment in my own hardware...). I don't really care about any local 'value-added' services. What I want is:
The ability to access my home box from anywhere in the world via SSH, HTTP, HTTPS or any other protocol I want
A static IP address
No firewalling
Give me that, and I'm happy. If you give me an email address, cool. If you give me Usenet access, sweet. But don't limit me to browsing. The internet is about connecting people and computers as peers.
Fiction can make fact more easily understood, and hence can serve a useful purpose. Example: those silly mnemonics one is learns in order to recall various sequences.
That just configures networking, though--I don't believe that it leaves many daemons running. Still, a system in runlevel 2 can be quite useful for, say, document preparation (the original use for Unix). Even runlevel 1 can be useful, albeit dangerous (useful because one has a full Unix; dangerous because one is root).
Yup, 'Worse is Better' is a real classic. Although to tell the truth I'm not convinced that it's evocative so much of the Lisp/C divide as the LispM/Unix divide. And part of its point was that in a Darwinian sense worse really is better.
I think that Common Lisp and Scheme are probably more popular now than they ever have been. A great deal of this is due to the essays of Paul Graham, who despite his faults has been an excellent evangelist for the Lisp family of languages.
Of course, what really interests me is the next step: the language which offers features no Lisp can. Is that even possible?
I think what he was probably thinking of was the fact that most modern languages prevent buffer overflows and the rest. Lisp actually partakes of both natures, though: by default the language is safe but not as fast as it could be; you can tweak it to make speed more important, and you can even tweak it to make safety less important. It's kinda cool, actually.
I urge anyone who's not read it to take a look at Practical Common Lisp, which is an excellent introduction to an excellent language.
Until Linux stops fragmenting, and focuses on applications and a friendly platform for application development its simply never going to unseat Windows on the desktop and has a great potential to get beat by OSX.
Not unless Apple GPL OS X, it doesn't. Some of us are into Linux because we value our freedom.
Slashdot Mirror
Not that I really think they want to compete directly with Microsoft.
That's why I wrote my CV and resume in LaTeX and generated a PDF: looks sharp, is readable everywhere and keeps me (relatively) sane.
The genius of the GPL is that it requires you to grant to others the same rights which you have been granted: it compels anyone who accepts its terms to play on a level field. It is a boon to users first of all (for they can be assured of the ability to tweak and improve the software on which they rely), but is secondarily a boon to developers, who know that they may benefit from the improvements others make to their original work. It's very clever.
For now, the solution is to LGPL fonts.
Because ad hominem attacks (e.g. calling someone a zealot) are easier than rational argument. I don't agree with Stallman on everything, and indeed he's one instance of someone who may actually be a zealot in the best sense of the term, but he does have a valid (I won't argue that it's correct, but merely that it's valid) philosophical basis for what he says and does. He's a very smart fellow, and he came up with a license which grants more rights to users than most licenses do, and in addition preserves those rights come hell or high water. I trust that he'll figure out a good upgrade thereto.
If you really wanted to be clever, you'd define a standard interface for mapping vendor HTML into real HTML, and offer the possibility for plug-in modules, and then you'd take over the world:-)
Of course, we'd all be happier if we kept solar hours anyway: 12 hours of daylight; 12 of night; work eight hours out of the day. Yes, this would mean short winter work days and long summer work days. I could deal.
And of course the sane solution is to just adjust working hours if needed.
But if it's that expensive, suddenly alternatives become relatively less expensive. We might start using horn instead of plastic, or wool instead of polyester.
And of course science, despite your neo-Luddite inclinations, does continue on its forward march: we will make new discoveries, and they will continue to improve our quality of life (which would otherwise stagnate as everything gets more expensive--which is to say, takes more labour and resources to afford).
Yeah, that's what Malthus thought. Of course, he was wrong. So far population is growing more slowly than productivity (which is why your children have more toys (which are each more complex and expensive) than you ever had. Which is why a family below the poverty line in the US is quite likely to own a colour TV and a car.
We have one huge frontier: the sea. Three quarters of our globe is currently useless to us. Yes, there are challenges, but they pale in comparison to the challenges of space. Space is tremendously empty and requires astronomical amounts of energy to traverse; the sea contains much life, and the sea floor hides untapped mineral resources.
Your god dies of snakebite and stays dead; my god rises from the dead and lives forever...
How is he misunderstanding 'on-demand'? The user demands an upgrade, and the system it is upgraded. Likewise for Fedora with yum.
That's something else I'll never understand. Why spend $3,000 on surgery for an animal? It boggles the mind.
Ummm...they're animals; they're designed to be homeless. Yes, they will have to fight to survive: that's their natural state.
No, it doesn't. That's illegal. What they can fire you for is dating, fraternisation &c. in uniform. Sheesh.
Of course, if he'd used embryonic stem cells to do those things, he'd not be a terrorist, but he'd certainly be a mass-murderer, or party to mass murder.
If, OTOH, he's an access provider, then it doesn't make sense to give away his primary business. But if that is his business, he's probably in trouble: what with all the other free ways to access the net, access providers are going the way of the dodo.
My thought is that computer use should cost, but wireless shouldn't. But that's just me.
Howdy, Smoove. Will these fine meats and cheeses be sought out from among the world's finest cuisines?
Give me that, and I'm happy. If you give me an email address, cool. If you give me Usenet access, sweet. But don't limit me to browsing. The internet is about connecting people and computers as peers.
Fiction can make fact more easily understood, and hence can serve a useful purpose. Example: those silly mnemonics one is learns in order to recall various sequences.
That just configures networking, though--I don't believe that it leaves many daemons running. Still, a system in runlevel 2 can be quite useful for, say, document preparation (the original use for Unix). Even runlevel 1 can be useful, albeit dangerous (useful because one has a full Unix; dangerous because one is root).
I think that Common Lisp and Scheme are probably more popular now than they ever have been. A great deal of this is due to the essays of Paul Graham, who despite his faults has been an excellent evangelist for the Lisp family of languages.
Of course, what really interests me is the next step: the language which offers features no Lisp can. Is that even possible?
I urge anyone who's not read it to take a look at Practical Common Lisp, which is an excellent introduction to an excellent language.
Not unless Apple GPL OS X, it doesn't. Some of us are into Linux because we value our freedom.