Copyright law, by default, assigns most rights related to a work to the author. The GPL only concerns itself with those rights. It relaxes the restrictions on those rights as long as certain rules are followed.
The things the GPL prohibts you from doing would not be possible (legally) if the GPL didn't exist anyway - i.e, no rights were taken away by the GPL.
The GPL is a grant to distribute a work, under certain conditions - nothing more. If you think you have that right absent any contract, you are sadly mistaken.
Re:SCO still packs a punch?
on
SCO SCO SCO!
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
In IBM's defense, their current policy with regards to patents appears to be, "If you sue us for patent infringement, we'll dig through our database and crush you. If you don't, we won't bother. Have fun."
That might even have been stated by someone official - in any case, it seems fairly generous.
This interview (while somewhat hostile), does illustrate why I hate it - we have voting system companies that refuse to make their systems open that are, in turn, monitored by officials that do not understand how the systems can be tampered with.
I think our elected officials just aren't ready to handle technology, unfortunately.
Oh, any voting system that doesn't provide a hard-copy output of how I voted to be used as a check is a voting system I don't trust - a pure touch-screen system should provide a printout that I can confirm, and hand in, where it will be filed much the way traditional ballots are file. The actual counting can be purely electronic for all I care, until a recount is requested, in which case the paper ballots should be used - any tampering significant enough to alter the election should be trivially detectable using this system.
The rule that I was referring to was a Federal rule that says (IIRC) "Reception of any transmission by persons that do not have the right to make such a transmission is illegal without explicit permission."
The governor of Michigan put an exception out for Amateur Radio operators that said, "Amateurs can receive police transmissions."
So, for the most part, scanners are legal in Michigan for Amateurs, dunno about other states though.
I suspect that on some/many motherboards, you can see performance decreases going from 3GB to 4GB, depending on how the motherboard maps the PCI bus address space and the physical ram.
I've seen a motherboard recently (I forget the make, sorry) that with 4GB of ram, allocated an entire 1GB over the 4GB, requiring PAE mode to access it, and PAE mode does tend to decrease performance a little bit.
Of course, workload matters more at that point - if your workload is I/O bound, that extra ram as cache will probably be useful even though accessing memory as a whole is a bit slower.
The EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL tags are not enforcements of the GPL.
They are warnings that using that symbol in a non-GPLed module is probably a license violation.
If you are writing non-GPL kernel modules, you probably need to talk to a good lawyer and have that person analyze the entire situation.
Keep in mind that a great many of the people that contributed to the Linux kernel did so with a *PURE* GPL license. The "binary only modules are ok" statement made by Linus has absolutely no effect on the license that other code was distributed with. (And thus, effectively, the kernel is under a pure GPL license, as sorting out which bits were published under which variant is effectively impossible.)
So, get a lawyer. They're much more effective than technological measures anyway. (It is possible to do module-like things by manipulating/dev/kmem anyway, so it's not clear that the module interface is even a significant factor here.)
On the linux-kernel list, there has been a very good explanation of this issue - basically, the fact that there is a module interface does not necessarily imply that the interface is intended to be a GPL barrier.
On the other hand, the system call interface (i.e, the interface to userland) was intended all along to be a standard interface that did not imply a GPL defined derivative work.
Given that being able to, for example, reroute system calls, and thus reimplement entire subsystems, or at least, circumvent them is much more invasive, the ability to do that is regarded (by at least some of the developers) as being a clear GPL violation. Reading the GPL (v2) is probably a good idea for anyone trying to participate in this discussion. The interpretation I'm trying to lay out here is not that unreasonable an interpretation, IMO.
I think (but I'm not sure) that the X server does a partial restart when you log on or off. (Certainly, the way the screen flashes seems to imply it switches out of graphics mode for a minute or two.)
Regarding RPMs - Two thoughts - find aptrpm and get it to work, or try Debian.
Seriously, Apt is Debian's #1 selling point for most users. The #2 is stability. Rock solid, if you're running the "stable" distribution, you can update software daily, and nothing should break. Ever. (The only exception being the incredibly rare case of the feature you depend on being inherently insecure, but even then, I think they just fix it as much as possible, and provide a warning on install.)
Dependencies are most RPM distributions single biggest problem, imo. Apt or its cousins, aptrpm (maybe apt4rpm?) and up2date serve primarily to solve those problems - try that, and see if that makes your life better.
I may be a Debian bigot, but I know it's a hard distribution to get used to, heh.
That was one of the best vampire shows I've ever watched. Well, then again, there haven't exactly been a lot of even decent vampire shows, now that I think about it.
(Buffy + Angel and Forever Knight are all I can think of, honestly.)
What if you want to change the name of the domain because it conflicts with your company's hostname, and you don't want to use the Win2k server as a primary DNS server for the network?
Having worked at the Chrysler HQ/Techcenter, and having been on the GM Techcenter's campus, le tme say just this: That policy at GM probably has more to do with the fact that the parking is incredibly decentralized than a desire for corporate pride.
Oh, and when I was working at DCX, they had just opened a new parking structure, but hadn't finished the addition (3 new floors) that were going to fill the structure up, so they let anyone, even -- *gasp* -- contractors, park there.
As I understand it, they just give preferential use of a semi-limited parking resource to those who own company cars. *shrug*
Re:Gentoo's Portage system r00lz
on
Is RPM Doomed?
·
· Score: 1
Oh, that was actually a poor example.
Take for a better one, installing slrn and mozilla.
Concievably, both could be curious as to what your default newsserver is, right?
So one asks, and the second one can reuse the answer.
Think along those lines for a collection of better examples of shared configuration information.
Re:Gentoo's Portage system r00lz
on
Is RPM Doomed?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The system he was referring to is for package configuration.
I.e, I don't want to pay attention to the intricacies of how my keyboard mappings are configured. So DebConf asks me a question or 3 the first time I install the console-tools (maybe, I forget) package.
It asks the question using my choice of interfaces, i.e, a readline4 based one, a nice ncurses based one, an X based one, or a web based one. (I have no idea how the web one works, just for reference, I just know it's an option.)
From that point on, I should never be asked that question again, unless the meaning of it has changed.
The benefit here is that some simple things (like say, your workgroup that your Samba server hangs out in?) can be configured once, and your config file can be regenerated on each package upgrade. You can make changes on top of that configuration file, if you need, but many updates can be handled for you without you needing to know the details of the upgrade.
DebConf is a *really* nice tool for configuration management. In theory (it hasn't happened in practice), is that common configuration options for say, MTAs can be used, so if you want to switch from sendmail to exim you can have your old configuration information copied right over.
Actually, according to a news item I saw in, umm, InfoWorld, I belive - that's about the minimum price of MS Office Standard Edition. It starts at 479, comes down to 279 per seat.
The numbers were in the news article announcing/discussing Star Office 6, and it's $75/5 seats licensing cost.
So, umm, $300 a seat is a fair estimate, even for someone buying a million seats.
That's for "correctly licensed" copies, not OEM copies. Everyone knows that MS says that even if you get a machine with Windows or Office on it, if the machine would otherwise be covered by a site license, you still have to pay for the license again, right?
Go do some research, read some news articles, get a grip on the actual prices and the controversy involved in these licenses - those numbers are fairly accurate. (Ok, the Windows OS prices may be a bit high, but the Office ones are pretty much dead accurate.)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm 90% sure you're trolling, but what the hell..
Copyright law, by default, assigns most rights related to a work to the author. The GPL only concerns itself with those rights. It relaxes the restrictions on those rights as long as certain rules are followed.
The things the GPL prohibts you from doing would not be possible (legally) if the GPL didn't exist anyway - i.e, no rights were taken away by the GPL.
The GPL is a grant to distribute a work, under certain conditions - nothing more. If you think you have that right absent any contract, you are sadly mistaken.
In IBM's defense, their current policy with regards to patents appears to be, "If you sue us for patent infringement, we'll dig through our database and crush you. If you don't, we won't bother. Have fun."
That might even have been stated by someone official - in any case, it seems fairly generous.
Don't you mean, "go home for the night"?
or even, "go to bed"?
Admittedly, his interpretation seems to be the one the lawyers from companies using the DMCA like to use.
and hate it at the same time.
This interview (while somewhat hostile), does illustrate why I hate it - we have voting system companies that refuse to make their systems open that are, in turn, monitored by officials that do not understand how the systems can be tampered with.
I think our elected officials just aren't ready to handle technology, unfortunately.
Oh, any voting system that doesn't provide a hard-copy output of how I voted to be used as a check is a voting system I don't trust - a pure touch-screen system should provide a printout that I can confirm, and hand in, where it will be filed much the way traditional ballots are file. The actual counting can be purely electronic for all I care, until a recount is requested, in which case the paper ballots should be used - any tampering significant enough to alter the election should be trivially detectable using this system.
Perl gives you enough rope to hang yourself if you're a hack
Funny, C gives you enough rope to shoot yourself.
I seem to remember Comcast annoucing that they were doubling the upload caps to 256kbit in March.
I have no idea where I heard that though, so no link , unfortunately.
Actually, let me clarify.
The rule that I was referring to was a Federal rule that says (IIRC) "Reception of any transmission by persons that do not have the right to make such a transmission is illegal without explicit permission."
The governor of Michigan put an exception out for Amateur Radio operators that said, "Amateurs can receive police transmissions."
So, for the most part, scanners are legal in Michigan for Amateurs, dunno about other states though.
And Michigan also has an exception from the Governor (well, Engler, I think) that exempts Amateurs from that law.
I suspect that on some/many motherboards, you can see performance decreases going from 3GB to 4GB, depending on how the motherboard maps the PCI bus address space and the physical ram.
I've seen a motherboard recently (I forget the make, sorry) that with 4GB of ram, allocated an entire 1GB over the 4GB, requiring PAE mode to access it, and PAE mode does tend to decrease performance a little bit.
Of course, workload matters more at that point - if your workload is I/O bound, that extra ram as cache will probably be useful even though accessing memory as a whole is a bit slower.
Oh, I've really enjoyed Frankowski's stuff.
:)
The delays between books are sometimes frustrating though.
The EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL tags are not enforcements of the GPL.
/dev/kmem anyway, so it's not clear that the module interface is even a significant factor here.)
They are warnings that using that symbol in a non-GPLed module is probably a license violation.
If you are writing non-GPL kernel modules, you probably need to talk to a good lawyer and have that person analyze the entire situation.
Keep in mind that a great many of the people that contributed to the Linux kernel did so with a *PURE* GPL license. The "binary only modules are ok" statement made by Linus has absolutely no effect on the license that other code was distributed with. (And thus, effectively, the kernel is under a pure GPL license, as sorting out which bits were published under which variant is effectively impossible.)
So, get a lawyer. They're much more effective than technological measures anyway. (It is possible to do module-like things by manipulating
On the linux-kernel list, there has been a very good explanation of this issue - basically, the fact that there is a module interface does not necessarily imply that the interface is intended to be a GPL barrier.
On the other hand, the system call interface (i.e, the interface to userland) was intended all along to be a standard interface that did not imply a GPL defined derivative work.
Given that being able to, for example, reroute system calls, and thus reimplement entire subsystems, or at least, circumvent them is much more invasive, the ability to do that is regarded (by at least some of the developers) as being a clear GPL violation. Reading the GPL (v2) is probably a good idea for anyone trying to participate in this discussion. The interpretation I'm trying to lay out here is not that unreasonable an interpretation, IMO.
IANAL, of course.
I think (but I'm not sure) that the X server does a partial restart when you log on or off. (Certainly, the way the screen flashes seems to imply it switches out of graphics mode for a minute or two.)
Anyone with more knowledge around to clarify?
Regarding RPMs - Two thoughts - find aptrpm and get it to work, or try Debian.
Seriously, Apt is Debian's #1 selling point for most users. The #2 is stability. Rock solid, if you're running the "stable" distribution, you can update software daily, and nothing should break. Ever. (The only exception being the incredibly rare case of the feature you depend on being inherently insecure, but even then, I think they just fix it as much as possible, and provide a warning on install.)
Dependencies are most RPM distributions single biggest problem, imo. Apt or its cousins, aptrpm (maybe apt4rpm?) and up2date serve primarily to solve those problems - try that, and see if that makes your life better.
I may be a Debian bigot, but I know it's a hard distribution to get used to, heh.
Because he's not the sole owner.
You're thinking of Forever Knight.
That was one of the best vampire shows I've ever watched. Well, then again, there haven't exactly been a lot of even decent vampire shows, now that I think about it.
(Buffy + Angel and Forever Knight are all I can think of, honestly.)
hmm, a little off topic here, but...
What if you want to change the name of the domain because it conflicts with your company's hostname, and you don't want to use the Win2k server as a primary DNS server for the network?
Well, it does cover a great deal of CPAN - you'd be amazed at how much of CPAN has been repackaged as Debian packages.
Having worked at the Chrysler HQ/Techcenter, and having been on the GM Techcenter's campus, le tme say just this: That policy at GM probably has more to do with the fact that the parking is incredibly decentralized than a desire for corporate pride.
Oh, and when I was working at DCX, they had just opened a new parking structure, but hadn't finished the addition (3 new floors) that were going to fill the structure up, so they let anyone, even -- *gasp* -- contractors, park there.
As I understand it, they just give preferential use of a semi-limited parking resource to those who own company cars. *shrug*
Oh, that was actually a poor example.
Take for a better one, installing slrn and mozilla.
Concievably, both could be curious as to what your default newsserver is, right?
So one asks, and the second one can reuse the answer.
Think along those lines for a collection of better examples of shared configuration information.
The system he was referring to is for package configuration.
I.e, I don't want to pay attention to the intricacies of how my keyboard mappings are configured. So DebConf asks me a question or 3 the first time I install the console-tools (maybe, I forget) package.
It asks the question using my choice of interfaces, i.e, a readline4 based one, a nice ncurses based one, an X based one, or a web based one. (I have no idea how the web one works, just for reference, I just know it's an option.)
From that point on, I should never be asked that question again, unless the meaning of it has changed.
The benefit here is that some simple things (like say, your workgroup that your Samba server hangs out in?) can be configured once, and your config file can be regenerated on each package upgrade. You can make changes on top of that configuration file, if you need, but many updates can be handled for you without you needing to know the details of the upgrade.
DebConf is a *really* nice tool for configuration management. In theory (it hasn't happened in practice), is that common configuration options for say, MTAs can be used, so if you want to switch from sendmail to exim you can have your old configuration information copied right over.
Actually, according to a news item I saw in, umm, InfoWorld, I belive - that's about the minimum price of MS Office Standard Edition. It starts at 479, comes down to 279 per seat.
The numbers were in the news article announcing/discussing Star Office 6, and it's $75/5 seats licensing cost.
So, umm, $300 a seat is a fair estimate, even for someone buying a million seats.
That's for "correctly licensed" copies, not OEM copies. Everyone knows that MS says that even if you get a machine with Windows or Office on it, if the machine would otherwise be covered by a site license, you still have to pay for the license again, right?
Go do some research, read some news articles, get a grip on the actual prices and the controversy involved in these licenses - those numbers are fairly accurate. (Ok, the Windows OS prices may be a bit high, but the Office ones are pretty much dead accurate.)
The compiler tool chain, and a huge number of important cui utilities, such as ls, awk, find, grep ... etc.
Stuff that make it (a replacement for) Unix.
The parent should be modded up, imo.
For those of you too lazy to do it yourself:
Gullible on dictionary.com