I would think that the developers would be hesitant about using Mono/.NET or Java because both of those languages are not Free (read: Freedom).
Mono is a Free implementation of.NET. For Java there's gcj and others. That's what Havoc (and I) were referring to.
Of course, the specifications of these languages and platforms isn't Free (as in Freedom). But: I'd like to recall the fact that GNU/Linux started out as a clone of the non-free Unix system. (GNU's Not Unix)
No.. there is no formal connection between Mono and Evolution, although both are products of Ximian.
A very good read is this piece by Havoc Pennington, of GNOME fame.
Basically he says that there are ideas that integrating some high-level, sandboxed platforms like Mono/.NET and/or Java into the Linux desktop. (or more specifically, GNOME)
He also says that they're not going to use Mono or Java in Gnome (and where Gnome goes, Evolution goes) until there is some kind of road-map on which technology should be used and how.
Personally, I find Java more compelling. C# may be a nicer language, but there is no control over which direction the class libraries will take. The Java Community Process is at least a somewhat open alternative.
yes, there is no legal significance. But if i write a web app that the server portion needs to run on apache, with perl installed and uses latex with openssh as the authenticator,And what ever else *'nix has to offer to make it great those are system requirments not devived works. If there is a function in a library already existing on a base install of the 2.4 kernal and i need that function to access the drive in a certain way, then that isn't a derived work, it is a system requirment.
You already conceded that 'system requirement' has no legal signficance. So what is your point here?
Linking to a library constitutes a derived work of that library. This is established law. Why do you think the LGPL exists? What is the difference between the LGPL and the GPL? The difference is that you can link to an LGPL library without your program falling under the license. If you could link to GPL libraries without your program becoming a derived work under the GPL, why does glibc include the following exception?
As a special exception, the copyright holders of this library give you permission to link this library with independent modules to produce an executable, regardless of the license terms of these independent modules, and to copy and distribute the resulting executable under terms of your choice, provided that you also meet, for each linked independent module, the terms and conditions of the license of that module. An independent module is a module which is not derived from or based on this library. If you modify this library, you may extend this exception to your version of the library, but you are not obligated to do so. If you do not wish to do so, delete this exception statement from your version.
Then you go on with: If what you are saying is true, then it is entirley[sic] possible for SCO to claim ownership of all the linux stuff based on any derived works found to be in it. Well maybe not ownership but they could dictate the license.
No it's not. You don't offer any explanation to motivate why this would be the case from what I wrote. Perhaps you read too much Groklaw and saw this term in relation to SCO's claims, and got the wrong idea. Linux contains no "derived works" of anything belonging to SCO. The linux kernel does not link to any SCO-owned libraries. The linux kernel does not contain SCO code. It is not a derived work.
It would be a complete waist[sic] for people to write comercial[sic] apps for liunx[sic] If they have to give it away because programers[sic] knew you could do this or that with an existing library.
This is a complete troll. People are totally free to write commercial apps for Linux. You are, however, NOT free to link to any library without following the license terms of that library. This is true for all libraries, open source or not. No commercial software vendor uses any library without knowing the license conditions. It's nonsense to suggest otherwise.
Besides that, the most-used libraries on Linux are not under the GPL, but rather the LGPL and other licenses which are not 'virial' like the GPL.
That's a good point, but it relates to legislative compliance, not standards compliance. At least not directly.
If you ask me, the legislative idea is probably what the EU had in mind. It's certainly easier to pass legislation endorsing an ISO standard than to pass legislation endorsing a proprietary one.
That's a misunderstanding. It's not about how you distribute it. It's about the technical aspects of library-linking.
The FSF is very clear on this matter, and their stance is that linking to a GPL-ed library constitutes a 'derived work' under the GPL, and thus the resulting executable must be GPL-licenced.
Merely running your code on Linux or using a GPL-ed interpreter to run your program does not constitute a 'derived work' under this definition. Linus Torvalds himself has clearly delineated where this border is with the kernel: User space programs are not derived works, neither are kernel modules.
There is no legal significance in saying that something is a 'system requirement'.
Forking isn't an issue. This is more or less pure Sun FUD.
I invite you to try out GNU Classpath, Kaffe or GCJ. Although they are not fully implemented yet, if you find that one of the implemented methods/classes isn't up to the specification, report it, and they'll take action. I guarantee that. (Given that it's a real bug..)
so long as any API bugs that do exist are consistant across platforms.
This is wrong. If you are writing your programs to be dependent on unspecified behaviour, you should not expect it to always work. This has nothing to do with OSS Java. It's something which is present even in Sun-sanctioned Java implementations.
For example, on Windows and Linux you can set the color of Button-widgets with setBackground(). (but not JButtons) However, this behaviour is not specified. And it doesn't work on OS X.
That said, I'd like things to conform to Sun's testsuite too. The problem is, Sun charges thousands of dollars for it.
people don't have to "release" thier code under the GPL even though they build and link it with gcc.
Link it to what.. The GNU C libraries? Then yes they would have to GPL their code. Except that the GNU C libraries aren't under the GPL. They are under the GPL with an exception allowing you to link to them without having to GPL your code.
You mean in active use right? Because most DVDs I run into are region encoded. You know that most people don't know what region encoding is right? You know that most people don't give a shit either right?
That's the situation in the USA, that's right. Because the USA has decently cheap DVDs, and it's the primary release market.
In Europe, it's not like that, because the DVDs are more expensive, and they hit the stores much later than in the USA. So there's a market there for import-DVDs.
The result of this is that most europeans buying a DVD player do know what region-encoding is, and they do give a shit. DVD players are marketed as "Region free!". It's almost difficult to find one which does have region encoding. (Not quite true, they're usually sold with region-encoding, and they'll tell you at the store how to disable it.)
Right here is an example for you, a UK DVD player merchandiser. The region-free ones are clearly marked.
So yes, I do think that if the USA enforces this broadcast flag, and Europe does not, that you might end up with the same situation, except reversed.
China != USA, they do not *try* to bullshit everyone into believing that they live in a free society.
In my opinion, practically all totalitarian societies do try to do that. Almost to ridiculous extents.
For instance: I wonder, is there, or has there ever been, a country with the word "democratic" in it's name which has actually been democratic?
E.g. "German Democratic Republic" (A.k.a. "East Germany", communist dictatorship), "The Democratic Republic of Congo" (Dicatorship under Joseph Kabila) "Lao People's Democratic Republic" (A.k.a. Laos, communist one-party state)
Well, why wouldn't they want to maintain such an illusion? They know that at least some part of the population is going to believe it. And as for the rest, even if they don't believe it, it makes them less aware of their lost freedoms.
They're not stupid, you know.. they don't want to provoke anything which would lead to people confronting the leadership directly with their oppressive policies. There is no point in pissing people off if they can avoid it; it'd only serve to undermine their own power.
Why would they else even bother to hold elections in a one-party state?
Why do they have lots of different newspapers, although they all report the same government-line?
And then there are the hundreds of little things which are prohibited without actually being prohibited on paper. Things that require permits which are impossible to get and so on.
I have several friends from the former east bloc (and mainland China), and they all tell me similar things, that the nice thing about the 'free world' is the _realization_ of their freedom. That when someone said "You are allowed to do this", that actually meant that you were allowed to do that.
Now I'm not necessarily saying that Google is allowing themselves to be controlled by China. But what I am saying is that this decision from Google certainly is in the best interest of the Chinese leadership.
If Google indexed banned sites, then they would still be available via Google's cache.
Nope. China already blocks Google's cache, as well as most proxies they can find.
Would it be better if China took Google offline entirely?
Not from their point of view. It's a too obvious a form of censorship. They want to maintain the illusion of freedom as much as possible. That's why they don't want Google listing these banned pages to begin with; it makes the censorship more obvious.
To be kind of picky myself.. You just read a word, you understood what was meant by it, then you go on to claim that there is no such word?
Words are ultimately defined by usage. It is so. Whether 'virii' is the correct latin plural or not is kind of beside the point. Actually, there are quite a lot of words and names in english (and likely all languages) which come from that kind of linguistic confusion. There's even a name for the phenomenon, 'popular etymology' or 'folk etymology'.
[..]doped with an aluminum oxide compound that is pretty much identical to solid rocket fuel (although this flammable quality wasn't known at the time).
Actually, it was iron oxide and solid aluminum. These two substances can react in a very exothermic redox-reaction forming aluminum oxide. Such metal-metal oxide compounds are known as thermite.
The flammable quality was most certainly known at the time. The Germans actually used Zeppelins to drop incendiary thermite bombs on British targets during WWI.
After reading the article (the actual publication, that is), here's an attempt at a summary.
When you heat something, the entropy (disorder) of a system increases in importance. This is a law of thermodynamics.
A gas has greater entropy than a liquid, both have greater entropy than a solid. Usually.
Now, this substance turns solid when you heat it. -This means the solid phase has higher entropy than the liquid phase. That is unusual, but it doesn't violate any laws.
How does it work? Well, it appear the alpha-cyclodextrin molecule has two conformations (shapes). In the low-temperature one, it hydrogen-bonds to itself. At higher temperatures, these bonds are broken. (this is what happens with ice-water-steam too)
The funny thing about this substance, is that once these internal hydrogen bonds are broken, it allows the molecule to bind to other ones.. so while you break the "internal" hydrogen bonds, you give rise to a bunch of "external" molecular bonds, to other alpha-cyclodextrine molecules.
This leads to the formation of a solid. (not actually a true solid, but rather a 'sol', a suspension of linked-together alpha-Cyclodextrin molecules in water) And this solid actually does have lower entropy than the liquid phase, due to the breaking of the internal hydrogen-bonds.
No laws broken. Nothing 'impossible' going on. But, it is however an interesting phenomenon, and something which certainly may turn out to have practical uses in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
They're not so much rebel and even less islamic. Abkhazia is national authonomy that claims its independence, yet unrecognized in the world.
Claiming independence without official recognition is generally considered a form of rebellion.
And they are indeed, (to a larger extent than russians or georgians in general) muslims.
Of course, being a muslim does not mean you are an islamist.
(People are far too ignorant of the fact that islam does not equal islamism)
I would think that the developers would be hesitant about using Mono/.NET or Java because both of those languages are not Free (read: Freedom).
.NET.
Mono is a Free implementation of
For Java there's gcj and others.
That's what Havoc (and I) were referring to.
Of course, the specifications of these languages and platforms isn't Free (as in Freedom).
But: I'd like to recall the fact that GNU/Linux started out as a clone of the non-free Unix system.
(GNU's Not Unix)
PDF? Name ONE PDF file reader OR writer not from Adobe.
Reader? Xpdf
Writer? Ghostscript utilities, Gnome-print, and about a bazillion other programs. I've written several myself.
It's not as far off the mark as you think though.
There are Evolution extensions being written in C#.
(And this has lead to rumors about all of Evolution being rewritten in C#, but I don't think that's any more likely than you do)
No.. there is no formal connection between Mono and Evolution, although both are products of Ximian.
A very good read is this piece by Havoc Pennington, of GNOME fame.
Basically he says that there are ideas that integrating some high-level, sandboxed platforms like Mono/.NET and/or Java into the Linux desktop. (or more specifically, GNOME)
He also says that they're not going to use Mono or Java in Gnome (and where Gnome goes, Evolution goes) until there is some kind of road-map on which technology should be used and how.
Personally, I find Java more compelling. C# may be a nicer language, but there is no control over which direction the class libraries will take. The Java Community Process is at least a somewhat open alternative.
You already conceded that 'system requirement' has no legal signficance. So what is your point here?
Linking to a library constitutes a derived work of that library. This is established law. Why do you think the LGPL exists? What is the difference between the LGPL and the GPL? The difference is that you can link to an LGPL library without your program falling under the license. If you could link to GPL libraries without your program becoming a derived work under the GPL, why does glibc include the following exception?
Then you go on with:
If what you are saying is true, then it is entirley[sic] possible for SCO to claim ownership of all the linux stuff based on any derived works found to be in it. Well maybe not ownership but they could dictate the license.
No it's not. You don't offer any explanation to motivate why this would be the case from what I wrote. Perhaps you read too much Groklaw and saw this term in relation to SCO's claims, and got the wrong idea. Linux contains no "derived works" of anything belonging to SCO. The linux kernel does not link to any SCO-owned libraries. The linux kernel does not contain SCO code. It is not a derived work.
It would be a complete waist[sic] for people to write comercial[sic] apps for liunx[sic] If they have to give it away because programers[sic] knew you could do this or that with an existing library.
This is a complete troll. People are totally free to write commercial apps for Linux. You are, however, NOT free to link to any library without following the license terms of that library. This is true for all libraries, open source or not. No commercial software vendor uses any library without knowing the license conditions. It's nonsense to suggest otherwise.
Besides that, the most-used libraries on Linux are not under the GPL, but rather the LGPL and other licenses which are not 'virial' like the GPL.
You don't know what a 'derived work' is, do you?
That's a good point, but it relates to legislative compliance, not standards compliance. At least not directly.
If you ask me, the legislative idea is probably what the EU had in mind. It's certainly easier to pass legislation endorsing an ISO standard than to pass legislation endorsing a proprietary one.
That's a misunderstanding. It's not about how you distribute it. It's about the technical aspects of library-linking.
The FSF is very clear on this matter, and their stance is that linking to a GPL-ed library constitutes a 'derived work' under the GPL, and thus the resulting executable must be GPL-licenced.
Merely running your code on Linux or using a GPL-ed interpreter to run your program does not constitute a 'derived work' under this definition.
Linus Torvalds himself has clearly delineated where this border is with the kernel: User space programs are not derived works, neither are kernel modules.
There is no legal significance in saying that something is a 'system requirement'.
Forking isn't an issue. This is more or less pure Sun FUD.
I invite you to try out GNU Classpath, Kaffe or GCJ. Although they are not fully implemented yet, if you find that one of the implemented methods/classes isn't up to the specification, report it, and they'll take action. I guarantee that.
(Given that it's a real bug..)
so long as any API bugs that do exist are consistant across platforms.
This is wrong. If you are writing your programs to be dependent on unspecified behaviour, you should not expect it to always work. This has nothing to do with OSS Java. It's something which is present even in Sun-sanctioned Java implementations.
For example, on Windows and Linux you can set the color of Button-widgets with setBackground(). (but not JButtons) However, this behaviour is not specified. And it doesn't work on OS X.
That said, I'd like things to conform to Sun's testsuite too. The problem is, Sun charges thousands of dollars for it.
people don't have to "release" thier code under the GPL even though they build and link it with gcc.
Link it to what.. The GNU C libraries? Then yes they would have to GPL their code. Except that the GNU C libraries aren't under the GPL. They are under the GPL with an exception allowing you to link to them without having to GPL your code.
Thanks for enlightening me.
But does this mean different recivers, or will most of them be able to handle both signal types?
(Most modern VCRs and DVD players, for instance, handle both PAL and NTSC)
You mean in active use right? Because most DVDs I run into are region encoded. You know that most people don't know what region encoding is right? You know that most people don't give a shit either right?
That's the situation in the USA, that's right. Because the USA has decently cheap DVDs, and it's the primary release market.
In Europe, it's not like that, because the DVDs are more expensive, and they hit the stores much later than in the USA. So there's a market there for import-DVDs.
The result of this is that most europeans buying a DVD player do know what region-encoding is, and they do give a shit. DVD players are marketed as "Region free!". It's almost difficult to find one which does have region encoding.
(Not quite true, they're usually sold with region-encoding, and they'll tell you at the store how to disable it.)
Right here is an example for you, a UK DVD player merchandiser. The region-free ones are clearly marked.
So yes, I do think that if the USA enforces this broadcast flag, and Europe does not, that you might end up with the same situation, except reversed.
Europe doesn't have the broadcast flag (as of yet), right?
And HDTV is HDTV, right? A common standard, unlike NTSC and PAL, right?
So will we see Americans buying HDTV cards from Europe in the future?
Is there a chance this will go the same way as DVD region-protection?
China != USA, they do not *try* to bullshit everyone into believing that they live in a free society.
In my opinion, practically all totalitarian societies do try to do that. Almost to ridiculous extents.
For instance: I wonder, is there, or has there ever been, a country with the word "democratic" in it's name which has actually been democratic?
E.g. "German Democratic Republic" (A.k.a. "East Germany", communist dictatorship),
"The Democratic Republic of Congo" (Dicatorship under Joseph Kabila)
"Lao People's Democratic Republic" (A.k.a. Laos, communist one-party state)
Can you point me to where you determined this?
Well, why wouldn't they want to maintain such an illusion?
They know that at least some part of the population is going to believe it. And as for the rest, even if they don't believe it, it makes them less aware of their lost freedoms.
They're not stupid, you know.. they don't want to provoke anything which would lead to people confronting the leadership directly with their oppressive policies. There is no point in pissing people off if they can avoid it; it'd only serve to undermine their own power.
Why would they else even bother to hold elections in a one-party state?
Why do they have lots of different newspapers, although they all report the same government-line?
And then there are the hundreds of little things which are prohibited without actually being prohibited on paper. Things that require permits which are impossible to get and so on.
I have several friends from the former east bloc (and mainland China), and they all tell me similar things, that the nice thing about the 'free world' is the _realization_ of their freedom. That when someone said "You are allowed to do this", that actually meant that you were allowed to do that.
Now I'm not necessarily saying that Google is allowing themselves to be controlled by China. But what I am saying is that this decision from Google certainly is in the best interest of the Chinese leadership.
If Google indexed banned sites, then they would still be available via Google's cache.
Nope. China already blocks Google's cache, as well as most proxies they can find.
Would it be better if China took Google offline entirely?
Not from their point of view. It's a too obvious a form of censorship. They want to maintain the illusion of freedom as much as possible. That's why they don't want Google listing these banned pages to begin with; it makes the censorship more obvious.
To be kind of picky myself..
You just read a word, you understood what was meant by it, then you go on to claim that there is no such word?
Words are ultimately defined by usage. It is so. Whether 'virii' is the correct latin plural or not is kind of beside the point. Actually, there are quite a lot of words and names in english (and likely all languages) which come from that kind of linguistic confusion. There's even a name for the phenomenon, 'popular etymology' or 'folk etymology'.
[..]doped with an aluminum oxide compound that is pretty much identical to solid rocket fuel (although this flammable quality wasn't known at the time).
Actually, it was iron oxide and solid aluminum. These two substances can react in a very exothermic redox-reaction forming aluminum oxide. Such metal-metal oxide compounds are known as thermite.
The flammable quality was most certainly known at the time. The Germans actually used Zeppelins to drop incendiary thermite bombs on British targets during WWI.
You can contradict yourself with these statements; so which phase has the higher entropy?
You are right.
The latter statement is wrong. It should read "this solid actually does have a higher entropy than the liquid phase".
Power of habit I guess. As I wrote, it's not usually the case.
After reading the article (the actual publication, that is), here's an attempt at a summary.
When you heat something, the entropy (disorder) of a system increases in importance. This is a law of thermodynamics.
A gas has greater entropy than a liquid, both have greater entropy than a solid. Usually.
Now, this substance turns solid when you heat it. -This means the solid phase has higher entropy than the liquid phase. That is unusual, but it doesn't violate any laws.
How does it work? Well, it appear the alpha-cyclodextrin molecule has two conformations (shapes). In the low-temperature one, it hydrogen-bonds to itself. At higher temperatures, these bonds are broken. (this is what happens with ice-water-steam too)
The funny thing about this substance, is that once these internal hydrogen bonds are broken, it allows the molecule to bind to other ones.. so while you break the "internal" hydrogen bonds, you give rise to a bunch of "external" molecular bonds, to other alpha-cyclodextrine molecules.
This leads to the formation of a solid. (not actually a true solid, but rather a 'sol', a suspension of linked-together alpha-Cyclodextrin molecules in water) And this solid actually does have lower entropy than the liquid phase, due to the breaking of the internal hydrogen-bonds.
No laws broken. Nothing 'impossible' going on. But, it is however an interesting phenomenon, and something which certainly may turn out to have practical uses in the future.
cyclodextrin? Probably. It's starch.
water? Definitely.
4-methylpyridine? Probably causes cancer. Known to cause damage to the central nervous system. In simple words: Poision.
Can someone explain the phrase 'sol-gel'? Does that mean that it become more like a gelatinous subject when heated instead of a more 'solid' solid?
Sols aren't solids. A "sol" is a colloid solution, so is a gel. Without getting too deep into the chemistry, he's basically saying it's a gel.
(Look up 'sol', 'gel', 'dispersion' and 'colloid' for more details)
How about NATIVE! I don't want a windows binary.
Wait for it.
Quoteth the Doom 3 faq:
id Software has stated that DOOM 3 will be released for Linux and Mac OS X as well.
Yes. But these weren't ID:s, just age and gender verifications.
Given that, it seems far more likely someone would just steal someone elses's token instead. It's surely much easier than finding a corrupt FBI agent.
(Especially stealing one from a child..)