I have no idea who any of the people involved are, or what their products (or websites maybe?) are supposed to do. For the sake of us who aren't familiar with every current lawsuit, could you please add a little context to the story summaries? This isn't exactly like mentioning a new salvo in IBM v. SCO where you can assume a majority of Slashdotters will have a clue WTF you're talking about.
My Dell at work has an ATI RV635 card. You know: the one that might, someday, support 3D but hasn't yet in the couple of years it's been out? I switched from Ubuntu Karmic to Fedora Core 12 a couple of weeks ago to see if the experimental drivers worked, but ended up with a non-working X.
If I want to buy a card that has working accelerated 3D today - not next week, not "maybe if I download a hack from North Korea that might work or might catch fire" - so I can do basic stuff like get smooth compositing in KDE, what should I get? Again, this is going into my computer at work, so $500 gaming cards are right out. I'm positive I can get the hardware guy to order a reasonably priced card for me (and another for himself) if it'll work on Linux, though.
BTW, let me preemptively say that I'm not gonna Google it. There are 5,000,000 outdated and spurious reports. I'd much rather discuss it with a group of peers than try to decode what some kid in Sri Lanka came up with.
I called the local ISP and told them to activate the account. I never signed a contract or service agreement of any kind. And even if I did - that's inapplicable here. Suppose I'm renting a house and my lease says that I'm legally liable for anything that happens on the property. Two drunks kill each other on my rented front yard while I'm not home. Forget the lease; I'm not going to prison for it.
Back to the case in point, although I might be responsible to the ISP for breaking the terms of service in the contract (if there was one), that's a far cry from being legally responsible for a neighbor downloading kiddie porn just because my ISP thought I should be.
Living in fear must suck, huh? I have 4 open WiFi networks available to me at the moment (in a subdivision with 1/2-acre lots, not in a dense apartment complex). I've hopped onto a neighbor's network when my phone was out, and I have DHCP logs showing when they've been on mine. If I got hit with a subpoena, it'd be a piece of cake to show how many other people are using my router. That's a lot better approach for me and my neighbors than shutting each other out in a moral panic.
why would an adult need to communicate with someone else's child over the internet?
I'll let you in on a secret that will blow your mind: I talked to a neighbor kid the other day - in person!. He was having problems with his calc homework and his dad called to see if I could spare a few minutes to help the boy out.
Can you imagine? Someone else's child! Right there in my dining room! And we were talking like peers without the benefit of being separated by a cinder block wall and razor wire!
If you look at the Artifex license page (http://www.artifex.com/indexlicense.htm) you will actually see that they have a very strange interpretation of the GPL.
Yeah. They seem to follow the MySQL "open source for personal use only" form of dyslexia.
The TelCo's will only go so far before they say ( and rightly so ) stop, this has to be locked down, we cannot risk the entire cell ecosystem on a phone that can be completely modified to do anything.
I shudder in horror at the memory of the wild years when people were allowed to connect general purpose programmable computers to the POTS network with unlocked modems. You could just send one of the hacker commands listed in the back of the manual (can you imagine!) and it would cheerfully oblige without even verifying that the code complied with local and federal laws. Sheer anarchy, I tell you, with nationwide blackouts on an hourly basis.
Yeah, it's pretty horrible. And I don't really get the point. It's not like FreeBSD is particularly hard to install and configure, and configuring Samba to run on it is identical to configuring Samba to run on Linux. I'm hard pressed to think of a reason why you'd want to run ZFS via FUSE on Linux instead of using the real thing on a similar, well-supported Free Unix.
You misunderstand. We just spent a few gigadollars to experimentally prove QM predictions because we don't take these things on faith but do our skeptical best to disprove them.
Not only is there a large and very vocal right-wing (typically Libertarian)
This amuses me. I'm a Libertarian because the Republicans were becoming too socially conservative and fiscally liberal. Out of curiosity, would you classify me as "right-wing" because I still believe in capitalism and free markets, or "left-wing" because I don't care if Joe marries Tom and they both get stoned on their honeymoon? And given the huge proportion (compared to the general population) of Slashdotters with science degrees - compsci major with physics minor for me - how on earth are you able to write us off as anti-science?
I am an AGW skeptic. Not a denialist, but a skeptic. I'm not saying that it's untrue, but that I want to see the evidence. In the same sense, I'm also skeptical of quantum mechanics and string theory. That's generally considered to be a pro-scientific stance, you know.
To my wife after the movie: If I were a vampire, I'd kick Edward's ass for making us all look like effeminate pansies. And why do sparkly vampires get to watch teenage girls sleep, but I get in trouble for looking too closely at professional cheerleaders on TV?
Seriously, I don't believe in aliens beyond movies
Really? There are an estimated 9*10^21 stars in the observable universe, and you're of the opinion that we're on the only planet that's ever managed to evolve life? I don't think Little Green Men are coming here to mutilate our cows, but I find the position that there aren't LGM anywhere to be utterly ludicrous.
Well, like I said: defective IT departments. That doesn't mean it's the fault of the department, but the end result is that they're supporting old, pathologically broken software and deploying more just like it.
You forgot "...and XP because IE6 isn't available on any modern OS." We're rapidly approaching the time when IE6 will only be available on new hardware via virtualization, so you might as well use something contemporary as the main browser.
Pushing functionality into the browser instead of relying on scripting means longer launch times, more failure points, and more disparate functionality from browser to browser for developers to consider.
...and interactive sites that don't require a whole page load every time you want to change the tiniest thing. Yeah, so they're harder to develop (unless you're one of the 99.9% of web programmers who use a library to handle the differences) but I can live with that.
Except for those people who are still using IE 6 or Netscape 4.
That's their problem. The cost-benefit ratio of supporting those ancient systems (and enabling the defective IT departments that stick with them) just isn't worth it anymore. Let them have their Geocities-era sites and funky rendering while the rest of us enjoy the last decade's worth of progress.
Except that they often aren't nice to those who do not share their religion.
You're talking about specific small-but-vocal sects who are largely derided by mainstream Christian groups. Yes, there are groups of insane Christians/Buddhists/Muslims/Atheists, but you don't get to generalize to all members of those (lack of)? belief systems.
Yeah, my parents had me in church a lot as a kid. As an adult, I pretty much stopped going. Know what? My mom still likes me and I still have plenty of friends who go to church, and as far as I know none of them have shunned me as a pariah. I don't think you can really give a group "cult" status when there's no penalty for leaving and they're still nice to you afterward.
Slashdot Mirror
That helps tremendously. Thanks!
I have no idea who any of the people involved are, or what their products (or websites maybe?) are supposed to do. For the sake of us who aren't familiar with every current lawsuit, could you please add a little context to the story summaries? This isn't exactly like mentioning a new salvo in IBM v. SCO where you can assume a majority of Slashdotters will have a clue WTF you're talking about.
And this causes what problems in practice?
A motherboard with an integrated intel graphic card.
And my IT department won't mind if I just pop in a new motherboard? :-)
In truth, no one would care (as long as it worked afterward), but I'd much rather swap in a replacement graphics card.
"Peer" doesn't mean "infallible expert", or at least not among my peer group.
My Dell at work has an ATI RV635 card. You know: the one that might, someday, support 3D but hasn't yet in the couple of years it's been out? I switched from Ubuntu Karmic to Fedora Core 12 a couple of weeks ago to see if the experimental drivers worked, but ended up with a non-working X.
If I want to buy a card that has working accelerated 3D today - not next week, not "maybe if I download a hack from North Korea that might work or might catch fire" - so I can do basic stuff like get smooth compositing in KDE, what should I get? Again, this is going into my computer at work, so $500 gaming cards are right out. I'm positive I can get the hardware guy to order a reasonably priced card for me (and another for himself) if it'll work on Linux, though.
BTW, let me preemptively say that I'm not gonna Google it. There are 5,000,000 outdated and spurious reports. I'd much rather discuss it with a group of peers than try to decode what some kid in Sri Lanka came up with.
I called the local ISP and told them to activate the account. I never signed a contract or service agreement of any kind. And even if I did - that's inapplicable here. Suppose I'm renting a house and my lease says that I'm legally liable for anything that happens on the property. Two drunks kill each other on my rented front yard while I'm not home. Forget the lease; I'm not going to prison for it.
Back to the case in point, although I might be responsible to the ISP for breaking the terms of service in the contract (if there was one), that's a far cry from being legally responsible for a neighbor downloading kiddie porn just because my ISP thought I should be.
Contract? Lease? WTF are you talking about?
Living in fear must suck, huh? I have 4 open WiFi networks available to me at the moment (in a subdivision with 1/2-acre lots, not in a dense apartment complex). I've hopped onto a neighbor's network when my phone was out, and I have DHCP logs showing when they've been on mine. If I got hit with a subpoena, it'd be a piece of cake to show how many other people are using my router. That's a lot better approach for me and my neighbors than shutting each other out in a moral panic.
The original question was why an adult would need to talk to a kid, period. The answer is that there are plenty of legitimate reasons.
why would an adult need to communicate with someone else's child over the internet?
I'll let you in on a secret that will blow your mind: I talked to a neighbor kid the other day - in person!. He was having problems with his calc homework and his dad called to see if I could spare a few minutes to help the boy out.
Can you imagine? Someone else's child! Right there in my dining room! And we were talking like peers without the benefit of being separated by a cinder block wall and razor wire!
If you look at the Artifex license page (http://www.artifex.com/indexlicense.htm) you will actually see that they have a very strange interpretation of the GPL.
Yeah. They seem to follow the MySQL "open source for personal use only" form of dyslexia.
The TelCo's will only go so far before they say ( and rightly so ) stop, this has to be locked down, we cannot risk the entire cell ecosystem on a phone that can be completely modified to do anything.
I shudder in horror at the memory of the wild years when people were allowed to connect general purpose programmable computers to the POTS network with unlocked modems. You could just send one of the hacker commands listed in the back of the manual (can you imagine!) and it would cheerfully oblige without even verifying that the code complied with local and federal laws. Sheer anarchy, I tell you, with nationwide blackouts on an hourly basis.
Yeah, it's pretty horrible. And I don't really get the point. It's not like FreeBSD is particularly hard to install and configure, and configuring Samba to run on it is identical to configuring Samba to run on Linux. I'm hard pressed to think of a reason why you'd want to run ZFS via FUSE on Linux instead of using the real thing on a similar, well-supported Free Unix.
You misunderstand. We just spent a few gigadollars to experimentally prove QM predictions because we don't take these things on faith but do our skeptical best to disprove them.
Get a Mac or Hackintosh, use "Secure Empty Trash".
How well does that work on remapped hard drive blocks?
Not only is there a large and very vocal right-wing (typically Libertarian)
This amuses me. I'm a Libertarian because the Republicans were becoming too socially conservative and fiscally liberal. Out of curiosity, would you classify me as "right-wing" because I still believe in capitalism and free markets, or "left-wing" because I don't care if Joe marries Tom and they both get stoned on their honeymoon? And given the huge proportion (compared to the general population) of Slashdotters with science degrees - compsci major with physics minor for me - how on earth are you able to write us off as anti-science?
I am an AGW skeptic. Not a denialist, but a skeptic. I'm not saying that it's untrue, but that I want to see the evidence. In the same sense, I'm also skeptical of quantum mechanics and string theory. That's generally considered to be a pro-scientific stance, you know.
To my wife after the movie: If I were a vampire, I'd kick Edward's ass for making us all look like effeminate pansies. And why do sparkly vampires get to watch teenage girls sleep, but I get in trouble for looking too closely at professional cheerleaders on TV?
Seriously, I don't believe in aliens beyond movies
Really? There are an estimated 9*10^21 stars in the observable universe, and you're of the opinion that we're on the only planet that's ever managed to evolve life? I don't think Little Green Men are coming here to mutilate our cows, but I find the position that there aren't LGM anywhere to be utterly ludicrous.
Well, like I said: defective IT departments. That doesn't mean it's the fault of the department, but the end result is that they're supporting old, pathologically broken software and deploying more just like it.
Fix 2: Require IE6.
You forgot "...and XP because IE6 isn't available on any modern OS." We're rapidly approaching the time when IE6 will only be available on new hardware via virtualization, so you might as well use something contemporary as the main browser.
Pushing functionality into the browser instead of relying on scripting means longer launch times, more failure points, and more disparate functionality from browser to browser for developers to consider.
...and interactive sites that don't require a whole page load every time you want to change the tiniest thing. Yeah, so they're harder to develop (unless you're one of the 99.9% of web programmers who use a library to handle the differences) but I can live with that.
Except for those people who are still using IE 6 or Netscape 4.
That's their problem. The cost-benefit ratio of supporting those ancient systems (and enabling the defective IT departments that stick with them) just isn't worth it anymore. Let them have their Geocities-era sites and funky rendering while the rest of us enjoy the last decade's worth of progress.
Except that they often aren't nice to those who do not share their religion.
You're talking about specific small-but-vocal sects who are largely derided by mainstream Christian groups. Yes, there are groups of insane Christians/Buddhists/Muslims/Atheists, but you don't get to generalize to all members of those (lack of)? belief systems.
Yeah, my parents had me in church a lot as a kid. As an adult, I pretty much stopped going. Know what? My mom still likes me and I still have plenty of friends who go to church, and as far as I know none of them have shunned me as a pariah. I don't think you can really give a group "cult" status when there's no penalty for leaving and they're still nice to you afterward.