Re:Real Historical Medals vs. Skinhead Junk
on
Yahoo Knuckles Under
·
· Score: 1
My mother worked for United Jewish Appeal in Vienna after WWII and came home with a few Nazi knives and medals given to her by Jewish refugees she helped get through the US immigration mill or helped run the British blockade and get to Palestine.
She later gave these bits of memorabilia to a friend who was a serious collector of such things -- and who was also Jewish.
The Holocaust Museum in Washington DC has a fair amount of Nazi memorabilia. So does the National Cryptological Museum.
Worse, there are articles *I have written* in both the Baltimore Sun and Washington Post archives, and I don't see a penny of that archive/retrieval money.
The National Writers Union is working on this, though.
Not that I mind my work being redistributed online like mad - for free. It just galls me that my work is being resold for profit without my permission and with me getting a cut.
Guess (sigh) I'll have to start keeping my little personal site up to date and posting my freelance stuff on it a few weeks after it appears wherever.
"Finally, perhaps a written test should be required before allowing the purchase of a computer."
No question! I also believe anyone who wants to drive a car should know how to do at least a brake job (including turning rotors/drums and bleeding the hydraulic system), perform a front end alignment and prove their competence at diagnosing common steering problems, show that they are able to mount and balance a tire, and generally do most maintenance tasks using no source of information other than the documentation supplied with the car when it was purchased new.
This would lead to much better computer code and more reliable hardware because a majority of people in the IT industry would no longer be able to drive and could concentrate on making their products better and easier to use.
It would also solve most of the traffic problems in Silicon Valley and, as a side effect, cut the accident rate and car insurance prices there by a huge amount.
Meanwhile, yeah, let's start a mandatory training program for computer and Internet users so that they can all diagnose their own problems and stop bothering tech support.
And I'll keep on driving my 1994 (reliable) Jeep Cherokee (since I used to fix cars professionally and have no problem keeping it up), and I'll keep on using my trailing-edge computers (a 500MHz Celeron does all I need), my one-generation-back Linux kernel and one-release-old Mandrake distro, and I will keep doing all my important writing in clunky, inelegant, feature-free NEdit because it may not be as cute as [your favorite word processor here] but has never crashed on me, not once, not ever, while I was typing and saving copy.
Ummmm... the Internet Traffic Report isn't Google's; it is one of the original Andover.net sites. People forget that Andover was a fine, generally profitable little company before Slashdot and freshmeat and the IPO and the VA buy and all that.
Another Andover site that's still around is one of the earliest online free code archives -- freecode.com.
Nobody ever "heard of" Andover back in those days because each of the company's original sites was treated as a separate entity and we never pushed the "network" thing. But we were there, doing our little thing and having a nice, low-key time.:)
My father always said the bet thing was true; he was a major sf fan in the 40s and 50s, the kind who went to meetings, and he too always said that a religion was the best possible way to make a lot of money quickly -- and tax free.
Hank Frazier, one of my father's best friends, actually started a joke/knockoff of Dianetics called "General Psionics" and ran it -- and made money from it -- for several years.
Much of the Fosterite stuff in "Stranger" was based on Los Angeles preacher Aimee Semple McPherson's "Temple of Love."
Another Heinlein story, "If This Goes On," talks of a future US run by a religious dictatorship. It is similar in ways to Sinclair Lewis's "It Can't Happen Here."
Religion was a popular dystopian theme in late 40s and early 50s science fiction.
Later there was Walter Miller's "A Canticle for Leibowitz," which talked about a post-nuclear war US in which guarding a nuclear facility becomes a religious ritual, not science.
Right! Thanks for reminding me... guess I've read more Heinlein and Joyce than religious works these last few decades.
Maybe it's time for me to take a fast retour of some of the more popular religious tracts, from the books of Moses and Bahagavad Gita to Parke Godwin's "Waiting for the Galactic Bus," a book that is a bit like "Stranger in a Strange Land" crossed with "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Except weirder.
Heinlein got the title from James Joyce; he did not make it up.
Heinlein got most of his pithy "Lazarus Long" quotes from either Mark Twain or Ambrose Bierce, both of whom are worth reading on their own.
But I still like Heinlein, possibly because I discovered his work when I was nine years old and he was at the peak of his writing form.
A lot of his work was done for "young adults" so he had to limit his vocabulary and keep his characters simple -- aside from the fact that, in those days, science fiction was a literature of ideas, not of character development. The "new wave" SF writers who started employing mainstream literary techniques didn't come along heavily until the late 1960s.
Heinlein was raised before WWII and graduated from the Naval Academy. By the standards of his times he was a feminist, a liberal, and a dreamer -- and by today's standards a hyperpatriot, a warmonger, and possibly an extreme libertarian and a gun nut.
But don't sell Henlein short. He was what he was, good and bad, and most modern science fiction owes a lot to his work.
(I'm talking about written science fiction; by my standards, most film sci-fi is strictly 1930s.)
4.1.5. The storage and distribution of MP3 format files via the Company
network is prohibited.
4.1.6. The Company does not permit sites where 20% or more of the
monthly traffic is from file downloads, or sites that use more than 10% of
system resources, or sites which in the Company's view are detrimental to
the enjoyment of the Company services by the Company's other clients, or
are in the sole and final judgment of the Company, detrimental to network
or business operations.
Seems to me that anyone who wants to host any kind of downloadable files -- not just MP3s -- should avoid this service.
There are plenty of other hosting services, many of which charge the same as or less than this one.
So let them run their business their way, catering to low-end users who rely on Frontpage instead of skill to create their sites, and take your business someplace else.
A programmable repeater satellite. Too cool! I remember OSCAR 1, a little handwired box in LEO that did nothing but transmit dit-dit-dit dit-dit (That's "hi" in case you are Bruce Perens or one of the other code-impaired people *G*).
I was totally thrilled when I managed to pick up that little "signal from space" on my WWII-surplus Hallicrafters receiver as OSCAR passed over California. I was, I think, 8 at the time.
Anyway, it has been far too long since I was active in ham stuff. There is more mystery and romance to radio than to the Internet, plus independence from land-based connections and the big companies (telcos etc.) that control the 'net.
Time to brush up on my code (won't take long) and make sure my theory knowledge is up to par (again, shouldn't take long to update), and take my test.
Maybe now I can afford gear that runs on them IC thingies. Whoo! I was always a rebuilder of junk and/or home brew person, started with a 3W CW xmtr I made myself on a bit of chassis, a 1/2 wave antenna (fancy name for "long piece of wire cut to a measured length hung out the window"), "spoke" with an old Western Union key (later replaced with a bug, then with a fancy Hammerlund electronic keyer - the first piece of transistorized equipment I ever made - from a kit - or owned at all.)
I miss ham radio. And I have no one to blame but myself for having let myself get away from it.
When I saw ads for the movie "Red Planet" I hoped it was a movie-ization of the Heinlein book of the same name. You know the one -- a progenitor of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" with Boy Scouts and lots of guns.
Heinlein's science may not always have been plausible, but at least it was almost always internally consistent. (And for those of you who don't know how to read: no, "Starship Troopers" the movie was nothing like "Starship Troopers" the book; the book was squared away.)
I sure as hell wish some of those old Heinlein books would be made into movies. I'd also like to see R. A. Lafferty's "The Reefs of Space" and A. E. Van Vogt's "Voyage of the Space Beagle" on screen.
Wait! I forgot! Gene Rodenberry stole "Space Beagle," lobotomized it, and turned it into a half-assed TV show called "Star Dreck" or something.
You know, literacy is a curse, especially if you like science fiction. I have yet to see a TV or movie SF plot that wasn't done to death in novel form before WW II.
There is a whole Galaxy (and Analog and F&SF) full of good science fiction books out there waiting to be made into thoughtful, dramatic movies, but we get George Lucas and similar crud instead.
And no, it's not "sci-fi." Call it "science fiction" if you know what you're talking about and you're not TV-moronized since birth.
Yup. Voter records are public. I was registered Republican for a while, and because of that I get a constant stream of mail from Republican candidates -- along with some *vile* attacks on Gore and other Democrats from local and state Republican organizations.
Maybe the campaign is high-minded (hah!) at the national level, but here in the local trenches, at least in Maryland, it seems like Republicans are using voter lists as a way to irritate everyone they can in the most Gingrichlike way possible.
Another thing to note is that ESR does not work for VA Linux. He is on the Board of Directors, which means he goes to a couple of meetings a year but otherwise has no involvement with the company.
Come to think of it, the people who answer the phone at VA probably couldn't find me or Rob Malda very easily, either. We don't have VA phone extensions or any of that.
Use email. Usually works better than phones anyway in this circle.:)
What you really want to see, in other words, is Kuro5hin. And the people who want lots of Open Source-oriented news links plus some original reporting, without a lot of commentary or opinion, really want NewsForge.
Slashdot is Slashdot. It are what it are and it ain't what it ain't. I have always liked it the way it is, and hope like hell it never loses its character by trying to be something it isn't.
Funny note - the VP in charge of Citibank's online retail banking operation is one of my limo customers, and has been for years. After many long conversations about Linux and alternative OSes, he made sure the Citibank site was totally cross-platform, which was not only a good customer move but also made a lot of the Unix and Linux coders who work there real happy and got him a *lot* of respect from them.
This person, who I would rather not name here, has since bought a dual-boot home computer from a small, local vendor, and is gradually falling off the edge into Linux.
BTW, I filed my taxes last year using TurboTax online -- in Linux -- and the small local bank where I keep both my personal and limo-business accounts runs platform-independent online banking and plans to keep it that way.
Let the bankers know you're out there, and that your choice of banks is at least in part dependent on their ability to serve your needs. This works especialy well with small local banks, and even better if you also own a business, even a small one, because business accounts are better profit sources than persoanl accounts.
It depends on how you slide, and how far, and how much of your time gets taken up by administrative details like expenditure approvals. That's a company-by-company thing, and I don't know what your company is like in this regard.
But even in the best-organized company, your expectation that you will only spend 20% of your time managing is totally unrealistic. This never happens. If you're lucky, you *may* spend close to 50% of your time coding in between taking care of your crew, and as far as I'm concerned, taking care of your crew is a manager's primary responsibility in any field of endeavor from fast food to programming.
I am also a big believer in hands-on leadership; if you spend time working alongside your people you will always have a better grasp of what they are doing than if you are separated from them.
But you will *not* do all that much coding once you start taking responsibility for others' work.
How much have you seen me post on Slashdot lately? And how much do I really write on NewsForge, our latest site? It's frustrating, because writing is the *fun* part of my job.
But there is also a great deal of satisfaction to be found in helping others do their jobs well. In my case, I work with great people who are also my friends -- the ones you see on Slashdot, NewsForge, Linux.com, and the rest of the OSDN sites -- and what keeps me going on the detail-bogged days is knowing that if I can keep upper-upper management from screwing with Taco, Hemos, Emmett, timothy, and the rest of the gang, I am helping to get more done than if I was simply busting my own ass and not worrying about anything else. Plus, they know what I do and appreciate it. This is the big reward of being a *competent* manager -- kudos from coworkers whose lives you make easier by taking shit they'd otherwise be forced to take themselves. Any extra money you get is nothing compared to the respect and gratitude of the people you work with every day.
I view front-line management as a necessary task, one that *somebody* has to do, and if those of us who have some competence at [coding; writing; art; design; auto repair; you name it] don't take it on, we and all our friends/coworkers will be cursed with incompetent bosses forevermore.
I have never wanted to be in management, and don't really enjoy it. You probably won't like it much either (most of the time). But it's clean indoor work with no heavy lifting, and somebody has to do it, so why not you?:)
Robin 'roblimo' Miller
reluctant editor-in-chief,
Open Source Development Network
Yes, Dodger, we know everything about you now, including that little pants-wetting episode when you were in kindergarten that you thought everyone forgot but was entered in your *permanent record* and is accessible to anyone who knows the serial number of your Intel PII and has a barcode scanner.
</humor>
As long as you're willing to pull any posts that EvilCo doesn't like, then the "safe harbor" provision of the DMCA protects you from any lawsuits.
Beyond that, there's a whole series of rules to follow -- or not. But if you don't follow them, you could *potentially* have to defend yourself in court against a civil claim. If EvilCo sues you and you don't show up, they'll get a default judgement against you and you can be screwed but good. Don't forget - EvilCo can collect damages "plus legal expenses," and even if they only get a $1 judgement against you, the legal fees could be thousands.
There are ways around a lot of these problems, but I am *not* going to discuss them in a public forum. As I think most of you know, I get to spend enough time dealing with DMCA and legal crap without looking for more of it.
We get extra summer this year because the company made some new Web sites (like NewsForge), plus LWCE and other events roused us grudgingly from our well-deserved stupor.
Think of how schools in snow country sometimes tack on extra class days at the end of the school year if they've had more winter snow days than expected. Same thing.:)
The funny thing is, I interpreted Richard's pro-Gnome remarks as being along the lines of a sports fan supporting the home team. I mean, he lives in the Boston metro area so he is probably more likely to be pro-Red Sox than to root for the (ahem) obvously far cooler Baltimore Orioles.
In other words, "Lighten up already, people."
Messing with Free Software and Open Source and Linux is supposed to be *fun* and bring us all closer together, as opposed to the death - to - all - competitors rivalries that infest the commercial, closed source software world.
I happen to prefer KDE and will probably never use emacs in my life, but that's no reason for me to get into bar fights just because some misguided clown thinks the New England Patriots belong in the same league as the Redskins.:)
Rob Malda has been posting Star Wars and cartoon stories since "Chips 'n Dips" days. Since I don't have any particular interest in either topic, I've always bypassed them.
I never once thought about e-mailing Rob and telling him to stop posting about these topics. I figure that out of the 12 - 15 Slashdot stories posted per day, on average, I should be happy if 8 - 10 of them interest me personally.
"...You can't please everyone, so you got to please yourself"
I'd say an elegantly-written program can be the artistic equivalant of an elegantly-written musical score.
In either case, you must be able to understand the language in which they are written to appreciate their beauty. To someone who can't read music, a Bach score is as indecipherable as a C program is to someone who doesn't know C.
Slashdot Mirror
My mother worked for United Jewish Appeal in Vienna after WWII and came home with a few Nazi knives and medals given to her by Jewish refugees she helped get through the US immigration mill or helped run the British blockade and get to Palestine.
She later gave these bits of memorabilia to a friend who was a serious collector of such things -- and who was also Jewish.
The Holocaust Museum in Washington DC has a fair amount of Nazi memorabilia. So does the National Cryptological Museum.
But what do I know, eh?
- Robin
Worse, there are articles *I have written* in both the Baltimore Sun and Washington Post archives, and I don't see a penny of that archive/retrieval money.
The National Writers Union is working on this, though.
Not that I mind my work being redistributed online like mad - for free. It just galls me that my work is being resold for profit without my permission and with me getting a cut.
Guess (sigh) I'll have to start keeping my little personal site up to date and posting my freelance stuff on it a few weeks after it appears wherever.
- Robin
"Finally, perhaps a written test should be required before allowing the purchase of a computer."
No question! I also believe anyone who wants to drive a car should know how to do at least a brake job (including turning rotors/drums and bleeding the hydraulic system), perform a front end alignment and prove their competence at diagnosing common steering problems, show that they are able to mount and balance a tire, and generally do most maintenance tasks using no source of information other than the documentation supplied with the car when it was purchased new.
This would lead to much better computer code and more reliable hardware because a majority of people in the IT industry would no longer be able to drive and could concentrate on making their products better and easier to use.
It would also solve most of the traffic problems in Silicon Valley and, as a side effect, cut the accident rate and car insurance prices there by a huge amount.
Meanwhile, yeah, let's start a mandatory training program for computer and Internet users so that they can all diagnose their own problems and stop bothering tech support.
And I'll keep on driving my 1994 (reliable) Jeep Cherokee (since I used to fix cars professionally and have no problem keeping it up), and I'll keep on using my trailing-edge computers (a 500MHz Celeron does all I need), my one-generation-back Linux kernel and one-release-old Mandrake distro, and I will keep doing all my important writing in clunky, inelegant, feature-free NEdit because it may not be as cute as [your favorite word processor here] but has never crashed on me, not once, not ever, while I was typing and saving copy.
- Robin
Another Andover site that's still around is one of the earliest online free code archives -- freecode.com.
Nobody ever "heard of" Andover back in those days because each of the company's original sites was treated as a separate entity and we never pushed the "network" thing. But we were there, doing our little thing and having a nice, low-key time. :)
- Robin
My father always said the bet thing was true; he was a major sf fan in the 40s and 50s, the kind who went to meetings, and he too always said that a religion was the best possible way to make a lot of money quickly -- and tax free.
Hank Frazier, one of my father's best friends, actually started a joke/knockoff of Dianetics called "General Psionics" and ran it -- and made money from it -- for several years.
Much of the Fosterite stuff in "Stranger" was based on Los Angeles preacher Aimee Semple McPherson's "Temple of Love."
Another Heinlein story, "If This Goes On," talks of a future US run by a religious dictatorship. It is similar in ways to Sinclair Lewis's "It Can't Happen Here."
Religion was a popular dystopian theme in late 40s and early 50s science fiction.
Later there was Walter Miller's "A Canticle for Leibowitz," which talked about a post-nuclear war US in which guarding a nuclear facility becomes a religious ritual, not science.
- Robin
Right! Thanks for reminding me... guess I've read more Heinlein and Joyce than religious works these last few decades.
Maybe it's time for me to take a fast retour of some of the more popular religious tracts, from the books of Moses and Bahagavad Gita to Parke Godwin's "Waiting for the Galactic Bus," a book that is a bit like "Stranger in a Strange Land" crossed with "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Except weirder.
- Robin
Heinlein got the title from James Joyce; he did not make it up.
Heinlein got most of his pithy "Lazarus Long" quotes from either Mark Twain or Ambrose Bierce, both of whom are worth reading on their own.
But I still like Heinlein, possibly because I discovered his work when I was nine years old and he was at the peak of his writing form.
A lot of his work was done for "young adults" so he had to limit his vocabulary and keep his characters simple -- aside from the fact that, in those days, science fiction was a literature of ideas, not of character development. The "new wave" SF writers who started employing mainstream literary techniques didn't come along heavily until the late 1960s.
Heinlein was raised before WWII and graduated from the Naval Academy. By the standards of his times he was a feminist, a liberal, and a dreamer -- and by today's standards a hyperpatriot, a warmonger, and possibly an extreme libertarian and a gun nut.
But don't sell Henlein short. He was what he was, good and bad, and most modern science fiction owes a lot to his work.
(I'm talking about written science fiction; by my standards, most film sci-fi is strictly 1930s.)
- Robin
There are plenty of other hosting services, many of which charge the same as or less than this one.
So let them run their business their way, catering to low-end users who rely on Frontpage instead of skill to create their sites, and take your business someplace else.
- Robin
A programmable repeater satellite. Too cool! I remember OSCAR 1, a little handwired box in LEO that did nothing but transmit dit-dit-dit dit-dit (That's "hi" in case you are Bruce Perens or one of the other code-impaired people *G*).
I was totally thrilled when I managed to pick up that little "signal from space" on my WWII-surplus Hallicrafters receiver as OSCAR passed over California. I was, I think, 8 at the time.
Anyway, it has been far too long since I was active in ham stuff. There is more mystery and romance to radio than to the Internet, plus independence from land-based connections and the big companies (telcos etc.) that control the 'net.
Time to brush up on my code (won't take long) and make sure my theory knowledge is up to par (again, shouldn't take long to update), and take my test.
Maybe now I can afford gear that runs on them IC thingies. Whoo! I was always a rebuilder of junk and/or home brew person, started with a 3W CW xmtr I made myself on a bit of chassis, a 1/2 wave antenna (fancy name for "long piece of wire cut to a measured length hung out the window"), "spoke" with an old Western Union key (later replaced with a bug, then with a fancy Hammerlund electronic keyer - the first piece of transistorized equipment I ever made - from a kit - or owned at all.)
I miss ham radio. And I have no one to blame but myself for having let myself get away from it.
Time to go back to it!
- Robin
When I saw ads for the movie "Red Planet" I hoped it was a movie-ization of the Heinlein book of the same name. You know the one -- a progenitor of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" with Boy Scouts and lots of guns.
Heinlein's science may not always have been plausible, but at least it was almost always internally consistent. (And for those of you who don't know how to read: no, "Starship Troopers" the movie was nothing like "Starship Troopers" the book; the book was squared away.)
I sure as hell wish some of those old Heinlein books would be made into movies. I'd also like to see R. A. Lafferty's "The Reefs of Space" and A. E. Van Vogt's "Voyage of the Space Beagle" on screen.
Wait! I forgot! Gene Rodenberry stole "Space Beagle," lobotomized it, and turned it into a half-assed TV show called "Star Dreck" or something.
You know, literacy is a curse, especially if you like science fiction. I have yet to see a TV or movie SF plot that wasn't done to death in novel form before WW II.
There is a whole Galaxy (and Analog and F&SF) full of good science fiction books out there waiting to be made into thoughtful, dramatic movies, but we get George Lucas and similar crud instead.
And no, it's not "sci-fi." Call it "science fiction" if you know what you're talking about and you're not TV-moronized since birth.
- Robin Miller
"science fiction fan since 1959"
Yup. Voter records are public. I was registered Republican for a while, and because of that I get a constant stream of mail from Republican candidates -- along with some *vile* attacks on Gore and other Democrats from local and state Republican organizations.
Maybe the campaign is high-minded (hah!) at the national level, but here in the local trenches, at least in Maryland, it seems like Republicans are using voter lists as a way to irritate everyone they can in the most Gingrichlike way possible.
- Robin
Another thing to note is that ESR does not work for VA Linux. He is on the Board of Directors, which means he goes to a couple of meetings a year but otherwise has no involvement with the company.
:)
Come to think of it, the people who answer the phone at VA probably couldn't find me or Rob Malda very easily, either. We don't have VA phone extensions or any of that.
Use email. Usually works better than phones anyway in this circle.
- Robin
Slashdot is Slashdot. It are what it are and it ain't what it ain't. I have always liked it the way it is, and hope like hell it never loses its character by trying to be something it isn't.
- Robin
Funny note - the VP in charge of Citibank's online retail banking operation is one of my limo customers, and has been for years. After many long conversations about Linux and alternative OSes, he made sure the Citibank site was totally cross-platform, which was not only a good customer move but also made a lot of the Unix and Linux coders who work there real happy and got him a *lot* of respect from them.
This person, who I would rather not name here, has since bought a dual-boot home computer from a small, local vendor, and is gradually falling off the edge into Linux.
BTW, I filed my taxes last year using TurboTax online -- in Linux -- and the small local bank where I keep both my personal and limo-business accounts runs platform-independent online banking and plans to keep it that way.
Let the bankers know you're out there, and that your choice of banks is at least in part dependent on their ability to serve your needs. This works especialy well with small local banks, and even better if you also own a business, even a small one, because business accounts are better profit sources than persoanl accounts.
- Robin
Actually, accounting fees are tax-deductible, not only for corporations but for individuals.
- Robin
If this question makes the "cut" I'll retitle before sending. It's a damned good question IMO.
- Robin
But even in the best-organized company, your expectation that you will only spend 20% of your time managing is totally unrealistic. This never happens. If you're lucky, you *may* spend close to 50% of your time coding in between taking care of your crew, and as far as I'm concerned, taking care of your crew is a manager's primary responsibility in any field of endeavor from fast food to programming.
I am also a big believer in hands-on leadership; if you spend time working alongside your people you will always have a better grasp of what they are doing than if you are separated from them.
But you will *not* do all that much coding once you start taking responsibility for others' work.
How much have you seen me post on Slashdot lately? And how much do I really write on NewsForge, our latest site? It's frustrating, because writing is the *fun* part of my job.
But there is also a great deal of satisfaction to be found in helping others do their jobs well. In my case, I work with great people who are also my friends -- the ones you see on Slashdot, NewsForge, Linux.com, and the rest of the OSDN sites -- and what keeps me going on the detail-bogged days is knowing that if I can keep upper-upper management from screwing with Taco, Hemos, Emmett, timothy, and the rest of the gang, I am helping to get more done than if I was simply busting my own ass and not worrying about anything else. Plus, they know what I do and appreciate it. This is the big reward of being a *competent* manager -- kudos from coworkers whose lives you make easier by taking shit they'd otherwise be forced to take themselves. Any extra money you get is nothing compared to the respect and gratitude of the people you work with every day.
I view front-line management as a necessary task, one that *somebody* has to do, and if those of us who have some competence at [coding; writing; art; design; auto repair; you name it] don't take it on, we and all our friends/coworkers will be cursed with incompetent bosses forevermore.
I have never wanted to be in management, and don't really enjoy it. You probably won't like it much either (most of the time). But it's clean indoor work with no heavy lifting, and somebody has to do it, so why not you? :)
Robin 'roblimo' Miller
reluctant editor-in-chief,
Open Source Development Network
Yes, Dodger, we know everything about you now, including that little pants-wetting episode when you were in kindergarten that you thought everyone forgot but was entered in your *permanent record* and is accessible to anyone who knows the serial number of your Intel PII and has a barcode scanner.
</humor>
- Robin
As long as you're willing to pull any posts that EvilCo doesn't like, then the "safe harbor" provision of the DMCA protects you from any lawsuits.
Beyond that, there's a whole series of rules to follow -- or not. But if you don't follow them, you could *potentially* have to defend yourself in court against a civil claim. If EvilCo sues you and you don't show up, they'll get a default judgement against you and you can be screwed but good. Don't forget - EvilCo can collect damages "plus legal expenses," and even if they only get a $1 judgement against you, the legal fees could be thousands.
There are ways around a lot of these problems, but I am *not* going to discuss them in a public forum. As I think most of you know, I get to spend enough time dealing with DMCA and legal crap without looking for more of it.
- Robin
Think of how schools in snow country sometimes tack on extra class days at the end of the school year if they've had more winter snow days than expected. Same thing. :)
Back to my stupor now...
- Robin
The funny thing is, I interpreted Richard's pro-Gnome remarks as being along the lines of a sports fan supporting the home team. I mean, he lives in the Boston metro area so he is probably more likely to be pro-Red Sox than to root for the (ahem) obvously far cooler Baltimore Orioles.
:)
In other words, "Lighten up already, people."
Messing with Free Software and Open Source and Linux is supposed to be *fun* and bring us all closer together, as opposed to the death - to - all - competitors rivalries that infest the commercial, closed source software world.
I happen to prefer KDE and will probably never use emacs in my life, but that's no reason for me to get into bar fights just because some misguided clown thinks the New England Patriots belong in the same league as the Redskins.
(Metaphors purposely mixed.)
- Robin
Bayer also lost the trademark to Heroin, the pain reliever they were pushing before Bayer Aspirin (reg tm) became popular.
:)
And yes, it is spelled "aspirin" unless your first name is Robert and you write science fiction.
- Robin
I never once thought about e-mailing Rob and telling him to stop posting about these topics. I figure that out of the 12 - 15 Slashdot stories posted per day, on average, I should be happy if 8 - 10 of them interest me personally.
"...You can't please everyone,
so you got to please yourself"
(R. Nelson)
- Robin
Personally, I think the true test of Katzness is the inevitable "knock" post from Bowie J. Poag. :P
- Robin
I'd say an elegantly-written program can be the artistic equivalant of an elegantly-written musical score.
In either case, you must be able to understand the language in which they are written to appreciate their beauty. To someone who can't read music, a Bach score is as indecipherable as a C program is to someone who doesn't know C.
- Robin