Not everything is part of GNU. If a closed-source app is developed for Linux, this app is not part of GNU. Period. See Maya for example.
In order to develop such an application the developer is highly restricted in the resources available. As compared with writing a GPL program, where any GPL code is freely available for usage. A programmer would even need to check if they can use standard libraries...
Also, nVidia's efforts are the only way of getting decent 3D on Linux. With decent I mean OpenGL 2.0 support. And as I said before, the binary blob is NOT illegal, the kernel module (which is opensourced) is, because its not GPLed. The binary blob just uses the kernel module's API.
However there's the side effect that using that "binary blob" renders the entire kernel unsupported.
The counter-argument is that many companies are basically seeking people who will port their code for free, and then profit from their efforts.
Getting a proprietary app to run on Linux may well be very expensive. Doing it legally requires being very careful about the code you include in the port. "Pirating" GPL code into the port carries the risk of being sued into oblivion.
Companies can either pay actual salaries to programmares and get it coded closed-source, or donate their intellectual property and get it ported for free, eventually. Either way, they have to pay.
It's also the case that whilst the "freeware proprietary" model, which covers things like "Itunes" and "Shockwave Player", might work with Windows it dosn't appear to work well with Linux.
But when I question further about asking Linux coders to help with the conversion, the major of companies that have shown an interest in a Linux port say that they've attempted to do so, but the programmers that they approached expect the software to be open-sourced if the company is to get their help. I've even had some developers of software that's geared more towards a particular science admit that they think there would be a huge demand on their software for Linux, but the "requirement" by Linux coders that the software is open-sourced killed the prospect of releasing a Linux version. As much as I'd like to brush that off as "just an excuse", look at a lot of the replies here on Slashdot about Linux and open-source and you'll quickly see that HE'S RIGHT! I love open-source (or at the very least open standards) just as much as anyone else here and I use it whenever feasible. But there is definitely an assumption among a lot of Linux users that if it's available on Linux the course code has got to be made available or else it doesn't belong on Linux, like it's some kind of plague.
That "plague" is a direct result of copyright. In order for the application to be proprietary it cannot (legally) use GPL code. This makes the task for any Linux developers several times harder and more expensive (even if they don't need to consult with lawyers or get into negotiations for proprietary licencing of libraries.)
The US uses mm/dd/yy because that's the way it's spoken in English:August Second Two Thousand Six.
You may well be putting the cart before the horse here. With the change to putting the month first affecting how things are said in the US.
Saying "The Second Day of August Two Thousand Six" sounds clunky to American ears.
I'm not aware of anywhere using that variation. You'd either have "The second day of the month of August, two thousand and six." or "The second of August two thousand and six." (Possibly "twenty oh six" for the year.)
The US did once use the dd/mm/yy form. This is still evident in "4th of July".
The US likes to be different from elsewhere. Soon after independence some things were changed from the English was of doing things very deliberatly, but since then the meme has become a lot more subtle.
In the end it doesn't really matter though - the only time it's mildly annoying is when software comes with both English and American English, but labels the American English version as English, then treats English as though it's a weird other dialect and specifically labels it UK or British English.
Or insists on using Webster's spellings, whilst claiming to be in English. Even though they are specific to US English
For that matter, why does Microsoft think it has any standing in this issue? It's the OEM's (Dell) that sell things to consumers, THEY are the ones that should be placing requirements (or making susggestions) to Microsoft, not the other way around.
It's probably another "feature" of the OEM contracts which also allow Microsoft to say "we'll charge you more per copy of Windows if you want to sell machines without Windows on" and similar thinggs.
A paper vote doesn't necessarily provide better security, but pretty much anyone can validate the security of a paper election; they just need to watch the voting slips being handed out, watch the folded slips being put into the box, and then make sure the box isn't lost.
It dosn't stop there since people can also watch what happens to the ballot papers when they are counted/collated.
It is quite easy for every candidate's supporters to validate a paper election.
This is how things work in most parts of the world. Most of the world also wouldn't stand for votes being counted in secret let alone by machine.
Nobody does. Where the government is secretive, it should be so only because there's an overwhelming public interest for it to be that way, or where doing so prevents citizens' rights from themselves being violated (e.g., personal records maintained by the government on Federal employees). But those should be the exceptions, and not the rule. Any time you have a situation where citizens have to justify the disclosure of information from the government on a regular basis, you have a problem.
Really it should be that government needs to justify not disclosing information.
If you are on private property, such as a shopping mall, they can ask you not to take photos, but you can't be penalized for it unless you continue against their will.
But can they tell someone photographing with the permission of the property owner to stop.Or to order a CCTV system switched off?
If anything can be learned from the US experiment in limited government, it's that limited government is a near impossibility. Power benefits the power elite, and it is only a matter of time before any government -- even the smallest, most libertarian, most strictly limited in power over the people such as the early US -- begins to morph into the corrupt, exploitable regime we see today in basically every country around the world.
"Limited government" only works where you have a populace prepared to stamp out the slightest "feature creep". Otherwise you run into the same "good servant/bad master" situation more usually associated with fire.
Re:nobody's going to stop buying SUVs
on
The Hybrid Scooter
·
· Score: 1
SUVs don't make you safe, it only makes you bigger and gives you more kinetic energy to get rid of. Sure, it'll trump a 1980s Ford Escort, but that's not because an SUV is safe, it's because the Escort is shitty.
How well is that 20-25 year old Escort going to do against any modern car? Even assuming the Escort has corrosion issues.
Re:nobody's going to stop buying SUVs
on
The Hybrid Scooter
·
· Score: 1
Why not build a custom car, that simply "abuses" the high ground clearance on SUV's and the like? Something that simply slides under those types of cars and makes them airborne?
Make both cars radio controlled and you'd have "Mythbusters meets Robot Wars".
I do refrigeration for a large food wharehouse. When our power went out, we trucked in a 3000KVA generator and bolted the cables into our switchgear.
Presumably if your power feed wasn't originally set up for easy switching between mains and generator it is now...
When your business depends on power, you know how to make calls and get it QUICKLY. It cost us 120 gallons of diesel per hour, but we would have had a catastrophic loss without it.
Depends where you get your fuel from. Diesel for construction/agriculture use dosn't have the taxes of a road fuel.
Well, creationists have been claiming that neanderthals were actually just humans. Enough DNA studies have been done on neanderthals to show that human mitochondrial DNA and neanderthal mitochondrial DNA is actually rather different - much smaller than the difference between humans and chimps, but different enough to show that humans and neanderthals were separate linages who didn't interbreed to any significant degree (and probably not at all).
The ability to interbreed (and the firtility of any offspring) is a factor of nuclear DNA though. Though both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA mutate randomly observed mutations tend to be non random since any mutation which breaks either an organelle or a cell dosn't last too long. In order for a non fatal mutation to be passed on it also has to occur in the right cells...
They take your name off, or at least your contact info. They add their own banner across the top. Lord only knows what else they might do to "enhance" your resume.
Really, I don't want that kind of "help".
That applies regardless of if you are a looking for a job or looking for workers...
Yeah except US et al is running around in Iraq, and the crazy maniac that got "voted" in as president is gunning for Iran too - on top of that we got a lunatic sitting in North Korea seriously considering going into war with just about anyone...
Of the two the US is rather more dangerous North Korea dosn't have the armed forces to attack anywhere (or the logistics to get them there) whereas the US does. Even if North Korea does have nuclear weapons they certainly don't have sufficent to wipe out everywhere which could counter attack. The US could mount a "first strike" and still have sufficent weapons to deter an attack.
Clinton spent a lot of time & effort cooling off tensions in the Middle East & I'm not sure what G.W. Bush could have done to avoid the current situation.
Cutting off the supply of US money and weapons into the area would have been a good start.
What government law enforcement agency is auditing closed source companies' code looking for GPL violations? I'd bet a lot more than a nickle that there is quite a bit of purloined code floating around inside closed source commercial software.....
No doubt quite a bit of it is someone else's proprietary code. Anyway it's ment to be for copyright holders to look for such violations.
Really, what can they do? The only possible solution that I can even fathom is for a UN force to occupy Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and disarm the entire region. That is not going to happen, no side would allow it.
Even if you could cut off external support it would be rather difficult for any force to occupy Israel. For one thing where would you get the soldiers from? They certainly could not come from the US or anywhere else strongly involved. You'd also undoubtely need nuclear weapons placed under UN control to deter Israel from using its own. (Whilst New York may be safe, Geneva isn't.)
The UN Security Council will continue to do what they do best: nothing.
Kind of difficult for them to do anything which any of the 5 permenent members don't like. This includes the current Middle East situation, since the US will veto anything which even identifies the primary trouble maker here.
allofmp3.com would not have a service anyone would pay for if it wasn't for copyright and the general lack of an automatic "everything goes into the public domain at the moment of creation" situation.
Copyright is actually irrelevent to the kind of service allofmp3.com are providing. Even if all of their material was public domain they would still be providing a service.
Sure they could save millions that way, but what about their IT dept. If it is a halfway large organization, or huge like FedEx, their teams supporting the POS equipment may not be qualified or fully understand how to support the equipment in a Linux environment.
The same would aply moving from Windows 9X to Windows XP/Vista.
My point wasn't that they SHOULD bundle. It's that Vista is 8GB and DOESN'T COME WITH THEM.
My Gentoo install with all those tools takes around 2GB [2GB to 3GB is a good estimate, right now I have loads of other stuff that isn't Gentoo specific so it's hard to be exact without doing an indepth du scan].
Even Windows XP and MS Office takes up less space.
Re:How much editorial oversight is enough?
on
When Wikipedia Fails
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
They are already doing something to stop the "spur of the moment" edits. Having an already established user account is required to edit the articles deemed "semi-controversial" articles. So yes, you can still register an account and make some crazy changes to the article four days later but I'd imagine most lose interest.
This would stop "casual vandals". But it's ineffective against organised politics and lobby groups. If anything a "cooling off period" can be counter productive, since it does little to put off (even quite loosely) organised groups and fanatics. Whilst being likely to deter an average person. It can be a fundermental problem that the people you most want to deter are those least easily detered. Sometimes known as the "jerk pass" filter effect.
For those articles where established users are "disagreeing heavily" on what the article should say it is flagged as controversial and only editors can change it.
There are a couple of problems here. The first is what happens if the editors are biased towards one "side"? The other is disagreement may be part of the topic in question and to deny this makes the whole thing meaningless.
Slashdot Mirror
Not everything is part of GNU. If a closed-source app is developed for Linux, this app is not part of GNU. Period. See Maya for example.
In order to develop such an application the developer is highly restricted in the resources available. As compared with writing a GPL program, where any GPL code is freely available for usage. A programmer would even need to check if they can use standard libraries...
Also, nVidia's efforts are the only way of getting decent 3D on Linux. With decent I mean OpenGL 2.0 support. And as I said before, the binary blob is NOT illegal, the kernel module (which is opensourced) is, because its not GPLed. The binary blob just uses the kernel module's API.
However there's the side effect that using that "binary blob" renders the entire kernel unsupported.
The counter-argument is that many companies are basically seeking people who will port their code for free, and then profit from their efforts.
Getting a proprietary app to run on Linux may well be very expensive. Doing it legally requires being very careful about the code you include in the port. "Pirating" GPL code into the port carries the risk of being sued into oblivion.
Companies can either pay actual salaries to programmares and get it coded closed-source, or donate their intellectual property and get it ported for free, eventually. Either way, they have to pay.
It's also the case that whilst the "freeware proprietary" model, which covers things like "Itunes" and "Shockwave Player", might work with Windows it dosn't appear to work well with Linux.
But when I question further about asking Linux coders to help with the conversion, the major of companies that have shown an interest in a Linux port say that they've attempted to do so, but the programmers that they approached expect the software to be open-sourced if the company is to get their help. I've even had some developers of software that's geared more towards a particular science admit that they think there would be a huge demand on their software for Linux, but the "requirement" by Linux coders that the software is open-sourced killed the prospect of releasing a Linux version.
As much as I'd like to brush that off as "just an excuse", look at a lot of the replies here on Slashdot about Linux and open-source and you'll quickly see that HE'S RIGHT! I love open-source (or at the very least open standards) just as much as anyone else here and I use it whenever feasible. But there is definitely an assumption among a lot of Linux users that if it's available on Linux the course code has got to be made available or else it doesn't belong on Linux, like it's some kind of plague.
That "plague" is a direct result of copyright. In order for the application to be proprietary it cannot (legally) use GPL code. This makes the task for any Linux developers several times harder and more expensive (even if they don't need to consult with lawyers or get into negotiations for proprietary licencing of libraries.)
The US uses mm/dd/yy because that's the way it's spoken in English:August Second Two Thousand Six.
You may well be putting the cart before the horse here. With the change to putting the month first affecting how things are said in the US.
Saying "The Second Day of August Two Thousand Six" sounds clunky to American ears.
I'm not aware of anywhere using that variation. You'd either have "The second day of the month of August, two thousand and six." or "The second of August two thousand and six." (Possibly "twenty oh six" for the year.)
The US did once use the dd/mm/yy form. This is still evident in "4th of July".
The US likes to be different from elsewhere. Soon after independence some things were changed from the English was of doing things very deliberatly, but since then the meme has become a lot more subtle.
In the end it doesn't really matter though - the only time it's mildly annoying is when software comes with both English and American English, but labels the American English version as English, then treats English as though it's a weird other dialect and specifically labels it UK or British English.
Or insists on using Webster's spellings, whilst claiming to be in English. Even though they are specific to US English
For that matter, why does Microsoft think it has any standing in this issue? It's the OEM's (Dell) that sell things to consumers, THEY are the ones that should be placing requirements (or making susggestions) to Microsoft, not the other way around.
It's probably another "feature" of the OEM contracts which also allow Microsoft to say "we'll charge you more per copy of Windows if you want to sell machines without Windows on" and similar thinggs.
A paper vote doesn't necessarily provide better security, but pretty much anyone can validate the security of a paper election; they just need to watch the voting slips being handed out, watch the folded slips being put into the box, and then make sure the box isn't lost.
It dosn't stop there since people can also watch what happens to the ballot papers when they are counted/collated.
It is quite easy for every candidate's supporters to validate a paper election.
This is how things work in most parts of the world. Most of the world also wouldn't stand for votes being counted in secret let alone by machine.
Nobody does. Where the government is secretive, it should be so only because there's an overwhelming public interest for it to be that way, or where doing so prevents citizens' rights from themselves being violated (e.g., personal records maintained by the government on Federal employees). But those should be the exceptions, and not the rule. Any time you have a situation where citizens have to justify the disclosure of information from the government on a regular basis, you have a problem.
Really it should be that government needs to justify not disclosing information.
If you are on private property, such as a shopping mall, they can ask you not to take photos, but you can't be penalized for it unless you continue against their will.
But can they tell someone photographing with the permission of the property owner to stop.Or to order a CCTV system switched off?
If anything can be learned from the US experiment in limited government, it's that limited government is a near impossibility. Power benefits the power elite, and it is only a matter of time before any government -- even the smallest, most libertarian, most strictly limited in power over the people such as the early US -- begins to morph into the corrupt, exploitable regime we see today in basically every country around the world.
"Limited government" only works where you have a populace prepared to stamp out the slightest "feature creep". Otherwise you run into the same "good servant/bad master" situation more usually associated with fire.
SUVs don't make you safe, it only makes you bigger and gives you more kinetic energy to get rid of. Sure, it'll trump a 1980s Ford Escort, but that's not because an SUV is safe, it's because the Escort is shitty.
How well is that 20-25 year old Escort going to do against any modern car? Even assuming the Escort has corrosion issues.
Why not build a custom car, that simply "abuses" the high ground clearance on SUV's and the like? Something that simply slides under those types of cars and makes them airborne?
Make both cars radio controlled and you'd have "Mythbusters meets Robot Wars".
I do refrigeration for a large food wharehouse. When our power went out, we trucked in a 3000KVA generator and bolted the cables into our switchgear.
Presumably if your power feed wasn't originally set up for easy switching between mains and generator it is now...
When your business depends on power, you know how to make calls and get it QUICKLY. It cost us 120 gallons of diesel per hour, but we would have had a catastrophic loss without it.
Depends where you get your fuel from. Diesel for construction/agriculture use dosn't have the taxes of a road fuel.
Well, creationists have been claiming that neanderthals were actually just humans. Enough DNA studies have been done on neanderthals to show that human mitochondrial DNA and neanderthal mitochondrial DNA is actually rather different - much smaller than the difference between humans and chimps, but different enough to show that humans and neanderthals were separate linages who didn't interbreed to any significant degree (and probably not at all).
The ability to interbreed (and the firtility of any offspring) is a factor of nuclear DNA though. Though both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA mutate randomly observed mutations tend to be non random since any mutation which breaks either an organelle or a cell dosn't last too long. In order for a non fatal mutation to be passed on it also has to occur in the right cells...
They take your name off, or at least your contact info. They add their own banner across the top. Lord only knows what else they might do to "enhance" your resume.
Really, I don't want that kind of "help".
That applies regardless of if you are a looking for a job or looking for workers...
Yeah except US et al is running around in Iraq, and the crazy maniac that got "voted" in as president is gunning for Iran too - on top of that we got a lunatic sitting in North Korea seriously considering going into war with just about anyone...
Of the two the US is rather more dangerous North Korea dosn't have the armed forces to attack anywhere (or the logistics to get them there) whereas the US does. Even if North Korea does have nuclear weapons they certainly don't have sufficent to wipe out everywhere which could counter attack. The US could mount a "first strike" and still have sufficent weapons to deter an attack.
Clinton spent a lot of time & effort cooling off tensions in the Middle East & I'm not sure what G.W. Bush could have done to avoid the current situation.
Cutting off the supply of US money and weapons into the area would have been a good start.
What government law enforcement agency is auditing closed source companies' code looking for GPL violations? I'd bet a lot more than a nickle that there is quite a bit of purloined code floating around inside closed source commercial software.....
No doubt quite a bit of it is someone else's proprietary code.
Anyway it's ment to be for copyright holders to look for such violations.
Really, what can they do? The only possible solution that I can even fathom is for a UN force to occupy Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and disarm the entire region. That is not going to happen, no side would allow it.
Even if you could cut off external support it would be rather difficult for any force to occupy Israel. For one thing where would you get the soldiers from? They certainly could not come from the US or anywhere else strongly involved. You'd also undoubtely need nuclear weapons placed under UN control to deter Israel from using its own. (Whilst New York may be safe, Geneva isn't.)
The UN Security Council will continue to do what they do best: nothing.
Kind of difficult for them to do anything which any of the 5 permenent members don't like. This includes the current Middle East situation, since the US will veto anything which even identifies the primary trouble maker here.
allofmp3.com would not have a service anyone would pay for if it wasn't for copyright and the general lack of an automatic "everything goes into the public domain at the moment of creation" situation.
Copyright is actually irrelevent to the kind of service allofmp3.com are providing. Even if all of their material was public domain they would still be providing a service.
Sure they could save millions that way, but what about their IT dept. If it is a halfway large organization, or huge like FedEx, their teams supporting the POS equipment may not be qualified or fully understand how to support the equipment in a Linux environment.
The same would aply moving from Windows 9X to Windows XP/Vista.
My point wasn't that they SHOULD bundle. It's that Vista is 8GB and DOESN'T COME WITH THEM.
My Gentoo install with all those tools takes around 2GB [2GB to 3GB is a good estimate, right now I have loads of other stuff that isn't Gentoo specific so it's hard to be exact without doing an indepth du scan].
Even Windows XP and MS Office takes up less space.
They are already doing something to stop the "spur of the moment" edits. Having an already established user account is required to edit the articles deemed "semi-controversial" articles. So yes, you can still register an account and make some crazy changes to the article four days later but I'd imagine most lose interest.
This would stop "casual vandals". But it's ineffective against organised politics and lobby groups. If anything a "cooling off period" can be counter productive, since it does little to put off (even quite loosely) organised groups and fanatics. Whilst being likely to deter an average person.
It can be a fundermental problem that the people you most want to deter are those least easily detered. Sometimes known as the "jerk pass" filter effect.
For those articles where established users are "disagreeing heavily" on what the article should say it is flagged as controversial and only editors can change it.
There are a couple of problems here. The first is what happens if the editors are biased towards one "side"? The other is disagreement may be part of the topic in question and to deny this makes the whole thing meaningless.