I read through the section titled "Examples of CoC issues and their resolutions" in the proposal, and most of the listed examples seem to end with a step that boils down to "person A admits that people's feelz are all that really matter, and not only apologizes for being a boor earlier but also accepts the technical proposal offered by person B without further argument, and discovers that unicorns exist if we just believe in them hard enough".
I think they're missing the step "person A experiences massive head trauma" right before that.
While 75 dollars is a significant savings over 180, why stop there? I just did a search on "linear algebra" on Google Shopping, and I can see three books from Dover Publications in there, with a combined cost of $33.18. While I'm sure they're terrible at explaining linear algebra to someone who doesn't already know linear algebra, I'm equally sure that the 75 and 180 dollar versions are terrible as well. I'd rather have three concise terrible math books books plus 40-150 dollars than one really heavy terrible math book.
I don't think Linux gamers or even people doing heavy 3D editing/animation feel a big need to have access to the source code for the graphics drivers. Maybe a VERY small percentage would prefer it, because they're knowledgeable enough of a coder to tweak a driver to fix a specific problem they're encountering? But that's got to be far less than 1% of the user-base.
I have little interest in hacking my own video drivers, but I would still very much prefer that they were open source. Because I want the very small percentage of users who would hack their own video drivers to be able to, so that I can benefit from their work. That's the beauty of open source, and it's the reason why we put up with all the considerable ugliness of open source.
Yup. But the particular polarity of his dickishness helps to balance out its opposite--that is, all the millions of shitty programmers who hate rigor just because it's rigorous, and proselytize against it at every opportunity. He's a lot like Richard Stallman in this way--an impractical dick, to be sure, but a useful dick nontheless.
Plus, Dijkstra had a sense of humor, which makes him more fun to quote.
2) If you got the book from the library, scanned it into a database where you can't get the full text back out, and took the book back to the library, no problem. 3) If you got the book from the library, scanned it, took the book back to the library, and then read the scanned copy later, you have distributed more copies than are acquired, so that is a copyright infringement.
What Google wants to do is 2).
Okay, but what if I really want to do 3 but claim to want to do 2, and provide a Google-Books-style searchable database as cover? How are you going to make sure I don't read the book later? How are you legally going to refuse to let me do it but still let Google do it?
"Are you calling me a liar? I'll prove it! Go ahead, ask me anything you want about the Goblet of Fire... No, I don't know anything about that! See?"
the Supreme Court decision that directly involved the definition of 'limited' expressly distinguished between 'limited' and 'definite'.
Cute. This is what happens when let lawyers write your laws, and don't make them define their terms. By any reasonable interpretation, "limited" and "definite" are in fact synonyms. The both mean "having a boundary". So, yes, "author's lifetime plus five hundred years" is technically both limited and definite.
But they knew how to count higher than a hundred even back in the 18th century, so there would have been no reason to put the word "limited" in there unless it was meant to prevent unreasonably long copyright periods, like the ones we are now suffering under.
Do you read OpenSource.com? If you're interested in Linux or Open Source, perhaps you should.
I dunno, Slashdot, the last link to an open-source site you recommended to me was sourceforge.net, and I got a bad case of of herp--er, special offers--from there.
If you're copying them just to have your own copy without having had to buy one, it's likely not fair use. If you're providing a service like Google's, you are more likely to be acting legally.
"More likely", huh? Well, that certainly sounds pretty unambiguous. One thousand lawyer points awarded.
So okay, if I don't give people access to my stash, it's illegal, but if I make it searchable and provide snippets, it suddenly becomes legal? Great racket they've got going on there.
Oh, and if it's legal for Google and me to do it, then it's legal for Google and me and another guy to do it, right? And if three parties can do it, four parties can, right? And if four parties can do it, everybody can, right?
It'll be interesting to see where it goes from here. We should start a betting pool. I personally bet they'll cut us off at, like, seven guys.
On the one hand, I loathe the monster that copyright law has become, and I think that a searchable database of fulltext library books is a definite positive for society, contributing strongly to the original stated purpose of copyright, which is to advance and safeguard the people's collective knowledge.
On the other hand, I really don't think this qualifies as fair use. It would be fine if the Library of Congress was doing the scanning, and retaining the copies. But Google is a company, not a government entity. If it's legal for them to do this, wouldn't it be legal for me to scan every book in the library myself, as long as I don't let anyone else access the copies?
Wait, is that legal? Has it been legal this whole time?
Making something like ad blocking ubiquitous naturally kills it, but does that stop nerds from showing everybody how to block ads? No, gotta help all the people... We could have kept blocking ads and let the unwashed pay for it all with their attention, but no, not us nerds...
Yeah... this is my fault. So here's what happened:
I went home last Thanksgiving, and Dad and Uncle Bob were watching omgfootballz.com and Mom wanted to show Aunt Jan something on artsandcrafts.com, and Cousin Suzy and Cousin Josh wanted to play the cool games on notactuallyfunbutsomehowstillpopulargames.com, and because of all the auto-playing full-motion full-volume all-singing all-dancing video ads for the 2015 Chevy Ponderoso that they were all pulling down simultaneously, I wasn't able to access textonlytechnews.com. This cannot stand.
So, long story short, I put ad blockers on every computer in the house. Sorry.
You mention nano early on in your post, then go on about learning vi.
I mean, I don't use it either. I mostly just mentioned it to make fun of it. But there's no doubt that it's culturally significant in this context. And who knows, maybe this guy is the vi kind of Linux user. There's nothing wrong with that. Some people are just born like that.
I can't recommend a book...It's not that scary these days anyway, there's a GUI for most things and you're rarely forced to use the command line (unless you want to) or mess around configuring hardware.
One, I mostly agree with your post. But...
Two, if the guy is building his own boxes, as he said in his post, he's likely going to be messing around configuring hardware. Which means:
Three, he's going to be doing a whole lot of command line stuff. Actually, I imagine pretty much any Slashdot reader, even one who's not already using Linux in 2015, is going to be the kind of person who ends up having to use the command line almost immediately. Granted, it is a lot whole lot better than it used to be. Unfortunately, it used to be so bad, you guys, and even just ten percent of "an inconceivable amount of command line" is still "quite a bit of command line".
I'd recommend O'Reilly's Linux Pocket Guide, which if I remember correctly is just a list of the most common commands. And has a cowboy on the cover. And is small and not that expensive. I'm sure you could get the same information online somewhere, but I don't know where.
The most important commands for a noob are going to be "su" and "sudo", "ls" and "ls -la", "cd", "pwd", "cat", "nano", "less", "chmod", "find -name <filename>", "grep", and "apt-get install <packagename>" or "yum install <packagename>", depending on whether your distro is Debian- or Fedora-based. You should learn how to use shell scripts, which have the file extension ".sh" and which are the Linux equivalent of batch files. You have to make them executable with "chmod a+x <scriptname>.sh" first, and if they're in the current directory, you have to run them with "./<scriptName>.sh". You will also be unable to avoid learning "vi", because it is TEH AWSAM, we have all agreed to believe; to get you started, the first vi command you should know is ":quit!".
Every program puts its files into about a dozen different directories, scattered all over the filesystem. This is the Linux way; there is no way around it. The error log files are typically in/var/logs/<applicationName>/. A particular user's desktop is at/home/<username>/Desktop. Good luck.
"No, sweetie, we already scanned your baby's DNA a few hours after he was born. What? No, I know you didn't ask us to. No, neither did the father. Yes, it is a little expensive. But don't worry, it's already been paid for. These nice people who work for someone named something like "Nissa" or "Phoebe" volunteered to pay for genetic scans of all the babies born in our hospital system. All they ask in return is that we send them a copy of each scan. So we do. Isn't that nice?"
For those who want to actually design circuits rather than copy them from a Mim's booklet, see Don Lancaster's CMOS Cookbook, Op-Amp Cookbook, etc.
That's a fine idea, but they're not mutually exclusive. Education often works better if you start off simple and concrete. You can start fiddling around with Mims's designs and then take the training wheels off with more advanced works like Lancaster's.
As an analogy, when you're trying to teach people about literature, you don't necessarily start with Finnegan's Wake. Depending on their previous experience, it might be more useful to give them Dick and Jane and Spot first.
This guy is so paranoid that he imprisoned himself for years vs just trying to face the justice system, and perhaps getting out with a fine, or even declared innocent.
This guy had locked himself to prevent dealing with the legal systems of the UK, Sweden, and the United States. While they are not perfect and need reform, are still considered the world's fairest justice systems.
It's worth noting that the reason given by the representatives of these justice systems for attempting to arrest Assange is that he was wanted in Sweden for sexual assault. Assange, meanwhile, claimed that that the real reason they were trying to apprehend him was because he had embarrassed the U.S. government, and thus they had ordered their sycophants in the British government to extradite him to Sweden, so that the Swedes could pass him on to the United States, so that the U.S. government could make an example out of him.
If you're trying to decide who to believe, ask yourself: How many times have you heard about the police staking out a foreign nation's embassy 24-7-365/6 for three solid years in order to catch an alleged date rapist?
In a related story, the new toaster from MindellCo was announced yesterday. It's just like a regular toaster, except when you push down the lever, it asks you if you're sure before it starts toasting, and then asks again every ten seconds.
Now they're, what exactly? I just don't see people wanting to buy Playboy with no nudity. At that point, get a Victoria's Secret catalog.
Right, what's the point? If you don't want to do what you do anymore, just cash out. Don't waste all your assets trying to transform yourself into "The New Playboy", or whatever.
"The internet ate our lunch, so we decided to eat dirt instead."
Its almost silly to think any advancement will take centuries based on the exponential nature of scientific discoveries.
I'd say progress has slowed significantly. I'm not sure how you'd defend the claim that our rate of progress accelerating, let alone exponentially.
We do have diminishing returns as far as applications go, but the rate of discovery is still increasing rapidly.
Lets say one area of discovery is doubling in sophistication every year.
Er, what does "doubling in sophistication" mean? What's an "area of discovery"? How many Bronze Ages in an Iron Age? How many jet engines per memristor?
What I'm getting at is, it's difficult to talk mathematically about these things because they're very difficult to define and to measure.
I do agree that technology is changing faster and faster; I just never find the results very satisfying when people start trying to apply numbers to the phenomenon.
If I remember correctly, the goal of the Culture in The Player of Games was to destabilize the ruling elite of a "barbaric" but nonetheless technologically advanced neighboring civilization. As part of their plan, the Minds in charge wanted to beat the "savages" at their own (literal) game, because The Game was the single most important thing in their society, and the ruling elite in part used their prowess at playing The Game to justify their rule. The Culture had to enter a humanoid player in the tournament, rather than a Mind, because those were the rules--artificial intelligences weren't allowed to compete.
Slashdot Mirror
I read through the section titled "Examples of CoC issues and their resolutions" in the proposal, and most of the listed examples seem to end with a step that boils down to "person A admits that people's feelz are all that really matter, and not only apologizes for being a boor earlier but also accepts the technical proposal offered by person B without further argument, and discovers that unicorns exist if we just believe in them hard enough".
I think they're missing the step "person A experiences massive head trauma" right before that.
"So, uh, sir, I was thinking, can priority four maybe be 'space exploration'?"
"This meeting is over.".
While 75 dollars is a significant savings over 180, why stop there? I just did a search on "linear algebra" on Google Shopping, and I can see three books from Dover Publications in there, with a combined cost of $33.18. While I'm sure they're terrible at explaining linear algebra to someone who doesn't already know linear algebra, I'm equally sure that the 75 and 180 dollar versions are terrible as well. I'd rather have three concise terrible math books books plus 40-150 dollars than one really heavy terrible math book.
I don't think Linux gamers or even people doing heavy 3D editing/animation feel a big need to have access to the source code for the graphics drivers. Maybe a VERY small percentage would prefer it, because they're knowledgeable enough of a coder to tweak a driver to fix a specific problem they're encountering? But that's got to be far less than 1% of the user-base.
I have little interest in hacking my own video drivers, but I would still very much prefer that they were open source. Because I want the very small percentage of users who would hack their own video drivers to be able to, so that I can benefit from their work. That's the beauty of open source, and it's the reason why we put up with all the considerable ugliness of open source.
"Dijkstra's a dick"
Yup. But the particular polarity of his dickishness helps to balance out its opposite--that is, all the millions of shitty programmers who hate rigor just because it's rigorous, and proselytize against it at every opportunity. He's a lot like Richard Stallman in this way--an impractical dick, to be sure, but a useful dick nontheless.
Plus, Dijkstra had a sense of humor, which makes him more fun to quote.
From my understanding, it's relatively easy to identify a person by it's movements. Will this obfuscation prevent this?
[citation needed]
Try https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
2) If you got the book from the library, scanned it into a database where you can't get the full text back out, and took the book back to the library, no problem. 3) If you got the book from the library, scanned it, took the book back to the library, and then read the scanned copy later, you have distributed more copies than are acquired, so that is a copyright infringement.
What Google wants to do is 2).
Okay, but what if I really want to do 3 but claim to want to do 2, and provide a Google-Books-style searchable database as cover? How are you going to make sure I don't read the book later? How are you legally going to refuse to let me do it but still let Google do it?
"Are you calling me a liar? I'll prove it! Go ahead, ask me anything you want about the Goblet of Fire... No, I don't know anything about that! See?"
the Supreme Court decision that directly involved the definition of 'limited' expressly distinguished between 'limited' and 'definite'.
Cute. This is what happens when let lawyers write your laws, and don't make them define their terms. By any reasonable interpretation, "limited" and "definite" are in fact synonyms. The both mean "having a boundary". So, yes, "author's lifetime plus five hundred years" is technically both limited and definite.
But they knew how to count higher than a hundred even back in the 18th century, so there would have been no reason to put the word "limited" in there unless it was meant to prevent unreasonably long copyright periods, like the ones we are now suffering under.
Do you read OpenSource.com? If you're interested in Linux or Open Source, perhaps you should.
I dunno, Slashdot, the last link to an open-source site you recommended to me was sourceforge.net, and I got a bad case of of herp--er, special offers--from there.
If you're copying them just to have your own copy without having had to buy one, it's likely not fair use. If you're providing a service like Google's, you are more likely to be acting legally.
"More likely", huh? Well, that certainly sounds pretty unambiguous. One thousand lawyer points awarded.
So okay, if I don't give people access to my stash, it's illegal, but if I make it searchable and provide snippets, it suddenly becomes legal? Great racket they've got going on there.
Oh, and if it's legal for Google and me to do it, then it's legal for Google and me and another guy to do it, right? And if three parties can do it, four parties can, right? And if four parties can do it, everybody can, right?
It'll be interesting to see where it goes from here. We should start a betting pool. I personally bet they'll cut us off at, like, seven guys.
On the one hand, I loathe the monster that copyright law has become, and I think that a searchable database of fulltext library books is a definite positive for society, contributing strongly to the original stated purpose of copyright, which is to advance and safeguard the people's collective knowledge.
On the other hand, I really don't think this qualifies as fair use. It would be fine if the Library of Congress was doing the scanning, and retaining the copies. But Google is a company, not a government entity. If it's legal for them to do this, wouldn't it be legal for me to scan every book in the library myself, as long as I don't let anyone else access the copies?
Wait, is that legal? Has it been legal this whole time?
No question that the internet is killing authors.
Dammit. I did have a question about that. You're always one step ahead of me.
Making something like ad blocking ubiquitous naturally kills it, but does that stop nerds from showing everybody how to block ads? No, gotta help all the people... We could have kept blocking ads and let the unwashed pay for it all with their attention, but no, not us nerds...
Yeah... this is my fault. So here's what happened:
I went home last Thanksgiving, and Dad and Uncle Bob were watching omgfootballz.com and Mom wanted to show Aunt Jan something on artsandcrafts.com, and Cousin Suzy and Cousin Josh wanted to play the cool games on notactuallyfunbutsomehowstillpopulargames.com, and because of all the auto-playing full-motion full-volume all-singing all-dancing video ads for the 2015 Chevy Ponderoso that they were all pulling down simultaneously, I wasn't able to access textonlytechnews.com. This cannot stand.
So, long story short, I put ad blockers on every computer in the house. Sorry.
You mention nano early on in your post, then go on about learning vi.
I mean, I don't use it either. I mostly just mentioned it to make fun of it. But there's no doubt that it's culturally significant in this context. And who knows, maybe this guy is the vi kind of Linux user. There's nothing wrong with that. Some people are just born like that.
Oh, also, "mkdir", "mv ", "rm ", "rm -rf ".
I can't recommend a book...It's not that scary these days anyway, there's a GUI for most things and you're rarely forced to use the command line (unless you want to) or mess around configuring hardware.
One, I mostly agree with your post. But...
Two, if the guy is building his own boxes, as he said in his post, he's likely going to be messing around configuring hardware. Which means:
Three, he's going to be doing a whole lot of command line stuff. Actually, I imagine pretty much any Slashdot reader, even one who's not already using Linux in 2015, is going to be the kind of person who ends up having to use the command line almost immediately. Granted, it is a lot whole lot better than it used to be. Unfortunately, it used to be so bad, you guys, and even just ten percent of "an inconceivable amount of command line" is still "quite a bit of command line".
I'd recommend O'Reilly's Linux Pocket Guide, which if I remember correctly is just a list of the most common commands. And has a cowboy on the cover. And is small and not that expensive. I'm sure you could get the same information online somewhere, but I don't know where.
The most important commands for a noob are going to be "su" and "sudo", "ls" and "ls -la", "cd", "pwd", "cat", "nano", "less", "chmod", "find -name <filename>", "grep", and "apt-get install <packagename>" or "yum install <packagename>", depending on whether your distro is Debian- or Fedora-based. You should learn how to use shell scripts, which have the file extension ".sh" and which are the Linux equivalent of batch files. You have to make them executable with "chmod a+x <scriptname>.sh" first, and if they're in the current directory, you have to run them with "./<scriptName>.sh". You will also be unable to avoid learning "vi", because it is TEH AWSAM, we have all agreed to believe; to get you started, the first vi command you should know is ":quit!".
Every program puts its files into about a dozen different directories, scattered all over the filesystem. This is the Linux way; there is no way around it. The error log files are typically in /var/logs/<applicationName>/. A particular user's desktop is at /home/<username>/Desktop. Good luck.
"No, sweetie, we already scanned your baby's DNA a few hours after he was born. What? No, I know you didn't ask us to. No, neither did the father. Yes, it is a little expensive. But don't worry, it's already been paid for. These nice people who work for someone named something like "Nissa" or "Phoebe" volunteered to pay for genetic scans of all the babies born in our hospital system. All they ask in return is that we send them a copy of each scan. So we do. Isn't that nice?"
For those who want to actually design circuits rather than copy them from a Mim's booklet, see Don Lancaster's CMOS Cookbook, Op-Amp Cookbook, etc.
That's a fine idea, but they're not mutually exclusive. Education often works better if you start off simple and concrete. You can start fiddling around with Mims's designs and then take the training wheels off with more advanced works like Lancaster's.
As an analogy, when you're trying to teach people about literature, you don't necessarily start with Finnegan's Wake. Depending on their previous experience, it might be more useful to give them Dick and Jane and Spot first.
As far as Iran is concerned, there is...no ban on Iranium enrichment.
Announcing Iranium! Just as fissible as the infidels' uranium, with half the blasphemy!
This guy is so paranoid that he imprisoned himself for years vs just trying to face the justice system, and perhaps getting out with a fine, or even declared innocent. This guy had locked himself to prevent dealing with the legal systems of the UK, Sweden, and the United States. While they are not perfect and need reform, are still considered the world's fairest justice systems.
It's worth noting that the reason given by the representatives of these justice systems for attempting to arrest Assange is that he was wanted in Sweden for sexual assault. Assange, meanwhile, claimed that that the real reason they were trying to apprehend him was because he had embarrassed the U.S. government, and thus they had ordered their sycophants in the British government to extradite him to Sweden, so that the Swedes could pass him on to the United States, so that the U.S. government could make an example out of him.
If you're trying to decide who to believe, ask yourself: How many times have you heard about the police staking out a foreign nation's embassy 24-7-365/6 for three solid years in order to catch an alleged date rapist?
In a related story, the new toaster from MindellCo was announced yesterday. It's just like a regular toaster, except when you push down the lever, it asks you if you're sure before it starts toasting, and then asks again every ten seconds.
Now they're, what exactly? I just don't see people wanting to buy Playboy with no nudity. At that point, get a Victoria's Secret catalog.
Right, what's the point? If you don't want to do what you do anymore, just cash out. Don't waste all your assets trying to transform yourself into "The New Playboy", or whatever.
"The internet ate our lunch, so we decided to eat dirt instead."
Its almost silly to think any advancement will take centuries based on the exponential nature of scientific discoveries.
I'd say progress has slowed significantly. I'm not sure how you'd defend the claim that our rate of progress accelerating, let alone exponentially.
We do have diminishing returns as far as applications go, but the rate of discovery is still increasing rapidly.
Lets say one area of discovery is doubling in sophistication every year.
Er, what does "doubling in sophistication" mean? What's an "area of discovery"? How many Bronze Ages in an Iron Age? How many jet engines per memristor?
What I'm getting at is, it's difficult to talk mathematically about these things because they're very difficult to define and to measure.
I do agree that technology is changing faster and faster; I just never find the results very satisfying when people start trying to apply numbers to the phenomenon.
If I remember correctly, the goal of the Culture in The Player of Games was to destabilize the ruling elite of a "barbaric" but nonetheless technologically advanced neighboring civilization. As part of their plan, the Minds in charge wanted to beat the "savages" at their own (literal) game, because The Game was the single most important thing in their society, and the ruling elite in part used their prowess at playing The Game to justify their rule. The Culture had to enter a humanoid player in the tournament, rather than a Mind, because those were the rules--artificial intelligences weren't allowed to compete.