I play guitar as a hobby (classical, flamenco and heavy metal [acoustic and electric) Wow, believe it or not, those are 3 of my 4 favorite flavors of guitar music. (Blues is the other.) And perhaps the 3 most difficult, at least some sub-genres of metal. I find it interesting that anyone would be interested in PLAYING those 3 though. I've always wondered how the "guitar greats" in rock music would compare with classical and flamenco players. (I.e. could Segovia play like Hendrix if he tried, and how good would Clapton be at flamenco?) I find flamenco especially impressive, as they both pick and strum in one single motion.
Are you trying to claim that there was never a point in history that the USA made better cars than the rest of the world? Because that's what he said. Not that the USA currently makes better cars. Either you mis-interpreted what he said, or you fail to understand the history of automobile production, or you're the one who is delusional.
you'd better get on friendly terms with your local Congressman - preferably a Republican one - before you go... How many times am I supposed to tap my foot under the stall?
The main things is that PHP comes standard on pretty much any web host and GNU/Linux distro you can find. Ruby on Rails can take some effort to install. Even after that, getting code from a workstation to the server can take some effort. Of course, I've run into similar problems with PHP. (Like a host that only supports FTP uploads, when I'm using Subversion. Or a library I need, but the host won't install it.) And the main reason for the deployment issue is that Rails encourages you to develop on your own system instead of on the server itself, which many PHP developers do.
That said, deploying a Rails app isn't all that difficult. I was able to walk a customer through setting up a full Rails environment on a FreeBSD system. (Without any sort of FreeBSD-specific HOWTO.) There are also several Rails "stacks" available now, that come with everything you need built in. Some are VM images, others are sets of packages.
The other thing that makes deploying Rails apps easier is Capistrano. It has a bit of a learning curve, but once you've learned it, it makes deploying a Rails app easier every time, to the point of being almost completely automated.
This is the lovely thing about patents in general and software patents in particular; you can claim so many patents for the same thing. The humble network plug is covered by about 45 patents iirc. When the Mach 3 razor came out, I think they claimed 28 new patented features. I wasn't even able to count 28 features of the razor, much less 28 new features. Then there were a couple dozen more patents on the Mach 3 Turbo, the M3 Power, and the Fusion.
It just seems insane that the patent office could possibly believe that there have been several hundred improvements to razors within a few years time. I could understand maybe 10 innovations. (And adding another blade is not exactly an innovation.)
I'm actually a believer in innovation and forward progress. I find it amazing that there's still innovation in the toilet paper industry. Who would have thought 20 years ago that you'd have so many choices? Do I want the single roll, the double roll, or the triple roll? I just don't think we need a patent to prevent others from selling larger rolls of toilet paper.
It's not often that I run across another person who notices that the commandment states that "you shall have no other gods before me", instead of the more forceful "there are no other gods",. The actual text implies strongly that there ARE other gods -- just that you are not to worship them, or place them at a higher status.
Like many beliefs in modern Christianity, what the words say, and what people believe are very different things. Heck, there are 2 different versions of the 10 Commandments (Exodus and Deuteronomy) with different wordings. How can you possibly reconcile that with a belief that the bible is the unerring word of God?
I also wonder about the many different words used for God in the bible. Lord, God, Holy Spirit, Yaweh. I wonder if they were actually different gods, and we got them mixed up when we decided that worshiping only 1 god meant that there IS only 1 god. Or more likely, decided that they must all be the same god, if there's only 1.
It depends on what you're looking to get out of a LUG (or any other group). Back in the day, the LUG played a more important role as far as educating Linux users and spreading the word (and the code). With nearly ubiquitous high-speed connections, info on the web is easy to get, and often more specific on any particular topic than you'll get from a local group.
But there are other reasons for user groups:
- Learning. Different people learn in different ways. Some people learn well from watching and listening. So a formal presentation works well for them. Others learn by doing. Others learn by reading. Online resources only cater to the last type of learning. (Although screencasts are changing that some, I suppose.)
- Socializing. Often times, the informal gatherings after the meetings are more fun than the meetings themselves. I know a lot of us could stand to be more social. If it takes a geeky group to do so, fine. We get to talk to people with similar as well as diverse interests.
- Networking. I've gotten quite a few consulting gigs through the user groups. I never believed in the importance of networking when I was younger, but it really does pay off.
- Giving back. I volunteered to chair the local LUG so I could give something back to the community. This is especially important in the Free Software / Open Source community. So I enjoy getting to stand up in front of a group of people and share some knowledge with them. It also helps me learn more about the subject. And I learned how to be a better public speaker in the process.
- Trusted opinions. One thing that's hard to find online is opinions you can trust. Meeting someone in person gives a feeling of comfort that some people need. Also, it's more appropriate to ask some questions in a small group. Like what's the consensus of opinion on a certain thing. Or getting help on where to look for more information on a topic when you don't know the right keywords to use.
- Overview of what's out there. It's impossible to keep up with everything going on in the world of technology. And even harder to get a detailed overview of things. So it's nice to be able to sit down and have someone show you what's out there, so you can investigate more thoroughly later if you find something to be of interest.
My opinion on the value of user groups is more of quality than quantity. If it meets the needs of the people there, then it's worth doing. Like with Free Software, the main value in having larger numbers is to spread the work in order to keep the quality high.
I think a lot of the drop in attendance is due to the fact that it's now quite easy to find help with Linux, either online, or though friends, classmates, or co-workers. We also do a relatively poor job of marketing ourselves. We probably also suffer from a lack of diversity in our topic choices and presenters.
Ditto. It was the MZ1, and cost me about $800. I was so proud to have been the first (and probably only) person I knew to get an MD recorder. I wasn't going to be late to the party, like I was with CDs.
I think the parent poster is on to something. I can guarantee you that I have plenty of energy available in the gases escaping from my body. Reducing that energy would not be a problem -- for me, or for those around me.
Actually, jQuery code is much more concise and readable than Prototype. It also follows JavaScript idioms better, and has a simpler API. They're fairly similar, and Prototype is becoming more like jQuery over time. But Prototype has a much larger mindshare, so it's used in more projects. I'm hoping they merge some day.
Wow. You got half way with your idea, but didn't make it all the way.
Right now, with most programming languages, we tell the computer how to compute the result. We generally do this with a linear list of steps for the computer to take. But that's not the only way to write a program. Another way is to tell the computer what we want it to compute, and let it figure out the best way how to do that. This sounds pretty crazy at first, but it's actually been done. Take a look at the Prolog and Haskell programming languages. They're much more descriptive than iterative. They can parallelize things a lot better than the languages we're used to using.
The term "mobile bank" reminds me of going through southern Missouri and seeing a couple banks that were actually just mobile home trailers, instead of real buildings. I always thought it would be easy to rob those banks -- just hook them up to your trailer hitch and take them home. Then you've got plenty of time at the comfort of your own home to break into the safe.
Try finding really good resources on liquid css tableless designs with code for cross browser support. Yeah, I was trying to find a 3-column liquid CSS design the other day, and still can only find 1 that works with any of the columns as the longest, and with background color extending all the way down. It's the same one I've found a few times, but surprisingly, I haven't found anyone else doing it.
The St. Louis Chief of Police actually made a statement about the cameras. He said "it's legal and there is nothing wrong with it." The ACLU contacted him a while back to discuss it. They all agreed that the cameras will likely catch more good behavior by police than bad. The police chief is actually a pretty reasonable guy, and he understands that the community sometimes has issues with police officers. I figure that if this makes the cops and the people get along better, he can deal with it.
I think with the ACLU being the ones distributing the cameras, it would be much more difficult for the police to get away with confiscating them.
When the 2nd Amendment was written, letting the people have guns was enough to intimidate the government into keeping the interests of the people in mind. Unfortunately, today's government can easily out-gun the population, so the 2nd Amendment no longer has the intended effect.
Seeing as how the state created the programs for educational purposes, and not profit, it's a shame that they didn't allow the source code to be available for free. Seems like in the long run, that would have had a larger impact on education. It's even more a shame that they did not open the code once most of the profit had dried up.
Again, your argument about enslavement suffers from the same fallacy. Nobody can enslave you and remove your rights, any more than someone can remove your rights to use software that you have a license for. Your rights are still there no matter what anyone else does. You're claiming that slavery never existed? Or are you playing a word game, saying that slaves had the right to be free, but their rights were just ignored? It's a fact that slavery did exist, even though we now recognize a human right to not be enslaved. People were taking away those rights from the slaves.
Even if I were in favor of using the GPL--to promote open source for example--I would still take exception to the notion that the GPL provides freedom, but the BSD license does not. It's the other way around. Did you actually read my response? I said that either opinion was valid.
The GPL may have other benefits, but promoting freedom isn't one of them. Freedom means the ability to do whatever you want with software, even something other people may not like. When you cannot do that, it is because your freedom is restricted. I think I see the problem here. You're looking at freedom narrowly, particularly applying to developers. The GPL takes a wide view of freedom. The GPL wants freedom to extend to as many people as possible. Thus, it places the freedom of the recipients of the software higher than the freedom of distributors. That's its whole essence. So when I say "more freedom", I mean it provides freedom to a wider subset of the population.
The essential freedom to do essentially whatever you want with software. Any further restrictions, though, are just not free. Again, I think you missed my whole point. If I release software under a BSD license, and Microsoft takes that code and releases it under a more restrictive license, then the people receiving my code through Microsoft no longer have the freedom to modify the code. Even if Microsoft made no substantial changes to it. You admit yourself that the right to modify code is a freedom. You could argue that my code is still available from my own web site, or that anyone who got it from another source is still free to use it. But maybe my web site is gone; maybe not many people got it. Perhaps I'm OK with that possibility. But perhaps I want everyone who receives my code to have the same rights to use my software that Microsoft had when they received it. In that case, I'd choose the GPL, which would ensure that everyone who receives my code receives the rights I wanted them to have, no matter how they received it.
Perhaps a good compromise license would be to use the BSD license, but require that the distributor provide the original source they received, without the modifications that they added.
Umm, it's actually copyright that's viral. The GPL just takes advantage of that for its own purposes. If copyright were not viral, there would be no need for the GPL.
Do you really think that Microsoft's license of its code is not viral? Here's a quick experiment. Take some Microsoft code and try releasing it under a license other than the one it came with. What, Microsoft won't let you do that? You have to follow Microsoft's rules that they set on their own code? Why would you expect the GPL to be any different? Microsoft won't even let you release their code under any circumstances? Not even this little bit that you "borrowed"?
It comes down to this: people writing code are allowed to define the terms under which others may copy their code. Licenses are the way of defining those terms. In the case of the GPL, those terms are simply "you can use this stuff, as long as you let others use it in the same way". Some people apparently don't bother to read the second part of that. I'm not sure why; I guess the standard source code license is easier to understand ("you can't use this").
I fail to understand why anyone would think that "you can't use this" is better than "you can use this stuff, as long as you let others use it in the same way". With GPLed code, you get the choice to use it or not. With proprietary code, you don't even have the OPTION of using their source code, unless you negotiate some expensive contract that will be much more restrictive than the GPL. And believe me, you will have no option for releasing that code under different terms than that contract allows; the license terms of the contract WILL BE viral.
Users don't directly need all 4 freedoms, just freedom 0 (the freedom to use), and perhaps freedom 2 (freedom to share with your neighbors). But they indirectly benefit from the other freedoms. Let's say you're an end user, and want to add a feature to a program. With GPL software, you ave the freedom/ability to choose a developer to add the feature for you. Without freedom 1, you're pretty much at the mercy of the vendor to add the feature for you; nobody else is allowed to add to the program.
Guido, your argument was very good. You had me questioning my own preference for the GPL over BSD license. (My preference in that direction is not very strong, and there are situations where I prefer the BSD license.) But cheater512's argument was stronger (and nice and succinct, as you pointed out). I don't understand why you had to cut him down.
My best analogy of BSD versus GPL is to question which provides more freedom: the freedom to do anything, or the freedom to do anything except enslave someone and remove their freedoms. It's a philosophical question, and I can easily see people taking either position. I don't believe that there's a right answer to the question. In modern society, we choose the latter.
Admittedly, the Free Software Foundation's (and Open Source guideline's) four freedoms are not as important as the human right not to be enslaved. (Richard Stallman might disagree; he believes the four freedoms are fundamental human rights for the modern world.) But having and keeping those 4 freedoms is quite liberating. It allows you to control your own destiny when it comes to the software you use.
What type of number is comprised of six and a half figures?
I think he meant log10(salary) = 5.5, or his salary is 10^5.5; i.e. about $300,000. (Yes, it's 5.5 when doing the math, as a 6-figure salary is 10^5. It's one of those off-by-one situations.)
Slashdot Mirror
Are you trying to claim that there was never a point in history that the USA made better cars than the rest of the world? Because that's what he said. Not that the USA currently makes better cars. Either you mis-interpreted what he said, or you fail to understand the history of automobile production, or you're the one who is delusional.
The main things is that PHP comes standard on pretty much any web host and GNU/Linux distro you can find. Ruby on Rails can take some effort to install. Even after that, getting code from a workstation to the server can take some effort. Of course, I've run into similar problems with PHP. (Like a host that only supports FTP uploads, when I'm using Subversion. Or a library I need, but the host won't install it.) And the main reason for the deployment issue is that Rails encourages you to develop on your own system instead of on the server itself, which many PHP developers do.
That said, deploying a Rails app isn't all that difficult. I was able to walk a customer through setting up a full Rails environment on a FreeBSD system. (Without any sort of FreeBSD-specific HOWTO.) There are also several Rails "stacks" available now, that come with everything you need built in. Some are VM images, others are sets of packages.
The other thing that makes deploying Rails apps easier is Capistrano. It has a bit of a learning curve, but once you've learned it, it makes deploying a Rails app easier every time, to the point of being almost completely automated.
But theft implies that the original owner no longer has the stolen item.
That's the reason many people like to make a distinction between the 2.
Wow, a chance to mention the OTHER Firefox -- not the browser.
It just seems insane that the patent office could possibly believe that there have been several hundred improvements to razors within a few years time. I could understand maybe 10 innovations. (And adding another blade is not exactly an innovation.)
I'm actually a believer in innovation and forward progress. I find it amazing that there's still innovation in the toilet paper industry. Who would have thought 20 years ago that you'd have so many choices? Do I want the single roll, the double roll, or the triple roll? I just don't think we need a patent to prevent others from selling larger rolls of toilet paper.
It's not often that I run across another person who notices that the commandment states that "you shall have no other gods before me", instead of the more forceful "there are no other gods",. The actual text implies strongly that there ARE other gods -- just that you are not to worship them, or place them at a higher status.
Like many beliefs in modern Christianity, what the words say, and what people believe are very different things. Heck, there are 2 different versions of the 10 Commandments (Exodus and Deuteronomy) with different wordings. How can you possibly reconcile that with a belief that the bible is the unerring word of God?
I also wonder about the many different words used for God in the bible. Lord, God, Holy Spirit, Yaweh. I wonder if they were actually different gods, and we got them mixed up when we decided that worshiping only 1 god meant that there IS only 1 god. Or more likely, decided that they must all be the same god, if there's only 1.
It depends on what you're looking to get out of a LUG (or any other group). Back in the day, the LUG played a more important role as far as educating Linux users and spreading the word (and the code). With nearly ubiquitous high-speed connections, info on the web is easy to get, and often more specific on any particular topic than you'll get from a local group.
But there are other reasons for user groups:
- Learning. Different people learn in different ways. Some people learn well from watching and listening. So a formal presentation works well for them. Others learn by doing. Others learn by reading. Online resources only cater to the last type of learning. (Although screencasts are changing that some, I suppose.)
- Socializing. Often times, the informal gatherings after the meetings are more fun than the meetings themselves. I know a lot of us could stand to be more social. If it takes a geeky group to do so, fine. We get to talk to people with similar as well as diverse interests.
- Networking. I've gotten quite a few consulting gigs through the user groups. I never believed in the importance of networking when I was younger, but it really does pay off.
- Giving back. I volunteered to chair the local LUG so I could give something back to the community. This is especially important in the Free Software / Open Source community. So I enjoy getting to stand up in front of a group of people and share some knowledge with them. It also helps me learn more about the subject. And I learned how to be a better
public speaker in the process.
- Trusted opinions. One thing that's hard to find online is opinions you can trust. Meeting someone in person gives a feeling of comfort that some people need. Also, it's more appropriate to ask some questions in a small group. Like what's the consensus of opinion on a certain thing. Or getting help on where to look for more information on a topic when you don't know the right keywords to use.
- Overview of what's out there. It's impossible to keep up with everything going on in the world of technology. And even harder to get a detailed overview of things. So it's nice to be able to sit down and have someone show you what's out there, so you can investigate more thoroughly later if you find something to be of interest.
My opinion on the value of user groups is more of quality than quantity. If it meets the needs of the people there, then it's worth doing. Like with Free Software, the main value in having larger numbers is to spread the work in order to keep the quality high.
I think a lot of the drop in attendance is due to the fact that it's now quite easy to find help with Linux, either online, or though friends, classmates, or co-workers. We also do a relatively poor job of marketing ourselves. We probably also suffer from a lack of diversity in our topic choices and presenters.
[Adapted from the SLUUG.org discussion list.]
Ditto. It was the MZ1, and cost me about $800. I was so proud to have been the first (and probably only) person I knew to get an MD recorder. I wasn't going to be late to the party, like I was with CDs.
I think the parent poster is on to something. I can guarantee you that I have plenty of energy available in the gases escaping from my body. Reducing that energy would not be a problem -- for me, or for those around me.
Actually, jQuery code is much more concise and readable than Prototype. It also follows JavaScript idioms better, and has a simpler API. They're fairly similar, and Prototype is becoming more like jQuery over time. But Prototype has a much larger mindshare, so it's used in more projects. I'm hoping they merge some day.
Wow. You got half way with your idea, but didn't make it all the way.
Right now, with most programming languages, we tell the computer how to compute the result. We generally do this with a linear list of steps for the computer to take. But that's not the only way to write a program. Another way is to tell the computer what we want it to compute, and let it figure out the best way how to do that. This sounds pretty crazy at first, but it's actually been done. Take a look at the Prolog and Haskell programming languages. They're much more descriptive than iterative. They can parallelize things a lot better than the languages we're used to using.
Damn. WTF is a much better name than I was going to suggest.
The term "mobile bank" reminds me of going through southern Missouri and seeing a couple banks that were actually just mobile home trailers, instead of real buildings. I always thought it would be easy to rob those banks -- just hook them up to your trailer hitch and take them home. Then you've got plenty of time at the comfort of your own home to break into the safe.
Some people call him the gangster of Love....
Just because he speaks of the pompetous of love, does not mean that he's the gangster of love.The St. Louis Chief of Police actually made a statement about the cameras. He said "it's legal and there is nothing wrong with it." The ACLU contacted him a while back to discuss it. They all agreed that the cameras will likely catch more good behavior by police than bad. The police chief is actually a pretty reasonable guy, and he understands that the community sometimes has issues with police officers. I figure that if this makes the cops and the people get along better, he can deal with it.
I think with the ACLU being the ones distributing the cameras, it would be much more difficult for the police to get away with confiscating them.
When the 2nd Amendment was written, letting the people have guns was enough to intimidate the government into keeping the interests of the people in mind. Unfortunately, today's government can easily out-gun the population, so the 2nd Amendment no longer has the intended effect.
Seeing as how the state created the programs for educational purposes, and not profit, it's a shame that they didn't allow the source code to be available for free. Seems like in the long run, that would have had a larger impact on education. It's even more a shame that they did not open the code once most of the profit had dried up.
Perhaps a good compromise license would be to use the BSD license, but require that the distributor provide the original source they received, without the modifications that they added.
Umm, it's actually copyright that's viral. The GPL just takes advantage of that for its own purposes. If copyright were not viral, there would be no need for the GPL.
Do you really think that Microsoft's license of its code is not viral? Here's a quick experiment. Take some Microsoft code and try releasing it under a license other than the one it came with. What, Microsoft won't let you do that? You have to follow Microsoft's rules that they set on their own code? Why would you expect the GPL to be any different? Microsoft won't even let you release their code under any circumstances? Not even this little bit that you "borrowed"?
It comes down to this: people writing code are allowed to define the terms under which others may copy their code. Licenses are the way of defining those terms. In the case of the GPL, those terms are simply "you can use this stuff, as long as you let others use it in the same way". Some people apparently don't bother to read the second part of that. I'm not sure why; I guess the standard source code license is easier to understand ("you can't use this").
I fail to understand why anyone would think that "you can't use this" is better than "you can use this stuff, as long as you let others use it in the same way". With GPLed code, you get the choice to use it or not. With proprietary code, you don't even have the OPTION of using their source code, unless you negotiate some expensive contract that will be much more restrictive than the GPL. And believe me, you will have no option for releasing that code under different terms than that contract allows; the license terms of the contract WILL BE viral.
Users don't directly need all 4 freedoms, just freedom 0 (the freedom to use), and perhaps freedom 2 (freedom to share with your neighbors). But they indirectly benefit from the other freedoms. Let's say you're an end user, and want to add a feature to a program. With GPL software, you ave the freedom/ability to choose a developer to add the feature for you. Without freedom 1, you're pretty much at the mercy of the vendor to add the feature for you; nobody else is allowed to add to the program.
Guido, your argument was very good. You had me questioning my own preference for the GPL over BSD license. (My preference in that direction is not very strong, and there are situations where I prefer the BSD license.) But cheater512's argument was stronger (and nice and succinct, as you pointed out). I don't understand why you had to cut him down.
My best analogy of BSD versus GPL is to question which provides more freedom: the freedom to do anything, or the freedom to do anything except enslave someone and remove their freedoms. It's a philosophical question, and I can easily see people taking either position. I don't believe that there's a right answer to the question. In modern society, we choose the latter.
Admittedly, the Free Software Foundation's (and Open Source guideline's) four freedoms are not as important as the human right not to be enslaved. (Richard Stallman might disagree; he believes the four freedoms are fundamental human rights for the modern world.) But having and keeping those 4 freedoms is quite liberating. It allows you to control your own destiny when it comes to the software you use.
I think he meant log10(salary) = 5.5, or his salary is 10^5.5; i.e. about $300,000. (Yes, it's 5.5 when doing the math, as a 6-figure salary is 10^5. It's one of those off-by-one situations.)