Still, no one came in and built it for the U.S. -- it had to be done within the U.S. by the U.S. from taxes raised in the U.S., or it wasn't getting done.
Hey, if you can get the people and governments all over the world to forgive U.S. debts, then maybe the U.S. can talk about forgiving yours.
How many countries aren't in debt, really? The U.S. can't even negotiate to end most of its debt, because it's privately held by parties large and small all over the world. At least we've forgiven the debts of some countries when they really needed it.
Oh, and I don't see companies in L.A. countries pouring billions of dollars in research, development, equipment, and labor into huge operations in the U.S. just to see those operations nationalized by the U.S. If you really want capitalism to work in Latin America, your countries need to honor land ownership, leases, and license rights. Nationalizing or threatening to nationalize huge foreign investments does not exactly encourage people to invest more money in your countries. Your specific country may not be doing this, but you lumped Latin America into a group and didn't make clear a specific country to debate.
The U.S. is not responsible for the entire world's economy. We do what we can for us. You need to do what you can for yourselves. That's the way trade works. Yes, we have a huge infrastructure here in the U.S., but we've built that. No other country came in and built the Roosevelt Interstate System. No other country came in and built the nationwide electric grid. No other country invented the assembly line, the microprocessor, and the airplane. Despite the fact that Hollywood studios make some really awful movies and on the whole aren't very artistic, they do invest the money into production, advertising, and distribution that makes American films the most widely watched in the world. No other country built our Atlantic to Pacific railway. No other country is the founding place and headquarters of Coca-Cola, Microsoft, or General Motors.
In order to have the economic advantages of a strong economy and solid infrastructure, you must invest in a strong economy and solid infrastructure. This is not just investment of money. It also involves laws, education, and taxes geared towards letting people make money. Our education system in the U.S. is not as good as it should be, and unfortunately doesn't show signs of improvement in the short term. However, there is still the right mix of influences to make the U.S. competitive if not to keep us in the top spot economically. Your government and the people in your country may have different priorities. In the U.S., where money is the primary tool to solve problems, a strong economy is a priority that ranks soon after national security. If your country has some other priorities that come before developing the economy that take a back seat to the economy in the U.S. and you've acheived those priorities, then you're just as successful as we are. It's about priorities.
In the U.S., socialism scares us, not because it's inherently bad but because it takes away on of the the greatest hopes we have -- that we'll be able to make enough money to take care of most of our problems. The U.S. was founded on a distrust of government to serve the needs of the people. Unfortunately, too many Americans these days don't understand that. If a socialist country really can serve the needs of its people well enough and isn't oppressive like many have been, then it wouldn't be so bad for people who could trust it to stay that way.
User freedoms are a big part of it. It's also about the original author's freedoms and rights.
If Linux was moved wholesale to the GPLv3 with the anti-DRM language, Linus and the contributing authors would have their code locked away from certain users they may want to be able to use their code. So the ability of the authors to give their code to all users, regardless of the use, would be removed by v3.
The FSF doesn't believe in DRM, and that's fine. They want a license that precludes the use of a project with DRM or for DRM, and that's fine.
The GPLv2 does not say you can't use software licensed under it with DRM or for DRM. It would be a different license if that were tacked on. The authors have a right to say they won't use that license. It's their code, and it's not right of people to tell them how they must license it.
Let the FSF have a license that bans software licensed with it being used for DRM or with DRM. Let people who don't like that license not use it. It would probably be in the interests of all involved to have a GPLv3 in the spirit of GPLv2 that fixes things and updates language without new restrictions on use. If the FSF wants an anti-DRM license, they should draft one separately or make it an optional addendum to GPLv3 if they really want GPLv3 to be used. Right now, they are trying to bully projects into the anti-DRM language by pointing out that there are other improvements in v3 and that those improvements cannot come to a project without the anti-DRM language. If they want those improvements to become mainstream, they need to have them in a license that will be accepted as mainstream.
First, what part of "I have nothing against the French specifically" do you not understand?
Neither of these countries mentioned is peopled by pedigreed thoroughbreds raised in kennels. So yes, Arabs, Persians, Jews, Assyrians, Kurds, and others were affected. I chose to mention Persians. The very idea that you can lump a people together by a national boundary while discounting totally blood and heritage is one of the biggest problems in international politics. Another disasterous misconception is that primary language alone determines everythign about a culture.
No doubt many of the Arabic-speaking people in previously Persian areas are Persian-descended people who happen to speak the language that has been more influential in their area in the recent past. Syria is mostly Arabs, but they are largely mixed Arabs. Lebanon has a distinct and mentionable although small Persian minority along with other pure and mixed peoples.
Consider similarly that not all Americans are British descendents just because Germans, Russians, Poles, Italians, French, and others learned the language when they immigrated. There are also Mexicans (Spanish, Native, and mixed), ethnic Jews, religious Jews, Arabs, Africans (descended both of slaves and free people), Japanese, Koreans, Chinese (from differing cultural regions of China), Vietnamese, Indians, Pakistanis (whose country used to be part of India), and others in the U.S. who speak English every day but do not consider themselves purely American. Some of them live in ethnic neighborhoods, while some do not. Some consider themselves members of their anscestral homelands who happen to live in the U.S. while others consider themselves mostly American. Britain, France, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and any other place with lots of immigration have similar situations. Must Syria and Lebanon be different because you know when the political boundary changed?
Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Israel (Palestine at the time), and Saudi Arabia were all occupied by the French and English. The only reason Iran was not under French control was because it was under British control. The only reason Syria and Lebanon were not under British control is that they were under French control. It was a shared split of the area, and the French and English can be rolled in together as occupiers of the whole area. So perhaps I should mention Arabs instead of Persians to make you happy, considering Algeria and Egypt along with Lebanon and Syria? Or would the carving up of the Middle East by two superpowers be considered one act?
And what about France making deal after deal with the current regime in Iran which is oppresive against its own people? Is that Persian enough for you?
Damn, a spelling troll crawls out and we have to start having a complete history lesson because people are trying to pick nits about something they haven't even considered fully.
The Glorious Church of the United States doesn't officially believe in asking for Armageddon to occur in our lifetimes. There are many people in the U.S. who want that, possibly including the President from the look of things, but popularity of a religious belief in a country doesn't make it a state religion.
The United States is, despite what people say about it being a Jewish nation or a Christian nation or a Judeo-Christian nation, governed by a secular government. As a group of people with similar values living in a shared space, you might be able to say it's a religious "nation", but that religion is not endorsed officially by the government.
Because Lebanon and Syria are where most Persians live (that area of the world being known as Persia), and that part of the world was under French protectionism by order of the League of Nations between those two World Wars?
I have nothing against the French specifically. I don't have a problem with colonialism specifically for that matter. It's possible to colonize without oppressing people -- maybe not likely, but possible. I just have a problem with foreign powers maintaining rule by force over people who wish to be independent.
France and Britain until the last hundred or hundred and fifty years were not on the... best of terms.
First degree? Maybe second or third degree. I'd think first degree disadvantages based on travel would require going to places more like Sudan or southeastern Afghanistan. Hell, I'd rather be in Jalalabad, Kabul, Beirut, Gaza, Mosul, Najaf, or Baghdad than Darfur right now. I'd avoid Georgia (the country) right now, too.
You have a right to use hyperbole, but wow. Hey, I'm an American and I'm unhappy about how things are going here lately. There are still lots of places I'd consider riskier to travel than the U.S. right now.
I hope you're indeed exaggerating at least a bit. If not, perhaps you need to check what's going on elsewhere for some context.
It's not an attempt to "dumb down" anything, and the U.S. educational system was not crappy back when Merriam Webster mades such changes in his dictionary. Whether or not it is crappy now is more of an open question, but has no bearing on the change of spelling.
In the U.S., 'colour' reads ass if it would be pronounced 'cohloor' or 'cohlowr'. It is pronounced more like 'culler', but just dropping the 'u' makes it much more clear that it represents the apperance of light bouncing off of something instead of it referring to one who weeds out members of a set.
There was a big movement in the U.S. to get rid of old baggage not needed from colonial times ('colonial times' being pronounced "when North America was Britain's bitch" if you like). Unpronounced letters in some cases were part of that baggage. So was a state religion. Silly royals were too, but we in the U.S. seem to have hotel heiresses and movie stars to take up the tabloid slack. Eventually powdered wigs fell by the wayside in the U.S. too. Besides, 'colour' makes clear its French roots. The English if anyone should understand getting rid of French influence where it's unneccessary (well, after the Vietnamese, Persians, and those from Côte d'Ivoire -- all of whom have had abundant French influence more recently).
Before you continue attacking educational systems, please note that "United States" is a proper noun and should therefore be capitalized in proper English (even the main British dialect). You were not speaking of the idea of nation states or of all "states" in the U.S., Mexico, and other countries that use the term for their political subdivisions, were you? Now maybe your questioning of other people's use of the English language, especially when they are making jokes as the parent of your post appears to have been, might not seem so hypocritical.
Congratulations, you trolled and got responses and a mod of 'Insightful'. Sorry if this response was a bit more rational and level than you wanted. Now, I wonder if you're going to lecture the moderator of your post on the differences between 'insight' and 'incite'.
So what you're saying, in effect, is that it's acceptable according to the Constitution and the intent of the founders for the Federal statutes to allow the government, or individuals acting on behalf of the government, to be allowed to break the previous Federal statutes after they have been broken? And that this is the case even if it is clearly to the detriment of the people?
Any kind of misconduct and illegal acts can be undertaken by the Federal government without restrictions and without any redress on behalf of the people if this is the case. After all, the only way a law matters to a criminal is that it's enforced and there is a penalty for its breakage.
So, effectively, the Constitution of the United States, as written and as the writers of it intended, does not limit the power of the government against the people so long as that government can change the laws or the Constitution itself to protect the government employees _after_ the fact?
That's some seriously shaky ground there. I'm not a lawyer. From the authority with which you're responding, it seems you might be. Please tell me that's not the case. If it starts becoming the view of lawyers that the Federal government is not at all accountable to the people, it's time for a revolution. Hopefully a bloodless one using ballots, but if that becomes the prevailing view, I'll take what I can get.
But with the wonderful world of pump-and-dump, you get to sell your stake in the company while your bluff is high, and let some poor schmuck on the other end of a public market pocket the loss when the cards all turn face up.
That's decent reasoning, but starting from a mistaken premise.
You see, the decision you cite has the _defendant_ being protected from the _government_.
In the case of what we're talking about, the defendant _is_ the government. Allowing the government to act in the way the White House and the Congress are trying to allow hurts the non-government defendants in any investigation and trial for which the surveillance is used. By legalizing what the _government_ is doing after the fact, it _narrows_ the rights of the _defendant_ after the fact. The illegality of the surveillance makes it inadmissable as evidence. That's a legal defense.
Legalizing an illegal act of the investigators or of the prosecution after the fact _is_ something "which deprives one charged with crime of any defense available according to law at the time when the act was committed".
By this reasoning, making it legal to tap a phone without a warrant in certain cases cannot be done for wiretaps that have already happened. Making the framework for when the warrant has to be issued different in the future is another story. In any case, I'd still be willing to wager the courts won't say no law has been broken _by_the_government_ if the government tries to cover its ass after the fact.
They could have easliy bought SCO before going to court. That's what they would have done before settling.
IBM's confident that this case will help them in the long run, or they wouldn't be involved in the litigation at all.
There was a bunch of speculation before the pretrial hearings even started that IBM might buy SCO, liquidate the corporation, and open-source all the software assets, and be done with the whole mess. Winning in court proves things about the GPL, the open development of software, the honesty of IBM as a corporation, and a few other things that a buyout or a settlement never could.
What these people need to learn is that Congress can pass no ex post facto laws. It's in the Constitution of the United States of America.
Some court decisions have said that ex post facto laws only apply to not punishing criminals for things that were made illegal after the acts took place. I'd be willings to wager that the same courts would say you can't stop someone from being punished for something that was illegal at the time, either.
I wasn't aware iTunes recorded DVDs. Thanks for pointing out to Apple and all us/. readers that iMovie is redundant.
Before you mention how WMP does more than burn DVDs... wait! WMP burns DVDs? Thanks for letting us know that, too!
Oh, and before you bring up how "WMP" isn't jargon itself, about how WMP does less but it easier, etc, notice a couple of things:
1. MPlayer plays media very simply, too. 2. The parent of your post was talking about doing something that WMP does not do. Recording a DVD does involve more knowledge than playing one, hence the additional terminology that you're calling "soup of jargon".
I've read some of your older posts, so it's clear to me you're not an MS astroturfer. That wasn't clear just from reading your one response here, though. Point taken that perceived complexity chases away some users. However, the post to which you were responding was talkign about something that is necessarily more complex than playing a DVD or a single media file.
Maybe open the case, figure out which line the RFID reader uses to signal a successful authentication to the player, and hard-wire power to that line. I doubt they'd require an actual packet protocol from the reader to the player, but if they do then there will be a mod chip involved instead of tapping a power lead and jumpering over the reader.
There are some people who will buy an Xbox in order to play a single game on it. Some will buy the hardware because they have the games but their hardware failed or was lost in a fire or something. Microsoft's decision to sell the hardware as a loss leader does not obligate the buyer of that hardware to make further purchases in order to cover MS's bottom line.
That being said, there's still the little matter of having to hack the hardware to install Linux on it. Running a version of Linux on the Xbox that makes use of the firmware of the product could be argued to be using a derivative work based on the firmware. IANAL, so hard telling if that'd hold up. Currently the courts seem to support the idea that making things compatible with firmware isn't copyright infringement. Legal precedents get lots of consideration, but new decisions don't _always_ go the same way as the precedent. There's a chip specifically that has to be hacked to allow Linux to boot on the Xbox. That code on that chip has to be functionally identical (at the chip-to-chip interface level) to the original other than the copy protection. That's a stronger argument for copyright infringement, unless the chip was black-box cloned. It's also the same replacement chip in many cases that is illegal under the DMCA for helping people play counterfeit games. There may be a chip that bypasses the OS DRM but leaves intact the valid Xbox game DRM, but I haven't seen one.
The good news is that controllers work similarly for PCs, and Linux runs on PCs. Hopefully it'll be a short road between the Xbox prototype and getting this to work with hardware that's mroe commoditized. I doubt MS would care about the research as long as this thing doesn't start getting sold as an Xbox hack. They might even be able to use it as positive press.
This is how I referred to Senator Stevens at one point in my original post:
the guy who doesn't know the exact right metaphor to use.
If that's not saying he was wrong, I'm not sure what is. I was saying that the metaphor of a series of tubes for a series of network circuits itself is not unreasonable once you accept the metaphor of a single tube standing for a single circuit. I thought that was clear based on the context of the thread, but I may be mistaken about what's clear to other people since it's always going to be clear to me what I meant.
Your suggestion to "donate your sexual organs to science or medicine" wasn't an convincing argument to stop feeling something I didn't feel.
What in particular led you to believe I was addressing you singly and specifically when I was talking about the many people pounding the Senator's flub into the ground?
We aren't talking about "one person"
That's right, we're talking about a bunch of people feeling superior to a Senator of the United States. He should be better informed, and all those script kiddies and wannabees who have trashed him over and over on this one topic should be better equipped to mock him before doing so.
I understand that a data packet is more like a truck then a series of tubes is like a network.
That's another metaphor, and from a particular point of view does make more sense. I think you're putting more emphasis on the word "series" than it really deserves here. The Senator probably didn't mean "run all together, end to end, with no branches" when he used that word. He was probably using "series" to mean "group of similar things". He probably could have picked a better word, but then again we've already agreed he could have picked a better overall metaphor. This metaphor he used is still not the general problem people are making it out to be. It has flaws, but it's not the worst metaphor for a data network.
Anyway this isn't about feeling superior, it's about people making laws about things they don't understand all that well or at all.
That definitely should be what it's about. The people about which I'm complaining are those that have no goal in mind other than reminding people about the one blunder. If people want to discuss the implications of the general problem and how to fix it, that's a whole different level of discourse than, "First post OMFG! In Soviet Russia, you get delayed for days in the series of tubes while an internet waits for you!"
Beeing the 8798th person to agresively defend (if you can call attacking people on slashdot a defense) a lawmaker who hasn't done his homework is nothing to be proud of either.
I'm only defending him to a point. He should study more about a topic before he speaks about it in Congress. It's not this one screwy speech that's the problem, though. The metaphor in question isn't the problem. The problem is that senators and representatives regularly vote and even lobby each other on topics they don't understand. The use of the tubes metaphor isn't necessarily a sign that Ted Stevens doesn't understand the Internet. The facts that he mangled the metaphor internally and that he referred to an email message as "an internet" are signs that he doesn't understand it. There's a big difference. The fact that he started with a flawed but workable metaphor shows he had some inclination to have someone explain it to him beforehand. He should have picked a better person to explain it, spent more time asking them questions, or listened more carefully. At least he made some small effort, which is more than most of the Senate seems to be doing on most of the bills.
1. I've read the transcript. The guy got it wrong. If you haven't read my post, you shouldn't comment. I never claimed he got it right. 2. If you read my post and still feel superior because you can point out where one person was wrong about one thing, then reread the post. 3. Obviously you don't understand plumbing as well as you claim to understand networking. You can balance flow of fluids through multiple paths, too. My house, for example, has a pressure equalization valve on the hot water line from two water heaters so they drain and refill at the same rate. You can also filter unwanted things out of your fluids, selectively accept fluids from one set of pipes (or "tubes") or not, and can, in fact, engineer the system for more volume (bigger pipe, like bandwidth) or higher speed (higher pressure, a bit similar to lower latency). As a matter of fact, some older electronics textbooks explain things in terms of plumbing for electrons. There should no doubt that network packets traversing a network are largely modeled on electrons traveling through circuits. Some parts of the plumbing/pneumatics/hydraulics metaphors in fact carry over well, while others don't carry over well at all. For that matter, several things in electronics itself don't necessarily carry over very well to networking. When was the last time you had to adjust the voltage/amperage of your HTTP traffic to make sure it didn't cause a fire while still getting the same throughput?
Again, if you feel you are a superior human being because you know this one guy was wrong about one topic, go donate your naughty bits to someone who can get some use out of them. Hopefully people with a mindset that "oh, the old guy is wrong! I'm so cool to be the 8798th person to point it out on/. it hurts!" will never breed anyway, because the kids of those people will likely be just as fucked in the head if not moreso.
First, let me say I'm not arguing with you, turbidostato. I think we agree more than disagree, but it seems to me people are reading this thread different ways. There are many things in the thread that mean one thing in context and another out of context. I'd like to get some of them staked down in place.
You won't see that the author can revoke it unless some very specific situations are met (basically, the unability from the distributor side to abide to the GPL and some other law/patent grant, etc.). Regarding its conditions a license is no different from a contract: two parts stablished a relationship and from that moment on them both are abode to respect it. You (the distributor) acorded to give me a non-limited license for redistribution; you *must* respect this. I (the licensee) acorded the redistribution to be in such and such terms; I *must* respect them.
This is based on the law outside the contract. I was stating that there's nothing in the GPL that states specifically that the author can't. So, in effect, the author could under any circumstances acceptable within standard, accepted contract law. You're right that those would be narrow, and it's probably good to point that out.
Anyone who tried to distribute the newer versions under the GPL would be in violation of both licenses, so their rights under both licensess would be pretty much revoked on those grounds. The older versions that are fully GPL shouldn't be a problem, which is why Debian is using those. Anyone who had a copy of the GPLed version can redistribute the GPLed version freely. They are not entitled to additions and derivations made by the original author and released under the new license just because the old code is GPLed.
The author of a GPLed bit of code can at any time make new versions that are not GPLed. The author is not bound by having released a GPLed version to license his derivative works under the GPL, because the GPL is not what gave him the rights to make those derivative works. The posting earlier about people being required to give licenses to third parties of any derivative works could be taken out of context. They do not have anything to do with the rights of the original author, but only the rights of licensees.
You're not redistributing it if you wrote it. You're distributing it. There is no 're-'. 'You' is very specifically defined to be someone other than the software's author by the license.
The GPL is a license which grants people other than the author certain rights, including redistribution. It requires certain things in exchange for those rights, including the terms of that redistribution.
Schilling cannot be told he cannot choose a different license for new code he wrote just because he released the old code it goes with was previously released under a different license. The new code he wrote can be licensed any way he wants. He can release the old code under that license too. The only question becomes what other people can do with what he had already released under the old license.
Debian has code which was licensed to them under the GPL. They are planning to use that to make a derivative work under the GPL. I don't see anything anywhere in the GPL saying that the copyright holder cannot revoke the license of a third party, only that the redistributor cannot.
I don't see anything here other than speculation about Schilling planning to revoke the GPL on the older, GPL-licensed code that Debian plans to fork in the first place. It's reasonable speculation about what could possibly happen, but it's still speculation.
Even the politician at which you people are poking fun called it a "a series of tubes".
Seeing circuits as tubes, routers as pressure balance valves, firewalls as filters, certain types of DoS attacks as plugging a tube, and dropping packets as a leaky tube all are sensible enough extensions of a "fat pipe" metaphor.
Just get over yourselves, people. Just because someone knows a better metaphor for something doesn't mean he knows any more how that thing actually works. It also doesn't make him any smarter or overall any more knowledgeable about the world as a whole than the guy who doesn't know the exact right metaphor to use.
Knowing one thing more than one other person about one topic only proves that you know one more thing about one topic than one other person.
If your biggest thrill in life is to one-up the technical knowledge (on one topic!) of a guy in a non-technical field who's thirty to sixty years older than you, then go ahead and feel superior. While you're at it, donate your sexual organs to science or medicine so someone gets some use out of them. Maybe that way you can brag about something more notable than, "3y3 NOS3 MOR3 THUN THA 0LD GUY B0wT THA INTARW3B! 3y3 AM A L33T!!!1"
In some cases, meatbags with aimbots. I'd hardly call that "people" at all.
Oh, and in reference to your sig, Windows XP does still need to be rebooted more than it should. So much less than previous versions it's hilarious, but still more than it should need.
First, the disclaimer: I'm not a broker, advisor, or fund manager. I don't currently hold any MS stock directly. MSFT is held by one of the funds in which I invest. This post is just my quick-thought opinion. The contents don't constitute advice and shouldn't be read as a fully-considered position.
Maybe once the growth slows sufficiently, the board will decide to pay dividends. Paying dividends during the growth phase can hurt the company's cash flow. Going from phenomenal growth without dividends to slow growth with dividends at the right point in the curve might be a good decision.
Hopefully MS can find that point for the sake of their investors. If not, those investors may very well sell at the point they feel neither dividends nor growth make the stock a growth proposition in their portfolios. Instead, they may push the board out and elect a board more in tune with the idea of dividends. If either of those things happens, it hurts MS because obviously the current board hasn't been doing too bad a job financially (ethically and legally are another question). With the amount of MS stock held by large institutional investors and large funds, it'd really cause a resounding thud if the sales orders started piling up. I'm sure the shares wouldn't go down too far and would eventually come back up, but I'd bet it could be a big correction.
Slashdot Mirror
I stand corrected.
Still, no one came in and built it for the U.S. -- it had to be done within the U.S. by the U.S. from taxes raised in the U.S., or it wasn't getting done.
Hey, if you can get the people and governments all over the world to forgive U.S. debts, then maybe the U.S. can talk about forgiving yours.
How many countries aren't in debt, really? The U.S. can't even negotiate to end most of its debt, because it's privately held by parties large and small all over the world. At least we've forgiven the debts of some countries when they really needed it.
Oh, and I don't see companies in L.A. countries pouring billions of dollars in research, development, equipment, and labor into huge operations in the U.S. just to see those operations nationalized by the U.S. If you really want capitalism to work in Latin America, your countries need to honor land ownership, leases, and license rights. Nationalizing or threatening to nationalize huge foreign investments does not exactly encourage people to invest more money in your countries. Your specific country may not be doing this, but you lumped Latin America into a group and didn't make clear a specific country to debate.
The U.S. is not responsible for the entire world's economy. We do what we can for us. You need to do what you can for yourselves. That's the way trade works. Yes, we have a huge infrastructure here in the U.S., but we've built that. No other country came in and built the Roosevelt Interstate System. No other country came in and built the nationwide electric grid. No other country invented the assembly line, the microprocessor, and the airplane. Despite the fact that Hollywood studios make some really awful movies and on the whole aren't very artistic, they do invest the money into production, advertising, and distribution that makes American films the most widely watched in the world. No other country built our Atlantic to Pacific railway. No other country is the founding place and headquarters of Coca-Cola, Microsoft, or General Motors.
In order to have the economic advantages of a strong economy and solid infrastructure, you must invest in a strong economy and solid infrastructure. This is not just investment of money. It also involves laws, education, and taxes geared towards letting people make money. Our education system in the U.S. is not as good as it should be, and unfortunately doesn't show signs of improvement in the short term. However, there is still the right mix of influences to make the U.S. competitive if not to keep us in the top spot economically. Your government and the people in your country may have different priorities. In the U.S., where money is the primary tool to solve problems, a strong economy is a priority that ranks soon after national security. If your country has some other priorities that come before developing the economy that take a back seat to the economy in the U.S. and you've acheived those priorities, then you're just as successful as we are. It's about priorities.
In the U.S., socialism scares us, not because it's inherently bad but because it takes away on of the the greatest hopes we have -- that we'll be able to make enough money to take care of most of our problems. The U.S. was founded on a distrust of government to serve the needs of the people. Unfortunately, too many Americans these days don't understand that. If a socialist country really can serve the needs of its people well enough and isn't oppressive like many have been, then it wouldn't be so bad for people who could trust it to stay that way.
User freedoms are a big part of it. It's also about the original author's freedoms and rights.
If Linux was moved wholesale to the GPLv3 with the anti-DRM language, Linus and the contributing authors would have their code locked away from certain users they may want to be able to use their code. So the ability of the authors to give their code to all users, regardless of the use, would be removed by v3.
The FSF doesn't believe in DRM, and that's fine. They want a license that precludes the use of a project with DRM or for DRM, and that's fine.
The GPLv2 does not say you can't use software licensed under it with DRM or for DRM. It would be a different license if that were tacked on. The authors have a right to say they won't use that license. It's their code, and it's not right of people to tell them how they must license it.
Let the FSF have a license that bans software licensed with it being used for DRM or with DRM. Let people who don't like that license not use it. It would probably be in the interests of all involved to have a GPLv3 in the spirit of GPLv2 that fixes things and updates language without new restrictions on use. If the FSF wants an anti-DRM license, they should draft one separately or make it an optional addendum to GPLv3 if they really want GPLv3 to be used. Right now, they are trying to bully projects into the anti-DRM language by pointing out that there are other improvements in v3 and that those improvements cannot come to a project without the anti-DRM language. If they want those improvements to become mainstream, they need to have them in a license that will be accepted as mainstream.
First, what part of "I have nothing against the French specifically" do you not understand?
Neither of these countries mentioned is peopled by pedigreed thoroughbreds raised in kennels. So yes, Arabs, Persians, Jews, Assyrians, Kurds, and others were affected. I chose to mention Persians. The very idea that you can lump a people together by a national boundary while discounting totally blood and heritage is one of the biggest problems in international politics. Another disasterous misconception is that primary language alone determines everythign about a culture.
No doubt many of the Arabic-speaking people in previously Persian areas are Persian-descended people who happen to speak the language that has been more influential in their area in the recent past. Syria is mostly Arabs, but they are largely mixed Arabs. Lebanon has a distinct and mentionable although small Persian minority along with other pure and mixed peoples.
Consider similarly that not all Americans are British descendents just because Germans, Russians, Poles, Italians, French, and others learned the language when they immigrated. There are also Mexicans (Spanish, Native, and mixed), ethnic Jews, religious Jews, Arabs, Africans (descended both of slaves and free people), Japanese, Koreans, Chinese (from differing cultural regions of China), Vietnamese, Indians, Pakistanis (whose country used to be part of India), and others in the U.S. who speak English every day but do not consider themselves purely American. Some of them live in ethnic neighborhoods, while some do not. Some consider themselves members of their anscestral homelands who happen to live in the U.S. while others consider themselves mostly American. Britain, France, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and any other place with lots of immigration have similar situations. Must Syria and Lebanon be different because you know when the political boundary changed?
Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Israel (Palestine at the time), and Saudi Arabia were all occupied by the French and English. The only reason Iran was not under French control was because it was under British control. The only reason Syria and Lebanon were not under British control is that they were under French control. It was a shared split of the area, and the French and English can be rolled in together as occupiers of the whole area. So perhaps I should mention Arabs instead of Persians to make you happy, considering Algeria and Egypt along with Lebanon and Syria? Or would the carving up of the Middle East by two superpowers be considered one act?
And what about France making deal after deal with the current regime in Iran which is oppresive against its own people? Is that Persian enough for you?
Damn, a spelling troll crawls out and we have to start having a complete history lesson because people are trying to pick nits about something they haven't even considered fully.
The Glorious Church of the United States doesn't officially believe in asking for Armageddon to occur in our lifetimes. There are many people in the U.S. who want that, possibly including the President from the look of things, but popularity of a religious belief in a country doesn't make it a state religion.
The United States is, despite what people say about it being a Jewish nation or a Christian nation or a Judeo-Christian nation, governed by a secular government. As a group of people with similar values living in a shared space, you might be able to say it's a religious "nation", but that religion is not endorsed officially by the government.
Because Lebanon and Syria are where most Persians live (that area of the world being known as Persia), and that part of the world was under French protectionism by order of the League of Nations between those two World Wars?
I have nothing against the French specifically. I don't have a problem with colonialism specifically for that matter. It's possible to colonize without oppressing people -- maybe not likely, but possible. I just have a problem with foreign powers maintaining rule by force over people who wish to be independent.
France and Britain until the last hundred or hundred and fifty years were not on the... best of terms.
First degree? Maybe second or third degree. I'd think first degree disadvantages based on travel would require going to places more like Sudan or southeastern Afghanistan. Hell, I'd rather be in Jalalabad, Kabul, Beirut, Gaza, Mosul, Najaf, or Baghdad than Darfur right now. I'd avoid Georgia (the country) right now, too.
You have a right to use hyperbole, but wow. Hey, I'm an American and I'm unhappy about how things are going here lately. There are still lots of places I'd consider riskier to travel than the U.S. right now.
I hope you're indeed exaggerating at least a bit. If not, perhaps you need to check what's going on elsewhere for some context.
In the U.S., 'colour' reads ass if it would be pronounced 'cohloor' or 'cohlowr'. It is pronounced more like 'culler', but just dropping the 'u' makes it much more clear that it represents the apperance of light bouncing off of something instead of it referring to one who weeds out members of a set.
There was a big movement in the U.S. to get rid of old baggage not needed from colonial times ('colonial times' being pronounced "when North America was Britain's bitch" if you like). Unpronounced letters in some cases were part of that baggage. So was a state religion. Silly royals were too, but we in the U.S. seem to have hotel heiresses and movie stars to take up the tabloid slack. Eventually powdered wigs fell by the wayside in the U.S. too. Besides, 'colour' makes clear its French roots. The English if anyone should understand getting rid of French influence where it's unneccessary (well, after the Vietnamese, Persians, and those from Côte d'Ivoire -- all of whom have had abundant French influence more recently).
Before you continue attacking educational systems, please note that "United States" is a proper noun and should therefore be capitalized in proper English (even the main British dialect). You were not speaking of the idea of nation states or of all "states" in the U.S., Mexico, and other countries that use the term for their political subdivisions, were you? Now maybe your questioning of other people's use of the English language, especially when they are making jokes as the parent of your post appears to have been, might not seem so hypocritical.
Congratulations, you trolled and got responses and a mod of 'Insightful'. Sorry if this response was a bit more rational and level than you wanted. Now, I wonder if you're going to lecture the moderator of your post on the differences between 'insight' and 'incite'.
So what you're saying, in effect, is that it's acceptable according to the Constitution and the intent of the founders for the Federal statutes to allow the government, or individuals acting on behalf of the government, to be allowed to break the previous Federal statutes after they have been broken? And that this is the case even if it is clearly to the detriment of the people?
Any kind of misconduct and illegal acts can be undertaken by the Federal government without restrictions and without any redress on behalf of the people if this is the case. After all, the only way a law matters to a criminal is that it's enforced and there is a penalty for its breakage.
So, effectively, the Constitution of the United States, as written and as the writers of it intended, does not limit the power of the government against the people so long as that government can change the laws or the Constitution itself to protect the government employees _after_ the fact?
That's some seriously shaky ground there. I'm not a lawyer. From the authority with which you're responding, it seems you might be. Please tell me that's not the case. If it starts becoming the view of lawyers that the Federal government is not at all accountable to the people, it's time for a revolution. Hopefully a bloodless one using ballots, but if that becomes the prevailing view, I'll take what I can get.
But with the wonderful world of pump-and-dump, you get to sell your stake in the company while your bluff is high, and let some poor schmuck on the other end of a public market pocket the loss when the cards all turn face up.
That's decent reasoning, but starting from a mistaken premise.
You see, the decision you cite has the _defendant_ being protected from the _government_.
In the case of what we're talking about, the defendant _is_ the government. Allowing the government to act in the way the White House and the Congress are trying to allow hurts the non-government defendants in any investigation and trial for which the surveillance is used. By legalizing what the _government_ is doing after the fact, it _narrows_ the rights of the _defendant_ after the fact. The illegality of the surveillance makes it inadmissable as evidence. That's a legal defense.
Legalizing an illegal act of the investigators or of the prosecution after the fact _is_ something "which deprives one charged with crime of any defense available according to law at the time when the act was committed".
By this reasoning, making it legal to tap a phone without a warrant in certain cases cannot be done for wiretaps that have already happened. Making the framework for when the warrant has to be issued different in the future is another story. In any case, I'd still be willing to wager the courts won't say no law has been broken _by_the_government_ if the government tries to cover its ass after the fact.
They could have easliy bought SCO before going to court. That's what they would have done before settling.
IBM's confident that this case will help them in the long run, or they wouldn't be involved in the litigation at all.
There was a bunch of speculation before the pretrial hearings even started that IBM might buy SCO, liquidate the corporation, and open-source all the software assets, and be done with the whole mess. Winning in court proves things about the GPL, the open development of software, the honesty of IBM as a corporation, and a few other things that a buyout or a settlement never could.
What these people need to learn is that Congress can pass no ex post facto laws. It's in the Constitution of the United States of America.
Some court decisions have said that ex post facto laws only apply to not punishing criminals for things that were made illegal after the acts took place. I'd be willings to wager that the same courts would say you can't stop someone from being punished for something that was illegal at the time, either.
I wasn't aware iTunes recorded DVDs. Thanks for pointing out to Apple and all us /. readers that iMovie is redundant.
Before you mention how WMP does more than burn DVDs... wait! WMP burns DVDs? Thanks for letting us know that, too!
Oh, and before you bring up how "WMP" isn't jargon itself, about how WMP does less but it easier, etc, notice a couple of things:
1. MPlayer plays media very simply, too.
2. The parent of your post was talking about doing something that WMP does not do. Recording a DVD does involve more knowledge than playing one, hence the additional terminology that you're calling "soup of jargon".
I've read some of your older posts, so it's clear to me you're not an MS astroturfer. That wasn't clear just from reading your one response here, though. Point taken that perceived complexity chases away some users. However, the post to which you were responding was talkign about something that is necessarily more complex than playing a DVD or a single media file.
Because this cools the computer, as opposed to setting it ablaze.
Maybe open the case, figure out which line the RFID reader uses to signal a successful authentication to the player, and hard-wire power to that line. I doubt they'd require an actual packet protocol from the reader to the player, but if they do then there will be a mod chip involved instead of tapping a power lead and jumpering over the reader.
If that happened, what would we do with all of those 3-acre buildings that would be sitting empty? Nobody has that many warehouse raves to throw.
There are some people who will buy an Xbox in order to play a single game on it. Some will buy the hardware because they have the games but their hardware failed or was lost in a fire or something. Microsoft's decision to sell the hardware as a loss leader does not obligate the buyer of that hardware to make further purchases in order to cover MS's bottom line.
That being said, there's still the little matter of having to hack the hardware to install Linux on it. Running a version of Linux on the Xbox that makes use of the firmware of the product could be argued to be using a derivative work based on the firmware. IANAL, so hard telling if that'd hold up. Currently the courts seem to support the idea that making things compatible with firmware isn't copyright infringement. Legal precedents get lots of consideration, but new decisions don't _always_ go the same way as the precedent. There's a chip specifically that has to be hacked to allow Linux to boot on the Xbox. That code on that chip has to be functionally identical (at the chip-to-chip interface level) to the original other than the copy protection. That's a stronger argument for copyright infringement, unless the chip was black-box cloned. It's also the same replacement chip in many cases that is illegal under the DMCA for helping people play counterfeit games. There may be a chip that bypasses the OS DRM but leaves intact the valid Xbox game DRM, but I haven't seen one.
The good news is that controllers work similarly for PCs, and Linux runs on PCs. Hopefully it'll be a short road between the Xbox prototype and getting this to work with hardware that's mroe commoditized. I doubt MS would care about the research as long as this thing doesn't start getting sold as an Xbox hack. They might even be able to use it as positive press.
If that's not saying he was wrong, I'm not sure what is. I was saying that the metaphor of a series of tubes for a series of network circuits itself is not unreasonable once you accept the metaphor of a single tube standing for a single circuit. I thought that was clear based on the context of the thread, but I may be mistaken about what's clear to other people since it's always going to be clear to me what I meant.
What in particular led you to believe I was addressing you singly and specifically when I was talking about the many people pounding the Senator's flub into the ground?
That's right, we're talking about a bunch of people feeling superior to a Senator of the United States. He should be better informed, and all those script kiddies and wannabees who have trashed him over and over on this one topic should be better equipped to mock him before doing so.
That's another metaphor, and from a particular point of view does make more sense. I think you're putting more emphasis on the word "series" than it really deserves here. The Senator probably didn't mean "run all together, end to end, with no branches" when he used that word. He was probably using "series" to mean "group of similar things". He probably could have picked a better word, but then again we've already agreed he could have picked a better overall metaphor. This metaphor he used is still not the general problem people are making it out to be. It has flaws, but it's not the worst metaphor for a data network.
That definitely should be what it's about. The people about which I'm complaining are those that have no goal in mind other than reminding people about the one blunder. If people want to discuss the implications of the general problem and how to fix it, that's a whole different level of discourse than, "First post OMFG! In Soviet Russia, you get delayed for days in the series of tubes while an internet waits for you!"
I'm only defending him to a point. He should study more about a topic before he speaks about it in Congress. It's not this one screwy speech that's the problem, though. The metaphor in question isn't the problem. The problem is that senators and representatives regularly vote and even lobby each other on topics they don't understand. The use of the tubes metaphor isn't necessarily a sign that Ted Stevens doesn't understand the Internet. The facts that he mangled the metaphor internally and that he referred to an email message as "an internet" are signs that he doesn't understand it. There's a big difference. The fact that he started with a flawed but workable metaphor shows he had some inclination to have someone explain it to him beforehand. He should have picked a better person to explain it, spent more time asking them questions, or listened more carefully. At least he made some small effort, which is more than most of the Senate seems to be doing on most of the bills.
In short, picking on Te
1. I've read the transcript. The guy got it wrong. If you haven't read my post, you shouldn't comment. I never claimed he got it right.
/. it hurts!" will never breed anyway, because the kids of those people will likely be just as fucked in the head if not moreso.
2. If you read my post and still feel superior because you can point out where one person was wrong about one thing, then reread the post.
3. Obviously you don't understand plumbing as well as you claim to understand networking. You can balance flow of fluids through multiple paths, too. My house, for example, has a pressure equalization valve on the hot water line from two water heaters so they drain and refill at the same rate. You can also filter unwanted things out of your fluids, selectively accept fluids from one set of pipes (or "tubes") or not, and can, in fact, engineer the system for more volume (bigger pipe, like bandwidth) or higher speed (higher pressure, a bit similar to lower latency). As a matter of fact, some older electronics textbooks explain things in terms of plumbing for electrons. There should no doubt that network packets traversing a network are largely modeled on electrons traveling through circuits. Some parts of the plumbing/pneumatics/hydraulics metaphors in fact carry over well, while others don't carry over well at all. For that matter, several things in electronics itself don't necessarily carry over very well to networking. When was the last time you had to adjust the voltage/amperage of your HTTP traffic to make sure it didn't cause a fire while still getting the same throughput?
Again, if you feel you are a superior human being because you know this one guy was wrong about one topic, go donate your naughty bits to someone who can get some use out of them. Hopefully people with a mindset that "oh, the old guy is wrong! I'm so cool to be the 8798th person to point it out on
This is based on the law outside the contract. I was stating that there's nothing in the GPL that states specifically that the author can't. So, in effect, the author could under any circumstances acceptable within standard, accepted contract law. You're right that those would be narrow, and it's probably good to point that out.
Anyone who tried to distribute the newer versions under the GPL would be in violation of both licenses, so their rights under both licensess would be pretty much revoked on those grounds. The older versions that are fully GPL shouldn't be a problem, which is why Debian is using those. Anyone who had a copy of the GPLed version can redistribute the GPLed version freely. They are not entitled to additions and derivations made by the original author and released under the new license just because the old code is GPLed.
The author of a GPLed bit of code can at any time make new versions that are not GPLed. The author is not bound by having released a GPLed version to license his derivative works under the GPL, because the GPL is not what gave him the rights to make those derivative works. The posting earlier about people being required to give licenses to third parties of any derivative works could be taken out of context. They do not have anything to do with the rights of the original author, but only the rights of licensees.
You're not redistributing it if you wrote it. You're distributing it. There is no 're-'. 'You' is very specifically defined to be someone other than the software's author by the license.
The GPL is a license which grants people other than the author certain rights, including redistribution. It requires certain things in exchange for those rights, including the terms of that redistribution.
Schilling cannot be told he cannot choose a different license for new code he wrote just because he released the old code it goes with was previously released under a different license. The new code he wrote can be licensed any way he wants. He can release the old code under that license too. The only question becomes what other people can do with what he had already released under the old license.
Debian has code which was licensed to them under the GPL. They are planning to use that to make a derivative work under the GPL. I don't see anything anywhere in the GPL saying that the copyright holder cannot revoke the license of a third party, only that the redistributor cannot.
I don't see anything here other than speculation about Schilling planning to revoke the GPL on the older, GPL-licensed code that Debian plans to fork in the first place. It's reasonable speculation about what could possibly happen, but it's still speculation.
Even the politician at which you people are poking fun called it a "a series of tubes".
Seeing circuits as tubes, routers as pressure balance valves, firewalls as filters, certain types of DoS attacks as plugging a tube, and dropping packets as a leaky tube all are sensible enough extensions of a "fat pipe" metaphor.
Just get over yourselves, people. Just because someone knows a better metaphor for something doesn't mean he knows any more how that thing actually works. It also doesn't make him any smarter or overall any more knowledgeable about the world as a whole than the guy who doesn't know the exact right metaphor to use.
Knowing one thing more than one other person about one topic only proves that you know one more thing about one topic than one other person.
If your biggest thrill in life is to one-up the technical knowledge (on one topic!) of a guy in a non-technical field who's thirty to sixty years older than you, then go ahead and feel superior. While you're at it, donate your sexual organs to science or medicine so someone gets some use out of them. Maybe that way you can brag about something more notable than, "3y3 NOS3 MOR3 THUN THA 0LD GUY B0wT THA INTARW3B! 3y3 AM A L33T!!!1"
In some cases, meatbags with aimbots. I'd hardly call that "people" at all.
Oh, and in reference to your sig, Windows XP does still need to be rebooted more than it should. So much less than previous versions it's hilarious, but still more than it should need.
First, the disclaimer: I'm not a broker, advisor, or fund manager. I don't currently hold any MS stock directly. MSFT is held by one of the funds in which I invest. This post is just my quick-thought opinion. The contents don't constitute advice and shouldn't be read as a fully-considered position.
Maybe once the growth slows sufficiently, the board will decide to pay dividends. Paying dividends during the growth phase can hurt the company's cash flow. Going from phenomenal growth without dividends to slow growth with dividends at the right point in the curve might be a good decision.
Hopefully MS can find that point for the sake of their investors. If not, those investors may very well sell at the point they feel neither dividends nor growth make the stock a growth proposition in their portfolios. Instead, they may push the board out and elect a board more in tune with the idea of dividends. If either of those things happens, it hurts MS because obviously the current board hasn't been doing too bad a job financially (ethically and legally are another question). With the amount of MS stock held by large institutional investors and large funds, it'd really cause a resounding thud if the sales orders started piling up. I'm sure the shares wouldn't go down too far and would eventually come back up, but I'd bet it could be a big correction.