Good thing that's not happening then isn't it? For years now I've been hearing alternately about how the horrible editors and/or admins are destroying Wikipedia or how it's fundamentally impossible for it to work. Meanwhile, Wikipedia has steadily improved to become a wonderfully useful resource. I rarely search for something I think should be there and don't find it. I do occasionally have to wade through spam and vanity pages. Based on my experience, the rate of notability purges is somewhere between just right and not quite enough.
"Try reading the constition some time instead of thinking you know what it says."
You mean like Amendment V, where it says "No person shall... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law..." and makes absolutely no mention of "citizen" at all? Time to take your own advice, bucko.
"'While it may seem strict, it's necessary to prevent the vanity and spam pages from appearing all over Wikipedia.'
And this matters...why?"
Because when I search for something on Wikipedia, I am looking for a different sort of result than if I search for it on LiveJournal, Blogger, or the Web at large. Currently, I generally find it. (Thanks Wikipedia admins!)
"All to keep the precious namespace clear of 'low quality' articles (as if there aren't enough low-quality articles already -- it's kind of par for the course when you have user-editable content)."
So you think because Wikipedia includes some poor content, it's unjustified to try to improve it? In my experience, the "par" on Wikipedia is pretty good.
There is no contradiction. He said he doesn't believe the anecdote.. I assure him its falsehood is clearly documented. He suggests it is the sort of thing NASA does. I disagree, and point out the actual facts of the pen thing as a counterexample.
I don't care about grease pencils, nor know why NASA chose not to use them. Possibly just that they had great pens that did the job and were free. Also, whatever fabulous advantages "modern" grease pencils may have are irrelevant to decisions made in the 1960s.
So by your theory: If someone put a modified Linux kernel up for download, but didn't get the source up until five seconds later, they are permanently forbidden from ever distributing Linux forever. Yes, that makes sense I'm sure.
"Note that I don't believe the anecdote about NASA spending a million developing a pen, but like the military, they have a notable habit of spending ludicrous sums on items that are identical to ones that can be bought much more cheaply (i.e. same manufacturer, same parts, but the military version is painted green and costs 25 times as much)."
It's not really a matter of what you beleive; the facts are on record. NASA initially used pencils, but wanted something better for the reasons the parent mentions. I don't know if they considered grease pencils, but off the top of my head they don't write very finely. I'm sure they would use them in appropriate circumstances, but even on the ground, there isn't much I'd consider pen and grease pencil equally suited for.
In any case, I hear NASA has this habit you mention, but the example is always the pens. They didn't spend a ludicrous sum on the pens that replaced the pencils. They spent zero dollars. Nothing. Pens suited for space were developed and given to them completely for free.
"But once the GPL is violated, the violator no longer has a license to distribute that code unless the copyright holder explicitly gives them one - so merely releasing source for some stuff later isn't going to help at all."
This is incorrect. Once the infringer stops violating the GPL, they can grab again a copy of the code and redistribute it under the terms of the GPL, just like anyone else. Permission from the copyright holder would only be required to continue distribution without fixing the violation.
Assus has fixed the violation. Even if they wanted to be mean about it, holders of briefly violated copyrights have no significant leverage here.
"Releasing newly written code with equivalent functionality or even rewriting GPL code and keeping the product closed source..."
So the injunction is dealt with. There may be a minor financial penalty. The Judge will not do something that is the equivalent to burning the business down for infringement that does not reasonably justify that.
Someone briefly infringed a copyright, it appears to have been an honest mistake, and the infringement is no longer happening. If the copyright holder wants to push it they can probably get a minor financial penalty. That's all.
The Judge hearing your lawsuit. The point is if you appear to have made a reasonable mistake, and make a reasonable attempt to remedy it promptly, a reasonable judge is not going to impose any sort of unreasonable penalties. Whether the rights holder wants to be nice or not, a minor infraction doesn't mean they can burn the infringer's business down.
"This begs the question, are you also one of these anal pedants who freaks out when somebody uses the phrase "begs the question" in the popular sense?"
No. He would only be an anal pedant if we assume that he is correct, and the original juxtaposition was not technically ironic. I reject this assumption, and thus conclude that it is your post that not only begs the question, but does so ironically. Unless you or I, but not both, are being sarcastic. No, really.
The determination of whether something is ironic is often be made in outright obvious error, but it is in the best of times highly subjective. This makes the job of the conscientious anal pedant exceedingly difficult, and that of the carefree one all too easy. You can always say "No, that's not ironic; it would be ironic if X" where X is some more ironic scenario. "Contest to beat Bletchy Park at cracking German codes won by German" is certainly somewhat ironic. Of course it becomes less so as you look at the details, just like jokes aren't as funny when you explain them.
"Yep, and if I pour water into a bucket the water level will always remain at exactly 14,5%, no matter how much water goes in. Why? I have no idea, but it must be true."
The current percentage does not tell you what might happen in the future. You need to know or estimate the immigration rate, emmigration rate, birth rate, death rate, assimilation rate across the group you're interested in, and the population as a whole. I have looked these up, and based my conclusion on what I found. Why haven't you looked these up?
"I don't really give a shit."
You're still posting, so this statement is false. Or you're stupid. I'm guessing both.
You appear to have past experience with people who think you are a right wing Nazi. Though I never said that myself, I guess I'm unsurprised.
The EU tracks demographics of citizens/residents and birth and immigration rates. I certainly wouldn't dismiss those as propaganda. Of course, they don't support your conclusion, or anything remotely like it. So yeah, I'll probably dismiss anything that reports demographic numbers radically different from the official government ones. I'm sure you'll be happy to tell me about the vast conspiracy afoot amongst European census workers. Been infiltrated by the darkies I suppose?
Based on current trends, Muslims will always be a minority in Europe. "white Christians" may well lose the majority. To white ex-Christian Atheists.
"Suffice to say that I wouldn't be concerned about this if there wasn't anything to be concerned about." Now there is some logic! How can I fail to be convinced?
So that's a No? You don't have any numbers? Your assurance that Europe will inevitably become majority Muslim is not in fact based on anything at all? I mean, you're so offended when I call your statements xenophobic BS, surely you'd have some factual backing, right? Even a little?
You appear to have spent a good minute or two posting this post on slashdot, rather than volunteering for a worthy cause. How can you possibly justify that? I'd love to see you look into the eyes of a destitute child and explain you would help others, but you are too busy questioning exactly what charitable endeavors others support with their own money.
Well, apparently NIH could have used you:) From what I gathered, the facility was significantly misplanned for the size of the machine, hence the fences at certain points outside to keep cars/bikes/backhoes away from the wall. Also, several hallways inside had signs posted saying that if you walk through this section the mag stripe on you credit cards might suffer.
The geekiest bit was the monitors in the control room. A ways away from the machine, but it still twisted the scanbeam of a CRT pretty well, so the image showed up rotated by 30 degrees or so. They'd taken the low-tech solution, and built little wooden wedges to mount the monitors crooked to compensate. All these cock-eyed screens with straight pictures on them. And of course the emergency shut-down switch... Since the magnet is superconducting, cutting the power won't do anything, so if you hit that big red button it vents the coolant, the magnet warms and acquires resistance, and parts of it melt, but it's the only way to shut it down. Hanging from the button was a little price tag, with a lot of zeroes...
As far as the story, note that the backhoe did not actually get sucked anywhere, it was stopped in time. I did see the trench they were digging, which sure enough ran straight at the relevant fence, but I can't actually verify the drama of the confrontation. I only heard about it second hand over beer, so some embellishment may well have occurred.
"has magnet strength really increased many orders of magnitude in the last 15 years"
No, this was in the early nineties. Compared to ordinary MRI machines at your local hospital, the field strength of the NIH 4T human machine was orders of magnitude bigger back then. It had at the time a reasonable claim to being the biggest magnet in the world (depending how you counted).
Ten years ago my girlfriend at the time was involved in research using NIHs 4T human machine, a 3-story tall superconducting magnet. There was a fence outside part of the building with signs saying keep out, strong magnetic fields. But one day my girlfriend told me how the director had to go running outside because some workmen digging a trench were taking down a section of the fence, preparing to bring a backhoe through. After arguing a bit with the construction foreman about this being where the trench was supposed to go, and how he really didn't think a magnet was going to hurt his backhoe, she took one of their shovels and stuck it to the wall. That got their attention long enough to explain how many millions of dollars they would owe her if their backhoe gets sucked though the side of the building and breaks her magnet.
Dude, a billion people. 1 in 6 humans. If they wanted you dead, you wouldn't be posting on Slashdot. You are; ergo, Muslims don't generally want you dead.
"When they become the majority in Europe (and they will, unless something drastic happens)"
Got some solid demographics on that do you? Or just pulling xenophobic bs out your ass?
Muslim immigrants are no threat to western culture. When Muslims live in western countries, they will become western because our culture is better. Sorry you don't think so.
"There aren't a 'few' of them." Again, you're not dead. Fundamentalist whack jobs can't be a significant portion. You'd be dead.
Slashdot Mirror
Good thing that's not happening then isn't it? For years now I've been hearing alternately about how the horrible editors and/or admins are destroying Wikipedia or how it's fundamentally impossible for it to work. Meanwhile, Wikipedia has steadily improved to become a wonderfully useful resource. I rarely search for something I think should be there and don't find it. I do occasionally have to wade through spam and vanity pages. Based on my experience, the rate of notability purges is somewhere between just right and not quite enough.
"Try reading the constition some time instead of thinking you know what it says."
You mean like Amendment V, where it says "No person shall... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law..." and makes absolutely no mention of "citizen" at all? Time to take your own advice, bucko.
That's fine if you are content knowing that the conduct of the United States isn't any worse than that of al Quaeda.
Some have higher standards.
"'While it may seem strict, it's necessary to prevent the vanity and spam pages from appearing all over Wikipedia.'
And this matters...why?"
Because when I search for something on Wikipedia, I am looking for a different sort of result than if I search for it on LiveJournal, Blogger, or the Web at large. Currently, I generally find it. (Thanks Wikipedia admins!)
"All to keep the precious namespace clear of 'low quality' articles (as if there aren't enough low-quality articles already -- it's kind of par for the course when you have user-editable content)."
So you think because Wikipedia includes some poor content, it's unjustified to try to improve it? In my experience, the "par" on Wikipedia is pretty good.
I'm sorry your vanity page got deleted.
There is no contradiction. He said he doesn't believe the anecdote.. I assure him its falsehood is clearly documented. He suggests it is the sort of thing NASA does. I disagree, and point out the actual facts of the pen thing as a counterexample.
I don't care about grease pencils, nor know why NASA chose not to use them. Possibly just that they had great pens that did the job and were free. Also, whatever fabulous advantages "modern" grease pencils may have are irrelevant to decisions made in the 1960s.
So by your theory: If someone put a modified Linux kernel up for download, but didn't get the source up until five seconds later, they are permanently forbidden from ever distributing Linux forever.
Yes, that makes sense I'm sure.
"Why can't someone sneak in a tag or javascript that causes IE to dump..."
Um, they can. You can write javascript that crashes IE right now.
"thus generating migration away from the standard non-compliance beast?"
YMMV, but somehow I think it's more likely to generate migration away from your website.
"Note that I don't believe the anecdote about NASA spending a million developing a pen, but like the military, they have a notable habit of spending ludicrous sums on items that are identical to ones that can be bought much more cheaply (i.e. same manufacturer, same parts, but the military version is painted green and costs 25 times as much)."
It's not really a matter of what you beleive; the facts are on record. NASA initially used pencils, but wanted something better for the reasons the parent mentions. I don't know if they considered grease pencils, but off the top of my head they don't write very finely. I'm sure they would use them in appropriate circumstances, but even on the ground, there isn't much I'd consider pen and grease pencil equally suited for.
In any case, I hear NASA has this habit you mention, but the example is always the pens. They didn't spend a ludicrous sum on the pens that replaced the pencils. They spent zero dollars. Nothing. Pens suited for space were developed and given to them completely for free.
"But once the GPL is violated, the violator no longer has a license to distribute that code unless the copyright holder explicitly gives them one - so merely releasing source for some stuff later isn't going to help at all."
This is incorrect. Once the infringer stops violating the GPL, they can grab again a copy of the code and redistribute it under the terms of the GPL, just like anyone else. Permission from the copyright holder would only be required to continue distribution without fixing the violation.
Assus has fixed the violation. Even if they wanted to be mean about it, holders of briefly violated copyrights have no significant leverage here.
The quote under discussion:
"Releasing newly written code with equivalent functionality or even rewriting GPL code and keeping the product closed source..."
So the injunction is dealt with. There may be a minor financial penalty. The Judge will not do something that is the equivalent to burning the business down for infringement that does not reasonably justify that.
Someone briefly infringed a copyright, it appears to have been an honest mistake, and the infringement is no longer happening. If the copyright holder wants to push it they can probably get a minor financial penalty. That's all.
"Considered enough by who?"
The Judge hearing your lawsuit. The point is if you appear to have made a reasonable mistake, and make a reasonable attempt to remedy it promptly, a reasonable judge is not going to impose any sort of unreasonable penalties. Whether the rights holder wants to be nice or not, a minor infraction doesn't mean they can burn the infringer's business down.
"This begs the question, are you also one of these anal pedants who freaks out when somebody uses the phrase "begs the question" in the popular sense?"
No. He would only be an anal pedant if we assume that he is correct, and the original juxtaposition was not technically ironic. I reject this assumption, and thus conclude that it is your post that not only begs the question, but does so ironically. Unless you or I, but not both, are being sarcastic. No, really.
The determination of whether something is ironic is often be made in outright obvious error, but it is in the best of times highly subjective. This makes the job of the conscientious anal pedant exceedingly difficult, and that of the carefree one all too easy. You can always say "No, that's not ironic; it would be ironic if X" where X is some more ironic scenario. "Contest to beat Bletchy Park at cracking German codes won by German" is certainly somewhat ironic. Of course it becomes less so as you look at the details, just like jokes aren't as funny when you explain them.
You spend your time posting to someone who thinks you're an idiot about something you don't give a shit about. Stupid it is.
Move.
By way of the westernized understanding of "chi" that takes it from being somewhat vauge and meaningless to being entirely so? Sure. Beyond that? No.
"Yep, and if I pour water into a bucket the water level will always remain at exactly 14,5%, no matter how much water goes in. Why? I have no idea, but it must be true."
The current percentage does not tell you what might happen in the future. You need to know or estimate the immigration rate, emmigration rate, birth rate, death rate, assimilation rate across the group you're interested in, and the population as a whole. I have looked these up, and based my conclusion on what I found. Why haven't you looked these up?
"I don't really give a shit."
You're still posting, so this statement is false. Or you're stupid. I'm guessing both.
So you're saying it looks like this study might possibly only apply to typical real people?
You appear to have past experience with people who think you are a right wing Nazi. Though I never said that myself, I guess I'm unsurprised.
The EU tracks demographics of citizens/residents and birth and immigration rates. I certainly wouldn't dismiss those as propaganda. Of course, they don't support your conclusion, or anything remotely like it. So yeah, I'll probably dismiss anything that reports demographic numbers radically different from the official government ones. I'm sure you'll be happy to tell me about the vast conspiracy afoot amongst European census workers. Been infiltrated by the darkies I suppose?
Based on current trends, Muslims will always be a minority in Europe. "white Christians" may well lose the majority. To white ex-Christian Atheists.
"Suffice to say that I wouldn't be concerned about this if there wasn't anything to be concerned about."
Now there is some logic! How can I fail to be convinced?
So that's a No? You don't have any numbers? Your assurance that Europe will inevitably become majority Muslim is not in fact based on anything at all?
I mean, you're so offended when I call your statements xenophobic BS, surely you'd have some factual backing, right? Even a little?
You appear to have spent a good minute or two posting this post on slashdot, rather than volunteering for a worthy cause. How can you possibly justify that? I'd love to see you look into the eyes of a destitute child and explain you would help others, but you are too busy questioning exactly what charitable endeavors others support with their own money.
Well, apparently NIH could have used you :) From what I gathered, the facility was significantly misplanned for the size of the machine, hence the fences at certain points outside to keep cars/bikes/backhoes away from the wall. Also, several hallways inside had signs posted saying that if you walk through this section the mag stripe on you credit cards might suffer.
The geekiest bit was the monitors in the control room. A ways away from the machine, but it still twisted the scanbeam of a CRT pretty well, so the image showed up rotated by 30 degrees or so. They'd taken the low-tech solution, and built little wooden wedges to mount the monitors crooked to compensate. All these cock-eyed screens with straight pictures on them. And of course the emergency shut-down switch... Since the magnet is superconducting, cutting the power won't do anything, so if you hit that big red button it vents the coolant, the magnet warms and acquires resistance, and parts of it melt, but it's the only way to shut it down. Hanging from the button was a little price tag, with a lot of zeroes...
As far as the story, note that the backhoe did not actually get sucked anywhere, it was stopped in time. I did see the trench they were digging, which sure enough ran straight at the relevant fence, but I can't actually verify the drama of the confrontation. I only heard about it second hand over beer, so some embellishment may well have occurred.
"has magnet strength really increased many orders of magnitude in the last 15 years"
No, this was in the early nineties. Compared to ordinary MRI machines at your local hospital, the field strength of the NIH 4T human machine was orders of magnitude bigger back then. It had at the time a reasonable claim to being the biggest magnet in the world (depending how you counted).
So I still don't see the demographics. I'll give you a hint: Europe is less than 5% Muslim. What do you imagine the immigration rate to be?
Ten years ago my girlfriend at the time was involved in research using NIHs 4T human machine, a 3-story tall superconducting magnet. There was a fence outside part of the building with signs saying keep out, strong magnetic fields. But one day my girlfriend told me how the director had to go running outside because some workmen digging a trench were taking down a section of the fence, preparing to bring a backhoe through. After arguing a bit with the construction foreman about this being where the trench was supposed to go, and how he really didn't think a magnet was going to hurt his backhoe, she took one of their shovels and stuck it to the wall. That got their attention long enough to explain how many millions of dollars they would owe her if their backhoe gets sucked though the side of the building and breaks her magnet.
Dude, a billion people. 1 in 6 humans. If they wanted you dead, you wouldn't be posting on Slashdot. You are; ergo, Muslims don't generally want you dead.
"When they become the majority in Europe (and they will, unless something drastic happens)"
Got some solid demographics on that do you? Or just pulling xenophobic bs out your ass?
Muslim immigrants are no threat to western culture. When Muslims live in western countries, they will become western because our culture is better. Sorry you don't think so.
"There aren't a 'few' of them."
Again, you're not dead. Fundamentalist whack jobs can't be a significant portion. You'd be dead.
Lose the cowardly fear.