But not "fit" enough to turn some pedals... seriously, look at the picture of the guy on that thing; it's not going to get you dates.
If you want a bike, but need to impress people with how much money you spent, there are several manufacturers happy to help. I'd suggest a Cervelo. At 5K, you'll be looking at the bottom of their line, but the people who will be impressed by the name and not your skill won't know the difference.
How much wil you bet without reading the article? It says he spoke to "the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives as well as the National Security Agency.... Daugherty said he is still stunned that he had to get clearance from the NSA..." I am also stunned, even confused, but it doesn't look like a typo.
As far as the ATF:
"What's miserable is that the default stance on anything that remotely goes 'Bang' is 'Sorry, that's not allowed.'"
Interesting you should say that, since in the story in question, their response to a 700 pound artillery piece, was "No problem; we don't even need to know about that"
"The problem with this scenario is that marketing helps in the initial, but it does not help in the long term..."
I think the GPs point about the relative worth of their versus most slashdoters opinions on how to run a game company holds for the "long term" as well. EA was founded in 1982, at roughly the creation of the personal computer game market, and has been a dominant player in that market ever since.
Troll? For saying the Democratic party is frequently dis-unified? Are there people who don't think this is true? Weird.
See, this is why replying is better than moderating. I'm left bewildered as to what the mod though I was saying. Do they think I'm a conservative, bashing Democrats? Do they think I'm unfairly arguing the parent posts contention?
On the merits of the parent post: If someone is "part of the administration" the President can fire them, and because of this may be assumed to support their statements and actions, and may be fairly blamed for same. The president cannot fire members of the legislative branch. No matter how often he may agree with them, they are not members of his administration.
The ability to perceive that are more political actors than one red team and one blue team is surprisingly helpful in having any clue what's going on.
"so let's spread the blame equally between the D's and R's"
Please calculate the debt run up, inflation adjusted, per year, under Democratic presidents and Republican ones during your life time. Based on your handle, you are a similar age to me, so I expect you'll get a similar answer as what I got. Do you know what "order of magnitude" means? Bush roughly doubled the debt, but Reagan provided most of the first half. Why are we spreading blame equally for debt that was overwhelmingly incurred by Republicans?
Yes, but it's the Democratic party. Your assumption that they are unified, and effectively cooperate to achieve their goals just because they are in the same party and mostly have the same goals is amusing, but not supported by history.
If crazy Larry has a definition of the law of abiogenesis you would like to use, that will be fine. The reliability of source that defines the terms we use for our discussion is irrelevant. As long as we are using the same definition, we can have a meaningful discussion.
The fact that you attack the source of seemingly reasonable definitions without providing any of your own doesn't say much for you. If that definition doesn't describe what you're talking about, provide your own. Assuming, of course, you know what you are talking about, which frankly, is not apparent.
"From math professor in college: flip a coin 50 times. It comes up heads every time. What are the odds (assuming it's a true coin/flip each time) it'll come up heads next flip? 50%."
And in that situation, would you bet on the truth of your assumption that it's a true coin flip each time? Maybe you hit the ~1 in 10^15 chance, or maybe you missed something in your understanding of the coin. The latter seems radically more probable.
That's the point being made by the scientist in the article. When we find something that our current understanding says should be highly improbable, it might be the case that we just got (un)lucky. But the more reasonable assumption is that our current understanding is imperfect in some relevant way. Maybe we'll do a bunch more thinking about and observing of orbital dynamics and what have you and eventually conclude we just caught this planet in the one short time frame that we could have to see what we're seeing. But the best guess right now is that we missed something that makes this planet not as improbable as we thought.
They don't support an old version on a not-yet-released OS; so that's hardly shocking.
You correctly point out that some people might, even reasonably, want to run officially supported software.
Taking the original posters question at face value, their concern is that they only want to run officially supported software, and they wonder if there is an open source package they hasn't heard of previously for a not yet released OS that will answer this concern? Assuming, for the sake of argument, the poster is smarter than a turnip, they can figure out the answer is "No." So posting this to Ask Slashdot has some other motivation. I've no idea what.
"ask Intuit if their latest software in the Quicken line of accounting and retail software will run in 64bit windows."
Done (at least for Quicken). They say yes. ( http://quicken.intuit.com/personal-finance/deluxe-money-management.jsp ; system requirements at the bottom)
Drivers might be an issue, but I've been running 64bit windows for a while now, and have yet to encounter a 32 bit application that knew or cared.
Who are you referring to? Some Germans (notably von Braun) worked on american rockets after world war 2. I'm not aware of any Russians who figured prominently.
"First: Scientific Law vs. Theory. Perhaps you should learn the difference."
Some Scientific Laws are theories devised by egotistical scientists in the 18th Century. Otherwise, sometimes "Law" is also used to describe consistent observations with no explanatory backing; (e.g. the Law of Conservation of Energy: Energy never seems to be created or destroyed, we've no idea why it couldn't be, but it always works out that way, so we call it a Law and move on) Because most of the 18th Century guys were big on consistent observations, and didn't care much about explanatory theory (or were even philosophically opposed to it), many Laws fulfil both criteria. For example, Newtons Law of Gravity.
"Second: Are you seriously trying to make an argument based off of what wikipedia says? Let's try to deal with the facts, okay?"
No, he was quoting Wikipedia's definition of the scientific theory under discussion. If you prefer a different definition, please provide one.
"Most GPL or LGPL libraries have rough equivalents that are BSD." Yes, that is my experience as well.
" Some of them need a bit of work, but that's expectable, because fewer people choose to work on BSD libraries."
That's the very opposite of my experience, but if you say yours is different, I won't argue.
"If you want a different license, contact me. I'll make you an offer I consider reasonable. If you're proposing to publish the code BSD, an my code would be a trivial part of your project, I'll probably just want an exchange (so that I'll be certain I get a copy of your code under a GPL compatible license)."
If I were publishing it under BSD, you could use it under GPL regardless.
But actually, I'd be proposing to link your code into a closed source project that includes code under various licenses, some of which I couldn't give you source to even if I wanted to. If I had your code under a BSD license and I made fixes/improvements I'd probably share. to be nice and because it's in my interests: you'll get fixes from more people than just me, and put them all together into a next version, and I'll want my fixes in there. But if you were willing to give it to me BSD, there'd be no point in having gone with the GPL in the first place.
So the other option is for me to give you money for a copy of the code that I promise not to release, and which then becomes part of the couldn't-share-if-I-wanted-to problem. I've actually done this deal with a GPL lib in the past (as well as plain old commercial ones). But you're less likely to get fixes that way. If I pay, you'll more likely just get bug reports.
It is my belief that many people who use GPL expect it to do things it doesn't, and secure benefits (for them) that it won't. In short, I think for most people GPL walls your code off from use with too much other code for too little benefit.
But in any case, absolutely use what works for you. I don't know you or what you want from your license, so it is entirely possible GPLv3 or AGPL does exactly what you want, in which case you should use them. It's unlikely I'll wind up using your code or contributing to it if you do. I realize there may be considerations more important to you than the theoretical possibility of my contributing to your project (even considering how amazingly fabulous I am):)
Re:This isn't sensationalist, it's the truth
on
Leaving the GPL Behind
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"'Ripping off' in the sense that you're taking"
No, "being given."
"someone else's code"
code someone else wrote, and freely gave you your own copy of.
"sticking your own label on it, and selling it for $$$"
as they explicitly directed you should be able to do.
I have written code under a BSD license, and if anybody is mananging to do something productive with it, that's great. It is not possible to rip me off, as I do not expect or want anything. It is possible to be nice to me by sending me a fix if they find a bug, but even failing to be nice to me if they have the opportunity is not in any way ripping me off.
"It's basically proprietary software - with all the downsides of that"
Downsides like the food on my table or the time I can spend getting paid to work on open source support libraries?
" - given a leg-up by Open Source"
No. "Open Source" didn't do squat. I did. I wrote the code, and if I want to give it to whomever I please, what business is it of yours? Apparently some people want to give stuff away, but are bothered by the idea that someone else would profit from it. I'm not one of those people.
As a practical matter, I believe that by freely giving my code away, more people will be likely to use it, and whatever fraction take the option to be nice to me will add up to more people than if I put restrictions on it saying they have to be nice (and not even to me, but to hazily defined third parties). But if they don't take the opportunity to be nice to me, that's cool; maybe some anonymous fellow coders life was made slightly easier somewhere, and on the off chance karma exists, I get some. Or not. I'm giving it away. Getting nothing in return is completely acceptable; It is my expectation.
Re:This isn't sensationalist, it's the truth
on
Leaving the GPL Behind
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"THEN DON'T USE IT."
We won't. That's the whole point being made here. Frequently, authors of open-source library code would, for whatever reason, like it if that code were usable, and used, by a wide variety of people. A GPL/LGPL license may inhibit such adoption to a greater degree than those authors imagine.
Just because someone says choosing a particular license has cons as well as pros doesn't mean they are bitching. Unless that license is the GPL, which we all know is utterly perfect for all purposes, and no suggestion otherwise should ever be allowed.
"The vast majority of all libraries are licenced with the library/lesser version of the GPL so as to specifically avoid this problem"
But it doesn't really. I can't statically link to such a library, and have a tracking burden I wouldn't otherwise. It's not necessarily a huge deal, but an LGPL license makes the code less useful to me. If I can find a BSD alternative, it's already got a leg up. Even if I find a commercially licensed library I can just pay for, that's better for me.
"It invariably happens that some whiner redefines 'the freedom to set the license on their code' as 'the freedom to take someone else's work and treat it as their own exclusive personal private property'."
I want to take someone elses work and be able to treat it as my own property, absolutely. (the "exclusive personal private" part is irrelevant to me, and not true of BSD code anyway) That's the whole point of open source for me; it's just as good as if I wrote it myself, but I didn't have to. Closed source and GPL source are not as good. If you don't want that to happen, don't use a BSD license. Of course, if you don't want others profiting from your work, you shouldn't open source it at all. GPL in no way says anyone will cut you in on money they make off your code, or share improvements they make with you or anyone else that isn't their customer. If that's what you want, go closed source.
"So, 2short: do you care to elaborate how such a hardworking sap, only trying to do the right thing, will be able to confirm who really owns the quote? Is it from the AP original text? Was it added by the tertiary source? Was it a typo, and the story was really from Reuters?"
You're right! I hope they fix this tool soon, since until they do, confirming ownership of AP quotes will continue to be impossible, just as it always has been before now.
"That is supposed to be the point of this tool."
Not according to the AP, or any statement they have made. It seems, at the least, highly unlikely that the coder who wrote it thought that was the point. I mean, it's not that it does it badly. The tool makes no attempt whatsoever to do anything remotely related to ascertaining authorship.
You can assume someone is doing something bad, ignore alternative explanations, and construct fanciful little courtroom dramas in your head where they reveal their nefariousness. But while you're at it, why not imagine someone who finds such inventions persuasive? You could save yourself the time of posting here, and just enjoy the fantasy.
"I'm sorry, I am accustomed to practitioners of the English language using pronouns to refer to no more than one neutral subject at a time. You know, in order to avoid ambiguity."
You are 'accustomed' to good writing? On Slashdot? Really?
In any case, my sentence was poorly constructed and ambiguous, certainly. It had two possible meanings. Only one of those meanings was coherent and relevant in the context of the post I was replying to; the other was a nonsensical non-sequitor. You chose to assume I meant the latter, because you preferred being able to mock your own misinterpretation than being able to understand my meaning.
If you find such rhetorical wanking satisfying, enjoy. Personally, I don't find it leads to interesting conversations.
"However, (and IANAL but) providing licences to rights you do not own has got to be illegal"
The guy lied to the AP (or rather their software), telling them they owned a piece of text and offering to pay them for it. Taken in by his deception, they accepted the money. When he said "Gotcha!", they gave the money back (with, one assumes, some befuddlement). Clearly, they have committed a dastardly crime.
"If you say something, I assume it is ok to claim that you said it."
Reading comprehension: Try it sometime. Hint : What is the 'sentence in question' I'm reffering to? Bonus hint: It is seven words long, but I never said it, so you shouldn't claim I did just because I counted the words.
On the other hand, if you send me fifty bucks for a copyright license to the sentence I never said, that's cool. I won't sue you for copyright violation, but unlike the AP, I'd keep the money.
"This article is about licence.icopyright.net, a self-service website created by AP specifically to charge for and provide copyright licence to article quotes."
Oddly, I don't see "verify and confirm authorship" in even your list of the sites intended functions. Almost like it makes no attempt to do any such thing.
Right. A "simple grep" against the archive of all AP documents. I'm not sure why you think such a single archive exists, why you think grep would be suitable way to search it.
In any case, why would that be smart? How much money is it 'smart' for a businesses to spend on efforts whose only purpose is to make sure people don't find ways to trick the business into accepting money for no reason?
"What if you made up a quote like "Today, Reuters announced they were declaring bankrupcy" and licensed it from the AP. Could you then attribute that quote to the AP?"
No, obviously.
"Do you think their system should allow that?"
If I tell you "The sentence in question is 7 words long.", do you interpret that as authorization to claim I said it? MSWord does word counts, does that mean I can attribute anything I type into it as an official MS position? Does Chewbacca live on Endor?
"AP's clusterfuck of a piece of software they're using to determine what's theirs and what's not is the issue here. "
There is no such piece of software. AP makes no claim that their software does that, nor anything like it. Their software counts the number of words in a passage you provide. That's all. I appears to achieve this simple task perfectly. Whether this is due to good beta testing, we can only speculate.
Slashdot Mirror
Where I live, if you block the bike lane going 12mph on a motorized vehicle, there may be violence.
But not "fit" enough to turn some pedals... seriously, look at the picture of the guy on that thing; it's not going to get you dates.
If you want a bike, but need to impress people with how much money you spent, there are several manufacturers happy to help. I'd suggest a Cervelo. At 5K, you'll be looking at the bottom of their line, but the people who will be impressed by the name and not your skill won't know the difference.
"I'm willing to bet it's a typo for NFA,..."
... Daugherty said he is still stunned that he had to get clearance from the NSA ..." I am also stunned, even confused, but it doesn't look like a typo.
How much wil you bet without reading the article? It says he spoke to "the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives as well as the National Security Agency.
As far as the ATF:
"What's miserable is that the default stance on anything that remotely goes 'Bang' is 'Sorry, that's not allowed.'"
Interesting you should say that, since in the story in question, their response to a 700 pound artillery piece, was "No problem; we don't even need to know about that"
"The problem with this scenario is that marketing helps in the initial, but it does not help in the long term..."
I think the GPs point about the relative worth of their versus most slashdoters opinions on how to run a game company holds for the "long term" as well. EA was founded in 1982, at roughly the creation of the personal computer game market, and has been a dominant player in that market ever since.
Troll? For saying the Democratic party is frequently dis-unified? Are there people who don't think this is true? Weird.
See, this is why replying is better than moderating. I'm left bewildered as to what the mod though I was saying. Do they think I'm a conservative, bashing Democrats? Do they think I'm unfairly arguing the parent posts contention?
On the merits of the parent post: If someone is "part of the administration" the President can fire them, and because of this may be assumed to support their statements and actions, and may be fairly blamed for same. The president cannot fire members of the legislative branch. No matter how often he may agree with them, they are not members of his administration.
The ability to perceive that are more political actors than one red team and one blue team is surprisingly helpful in having any clue what's going on.
"so let's spread the blame equally between the D's and R's"
Please calculate the debt run up, inflation adjusted, per year, under Democratic presidents and Republican ones during your life time. Based on your handle, you are a similar age to me, so I expect you'll get a similar answer as what I got. Do you know what "order of magnitude" means? Bush roughly doubled the debt, but Reagan provided most of the first half. Why are we spreading blame equally for debt that was overwhelmingly incurred by Republicans?
"They are the same party,"
Yes, but it's the Democratic party. Your assumption that they are unified, and effectively cooperate to achieve their goals just because they are in the same party and mostly have the same goals is amusing, but not supported by history.
If crazy Larry has a definition of the law of abiogenesis you would like to use, that will be fine. The reliability of source that defines the terms we use for our discussion is irrelevant. As long as we are using the same definition, we can have a meaningful discussion.
The fact that you attack the source of seemingly reasonable definitions without providing any of your own doesn't say much for you. If that definition doesn't describe what you're talking about, provide your own. Assuming, of course, you know what you are talking about, which frankly, is not apparent.
"From math professor in college: flip a coin 50 times. It comes up heads every time. What are the odds (assuming it's a true coin/flip each time) it'll come up heads next flip? 50%."
And in that situation, would you bet on the truth of your assumption that it's a true coin flip each time? Maybe you hit the ~1 in 10^15 chance, or maybe you missed something in your understanding of the coin. The latter seems radically more probable.
That's the point being made by the scientist in the article. When we find something that our current understanding says should be highly improbable, it might be the case that we just got (un)lucky. But the more reasonable assumption is that our current understanding is imperfect in some relevant way. Maybe we'll do a bunch more thinking about and observing of orbital dynamics and what have you and eventually conclude we just caught this planet in the one short time frame that we could have to see what we're seeing. But the best guess right now is that we missed something that makes this planet not as improbable as we thought.
They don't support an old version on a not-yet-released OS; so that's hardly shocking.
You correctly point out that some people might, even reasonably, want to run officially supported software.
Taking the original posters question at face value, their concern is that they only want to run officially supported software, and they wonder if there is an open source package they hasn't heard of previously for a not yet released OS that will answer this concern? Assuming, for the sake of argument, the poster is smarter than a turnip, they can figure out the answer is "No." So posting this to Ask Slashdot has some other motivation. I've no idea what.
Or data processing, in the case of me or any of my users.
But in any case, manipulating video is something you see only rare specialized users doing?
"ask Intuit if their latest software in the Quicken line of accounting and retail software will run in 64bit windows."
Done (at least for Quicken). They say yes. ( http://quicken.intuit.com/personal-finance/deluxe-money-management.jsp ; system requirements at the bottom)
Drivers might be an issue, but I've been running 64bit windows for a while now, and have yet to encounter a 32 bit application that knew or cared.
Who are you referring to? Some Germans (notably von Braun) worked on american rockets after world war 2. I'm not aware of any Russians who figured prominently.
"First: Scientific Law vs. Theory. Perhaps you should learn the difference."
Some Scientific Laws are theories devised by egotistical scientists in the 18th Century. Otherwise, sometimes "Law" is also used to describe consistent observations with no explanatory backing; (e.g. the Law of Conservation of Energy: Energy never seems to be created or destroyed, we've no idea why it couldn't be, but it always works out that way, so we call it a Law and move on) Because most of the 18th Century guys were big on consistent observations, and didn't care much about explanatory theory (or were even philosophically opposed to it), many Laws fulfil both criteria. For example, Newtons Law of Gravity.
"Second: Are you seriously trying to make an argument based off of what wikipedia says? Let's try to deal with the facts, okay?"
No, he was quoting Wikipedia's definition of the scientific theory under discussion. If you prefer a different definition, please provide one.
"OK. Use BSD then."
:)
I do.
"Most GPL or LGPL libraries have rough equivalents that are BSD."
Yes, that is my experience as well.
" Some of them need a bit of work, but that's expectable, because fewer people choose to work on BSD libraries."
That's the very opposite of my experience, but if you say yours is different, I won't argue.
"If you want a different license, contact me. I'll make you an offer I consider reasonable. If you're proposing to publish the code BSD, an my code would be a trivial part of your project, I'll probably just want an exchange (so that I'll be certain I get a copy of your code under a GPL compatible license)."
If I were publishing it under BSD, you could use it under GPL regardless.
But actually, I'd be proposing to link your code into a closed source project that includes code under various licenses, some of which I couldn't give you source to even if I wanted to. If I had your code under a BSD license and I made fixes/improvements I'd probably share. to be nice and because it's in my interests: you'll get fixes from more people than just me, and put them all together into a next version, and I'll want my fixes in there. But if you were willing to give it to me BSD, there'd be no point in having gone with the GPL in the first place.
So the other option is for me to give you money for a copy of the code that I promise not to release, and which then becomes part of the couldn't-share-if-I-wanted-to problem. I've actually done this deal with a GPL lib in the past (as well as plain old commercial ones). But you're less likely to get fixes that way. If I pay, you'll more likely just get bug reports.
It is my belief that many people who use GPL expect it to do things it doesn't, and secure benefits (for them) that it won't. In short, I think for most people GPL walls your code off from use with too much other code for too little benefit.
But in any case, absolutely use what works for you. I don't know you or what you want from your license, so it is entirely possible GPLv3 or AGPL does exactly what you want, in which case you should use them. It's unlikely I'll wind up using your code or contributing to it if you do. I realize there may be considerations more important to you than the theoretical possibility of my contributing to your project (even considering how amazingly fabulous I am)
"'Ripping off' in the sense that you're taking"
No, "being given."
"someone else's code"
code someone else wrote, and freely gave you your own copy of.
"sticking your own label on it, and selling it for $$$"
as they explicitly directed you should be able to do.
I have written code under a BSD license, and if anybody is mananging to do something productive with it, that's great. It is not possible to rip me off, as I do not expect or want anything. It is possible to be nice to me by sending me a fix if they find a bug, but even failing to be nice to me if they have the opportunity is not in any way ripping me off.
"It's basically proprietary software - with all the downsides of that"
Downsides like the food on my table or the time I can spend getting paid to work on open source support libraries?
" - given a leg-up by Open Source"
No. "Open Source" didn't do squat. I did. I wrote the code, and if I want to give it to whomever I please, what business is it of yours? Apparently some people want to give stuff away, but are bothered by the idea that someone else would profit from it. I'm not one of those people.
As a practical matter, I believe that by freely giving my code away, more people will be likely to use it, and whatever fraction take the option to be nice to me will add up to more people than if I put restrictions on it saying they have to be nice (and not even to me, but to hazily defined third parties). But if they don't take the opportunity to be nice to me, that's cool; maybe some anonymous fellow coders life was made slightly easier somewhere, and on the off chance karma exists, I get some. Or not. I'm giving it away. Getting nothing in return is completely acceptable; It is my expectation.
"THEN DON'T USE IT."
We won't. That's the whole point being made here. Frequently, authors of open-source library code would, for whatever reason, like it if that code were usable, and used, by a wide variety of people. A GPL/LGPL license may inhibit such adoption to a greater degree than those authors imagine.
Just because someone says choosing a particular license has cons as well as pros doesn't mean they are bitching. Unless that license is the GPL, which we all know is utterly perfect for all purposes, and no suggestion otherwise should ever be allowed.
"The vast majority of all libraries are licenced with the library/lesser version of the GPL so as to specifically avoid this problem"
But it doesn't really. I can't statically link to such a library, and have a tracking burden I wouldn't otherwise. It's not necessarily a huge deal, but an LGPL license makes the code less useful to me. If I can find a BSD alternative, it's already got a leg up. Even if I find a commercially licensed library I can just pay for, that's better for me.
"It invariably happens that some whiner redefines 'the freedom to set
the license on their code' as 'the freedom to take someone else's work
and treat it as their own exclusive personal private property'."
I want to take someone elses work and be able to treat it as my own property, absolutely. (the "exclusive personal private" part is irrelevant to me, and not true of BSD code anyway) That's the whole point of open source for me; it's just as good as if I wrote it myself, but I didn't have to. Closed source and GPL source are not as good. If you don't want that to happen, don't use a BSD license. Of course, if you don't want others profiting from your work, you shouldn't open source it at all. GPL in no way says anyone will cut you in on money they make off your code, or share improvements they make with you or anyone else that isn't their customer. If that's what you want, go closed source.
"surely the first company to do so will then release under a MIT/Apache/BSD and the GPL version will simple fade away"
That would be my experience in a nutshell.
"So, 2short: do you care to elaborate how such a hardworking sap, only trying to do the right thing, will be able to confirm who really owns the quote? Is it from the AP original text? Was it added by the tertiary source? Was it a typo, and the story was really from Reuters?"
You're right! I hope they fix this tool soon, since until they do, confirming ownership of AP quotes will continue to be impossible, just as it always has been before now.
"That is supposed to be the point of this tool."
Not according to the AP, or any statement they have made. It seems, at the least, highly unlikely that the coder who wrote it thought that was the point. I mean, it's not that it does it badly. The tool makes no attempt whatsoever to do anything remotely related to ascertaining authorship.
You can assume someone is doing something bad, ignore alternative explanations, and construct fanciful little courtroom dramas in your head where they reveal their nefariousness. But while you're at it, why not imagine someone who finds such inventions persuasive? You could save yourself the time of posting here, and just enjoy the fantasy.
"I'm sorry, I am accustomed to practitioners of the English language using pronouns to refer to no more than one neutral subject at a time. You know, in order to avoid ambiguity."
You are 'accustomed' to good writing? On Slashdot? Really?
In any case, my sentence was poorly constructed and ambiguous, certainly. It had two possible meanings. Only one of those meanings was coherent and relevant in the context of the post I was replying to; the other was a nonsensical non-sequitor. You chose to assume I meant the latter, because you preferred being able to mock your own misinterpretation than being able to understand my meaning.
If you find such rhetorical wanking satisfying, enjoy. Personally, I don't find it leads to interesting conversations.
"However, (and IANAL but) providing licences to rights you do not own has got to be illegal"
The guy lied to the AP (or rather their software), telling them they owned a piece of text and offering to pay them for it. Taken in by his deception, they accepted the money. When he said "Gotcha!", they gave the money back (with, one assumes, some befuddlement). Clearly, they have committed a dastardly crime.
"If you say something, I assume it is ok to claim that you said it."
Reading comprehension: Try it sometime. Hint : What is the 'sentence in question' I'm reffering to? Bonus hint: It is seven words long, but I never said it, so you shouldn't claim I did just because I counted the words.
On the other hand, if you send me fifty bucks for a copyright license to the sentence I never said, that's cool. I won't sue you for copyright violation, but unlike the AP, I'd keep the money.
"This article is about licence.icopyright.net, a self-service website created by AP specifically to charge for and provide copyright licence to article quotes."
Oddly, I don't see "verify and confirm authorship" in even your list of the sites intended functions. Almost like it makes no attempt to do any such thing.
Right. A "simple grep" against the archive of all AP documents. I'm not sure why you think such a single archive exists, why you think grep would be suitable way to search it.
In any case, why would that be smart? How much money is it 'smart' for a businesses to spend on efforts whose only purpose is to make sure people don't find ways to trick the business into accepting money for no reason?
"What if you made up a quote like "Today, Reuters announced they were declaring bankrupcy" and licensed it from the AP. Could you then attribute that quote to the AP?"
No, obviously.
"Do you think their system should allow that?"
If I tell you "The sentence in question is 7 words long.", do you interpret that as authorization to claim I said it? MSWord does word counts, does that mean I can attribute anything I type into it as an official MS position? Does Chewbacca live on Endor?
"AP's clusterfuck of a piece of software they're using to determine what's theirs and what's not is the issue here. "
There is no such piece of software. AP makes no claim that their software does that, nor anything like it. Their software counts the number of words in a passage you provide. That's all. I appears to achieve this simple task perfectly. Whether this is due to good beta testing, we can only speculate.