At 244 British pounds per module (check out the article with the pictures) you're shelling out nearly $400[US] per module.
The simplest system would be just the receiver and TV interface, for $800. Timeshifting would be enabled for $1200.
One can build the same system with a Hauppage PVR card (hardware MPEG encoder) for $400 (w/o software). It wouldn't be as quiet or small, but you could get the same modularity with multiple systems. Since it has hardware mpeg encoding, a cheap fanless system, such as the Via epox boards, should be able to handle one card and hard drive, and still be able to decode one stream at the same time. This would be about the same saize as all the modules put together, in one quiet, cheap box.
Honestly, Having a house stand for a long time is a nice goal, but if you take into account how people use houses now compared to how they were used 25 years ago, and go back in 25 year increments, you will likely not see any period of time larger than 50 or 75 years where a single dwelling completely met the needs of its inhabitants.
You won't even be around by the time the house you're living in today falls apart - why build your house of the future to today's standards? At best you're wasting your time and money. At worst, your descendants are going to have to waste time and money tearing the useless eyesore down.
Sure, castles last a long time. People still love 'em. Have you tried living in one? They are very ill suited to us in so many ways. Adding modern conveniences is an expensive pain. Bringing them up to code, keeping them clean. Maintenance and upkeep. These costs alone could pay for a new house each year, nevermind the fact that you couldn't get a modern projection TV in more than a few rooms without a crane and a large window.
Unless you have an oracle, you aren't going to be able to design for the future. If the house of the future was designed and built in the 30s and 50s, we'd all have elevator shafts in our two and three story homes, except we wouldn't be using them because they don't have a good price/performance ratio. Therefore we'd convert them to badly sized closets and storage (well, I'd have a firepole in mine, but that's not the point). Even if you overdesigned chances are good that they would still not fit well.
However, as an academic excersize it is an interesting question. Kind of like putting Linux on the atari 2600. You could, but its more fun talking about it than it would be implementing it.
Show them the software license, specifically section seven which may or may not apply, and sections 11 and 12 which do apply:
Section 7 (in part): If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License.
Section 11 (all): BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
Section 12 (all): IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
So the straight answer is that the word indemnification does not occur in the license. Whether the license has no, little, or good indemnification should be judged by a lawyer. It seems as though the GPL protects those who wrote, modified, and distributed the programs in question from those who use the program, but doesn't seem to extend any special protections to those who use the program from their customers or other third parties.
My limited understanding of indemnity is that it's usually in a contract between a software supplier and a client, and the supplier usually carries insurance to cover indemnity claims. Thus, for Linux to have indemnity you'd have to contract to, say redhat, for the software and set up a clause in the contract specifically covering this issue.
Show them the software license, specicfically section seven which may or may not apply, and sections 11 and 12 which do apply:
Section 7 (in part): If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License.
Section 11 (all): BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
Section 12 (all): IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
So the straight answer is that the word indemnification does not occur in the license. Whether the license has no, little, or good indemnification should be judged by a lawyer. It seems as though the GPL protects those who wrote, modified, and distributed the programs in question from those who use the program, but doesn't seem to extend any special protections to those who use the program from their customers or other third parties.
They should have the same rights as movie publishers.
If the game, as a central feature to its plot, has a ton of realistic violence, especially in an environment the person is likely to be found in normally (a city), then the game should be rated "R" or "PG-13" and restricted to being sold to minors of the appropiate age or with their guardians.
This isn't rocket science. These are laws developed to help parents give children some freedom they couldn't have otherwise. I know that I can send my kid to the movies and he isn't going to see certian things. If I knew the theater might let him in to a rated R movie, I wouldn't let him go without me. He desires that little bit of freedom, and the movie theater, by setting up a basic agreement with me, is providing me with that assurance.
Secondly, I work in the video rental business. It would be easy for video rental places to sell or rent to minors only with a guardian's previously given permission since the kid would then have his/her own card. It's not so easy with retail outlets. If a game shop wants to set up such a system, though, it would be trivial to deal with.
The upshot is that this does not degrade your freedom, unless you're a minor. If you are a minor, you have very little real freedom anyway. If you think all minors should be able to access this material on their whim without parental consent then you have very different opinions about raising children than many people who actually have experience in doing so.
Think of it this way - there are lots of stupid, yet successful criminals out there. These criminals may not yet know or understand that they can be tracked via anonymous phone usage.
By illegalizing anonymous cell phones, the Swiss Gov't is simply saying to the criminals, "Hey, we know what a tough business it is keeping up with all the cloak and dagger stuff you guys have to do to stay free. Rather than letting you fall on your sword, er, cell phone, and get caught, we'll keep up with the latest technology others are employing against you, and ban common thieving tools which are vulnerable, thus saving you valuable time which you can spend in more productive pursuits, such as larceny, or our favorite, GTA 3."
The upside for criminals is that they'll have to work a little harder to get an anonymous or fake identity phone, but echelon will now have to check a much larger pool of phones for suspicious activity, instead of focusing most of its efforts on anonymous phones.
The upside is that switzerland != the world, so anonymous phones are still available elsewhere.
As a hosting provider, how far should I go to protect the rights of my clients
As far as they are paying you to protect their rights. If you go any further, you are bound to lose money. If you don't go as far as your user policies then you'll lose customers. End of equation.
while upholding the law
As far as the law requires you to uphold it. In DMCA land you are required to take some action against copyright infringment. If you thought their website was infringing, I would have expected you to take it down according to the law and your AUP. If your AUP doesn't have a rule against copyright infringement, then you are in for some trouble with your clients when you must comply with even the 'bad' laws.
and still verify every claim that comes in?
Again, you should only go as far as your customer agreement says, and the law requires.
If you go any further then you can get in trouble in all sorts of ways. The email you received may be seen in court as a valid, DMCA compliant request, even if the email subsequently didn't work or was sent through abnormal channels. Perhaps the copyright owner is using another business to send out a lot of these. It doesn't necessarily make them any less DMCA compliant. Therefore, by checking the 'validity' and 'claim' of the email, you are in effect acting as some sort of judge in the matter. You don't want to interpose yourself in that situation, trust me.
If you go the other way, and do too little (ie, your AUP tells your customers you'll notify them and provide them with copies of such emails at or just after the time of disabling their site) then you'll be in essentially the same position, except with the customer.
The $11,000 fine is a fine, so the consumers who get burned by the actions won't receive any of it.
But it will be lucrative enough for the gov't agency responsible that they will actually go after those who aren't in compliance. It doesn't rule out suing the telemarketting company either, so they could be fined and sued for the same action, with the gov't doing most of the leg work for you.
As a parent, I allow my children to use the computer. I do, however, place it in the house where there is a lot of traffic and I can keep an eye on what they are doing without interrupting them.
This is a Good Thing(TM). Accountability, in general, is a good thing.
You may not agree with the application of this technology, but why disparage it here? If you feel pornography is a good thing then you can enjoy it yourself.
I, however, feel that pornography has many bad consequences. I know this from personal experience. Who are you to disparage my personal experience, my morals, convictions, values and beliefs? Pornography, just like gambling, drinking, drugs, computer hardware, computer games, MMORPGs, etc can be addictive. These addictions can change you and your life significantly. If you like those changes, or it doesn't change you, or you don't notice the change, then good for you. But don't hate the technology or the people who use it for themselves.
-Adam
An idea is a precious and fragile thing. Don't hate ideas. Hate people.
What can also be done is a new firmware can be loaded to the phone remotely when it is turned on, which could turn the phone on due to some real time clock interrupt or other mechanism.
The authorities then would only have to know which phones to load the firmware on at one point in time, then the phones will turn on, find it's closest cell point, log on once, then log off and turn itself off.
Not necessarily the users using the system, but the users developing software for it. If you give them the option of choosing whether their program is scheduled as an interactive process or a batch they will always choose the wrong one.
"Why yes, that is my elitist attitude you are observing. Please be careful with... Doh!"
The reason LEDs seem so bright is that they are essentially a point source of light, and they generally are designed for small viewing angles.
It would take quite a number of LEDs to match even a dim light bulb.
The reason LEDs are considered so efficient is that their light output is based on the current through, rather than the voltage through them.
Inefficiencies are introduced in the circuit used to power the LEDs. In most small circuits one would use a simple resister to limit the current. This resister typically wastes 2-3 times the energy that the LED itself consumes. This isn't an issue since one LED and resister should consume less than one tenth of a watt.
Cheap LED light bulbs for home use might use a simple resister scheme. If so, they will consume nearly as much energy as an equivilant incandescent bulb, and let off as much heat.
A truly efficient LED light bulb will have several high-output LEDs, and a small, 90%+ efficient switching current regulator. Such a bulb should still be more efficient than current lights. This can be shown by how little energy is given off by other (non visible light) forms of radiation, such as infrared light and heat.
If all you want to do is play games, then don't get a PDA.
If you need a tool with which you can schedule, keep track of people, times, places, notes, money, etc which just happens to play a good selection of games when the going gets boring, get a PDA.
The question you're asking is, "If I can only get one, which one do I get?" The answer is the gameboy if the PDA features are secondary to gaming, and the PDA if the PDA features are more important than gaming.
The real question is, "If I get my company to buy me a good PDA that will play games, how do I expense the games that aren't free, and where do I get the free time to play them?"
Trolltech, front page: "IBM Pervasive Chooses Trolltech's Qt/Embedded and Qtopia for its New Embedded Linux Reference Platform"
So, let's get this straight.
Canopy invests in SCO
SCO is suing IBM over Linux stuff
IBM is using Trolltech's Linux stuff
Canopy invests in Trolltech
So either Canopy doesn't know what's going on, or is pretty hands-off, or they have no qualms about using one business in a way that would hurt or kill off one or more of their other viable businesses. Either way, they aren't a good company to work with.
Kind of like the dilbert comic, "The net-net at the end of the days is we owe ourselves 3 billion dollars."
-Adam
Re:Let's hope it's not the IMDb for books...
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An IMDb for Books
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· Score: 1
I'm not thinking in terms of physical storage or even database design. I'm thinking in terms of interface and data input.
If you search for, say, "Inferno" on IMDB there are 90 matching titles. If you have a book database that is fairly complete just for the last several decades you'll have far more books with "inferno" in the title than we currently have movies.
What I'm trying to point out is that even if you have several new books added every day, and get 1000 books entered a year you are still only listing the most popular books. If you take an existing data source, such as the Library of Congress and then add a comment interface to it you are still going to have a huge dataset with little added value since 95% of the books won't have any information on them.
The IMDB still suffers from this problem today - current, new and popular movies have comments and ratings. A lot of other, good films simply have no information other than a short synopsis (which was gathered from a seperate data source) and list of actors. It will simply serve to make popular books more popular.
-Adam
Let's hope it's not the IMDb for books...
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An IMDb for Books
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· Score: 4, Insightful
As nice as the IMDb is, there is one major difference between what you are doing and the IMDb:
The sheer volume of material.
There are far more books now than movies, and you had better start considering how you are going to apply categories and searching to it. The sheer volume also means that most of the good information is only going to reside in 'popular' books, while the rest, if it is ever added, is going to be dilute and useless.
I wish you luck in your endeaver, I'm certian others will aid you in its progress. I can't see it becoming very popular unless you somehow leverage existing (possibly for-pay) data sources, such as Amazon, and that path requires you to take your site to a proprietary level (as CDDB and IMDb did), which will upset those who freely added material in the 'early' days.
I just feel like people who make these arguments want to fundamentally change the very nature of what Slashdot is!
So... Duplicate stories and typos/grammar issues are "fundamental" and part of the "very nature" of slashdot?
Ah. Regarding grammar and typos, I thought you guys simply didn't care enough to read through a story three times before submitting it. I can see having one or two dupes a month, but several a month is just sloppy...
What do you guys do all day? I thought Slashdot had one or two editors that all they did all day long was story submissions. Either this is not true, or these guys aren't watching what other part-time editors are submitting, because they should have a pretty good idea of what has been posted before, especially in the recent past.
I can suggest two technical improvements which will fix spelling and dupes:
First, put in a simple spell checker for story submissions. Make it so that submit has to be hit twice if there are words that don't pass muster, wrong words can be highlighted in color in a preview above the submission editor. There are a few grammar checkers to make sure [its|it's] and things like [lose|loose] and [their|they're|there] are correctly used. This'll take care of 95% of spelling and grammar issues. Better yet, employ several proven grammar and spelling editors who get free subscriptions by spell and grammar checking stories before they show up on the front page. Give them some sort of direct line so improvements can be made in the 20 minute time span before publication.
The duplicate story is only a little harder:
No less than 3 editors have to sign off on any newly accepted story before it's displayed. If it's a dupe, chances are good that one of the three editors (the one that accepted and originally edited it and two others to add their stamp of approval to it) will have seen it before. There is no pattern matching engine in perl to match the memory of the human mind.
I understand your desire to keep the 'flavor' of slashdot the same, and to go fast and furious - jumping in where others might apply more caution. I applaud that about slashdot.
In short, you can argue all you want that the old truck on blocks and broken appliances all on the front lawn of slashdot are intended features. You'll just be very, very wrong. You aren't an artist, and you can't claim that a piece of art with feces smeared over it is still art.
-Adam
Grammar/style/spelling engines (in perl) can be found here diction and over here- a list of them. Most are relatively immature, but better than nothing - and adoption here could advertise the need for development in this area. You guys do want to push open source development, right? Don't enable it for comments or user submissions- too much load on the server. Just for the editor's submissions.
If there are too many story submissions to keep up with (ie, you do have two guys busy all the time rejecting stories) then you need to prune the stories before they get in the bin. Do auto-dupe checking on stories within the bin - when one is viewed by an editor, show the others so they can pick the best one, or just throw out dupes. I'm sure you do this to a degree already. Employ a simple spell checker and stop accepting submissions with more than 5 mispellings, never mind grammar. Make submitters work a little harder and the input will improve (garbage in, garbage out).
These were the Hawthorne Studies... they specifically tried to determine the effect of lighting levels on worker productivity. Increasing the amount of light appeared to improve output. But decreasing the amount of light did the same thing.
Unfortunately, blinking the lights caused them to riot and kill the researchers, so that portion of the research was never completed.
-Adam
Additional info on their website...
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350 Megapixel Camera
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· Score: 5, Informative
For those too busy to go to their website:
The imager is made up of 40 silicon imagers, each of which has two imaging surfaces on it, for a total of 80 channels of about 4.3 megapixels each. There are gaps between the silicon imagers. Images they make have black borders around them so that the image spatially is like looking through a window with bars. The imagers are rectangular, and are set up in a pattern somewhat like this
.HHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHH .HHHHHHHHH
The periods are due to slashdot's inability to do & nbsp;, & #160;, etc. The #'s I was going to use in place of H caused the lameness filter to spew "Too many junk characters." I guess I didn't realize I had a junk character account, nevermind that it is apparently overdrawn!
It takes a full ten seconds to get the data from the sensors, and there is a rotating shutter above it. The time to take the image and then copy it off the array is long enough that they can only obtain about 1TB of data on a typical veiwing night.
-Adam
They are only available in mass quantity bare
on
Mini Drives for Mini-CDs?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
If you plan on making a few thousand units you'll be able to work with the asian companies that make the mechanical portions of these drives that you can put in your product.
Other than that, no one is interested in making a mass produced version simply because it holds so little data. Perhaps if someone would finally come out with an 80mm DVD then the players for that (~1GB for dual layer) might be enough data to make it worthwhile.
At this point, I'd suggest you simply use a large 2.5" or 1.8" or compactflash hard drive.
No one wants to carry their music seperate from their players anymore anyway. It's cheaper to have them seperate now, and the user interface is a little easier since you don't have to spend so much time catagorizing your music and playlists, but this isn't the case for the IPOD, and future devices aren't likely to continue to do it this way.
"My fellow Americans. Today we were attacked. The terrorists have become brazen in their efforts to show us up. Today our flag on the moon was knocked over and burned. The perpetrators must and will be punished! Just minutes ago I signed an order to bomb the heck out of... Well, pretty much everyone else in the world."
Slashdot Mirror
At 244 British pounds per module (check out the article with the pictures) you're shelling out nearly $400[US] per module.
The simplest system would be just the receiver and TV interface, for $800. Timeshifting would be enabled for $1200.
One can build the same system with a Hauppage PVR card (hardware MPEG encoder) for $400 (w/o software). It wouldn't be as quiet or small, but you could get the same modularity with multiple systems. Since it has hardware mpeg encoding, a cheap fanless system, such as the Via epox boards, should be able to handle one card and hard drive, and still be able to decode one stream at the same time. This would be about the same saize as all the modules put together, in one quiet, cheap box.
-Adam
In other news, the NRA is pre-emptively hiring console mod-chip makers, and funding linux programmers to turn the gun into a server.
Uh... Please don't slashdot this server...
-Adam
Longevity is good. It did wonders for Cobol.
Honestly, Having a house stand for a long time is a nice goal, but if you take into account how people use houses now compared to how they were used 25 years ago, and go back in 25 year increments, you will likely not see any period of time larger than 50 or 75 years where a single dwelling completely met the needs of its inhabitants.
You won't even be around by the time the house you're living in today falls apart - why build your house of the future to today's standards? At best you're wasting your time and money. At worst, your descendants are going to have to waste time and money tearing the useless eyesore down.
Sure, castles last a long time. People still love 'em. Have you tried living in one? They are very ill suited to us in so many ways. Adding modern conveniences is an expensive pain. Bringing them up to code, keeping them clean. Maintenance and upkeep. These costs alone could pay for a new house each year, nevermind the fact that you couldn't get a modern projection TV in more than a few rooms without a crane and a large window.
Unless you have an oracle, you aren't going to be able to design for the future. If the house of the future was designed and built in the 30s and 50s, we'd all have elevator shafts in our two and three story homes, except we wouldn't be using them because they don't have a good price/performance ratio. Therefore we'd convert them to badly sized closets and storage (well, I'd have a firepole in mine, but that's not the point). Even if you overdesigned chances are good that they would still not fit well.
However, as an academic excersize it is an interesting question. Kind of like putting Linux on the atari 2600. You could, but its more fun talking about it than it would be implementing it.
-Adam
Show them the software license, specifically section seven which may or may not apply, and sections 11 and 12 which do apply:
Section 7 (in part): If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License.
Section 11 (all): BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
Section 12 (all): IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
So the straight answer is that the word indemnification does not occur in the license. Whether the license has no, little, or good indemnification should be judged by a lawyer. It seems as though the GPL protects those who wrote, modified, and distributed the programs in question from those who use the program, but doesn't seem to extend any special protections to those who use the program from their customers or other third parties.
My limited understanding of indemnity is that it's usually in a contract between a software supplier and a client, and the supplier usually carries insurance to cover indemnity claims. Thus, for Linux to have indemnity you'd have to contract to, say redhat, for the software and set up a clause in the contract specifically covering this issue.
-Adam
"I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on slashdot..."
Show them the software license, specicfically section seven which may or may not apply, and sections 11 and 12 which do apply:
Section 7 (in part): If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License.
Section 11 (all): BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
Section 12 (all): IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
So the straight answer is that the word indemnification does not occur in the license. Whether the license has no, little, or good indemnification should be judged by a lawyer. It seems as though the GPL protects those who wrote, modified, and distributed the programs in question from those who use the program, but doesn't seem to extend any special protections to those who use the program from their customers or other third parties.
-Adam
"I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on slashdot..."
They should have the same rights as movie publishers.
If the game, as a central feature to its plot, has a ton of realistic violence, especially in an environment the person is likely to be found in normally (a city), then the game should be rated "R" or "PG-13" and restricted to being sold to minors of the appropiate age or with their guardians.
This isn't rocket science. These are laws developed to help parents give children some freedom they couldn't have otherwise. I know that I can send my kid to the movies and he isn't going to see certian things. If I knew the theater might let him in to a rated R movie, I wouldn't let him go without me. He desires that little bit of freedom, and the movie theater, by setting up a basic agreement with me, is providing me with that assurance.
Secondly, I work in the video rental business. It would be easy for video rental places to sell or rent to minors only with a guardian's previously given permission since the kid would then have his/her own card. It's not so easy with retail outlets. If a game shop wants to set up such a system, though, it would be trivial to deal with.
The upshot is that this does not degrade your freedom, unless you're a minor. If you are a minor, you have very little real freedom anyway. If you think all minors should be able to access this material on their whim without parental consent then you have very different opinions about raising children than many people who actually have experience in doing so.
-Adam
Think of it this way - there are lots of stupid, yet successful criminals out there. These criminals may not yet know or understand that they can be tracked via anonymous phone usage.
By illegalizing anonymous cell phones, the Swiss Gov't is simply saying to the criminals, "Hey, we know what a tough business it is keeping up with all the cloak and dagger stuff you guys have to do to stay free. Rather than letting you fall on your sword, er, cell phone, and get caught, we'll keep up with the latest technology others are employing against you, and ban common thieving tools which are vulnerable, thus saving you valuable time which you can spend in more productive pursuits, such as larceny, or our favorite, GTA 3."
The upside for criminals is that they'll have to work a little harder to get an anonymous or fake identity phone, but echelon will now have to check a much larger pool of phones for suspicious activity, instead of focusing most of its efforts on anonymous phones.
The upside is that switzerland != the world, so anonymous phones are still available elsewhere.
-Adam
As a hosting provider, how far should I go to protect the rights of my clients
As far as they are paying you to protect their rights. If you go any further, you are bound to lose money. If you don't go as far as your user policies then you'll lose customers. End of equation.
while upholding the law
As far as the law requires you to uphold it. In DMCA land you are required to take some action against copyright infringment. If you thought their website was infringing, I would have expected you to take it down according to the law and your AUP. If your AUP doesn't have a rule against copyright infringement, then you are in for some trouble with your clients when you must comply with even the 'bad' laws.
and still verify every claim that comes in?
Again, you should only go as far as your customer agreement says, and the law requires.
If you go any further then you can get in trouble in all sorts of ways. The email you received may be seen in court as a valid, DMCA compliant request, even if the email subsequently didn't work or was sent through abnormal channels. Perhaps the copyright owner is using another business to send out a lot of these. It doesn't necessarily make them any less DMCA compliant. Therefore, by checking the 'validity' and 'claim' of the email, you are in effect acting as some sort of judge in the matter. You don't want to interpose yourself in that situation, trust me.
If you go the other way, and do too little (ie, your AUP tells your customers you'll notify them and provide them with copies of such emails at or just after the time of disabling their site) then you'll be in essentially the same position, except with the customer.
-Adam
The $11,000 fine is a fine, so the consumers who get burned by the actions won't receive any of it.
But it will be lucrative enough for the gov't agency responsible that they will actually go after those who aren't in compliance. It doesn't rule out suing the telemarketting company either, so they could be fined and sued for the same action, with the gov't doing most of the leg work for you.
-Adam
Look at it this way.
As a parent, I allow my children to use the computer. I do, however, place it in the house where there is a lot of traffic and I can keep an eye on what they are doing without interrupting them.
This is a Good Thing(TM). Accountability, in general, is a good thing.
You may not agree with the application of this technology, but why disparage it here? If you feel pornography is a good thing then you can enjoy it yourself.
I, however, feel that pornography has many bad consequences. I know this from personal experience. Who are you to disparage my personal experience, my morals, convictions, values and beliefs? Pornography, just like gambling, drinking, drugs, computer hardware, computer games, MMORPGs, etc can be addictive. These addictions can change you and your life significantly. If you like those changes, or it doesn't change you, or you don't notice the change, then good for you. But don't hate the technology or the people who use it for themselves.
-Adam
An idea is a precious and fragile thing. Don't hate ideas. Hate people.
What can also be done is a new firmware can be loaded to the phone remotely when it is turned on, which could turn the phone on due to some real time clock interrupt or other mechanism.
The authorities then would only have to know which phones to load the firmware on at one point in time, then the phones will turn on, find it's closest cell point, log on once, then log off and turn itself off.
-Adam
The first rule of kernel development is
Users are dumb.
Not necessarily the users using the system, but the users developing software for it. If you give them the option of choosing whether their program is scheduled as an interactive process or a batch they will always choose the wrong one.
"Why yes, that is my elitist attitude you are observing. Please be careful with... Doh!"
-Adam
The reason LEDs seem so bright is that they are essentially a point source of light, and they generally are designed for small viewing angles.
It would take quite a number of LEDs to match even a dim light bulb.
The reason LEDs are considered so efficient is that their light output is based on the current through, rather than the voltage through them.
Inefficiencies are introduced in the circuit used to power the LEDs. In most small circuits one would use a simple resister to limit the current. This resister typically wastes 2-3 times the energy that the LED itself consumes. This isn't an issue since one LED and resister should consume less than one tenth of a watt.
Cheap LED light bulbs for home use might use a simple resister scheme. If so, they will consume nearly as much energy as an equivilant incandescent bulb, and let off as much heat.
A truly efficient LED light bulb will have several high-output LEDs, and a small, 90%+ efficient switching current regulator. Such a bulb should still be more efficient than current lights. This can be shown by how little energy is given off by other (non visible light) forms of radiation, such as infrared light and heat.
-Adam
The game quality on modern PDAs:
If all you want to do is play games, then don't get a PDA.
If you need a tool with which you can schedule, keep track of people, times, places, notes, money, etc which just happens to play a good selection of games when the going gets boring, get a PDA.
The question you're asking is, "If I can only get one, which one do I get?" The answer is the gameboy if the PDA features are secondary to gaming, and the PDA if the PDA features are more important than gaming.
The real question is, "If I get my company to buy me a good PDA that will play games, how do I expense the games that aren't free, and where do I get the free time to play them?"
-Adam
So, let's get this straight.
So either Canopy doesn't know what's going on, or is pretty hands-off, or they have no qualms about using one business in a way that would hurt or kill off one or more of their other viable businesses. Either way, they aren't a good company to work with.
Kind of like the dilbert comic, "The net-net at the end of the days is we owe ourselves 3 billion dollars."
-Adam
I'm not thinking in terms of physical storage or even database design. I'm thinking in terms of interface and data input.
If you search for, say, "Inferno" on IMDB there are 90 matching titles. If you have a book database that is fairly complete just for the last several decades you'll have far more books with "inferno" in the title than we currently have movies.
What I'm trying to point out is that even if you have several new books added every day, and get 1000 books entered a year you are still only listing the most popular books. If you take an existing data source, such as the Library of Congress and then add a comment interface to it you are still going to have a huge dataset with little added value since 95% of the books won't have any information on them.
The IMDB still suffers from this problem today - current, new and popular movies have comments and ratings. A lot of other, good films simply have no information other than a short synopsis (which was gathered from a seperate data source) and list of actors. It will simply serve to make popular books more popular.
-Adam
As nice as the IMDb is, there is one major difference between what you are doing and the IMDb:
The sheer volume of material.
There are far more books now than movies, and you had better start considering how you are going to apply categories and searching to it. The sheer volume also means that most of the good information is only going to reside in 'popular' books, while the rest, if it is ever added, is going to be dilute and useless.
I wish you luck in your endeaver, I'm certian others will aid you in its progress. I can't see it becoming very popular unless you somehow leverage existing (possibly for-pay) data sources, such as Amazon, and that path requires you to take your site to a proprietary level (as CDDB and IMDb did), which will upset those who freely added material in the 'early' days.
-Adam
Since the server is now lightly loasted...
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You can get the summary of all state spam laws from google's cache of www.spamlaws.com/state/summary.html
-Adam
I just feel like people who make these arguments want to fundamentally change the very nature of what Slashdot is!
So... Duplicate stories and typos/grammar issues are "fundamental" and part of the "very nature" of slashdot?
Ah. Regarding grammar and typos, I thought you guys simply didn't care enough to read through a story three times before submitting it. I can see having one or two dupes a month, but several a month is just sloppy...
What do you guys do all day? I thought Slashdot had one or two editors that all they did all day long was story submissions. Either this is not true, or these guys aren't watching what other part-time editors are submitting, because they should have a pretty good idea of what has been posted before, especially in the recent past.
I can suggest two technical improvements which will fix spelling and dupes:
First, put in a simple spell checker for story submissions. Make it so that submit has to be hit twice if there are words that don't pass muster, wrong words can be highlighted in color in a preview above the submission editor. There are a few grammar checkers to make sure [its|it's] and things like [lose|loose] and [their|they're|there] are correctly used. This'll take care of 95% of spelling and grammar issues. Better yet, employ several proven grammar and spelling editors who get free subscriptions by spell and grammar checking stories before they show up on the front page. Give them some sort of direct line so improvements can be made in the 20 minute time span before publication.
The duplicate story is only a little harder:
No less than 3 editors have to sign off on any newly accepted story before it's displayed. If it's a dupe, chances are good that one of the three editors (the one that accepted and originally edited it and two others to add their stamp of approval to it) will have seen it before. There is no pattern matching engine in perl to match the memory of the human mind.
I understand your desire to keep the 'flavor' of slashdot the same, and to go fast and furious - jumping in where others might apply more caution. I applaud that about slashdot.
In short, you can argue all you want that the old truck on blocks and broken appliances all on the front lawn of slashdot are intended features. You'll just be very, very wrong. You aren't an artist, and you can't claim that a piece of art with feces smeared over it is still art.
-Adam
Grammar/style/spelling engines (in perl) can be found here diction and over here- a list of them. Most are relatively immature, but better than nothing - and adoption here could advertise the need for development in this area. You guys do want to push open source development, right? Don't enable it for comments or user submissions- too much load on the server. Just for the editor's submissions.
If there are too many story submissions to keep up with (ie, you do have two guys busy all the time rejecting stories) then you need to prune the stories before they get in the bin. Do auto-dupe checking on stories within the bin - when one is viewed by an editor, show the others so they can pick the best one, or just throw out dupes. I'm sure you do this to a degree already. Employ a simple spell checker and stop accepting submissions with more than 5 mispellings, never mind grammar. Make submitters work a little harder and the input will improve (garbage in, garbage out).
These were the Hawthorne Studies... they specifically tried to determine the effect of lighting levels on worker productivity. Increasing the amount of light appeared to improve output. But decreasing the amount of light did the same thing.
Unfortunately, blinking the lights caused them to riot and kill the researchers, so that portion of the research was never completed.
-Adam
For those too busy to go to their website:
.HHHHHHHHH
.HHHHHHHHH
The imager is made up of 40 silicon imagers, each of which has two imaging surfaces on it, for a total of 80 channels of about 4.3 megapixels each. There are gaps between the silicon imagers. Images they make have black borders around them so that the image spatially is like looking through a window with bars. The imagers are rectangular, and are set up in a pattern somewhat like this
HHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHH
The periods are due to slashdot's inability to do & nbsp;, & #160;, etc. The #'s I was going to use in place of H caused the lameness filter to spew "Too many junk characters." I guess I didn't realize I had a junk character account, nevermind that it is apparently overdrawn!
It takes a full ten seconds to get the data from the sensors, and there is a rotating shutter above it. The time to take the image and then copy it off the array is long enough that they can only obtain about 1TB of data on a typical veiwing night.
-Adam
If you plan on making a few thousand units you'll be able to work with the asian companies that make the mechanical portions of these drives that you can put in your product.
Other than that, no one is interested in making a mass produced version simply because it holds so little data. Perhaps if someone would finally come out with an 80mm DVD then the players for that (~1GB for dual layer) might be enough data to make it worthwhile.
At this point, I'd suggest you simply use a large 2.5" or 1.8" or compactflash hard drive.
No one wants to carry their music seperate from their players anymore anyway. It's cheaper to have them seperate now, and the user interface is a little easier since you don't have to spend so much time catagorizing your music and playlists, but this isn't the case for the IPOD, and future devices aren't likely to continue to do it this way.
-Adam
"My fellow Americans. Today we were attacked. The terrorists have become brazen in their efforts to show us up. Today our flag on the moon was knocked over and burned. The perpetrators must and will be punished! Just minutes ago I signed an order to bomb the heck out of... Well, pretty much everyone else in the world."
-Adam
Nopt to mention the military and intelligence personel that will be required to take it with them to 'work'.
-Adam
It was supposed to be a live fly, but couldn't withstand the soldering iron.
It's probably a good thing though, live flies tend to keep dropping their 'tokens', which would not only offend patrons, but upset network admins.
What I'd give to be a fly on the wall for that exhibit.
-Adam