wasn't there an article on slashdot a while back that pointed out that drug-usage is *not* addictive - it's the *circumstances* that people find themselves in which *drives* them towards attempting to "find happiness" in drugs. both that study of rats as well as the study of veterans from the vietnam war showed that the subjects were quotes totally addicted quotes to opiates when they were subjected to horrible conditions, but that the *moment* they were transported to a happier environment, then with a little bit of withdrawal symptoms they kicked the "habit".
in other words, this study is telling us - through correlation NOT causation - that the number of unhappy americans is dramatically increasing. and that we're only just finding this out because of drug-testing.
why are they using a general-purpose OS, supplied by a company that's known not to care about security (because it costs money and profit), for *life* saving mission-critical software? i don't understand.
... but i don't *want* germ-free food. i want food for myself and my children that encourages our immune systems to fight and become stronger, so that we become HEALTHIER. vat-grown food will have no such challenges for our immune system, thus actually make us WEAKER.
this is fast getting to the point where the clear disadvantages - the FAILURE - of the three laws of robotics - is actually rolling out in real-life. it took several decades for asimov to explore the three laws fully to the point where he felt comfortable eventually spelling it out, but the "Calvanist" 3 Law Robots were actually a danger to humanity's evolution and advancement. why? because there were literally billions of checks and assessments PER SECOND being performed by the robots, calculating which nearby humans were POTENTIALLY going to be harmed... without any kind of restraint, limit or safeguards on what the robot(s) decided constituted "risk" or "danger".
with no risk comes no challenge. with no challenge, comes no evolution. i do not understand why people do not understand this.
About 0. GCHQ probably helps close vulnerabilities that intelligence services (other than US/Canada/UK/Australia/NZ) and criminals use.
oo - i wonder if one of the vulnerabilities *happens* to be one that's used in apple (myOS) smartphones.... saaay.... the one that, because they couldn't get it, was at the centre of constitutional violations by the U.S. Government and the FBI, recently? wouldn't _that_ be a coincidence, eh?
i have had a picture in my head, for many years, ever since i first saw two teenagers walking one behind the other (separated by a distance of only 18 inches), *both* of them thumbs-down and heads-down on their phones. the picture is of DEvolution - it's an addition of two more pictures to the classic darwin evolution of ape to human... and it starts with a picture of an average naked human holding a smartphone, bent over, and ends with a cyborg on all fours again, antennae bristling out of its head.
we're already at the first of those extra pictures....
i like speed-reading. i used to read 2-3 sci-fi / fantasy a week, except the 800-1000 page monsters like the robert jordan series, which often took me 4-6 days of continuous reading, and except asimov's detective stories about elijah bailey, which were incredibly dense logical reasoning (necessary for a detective and his partner). the thing i like about speed-reading is that when you come back to the same book in 4 to 12 months time, it's enjoyable - again - because you find things that you missed the first time. so the point that this article is making i see is an *advantage*... not a disadvantage.
it doesn't actually matter what *other people* think - yes pastafarianism was created as satire, but there *will* be people who will choose to follow it religiously (and i do use that word quite deliberately). let's take it the other way round: should this judge be permitted to rule that an individual who *pretends* to follow christianity is somehow "okay"??? that because that individual merely *claims* to be following a religion - yet his daily life and thoughts (if they were made public) would clearly demonstrate that his entire committment to christianity is a complete and utter sham.
in the USA, would a judge even be *permitted* to make any kind of ruling that could criticise the personal thoughts and motivations of a member of an established faith? they'd be utterly vilified if they did!
and so it's the same thing here. the actual religion is utterly irrelevant. it's the motivation and dedication of the individual that's important, regardless of how long that religion has been established, and regardless of what *everyone else* does. this judge is stepping way outside of acceptable ethical bounds. that, and someone else points out (in another post, here) that the supreme court has already ruled on "freedom of conscience to select religious faith or none at all" as being inviolate.
there was an amicus brief signed by nearly a hundred software libre supporters: i read it, and they missed some really, really important very dangerous examples of how copyrighting interfaces destroys both proprietary and libre software *and hardware* business models.
* assembly instructions. assembly instructions *are* the "interface" between the hardware and the software. if assembly instructions themselves become copyrighted - a restricted form of of free speech if you will - then we are hopelessly screwed. software distributors - any software - presently being sold (or given away as libre binaries) WORLDWIDE - would need all of a sudden to contact the *PROCESSOR* designers to gain their permission in order to continue distribution of what was previously recognised as legal and covered under free speech laws.
* the GPL, LGPL, AGPL, and all other software licenses whether they be proprietary or libre, would need to be updated in order to explicitly grant permission to use the APIs that were previously recognised as "free speech" [code, under precedent, is recognised as being "speech"]. in cases where changing the license is *NOT POSSIBLE* such as with the GPLv2 on the linux kernel, the problem becomes extremely serious. for those people not familiar with the problem of the GPLv2 license on the linux kernel: it's GPLv2 not GPLv2+, and, given that there are several thousand individual copyright holders - each and every one of whom needs to be contacted and EXPLICITLY asked if they agree to the license change, you start to understand how flat-out impossible that is. especially given that some of those people will have died, or changed name, or will have been working for companies at the time and so on. so all of a sudden, given that it would not be possible to update the license, and given that the license would no longer cover APIs within the copyrighted work of the linux kernel, the burden is on the END-USER to request permission of the copyright-holders - all of them - for the requisite permission... and thus we are completely fucked because the exact same problem occurs, in contacting and tracking down thousands of people. remember: if you can't *get* permission, you must cease and desist from use of the software, otherwise you are acting in a criminal capacity.
* RPC mechanisms. (remote procedure calls). all and any RPC interfaces - by virtue of *being* interfaces - would become copyrighted. this would entirely defeat the extremely protracted and lengthy ground-breaking work by which the samba team members managed - over many years - to persuade the EU to compel microsoft to release their IDL files for interoperability purposes. if it now becomes necessary for each and every end-user as well as developer to contact microsoft and ask their permission to use their suddenly-copyrighted interfaces.... what do you think is going to happen?
* Silicon Chips - even just *buying* a chip would be problematic as its "interfaces" would be copyrighted. we have enough problems as it is with NDAs and being unable to get hold of datasheets: what do you think would happen if the sellers of ICs suddenly started enforcing license agreements and copyright enforcement agreements because the pins of the chip were considered to be "interfaces" and thus "controlled"? supply via distributors - especially smaller ones - would be sent into absolute chaos.
the most amazing thing is that i was actually contacted by someone who claimed that there were *supporters* in the software libre community of copyrighting of interfaces, because it would somehow strengthen the effects of the GPL. as such copyrighting is in effect an extremely dangerous restriction of "freedom of speech" (because it effectively terminates your free unrestricted right to "talk" in the "language" of the "interface"), any such perceived "benefits" are utterly smashed by the total chaos that the entire world - with its now heavy-dependence on software and hardware - would be thrown into.
i just... i'm completely blown away that there are intelligent people out there who do not understand how utterly insane the concept of API copyrighting really is.
Why oh why do we have to keep shooting ourselves in the foot? OK I'm a BSD user so, well, stones and glass houses, but even so the open source community's continuing ability to why things should not be allowed is depressing...most people in our crowd want our stuff to be USED by as many people as possible...
copyright law and the GPL are there for very good reasons. i've posted about this before, but a simple scenario which can easily be demonstrated as a real-world "nightmare scenario" that should tell you why you are mistaken is: security vulnerabilities in smartphones.
let's take a simple GPL-violating Mediatek smartphone (for example the Fairphone 1). Fairphone created their first phone to reduce e-waste and also to tackle conflict materials problems and to provide factory workers with fair working conditions and pensions. except... two years on, the GPL-violating linux kernel that was used turned out to have a severe security flaw.
so, end-users contacted Fairphone and said, "any chance of some security updates, please? our product's less than 18 months old". so Fairphone contacted the factory and said, "can we have the source code please?" and the factory owner went, "what source code?" [actually he probably said "what's source code"].
it turns out that they were supplied with a binary-only "solution". there IS no way to fix the security vulnerabilities, leaving end-users with the stark choice of throwing away a perfectly good phone that's SUPPOSED TO BE REDUCING E-WASTE.
now, can you *honestly* tell me that in this scenario - which is extremely common - that you "Just Want Your Stuff To Be USED By As Many People As Possible"?
if you do, then you are, if i may be absolutely bluntly honest in my assessments, a self-serving ego-maniac who wants fame more than he wants freedom. spreading ILLEGAL SOFTWARE to "as many people as possible" cannot POSSIBLY be the ultimate end-goal that you wish to see happen, so that possibility is ruled out. spreading software with CRITICAL SECURITY FLAWS cannot possibly be the end-goal either. the only thing left is that you wish to be famous, by virtue of having "reached more people".
if the above assessment is wrong, please do correct me, i am happy to be told i am wrong.
The Linux Foundation, as the copyright holder of the Linux kernel, gets to determine what is and is not allowed.
whoa, whoa, whoa - that is flat out FALSE. individuals who write the CODE are the Copyright holders. ONLY if every SINGLE individual and corporation who has written code has EXPLICITLY ASSIGNED that copyright to the Linux Foundation (which they most definitely have not - i am a minor copyright holder and i have NOT assigned my rights to the Linux Foundation) would your statement be true.
i am kinda staggered that your anonymous comment received a +5 "insightful" when there is not a single factual statement that's been made which is correct. i've posted other replies on the other two sentences which are also wrong and factually incorrect.
"In addition, some developers have directly assigned their copyrights on Linux to Conservancy, so Conservancy also enforces the GPL on Linux via its own copyrights in Linux."
so unfortunately you are factually wrong. the SFC does in fact now directly own the copyright on Linux kernel source code, having been assigned that Copyright by the original authors.
Agreed. The SFC is not the owner of either of the works in question and is not the author of the license in question. They have no stake or standing in the matter.
As authors of the GPL itself, I would say that Stallman or the FSF do have some say in the matter.
The SFC can go pound sand...
from the article:
"However, our conclusion is simple: Conservancy and the Linux copyright holders in the GPL Compliance Project for Linux Developers" https://sfconservancy.org/copy...
you will note that the SFC *advises* its members who *ARE* Linux copyright holders. so your conclusion that "the SFC can go pound sand" is misleading.. the SFC has advised its members. the members - who are Linux copyright holders - willl consider that advice, and will consider whether to take legal action against Canonical.
I'm not sure what anyone would stand to gain by arguing that Ubuntu is violating the GPLv2 license. It seems kind of ridiculous.
large companies - whether they are software libre companies like redhat or canonical, or proprietary companies like HP or Samsung - are supposed to be the "shining example" of what laws individuals are expected to follow. when those large companies are also making their money out of software libre, it is even *more* important that they set a good example.
otherwise what happens is that smaller companies - and chinese and other asian companies across the world - go "oh look: canonical's lost its rights to distribute the linux kernel due to a Copyright violation, and nobody did anything, therefore we don't have to worry about it either. let's continue to blatantly break the law, dishonour the spirit of software libre and make as much money as we can by spongeing off of other people's expertise".
for example: i'm one of the people who is actively involved behind the scenes in convincing allwinner to comply with the GPL. how the fuck am i going to do that - how the fuck am i going to convince allwinner that they've done something wrong by distributing source that does not come with the proper GPL headers - when even fuckwit companies like Canonical blatantly break the law?
if you have a good answer to that, please let everybody know.
y'know... there's a reason why debian sticks with old-school mailing lists and why the mirrors keep it as utterly simple as possible. but the other question is, were users verifying the md5/sha1 checksums on the ISO images? how would they do that (when usually they will be downloading a check-program from the same website)? would they *know* to verify the checksums?
If you pick your file system because its GPL, you're pretty retarded. And yes, retarded is the appropriate word here.
he's picking his file system so that he complies with Copyright Law. why would you have an issue with that? i also don't understand why a Corporation (Canonical) would encourage people to ignore Copyright Law.
ok so is there any adblock software that actually loads the ads... then silently discards them? i don't mind if it's server-side or client-side (i use junkbuster / fork-of-junkbuster).
i have a friend who called me to say that their computer had had the default browser search settings changed to some adware. so i checked the instructions on how to remove it, only to find that the settings shown in the screen-shots *weren't there*. turns out that inspection of the timestamps on the filesystem, the phishing-malware had *replaced* legitimate system libraries, which enabled them to disguise the malware and prevent its own removal. it was necessary for us to go round some friend's houses, drop the macbook into single-user mode and copy over replacement files from an identical copy of macosx.
now, this is the first time i've ever dealt with macosx viruses, but i was surprised that it was so easy for my non-technical friend to be fooled by a phishing attempt which scared her with the "you have 2,500 viruses do you want us to fix it?" tactic. as a purely software-libre end-user for the past 20 years, all i can say is, "welcome to the monoculture world, apple. your false sense of security myth is well and truly over, and you have a hell of a lot of catching up to do".
over the past two years there was a drastic increase in the inability of the editors to spot the most basic of spelling errors. "it is" instead of the relative pronoun "its" and so on. these errors - presented to technically-competent people whose careers critically depend on ensuring that code and documentation contains absolutely no errors of any kind - generally tends to piss them off and leaves them with no respect for slashdot.
the second thing: as mentioned previously, there's not enough good content. "powered by your submissions" only works if you have a large enough threshold of people willing to "power the submissions". given that so many people have been pissed off at various stages of slashdot's lifetime, those people that used to submit stories no longer do so.
the third thing: the advertising, despite being a long-term contributor who clicks the "ads disabled" button, really really pisses me off. i am NEVER going to buy a product from slashdot. EVER. deal with it. respect my right to not be advertised at and put to inconvenience, and i will continue to help with moderation and submissions. otherwise, if you continue to irritate me i will either look at adding extra manual rules to u-block, or to junkbuster, or i will just quit using slashdot entirely [after 20 years of continous reading and contributions].
like the last grain of sand on a pile that tips it into a landslide, consciousness exists at that "critical instability" point. that's according to a friend of mine - dr alex hankey - who has been studying consciousness in a formal mathematical way for over a decade. i am _delighted_ to see that other people are finally catching up.
actually... leeches have started to be used again in the western medical world because the removal of blood - especially blood which has heavy toxins or other dangerous pollutants - can have a beneficial effect (obviously), and leaches automatically inject anti-coagulants.
just because they didn't necessarily understand the exact science *doesn't* mean that over centuries of empirical observation doctors from older times weren't "on the right track".
much of what western medical doctors tell patients is "simplified to the point of being bullshit".... but, *very importantly*, is *reassuring* bullshit. calming the patient down (especially in stress-related illness) is actually a recognised branch of medicine, and has been for many centuries.
"that may include rewrites to focus more on the new class of Star Wars characters"
yeah. that'll be because they ignore george lucas, who has been working on a storyline for several decades. did anyone else notice that the film was pretty much a quotes modern reinvention quotes of the exact same story of the very first film - right down to having a tunnel that the tie-fighters went down and got shot at?
i heard a story related to john lasseter, where the only reason that some of the older artists working on disney films stayed on was out of loyalty to walt. this despite the managers and directors at disney studios for over a decade basically viewing disney studios as a "profit generation outfit". as a result we got absolutely awful films like that one about voodoo down in new orleans, and that one about a bison in the U.S. desert, which was a truly nerve-grating scratch-your-own-eyes-out bitch-fest, with the main characters verbally back-stabbing each other pretty much the entire time [and this is supposed to be a kid's film].
marvel comics and dc comics films are successful because there is a HUGE volume of material developed by extremely talented writers over many decades. script-writers therefore actually have *too much* originality to work from, as well as having the advantage of not really needing to do too much in the way of "back-story" - they can jump right in.
to dick about with a 3-decade-long complex story by IGNORING THE PERSON WHO WROTE IT is just... well... disappointing.
just so you know, i currently have a sponsor for the 15.6in laptop, i've been working on it for 14 months now. sponsorship works well for two reasons: firstly, investment is usually profit-driven, so the priority is on maximising the investor's profits instead of getting the product - and even more importantly the modular standard - right. secondly, sponsorship is absolutely fair and honest. i receive what i need to do the job, and the sponsor(s) get to be able to buy (or in the case of my main sponsor, sell) the end product(s).
so if you'd like to sponsor the development of these products, do contact me ok? love to hear from you.
Slashdot Mirror
welcome to snowcrash by neal stephenson!
wasn't there an article on slashdot a while back that pointed out that drug-usage is *not* addictive - it's the *circumstances* that people find themselves in which *drives* them towards attempting to "find happiness" in drugs. both that study of rats as well as the study of veterans from the vietnam war showed that the subjects were quotes totally addicted quotes to opiates when they were subjected to horrible conditions, but that the *moment* they were transported to a happier environment, then with a little bit of withdrawal symptoms they kicked the "habit".
in other words, this study is telling us - through correlation NOT causation - that the number of unhappy americans is dramatically increasing. and that we're only just finding this out because of drug-testing.
um.... that much money... um... where's it all gone??
why are they using a general-purpose OS, supplied by a company that's known not to care about security (because it costs money and profit), for *life* saving mission-critical software? i don't understand.
... but i don't *want* germ-free food. i want food for myself and my children that encourages our immune systems to fight and become stronger, so that we become HEALTHIER. vat-grown food will have no such challenges for our immune system, thus actually make us WEAKER.
this is fast getting to the point where the clear disadvantages - the FAILURE - of the three laws of robotics - is actually rolling out in real-life. it took several decades for asimov to explore the three laws fully to the point where he felt comfortable eventually spelling it out, but the "Calvanist" 3 Law Robots were actually a danger to humanity's evolution and advancement. why? because there were literally billions of checks and assessments PER SECOND being performed by the robots, calculating which nearby humans were POTENTIALLY going to be harmed... without any kind of restraint, limit or safeguards on what the robot(s) decided constituted "risk" or "danger".
with no risk comes no challenge. with no challenge, comes no evolution. i do not understand why people do not understand this.
About 0. GCHQ probably helps close vulnerabilities that intelligence services (other than US/Canada/UK/Australia/NZ) and criminals use.
oo - i wonder if one of the vulnerabilities *happens* to be one that's used in apple (myOS) smartphones.... saaay.... the one that, because they couldn't get it, was at the centre of constitutional violations by the U.S. Government and the FBI, recently? wouldn't _that_ be a coincidence, eh?
i have had a picture in my head, for many years, ever since i first saw two teenagers walking one behind the other (separated by a distance of only 18 inches), *both* of them thumbs-down and heads-down on their phones. the picture is of DEvolution - it's an addition of two more pictures to the classic darwin evolution of ape to human... and it starts with a picture of an average naked human holding a smartphone, bent over, and ends with a cyborg on all fours again, antennae bristling out of its head.
we're already at the first of those extra pictures....
i like speed-reading. i used to read 2-3 sci-fi / fantasy a week, except the 800-1000 page monsters like the robert jordan series, which often took me 4-6 days of continuous reading, and except asimov's detective stories about elijah bailey, which were incredibly dense logical reasoning (necessary for a detective and his partner). the thing i like about speed-reading is that when you come back to the same book in 4 to 12 months time, it's enjoyable - again - because you find things that you missed the first time. so the point that this article is making i see is an *advantage*... not a disadvantage.
it doesn't actually matter what *other people* think - yes pastafarianism was created as satire, but there *will* be people who will choose to follow it religiously (and i do use that word quite deliberately). let's take it the other way round: should this judge be permitted to rule that an individual who *pretends* to follow christianity is somehow "okay"??? that because that individual merely *claims* to be following a religion - yet his daily life and thoughts (if they were made public) would clearly demonstrate that his entire committment to christianity is a complete and utter sham.
in the USA, would a judge even be *permitted* to make any kind of ruling that could criticise the personal thoughts and motivations of a member of an established faith? they'd be utterly vilified if they did!
and so it's the same thing here. the actual religion is utterly irrelevant. it's the motivation and dedication of the individual that's important, regardless of how long that religion has been established, and regardless of what *everyone else* does. this judge is stepping way outside of acceptable ethical bounds. that, and someone else points out (in another post, here) that the supreme court has already ruled on "freedom of conscience to select religious faith or none at all" as being inviolate.
there was an amicus brief signed by nearly a hundred software libre supporters: i read it, and they missed some really, really important very dangerous examples of how copyrighting interfaces destroys both proprietary and libre software *and hardware* business models.
* assembly instructions. assembly instructions *are* the "interface" between the hardware and the software. if assembly instructions themselves become copyrighted - a restricted form of of free speech if you will - then we are hopelessly screwed. software distributors - any software - presently being sold (or given away as libre binaries) WORLDWIDE - would need all of a sudden to contact the *PROCESSOR* designers to gain their permission in order to continue distribution of what was previously recognised as legal and covered under free speech laws.
* the GPL, LGPL, AGPL, and all other software licenses whether they be proprietary or libre, would need to be updated in order to explicitly grant permission to use the APIs that were previously recognised as "free speech" [code, under precedent, is recognised as being "speech"]. in cases where changing the license is *NOT POSSIBLE* such as with the GPLv2 on the linux kernel, the problem becomes extremely serious. for those people not familiar with the problem of the GPLv2 license on the linux kernel: it's GPLv2 not GPLv2+, and, given that there are several thousand individual copyright holders - each and every one of whom needs to be contacted and EXPLICITLY asked if they agree to the license change, you start to understand how flat-out impossible that is. especially given that some of those people will have died, or changed name, or will have been working for companies at the time and so on. so all of a sudden, given that it would not be possible to update the license, and given that the license would no longer cover APIs within the copyrighted work of the linux kernel, the burden is on the END-USER to request permission of the copyright-holders - all of them - for the requisite permission... and thus we are completely fucked because the exact same problem occurs, in contacting and tracking down thousands of people. remember: if you can't *get* permission, you must cease and desist from use of the software, otherwise you are acting in a criminal capacity.
* RPC mechanisms. (remote procedure calls). all and any RPC interfaces - by virtue of *being* interfaces - would become copyrighted. this would entirely defeat the extremely protracted and lengthy ground-breaking work by which the samba team members managed - over many years - to persuade the EU to compel microsoft to release their IDL files for interoperability purposes. if it now becomes necessary for each and every end-user as well as developer to contact microsoft and ask their permission to use their suddenly-copyrighted interfaces.... what do you think is going to happen?
* Silicon Chips - even just *buying* a chip would be problematic as its "interfaces" would be copyrighted. we have enough problems as it is with NDAs and being unable to get hold of datasheets: what do you think would happen if the sellers of ICs suddenly started enforcing license agreements and copyright enforcement agreements because the pins of the chip were considered to be "interfaces" and thus "controlled"? supply via distributors - especially smaller ones - would be sent into absolute chaos.
the most amazing thing is that i was actually contacted by someone who claimed that there were *supporters* in the software libre community of copyrighting of interfaces, because it would somehow strengthen the effects of the GPL. as such copyrighting is in effect an extremely dangerous restriction of "freedom of speech" (because it effectively terminates your free unrestricted right to "talk" in the "language" of the "interface"), any such perceived "benefits" are utterly smashed by the total chaos that the entire world - with its now heavy-dependence on software and hardware - would be thrown into.
i just... i'm completely blown away that there are intelligent people out there who do not understand how utterly insane the concept of API copyrighting really is.
thought it said "mindless meditation" for a moment...
Why oh why do we have to keep shooting ourselves in the foot?
OK I'm a BSD user so, well, stones and glass houses, but even so the open source community's continuing ability to why things should not be allowed is depressing...most people in our crowd want our stuff to be USED by as many people as possible...
copyright law and the GPL are there for very good reasons. i've posted about this before, but a simple scenario which can easily be demonstrated as a real-world "nightmare scenario" that should tell you why you are mistaken is: security vulnerabilities in smartphones.
let's take a simple GPL-violating Mediatek smartphone (for example the Fairphone 1). Fairphone created their first phone to reduce e-waste and also to tackle conflict materials problems and to provide factory workers with fair working conditions and pensions. except... two years on, the GPL-violating linux kernel that was used turned out to have a severe security flaw.
so, end-users contacted Fairphone and said, "any chance of some security updates, please? our product's less than 18 months old". so Fairphone contacted the factory and said, "can we have the source code please?" and the factory owner went, "what source code?" [actually he probably said "what's source code"].
it turns out that they were supplied with a binary-only "solution". there IS no way to fix the security vulnerabilities, leaving end-users with the stark choice of throwing away a perfectly good phone that's SUPPOSED TO BE REDUCING E-WASTE.
now, can you *honestly* tell me that in this scenario - which is extremely common - that you "Just Want Your Stuff To Be USED By As Many People As Possible"?
if you do, then you are, if i may be absolutely bluntly honest in my assessments, a self-serving ego-maniac who wants fame more than he wants freedom. spreading ILLEGAL SOFTWARE to "as many people as possible" cannot POSSIBLY be the ultimate end-goal that you wish to see happen, so that possibility is ruled out. spreading software with CRITICAL SECURITY FLAWS cannot possibly be the end-goal either. the only thing left is that you wish to be famous, by virtue of having "reached more people".
if the above assessment is wrong, please do correct me, i am happy to be told i am wrong.
The Linux Foundation, as the copyright holder of the Linux kernel, gets to determine what is and is not allowed.
whoa, whoa, whoa - that is flat out FALSE. individuals who write the CODE are the Copyright holders. ONLY if every SINGLE individual and corporation who has written code has EXPLICITLY ASSIGNED that copyright to the Linux Foundation (which they most definitely have not - i am a minor copyright holder and i have NOT assigned my rights to the Linux Foundation) would your statement be true.
i am kinda staggered that your anonymous comment received a +5 "insightful" when there is not a single factual statement that's been made which is correct. i've posted other replies on the other two sentences which are also wrong and factually incorrect.
also from the copyleft link above:
"In addition, some developers have directly assigned their copyrights on Linux to Conservancy, so Conservancy also enforces the GPL on Linux via its own copyrights in Linux."
so unfortunately you are factually wrong. the SFC does in fact now directly own the copyright on Linux kernel source code, having been assigned that Copyright by the original authors.
Agreed. The SFC is not the owner of either of the works in question and is not the author of the license in question. They have no stake or standing in the matter.
As authors of the GPL itself, I would say that Stallman or the FSF do have some say in the matter.
The SFC can go pound sand...
from the article:
"However, our conclusion is simple: Conservancy and the Linux copyright holders in the GPL Compliance Project for Linux Developers" https://sfconservancy.org/copy...
you will note that the SFC *advises* its members who *ARE* Linux copyright holders. so your conclusion that "the SFC can go pound sand" is misleading.. the SFC has advised its members. the members - who are Linux copyright holders - willl consider that advice, and will consider whether to take legal action against Canonical.
I'm not sure what anyone would stand to gain by arguing that Ubuntu is violating the GPLv2 license. It seems kind of ridiculous.
large companies - whether they are software libre companies like redhat or canonical, or proprietary companies like HP or Samsung - are supposed to be the "shining example" of what laws individuals are expected to follow. when those large companies are also making their money out of software libre, it is even *more* important that they set a good example.
otherwise what happens is that smaller companies - and chinese and other asian companies across the world - go "oh look: canonical's lost its rights to distribute the linux kernel due to a Copyright violation, and nobody did anything, therefore we don't have to worry about it either. let's continue to blatantly break the law, dishonour the spirit of software libre and make as much money as we can by spongeing off of other people's expertise".
for example: i'm one of the people who is actively involved behind the scenes in convincing allwinner to comply with the GPL. how the fuck am i going to do that - how the fuck am i going to convince allwinner that they've done something wrong by distributing source that does not come with the proper GPL headers - when even fuckwit companies like Canonical blatantly break the law?
if you have a good answer to that, please let everybody know.
y'know... there's a reason why debian sticks with old-school mailing lists and why the mirrors keep it as utterly simple as possible. but the other question is, were users verifying the md5/sha1 checksums on the ISO images? how would they do that (when usually they will be downloading a check-program from the same website)? would they *know* to verify the checksums?
If you pick your file system because its GPL, you're pretty retarded. And yes, retarded is the appropriate word here.
he's picking his file system so that he complies with Copyright Law. why would you have an issue with that? i also don't understand why a Corporation (Canonical) would encourage people to ignore Copyright Law.
ok so is there any adblock software that actually loads the ads... then silently discards them? i don't mind if it's server-side or client-side (i use junkbuster / fork-of-junkbuster).
i have a friend who called me to say that their computer had had the default browser search settings changed to some adware. so i checked the instructions on how to remove it, only to find that the settings shown in the screen-shots *weren't there*. turns out that inspection of the timestamps on the filesystem, the phishing-malware had *replaced* legitimate system libraries, which enabled them to disguise the malware and prevent its own removal. it was necessary for us to go round some friend's houses, drop the macbook into single-user mode and copy over replacement files from an identical copy of macosx.
now, this is the first time i've ever dealt with macosx viruses, but i was surprised that it was so easy for my non-technical friend to be fooled by a phishing attempt which scared her with the "you have 2,500 viruses do you want us to fix it?" tactic. as a purely software-libre end-user for the past 20 years, all i can say is, "welcome to the monoculture world, apple. your false sense of security myth is well and truly over, and you have a hell of a lot of catching up to do".
over the past two years there was a drastic increase in the inability of the editors to spot the most basic of spelling errors. "it is" instead of the relative pronoun "its" and so on. these errors - presented to technically-competent people whose careers critically depend on ensuring that code and documentation contains absolutely no errors of any kind - generally tends to piss them off and leaves them with no respect for slashdot.
the second thing: as mentioned previously, there's not enough good content. "powered by your submissions" only works if you have a large enough threshold of people willing to "power the submissions". given that so many people have been pissed off at various stages of slashdot's lifetime, those people that used to submit stories no longer do so.
the third thing: the advertising, despite being a long-term contributor who clicks the "ads disabled" button, really really pisses me off. i am NEVER going to buy a product from slashdot. EVER. deal with it. respect my right to not be advertised at and put to inconvenience, and i will continue to help with moderation and submissions. otherwise, if you continue to irritate me i will either look at adding extra manual rules to u-block, or to junkbuster, or i will just quit using slashdot entirely [after 20 years of continous reading and contributions].
like the last grain of sand on a pile that tips it into a landslide, consciousness exists at that "critical instability" point. that's according to a friend of mine - dr alex hankey - who has been studying consciousness in a formal mathematical way for over a decade. i am _delighted_ to see that other people are finally catching up.
"Shall we start leeching the four humors from the body again to achieve balance?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
actually... leeches have started to be used again in the western medical world because the removal of blood - especially blood which has heavy toxins or other dangerous pollutants - can have a beneficial effect (obviously), and leaches automatically inject anti-coagulants.
just because they didn't necessarily understand the exact science *doesn't* mean that over centuries of empirical observation doctors from older times weren't "on the right track".
much of what western medical doctors tell patients is "simplified to the point of being bullshit".... but, *very importantly*, is *reassuring* bullshit. calming the patient down (especially in stress-related illness) is actually a recognised branch of medicine, and has been for many centuries.
anyway... sorry, had to point that out.
"that may include rewrites to focus more on the new class of Star Wars characters"
yeah. that'll be because they ignore george lucas, who has been working on a storyline for several decades. did anyone else notice that the film was pretty much a quotes modern reinvention quotes of the exact same story of the very first film - right down to having a tunnel that the tie-fighters went down and got shot at?
i heard a story related to john lasseter, where the only reason that some of the older artists working on disney films stayed on was out of loyalty to walt. this despite the managers and directors at disney studios for over a decade basically viewing disney studios as a "profit generation outfit". as a result we got absolutely awful films like that one about voodoo down in new orleans, and that one about a bison in the U.S. desert, which was a truly nerve-grating scratch-your-own-eyes-out bitch-fest, with the main characters verbally back-stabbing each other pretty much the entire time [and this is supposed to be a kid's film].
marvel comics and dc comics films are successful because there is a HUGE volume of material developed by extremely talented writers over many decades. script-writers therefore actually have *too much* originality to work from, as well as having the advantage of not really needing to do too much in the way of "back-story" - they can jump right in.
to dick about with a 3-decade-long complex story by IGNORING THE PERSON WHO WROTE IT is just... well... disappointing.
I'm all for a hardware manufacturer who creates and promotes 100% open hardware with public code provided.....................know any?
yeah, that'll be me.
http://rhombus-tech.net/commun...
https://www.crowdsupply.com/eo...
i also have an RYF / FSF-Endorseable CPU Card under development:
http://rhombus-tech.net/ingeni...
just so you know, i currently have a sponsor for the 15.6in laptop, i've been working on it for 14 months now. sponsorship works well for two reasons: firstly, investment is usually profit-driven, so the priority is on maximising the investor's profits instead of getting the product - and even more importantly the modular standard - right. secondly, sponsorship is absolutely fair and honest. i receive what i need to do the job, and the sponsor(s) get to be able to buy (or in the case of my main sponsor, sell) the end product(s).
so if you'd like to sponsor the development of these products, do contact me ok? love to hear from you.