This will only cause advertisers and network television stations to 'embed' more of their products/advertisements into the television programs themselves. Looks like Apple already has a headstart in this area.
This will work for networks, since for the most part they produce much of the programming. Generally they are not going to be hurting much since they have economies of scale working in their favor.
The folks that will have issues are the local affiliates. The only programming they generally produce is news. Local news is becoming more and more marginalized when put side by side to cable news orginizations. This is particularly true in small markets. The difference in production value of local programming is stunning when you move from some where like the bay area to a rural location.
My personal take is that the eventuallity of major national networks purchasing a majority of its local affiliates in small market segments is coming in the near future. They just need to pay off congress men to back of repealing of the FCC ownership rules.
On a side note, realisically viewship of advertisments has been on the decline since the advent of the television remote control.
From Merriam-Webster: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
Nazism is commonly refered to as National Socialism. By definition, the take over of private sector economies and services is socialism, whether it is done by force, democratic process or defacto part of the societal construct.
More to the point socialism is more of a economic construct then an authority construct. Socialism can and does flurish under different authority constructs, as does capitolism.
Mostly pure capitalism + Democratic Repulic: The form of government around in the US/UK during the industrial revolution prior to labor movments. Business was king, sweat shops were common, an curruption was common place.
Socialism + Authoritarian Rule (Single dictator/Ruling elite): Nazi Germany/Facsist Italy(circa late 1930s thru mid 1940s)/Most brands of Communism
Capitalism + Authoritarian Rule (usually ruling elite): Most modern theocracies and true monarchies (UK doesn't count since its monarchy is only a state head and does not rule the UK).
Socialism/Capitalism mix + Democratic Republic: Most western forms of government. Most are much more Socialist then say the US, but it is a sccialist society, no matter what the republicans say..:-)
Most disagreements over what socialism is, comes from a disageement about the side entrees that could come with socialism. There are more then just democraic vs authoritarian, and my catagorizations are prolly not 100% correct, but they make the point.
In general, socialism/capitolism mix and Democratic Republics work really well together since they can protect the public at large from the psudo ruling elite that is created by from capitalsim, but provide enough insentive for people to be productive members of socities.
There have been all these restrictions on the rights of US citizens-but all that has happened since 911 is the price of a smuggler taking folks from Mexico to the US has gone up from $500 to $1500. That doesn't strike me as a lot of increased security.
Actually that is directly related to more secuirty. Basically (in theory at least) the risk for being a Coyote has decreased their numbers. So market dictates price. Less people offering a service tends to drive up the cost.
This is the same logic when dealing the drug war. The idea being, if the commodity or service avalibility is constrained, then the price will go up detering normally honest people from purchasing the commodity or service. Generally this is touted as a win.
What it actually means is that suddently a smaller number of people will make much more money per person they shuttle. Thus, just like with drugs, more money means more power. These folks will only get more violent to protect their very lucritive livelihood. My personal oppinion is the drug war is what turned vast sections of LA in to an utter wasteland.
This all strikes me as a big scam.
Sort of. The only justification for all of the types of restrictions of human rights and invasion of privacy, is the assumption that you cannot control the boarders. I personally have a great distain and distrust for this administration, mainly instead of attacking the problem of illegal or fraudulent immigration, they use smoke and mirrors to empower themselves at the expense of the public good.
Actually its funny you mention that. On one of the right wing talking heads shows(Scarbough Country I think), Ann Coulter was on defending the Patiot Act and at the time, still living Liberty Act. She was point blankly asked if she would feel comfortable if Janet Reno had the powers "blessed" upon Ashcroft. She enphattically responded with "NO!"...
It is completely absurd to give and branch or arm of government unfettered ability to remove your constitutional rights regardless of who is in office, but our white house squaters just don't get it.
No, actually, coffee makers don't boil the water, and not to 190 degrees fahrenheit. Indeed, commerical home use coffee machines don't do this.
Just because commerical coffee makers do not make it that way does not imply that is not how you make it. Regarless of actual tempature, since boiling water is _A_ method of producting coffee and the one most employeed when makeing your own coffee with out a coffee maker, there should be a reasonable expectation that the coffee could be at that tempature.
However, I challenge you. Go boil some water on the stove. Then poor it through some coffee beans. Then drink it right away.
I wouldn't simply because I use common sense and would have a reasonable expectation the coffee is hot and would most likely scald me. Beyond that I don't drink coffee for the simple fact I dislike hot beverages as a method for delivering the heavenly nector that is caffine...:-)
McDonald's coffee was really fscking hot at 190 degrees Fahrenheit -- 22 degrees shy of boiling -- because they claimed it tasted better that way; and,
Have you actually ever made coffee before? Here is the general recipe. Boil Water and pour through ground up coffee beans...
In general there should be a reasonable expectation that the coffee is close to boiling since that is how coffee is generally made. This was not a problem with McDonalds but a problem with people who have no consept of the idea that you are responsible for your own actions. The never ending Tobacco lawsuits, Fat lawsuits are just a continuation of the principle, that common sense has no place in our courts.
You mean, you didn't hear about the problems with some types of punch card machines until Florida 2000.
Good god no, every one has heard the gory details over the punch card ballot.
Nice of you to decide that tens of thousands of voters in Florida "shouldn't be voting". You're on the same page as Sec. State Harris.
While I do agree that everyone should have a right to vote, if you can't follow simple instructions, maybe you shouldn't be voting. The real issue in 2000 was not a problem with the machines, it was a problem of human error. Pregnate chads, dimpled chads, hanging chads result from not following the instructions. The instructions state quite clearly, after making your selection, make sure that all the little peices of chad are punched out and removed from the ballot.
So the question really is will a new voting system have less of a chance for human error. Probably not. Heck my grandma refused to use a mouse for years. I am sure there are more techno phobic luddies out there then her.
There is no such thing as an error free system. It may be possible to decrease the machine error rate with touch screen voting, but no matter what system you use, until you remove the human from the equation you will never have error free elections or voting.
Who is doing the tracking? I am sure that kidnappers will definitely find a great use for this...Look that one is off all by them self.
Why do I have a problem with this? It turns individuals in to not a person that have to be interacted with at some level, but cattle. We tag our animals for tracking. Why? Because they are mindless creatures that we need to keep corralled.
Many of our schools today are failing our kids. It is incredible to me, that in our society, that some children can graduate high school and not even be able to read their diploma. RFID tags are just moving us close to the point that teachers don't even need to know the kids name. They just have to be the baby sitter and make sure no one defecates on their desk.
You know what would be a better used of the billions of dollars that would be spent on this pure commoditization of our youth? How about hiring teachers? Paying the current teachers a competitive wage? Fixing the schools that are literally crumbling around students heads?
Ill be sending my children to school where bar codes are not required, thank you very much.
An unfortunate side effect can be a choking diesel fog during a long powercut!
Thats actually pretty easy to fix. The diesel engine was not orginially designed to run petrolum based fuels. The orgininal engine was build to run on peanut oil.
Nearly every diesel engine produced today still has the ability to run off of biodiesel. Biodiesel can be produced from the waste that is thrown out from fast food friers or any number of other types of biowaste.
Not only is biodiesel cleaner burning then petrolum based diesel, costs about the same as regular diesel, it can smell like french fries(or in your case chips) too...:-)
And in the process, deprived the RIAA of that right!
To throw some additional shades of gray. My distrobuion of said MP3 does in no way deprive RIAA(actually those that they represent) from distributing their albums, no less then then radio playing the songs. Actually artists have come out against people like Apple for selling single songs, since it destroys what they consider a peice of art(i.e. an album).
Ultimately I agree with you that property rights are inapplicable, since copyright is a imaginary construct to apply control to something in the digital age is uncontrolable.
Democrat (n): Some one who thinks you are too stupid to make decisions for your self, so the government should make them for you by taxing the living shite out of everyone and creating a vast gigantic pig such that Americans will need to suckle at the teat in order to survive.
Republican (n): Some one who thinks you are too stupid to make decisions for your self, so the government should not tax the rich and powerful top 1% cause they really have everyone's best interest at heart, including bending us all over and giving us what we need, the way they want to.
It works because the batteries operate via a chemical reaction, basically the acid inside eats away at the container. When the acid inside is mostly equilized it does not have enough umgh to work any more. By adding heat, i.e. direct sunlight, it adds enough umgh to make it happen. You should be able to notice something similar when you shake just dead batteries as well..
Let's see. Guns are designed to kill things, but everyone has a legal right to own one.
Actually no. Guns are designed to fire projectiles out of a barrel at high velocity. Guns can fire many forms of non-lethal forms of munitions like rubber or spongy bullets. The question is intent and action. If I kill, injure or threaten for non legitimate purposes such as self defence, then throw the book at me. If I use the weapon in self defence, for hunting, sport shooting at a gun club or any ligitimate reason defined under law, you cannot criminally or civially try me since I have not commited a crime.
However, buying a smartcard reader means you were going to steal TV programming, and the consequences are more severe. I don't get it.
So does that mean if you own a computer with a cdrom that you should be tried for intelectual property infringement? You could rip the cd and distribute the music. Well if you have not actually committed IP infringment, then no. The point is you cannot be tried for commiting a crime that you have not commited yet. Smartcard readers are becoming more and more standard in devices. To modify what the readers see you need a programmer. Smartcard programmers are multi purpose devices just as a CD-RW are. What gets put on them is what makes things illegal or not.
does prior restraint fit into all this? I don't know the first thing about law but this concise explanation seems to indicate so.
Prior restraint is a description of a law that tries to impose sanctions on an activity to fetter it before it happens. There is one law in this case that could be applied here: DMCA. In general as DMCA is used more to procecute people who use technologies for fair use, it will eventually be either be striken from the books or ruled unconstitutional(theres always hoping).
As for the rest of the essay it is highly critical of prior restraint as afront to liberty as indicate by :
The inexorable consequences of prior restraint, where employed outside the bounds of the doctrine of limited government, are simply an unwise and needless loss of liberty.
When it comes the exectutive branch, the congress has been effectively neutered. An excellent example is Gulf War II: the clone of the attack, or for that matter Vietnam. Basically the president can attack and occupy another country with out even getting the approval of the Congress. Last time I checked, the senate and only the senate had a right to declare war on another contry.
Oh wait, those were not wars, they were police actions, thats right. In all honesty, the senate did declare war on Iraq, but only as a rubber stamp for the president after it was clear that he was going to invade regardless of their approval.
Basically regardless of the approval of congress, any government program that operates in the shadows, out side the scope of the public view has no place in a free society.
Meaning, lots of embedded work takes place as modules to odd devices.
None of which LRP would have taken advantage of. The only real "odd devices" that LRP really cares about is network drivers. Most networking chip sets come from a pretty narrow pool and are already avalible with the stock kernel. The only binary module I have ever seen wrt wired networking is Intel's IANS drivers, and very high end network cards that would have no place in a highly embedded system that would warant a distro of 1.44 MB.
Companies he complain about like Lineo, Caldera and Embeddix have success by working with binary modules, what is much more difficult for an individual without the resources to develop something in-house without community participation or without credibility to sign a NDA.
Emdeddix was Lineo. They have completely closed their doors in the US. There is a former subsidary in Japan still opperating under the name Lineo, but that is it. All "IP" that Lineo could claim was bought for a pitance by Mot. Caldera never had an embedded product worth beans, so I am not sure he are claiming much.
Actually the fact of the mater is, with a late 2.2 kernel, one could duplicate the kernel side of LRP in an afternoon. The real work he did was in userspace. Hats off to him in that regard, as he did a very good job and making a router that was easy to configure from an sysadmin prospective, but this is definately not a GPL loophole.
Realistically, the main problem I see with the LRP is that it never left the confines of X86. X86 is a power hungry architecture and Most off the shelf routers, are either running mips or powerpc. While surely producers of routers could go get community tools, recompile, reintegrate and retest the whole thing...But the bottom line is embedded linux companies (that do not trace their lineage from any LRP work) provide the same thing completely packaged and ready to go; but as a bonus, they provide support. Something that was squirlly at best at LRP.
At some point some apes evolved into what could be classified as "Human".
Please, don't continue this misinterpretation of evolution. Apes and Humans radiatively evolved from a common ancestor. Apes did not evolve in to humans.
I can't think of many people outside of slashdot who consider 3 hours battery life using WiFi as acceptable.
Most laptops I have used can hardly handle 3 hours on a full charge. We are starting to get there, but most systems that have been used for more then a couple months, the batteries don't hold up to the abuse.
microwaves (excites water molecules, not much else)
Actually, microwaves can excite most anything, as long as it is tuned to the molecules you are trying to exite. Since water just happens to be contained in nearly everything fleashy, it make sense for microwave ovens to be tuned to water.
The only problem 802.11 is trying to solve is being able to move computers around. The only computers it makes real sense to move around are ones that have batteries in them.
Actually thats not the only problem it solves. Imagine a prebuilt house, or an apartment where you don't want or cannot run ethernet to every place you would want ethernet. You can get pci 802.11 cards and slap them in computers where ethernet is not really a good choice. Those computers don't necissarily need to move anywhere...:-)
Well in that case can't anything be considered "functional" as long as, say, initd has started?
Yes. The system in absence of the driver module would still be a functional system, minus being able to use the device the module was intended for. The kernel has 2 main purposes. The first being the master controler of the system, i.e. memory manager, schedualler etc. The other is to be the userland/hardware go between. The second case can be done through the use of external source code only compiled via the headers, provided by the system.
If this guy doesn't understand the GPL, then why was this posted?;)
This is \., compitence has never been a good replacement for sensationalism.
Now if I understand this correctly, ALL software for your embedded product as a kernel module MUST be released under the GPL? Even if you wrote it yourself, and do not wish to release the source?
You do not understand the kernel then. It has been a long established tradition, that if all of your code is in a module, you have the right to release them under a different license then gpl. A good example of this is the NVIDIA video drivers. Whether it is embedded or not is completely irrelivent.
By being a module, it inherently implies that the system is functional without the module loaded. If this type of exception was not made, then most vendors of really sophistocated hardware would never release linux drivers, as they believe that this is their core value.
People trash Bill Gates for describing the GPL as "viral," but if there exists any clear example of this, this is surely it.
Its only because people like you continue to hand out the fud...:-)
Additionally, as the note to LKML implies, the person requesting the code does not have a right to it as noted by:
Also, I should note that I don't
own this product, so I can't determine if the source is shipped with it.
The gpl only obligates you to provide the source code to those who you have licensed the software to. Also they don't have to put it up on a website or ftp site. They can make you go through a request process to validate that you got the binaries through proper channels. Just some food for though.
Hrmmm....Google seems to get away with it all the time...I don't know how many times I have done a search and the site that I was looking for was actually down...Google comes to the rescue and I could view the page in the Google Cache...
It does bring up an interesting question, is caching pages/images against the law. If so, does that mean that webproxies are illeagal too since they essentually do the same thing, just a more transparent interface...
Slashdot Mirror
This will only cause advertisers and network television stations to 'embed' more of their products/advertisements into the television programs themselves. Looks like Apple already has a headstart in this area. This will work for networks, since for the most part they produce much of the programming. Generally they are not going to be hurting much since they have economies of scale working in their favor.
The folks that will have issues are the local affiliates. The only programming they generally produce is news. Local news is becoming more and more marginalized when put side by side to cable news orginizations. This is particularly true in small markets. The difference in production value of local programming is stunning when you move from some where like the bay area to a rural location.
My personal take is that the eventuallity of major national networks purchasing a majority of its local affiliates in small market segments is coming in the near future. They just need to pay off congress men to back of repealing of the FCC ownership rules.
On a side note, realisically viewship of advertisments has been on the decline since the advent of the television remote control.
Facsism and Socialism are not mutually exclusive.
:
From Merriam-Webster:
any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
Nazism is commonly refered to as National Socialism. By definition, the take over of private sector economies and services is socialism, whether it is done by force, democratic process or defacto part of the societal construct.
More to the point socialism is more of a economic construct then an authority construct. Socialism can and does flurish under different authority constructs, as does capitolism.
Mostly pure capitalism + Democratic Repulic
The form of government around in the US/UK during the industrial revolution prior to labor movments. Business was king, sweat shops were common, an curruption was common place.
Socialism + Authoritarian Rule (Single dictator/Ruling elite):
Nazi Germany/Facsist Italy(circa late 1930s thru mid 1940s)/Most brands of Communism
Capitalism + Authoritarian Rule (usually ruling elite):
Most modern theocracies and true monarchies (UK doesn't count since its monarchy is only a state head and does not rule the UK).
Socialism/Capitalism mix + Democratic Republic:
Most western forms of government. Most are much more Socialist then say the US, but it is a sccialist society, no matter what the republicans say..:-)
Most disagreements over what socialism is, comes from a disageement about the side entrees that could come with socialism. There are more then just democraic vs authoritarian, and my catagorizations are prolly not 100% correct, but they make the point.
In general, socialism/capitolism mix and Democratic Republics work really well together since they can protect the public at large from the psudo ruling elite that is created by from capitalsim, but provide enough insentive for people to be productive members of socities.
There have been all these restrictions on the rights of US citizens-but all that has happened since 911 is the price of a smuggler taking folks from Mexico to the US has gone up from $500 to $1500. That doesn't strike me as a lot of increased security.
Actually that is directly related to more secuirty. Basically (in theory at least) the risk for being a Coyote has decreased their numbers. So market dictates price. Less people offering a service tends to drive up the cost.
This is the same logic when dealing the drug war. The idea being, if the commodity or service avalibility is constrained, then the price will go up detering normally honest people from purchasing the commodity or service. Generally this is touted as a win.
What it actually means is that suddently a smaller number of people will make much more money per person they shuttle. Thus, just like with drugs, more money means more power. These folks will only get more violent to protect their very lucritive livelihood. My personal oppinion is the drug war is what turned vast sections of LA in to an utter wasteland.
This all strikes me as a big scam.
Sort of. The only justification for all of the types of restrictions of human rights and invasion of privacy, is the assumption that you cannot control the boarders. I personally have a great distain and distrust for this administration, mainly instead of attacking the problem of illegal or fraudulent immigration, they use smoke and mirrors to empower themselves at the expense of the public good.
Actually its funny you mention that. On one of the right wing talking heads shows(Scarbough Country I think), Ann Coulter was on defending the Patiot Act and at the time, still living Liberty Act. She was point blankly asked if she would feel comfortable if Janet Reno had the powers "blessed" upon Ashcroft. She enphattically responded with "NO!"...
It is completely absurd to give and branch or arm of government unfettered ability to remove your constitutional rights regardless of who is in office, but our white house squaters just don't get it.
No, actually, coffee makers don't boil the water, and not to 190 degrees fahrenheit. Indeed, commerical home use coffee machines don't do this.
Just because commerical coffee makers do not make it that way does not imply that is not how you make it. Regarless of actual tempature, since boiling water is _A_ method of producting coffee and the one most employeed when makeing your own coffee with out a coffee maker, there should be a reasonable expectation that the coffee could be at that tempature.
However, I challenge you. Go boil some water on the stove. Then poor it through some coffee beans. Then drink it right away.
I wouldn't simply because I use common sense and would have a reasonable expectation the coffee is hot and would most likely scald me. Beyond that I don't drink coffee for the simple fact I dislike hot beverages as a method for delivering the heavenly nector that is caffine...:-)
McDonald's coffee was really fscking hot at 190 degrees Fahrenheit -- 22 degrees shy of boiling -- because they claimed it tasted better that way; and,
Have you actually ever made coffee before? Here is the general recipe. Boil Water and pour through ground up coffee beans...
In general there should be a reasonable expectation that the coffee is close to boiling since that is how coffee is generally made. This was not a problem with McDonalds but a problem with people who have no consept of the idea that you are responsible for your own actions. The never ending Tobacco lawsuits, Fat lawsuits are just a continuation of the principle, that common sense has no place in our courts.
You mean, you didn't hear about the problems with some types of punch card machines until Florida 2000.
Good god no, every one has heard the gory details over the punch card ballot.
Nice of you to decide that tens of thousands of voters in Florida "shouldn't be voting". You're on the same page as Sec. State Harris.
While I do agree that everyone should have a right to vote, if you can't follow simple instructions, maybe you shouldn't be voting. The real issue in 2000 was not a problem with the machines, it was a problem of human error. Pregnate chads, dimpled chads, hanging chads result from not following the instructions. The instructions state quite clearly, after making your selection, make sure that all the little peices of chad are punched out and removed from the ballot.
So the question really is will a new voting system have less of a chance for human error. Probably not. Heck my grandma refused to use a mouse for years. I am sure there are more techno phobic luddies out there then her.
There is no such thing as an error free system. It may be possible to decrease the machine error rate with touch screen voting, but no matter what system you use, until you remove the human from the equation you will never have error free elections or voting.
Who is doing the tracking? I am sure that kidnappers will definitely find a great use for this...Look that one is off all by them self.
Why do I have a problem with this? It turns individuals in to not a person that have to be interacted with at some level, but cattle. We tag our animals for tracking. Why? Because they are mindless creatures that we need to keep corralled.
Many of our schools today are failing our kids. It is incredible to me, that in our society, that some children can graduate high school and not even be able to read their diploma. RFID tags are just moving us close to the point that teachers don't even need to know the kids name. They just have to be the baby sitter and make sure no one defecates on their desk.
You know what would be a better used of the billions of dollars that would be spent on this pure commoditization of our youth? How about hiring teachers? Paying the current teachers a competitive wage? Fixing the schools that are literally crumbling around students heads?
Ill be sending my children to school where bar codes are not required, thank you very much.
Hey you can put it in my back yard...In a couple years, my 4 armed son will kick your genetically inferior son's arse on the play ground...
An unfortunate side effect can be a choking diesel fog during a long powercut!
Thats actually pretty easy to fix. The diesel engine was not orginially designed to run petrolum based fuels. The orgininal engine was build to run on peanut oil.
Nearly every diesel engine produced today still has the ability to run off of biodiesel. Biodiesel can be produced from the waste that is thrown out from fast food friers or any number of other types of biowaste.
Not only is biodiesel cleaner burning then petrolum based diesel, costs about the same as regular diesel, it can smell like french fries(or in your case chips) too...:-)
And in the process, deprived the RIAA of that right!
To throw some additional shades of gray. My distrobuion of said MP3 does in no way deprive RIAA(actually those that they represent) from distributing their albums, no less then then radio playing the songs. Actually artists have come out against people like Apple for selling single songs, since it destroys what they consider a peice of art(i.e. an album).
Ultimately I agree with you that property rights are inapplicable, since copyright is a imaginary construct to apply control to something in the digital age is uncontrolable.
There are some additional definitions as well:
Democrat (n): Some one who thinks you are too stupid to make decisions for your self, so the government should make them for you by taxing the living shite out of everyone and creating a vast gigantic pig such that Americans will need to suckle at the teat in order to survive.
Republican (n): Some one who thinks you are too stupid to make decisions for your self, so the government should not tax the rich and powerful top 1% cause they really have everyone's best interest at heart, including bending us all over and giving us what we need, the way they want to.
It works because the batteries operate via a chemical reaction, basically the acid inside eats away at the container. When the acid inside is mostly equilized it does not have enough umgh to work any more. By adding heat, i.e. direct sunlight, it adds enough umgh to make it happen. You should be able to notice something similar when you shake just dead batteries as well..
Only as a rubber stamp after words.
Let's see. Guns are designed to kill things, but everyone has a legal right to own one.
Actually no. Guns are designed to fire projectiles out of a barrel at high velocity. Guns can fire many forms of non-lethal forms of munitions like rubber or spongy bullets. The question is intent and action. If I kill, injure or threaten for non legitimate purposes such as self defence, then throw the book at me. If I use the weapon in self defence, for hunting, sport shooting at a gun club or any ligitimate reason defined under law, you cannot criminally or civially try me since I have not commited a crime.
However, buying a smartcard reader means you were going to steal TV programming, and the consequences are more severe. I don't get it.
So does that mean if you own a computer with a cdrom that you should be tried for intelectual property infringement? You could rip the cd and distribute the music. Well if you have not actually committed IP infringment, then no. The point is you cannot be tried for commiting a crime that you have not commited yet. Smartcard readers are becoming more and more standard in devices. To modify what the readers see you need a programmer. Smartcard programmers are multi purpose devices just as a CD-RW are. What gets put on them is what makes things illegal or not.
does prior restraint fit into all this? I don't know the first thing about law but this concise explanation seems to indicate so.
Prior restraint is a description of a law that tries to impose sanctions on an activity to fetter it before it happens. There is one law in this case that could be applied here: DMCA. In general as DMCA is used more to procecute people who use technologies for fair use, it will eventually be either be striken from the books or ruled unconstitutional(theres always hoping).
As for the rest of the essay it is highly critical of prior restraint as afront to liberty as indicate by :
The inexorable consequences of prior restraint, where employed outside the bounds of the doctrine of limited government, are simply an unwise and needless loss of liberty.
When it comes the exectutive branch, the congress has been effectively neutered. An excellent example is Gulf War II: the clone of the attack, or for that matter Vietnam. Basically the president can attack and occupy another country with out even getting the approval of the Congress. Last time I checked, the senate and only the senate had a right to declare war on another contry.
Oh wait, those were not wars, they were police actions, thats right. In all honesty, the senate did declare war on Iraq, but only as a rubber stamp for the president after it was clear that he was going to invade regardless of their approval.
Basically regardless of the approval of congress, any government program that operates in the shadows, out side the scope of the public view has no place in a free society.
Meaning, lots of embedded work takes place as modules to odd devices.
None of which LRP would have taken advantage of. The only real "odd devices" that LRP really cares about is network drivers. Most networking chip sets come from a pretty narrow pool and are already avalible with the stock kernel. The only binary module I have ever seen wrt wired networking is Intel's IANS drivers, and very high end network cards that would have no place in a highly embedded system that would warant a distro of 1.44 MB.
Companies he complain about like Lineo, Caldera and Embeddix have success by working with binary modules, what is much more difficult for an individual without the resources to develop something in-house without community participation or without credibility to sign a NDA.
Emdeddix was Lineo. They have completely closed their doors in the US. There is a former subsidary in Japan still opperating under the name Lineo, but that is it. All "IP" that Lineo could claim was bought for a pitance by Mot. Caldera never had an embedded product worth beans, so I am not sure he are claiming much.
Actually the fact of the mater is, with a late 2.2 kernel, one could duplicate the kernel side of LRP in an afternoon. The real work he did was in userspace. Hats off to him in that regard, as he did a very good job and making a router that was easy to configure from an sysadmin prospective, but this is definately not a GPL loophole.
Realistically, the main problem I see with the LRP is that it never left the confines of X86. X86 is a power hungry architecture and Most off the shelf routers, are either running mips or powerpc. While surely producers of routers could go get community tools, recompile, reintegrate and retest the whole thing...But the bottom line is embedded linux companies (that do not trace their lineage from any LRP work) provide the same thing completely packaged and ready to go; but as a bonus, they provide support. Something that was squirlly at best at LRP.
At some point some apes evolved into what could be classified as "Human".
Please, don't continue this misinterpretation of evolution. Apes and Humans radiatively evolved from a common ancestor. Apes did not evolve in to humans.
I can't think of many people outside of slashdot who consider 3 hours battery life using WiFi as acceptable.
Most laptops I have used can hardly handle 3 hours on a full charge. We are starting to get there, but most systems that have been used for more then a couple months, the batteries don't hold up to the abuse.
microwaves (excites water molecules, not much else)
Actually, microwaves can excite most anything, as long as it is tuned to the molecules you are trying to exite. Since water just happens to be contained in nearly everything fleashy, it make sense for microwave ovens to be tuned to water.
The only problem 802.11 is trying to solve is being able to move computers around. The only computers it makes real sense to move around are ones that have batteries in them.
Actually thats not the only problem it solves. Imagine a prebuilt house, or an apartment where you don't want or cannot run ethernet to every place you would want ethernet. You can get pci 802.11 cards and slap them in computers where ethernet is not really a good choice. Those computers don't necissarily need to move anywhere...:-)
Well in that case can't anything be considered "functional" as long as, say, initd has started?
;)
Yes. The system in absence of the driver module would still be a functional system, minus being able to use the device the module was intended for. The kernel has 2 main purposes. The first being the master controler of the system, i.e. memory manager, schedualler etc. The other is to be the userland/hardware go between. The second case can be done through the use of external source code only compiled via the headers, provided by the system.
If this guy doesn't understand the GPL, then why was this posted?
This is \., compitence has never been a good replacement for sensationalism.
Now if I understand this correctly, ALL software for your embedded product as a kernel module MUST be released under the GPL? Even if you wrote it yourself, and do not wish to release the source?
You do not understand the kernel then. It has been a long established tradition, that if all of your code is in a module, you have the right to release them under a different license then gpl. A good example of this is the NVIDIA video drivers. Whether it is embedded or not is completely irrelivent.
By being a module, it inherently implies that the system is functional without the module loaded. If this type of exception was not made, then most vendors of really sophistocated hardware would never release linux drivers, as they believe that this is their core value.
People trash Bill Gates for describing the GPL as "viral," but if there exists any clear example of this, this is surely it.
Its only because people like you continue to hand out the fud...:-)
Additionally, as the note to LKML implies, the person requesting the code does not have a right to it as noted by:
Also, I should note that I don't own this product, so I can't determine if the source is shipped with it.
The gpl only obligates you to provide the source code to those who you have licensed the software to. Also they don't have to put it up on a website or ftp site. They can make you go through a request process to validate that you got the binaries through proper channels. Just some food for though.
Too late. Already done: pegasus.
Hrmmm....Google seems to get away with it all the time...I don't know how many times I have done a search and the site that I was looking for was actually down...Google comes to the rescue and I could view the page in the Google Cache...
It does bring up an interesting question, is caching pages/images against the law. If so, does that mean that webproxies are illeagal too since they essentually do the same thing, just a more transparent interface...