is the ability to Cancel a download, click the link again, and have the browser (usually) pick up where the previous download attempt left off.
My university's network can be somewhat unreliable, and downloads often stop midway through. I often find that using IE is the only way to get the download, even though I prefer Mozilla (and Galeon, when I'm using GNU/Linux).
Earlier this month, the Federal Communications Commission approved regulations that would require television manufacturers to include anticopying technology in the next generation of televisions. The technology would identify programs that broadcasters do not want consumers to copy without first paying a fee.
So what's stopping companies from countries other than the US from making a copy-protected version of their hardware for the US market, and a non-copy-protected version (possibly at a higher price) for the non-US market?
Sure, companies don't like having to support multiple products, but I'll bet there'd be a market for this. Wouldn't the FCC's new regulation just push American companies out of this market?
From what I know of these countries, it seems extremely unfair to lump Cuba in with Iraq et al as "Axis of Evil". If I were a Cuban, I believe I would be extremely offended.
So they're in your neck of the woods, and they don't believe in your economic or political system! Deal with it!
And yes, I read those guidelines. I just got lost in all the legalese.:)
However, these regulations also state the following:
(4) Country restrictions. You may not knowingly export or
reexport source code, corresponding object code or products
developed with this source code to Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North
Korea, Sudan or Syria.
If you post it on the net, then there's nothing stopping these countries from getting the code. Hence, doesn't that put one in murky legal waters?
Wow, that's wildly inaccurate. I mean, you're astoundingly off-base.
You've got a point, there. I just meant that the U.S. gov't is partial to the needs of business, and doesn't really care about free software.
When you think about it, the government's only real job is to defend the rights and freedoms of its citizens.
So, you're saying that governments build roads to protect the mobility rights of citizens, for example? I think governments' jobs go much broader than that.
Among those freedoms, at least here in America, is the right to start a business and engage in free enterprise.
But rights must be balenced. If I may play the devil's advocate, one of the ideological underpinnings of the Free Software movement is that one's right to make money is less important than everyone's right to improve software, and your responsibility to help others.
The same laws that protect Microsoft's ability to sell software protect your right to give it away.
Well, the U.S. government does place restrictions on one's right to give software away (in the case of strong cryptography). Hence OpenBSD is based in Canada.
From an economic standpoint, that doesn't matter. The U.S. government is concerned much more with economic competition than with competition among different free software products.
Having people freely download American SELinux instead of Canadian OpenBSD doesn't equal more money in the American economy.
That's MS's point of view; however, the government's point of view is exacly as the article states.
If NSA work is released under the GPL, then non-American businesses can benefit equally from the NSA's work, even though the NSA receives no tax money from said businesses. Thus, the NSA would be helping the economies of foreign nations that compete with the U.S. From a business perspective, this seems like a reasonable move, and even though this doesn't benefit me (since I'm not American), I really can't blame the NSA for making this choice.
The issue here that made the U.S. government listen is that the "open-source software would compete with American proprietary software." The article states clearly that "Many complaints criticized the agency for providing the fruits of research to everyone, not just U.S. companies, and thus hurting American business."
This is another example of American government's actions being fuelled by a desire to help American businesses to the detriment of individual freedom, similar to the DCMA.
You don't consider them running their free online mail service on FreeBSD for years "taking *nix seriously"?;-)
Re:What about binary-only packages
on
GCC 3.2 Released
·
· Score: 1
I believe that most (GNU/)Linux and *BSD systems include both a 2.95.x and 3.x version of GCC, so that you can compile software written for both.
Furthermore, compiles programs (games/commercial software) depend on shared libraries (*.so.x.y.z, the equivalent of Windows DLLs), which are separate from compilers. Again, you can have two or more versions of a shared library (ie./lib/glibc.so.5.0.9 and/lib/glibc.so.6.2.1) on your system, so that you can run programs that need either.
Re:Is this front page material?
on
GCC 3.2 Released
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
This is front-page material because GCC is one of the most important building blocks of the free/open-source software world.
GCC is the de facto compiler for GNU/Linux and *BSD systems. Furthermore, the Linux kernel currently hasn't been ported off GCC. Without GCC, free *NIX systems would have nowhere near the importance they have now.
Re:Great, there goes more of our freedom
on
Shrinkwrapped Books
·
· Score: 1
That's just my sig....
Anyhow, what I mean by it is this. Consider a constitution -- it counts for nothing unless people believe in it. Many countries have written constitutions, but no one takes these constitutions seriously, and the countries in question are not free. By contrast, Britain has no written constitution, but it has an unwritten constitution, which people believe in, and Britain is a free country.
As another example, consider a market economy: it runs well when people believe in it.
There are many other examples, but I think this explains what I mean.:)
You can get the same effect by posting links to your site on message boards.
In my school's web tech class, we had a competition to make "zxylition" pages (zxylition is a made-up word) and get them listed on Google. The first page up used this technique to get noticed by Google.
Re:Great, there goes more of our freedom
on
Shrinkwrapped Books
·
· Score: 1
Man should work for for his own personal rational interest. That would be moral.
I'm afraid that I must disagree with you, partially on religious grounds. If I may invoke a quote:
Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. -- Mattew 5:42, NRSV
Now, I'm not a fundamentalist, but I do belive this. And I agree with you that a country must have different points of view, but this message is part of what makes me lean to the left, and favour a degree of socialism.
I might have used the term "structured programming" somewhat imprecisely. I'll try to clarify.
Consider the following: take an algorithm, say quicksort. It's a list of instructions, with control structures and recursion.
This is what the student should learn first: how to attack a problem with instructions, control structures, and recursion. This structure is used in both structured and object-oriented programming. Furthermore, some structured programming constructs, such as functions, remain in OOP languages, but are given less emphasis (for example, static methods in Java, such as java.math.cos).
I think if you show a student classes too early, it gets in the way of learning these basics. And in Java, there is no way to do this, since your applet/application is itself a class, with "public static void main". I don't think students should see this until they're comfortable with the basics mentioned above.
C# isn't by any stretch the best language to teach concerning the basics of computer programming
IMHO, neither is Java or C++.
My school switched a few years back from teaching first-year comp sci in Pascal, to Java. Why? Because Pascal is not a high-demand computer language, and Java is. The downside is that a student is immidiately confronted with object-oriented programming, without first learning the basics of structured programming.
According to UW's story, their introductory course was previously taught in C++ -- again, not the best language for beginners.
I think there's a tradeoff happening here between instructiveness and real-world usefulness. Certainly, C++, Java, and even C# are useful languages to know. However, languages designed for teaching, like Pascal, are probably still best for learning the basics of programming.
Also, I may point out that the article states that the new required course in C# is a "pre-university programming course". This sounds to me like something intended to give students a bit of an introduction to the technical aspects of programming, much like young students may learn some web page scripting before learning "real programming".
Re:Great, there goes more of our freedom
on
Shrinkwrapped Books
·
· Score: 1
I sure as hell do.
The NDP has brought many Good Things to Canada, including Medicare, which is one of the most cherished institutions in Canada (by most people, at least).
After having a socialist party since the 1930's, Canada is still a free country. Same with Britian, where they have the Labour Party, and most of Europe as well.
The US just seems to have an irrational "everything-left-of-centre-is-Communism" fear of democratic socialism that is not shared by the rest of the free world.
Re:Great, there goes more of our freedom
on
Shrinkwrapped Books
·
· Score: 1, Flamebait
The problem with this is that govenments tend to, at least, unofficially, side with big business. Why?
Business -> economy -> more jobs & tax revenue
Businesses contribute a lot of money to politicians' campaigns
Businesses fund lobby groups to influence politicians
Many politicians, especially in the US, are very right-wing, and support business on principle
Many politicians are businessmen (ie. Cheney)
Other reasons I haven't thought of...
What you guys need in the US is a mainstream centre-left socialist party, such as the NDP we have here in Canada, that is sympathetic to individual rights, and suspicious of the motives of big business.
Yes, you've used "eh" correctly. It's most often used to transform a statement ("American beer tastes like cow piss.") into a question ("American beer tastes like cow piss, eh?").
However, if you replace "no" with "eh", you should remove the "Surely". Otherwise you're mixing "British aristocrat" with "Canadian lumberjack", in a way that nature did not intend.
If its a shell script, you could easily bypass or edit the agreement then.
I'm glad you think so highly of my shell-scripting abilities....
I wonder if it would hold up in court that, in the agreement I signed, sun had to pay for my lunch every day for the rest of the time I use their technology?
No dice. The courts wouldn't allow a person to willfully step around a contract like that. (Unless, of course, allowing this would be an extremely popular political decision. Courts are often "trendy" in their interpretation of the law.)
Bypassing licensing agreements like this was already discussed on Slashdot here.
Slashdot Mirror
is the ability to Cancel a download, click the link again, and have the browser (usually) pick up where the previous download attempt left off.
My university's network can be somewhat unreliable, and downloads often stop midway through. I often find that using IE is the only way to get the download, even though I prefer Mozilla (and Galeon, when I'm using GNU/Linux).
From my experience you can get very good news from the BBC.
They have a very international focus, as opposed to many news shows that are heavily-biased towards their country of origin.
But wouldn't importing a non-copy protected TV violate the DMCA?
Uh, I wasn't talking about Americans importing these things... that, my friend, is your problem. :)
From the article,
So what's stopping companies from countries other than the US from making a copy-protected version of their hardware for the US market, and a non-copy-protected version (possibly at a higher price) for the non-US market?
Sure, companies don't like having to support multiple products, but I'll bet there'd be a market for this. Wouldn't the FCC's new regulation just push American companies out of this market?
From what I know of these countries, it seems extremely unfair to lump Cuba in with Iraq et al as "Axis of Evil". If I were a Cuban, I believe I would be extremely offended.
So they're in your neck of the woods, and they don't believe in your economic or political system! Deal with it!
And yes, I read those guidelines. I just got lost in all the legalese. :)
However, these regulations also state the following:
If you post it on the net, then there's nothing stopping these countries from getting the code. Hence, doesn't that put one in murky legal waters?
However, the ethic that every government follows is to do what's best for it's country, regardless of what is "fair". Just look at any trade dispute.
The fact that, with Linux, the US benefits from foreign work, does not mean that the NSA has any obligation to "give back to the community". :-(
Wow, that's wildly inaccurate. I mean, you're astoundingly off-base.
You've got a point, there. I just meant that the U.S. gov't is partial to the needs of business, and doesn't really care about free software.
When you think about it, the government's only real job is to defend the rights and freedoms of its citizens.
So, you're saying that governments build roads to protect the mobility rights of citizens, for example? I think governments' jobs go much broader than that.
Among those freedoms, at least here in America, is the right to start a business and engage in free enterprise.
But rights must be balenced. If I may play the devil's advocate, one of the ideological underpinnings of the Free Software movement is that one's right to make money is less important than everyone's right to improve software, and your responsibility to help others.
The same laws that protect Microsoft's ability to sell software protect your right to give it away.
Well, the U.S. government does place restrictions on one's right to give software away (in the case of strong cryptography). Hence OpenBSD is based in Canada.
From an economic standpoint, that doesn't matter. The U.S. government is concerned much more with economic competition than with competition among different free software products.
Having people freely download American SELinux instead of Canadian OpenBSD doesn't equal more money in the American economy.
That's MS's point of view; however, the government's point of view is exacly as the article states.
If NSA work is released under the GPL, then non-American businesses can benefit equally from the NSA's work, even though the NSA receives no tax money from said businesses. Thus, the NSA would be helping the economies of foreign nations that compete with the U.S. From a business perspective, this seems like a reasonable move, and even though this doesn't benefit me (since I'm not American), I really can't blame the NSA for making this choice.
The issue here that made the U.S. government listen is that the "open-source software would compete with American proprietary software." The article states clearly that "Many complaints criticized the agency for providing the fruits of research to everyone, not just U.S. companies, and thus hurting American business."
This is another example of American government's actions being fuelled by a desire to help American businesses to the detriment of individual freedom, similar to the DCMA.
Yes, I know they're using Win2K now, but they were using FreeBSD for years... which is what my post said. :-)
You don't consider them running their free online mail service on FreeBSD for years "taking *nix seriously"? ;-)
I believe that most (GNU/)Linux and *BSD systems include both a 2.95.x and 3.x version of GCC, so that you can compile software written for both.
Furthermore, compiles programs (games/commercial software) depend on shared libraries (*.so.x.y.z, the equivalent of Windows DLLs), which are separate from compilers. Again, you can have two or more versions of a shared library (ie. /lib/glibc.so.5.0.9 and /lib/glibc.so.6.2.1) on your system, so that you can run programs that need either.
This is front-page material because GCC is one of the most important building blocks of the free/open-source software world.
GCC is the de facto compiler for GNU/Linux and *BSD systems. Furthermore, the Linux kernel currently hasn't been ported off GCC. Without GCC, free *NIX systems would have nowhere near the importance they have now.
That's just my sig....
Anyhow, what I mean by it is this. Consider a constitution -- it counts for nothing unless people believe in it. Many countries have written constitutions, but no one takes these constitutions seriously, and the countries in question are not free. By contrast, Britain has no written constitution, but it has an unwritten constitution, which people believe in, and Britain is a free country.
As another example, consider a market economy: it runs well when people believe in it.
There are many other examples, but I think this explains what I mean. :)
You can get the same effect by posting links to your site on message boards.
In my school's web tech class, we had a competition to make "zxylition" pages (zxylition is a made-up word) and get them listed on Google. The first page up used this technique to get noticed by Google.
Man should work for for his own personal rational interest. That would be moral.
I'm afraid that I must disagree with you, partially on religious grounds. If I may invoke a quote:
Now, I'm not a fundamentalist, but I do belive this. And I agree with you that a country must have different points of view, but this message is part of what makes me lean to the left, and favour a degree of socialism.
I might have used the term "structured programming" somewhat imprecisely. I'll try to clarify.
Consider the following: take an algorithm, say quicksort. It's a list of instructions, with control structures and recursion.
This is what the student should learn first: how to attack a problem with instructions, control structures, and recursion. This structure is used in both structured and object-oriented programming. Furthermore, some structured programming constructs, such as functions, remain in OOP languages, but are given less emphasis (for example, static methods in Java, such as java.math.cos).
I think if you show a student classes too early, it gets in the way of learning these basics. And in Java, there is no way to do this, since your applet/application is itself a class, with "public static void main". I don't think students should see this until they're comfortable with the basics mentioned above.
C# isn't by any stretch the best language to teach concerning the basics of computer programming
IMHO, neither is Java or C++.
My school switched a few years back from teaching first-year comp sci in Pascal, to Java. Why? Because Pascal is not a high-demand computer language, and Java is. The downside is that a student is immidiately confronted with object-oriented programming, without first learning the basics of structured programming.
According to UW's story, their introductory course was previously taught in C++ -- again, not the best language for beginners.
I think there's a tradeoff happening here between instructiveness and real-world usefulness. Certainly, C++, Java, and even C# are useful languages to know. However, languages designed for teaching, like Pascal, are probably still best for learning the basics of programming.
Also, I may point out that the article states that the new required course in C# is a "pre-university programming course". This sounds to me like something intended to give students a bit of an introduction to the technical aspects of programming, much like young students may learn some web page scripting before learning "real programming".
I sure as hell do.
The NDP has brought many Good Things to Canada, including Medicare, which is one of the most cherished institutions in Canada (by most people, at least).
After having a socialist party since the 1930's, Canada is still a free country. Same with Britian, where they have the Labour Party, and most of Europe as well.
The US just seems to have an irrational "everything-left-of-centre-is-Communism" fear of democratic socialism that is not shared by the rest of the free world.
The problem with this is that govenments tend to, at least, unofficially, side with big business. Why?
What you guys need in the US is a mainstream centre-left socialist party, such as the NDP we have here in Canada, that is sympathetic to individual rights, and suspicious of the motives of big business.
Ahem... may I as what you consider a real beer?
Yes, you've used "eh" correctly. It's most often used to transform a statement ("American beer tastes like cow piss.") into a question ("American beer tastes like cow piss, eh?").
However, if you replace "no" with "eh", you should remove the "Surely". Otherwise you're mixing "British aristocrat" with "Canadian lumberjack", in a way that nature did not intend.
Congratulations!
Now you can find out what real beer is all about.
I AM CANADIAN!
If its a shell script, you could easily bypass or edit the agreement then.
I'm glad you think so highly of my shell-scripting abilities....
I wonder if it would hold up in court that, in the agreement I signed, sun had to pay for my lunch every day for the rest of the time I use their technology?
No dice. The courts wouldn't allow a person to willfully step around a contract like that. (Unless, of course, allowing this would be an extremely popular political decision. Courts are often "trendy" in their interpretation of the law.)
Bypassing licensing agreements like this was already discussed on Slashdot here.