A friend of mine got the Kinesis Ergo Keyboard and loves it. www.kinesis-ergo.com. It does slow you down at first, and it will make it harder to type on a regular keyboard, but it is a real wrist-saver. It comes with QWERY layout but is designed to be able to switch to DVORAK and other layouts easily.
For the lazy, the summary of the keyboard is that it has depressed bowls in which the keys and layed-out. This means your hands are in a much more natrual pose. Also, big keys like return and space are pressed with strong fingers like the index and the thumb. I strongly suggest at least checking out the webpage. Its a pricy keyboard, but it pays for itself in RSI surgary avoidance.
--Nick
Re:What the hell is this for? FAIR USE
on
A New DeCSS
·
· Score: 5
You do have a point, and I agree that many DeCSS advocates are acting childlike, but you overlook one essential doctrine that has pervaded many US court cases (of which this is one). This doctrine is called "Fair Use" and it essentially states it is unfair and illegal to restrict the use of a product you have sold to a consumer for any reason other than legal contractual obligation. For example, it is illegal to prevent resale of a product unless it would be illegal to sell it (ie food packages without ingredient lists). In my opinion, banning DeCSS falls under this blanket, preventing legitimate DVD owners from watching movies the way they want. I agree, perhaps the communtities reaction has been overzealous, but this is an important legal case for consumer rights (possibly the second most important rights after human rights) and deserves most of the attention it is getting.
Untouchable countries are hard to find. My plan: distributed data havens. Master servers that don't have content, just databases of mirrors. The client has controls for what sort of banned software you want, crypto, trade secret/rev eng, etc. It wouldnt be that hard, and (soon, really, RSN) I was going to write it. Perl and SQL should be fine. Of course, you need some sort of centralized server to do the database stuff, but thats not hard. Anyway, thats my plan. If enough people are interested, I will start a sourceforge project for it. The overall design is mostly done, I just need to start coding. Drop me a line if you are interested.
Yup. You're right. Rather ironic I guess, but thats the way things go. Rest assured, I will proofread my letter a little more carefully than I proofread my post.
It's funny. About half my posts are apologies for misspellings and other errors. I guess that should be a sign to me somehow. =)
Show some sanity! Write reasonable and calm letters. Do NOT flame. This is not your chance to rant about the evils of Copyrights and such. Flaming and generally being a jerk will get us nowhere, in fact it will probably hurt the cause more than you can imagine.
Read the Advocacy FAQs. Proofread you letter. Get someone else (hopefully someone who disagrees with you) to read and comment on it. Having a flood of flamers attack the Copyright agency could be the worst disaster possible for the DeCSS case.
Once again. Please, show some sanity and some respect. Write well reasoned and informative letters. DO NOT FLAME.
The whole point of Stego is that you cant say if something is or isn't there. In MP3Stego, it changes around the LSB of each frame. yes, there is a slight change in the music, but its almost subliminal. You cant tell which is the original music and which is the Stego file.
About the legal issues, I don't think any such case has come up where someone hides something in a freely available document. If a message is just lists of numbers of bytes in a particular file, then only the message should be illegal. But there is a very fine line to be drawn. Its a tough legal question, and I do not envy the judge stuck with it.
What you are really talking about is stenography. The process of hiding data in other data. Usually you also encrypt the hiden data such that it is impossible to prove (with the decryption key) that there is even hidden data in the first place.
Stenography is a relativly new area for both cryptography and the legal system. As I understand the current law (IANAL), both parts of your system (the carrier and the key) are illegal. Any document used to carry "illegal information" is illegal. At some point, this law will have to be revised (when someone hides info in the text of a supreme court case for example, then sues governemnt for distributing it [this will never happen tho]).
In the meantime, I believe there is a precedent for your home movie to become contraband. I'd love to see that in the media "NSA arrests father for illegal home movie." What is really needed is a way to make the VHS tape still contain the data, because the computer file is subject to restrictions that the video isn't. Like I say, it would be amusing.
--Nick
PS: if you are interested, there are a bunch of really good papers out there on stego that are readable to the non-cryptographer. From the software end there is some really nifty stuff, my favorites being MP3Stego (hides a few hundred k in an MP3 file) and StegFS (compatible with ext2fs, but hides date in 16 "security levels" which are stored in the unused blocks of the ext2fs. And does it in such a way as you cannot prove the existance of the data.) Very fun.
"The Internet will matter more in this election than any previous". Well, DUH! I mean, the internet has been growing at a prodigious pace for the last 10 years. Of course it matters more now than before!
Does it matter enough? Enough for what? To make a difference? Of course it will make a difference, it is one of the main news outlets (Smaller than TV and newspaper but larger than radio) for most of the US population. And we know media makes a huge difference in elections.
But, the nature of the internet (see what you want, at least more so than TV) makes it less helpful to candidates. So, yes it will make a difference in the sense it will be used like every other media outlet to spread propaganda. No, this isn't a revolution, just an evolution.
I mean, I see your point, he's just doing this for good press (I'm not agreeing, just seeing). But honestly, if you can get someone to do a good deed just for some (free) good press, thats great! More good deeds will happen, and the world will be a better place.
Why does a good deed become bad just because it will get you covered in the media? This guy is giving $2500 of his own money to charity not to mention spending some of his time to raise yet more money for charity. HE'S USING HIS GOOD PRESS TO RAISE MONEY FOR CHARITY! I think it is in remarkably poor taste to critize someone who is doing their best to get as much money as possible to a food bank. Sure, he gets his name in print, but in 3 weeks who will remember it? By your logic, Mother Theresa was extremly petty. I mean, her whole life she just kept trying to make headlines by helping people.
In short, I have a greal of respect for this man for donating his time and money to charity and very litte for you for critisizing him.
--Nick
Lots of assumptions! (or, "NO NO NO!!!")
on
Hole in GNU GPL?
·
· Score: 2
Companies are not individuals and have no right as such. The author seems to have missed on a large body of law that says otherwise.
I'm afraid it is YOU who as made an assumption. What you meant to say was "...have missed a large body of US law..."
Honestly, not everyone lives in the US. I do, and it appears you do too. But Fare doesn't. And nor do many corperations which might wish to subvert the GPL. We have copyright treaties with other countries, but if something a buisness practice is legal there, there is nothing we can do about it! This is the formost problem for law enforcement on the internet. Its (whatever it is) legal SOMEWHERE. And there aint a thing you can do about it except embargo and block traffic. And you know traffic blocking doesnt work.
Here is my interpretation of the issue. Reading this is not a substitute for reading the real posts.
Background: GPL says that you can't just distribute a binary (in essence). If you distribute at all, it must be with source.
The Issue: Can a company make an internal distribution of GPL software and not release it? (E.g. NSA secure linux, or Corel closed beta)
View 1: Companies are not people. A developer in a company may modify the code and give to other workers in the company. These other workers have all the rights to source from the GPL. Thus, if one worker decides to publish the modified code, the company cannot (legally) do anything, it's GPL code still. Thus, internal distributions of software can only be enforced through threat of firing. Even if only a binary is leaked, people who d/l the binary can require the company to give the source!
View 2: Yes of course. That is not subject to the terms of the GPL, you are not distributing it. The problem with this view is that what if I want to sell modified GPL code? I can say: $10 to join NickSoft, Inc. Then I will send you code, but you may not distribute as terms of 'employment' with NickSoft. Boom, there goes GPL.
The original poster says both views are flawed and you cannot have any other (legally they are mutally exclusive).
RMS says, yeah maybe its a flaw, but its really minor.
Again, this is only my interpretation. Read the original posts.
(My personal opinion is close to RMS', its a very tough issue and is hard to avoid, however one states a GPL-like licence. I'd say leave it be)
I see your point, and to some extent I agree. But, the reason I titled my post as such was twofold.
1) to indicate my agreement. I could have just said: I agree, but thats boring.
2) to help lazy moderators. While you may not like to admit it, not everyone moderates as concieciousally as you. Now, you may say "why help lazy moderators?" and its a good point. But I think its better to have good lazy moderation than bad lazy moderation. Also, I do have moderator points right now, but I feel posting intellegent comments is more important than moderating. (At least some people think they are intellegent, they got moderated up).
I don't think all comments have to be "useful." An 'I agree' comment isnt that useful, even if it adds a little something (which I think mine did). If I have a useful comment, I will reply to the main article. Replys to comments needn't be as useful. This is of course, highly debatable and comes down to whether you want/. to be a source of news or a place to exchange views. I prefer the latter. I can get news anywhere.
Here here! I completly agree. I'd moderate this up if I hadn't already posted. Humanity must go to the stars if it wants to progress. Earth is nice, but it won't last forever. We have to leave, and the sooner we start spreading out, the better off humanity will be.
People complain that we should spend money on the present to help fight hunger and poverty. But, compared to welfare NASA's budget is tiny. And compared to PERMINANTLY obliterating human suffering, spending a few more millions on poor people doesn't look quite as hot.
Here's to space! --Nick
ps: I know I can't spell. I'm just too lazy to break out the spell checker. Bite me.
I see your point, but I totally disagree. NASA is working on a low-low budget (both compared to what it used to be and to the size of other budgets [defense, science, welfare, etc]). They were told to do more missions with less money. AND THEY DID! A few of them failed, thats OK, we expected that. NASA expected that. NASA is STILL the worlds most sucessful space agency. If your life were analysed the way NASA was, I doubt you would be able to claim the sucess rate they do. To quote a drunk NASA techie, "allright buddy, lets see YOU go to Mars. C'mon, I'm waiting."
No matter how you look at it, the fate of humanity rests with NASA and space exploration. I think rather than critizing every failure of NASA, people should look to the sucesses and where they a bring us as a species. NASA needs the support of the American people to be able to do its job, and the American people start with you.
I completly disagree. IMHO, NASA is doing a fine job. They were given a task, do what you can with this shoestring budget, and they are doing pretty well. They are still the most sucessful space agency out there. And yes, I think space exploration is critical. Not to national security or anything, but to the security of the human race. Our future is in the stars (and the children) and we would utterly amiss to abandon our future simply because there have been a few failures. And not even that many failures either. Compare NASA's success (over 50%) with that of Linux installations. Less than 50% of Linux installations work 1st time. And going to space is much harder than installing Linux.
In short, we told them to go 'faster, cheaper' and they are. OK, so there are some failures, but when you get 10 missions the cost of one old-style mission, you can accept a few failures along the way.
This is a very bad plan. It will only encourage more lawsuits and sillyness. If we can convince a judge that PIRACY IS NOT A PROBLEM, we can go on with our lives. If piracy is a problem, espcially due to DeCSS or other "hacker programs," we will lose. Not only will we lose in the DVD case, big buisness with then have a case to cite in other areas. Remember, American law is precedent based. If we lose here, we lose everywhere.
No, the best course of action is not to thumb our nose at authority and say "Dare Ya to Crack down on us HARD", but rather to show our good and peaceful intentions through legal means.
However you look at, piracy is wrong. You can rationalize all you want about how the man is screwing you over, but when it comes down to it, you are commiting a crime if you pirate movies. Even RMS, one of the staunchest anti-IP advocates does not advocate piracy. Circumvention through legal means, yes (winning these lawsuits). Piracy, no.
If on the other hand, we lose these lawsuits, there are still measures that can be taken. In a number of countries it is still legal to reverse engineer for the sake of compatibility. Wait till a Linux player comes from one of them.
No matter what happens, we will win in the long run, it is impossible to prevent the free flow of information forever, as any spook will tell you. But how we conduct ourselves in the short run is key to how the long run will look. I urge anyone considering piracy as a "solution" to this problem to count to ten and reconsider.
I completly agree. Gilliam's works can have increadbly good and subtle underpinnings. Brazil is an excellent movie, and I did not mean to imply otherwise. Nevertheless, on the surface it is very overstated. Good Omens on the otherhand is understated on the surface, and still has subtleties below. Like the small town the Anti-christ growns up in. See a picture, it looks normal, hear Pratchett and Gaiman describe it, its hilarious. Understatement to the extreme.
It can hold water. The same way you can color a mobius strip. You just cant color one side and not the other. So you can put water in, it will just be inside and outside at the same time. (again, this requires a real 4d kline bottle, not a 3d projection. the 3d project is to a kline bottle as a circle is to a mobius strip).
I have to admit, I usually dislike movies based on my favorite books. And _Good Omens_ is one of my most favorite books. It is just about the funniest book I have ever read. Just ahead of The _Hitchhiker's Guide_ 'Trilogy'.
But Good Omens will be even harder to put into a movie than other favorites like _Ender's Game_. Why? Well, one of the best things about _Good Omens_ is the language. Full of nuance and wit, the narration tells more than the dialog or actions.
On the other hand, Gilliam is an excellent director and knows his way around wit. Still, I'm not sure if he is quite suited to the part. Omens is very understated in many ways (I think the best humor is understated humor), whereas Gilliam tends to go for overstatement. Certainly in his older work, and to some degree in his more modern works. (If you don't think so, watch Brazil again, talk about overstated)
Nevertheless, no matter how much of a let down the movie is or isn't it will make me remember the book, and that can't be a bad thing. I will certainly see the movie when (and if) it ever comes out.
For anyone who as not read _Good Omens_, DO IT NOW! It is easily the funniest book I have ever read, and ranks up there in the 10 best books I have read (and I have read quite a lot, never had a TV past 5th grade, so...). Do not wait for the movie, you will lose out if you see the movie first, no matter how good it is.
Damnit, I just realized I lent out my copy of Good Omens and never got it back. Now I want to read it again (for about the 5th time).
As some posters have pointed out, filtering software is never 100% accurate. All that is needed to stop this censorware craze is for a library to install the software (as it seems one has already done), and a kid (I'm sure there would be pleanty of volenteers) to try to research something, say breast cancer (maybe one of her friend's mothers has it). She gets blocked, and either sues the maker of the software for false advertising (claiming to do one thing, doing something else), or the library for restricting legitimate material (there was a court case that said that unless the library has a good reason, or it is considered obscene by the standards of the community, it is illegal for a publically funded library to restrict access to material based on content).
A small national media blitz, and voila, censorware disappears from the library.
(O.K., I admit, there a lots of flaws with this one. But, given that censorware is already being installed, this seems like another tactic that could be used in addition to the current ones.)
(And yes, I agree, opening the blocking list to public scrutiny and review would alievate most of the problems. It would certainly reduce false postitives, but would prob not reduce false negitives)
Well, different way of defining volume. E.g. a bowl has no volume even though it can hold water (a math-major will point out that a bowl is an OPEN surface whereas a sphere or a Kline bottle is a CLOSED surface). Also, a true Kline bottle would be 4-dimensional. This is but a 3-dimensional representation of a Kline bottle. For a similar effect, draw a Mobius strip in 2 dimensions. It doesn't look as nifty then. The thing about a Kline bottle is the neck is supposed to go through the body w/o a hole, as it is 'up' in the fourth dimension from the rest of the body. Like I say, this is only a 3-d projection of a Kline bottle.
Actually, his basic assumption is very valid. Unmaintainable code is bad code.
I won't argue the goodness/badness of perl. But I will argue that for real software (code that is used more than once), if it isn't maintainable, it's crap.
You utterly missed my point. I agree, unmaintainability is bad. But maintainability is ONLY ONE OF MANY aspects of good software. As you so delicitly put it "if it isn't maintainable, it's crap." But it's also crap if it doesn't work, it's crap if it runs too slow, it's crap if it's not done yet, etc. etc.
Saying maintainability is the only thing that matters is very nearsighted. I'll bet Win98 has some pretty maintainable code in it, but that does not make it a good OS.
You argument (if you care to call it that) is reasonable. The problem lies in your basic assumption, which I will paraphrase: "Code maintainability is the ultimate good, unmaintainable code is synonymous with bad code."
In some environments, this is true. If you are writing the code to control balistic missiles, maintianability will be very important (second, I hope, to correctness). However, in some cases, maintainability falls third or fourth on the list of prioirites. Sometimes its not a priority. I'll give an example from my personal life. I'm learning morse code, and I was going to go on a 5 hr flight. Since I only have 1hr battery, and I wanted to save that for working, I made a minidisc full of code and printed the answers on a piece of paper. How would you generate 100's of random characters, store them in seperate files, encode them to.au files, play them in order with pauses in between, etc. etc. I thought of nothing but perl, and it worked like a charm. Do I ever need those scripts again? No. Do I care if I cant read them? No.
You make argue that that is not a production environment, mere scripting. This is true, but I would argue that the line between scripting and programming is a fine one. Regardless, there are even cases of production environments where maintainability comes low on the list. cgi/database applications in which getting the damn thing working is more important than being able to maintain it. Just try to implement slash in C. Sure you can do it. Sure you can do it well, and maintainable. I'll see you in 3 months, and you won't have showered in weeks.
And, even if you accept the tenet that unmaintainable is bad, Perl is just as capable of clean code as any other language. In that way, perl can be of the dark side, it makes it easy and tempting to write unmaintainable code. But, on the other hand, writing clean code in perl is just as hard as writing code in any other language. So, assuming you want to write clean code, perl is just as good. Just cause it can make messy code does not mean you are obliged to do so.
In short, TMTOWTDI. This can never be bad. This is why open source is good. It all comes back to freedom. You can choose between GNOME and KDE, Linux and *BSD, Perl and Python. There is always another way, another value set. Perl is just looser about its value set.
True, they do have that right, but does the government? The obvious answer is yes, if they think there are drugs or other controlled substances. But, how would the government know? Would they search all packages? DHL is not responsible for tracking who is shipping what, they operate under a "common carrier"-esque type law (IANAL). As far as I know, if they know something is illegal, they can and do stop it, but they are not required to try and find out.
Slashdot Mirror
A friend of mine got the Kinesis Ergo Keyboard and loves it. www.kinesis-ergo.com. It does slow you down at first, and it will make it harder to type on a regular keyboard, but it is a real wrist-saver. It comes with QWERY layout but is designed to be able to switch to DVORAK and other layouts easily.
For the lazy, the summary of the keyboard is that it has depressed bowls in which the keys and layed-out. This means your hands are in a much more natrual pose. Also, big keys like return and space are pressed with strong fingers like the index and the thumb. I strongly suggest at least checking out the webpage. Its a pricy keyboard, but it pays for itself in RSI surgary avoidance.
--Nick
You do have a point, and I agree that many DeCSS advocates are acting childlike, but you overlook one essential doctrine that has pervaded many US court cases (of which this is one). This doctrine is called "Fair Use" and it essentially states it is unfair and illegal to restrict the use of a product you have sold to a consumer for any reason other than legal contractual obligation. For example, it is illegal to prevent resale of a product unless it would be illegal to sell it (ie food packages without ingredient lists). In my opinion, banning DeCSS falls under this blanket, preventing legitimate DVD owners from watching movies the way they want. I agree, perhaps the communtities reaction has been overzealous, but this is an important legal case for consumer rights (possibly the second most important rights after human rights) and deserves most of the attention it is getting.
My (poorly written) $.02
--Nick
Untouchable countries are hard to find. My plan: distributed data havens. Master servers that don't have content, just databases of mirrors. The client has controls for what sort of banned software you want, crypto, trade secret/rev eng, etc. It wouldnt be that hard, and (soon, really, RSN) I was going to write it. Perl and SQL should be fine. Of course, you need some sort of centralized server to do the database stuff, but thats not hard. Anyway, thats my plan. If enough people are interested, I will start a sourceforge project for it. The overall design is mostly done, I just need to start coding. Drop me a line if you are interested.
--Nick
Yup. You're right. Rather ironic I guess, but thats the way things go. Rest assured, I will proofread my letter a little more carefully than I proofread my post.
It's funny. About half my posts are apologies for misspellings and other errors. I guess that should be a sign to me somehow. =)
--Nick
Other than that misspelling, your description was accurate and informative.
Oops. Hehehe. My bad. Usually I just say fuck spelling, I know I can't spell. But that was a pretty bad mistake there. Sorry folks!
(hides head in shame)
--Nick
Show some sanity! Write reasonable and calm letters. Do NOT flame. This is not your chance to rant about the evils of Copyrights and such. Flaming and generally being a jerk will get us nowhere, in fact it will probably hurt the cause more than you can imagine.
Read the Advocacy FAQs. Proofread you letter. Get someone else (hopefully someone who disagrees with you) to read and comment on it. Having a flood of flamers attack the Copyright agency could be the worst disaster possible for the DeCSS case.
Once again. Please, show some sanity and some respect. Write well reasoned and informative letters. DO NOT FLAME.
--Nick
The whole point of Stego is that you cant say if something is or isn't there. In MP3Stego, it changes around the LSB of each frame. yes, there is a slight change in the music, but its almost subliminal. You cant tell which is the original music and which is the Stego file.
About the legal issues, I don't think any such case has come up where someone hides something in a freely available document. If a message is just lists of numbers of bytes in a particular file, then only the message should be illegal. But there is a very fine line to be drawn. Its a tough legal question, and I do not envy the judge stuck with it.
What you are really talking about is stenography. The process of hiding data in other data. Usually you also encrypt the hiden data such that it is impossible to prove (with the decryption key) that there is even hidden data in the first place.
Stenography is a relativly new area for both cryptography and the legal system. As I understand the current law (IANAL), both parts of your system (the carrier and the key) are illegal. Any document used to carry "illegal information" is illegal. At some point, this law will have to be revised (when someone hides info in the text of a supreme court case for example, then sues governemnt for distributing it [this will never happen tho]).
In the meantime, I believe there is a precedent for your home movie to become contraband. I'd love to see that in the media "NSA arrests father for illegal home movie." What is really needed is a way to make the VHS tape still contain the data, because the computer file is subject to restrictions that the video isn't. Like I say, it would be amusing.
--Nick
PS: if you are interested, there are a bunch of really good papers out there on stego that are readable to the non-cryptographer. From the software end there is some really nifty stuff, my favorites being MP3Stego (hides a few hundred k in an MP3 file) and StegFS (compatible with ext2fs, but hides date in 16 "security levels" which are stored in the unused blocks of the ext2fs. And does it in such a way as you cannot prove the existance of the data.) Very fun.
"The Internet will matter more in this election than any previous". Well, DUH! I mean, the internet has been growing at a prodigious pace for the last 10 years. Of course it matters more now than before!
Does it matter enough? Enough for what? To make a difference? Of course it will make a difference, it is one of the main news outlets (Smaller than TV and newspaper but larger than radio) for most of the US population. And we know media makes a huge difference in elections.
But, the nature of the internet (see what you want, at least more so than TV) makes it less helpful to candidates. So, yes it will make a difference in the sense it will be used like every other media outlet to spread propaganda. No, this isn't a revolution, just an evolution.
--Nick
Why?
I mean, I see your point, he's just doing this for good press (I'm not agreeing, just seeing). But honestly, if you can get someone to do a good deed just for some (free) good press, thats great! More good deeds will happen, and the world will be a better place.
Why does a good deed become bad just because it will get you covered in the media? This guy is giving $2500 of his own money to charity not to mention spending some of his time to raise yet more money for charity. HE'S USING HIS GOOD PRESS TO RAISE MONEY FOR CHARITY! I think it is in remarkably poor taste to critize someone who is doing their best to get as much money as possible to a food bank. Sure, he gets his name in print, but in 3 weeks who will remember it? By your logic, Mother Theresa was extremly petty. I mean, her whole life she just kept trying to make headlines by helping people.
In short, I have a greal of respect for this man for donating his time and money to charity and very litte for you for critisizing him.
--Nick
Companies are not individuals and have no right as such. The author seems to have missed on a large body of law that says otherwise.
I'm afraid it is YOU who as made an assumption. What you meant to say was "...have missed a large body of US law..."
Honestly, not everyone lives in the US. I do, and it appears you do too. But Fare doesn't. And nor do many corperations which might wish to subvert the GPL. We have copyright treaties with other countries, but if something a buisness practice is legal there, there is nothing we can do about it! This is the formost problem for law enforcement on the internet. Its (whatever it is) legal SOMEWHERE. And there aint a thing you can do about it except embargo and block traffic. And you know traffic blocking doesnt work.
--Nick
Here is my interpretation of the issue. Reading this is not a substitute for reading the real posts.
Background: GPL says that you can't just distribute a binary (in essence). If you distribute at all, it must be with source.
The Issue: Can a company make an internal distribution of GPL software and not release it? (E.g. NSA secure linux, or Corel closed beta)
View 1: Companies are not people. A developer in a company may modify the code and give to other workers in the company. These other workers have all the rights to source from the GPL. Thus, if one worker decides to publish the modified code, the company cannot (legally) do anything, it's GPL code still. Thus, internal distributions of software can only be enforced through threat of firing. Even if only a binary is leaked, people who d/l the binary can require the company to give the source!
View 2: Yes of course. That is not subject to the terms of the GPL, you are not distributing it. The problem with this view is that what if I want to sell modified GPL code? I can say: $10 to join NickSoft, Inc. Then I will send you code, but you may not distribute as terms of 'employment' with NickSoft. Boom, there goes GPL.
The original poster says both views are flawed and you cannot have any other (legally they are mutally exclusive).
RMS says, yeah maybe its a flaw, but its really minor.
Again, this is only my interpretation. Read the original posts.
(My personal opinion is close to RMS', its a very tough issue and is hard to avoid, however one states a GPL-like licence. I'd say leave it be)
--Nick
I see your point, and to some extent I agree. But, the reason I titled my post as such was twofold.
/. to be a source of news or a place to exchange views. I prefer the latter. I can get news anywhere.
1) to indicate my agreement. I could have just said: I agree, but thats boring.
2) to help lazy moderators. While you may not like to admit it, not everyone moderates as concieciousally as you. Now, you may say "why help lazy moderators?" and its a good point. But I think its better to have good lazy moderation than bad lazy moderation. Also, I do have moderator points right now, but I feel posting intellegent comments is more important than moderating. (At least some people think they are intellegent, they got moderated up).
I don't think all comments have to be "useful." An 'I agree' comment isnt that useful, even if it adds a little something (which I think mine did). If I have a useful comment, I will reply to the main article. Replys to comments needn't be as useful. This is of course, highly debatable and comes down to whether you want
--Nick
Here here! I completly agree. I'd moderate this up if I hadn't already posted. Humanity must go to the stars if it wants to progress. Earth is nice, but it won't last forever. We have to leave, and the sooner we start spreading out, the better off humanity will be.
People complain that we should spend money on the present to help fight hunger and poverty. But, compared to welfare NASA's budget is tiny. And compared to PERMINANTLY obliterating human suffering, spending a few more millions on poor people doesn't look quite as hot.
Here's to space!
--Nick
ps: I know I can't spell. I'm just too lazy to break out the spell checker. Bite me.
I see your point, but I totally disagree. NASA is working on a low-low budget (both compared to what it used to be and to the size of other budgets [defense, science, welfare, etc]). They were told to do more missions with less money. AND THEY DID! A few of them failed, thats OK, we expected that. NASA expected that. NASA is STILL the worlds most sucessful space agency. If your life were analysed the way NASA was, I doubt you would be able to claim the sucess rate they do. To quote a drunk NASA techie, "allright buddy, lets see YOU go to Mars. C'mon, I'm waiting."
No matter how you look at it, the fate of humanity rests with NASA and space exploration. I think rather than critizing every failure of NASA, people should look to the sucesses and where they a bring us as a species. NASA needs the support of the American people to be able to do its job, and the American people start with you.
--Nick
I completly disagree. IMHO, NASA is doing a fine job. They were given a task, do what you can with this shoestring budget, and they are doing pretty well. They are still the most sucessful space agency out there. And yes, I think space exploration is critical. Not to national security or anything, but to the security of the human race. Our future is in the stars (and the children) and we would utterly amiss to abandon our future simply because there have been a few failures. And not even that many failures either. Compare NASA's success (over 50%) with that of Linux installations. Less than 50% of Linux installations work 1st time. And going to space is much harder than installing Linux.
In short, we told them to go 'faster, cheaper' and they are. OK, so there are some failures, but when you get 10 missions the cost of one old-style mission, you can accept a few failures along the way.
--Nick
This is a very bad plan. It will only encourage more lawsuits and sillyness. If we can convince a judge that PIRACY IS NOT A PROBLEM, we can go on with our lives. If piracy is a problem, espcially due to DeCSS or other "hacker programs," we will lose. Not only will we lose in the DVD case, big buisness with then have a case to cite in other areas. Remember, American law is precedent based. If we lose here, we lose everywhere.
No, the best course of action is not to thumb our nose at authority and say "Dare Ya to Crack down on us HARD", but rather to show our good and peaceful intentions through legal means.
However you look at, piracy is wrong. You can rationalize all you want about how the man is screwing you over, but when it comes down to it, you are commiting a crime if you pirate movies. Even RMS, one of the staunchest anti-IP advocates does not advocate piracy. Circumvention through legal means, yes (winning these lawsuits). Piracy, no.
If on the other hand, we lose these lawsuits, there are still measures that can be taken. In a number of countries it is still legal to reverse engineer for the sake of compatibility. Wait till a Linux player comes from one of them.
No matter what happens, we will win in the long run, it is impossible to prevent the free flow of information forever, as any spook will tell you. But how we conduct ourselves in the short run is key to how the long run will look. I urge anyone considering piracy as a "solution" to this problem to count to ten and reconsider.
--Nick
I completly agree. Gilliam's works can have increadbly good and subtle underpinnings. Brazil is an excellent movie, and I did not mean to imply otherwise. Nevertheless, on the surface it is very overstated. Good Omens on the otherhand is understated on the surface, and still has subtleties below. Like the small town the Anti-christ growns up in. See a picture, it looks normal, hear Pratchett and Gaiman describe it, its hilarious. Understatement to the extreme.
--Nick
It can hold water. The same way you can color a mobius strip. You just cant color one side and not the other. So you can put water in, it will just be inside and outside at the same time. (again, this requires a real 4d kline bottle, not a 3d projection. the 3d project is to a kline bottle as a circle is to a mobius strip).
I have to admit, I usually dislike movies based on my favorite books. And _Good Omens_ is one of my most favorite books. It is just about the funniest book I have ever read. Just ahead of The _Hitchhiker's Guide_ 'Trilogy'.
But Good Omens will be even harder to put into a movie than other favorites like _Ender's Game_. Why? Well, one of the best things about _Good Omens_ is the language. Full of nuance and wit, the narration tells more than the dialog or actions.
On the other hand, Gilliam is an excellent director and knows his way around wit. Still, I'm not sure if he is quite suited to the part. Omens is very understated in many ways (I think the best humor is understated humor), whereas Gilliam tends to go for overstatement. Certainly in his older work, and to some degree in his more modern works. (If you don't think so, watch Brazil again, talk about overstated)
Nevertheless, no matter how much of a let down the movie is or isn't it will make me remember the book, and that can't be a bad thing. I will certainly see the movie when (and if) it ever comes out.
For anyone who as not read _Good Omens_, DO IT NOW! It is easily the funniest book I have ever read, and ranks up there in the 10 best books I have read (and I have read quite a lot, never had a TV past 5th grade, so...). Do not wait for the movie, you will lose out if you see the movie first, no matter how good it is.
Damnit, I just realized I lent out my copy of Good Omens and never got it back. Now I want to read it again (for about the 5th time).
--Nick
As some posters have pointed out, filtering software is never 100% accurate. All that is needed to stop this censorware craze is for a library to install the software (as it seems one has already done), and a kid (I'm sure there would be pleanty of volenteers) to try to research something, say breast cancer (maybe one of her friend's mothers has it). She gets blocked, and either sues the maker of the software for false advertising (claiming to do one thing, doing something else), or the library for restricting legitimate material (there was a court case that said that unless the library has a good reason, or it is considered obscene by the standards of the community, it is illegal for a publically funded library to restrict access to material based on content).
A small national media blitz, and voila, censorware disappears from the library.
(O.K., I admit, there a lots of flaws with this one. But, given that censorware is already being installed, this seems like another tactic that could be used in addition to the current ones.)
(And yes, I agree, opening the blocking list to public scrutiny and review would alievate most of the problems. It would certainly reduce false postitives, but would prob not reduce false negitives)
-Nick
Well, different way of defining volume. E.g. a bowl has no volume even though it can hold water (a math-major will point out that a bowl is an OPEN surface whereas a sphere or a Kline bottle is a CLOSED surface). Also, a true Kline bottle would be 4-dimensional. This is but a 3-dimensional representation of a Kline bottle. For a similar effect, draw a Mobius strip in 2 dimensions. It doesn't look as nifty then. The thing about a Kline bottle is the neck is supposed to go through the body w/o a hole, as it is 'up' in the fourth dimension from the rest of the body. Like I say, this is only a 3-d projection of a Kline bottle.
--Nick
Actually, his basic assumption is very valid. Unmaintainable code is bad code.
I won't argue the goodness/badness of perl. But I will argue that for real software (code that is used more than once), if it isn't maintainable, it's crap.
You utterly missed my point. I agree, unmaintainability is bad. But maintainability is ONLY ONE OF MANY aspects of good software. As you so delicitly put it "if it isn't maintainable, it's crap." But it's also crap if it doesn't work, it's crap if it runs too slow, it's crap if it's not done yet, etc. etc.
Saying maintainability is the only thing that matters is very nearsighted. I'll bet Win98 has some pretty maintainable code in it, but that does not make it a good OS.
You argument (if you care to call it that) is reasonable. The problem lies in your basic assumption, which I will paraphrase: "Code maintainability is the ultimate good, unmaintainable code is synonymous with bad code."
.au files, play them in order with pauses in between, etc. etc. I thought of nothing but perl, and it worked like a charm. Do I ever need those scripts again? No. Do I care if I cant read them? No.
In some environments, this is true. If you are writing the code to control balistic missiles, maintianability will be very important (second, I hope, to correctness). However, in some cases, maintainability falls third or fourth on the list of prioirites. Sometimes its not a priority. I'll give an example from my personal life. I'm learning morse code, and I was going to go on a 5 hr flight. Since I only have 1hr battery, and I wanted to save that for working, I made a minidisc full of code and printed the answers on a piece of paper. How would you generate 100's of random characters, store them in seperate files, encode them to
You make argue that that is not a production environment, mere scripting. This is true, but I would argue that the line between scripting and programming is a fine one. Regardless, there are even cases of production environments where maintainability comes low on the list. cgi/database applications in which getting the damn thing working is more important than being able to maintain it. Just try to implement slash in C. Sure you can do it. Sure you can do it well, and maintainable. I'll see you in 3 months, and you won't have showered in weeks.
And, even if you accept the tenet that unmaintainable is bad, Perl is just as capable of clean code as any other language. In that way, perl can be of the dark side, it makes it easy and tempting to write unmaintainable code. But, on the other hand, writing clean code in perl is just as hard as writing code in any other language. So, assuming you want to write clean code, perl is just as good. Just cause it can make messy code does not mean you are obliged to do so.
In short, TMTOWTDI. This can never be bad. This is why open source is good. It all comes back to freedom. You can choose between GNOME and KDE, Linux and *BSD, Perl and Python. There is always another way, another value set. Perl is just looser about its value set.
--Nick
True, they do have that right, but does the government? The obvious answer is yes, if they think there are drugs or other controlled substances. But, how would the government know? Would they search all packages? DHL is not responsible for tracking who is shipping what, they operate under a "common carrier"-esque type law (IANAL). As far as I know, if they know something is illegal, they can and do stop it, but they are not required to try and find out.