Haiku may not have a separate plural form in Japanese, but that is no reason for it to do the same in English.
I don't know any Japanese but I'd guess that in a typical sentence, the number (singular or plural) of the word haiku can be worked out from the context. But English doesn't always have that context, and English speakers are used to just having the pluralness of a word thrust in their face. It doesn't sound right to use exactly the same word for singular and plural; English just doesn't work like that.
There is a similar situation with pronunciation of words borrowed from French. Although French nouns do change their spelling in the plural form, the pronunciation is usually the same. But you can instantly tell whether it's singular or plural by looking at the article. For example, 'objet' and 'objets' sound exactly the same most of the time, but you have 'un objet' and 'des objets'.
So what do we do when borrowing these words for use in English? Take cafe for example (which should have an acute accent, but Slashdot's HTML posting doesn't seem to allow them). Most people pronounce this the French way, or close enough, as 'caffay'. (We'll ignore caffs for this discussion.) But although the singular in English sounds like the French word, the plural cafes is prounounced with an s on the end, because 'the' and 'a' do not indicate number as their French counterparts do. People do not say 'I walked past two caffay', because that would sound silly.
To say 'I wrote two haiku' sounds just as silly. English is not Japanese, so there's no reason for it to follow Japanese grammar.
That could only happen if the current set of core developers were happy to accept Corel people. Again, there's no way Corel can force KDE to accept its developers on the core team.
What's the problem? Even if Corel (for example) did become boneheaded and started submitting duff code for inclusion in KDE, the core developers could just reject it.
The article does make Corel sound a bit silly, but that must be because it's being selective. The KDE developers are free to ignore any 'bug reports' from Corel; OTOH, even if only one in ten is sensible, that's still a lot of useful bug reporting.
BTW anyone know how many copies of Corel Linux, WordPerfect and so on are being sold?
Okay, we've got the emulator - but how do you test your apps with it unless you have an OS?
Is there a prerelease of RedHat, Debian or whatever compiled for IA-64? And how would it interact with your real system (file sharing etc)? I'd certainly want to do the editing and compiling natively.
It would be useful if the emulated IA-64 system had some kind of virtual network device that communicates with the host system as if it were an Ethernet or PPP link. Then you could just pop up emulated xterms and share files via NFS to the emulated system.
Somebody managed to get the Sinclair ZX80 (predecessor to the Sinclair/Timex ZX81) to play sound. There was a program in an issue of ZX User, which I unfortunately threw away some years ago. This would be unremarkable, except that the ZX80 has no sound chip nor any moving parts (AFAIK).
IIRC a problem with earlier proposed legislation was that a digital signature would be legally binding, even if forged.
In other words, if a cracker manages to use your signature, it is binding on you even if you can prove that it was a forgery! This is not the case for written signatures AFAIK.
Slashdot used to run on VA hardware for a little while, IIRC. Does it still run on VA hardware? If not, will it be switching? (It seems that Slashdot's server needs easily outpace Moore's Law.)
The voltage is still 240V in Britain and 220V on the Continent. The new European 'standard' is 230V, but with a wide enough tolerance to cover both. See this page.
Try using Wine and Winelib to compile your Windows apps for Unix. I don't think it will be a piece of cake at this stage, but Corel are doing it, so it must be possible.
With a gcc wrapper to replace Microsoft's cl.exe you could indeed build executables for other platforms, though debugging them might be a problem.
Surely this whole thing is a wasted opportunity. With a name like 'Sealand' a far better business plan would be to open an offshore seal-based theme park.
If the licence says 'you may use the software for X, Y, and Z', then it implies that you may _not_ use the software for something not listed. Otherwise, why bother listing the 'allowed' uses at all?
As for copyright not restricting usage, I agree. Most likely all the stuff in the QPL about which uses are allowed is legally meaningless. But when considering whether a licence counts as free or not, you normally assume that all its terms are enforceable. Who knows, they might _become_ enforceable in the not-too-distant future.
'Leasing' software vs leasing physical goods
on
The Leased Life?
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· Score: 3
If you contract out the provision of air conditioning in your office, it's in your supplier's interest to install a reliable and high-quality unit to start with. Then they won't have to go back a couple of years later and spend money installing a new one. What's good for the supplier is also good for the customer. And if you think their service is poor, there are plenty of other companies providing the same service; a changeover during winter would not be painful.
Compare this to leasing an office software suite. The marginal costs to the supplier of forcing an upgrade on you are zero - indeed it may be profitable to them, if Foo2001 (rented) only works properly if you also upgrade to Bar2001 (which is licensed per-seat). I'm sure you can think of products to substitute for Foo and Bar.
Furthermore, you'll probably be locked in soon after signing the contract, and so be in a poor bargaining position subsequently. Even if file formats are completely open (which rarely happens), it's pretty hard to change your office suite, MTA, SAP type thingy or whatever else. So you must go with what your supplier demands - and there isn't the price ceiling set by being able to go out and buy copies at the same price as everyone else.
I believe that many British universities are locked into a deal with Microsoft where they are _forced_ to upgrade to Office2k, Win2k and so on within a couple of years of the software's release.
So-called software rental seems like a Faustian bargain to me.
Read it again, the bits starting 'you may use the program to...'. Now it doesn't explicitly say you may _not_ use the program to do something not mentioned (indeed, you don't need permission from a licence to use it), but the implication is that uses not explicitly allowed are forbidden.
Whether or not such terms are legally enforceable, that could stop it being a free licence - if you can think of something that people might want to do which is not listed.
IIRC the PHP engine Zend was released under the QPL. That doesn't make any sense since the uses for Zend are not limited to 'compiling, linking and running programs'. Implicitly the QPL forbids you to use Zend as a scripting language!
Looking at the sixth slide, I don't see that hardware has advanced very much more than software. So what if a high-end workstation now has Fast Ethernet instead of Ethernet? That's hardly a major paradigm shift. Ditto increasing the amount of memory or upping the clock speed.
Hardware is just the same as in 1990, but faster. Software is just the same as in 1990, but slower.
Re:I thought that was settled ages ago...
on
RMS On 'Open' Motif
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· Score: 2
The Open Source Initiative accepted it. However that doesn't count for much, they aren't very rigorous in their scrutiny of licences, having accepted the APSL 1.1 which contains a termination clause.
But RMS and the Debian people accepted the QPL too. It's a pretty bad free licence, but free nonetheless. At least if you ignore the worrying mumbo-jumbo about what you may use the software for.
It would have been much better if Troll Tech had just not mentioned usage in the licence. After all, it doesn't need to be in there, if you own a copy of some information you are normally free to use it how you wish (other than making more copies).
The old Qt Free Edition licence was definitely not free, even the OSI people agreed on that. It was one of the reasons why GNOME got started.
Slashdot Mirror
Haiku may not have a separate plural form in Japanese, but that is no reason for it to do the same in English.
I don't know any Japanese but I'd guess that in a typical sentence, the number (singular or plural) of the word haiku can be worked out from the context. But English doesn't always have that context, and English speakers are used to just having the pluralness of a word thrust in their face. It doesn't sound right to use exactly the same word for singular and plural; English just doesn't work like that.
There is a similar situation with pronunciation of words borrowed from French. Although French nouns do change their spelling in the plural form, the pronunciation is usually the same. But you can instantly tell whether it's singular or plural by looking at the article. For example, 'objet' and 'objets' sound exactly the same most of the time, but you have 'un objet' and 'des objets'.
So what do we do when borrowing these words for use in English? Take cafe for example (which should have an acute accent, but Slashdot's HTML posting doesn't seem to allow them). Most people pronounce this the French way, or close enough, as 'caffay'. (We'll ignore caffs for this discussion.) But although the singular in English sounds like the French word, the plural cafes is prounounced with an s on the end, because 'the' and 'a' do not indicate number as their French counterparts do. People do not say 'I walked past two caffay', because that would sound silly.
To say 'I wrote two haiku' sounds just as silly. English is not Japanese, so there's no reason for it to follow Japanese grammar.
That could only happen if the current set of core developers were happy to accept Corel people. Again, there's no way Corel can force KDE to accept its developers on the core team.
Why?
What's the problem? Even if Corel (for example) did become boneheaded and started submitting duff code for inclusion in KDE, the core developers could just reject it.
The article does make Corel sound a bit silly, but that must be because it's being selective. The KDE developers are free to ignore any 'bug reports' from Corel; OTOH, even if only one in ten is sensible, that's still a lot of useful bug reporting.
BTW anyone know how many copies of Corel Linux, WordPerfect and so on are being sold?
Okay, we've got the emulator - but how do you test your apps with it unless you have an OS?
Is there a prerelease of RedHat, Debian or whatever compiled for IA-64? And how would it interact with your real system (file sharing etc)? I'd certainly want to do the editing and compiling natively.
It would be useful if the emulated IA-64 system had some kind of virtual network device that communicates with the host system as if it were an Ethernet or PPP link. Then you could just pop up emulated xterms and share files via NFS to the emulated system.
Maybe if your monitor stand is broken or your desk is sloping?
What's going on with plurals here? Surely the plural of haiku is haikus?
Somebody managed to get the Sinclair ZX80 (predecessor to the Sinclair/Timex ZX81) to play sound. There was a program in an issue of ZX User, which I unfortunately threw away some years ago. This would be unremarkable, except that the ZX80 has no sound chip nor any moving parts (AFAIK).
Can't you buy Linux support from IBM? That's a company trusted to provide support.
Although this does involve buying IBM hardware.
Er, Xenix was written by Microsoft. Then they sold it to SCO.
As if RMS would ever utter the phrase 'closed source'. Sheesh :-)
It gave Jon Katz something to write about.
Okay, that one's debatable...
IIRC a problem with earlier proposed legislation was that a digital signature would be legally binding, even if forged.
In other words, if a cracker manages to use your signature, it is binding on you even if you can prove that it was a forgery! This is not the case for written signatures AFAIK.
Does the new version have the same problem?
Slashdot used to run on VA hardware for a little while, IIRC. Does it still run on VA hardware? If not, will it be switching? (It seems that Slashdot's server needs easily outpace Moore's Law.)
It could provide a haven for people to run their own domains without being sued by the likes of Mattel. What a disaster that would be.
This is beyond parody. Classic Katz :-)
The voltage is still 240V in Britain and 220V on the Continent. The new European 'standard' is 230V, but with a wide enough tolerance to cover both. See this page.
Try using Wine and Winelib to compile your Windows apps for Unix. I don't think it will be a piece of cake at this stage, but Corel are doing it, so it must be possible.
With a gcc wrapper to replace Microsoft's cl.exe you could indeed build executables for other platforms, though debugging them might be a problem.
But Free Pascal is based on GCC, meaning that it can target any platform that GCC can target, I believe. How portable is Borland's compiler?
Surely this whole thing is a wasted opportunity. With a name like 'Sealand' a far better business plan would be to open an offshore seal-based theme park.
If the licence says 'you may use the software for X, Y, and Z', then it implies that you may _not_ use the software for something not listed. Otherwise, why bother listing the 'allowed' uses at all?
As for copyright not restricting usage, I agree. Most likely all the stuff in the QPL about which uses are allowed is legally meaningless. But when considering whether a licence counts as free or not, you normally assume that all its terms are enforceable. Who knows, they might _become_ enforceable in the not-too-distant future.
If you contract out the provision of air conditioning in your office, it's in your supplier's interest to install a reliable and high-quality unit to start with. Then they won't have to go back a couple of years later and spend money installing a new one. What's good for the supplier is also good for the customer. And if you think their service is poor, there are plenty of other companies providing the same service; a changeover during winter would not be painful.
Compare this to leasing an office software suite. The marginal costs to the supplier of forcing an upgrade on you are zero - indeed it may be profitable to them, if Foo2001 (rented) only works properly if you also upgrade to Bar2001 (which is licensed per-seat). I'm sure you can think of products to substitute for Foo and Bar.
Furthermore, you'll probably be locked in soon after signing the contract, and so be in a poor bargaining position subsequently. Even if file formats are completely open (which rarely happens), it's pretty hard to change your office suite, MTA, SAP type thingy or whatever else. So you must go with what your supplier demands - and there isn't the price ceiling set by being able to go out and buy copies at the same price as everyone else.
I believe that many British universities are locked into a deal with Microsoft where they are _forced_ to upgrade to Office2k, Win2k and so on within a couple of years of the software's release.
So-called software rental seems like a Faustian bargain to me.
Read it again, the bits starting 'you may use the program to...'. Now it doesn't explicitly say you may _not_ use the program to do something not mentioned (indeed, you don't need permission from a licence to use it), but the implication is that uses not explicitly allowed are forbidden.
Whether or not such terms are legally enforceable, that could stop it being a free licence - if you can think of something that people might want to do which is not listed.
IIRC the PHP engine Zend was released under the QPL. That doesn't make any sense since the uses for Zend are not limited to 'compiling, linking and running programs'. Implicitly the QPL forbids you to use Zend as a scripting language!
Looking at the sixth slide, I don't see that hardware has advanced very much more than software. So what if a high-end workstation now has Fast Ethernet instead of Ethernet? That's hardly a major paradigm shift. Ditto increasing the amount of memory or upping the clock speed.
Hardware is just the same as in 1990, but faster. Software is just the same as in 1990, but slower.
The Open Source Initiative accepted it. However that doesn't count for much, they aren't very rigorous in their scrutiny of licences, having accepted the APSL 1.1 which contains a termination clause.
But RMS and the Debian people accepted the QPL too. It's a pretty bad free licence, but free nonetheless. At least if you ignore the worrying mumbo-jumbo about what you may use the software for.
It would have been much better if Troll Tech had just not mentioned usage in the licence. After all, it doesn't need to be in there, if you own a copy of some information you are normally free to use it how you wish (other than making more copies).
The old Qt Free Edition licence was definitely not free, even the OSI people agreed on that. It was one of the reasons why GNOME got started.