The current version of Mozilla in Unstable is 1.1-1. See the package page. It's been there for a week now.
If you'd like the packages faster, to get the maintainer's "not quite ready to check into Unstable" mozilla packages (which are still quite stable, just haven't gone through as much testing), add the following line to your/etc/apt/sources.list: deb http://pandora.debian.org/~kitame/mozilla/./
1.1's been available from there for at least two weeks now.
Upon some further thought, I'd consider the FSF's position on software freedom a kind of utilitarian compromise position. For the individual, being able to do whatever one wants with software -- modifying it, distributing it with source code, distributing it without source code, etc. -- is the highest level of freedom. However, permitting this can potentially restrict the freedom of others, as if this individual exercises his freedom to distribute modified binaries without source code, he makes it much more difficult for others to exercise their freedom to modify the code (in the absence of legal restraints they can still do so, by disassembling the binary for example, but it makes it significantly more difficult). Thus the individual's freedom is limited by requiring that he distribute source code whenever he distributes a modified binary in order to make it significantly easier for the everyone else to exercise their freedoms. All things considered, I see this as a relatively good trade-off.
If you take the FSF's definition of freedom as applied to software -- the ability to relatively easily modify a program through access to the original source code (and a license that permits you to make such modifications and distribute them), then your analysis is correct. If you take a more libertarian view of softare freedom -- the ability to do whatever the hell you want to the software -- then requiring one to distribute source code when one prefers not to is actually restricting freedom.
Corporations are legal entities, so distributing within a corporation is "private use", which the GPL explicitly exempts, since all the various copies of the code within the company are all licensed to the company, not the individual employees. I don't believe the FSF disagrees with this interpretation.
What's at issue here is whether distributing a beta to non-employees under NDA can count as private use, which it probably can't.
people aren't subtle enough these days
on
Skydriving
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Why back when I was a kid people were sneaky about their homicidal intent. Nowadays they just say "my goal in life is to cram 40 people into a bus, drop it from an airplane, and watch it smash to bits." Hmph.
Take a look at the large number of immigrants to the U.S. Take a look at the large number of foreigners attending college in the U.S. Obviously somebody likes it better than where they came from...
The people that use them are small-time users who would never be able to afford them
This isn't necessarily true in my experience. There are a lot of small businesses who run their LANs on pirated software. Small doctors' offices (3-5 doctors, not the big clinics) are one of the worst offenders; they purchase the expensive medical software they have to use to interface with various organizations, but they very commonly run their data server on a pirated copy of Win2k Server, for example.
Some warez seems to involve incredible programming effort, developing custom install tools to e.g. convert MP3'd WAVs back to the originals, deal with movie resampling to save space, etc., not to mention substantial reverse-engineering work to break copy protection schemes. Who does all this? Are they professional programmers with spare time? Bored college students? High school students?
How exactly does wearing a shirt whose front consists entirely of a gigantic "Tommy Hilfiger" logo ever get to the point where it is considered "cool"? Whoever managed to pull that off is a genius.
...the batteries, which often have lots of nasty toxic compounds in them (though that's gotten a bit better recently).
but that's not the standard Windows keybinding
on
Gaim For Windows
·
· Score: 2
That's the standard DOS keybinding. It still works in most Windows programs as a long-held-over compatibility thing, but it's not the one most people use or expect.
The GAIM webpage claims that they have never been the target of a deliberate blocking attempt by AOL. They say that the intermitted connection problems to OSCAR last summer were due to AOL's attempts to block MSN from connecting to the AIM network, which blocked GAIM as collateral damage, but were fairly easy to work around since they weren't specifically targetted at GAIM.
So if they actually did target GAIM, they might have more success.
This seems a lot like what we all complain about when it deal with other sorts of laws -- "but you can't do that, what he did was legal in Russia!"
What if a U.S. state passes a law regulating what sort of material it is permissible to transmit to their citizens. Assuming the law were not struck down as unconstitutional, should everyone in the U.S. now have to follow this state law, to make sure that they don't accidentally transmit banned material to residents of that state (for example, by placing it on a website where a resident of that state could access it)? This would end up with the result that everyone must follow the union of all state laws (thus the most restrictive in each category). Which is already happening with spam laws, which I don't see as a good precedent.
This is why compilers are bad -- they just mean fewer jobs for programmers, since a programmer can now write code in less than half the time. burn all compilers!
is there a real difference?
on
AMD Delays Hammer
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Something I've never seen a good explanation of -- is there performance-wise any difference between a 266 MHz clock with data transferred once per clock and a 133 MHz clock with data transferred twice per clock (despite the actual clock ticking rate of course)?
I can see how it would be applicable here. Basically you're doing repeated samples at discrete distances from each other, so it's analogous to the audio sampling, only not in the time domain.
I thought Shannon's law of sampling applied to the frequency resolution of repeated discrete-time sampling (i.e. sampling audio data 44100 times/second, as on a CD). What does that have to do with a single sample?
A great deal of stuff is coded in number of pixels, so the higher resolution you go to, the smaller it gets on screen (unless you simultaneously move to a bigger monitor). Thus even if you solved the dot pitch problems and could run a 15" monitor at 3200x2400 crisply, you wouldn't be able to make out anything on screen.
If they plan to solve it by releasing code as required by the GPL, but are delaying the release in order to possibly remove code they don't have the legal right to GPL (for example, licensed code from another company), then it'll be a good thing.
If they plan to solve it by removing the GPL'd components and replacing them with Epson-written components, then they are no longer in violation of the GPL, but nothing has been gained by the Free Software community (unless making your proprietary competitors do a little extra work counts as a gain).
Taking even a very high-resolution (for a desktop) monitor, say 1600x1200, is less than 2 Megapixels. So anything higher than that will have to be downsampled to display on a monitor anyway (either that or you'll have to scroll around). The main advantage in going higher than that is for high-quality printing. Printing a standard 3x5" photograph at 300 dpi requires a bit less than a 5 Megapixel camera, though something less will probably do okay too. Of course the more megapixels, the bigger you can print and still have it look good.
Also, if you want to do image editing, you'll want to start out with a higher-quality image than what you want as a final image, since filtering/etc. will invariably reduce the quality of the image.
So is 11 megapixel necessary? If you're taking pictures to email to grandma, certainly not. If you want to print out 8x10" photographs on high-quality photographic paper, it could be nice.
Slashdot Mirror
And here I thought Nokia was based in Finland, rumored to be part of Europe...
The current version of Mozilla in Unstable is 1.1-1. See the package page. It's been there for a week now.
/etc/apt/sources.list: ./
If you'd like the packages faster, to get the maintainer's "not quite ready to check into Unstable" mozilla packages (which are still quite stable, just haven't gone through as much testing), add the following line to your
deb http://pandora.debian.org/~kitame/mozilla/
1.1's been available from there for at least two weeks now.
Upon some further thought, I'd consider the FSF's position on software freedom a kind of utilitarian compromise position. For the individual, being able to do whatever one wants with software -- modifying it, distributing it with source code, distributing it without source code, etc. -- is the highest level of freedom. However, permitting this can potentially restrict the freedom of others, as if this individual exercises his freedom to distribute modified binaries without source code, he makes it much more difficult for others to exercise their freedom to modify the code (in the absence of legal restraints they can still do so, by disassembling the binary for example, but it makes it significantly more difficult). Thus the individual's freedom is limited by requiring that he distribute source code whenever he distributes a modified binary in order to make it significantly easier for the everyone else to exercise their freedoms. All things considered, I see this as a relatively good trade-off.
If you take the FSF's definition of freedom as applied to software -- the ability to relatively easily modify a program through access to the original source code (and a license that permits you to make such modifications and distribute them), then your analysis is correct. If you take a more libertarian view of softare freedom -- the ability to do whatever the hell you want to the software -- then requiring one to distribute source code when one prefers not to is actually restricting freedom.
Corporations are legal entities, so distributing within a corporation is "private use", which the GPL explicitly exempts, since all the various copies of the code within the company are all licensed to the company, not the individual employees. I don't believe the FSF disagrees with this interpretation.
What's at issue here is whether distributing a beta to non-employees under NDA can count as private use, which it probably can't.
Apparently my UID is 597, not 497. So make that "over #600 punk". =P
over #500 punk :)
Why back when I was a kid people were sneaky about their homicidal intent. Nowadays they just say "my goal in life is to cram 40 people into a bus, drop it from an airplane, and watch it smash to bits." Hmph.
Take a look at the large number of immigrants to the U.S. Take a look at the large number of foreigners attending college in the U.S. Obviously somebody likes it better than where they came from...
The people that use them are small-time users who would never be able to afford them
This isn't necessarily true in my experience. There are a lot of small businesses who run their LANs on pirated software. Small doctors' offices (3-5 doctors, not the big clinics) are one of the worst offenders; they purchase the expensive medical software they have to use to interface with various organizations, but they very commonly run their data server on a pirated copy of Win2k Server, for example.
Clearly he did it for the women.
Some warez seems to involve incredible programming effort, developing custom install tools to e.g. convert MP3'd WAVs back to the originals, deal with movie resampling to save space, etc., not to mention substantial reverse-engineering work to break copy protection schemes. Who does all this? Are they professional programmers with spare time? Bored college students? High school students?
How exactly does wearing a shirt whose front consists entirely of a gigantic "Tommy Hilfiger" logo ever get to the point where it is considered "cool"? Whoever managed to pull that off is a genius.
...the batteries, which often have lots of nasty toxic compounds in them (though that's gotten a bit better recently).
That's the standard DOS keybinding. It still works in most Windows programs as a long-held-over compatibility thing, but it's not the one most people use or expect.
The GAIM webpage claims that they have never been the target of a deliberate blocking attempt by AOL. They say that the intermitted connection problems to OSCAR last summer were due to AOL's attempts to block MSN from connecting to the AIM network, which blocked GAIM as collateral damage, but were fairly easy to work around since they weren't specifically targetted at GAIM.
So if they actually did target GAIM, they might have more success.
This seems a lot like what we all complain about when it deal with other sorts of laws -- "but you can't do that, what he did was legal in Russia!"
What if a U.S. state passes a law regulating what sort of material it is permissible to transmit to their citizens. Assuming the law were not struck down as unconstitutional, should everyone in the U.S. now have to follow this state law, to make sure that they don't accidentally transmit banned material to residents of that state (for example, by placing it on a website where a resident of that state could access it)? This would end up with the result that everyone must follow the union of all state laws (thus the most restrictive in each category). Which is already happening with spam laws, which I don't see as a good precedent.
This is why compilers are bad -- they just mean fewer jobs for programmers, since a programmer can now write code in less than half the time. burn all compilers!
Something I've never seen a good explanation of -- is there performance-wise any difference between a 266 MHz clock with data transferred once per clock and a 133 MHz clock with data transferred twice per clock (despite the actual clock ticking rate of course)?
I can see how it would be applicable here. Basically you're doing repeated samples at discrete distances from each other, so it's analogous to the audio sampling, only not in the time domain.
I thought Shannon's law of sampling applied to the frequency resolution of repeated discrete-time sampling (i.e. sampling audio data 44100 times/second, as on a CD). What does that have to do with a single sample?
Dunno how I ended up with 5,000,000...
A great deal of stuff is coded in number of pixels, so the higher resolution you go to, the smaller it gets on screen (unless you simultaneously move to a bigger monitor). Thus even if you solved the dot pitch problems and could run a 15" monitor at 3200x2400 crisply, you wouldn't be able to make out anything on screen.
If they plan to solve it by releasing code as required by the GPL, but are delaying the release in order to possibly remove code they don't have the legal right to GPL (for example, licensed code from another company), then it'll be a good thing.
If they plan to solve it by removing the GPL'd components and replacing them with Epson-written components, then they are no longer in violation of the GPL, but nothing has been gained by the Free Software community (unless making your proprietary competitors do a little extra work counts as a gain).
Taking even a very high-resolution (for a desktop) monitor, say 1600x1200, is less than 2 Megapixels. So anything higher than that will have to be downsampled to display on a monitor anyway (either that or you'll have to scroll around). The main advantage in going higher than that is for high-quality printing. Printing a standard 3x5" photograph at 300 dpi requires a bit less than a 5 Megapixel camera, though something less will probably do okay too. Of course the more megapixels, the bigger you can print and still have it look good.
Also, if you want to do image editing, you'll want to start out with a higher-quality image than what you want as a final image, since filtering/etc. will invariably reduce the quality of the image.
So is 11 megapixel necessary? If you're taking pictures to email to grandma, certainly not. If you want to print out 8x10" photographs on high-quality photographic paper, it could be nice.