From what I understand, Slashdot cannot police their users' copyright. They've been granted a non-exclusive license to display the users' comment; as such, if anyone else is posting it, they have no grounds for a suit, as they haven't been wronged (if they had an exclusive license, it'd be another story). Since they have no copyright on the comments, and no exclusive license to reproduce them, they frankly have no standing to bring a suit -- this is the very same reason that GNU insists that all contributed code has its copyright assigned to the FSF, because they don't have legal standing to bring suit in the event of GPL violations unless they're the copyright holders.
Oh I certainly wasn't claiming that MS Word can compare to LaTeX in terms of power, just that LaTeX is the only thing in UNIX that can compare to MS Word in terms of power. In other words, all the other UNIX word processors are inferior to MS Word, so you have to go to LaTeX, which certainly dwarfs MS Word at the expense of its horrid learning curve (I'm a CS major and I still have difficulty doing many things in it; I wouldn't dream of trying to teach a "normal" person to use it).
While StarOffice/AbiWord/etc. can replace MS Office for many uses, LaTeX is the only UNIX text formatting tool powerful enough to actually fully replace MS Office's functionality. In particular, no UNIX word processor that I'm aware of has an equation editor even approaching MS Office's, so to write any sort of a math paper it's either LaTeX or MS Office. I'll let you guess which is easier to use.
While the gist of my (intended to be joking) comment was that you could implement essentially anything in emacs via elisp extensions, you don't have to get quite that complex in order to add a spell-checker to emacs. It can simply call ispell externally to do its spell-checking.
Upon some further perusal, it seems that Emacs 20 at least actually does have built-in spell-checking (M-x spell-region and M-x spell-buffer, among others). I'm not sure if this is actually coded in Lisp or an ispell hook though.
Which is the same thing. As the GPL is not an EULA, violating it is not a license violation, since you never accepted the license. Violating it merely means you are in violation of the author's copyright, as nothing outside the GPL gives you permission to distribute his code.
The GPL actually obliges the distributor to either provide the source with the binary or accompany the binary with a written offer to provide source. So while it's true that he only has to actually provide source to those who ask, he's still required to make a written offer to do so; just providing the source to people who ask isn't itself enough.
As for the profits, it's quite possible $13 is around 50% of profits. I pay $40 for cablemodem, and when you subtract the cable company's expenses $26 is not an unreasonable figure for the profit they make on me.
You list a million things you do voluntarily as evidence that you're busier than most people with a 40-hour-a-week job. What makes you think these people don't have things they want to do voluntarily as well? Sports, running, beer, piano lessons, activities, etc. are not limited to college students.
There are some large OSS projects that actively encourage feedback and bugfixes and so on. Even contributing small bits to them or minor bug fixes would show some experience in being able to deal with isolated portions of enormous programs.
I personally have yet to see a single anime series I really liked. Some are okay, sure, in a "Dexter's Laboratory is a pretty good show" way, but none have been excellent, in a "Futurama is fucking amazing" way.
So you mean all of us who've been clamoring for the Slashdot editors to do a little more work editing their stories before posting should instead be clamoring for them to not edit stories, because they make them worse? =P
Why not include, say, anti-Americanism (or perhaps "encouraging treason"), or anti-capitalism, etc.
Once you start making lists of things which are unacceptable, it's not too hard to find things sort of similar that might also be included. Quite the slippery slope.
I don't know anyone who uses Linux, so setting up a private bnetd server isn't really an option. The people I know who connect to bnetd servers find public ones in IRC channels and connect to those (since they don't have valid keys). The people with valid keys don't want to go through the hassle of going to IRC to find what bnetd servers are up today, so they just use Battle.net, despite its obvious flaws.
I know quite a few people who pirated Starcraft in the early days when Blizzard allowed up to 5 or so instances of the same CD key to be in use at the same time (to avoid problems with ghosting). When Blizzard reduced this to two or so, they went out and bought the game so they could keep playing online. If bnetd had been available at that time, you can be sure that they would never have bought the game.
Well, I agree that you have more rights with a debit card or bank account than most people realize; the main difference is of course what you mentioned - with the credit card you don't have to pay the disputed charge for the duration of the dispute, while with a debit card you've already payed it. So with a CC the credit card company fronts the cash for the disputed amount while its being resolved, while with a debit card you do.
Your legal rights aren't exactly the same with a debit card as with a credit card though. Debit cards aren't covered by the U.S. laws on credit cards, in particular those regarding fraud. With a credit card, if you dispute a charge, the credit card company effectively has to prove that you really did charge it (if you push matters enough), usually by showing that you signed a physical receipt (so for online/phone orders, you'll always win disputes if you carry it far enough, because they can't legally prove you made the charge). With a debit card, it's usually you who has to prove that the charge was fraudulent.
In addition, I don't believe debit card issuers are required to give fraud protection. Essentially it's like a check - if you're ripped off, the bank isn't going to track down the person who cashed the check and try to get your money back; it's your problem. With a credit card, on the other hand, you're liable for a maximum of $50 of fraud (i.e. if your card is stolen).
That said, many debit cards in practice have more protections than they're required to, because they're issued as "Visa Check Cards," which means that the bank is required to meet Visa's standards, which include some level of fraud protection. These are Visa-mandated rules though, not legally-mandated ones.
First of all it's a bad idea to keep any balance on your credit card at all. It's just about the worst possible loan you could get from anywhere - even "low-interest" cards have ridiculous rates in the neighborhood of 12-18%.
But as for minimum monthly payments, of course they're going to make you pay something. Otherwise you could just keep spending up to your limit and then never pay them back - they'd essentially be giving you free money.
Not a debit card or checking account. If they screw you over with an unwarranted credit card charge, your can call your credit card company and stop payment on it. If they pulled money out of your checking account (either directly or through a debit card), you're pretty much screwed (good luck trying to get your bank to do anything about it).
FWIW, using a credit card for most purchases is actually good advice, because it avoids all sorts of frauds and other problems (for example, a restaurant in a foreign country once charged my card twice; I guess they thought since I wasn't from around there I couldn't come back and complain. The CC company removed the fraudulent second charge after a simple phone call...if I had paid with a debit card it would've been a real pain to try to get my money back). This is provided, of course, that you are disciplined enough to pay your credit card bill on time to avoid going into debt and paying high interest rates.
So what is it in your experience that tells you the primary purpose of bnetd is to avoid Battle.net duplicate key checking?
The fact that most people I know who use it are people who can't get on Battle.net because they don't own valid keys. The people who do own valid keys mostly just get on Battle.net because they don't want to bother setting up their own servers.
Uhh no. The server has no copy protection that I know of (other than them simply not giving out copies). The copy protection being circumvented is the client-key mechanism.
Slashdot Mirror
From what I understand, Slashdot cannot police their users' copyright. They've been granted a non-exclusive license to display the users' comment; as such, if anyone else is posting it, they have no grounds for a suit, as they haven't been wronged (if they had an exclusive license, it'd be another story). Since they have no copyright on the comments, and no exclusive license to reproduce them, they frankly have no standing to bring a suit -- this is the very same reason that GNU insists that all contributed code has its copyright assigned to the FSF, because they don't have legal standing to bring suit in the event of GPL violations unless they're the copyright holders.
Oh I certainly wasn't claiming that MS Word can compare to LaTeX in terms of power, just that LaTeX is the only thing in UNIX that can compare to MS Word in terms of power. In other words, all the other UNIX word processors are inferior to MS Word, so you have to go to LaTeX, which certainly dwarfs MS Word at the expense of its horrid learning curve (I'm a CS major and I still have difficulty doing many things in it; I wouldn't dream of trying to teach a "normal" person to use it).
While StarOffice/AbiWord/etc. can replace MS Office for many uses, LaTeX is the only UNIX text formatting tool powerful enough to actually fully replace MS Office's functionality. In particular, no UNIX word processor that I'm aware of has an equation editor even approaching MS Office's, so to write any sort of a math paper it's either LaTeX or MS Office. I'll let you guess which is easier to use.
While the gist of my (intended to be joking) comment was that you could implement essentially anything in emacs via elisp extensions, you don't have to get quite that complex in order to add a spell-checker to emacs. It can simply call ispell externally to do its spell-checking.
Upon some further perusal, it seems that Emacs 20 at least actually does have built-in spell-checking (M-x spell-region and M-x spell-buffer, among others). I'm not sure if this is actually coded in Lisp or an ispell hook though.
1. Incorrect. Emacs has a built-in everything. If your copy doesn't, it's because you don't know enough Common Lisp. =P
Which is the same thing. As the GPL is not an EULA, violating it is not a license violation, since you never accepted the license. Violating it merely means you are in violation of the author's copyright, as nothing outside the GPL gives you permission to distribute his code.
The GPL actually obliges the distributor to either provide the source with the binary or accompany the binary with a written offer to provide source. So while it's true that he only has to actually provide source to those who ask, he's still required to make a written offer to do so; just providing the source to people who ask isn't itself enough.
But I found k5 from /.
/.
So by definition the best k5 users come from
=P
[username Delirium on k5]
As for the profits, it's quite possible $13 is around 50% of profits. I pay $40 for cablemodem, and when you subtract the cable company's expenses $26 is not an unreasonable figure for the profit they make on me.
RMS handled it with less tact than he normally uses
Don't you mean "the same amount of tact that he normally uses"? The man isn't exactly fames for his tact...
You list a million things you do voluntarily as evidence that you're busier than most people with a 40-hour-a-week job. What makes you think these people don't have things they want to do voluntarily as well? Sports, running, beer, piano lessons, activities, etc. are not limited to college students.
There are some large OSS projects that actively encourage feedback and bugfixes and so on. Even contributing small bits to them or minor bug fixes would show some experience in being able to deal with isolated portions of enormous programs.
What should I say?
uh..w00t?
Sounds like a plan...
"Hi. I'm here to register to vote."
[silence]
"uh..w00t?"
I saw one episode, and it didn't really impress me much. But then I don't like sci-fi, action/adventure, or cyberpunk.
I personally have yet to see a single anime series I really liked. Some are okay, sure, in a "Dexter's Laboratory is a pretty good show" way, but none have been excellent, in a "Futurama is fucking amazing" way.
So you mean all of us who've been clamoring for the Slashdot editors to do a little more work editing their stories before posting should instead be clamoring for them to not edit stories, because they make them worse? =P
But people here seem to think that Americans are being unfairly subjected to this "unelected" body, but the U.S. could easily leave if it wanted to.
Why not include, say, anti-Americanism (or perhaps "encouraging treason"), or anti-capitalism, etc.
Once you start making lists of things which are unacceptable, it's not too hard to find things sort of similar that might also be included. Quite the slippery slope.
I don't know anyone who uses Linux, so setting up a private bnetd server isn't really an option. The people I know who connect to bnetd servers find public ones in IRC channels and connect to those (since they don't have valid keys). The people with valid keys don't want to go through the hassle of going to IRC to find what bnetd servers are up today, so they just use Battle.net, despite its obvious flaws.
I know quite a few people who pirated Starcraft in the early days when Blizzard allowed up to 5 or so instances of the same CD key to be in use at the same time (to avoid problems with ghosting). When Blizzard reduced this to two or so, they went out and bought the game so they could keep playing online. If bnetd had been available at that time, you can be sure that they would never have bought the game.
Well, I agree that you have more rights with a debit card or bank account than most people realize; the main difference is of course what you mentioned - with the credit card you don't have to pay the disputed charge for the duration of the dispute, while with a debit card you've already payed it. So with a CC the credit card company fronts the cash for the disputed amount while its being resolved, while with a debit card you do.
Your legal rights aren't exactly the same with a debit card as with a credit card though. Debit cards aren't covered by the U.S. laws on credit cards, in particular those regarding fraud. With a credit card, if you dispute a charge, the credit card company effectively has to prove that you really did charge it (if you push matters enough), usually by showing that you signed a physical receipt (so for online/phone orders, you'll always win disputes if you carry it far enough, because they can't legally prove you made the charge). With a debit card, it's usually you who has to prove that the charge was fraudulent.
In addition, I don't believe debit card issuers are required to give fraud protection. Essentially it's like a check - if you're ripped off, the bank isn't going to track down the person who cashed the check and try to get your money back; it's your problem. With a credit card, on the other hand, you're liable for a maximum of $50 of fraud (i.e. if your card is stolen).
That said, many debit cards in practice have more protections than they're required to, because they're issued as "Visa Check Cards," which means that the bank is required to meet Visa's standards, which include some level of fraud protection. These are Visa-mandated rules though, not legally-mandated ones.
First of all it's a bad idea to keep any balance on your credit card at all. It's just about the worst possible loan you could get from anywhere - even "low-interest" cards have ridiculous rates in the neighborhood of 12-18%.
But as for minimum monthly payments, of course they're going to make you pay something. Otherwise you could just keep spending up to your limit and then never pay them back - they'd essentially be giving you free money.
Not a debit card or checking account. If they screw you over with an unwarranted credit card charge, your can call your credit card company and stop payment on it. If they pulled money out of your checking account (either directly or through a debit card), you're pretty much screwed (good luck trying to get your bank to do anything about it).
FWIW, using a credit card for most purchases is actually good advice, because it avoids all sorts of frauds and other problems (for example, a restaurant in a foreign country once charged my card twice; I guess they thought since I wasn't from around there I couldn't come back and complain. The CC company removed the fraudulent second charge after a simple phone call...if I had paid with a debit card it would've been a real pain to try to get my money back). This is provided, of course, that you are disciplined enough to pay your credit card bill on time to avoid going into debt and paying high interest rates.
So what is it in your experience that tells you the primary purpose of bnetd is to avoid Battle.net duplicate key checking?
The fact that most people I know who use it are people who can't get on Battle.net because they don't own valid keys. The people who do own valid keys mostly just get on Battle.net because they don't want to bother setting up their own servers.
Uhh no. The server has no copy protection that I know of (other than them simply not giving out copies). The copy protection being circumvented is the client-key mechanism.