Personally I hope there's a silver lining attached to the cloud of this recession. I hope the people who have historically contributed to "open source" will have to run off and get low-paying jobs and work long hours to feed their families. This will give them back that sense of perspective that they lost somewhere along the way.
If the United States hadn't been so damn well off after World War II, this culture of "share and share alike, goddammit" never would have sprung up.
Heh. As I go back and read that again, I really like that. I think that sums up the attitude of the "open source" guys pretty well: "Share and share alike, goddammit." Gotta remember that one.
What is relevant is that spam violates the property rights of the recipients and the transmitting ISPs.
How? Let's say you and I meet at a football game and I tell you about my Superbowl party. Two weeks later the game rolls around and you find yourself without plans, so you give me a call. I didn't give you my phone number; you had to look it up. I also didn't give you express permission to call me. Do I jump up and down screaming about property rights when my phone rings?
Of course not. Let us not lose sight of the point here: what you object to is not the method of communication, or the nature of the communication. You object to the content of the communication, and filtering inbound communication based on the content has always been a tricky proposition.
No, what we're basically saying is, "Some people are stealing my bandwidth. How can I fight back to ensure that they go to jail just like people who get caught stealing anything else?"
You've been on this kick for some time. It doesn't hold water, Steve. The argument that spam, including this kind of spam, is stealing your bandwidth only makes sense if your ability to use your Internet connection is materially harmed by it. Bandwidth isn't something you own; it's capability and capacity. If spam, in any form, prevented you from being able to use your Internet connection-- say, somebody emailed you a multi-terabyte file or something-- then you would have a case to say that this is denial of service. (Not "theft of service," of course. Denial of service, which is a crime under several computer crime laws.)
But this type of spam specifically, and I dare say spam in general, does not prevent you from being able to use your Internet connection. It does not even materially infringe on your ability to use your Internet connection. You have, therefore, not been harmed by it, so you have no grounds to claim that it's a denial of service.
Think of it in these terms: let's say you but a big, fancy mailbox in front of your house. The next day, the mailman delivers a piece of junk mail to your mailbox. You get all up in arms, and accuse the organization that sent the junk mail of stealing your mailbox capacity from you. See, your mailbox should be able to hold 40 regular-sized letter envelopes. When they sent you that piece of junk mail, your mailbox capacity was reduced to 39 envelopes. They stole some of your capacity!
Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, does it? Your argument is the same. I'm sorry to have to tell you this-- I find spam as annoying as the next guy-- but this line of reasoning just doesn't get the job done.
You must remember, the R16000 is 64-bit, not 32-bit.
For the record, the R10000 series can run either 32-bit or 64-bit code. All other things being equal, the 32-bit version of a program will run faster than the 64-bit version; you can fit more 32-bit ints into cache at once than 64-bit ints, so the 64-bit version of a program generally suffers more cache misses than its 32-bit counterpart.
On an SGI box, you don't compile for 64-bit unless you absolutely have to address more than 2 GB of virtual memory.
Also, it has 4000k of L2 cache, not 256k or 512k.
That's pretty puny for an SGI. The processors they use in the Origin servers have typically been equipped with 8 MB of secondary cache; the 4 MB version must be just for the workstations, to keep costs manageable.
you are trying to compare two things that are completely different.
You, sir, are almost completely uninformed. The R16000 is an R10000 variant, just like the R12000 and R14000 before it. It is not a vector processor, and has no vector units. The R16000 is, furthermore, a desktop processor in its own right, because it's currently being used in the Fuel workstation.
Incidentally, SGI divested itself of Cray some time ago. Cray was bought by a company called Tera Computing, which then changed its name to Cray. They're building the SV2 vector supercomputer now, using their own processors, and they also have an arrangement with NEC to market the SX-6 in the United States with a Cray logo, but that's strictly a resale agreement.
Seems like you missed the other word I used: immature. Profanity is most certainly not "more eloquent and elegant," but when one couples it with that degree of immaturity of expression, one's words say far more about oneself than one might think.
He instead attempts to turn it around and pretend that he is "superior" somehow
Thus spake "Trolling4Dollars."
Oh, "Trolling," you're nothing if not good for a laugh.
I may very well be a self-righteous prick; it's hard to tell from in here, but I cheerfully acknowledge the possibility. You see, it doesn't change the fact that I'm right.
On another subject, though, if you're going to go making recommendations to the readers of this thread to add or remove friends based on your opinions, the very least you could do would be to post under your own name instead of hiding behind that "post anonymously" button.
I'm not going to talk about the law. I'm not going to talk about intellectual property or copyrights. I'm not going to say "fuck the prof." I'm just going to tell you how I think things should go down.
I think the professor(s) who have an opinion on this matter should ask you to remove the code that relates to their lessons. They have a really good case for asking; you've basically put the answers to the tests on a web page, and while you are certainly entitled to do that, they're also entitled to wish you wouldn't.
I think that then, having been asked, you should graciously comply with their request. The professors have a good point, and I think out of simple courtesy to them for all they've given you, you should respect their wishes.
In other words, y'all should all just play nice, and everything will work itself out.
I'm not going to tell you to read the fucking article. I understand full well that reading the fucking article is sometimes an unreasonable burden. But please, as a personal favor to me, read the fucking description.
Quote: "The problem here is that the code on his webpage is code from previous programming projects. It basically boils down to the tradeoff of a student who feels pround about his work and a professor who doesn't want to interfere with the lesson plan he probably worked hard to produce."
I know I'm speaking the truth when immature and profane individuals such as yourself get so very up in arms when they hear it. Thanks for making my day.
I don't get it, what is it about freedom you don't like? Again I hear slander without specifics.
Oh, man. This could take days. But the short answer is that the FSF does not stand for freedom. They stand for strictly limited freedom. They stand for "freedom except." And yet they persist in calling it "free." That's deceptive. But I really have little to say to you on this specific part of the discussion that I haven't already said in this extremely lengthy and, surprisingly, civil thread. If you want to know what I think about the FSF and what they call "freedom," please click over and read what I wrote there.
The java platform is famously non-free, under the control of Sun rather than standards bodies.
You're kind of proving my point here, whether you realize it or not. You have called out the fact that Java is defined by a company instead of by a committee as being a sign that it is "non-free." That smacks of the "ideologically impure" thing I mentioned earlier. Because the Java specification is not defined by a committee, the Java platform is impure, so all software that runs on Java is impure. And because Eclipse runs on Java, it is "useless for the free software community." This is, as I said before, an example of radical ideological fundamentalism.
It's not Sun's views on IP we care about, it's the license under which the gift software is offered.
Okay, then for the purposes of our conversation I retract what I said about the FSF's disagreements with Sun over IP. Forget I said that.
What you are trying to do is smear the free software community (who concern themselves with providing free alternatives) with warez kiddiez who have no respect for laws they disagree with.
Wha? I don't understand how you jumped from what I said to that conclusion. I didn't say a thing about software piracy. If you're going to argue with me-- for I do love a spirited debate-- at least have the courtesy to disagree with things that I actually say, if you please.
We don't like the license so we won't use it. You are trying very hard to make this seem unreasonable, but it is not.
What I consider to be unreasonable is the apparent "fruit of a poisoned tree" doctrine that is being applied here. As I said before, Java is considered ideologically unacceptable-- this is a vital distinction; not unacceptable on technological or practical terms, but purely ideological ones-- so all software that runs on Java is also unacceptable.
It is possible to release software for the Java platform under the GPL. It is possible to build software with Eclipse and then release it under the GPL. So the objection here has absolutely nothing to do with the real world. It's purely ideological, and I consider that to be unreasonable.
Of course not, you're clearly not reasonable and have no idea what a reasonable person would care about.
Wow, this is getting better and better.
It's an attempt to make it sound like anyone who cares about what license their software uses sound like a terrorist.
Actually, it's an attempt to make it sound like anyone who considers a tool "useless" not because of its license, or because of the license of the platform on which it runs, but because of the specification of the platform on which it runs sound like a radical fundamentalist. Which is precisely what I said. If you jumped from "radical fundamentalist" to "terrorist," then I submit that you may have been watching too much television, and that you might want to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.
Ah, but now you have responded to my post personally, and accused me of 'radical fundamentalism' and an obsession with 'ideological purity', and I have taken it personally.
Well... okay. Yes. If the statement, "[The fact that] it was build on top of the proprietary Java platform... made it useless for the free software community," accurately describes your opinions, then yes, I am accusing you of radical fundamentalism. I am accusing you of being more concerned with ideology than with software, free or otherwise. Most importantly, I am accusing you of cutting off your own nose to spite your face.
If this offends you, I am sincerely sorry. I do not mean to attack your character, hurt your feelings, or insult your person. I mean only to indict your ideas in the court of Slashdot public opinion.
You are coming from the perspective that a little proprietary software is ok.
Actually, just to make things perfectly clear here, I am coming from the perspective that all proprietary software is okay. I disagree most wholeheartedly with the FSF's most fundamental assumption, which is that proprietary software, and by extension all intellectual property, is a bad thing. Just so there's no confusion about where I stand on the issues, you see.
But you seem to think that anyone who has a different perspective on the appropriateness of proprietary software is a raving lunatic, and for this I fault you and continue to demand an apology.
Whether you, sir, are a raving lunatic or not remains to be seen. You may fault me for whatever you like, and you may demand whatever you like. As I said before, no apology will be forthcoming.
Well, come on. You do bring it on yourselves, don't you? All the high-minded talk of freedom and liberty just reeks of tall poppy syndrome. Even if your political goals weren't wrongheaded and your propaganda methods highly questionable, the "community" in general, and certain members of it in particular, think so much of themselves that being brought down a notch or two from time to time is good for them.
That said, though, let us not lose sight of the fact that your political goals are wrongheaded and your propaganda methods highly questionable.
"Politically unacceptable" is a poor substitute for "under a license that does not guarantee freedom from embracing and extending".
Actually, I think "politically unacceptable" describes the situation perfectly. Here we have a platform that is free for your use, without the sorts of BitKeeper-style restrictions that created such a stink a while back. The platform is ubiquitous and unrestricted, and generally considered to be appropriate for a wide variety of tasks. And yet you (you meaning the "community") refuse to use it for no other reason than that the people who built the platform do not subscribe to your views on intellectual property and source code licensing.
You may wrap it up in terms of "we want a tool that isn't under anybody's control," but the bottom line is that the concerns of the "community" aren't practical. They're ideological.
You're smearing reasonable people who don't like Trojan gifts with a very broad brush, and I believe you owe us an apology.
I am calling it like I see it. I don't think a reasonable person would conclude that Eclipse is "useless for the free software community" simply because it was built with and runs on Java. That is absolutely radical fundamentalism; it is based on the idea that anything that is not ideologically pure is "useless."
Now I didn't speak personally, and I intended no offense, but I will not be offering any apologies, either.
If by "purist" you mean "radical fundamentalist," I'm right there with you.
I know I'm not the only Slashdotter who senses the irony of a community of people who supposedly stand for freedom declaring an entire platform to be useless because they find it politically unacceptable.
The root word of 'engineer' as in the one who creates is not engine, its genius.
Not exactly. The first known use of "engineer" in English was in 1839, meaning "locomotive driver." Another word for "locomotive" was "engine." "Engine" comes from the 13th century Old French word engin, meaning skill or cleverness. This word came to be used to describe any trick or device, particularly in the military sense. ("Siege engine," for example, means any device or tactic used to wage war against a fortified position.) Engin came from the Latin ingenium, meaning inborn qualities or characteristics. Ingenium came from the root word gignere, meaning to beget or give birth to.
"Genius" was first used in English to mean "person of natural intelligence or talent" in 1649. It came through Norman French from the Latin word genius, meaning the guardian deity or spirit which watches over a person from birth. Genius also came from gignere, to beget or give birth to, but in a different way.
Gignere, through various circumlocutions, gave us many modern English words: ingenuity, for example, came from Middle French ingénieux, which came from Latin ingeniosus, meaning of good capacity.
So while the words "engineer" and "genius" are indeed related, you have to go back 2,000 years to an extremely distant root word to find the relation. "Engineer," on the other hand, is a first-order derivative from the mechanical sense of "engine."
Well, I guess it's better than the alternative. I'd rather see the occasional stupid story get posted-- no offense, Cliff, but even you've gotta admit that this one is stuuuuu-pid-- than to get nothing more than "Your Rights Online" flamewars.
Then again I'm still kinda grumpy that my story about Firefly's cancellation got bounced. Oh, well. Somehow life goes on.
Sounds kinda neat. It's not for me because I use DSL, so I have to have local telephone service anyway, but it's an interesting idea. How's the quality? Is there a noticeable echo or lag? Does it sound like a regular land line or more like a digital cell phone call? Have you ever had any problems with calls dropping or failing to go through?
God, I hate replying to acknowledged trolls, but this idea is repeated too damn often as it is.
What you said only applies to trademarks. You can only claim ownership of a trademark if the word or phrase isn't already in common usage to describe the thing you're trying to sell. You couldn't trademark "mouse pad," for example, because everybody already calls them mouse pads. Once you have a trademark, if you let people use it without authorization, it gradually becomes diluted to the point where you can't reasonably claim exclusivity any more. But this takes a lot of time. Johnson & Johnson still owns the trademark on "Band-Aid," Kimberly-Clark still owns the trademark on "Kleenex," and Xerox still owns the trademark on "Xerox."
The fact that you don't defend your copyrights against infringement doesn't dilute the strength of your claim to those copyrights. Copyrights are non-conditional.
iPhoto includes some recordings of classical music that you can play over a slide show. That's what the About box is talking about.
I loaded pics into iPhoto yesterday, too, and nothing like this happened.
Between the fake Sony/Nintendo story from a few days ago, yesterday's fake iTunes/Ogg story, and this story, I'm starting to wonder if we're seeing a new form of trolling. Rather than posting silly comments, the trolls have started submitting silly stories.
Obviously, you haven't played WC3 enough to make that judgement...
Obviously? You jerk. "You disagree with me, and I simply cannot understand how that could be the case if you had all the information, therefore you must necessarily be insufficiently informed."
In fact, the strategy in WC3 is unbelievible! You have to micro-manage EVERYTHING!
That's not strategy. That's logistics management. Choosing what units to build because of limited resources-- and god knows they're limited; who the hell thought a maximum of 90 units was an okay idea?-- is not strategy. Strategy is the question of what to do with those units once you've built them. In Warcraft, the answer to that question is, "send them straight up the middle in a massive rush and hope it turns out all right."
The playing field simply isn't big enough to bring strategy into a Warcraft game. Let's say you need to destroy an enemy's base. Does it make sense to bring in long-range siege weapons and pound his city walls to dust? Well, no, because first of all there are no real long-range siege weapons, and second because there are no real passive defenses like city walls.
Hell, you can't even control your units in a way that allows you to employ battlefield tactics. How do you lead a charge in Warcraft 3? The best you can do is get your units to wander over there to the enemy units and start hacking away. There's no way to advance under cover in order to break an enemy's line.
Battles in Warcraft end up looking like a high school cafeteria. Instead of holding strategically important positions and employing defense in depth, the good guys and the bad guys end up in little knots pounding the shit out of each other until everybody dies.
Warcraft can be a game of logistics, true. But it is not really a game of strategy.
Funny, isn't the spec they chose MORE susceptable to interference.
Than what? Than a wire in the ground? Sure. But your statement about people who get no picture at all is generally not true. I have friends in apartments (two of them, actually) who get perfect HD reception using nothing more than an indoor antenna. And I have one friend who lives way the heck out in the sticks who gets perfect reception with an inexpensive rooftop antenna.
When a thunderstorm blows through, you will occasionally get a few drop-outs in your picture because of atmospheric interference. But these are few and far between, and you never lose the signal entirely like you can with buried cable.
People don't have the right to go up to the windows on your house and tape an advertisement to it.
I dare say they do. The Thai restaurant down the block puts a menu on my doorknob every couple of weeks, sometimes more often. The Herbalife guys love to lurk in the grocery store parking lot and stick reply cards under windshield wipers.
Basically, if we hold that people don't have the right to shoot at the dogs on my front porch, they also shouldn't have the right to shoot their packets at any defenseless computer on my property
That sets a dangerous precedent. The purpose of a networked computer-- well, one of the primary purposes, anyway-- is to receive messages. Trying to draw an arbitrary line and say that these messages are okay while these aren't is tricky at best.
I think an automated messenger script that directs people to a web site with free instructions on both how to turn off the Messenger service and the possible ramifications of (miss out on broadcasted UPS shutdown warnings, etc.) is an excellent idea.
So it's not the method of messaging you have a problem with, but the content of the messages? That's a problem. Regulating message content has always been a dicey proposition.
Slashdot Mirror
You rock, dude. I love your breaths of fresh air.
Personally I hope there's a silver lining attached to the cloud of this recession. I hope the people who have historically contributed to "open source" will have to run off and get low-paying jobs and work long hours to feed their families. This will give them back that sense of perspective that they lost somewhere along the way.
If the United States hadn't been so damn well off after World War II, this culture of "share and share alike, goddammit" never would have sprung up.
Heh. As I go back and read that again, I really like that. I think that sums up the attitude of the "open source" guys pretty well: "Share and share alike, goddammit." Gotta remember that one.
What is relevant is that spam violates the property rights of the recipients and the transmitting ISPs.
How? Let's say you and I meet at a football game and I tell you about my Superbowl party. Two weeks later the game rolls around and you find yourself without plans, so you give me a call. I didn't give you my phone number; you had to look it up. I also didn't give you express permission to call me. Do I jump up and down screaming about property rights when my phone rings?
Of course not. Let us not lose sight of the point here: what you object to is not the method of communication, or the nature of the communication. You object to the content of the communication, and filtering inbound communication based on the content has always been a tricky proposition.
No, what we're basically saying is, "Some people are stealing my bandwidth. How can I fight back to ensure that they go to jail just like people who get caught stealing anything else?"
You've been on this kick for some time. It doesn't hold water, Steve. The argument that spam, including this kind of spam, is stealing your bandwidth only makes sense if your ability to use your Internet connection is materially harmed by it. Bandwidth isn't something you own; it's capability and capacity. If spam, in any form, prevented you from being able to use your Internet connection-- say, somebody emailed you a multi-terabyte file or something-- then you would have a case to say that this is denial of service. (Not "theft of service," of course. Denial of service, which is a crime under several computer crime laws.)
But this type of spam specifically, and I dare say spam in general, does not prevent you from being able to use your Internet connection. It does not even materially infringe on your ability to use your Internet connection. You have, therefore, not been harmed by it, so you have no grounds to claim that it's a denial of service.
Think of it in these terms: let's say you but a big, fancy mailbox in front of your house. The next day, the mailman delivers a piece of junk mail to your mailbox. You get all up in arms, and accuse the organization that sent the junk mail of stealing your mailbox capacity from you. See, your mailbox should be able to hold 40 regular-sized letter envelopes. When they sent you that piece of junk mail, your mailbox capacity was reduced to 39 envelopes. They stole some of your capacity!
Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, does it? Your argument is the same. I'm sorry to have to tell you this-- I find spam as annoying as the next guy-- but this line of reasoning just doesn't get the job done.
You must remember, the R16000 is 64-bit, not 32-bit.
For the record, the R10000 series can run either 32-bit or 64-bit code. All other things being equal, the 32-bit version of a program will run faster than the 64-bit version; you can fit more 32-bit ints into cache at once than 64-bit ints, so the 64-bit version of a program generally suffers more cache misses than its 32-bit counterpart.
On an SGI box, you don't compile for 64-bit unless you absolutely have to address more than 2 GB of virtual memory.
Also, it has 4000k of L2 cache, not 256k or 512k.
That's pretty puny for an SGI. The processors they use in the Origin servers have typically been equipped with 8 MB of secondary cache; the 4 MB version must be just for the workstations, to keep costs manageable.
you are trying to compare two things that are completely different.
On this point, however, you're 100% correct.
SGI workstations run at what? $5000 and up?
$10,000 and up, but who's counting?
Wha?
You, sir, are almost completely uninformed. The R16000 is an R10000 variant, just like the R12000 and R14000 before it. It is not a vector processor, and has no vector units. The R16000 is, furthermore, a desktop processor in its own right, because it's currently being used in the Fuel workstation.
Incidentally, SGI divested itself of Cray some time ago. Cray was bought by a company called Tera Computing, which then changed its name to Cray. They're building the SV2 vector supercomputer now, using their own processors, and they also have an arrangement with NEC to market the SX-6 in the United States with a Cray logo, but that's strictly a resale agreement.
Seems like you missed the other word I used: immature. Profanity is most certainly not "more eloquent and elegant," but when one couples it with that degree of immaturity of expression, one's words say far more about oneself than one might think.
He instead attempts to turn it around and pretend that he is "superior" somehow
Thus spake "Trolling4Dollars."
Oh, "Trolling," you're nothing if not good for a laugh.
You still haven't answered the questions put to you in the above mentioned threads.
Which questions would those be?
I may very well be a self-righteous prick; it's hard to tell from in here, but I cheerfully acknowledge the possibility. You see, it doesn't change the fact that I'm right.
On another subject, though, if you're going to go making recommendations to the readers of this thread to add or remove friends based on your opinions, the very least you could do would be to post under your own name instead of hiding behind that "post anonymously" button.
What are you afraid of?
I'm not going to talk about the law. I'm not going to talk about intellectual property or copyrights. I'm not going to say "fuck the prof." I'm just going to tell you how I think things should go down.
I think the professor(s) who have an opinion on this matter should ask you to remove the code that relates to their lessons. They have a really good case for asking; you've basically put the answers to the tests on a web page, and while you are certainly entitled to do that, they're also entitled to wish you wouldn't.
I think that then, having been asked, you should graciously comply with their request. The professors have a good point, and I think out of simple courtesy to them for all they've given you, you should respect their wishes.
In other words, y'all should all just play nice, and everything will work itself out.
I'm not going to tell you to read the fucking article. I understand full well that reading the fucking article is sometimes an unreasonable burden. But please, as a personal favor to me, read the fucking description.
Quote: "The problem here is that the code on his webpage is code from previous programming projects. It basically boils down to the tradeoff of a student who feels pround about his work and a professor who doesn't want to interfere with the lesson plan he probably worked hard to produce."
I know I'm speaking the truth when immature and profane individuals such as yourself get so very up in arms when they hear it. Thanks for making my day.
I don't get it, what is it about freedom you don't like? Again I hear slander without specifics.
Oh, man. This could take days. But the short answer is that the FSF does not stand for freedom. They stand for strictly limited freedom. They stand for "freedom except." And yet they persist in calling it "free." That's deceptive. But I really have little to say to you on this specific part of the discussion that I haven't already said in this extremely lengthy and, surprisingly, civil thread. If you want to know what I think about the FSF and what they call "freedom," please click over and read what I wrote there.
The java platform is famously non-free, under the control of Sun rather than standards bodies.
You're kind of proving my point here, whether you realize it or not. You have called out the fact that Java is defined by a company instead of by a committee as being a sign that it is "non-free." That smacks of the "ideologically impure" thing I mentioned earlier. Because the Java specification is not defined by a committee, the Java platform is impure, so all software that runs on Java is impure. And because Eclipse runs on Java, it is "useless for the free software community." This is, as I said before, an example of radical ideological fundamentalism.
It's not Sun's views on IP we care about, it's the license under which the gift software is offered.
Okay, then for the purposes of our conversation I retract what I said about the FSF's disagreements with Sun over IP. Forget I said that.
What you are trying to do is smear the free software community (who concern themselves with providing free alternatives) with warez kiddiez who have no respect for laws they disagree with.
Wha? I don't understand how you jumped from what I said to that conclusion. I didn't say a thing about software piracy. If you're going to argue with me-- for I do love a spirited debate-- at least have the courtesy to disagree with things that I actually say, if you please.
We don't like the license so we won't use it. You are trying very hard to make this seem unreasonable, but it is not.
What I consider to be unreasonable is the apparent "fruit of a poisoned tree" doctrine that is being applied here. As I said before, Java is considered ideologically unacceptable-- this is a vital distinction; not unacceptable on technological or practical terms, but purely ideological ones-- so all software that runs on Java is also unacceptable.
It is possible to release software for the Java platform under the GPL. It is possible to build software with Eclipse and then release it under the GPL. So the objection here has absolutely nothing to do with the real world. It's purely ideological, and I consider that to be unreasonable.
Of course not, you're clearly not reasonable and have no idea what a reasonable person would care about.
Wow, this is getting better and better.
It's an attempt to make it sound like anyone who cares about what license their software uses sound like a terrorist.
Actually, it's an attempt to make it sound like anyone who considers a tool "useless" not because of its license, or because of the license of the platform on which it runs, but because of the specification of the platform on which it runs sound like a radical fundamentalist. Which is precisely what I said. If you jumped from "radical fundamentalist" to "terrorist," then I submit that you may have been watching too much television, and that you might want to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.
Ah, but now you have responded to my post personally, and accused me of 'radical fundamentalism' and an obsession with 'ideological purity', and I have taken it personally.
Well... okay. Yes. If the statement, "[The fact that] it was build on top of the proprietary Java platform... made it useless for the free software community," accurately describes your opinions, then yes, I am accusing you of radical fundamentalism. I am accusing you of being more concerned with ideology than with software, free or otherwise. Most importantly, I am accusing you of cutting off your own nose to spite your face.
If this offends you, I am sincerely sorry. I do not mean to attack your character, hurt your feelings, or insult your person. I mean only to indict your ideas in the court of Slashdot public opinion.
You are coming from the perspective that a little proprietary software is ok.
Actually, just to make things perfectly clear here, I am coming from the perspective that all proprietary software is okay. I disagree most wholeheartedly with the FSF's most fundamental assumption, which is that proprietary software, and by extension all intellectual property, is a bad thing. Just so there's no confusion about where I stand on the issues, you see.
But you seem to think that anyone who has a different perspective on the appropriateness of proprietary software is a raving lunatic, and for this I fault you and continue to demand an apology.
Whether you, sir, are a raving lunatic or not remains to be seen. You may fault me for whatever you like, and you may demand whatever you like. As I said before, no apology will be forthcoming.
...and while I'm at it, I wish I had a pony.
Why must you slander us and belittle us?
Well, come on. You do bring it on yourselves, don't you? All the high-minded talk of freedom and liberty just reeks of tall poppy syndrome. Even if your political goals weren't wrongheaded and your propaganda methods highly questionable, the "community" in general, and certain members of it in particular, think so much of themselves that being brought down a notch or two from time to time is good for them.
That said, though, let us not lose sight of the fact that your political goals are wrongheaded and your propaganda methods highly questionable.
"Politically unacceptable" is a poor substitute for "under a license that does not guarantee freedom from embracing and extending".
Actually, I think "politically unacceptable" describes the situation perfectly. Here we have a platform that is free for your use, without the sorts of BitKeeper-style restrictions that created such a stink a while back. The platform is ubiquitous and unrestricted, and generally considered to be appropriate for a wide variety of tasks. And yet you (you meaning the "community") refuse to use it for no other reason than that the people who built the platform do not subscribe to your views on intellectual property and source code licensing.
You may wrap it up in terms of "we want a tool that isn't under anybody's control," but the bottom line is that the concerns of the "community" aren't practical. They're ideological.
You're smearing reasonable people who don't like Trojan gifts with a very broad brush, and I believe you owe us an apology.
I am calling it like I see it. I don't think a reasonable person would conclude that Eclipse is "useless for the free software community" simply because it was built with and runs on Java. That is absolutely radical fundamentalism; it is based on the idea that anything that is not ideologically pure is "useless."
Now I didn't speak personally, and I intended no offense, but I will not be offering any apologies, either.
If by "purist" you mean "radical fundamentalist," I'm right there with you.
I know I'm not the only Slashdotter who senses the irony of a community of people who supposedly stand for freedom declaring an entire platform to be useless because they find it politically unacceptable.
Yeah, okay. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I can see how you could see this story that way. Touché.
The root word of 'engineer' as in the one who creates is not engine, its genius.
Not exactly. The first known use of "engineer" in English was in 1839, meaning "locomotive driver." Another word for "locomotive" was "engine." "Engine" comes from the 13th century Old French word engin, meaning skill or cleverness. This word came to be used to describe any trick or device, particularly in the military sense. ("Siege engine," for example, means any device or tactic used to wage war against a fortified position.) Engin came from the Latin ingenium, meaning inborn qualities or characteristics. Ingenium came from the root word gignere, meaning to beget or give birth to.
"Genius" was first used in English to mean "person of natural intelligence or talent" in 1649. It came through Norman French from the Latin word genius, meaning the guardian deity or spirit which watches over a person from birth. Genius also came from gignere, to beget or give birth to, but in a different way.
Gignere, through various circumlocutions, gave us many modern English words: ingenuity, for example, came from Middle French ingénieux, which came from Latin ingeniosus, meaning of good capacity.
So while the words "engineer" and "genius" are indeed related, you have to go back 2,000 years to an extremely distant root word to find the relation. "Engineer," on the other hand, is a first-order derivative from the mechanical sense of "engine."
Yes, it dates back to the days when "engineer" actually had something to do with "engine."
Well, I guess it's better than the alternative. I'd rather see the occasional stupid story get posted-- no offense, Cliff, but even you've gotta admit that this one is stuuuuu-pid-- than to get nothing more than "Your Rights Online" flamewars.
Then again I'm still kinda grumpy that my story about Firefly's cancellation got bounced. Oh, well. Somehow life goes on.
Sounds kinda neat. It's not for me because I use DSL, so I have to have local telephone service anyway, but it's an interesting idea. How's the quality? Is there a noticeable echo or lag? Does it sound like a regular land line or more like a digital cell phone call? Have you ever had any problems with calls dropping or failing to go through?
Thanks for any elaboration you can provide.
God, I hate replying to acknowledged trolls, but this idea is repeated too damn often as it is.
What you said only applies to trademarks. You can only claim ownership of a trademark if the word or phrase isn't already in common usage to describe the thing you're trying to sell. You couldn't trademark "mouse pad," for example, because everybody already calls them mouse pads. Once you have a trademark, if you let people use it without authorization, it gradually becomes diluted to the point where you can't reasonably claim exclusivity any more. But this takes a lot of time. Johnson & Johnson still owns the trademark on "Band-Aid," Kimberly-Clark still owns the trademark on "Kleenex," and Xerox still owns the trademark on "Xerox."
The fact that you don't defend your copyrights against infringement doesn't dilute the strength of your claim to those copyrights. Copyrights are non-conditional.
iPhoto includes some recordings of classical music that you can play over a slide show. That's what the About box is talking about.
I loaded pics into iPhoto yesterday, too, and nothing like this happened.
Between the fake Sony/Nintendo story from a few days ago, yesterday's fake iTunes/Ogg story, and this story, I'm starting to wonder if we're seeing a new form of trolling. Rather than posting silly comments, the trolls have started submitting silly stories.
And they're getting good at it.
Obviously, you haven't played WC3 enough to make that judgement ...
Obviously? You jerk. "You disagree with me, and I simply cannot understand how that could be the case if you had all the information, therefore you must necessarily be insufficiently informed."
In fact, the strategy in WC3 is unbelievible! You have to micro-manage EVERYTHING!
That's not strategy. That's logistics management. Choosing what units to build because of limited resources-- and god knows they're limited; who the hell thought a maximum of 90 units was an okay idea?-- is not strategy. Strategy is the question of what to do with those units once you've built them. In Warcraft, the answer to that question is, "send them straight up the middle in a massive rush and hope it turns out all right."
The playing field simply isn't big enough to bring strategy into a Warcraft game. Let's say you need to destroy an enemy's base. Does it make sense to bring in long-range siege weapons and pound his city walls to dust? Well, no, because first of all there are no real long-range siege weapons, and second because there are no real passive defenses like city walls.
Hell, you can't even control your units in a way that allows you to employ battlefield tactics. How do you lead a charge in Warcraft 3? The best you can do is get your units to wander over there to the enemy units and start hacking away. There's no way to advance under cover in order to break an enemy's line.
Battles in Warcraft end up looking like a high school cafeteria. Instead of holding strategically important positions and employing defense in depth, the good guys and the bad guys end up in little knots pounding the shit out of each other until everybody dies.
Warcraft can be a game of logistics, true. But it is not really a game of strategy.
Funny, isn't the spec they chose MORE susceptable to interference.
Than what? Than a wire in the ground? Sure. But your statement about people who get no picture at all is generally not true. I have friends in apartments (two of them, actually) who get perfect HD reception using nothing more than an indoor antenna. And I have one friend who lives way the heck out in the sticks who gets perfect reception with an inexpensive rooftop antenna.
When a thunderstorm blows through, you will occasionally get a few drop-outs in your picture because of atmospheric interference. But these are few and far between, and you never lose the signal entirely like you can with buried cable.
People don't have the right to go up to the windows on your house and tape an advertisement to it.
I dare say they do. The Thai restaurant down the block puts a menu on my doorknob every couple of weeks, sometimes more often. The Herbalife guys love to lurk in the grocery store parking lot and stick reply cards under windshield wipers.
Basically, if we hold that people don't have the right to shoot at the dogs on my front porch, they also shouldn't have the right to shoot their packets at any defenseless computer on my property
That sets a dangerous precedent. The purpose of a networked computer-- well, one of the primary purposes, anyway-- is to receive messages. Trying to draw an arbitrary line and say that these messages are okay while these aren't is tricky at best.
I think an automated messenger script that directs people to a web site with free instructions on both how to turn off the Messenger service and the possible ramifications of (miss out on broadcasted UPS shutdown warnings, etc.) is an excellent idea.
So it's not the method of messaging you have a problem with, but the content of the messages? That's a problem. Regulating message content has always been a dicey proposition.