Boycotts don't work anymore - at least not against the large multinationals. Want to boycott RJR Nabisco? No more Kraft Mac and Cheeze for you! Disney? May as well turn off the TV. Sony? Forgetabout it. They have their hands in just about every aspect of your life - you may as well forget any form of entertainment you know about. Even if you do manage to hit one business group, the corporation can easily spin this to their own advantage.
I imagine many people are boycotting DVDs or CDs due to the MPAA/RIAA. These groups can easily claim that lack of sales was not due to boycotts, but to theft from "those meddling hackers and their mangy mutt".
WTF is Harlan Ellison? The site doesn't say anything, just some rant in capital letters full of question marks.
The article immediately before this one: Bad News from Yahoo. Hello? What's the news?
If you all want/. just to turn into a dumb 'ol portal site that has hot grits, that's fine. But if you want us to be actually interested in the stuff you decide to put on the front page, how about giving us some background? It's not a lot to ask for. Or is it?
I own close to 300 CDs. When I go on a plane, or take a drive, I don't want to lug all 300 CDs with me. I shouldn't have to. This is why I bought a Nomad Jukebox - so I can take that small device with me and listen to all of my legally purchased music whereever I am.
Accidental Empires(AE) was the name of Cringely's book and was turned into Revenge of the Nerds on PBS.
AE looked more at the business side of SV in the early-mid 80s and 90s. Great focus on why companies prospered, why they died, and how so much of what is now in SV a result of..well..accidents.
Fire In The Valley (FITV) is a much older work, by almost 10 years or more. It's focus is much older, following the development of the PC itself, and less on the entire technology that existed in the SV area. FITV starts its timeline in the early '70s, and issues in a much more technical sense than AE does.
In short, give AE to your parents, read both yourself.
As an example, Schacker offers this scenario: "Let's say you own a company that is building an Ethernet switch. Let's also say your value-add is software, and you have chosen to base your device on Linux. Can you imagine a court case some day that determines that all of the software you've developed falls under the GPL, and is now in the public domain? We fear this situation is impeding development in the embedded open-source arena."
What the heck does this mean? It's like saying that some day, the MS EULA means that MS owns all the code you've ever written. This is why lawyers exist. This is why you can (probably) contact the FSF. This is why there's been a bazillion questions about how the GPL operates, with most of them having been answered already.
Listen up, there is nothing about the GPL that makes it any different (in a legal standpoint) from the MS EULA, aside from changes in the terms and conditions. If EULAs in general are struck down, this could strike down the GPL as well. They're in the same family.
So let's look at the terms and conditions. The fear that your code will somehow have to be released under the GPL is covered by the LGPL, which is used to compile most apps that use the gcc compiler and libraries. The LGPL allows for commercial (closed source) apps to be compiled and linked against LGPL libraries.
If a company doesn't pay attention to this difference in licenses, it's their own fault. This is akin to mistaking the MS EULA for a Borland EULA. If you're still stuck, go get a lawyer or call the FSF.
Then how do you explain the programmers paid by VA Linux, Red Hat, SuSE, IBM, etc.?
Open Source allows innovation to occur at a rapid pace, since even people who may normally be competitors can team up with a common goal - better software.
The latest firmware of the NJB allow you to take music off the device and back to your hard drive, but only if it doesn't have any digital rights management set up. Your collection of MP3 files can be shuffled back and forth from the NJB, but some WMA files can't.
POS software that's been running in a Cafe for over a year.
I'm interested in this, as the local DVD store (i.e. not Blockbuster) is still using a DOS-based POS software. His inventory is all out of sync with the actual stock, and would love a Linux solution.
Browsers started going to hell in a handbasket when they forgot why HTML was around in the first place - to make a platform-independent system for sharing information. Thus, a web page in Netscape *should* look different than a web page in IE, *however* the content should be the same.
The DTD merely says that this text is in a paragraph. Unfortunately, most browsers have embraced and extended this to assume that all browsers have the exact same layout. Thus, changing font sizes or types in your browser makes the page look just plain wrong.
Back when the DTD was being followed, *everyone* built web browsers, and all was good with the world. The content was similar, and no matter what the platform, you could still browse. Then came . And . And and all hell broke loose.
Now we're in an IE world. One browser for everyone. Netscape is flailing, Mozilla is close, but MS has free run of the DTD.
If you really want browser wars to heat up, you have to make usre that the browser followed the DTD properly so the display is not driven by the content, but is driven by the end user, as it should be.
Why not do the settings via DHCP? I run my laptop between home and work all the time, plus the wireless card. Using static DHCP, I always get the same IP address, name, and other settings.
You wouldn't care if I set up a listening post to hear any wireless stuff going on in your house, right? You probably don't care about Echelon and various Internet-based listening posts monitoring your e-mail and where you surf, right?
After all, you are sending your data out over shared space, and if I feel like manipulating it *however I want*, that should be my right.
Patents cover an idea, and not a specific implementation (copyright). Because of that, you can reverse-engineer a copyright, but you can't reverse engineer a patent, since the idea is built into it.
The Freetype gang's notice about patents say that they got their documentation from Apple, and there was nothing in their documentation that said the technology was being covered or going to be covered by a patent.
It's been a while since I was in college (10 years). At that time, there was a CS which was much more intensive (read: coding) than the MIS (read: not coding, hey look! e-mail!). MIS was pretty much taken by either people who needed the elective, or by management types.
Slashdot Mirror
Boycotts don't work anymore - at least not against the large multinationals. Want to boycott RJR Nabisco? No more Kraft Mac and Cheeze for you! Disney? May as well turn off the TV. Sony? Forgetabout it. They have their hands in just about every aspect of your life - you may as well forget any form of entertainment you know about. Even if you do manage to hit one business group, the corporation can easily spin this to their own advantage.
I imagine many people are boycotting DVDs or CDs due to the MPAA/RIAA. These groups can easily claim that lack of sales was not due to boycotts, but to theft from "those meddling hackers and their mangy mutt".
WTF is Harlan Ellison? The site doesn't say anything, just some rant in capital letters full of question marks.
/. just to turn into a dumb 'ol portal site that has hot grits, that's fine. But if you want us to be actually interested in the stuff you decide to put on the front page, how about giving us some background? It's not a lot to ask for. Or is it?
The article immediately before this one: Bad News from Yahoo. Hello? What's the news?
If you all want
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/01/11/2153202.shtm l
You mean that article? From three months ago?
I own close to 300 CDs. When I go on a plane, or take a drive, I don't want to lug all 300 CDs with me. I shouldn't have to. This is why I bought a Nomad Jukebox - so I can take that small device with me and listen to all of my legally purchased music whereever I am.
Accidental Empires(AE) was the name of Cringely's book and was turned into Revenge of the Nerds on PBS.
AE looked more at the business side of SV in the early-mid 80s and 90s. Great focus on why companies prospered, why they died, and how so much of what is now in SV a result of..well..accidents.
Fire In The Valley (FITV) is a much older work, by almost 10 years or more. It's focus is much older, following the development of the PC itself, and less on the entire technology that existed in the SV area. FITV starts its timeline in the early '70s, and issues in a much more technical sense than AE does.
In short, give AE to your parents, read both yourself.
And ignore the issue completely. Convert to PDF, HTML, .rtf, ASCII, etc.
As an example, Schacker offers this scenario: "Let's say you own a company that is building an Ethernet switch. Let's also say your value-add is software, and you have chosen to base your device on Linux. Can you imagine a court case some day that determines that all of the software you've developed falls under the GPL, and is now in the public domain? We fear this situation is impeding development in the embedded open-source arena."
What the heck does this mean? It's like saying that some day, the MS EULA means that MS owns all the code you've ever written. This is why lawyers exist. This is why you can (probably) contact the FSF. This is why there's been a bazillion questions about how the GPL operates, with most of them having been answered already.
Listen up, there is nothing about the GPL that makes it any different (in a legal standpoint) from the MS EULA, aside from changes in the terms and conditions. If EULAs in general are struck down, this could strike down the GPL as well. They're in the same family.
So let's look at the terms and conditions. The fear that your code will somehow have to be released under the GPL is covered by the LGPL, which is used to compile most apps that use the gcc compiler and libraries. The LGPL allows for commercial (closed source) apps to be compiled and linked against LGPL libraries.
If a company doesn't pay attention to this difference in licenses, it's their own fault. This is akin to mistaking the MS EULA for a Borland EULA. If you're still stuck, go get a lawyer or call the FSF.
Then how do you explain the programmers paid by VA Linux, Red Hat, SuSE, IBM, etc.?
Open Source allows innovation to occur at a rapid pace, since even people who may normally be competitors can team up with a common goal - better software.
The latest firmware of the NJB allow you to take music off the device and back to your hard drive, but only if it doesn't have any digital rights management set up. Your collection of MP3 files can be shuffled back and forth from the NJB, but some WMA files can't.
http://easyPOS.sourceforge.net/
POS software that's been running in a Cafe for over a year.
I'm interested in this, as the local DVD store (i.e. not Blockbuster) is still using a DOS-based POS software. His inventory is all out of sync with the actual stock, and would love a Linux solution.
Ooh....my tags got taken literally. Rats. Should read:
Then came <blink>. And <center> . And <font> and all hell broke loose.
Browsers started going to hell in a handbasket when they forgot why HTML was around in the first place - to make a platform-independent system for sharing information. Thus, a web page in Netscape *should* look different than a web page in IE, *however* the content should be the same.
The DTD merely says that this text is in a paragraph. Unfortunately, most browsers have embraced and extended this to assume that all browsers have the exact same layout. Thus, changing font sizes or types in your browser makes the page look just plain wrong.
Back when the DTD was being followed, *everyone* built web browsers, and all was good with the world. The content was similar, and no matter what the platform, you could still browse. Then came . And . And and all hell broke loose.
Now we're in an IE world. One browser for everyone. Netscape is flailing, Mozilla is close, but MS has free run of the DTD.
If you really want browser wars to heat up, you have to make usre that the browser followed the DTD properly so the display is not driven by the content, but is driven by the end user, as it should be.
Why not do the settings via DHCP? I run my laptop between home and work all the time, plus the wireless card. Using static DHCP, I always get the same IP address, name, and other settings.
was heard from the crowd.
.NET, which noone really knows much about (still) but everyone agrees that it's patterned after Java
.NET.
.NET is MS's response to Java. All .NET is is the framework of Java, but being MS specific.
Let's look at the timeline of events:
1) MS gets sued by Sun over J++ and their Java implementation
2) Sun gets injunction to prevent MS from messing with Java.
3) MS creates
4) MS settles with Sun
5) MS releases toolkit to move Java coders from Java to
I'm not a coder, and it's pretty obvious to me that
Ways RPM is better than Debian:
.deb files
rpm -Va (validate packages)
PGP signing of packages
better CLI and GUI tools
apt-get dist-upgrade usually hoses my system
Ways Debian is better than RPM:
Kernel building is very easy
apt-get update
Multiple sources for
apt-get dist-upgrade (when it doesn't host my system)
I'll stick with Debian.
Sooo...
You wouldn't care if I set up a listening post to hear any wireless stuff going on in your house, right? You probably don't care about Echelon and various Internet-based listening posts monitoring your e-mail and where you surf, right?
After all, you are sending your data out over shared space, and if I feel like manipulating it *however I want*, that should be my right.
\/\/3 0\/\/n j00! D1r3ctTV ru1ez!!
Don't be irreplacable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.
Patents cover an idea, and not a specific implementation (copyright). Because of that, you can reverse-engineer a copyright, but you can't reverse engineer a patent, since the idea is built into it.
The Freetype gang's notice about patents say that they got their documentation from Apple, and there was nothing in their documentation that said the technology was being covered or going to be covered by a patent.
That's correct, but registering your copyright gives you a better legal advantage, since a third party (the US govt) has proof that you created it.
I had an apartment contract that said I could be evicted if I had guests after 2AM.
I then realized two things:
1) Most parts of a TOS (or lease) are an easy-escape-clause for the vendor.
2) READ ALL AGREEMENTS YOU SIGN
Darn trade organizations...
What happened to the RIAA-approved DVD player that was supposed to be shipping?
It's been a while since I was in college (10 years). At that time, there was a CS which was much more intensive (read: coding) than the MIS (read: not coding, hey look! e-mail!). MIS was pretty much taken by either people who needed the elective, or by management types.
Ahh, so you whip out your W2K CD when you want to install the C compiler, right?