at the moment you download you choose the GPL path, you can't later decide to make your project non-GPL and pay the license fee to trolltech and go commercial
Any links to back up that rather weird assertion?
The GPL and commercial versions of Qt are the same, only the licence is different. End-users can run dynamically-linked commercial binaries with their local GPL copies of Qt. If you decide to go commercial, you just pay Troll Tech for a commercial licence and go ahead. There is no legal, contractual or technical obstacle to it.
(If you've already released your code as GPL, of course, you can't "take it back" -- but if you own all the copyrights to it, you can cease to release future versions under the GPL. If some copyright holders object, you can't. That has nothing to do with Troll Tech.)
Now the airlines can restrict the use of those tickets to the person who purchased them and enforce that with the ID requirement...
This is about making more money for the airlines, not making your trip any more secure.
I don't know about you, but I'm glad that scalping and black-marketing are uncommon with airline tickets. It means I can still afford to fly. In other words, it's about saving more money for me.
And I don't care if they know my real name. Lots of people do.
Problem is, I don't get to decide what wireless chipsets get integrated in products. I sort of have a choice when it comes to USB adapters, but whole laptops?
Precisely. Even with the PCMCIA adapters I bought recently, there is no possible way to tell the chipset from the packaging. You can't even look up the product number -- they use the same darn number like WG-511 and the same packaging but change the chipset inside. As luck would have it, one had a Ralink and works with linux; the other had Marvell and I'm forced to use ndiswrapper.
The binary blob, as you call it, specifically, nv-kernel.o or "the resource manager" as the wrapper calls it, is a derivative work of the wrapper, and is therefore also required to be under the GPL, and so on. This is classic "how do I make proprietary modifications to a GPL program?" nonsense. Anyone who distributes this stuff is guilty of contributory copyright infringement.
Correct -- and therefore NVidia does not distribute nv-kernel.o. They cause it to be compiled on the user's machine. Few users will distribute that file further, but if they do, they would be violating the GPL.
NVidia distributes source code (it need not be under the GPL) to the shim, and a binary module that only depends on the shim. The binary module is useless by itself and, in particular, independent of the kernel (in principle they could write a different shim for another OS, like FreeBSD, and the same binary module -- perhaps that's what they actually do, I don't know). They're free to distribute that. The licence of the source of the shim doesn't matter to them.
If Ubuntu (or someone else) does the same thing, only through a nicer package manager, they should be in the clear too.
Just because they distribute source, does not mean it is free software.
Indeed it isn't free software but you missed the point. Only the source is distributed: the compilation of the shim is done on the user's machine. (At least, I imagine that's how Ubuntu will do it.) This is not a clear violation of the GPL. If the user re-distributed the resulting binary module, that would be a violation.
This is not a new idea, it's how qmail (for example) is commonly distributed. DJB's licence for qmail forbids distributing binaries (unless they satisfy some stringent conditions) or modified source, but patches are allowed (according to DJB's interpretation of copyright law). So since qmail is useless today without a number of patches, distros do the patching and compilation on the user's machine, which with modern package management systems is pretty transparent.
The fact that I couldn't become a citizen and I can't speak the language stops me.
You can become a citizen (if you wait) and you can speak the language (if you learn). My aunt and her family (all Indians by birth) did. Mainly because at that time India didn't allow dual passports/nationalities -- but I believe both the Netherlands and the US do, so why not.
I assume all the libraries of a 32 bit app on a 64 bit system would haveto be 32 bit as well, look at all the libraries effected...
You install it under a chroot. You can find instructions for debian/ubuntu on the net. On my ubuntu dapper AMD64 box the chroot takes about 0.6 GB. If you have a 64-bit machine you can probably set aside that much disk space. I have firefox, acroread, opera, realplay, totem installed there (plus the required libraries). It works fine.
Jabber is clearly the superior standard on nearly every axis. But everyone you know is on AIM or Messenger.
Nobody I know is on AIM (I don't live in the US). Quite a few people I know are on Google Talk, which is basically Jabber. How did Google get people to actually use its messaging service? By integrating it with their email: you can see from your mail window in your web browser which contacts are online, and message them directly from the browser. Clever.
You don't have very many daily visits (about 122 a day, of which 37 are firefox). Could a big chunk of that 37 be your own website maintainers? Or are those numbers for unique IP addresses?
Microsoft wanted a more reliable machine, improved memory management, a better filesystem, etc... Instead of throwing resources at doing these things from scratch, why didn't they just
Take Linux, or one of the BSDs (like Apple did)
Spend small amounts of money improving it (all that's really needed is improved device drivers)
Spend some money on improving Wine (it would be really easy for them, compared to anyone else who wants to do it), et voila -- near-perfect backward compatibility (certainly far better than Apple's MacOS 9 -> MacOS X or PowerPC->Intel moves)
From every point of view it seems to make more sense. They spend less money, get a more reliable product that can run very nicely on existing hardware, get some good press for a change, and benefit from the work of unpaid open-source programmers all over the world. But it isn't their way.
The article, if true, suggests that he's built that base on stealing the work of others.
It suggests no such thing. It makes it clear that Yau has accomplished enough to be regarded as one of the greats. (He won the Fields medal 24 years ago, for $deity's sake.) What it suggests is that he is not satisfied with those accomplishments and wants a share of the limelight in other work too.
Uh, because they contain harmful and dangerous pesticides?
Now explain why the democratic, free-market US not only bans marijuana (which has never been shown to be harmful or addictive), but even bans forms of hemp that do not contain the hallucinogenic substance (THC) in marijuana.
So what percentage of the general population are goats? And is it a good idea for a profit-minded corporation to piss off said percentage of customer base?
You clearly and unambiguously referred to Hewlett and Packard as Sun's founders. The headline was not "confusing", it was WRONG.
And the summary is stillWRONG. It says "a life-size cardboard cut of the HP rival's founders," and these people weren't founders of any HP rival (as far as I know), they were the founders of HP, which stands for (surprise) Hewlett-Packard.
Learn to, first, recognise your mistakes, second, admit them.
Americans really don't grok decimal, even the decimal currency which some well-meaning historical figure bequeathed them. I was floored when I first saw petrol ("gas") prices written like $2.83 9/10. What on earth does that mean? Well, apparently it just means $2.839, but if you write it like that most Americans won't understand it, while they do mysteriously understand the first form.
Slashdot Mirror
From last paragraph of TFA --that's not the original release, that's the advisory the university issued after all these people burned their sponges.
at the moment you download you choose the GPL path, you can't later decide to make your project non-GPL and pay the license fee to trolltech and go commercial
Any links to back up that rather weird assertion?
The GPL and commercial versions of Qt are the same, only the licence is different. End-users can run dynamically-linked commercial binaries with their local GPL copies of Qt. If you decide to go commercial, you just pay Troll Tech for a commercial licence and go ahead. There is no legal, contractual or technical obstacle to it.
(If you've already released your code as GPL, of course, you can't "take it back" -- but if you own all the copyrights to it, you can cease to release future versions under the GPL. If some copyright holders object, you can't. That has nothing to do with Troll Tech.)
Now the airlines can restrict the use of those tickets to the person who purchased them and enforce that with the ID requirement...
This is about making more money for the airlines, not making your trip any more secure.
I don't know about you, but I'm glad that scalping and black-marketing are uncommon with airline tickets. It means I can still afford to fly. In other words, it's about saving more money for me.
And I don't care if they know my real name. Lots of people do.
Problem is, I don't get to decide what wireless chipsets get integrated in products. I sort of have a choice when it comes to USB adapters, but whole laptops?
Precisely. Even with the PCMCIA adapters I bought recently, there is no possible way to tell the chipset from the packaging. You can't even look up the product number -- they use the same darn number like WG-511 and the same packaging but change the chipset inside. As luck would have it, one had a Ralink and works with linux; the other had Marvell and I'm forced to use ndiswrapper.
The binary blob, as you call it, specifically, nv-kernel.o or "the resource manager" as the wrapper calls it, is a derivative work of the wrapper, and is therefore also required to be under the GPL, and so on. This is classic "how do I make proprietary modifications to a GPL program?" nonsense. Anyone who distributes this stuff is guilty of contributory copyright infringement.
Correct -- and therefore NVidia does not distribute nv-kernel.o. They cause it to be compiled on the user's machine. Few users will distribute that file further, but if they do, they would be violating the GPL.
NVidia distributes source code (it need not be under the GPL) to the shim, and a binary module that only depends on the shim. The binary module is useless by itself and, in particular, independent of the kernel (in principle they could write a different shim for another OS, like FreeBSD, and the same binary module -- perhaps that's what they actually do, I don't know). They're free to distribute that. The licence of the source of the shim doesn't matter to them.
If Ubuntu (or someone else) does the same thing, only through a nicer package manager, they should be in the clear too.
Just because they distribute source, does not mean it is free software.
Indeed it isn't free software but you missed the point. Only the source is distributed: the compilation of the shim is done on the user's machine. (At least, I imagine that's how Ubuntu will do it.) This is not a clear violation of the GPL. If the user re-distributed the resulting binary module, that would be a violation.
This is not a new idea, it's how qmail (for example) is commonly distributed. DJB's licence for qmail forbids distributing binaries (unless they satisfy some stringent conditions) or modified source, but patches are allowed (according to DJB's interpretation of copyright law). So since qmail is useless today without a number of patches, distros do the patching and compilation on the user's machine, which with modern package management systems is pretty transparent.
The fact that I couldn't become a citizen and I can't speak the language stops me.
You can become a citizen (if you wait) and you can speak the language (if you learn). My aunt and her family (all Indians by birth) did. Mainly because at that time India didn't allow dual passports/nationalities -- but I believe both the Netherlands and the US do, so why not.
You install it under a chroot. You can find instructions for debian/ubuntu on the net. On my ubuntu dapper AMD64 box the chroot takes about 0.6 GB. If you have a 64-bit machine you can probably set aside that much disk space. I have firefox, acroread, opera, realplay, totem installed there (plus the required libraries). It works fine.
But during the other ten months, I am more muscular ( and probably a lot healthier ) and yet I am technically obese, according to the BMI.
They should do a study on jocks and IQ, too...
Jabber is clearly the superior standard on nearly every axis. But everyone you know is on AIM or Messenger.
Nobody I know is on AIM (I don't live in the US). Quite a few people I know are on Google Talk, which is basically Jabber. How did Google get people to actually use its messaging service? By integrating it with their email: you can see from your mail window in your web browser which contacts are online, and message them directly from the browser. Clever.
This makes me wonder why they didn't put a link to info about his arrest in the article.
The link does contain info, as well as further links.
it is just sloppy of the editors to NOT include a link
Slashdot is sloppy; if you want examples you can find plenty. But, on this occasion, the sloppiness is on the reader's part.
I found info here, here, and here
You could have found more and better info by just typing "reiser" into Google News.
You don't need Firefox to do your dishes or impress women, you just need to stop using emacs. Vim can do your dishes, and make your woman smile for a week (among other wondrous things).
You don't have very many daily visits (about 122 a day, of which 37 are firefox). Could a big chunk of that 37 be your own website maintainers? Or are those numbers for unique IP addresses?
Microsoft wanted a more reliable machine, improved memory management, a better filesystem, etc... Instead of throwing resources at doing these things from scratch, why didn't they just
From every point of view it seems to make more sense. They spend less money, get a more reliable product that can run very nicely on existing hardware, get some good press for a change, and benefit from the work of unpaid open-source programmers all over the world. But it isn't their way.
And in the rest of the world. Here in Chennai (India), burglaries are reported in the newspaper.
and that's an appropriate word for Slashdot.
nobody feels obliged to read the original article
That includes you, it seems.
The article, if true, suggests that he's built that base on stealing the work of others.
It suggests no such thing. It makes it clear that Yau has accomplished enough to be regarded as one of the greats. (He won the Fields medal 24 years ago, for $deity's sake.) What it suggests is that he is not satisfied with those accomplishments and wants a share of the limelight in other work too.
...before using Asterix imagery: those people are pretty litigious.
The point is, what joke were you making that your parent hadn't already made?
The problem is that I can't trust Slashdotters in general to have a sense of humor.
Nor could your parent, apparently...
1. Take a perfectly good joke.
2. Emphasise it, highlight it, add a laugh track.
3. Et voila! American humor.
Uh, because they contain harmful and dangerous pesticides?
Now explain why the democratic, free-market US not only bans marijuana (which has never been shown to be harmful or addictive), but even bans forms of hemp that do not contain the hallucinogenic substance (THC) in marijuana.
So what percentage of the general population are goats? And is it a good idea for a profit-minded corporation to piss off said percentage of customer base?
You clearly and unambiguously referred to Hewlett and Packard as Sun's founders. The headline was not "confusing", it was WRONG.
And the summary is still WRONG. It says "a life-size cardboard cut of the HP rival's founders," and these people weren't founders of any HP rival (as far as I know), they were the founders of HP, which stands for (surprise) Hewlett-Packard.
Learn to, first, recognise your mistakes, second, admit them.
Americans really don't grok decimal, even the decimal currency which some well-meaning historical figure bequeathed them. I was floored when I first saw petrol ("gas") prices written like $2.83 9/10. What on earth does that mean? Well, apparently it just means $2.839, but if you write it like that most Americans won't understand it, while they do mysteriously understand the first form.
Is it illegal? Dick Cheney did it when his popularity was down, and got away with it.