Replace "hired" with "patented", and you're right. From here on out, any code derived from the musical works of Frankie Avalon or the Indigo Girls (derived= "has text in common". For instance, a vowel or a consonant somewhere) will be subject to a $699 licensing fee for each offending line. Also, code that is found to be written in a similar manner to any of these songs (by humans, for instance) will be subject to the licensing fee plus a raid by the RIAA.
What all of these press releases are leaving out is the fact that MS is going into the litigation business, and right this minute Bill himself is in negotations with Darl McBride to form a software-litigation firm known as MSCO. Also, Longhorn was originally code-named "big long horn right up yer you-know-what", but that was thrown out because it had too many words & was difficult for the top execs to remember.
Is there any undergraduate institution in the US, or the world for that matter, that allows it students to graduate with any sort of degree with a 1.7 GPA?
I was trapped on a runway at the Newark airport for 3 hours some years ago, during the Great Napster Scare when the RIAA was Going Out of Business Due to Piracy. Guy sitting next to me was a fairly interesting, decent type, so we chatted for a while to kill the time.
It turns out that he worked in the recording industry (the company he worked for dealt with mostly classical music, so he couldn't get me a meeting with Britney Spears' chest or anything) and after I told him I was a computer geek the conversation eventually turned to Napster. His opinion? Not worried at all, and his explanation for that has stuck with me through all of the news of the recent RIAA nonsense: "Piracy on a large scale, where all these doomsday scenarios the record companies complain about are actually true...that would be a very bad thing, but that isn't what's happening. Piracy on a smaller scale? That's called free marketing."
Does the level of (internet) piracy taking place today qualify as a small enough scale relative to the overall market that it's actually helping the industry? I don't know the answer to that, and it's probably a grey area that someone a lot more informed than I am would have to spend a lot of time figuring out. It's the fact that the RIAA refuses to even allow for the possibility of positive side effects that makes me doubt much of anything they say or do. Well, that and poking 12-year-old grandmas with sticks or whatever atrocity it is they're pulling this week.
Background: I grew up in the most dag-gummed thirdest world-ed part of the....well, Missouri.
While I was in the Midwest to attend a wedding this past August, I took an extra week to visit dear old mom and dad. The small midwestern town they live in still uses 8-inch, 5.25-inch, and 3.5-inch floppies, as well as zip disks and CDs for data, at least in city hall and the public library. I don't think it's ever occurred to anyone to media-shift, so they keep most if not all of their older machines around until they die, then fix them with as much duct tape as possible and kick 'em till they work again.
This is just a racist jab at "those amusing white fellows with the very red necks"
You: I think I'll go for a walk.
LR: You're not fooling anyone, you know...
You: I feel happy. I feel happy. *THUMP*
Your handle seems oddly appropriate to the topic, in a "that would be funny if so many PHBs didn't actually believe it" sort of way.
</tongue in cheek>
VB6 is dead. Start cranking out.NUT and C# on the double, drone!
Seriously, I think I remember reading that MS said that end-of-life for VB6 is coming up in 2006 or so, but can't find the article where I read that. If it exists, it's likely buried deep within MS's site.
The best advice I could give to someone who's been buried under a pile of MS technology for most of his/her education/career would be to go out and pick up some non-MS languages. That way, if Redmond (or its language of the month) disappears tomorrow, there's a chance that you'll still be employable, and you'll gain a perspective on programming that you might not otherwise have.
That's just my opinion, though, and I'm sure there are thousands of MS flamers who would say that once you've gone down that path, you're damaged goods anyway. Take this sort of rambling in either direction with a tumbler of salt.
How can you trust such a non-trustable source anywany?
As soon as you figure that out, give me a call. If I could understand why so many people continue placing their trust in individuals or institutions that seem to exist only to abuse that trust, I'd finally be able to understand why the political system in my country works as well as it does.
I can't remember where I read this, but part my brain wants to say that it was here on Slashdot:
Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get a team of cats to pull a sled through the snow.
When I first read that, I thought to myself "Wait, but wouldn't that mean that cats are dumber, because they...oh, yeah." I'd say that pretty much sums it up.
Disclaimer: I have owned both cats and dogs in my life, and have been very fond of all of them.
I'm in total agreement with the parent post, as I went through a program very much like the one it describes.
One of the professors who taught the bulk of the math-heavy CS classes I took repeated this mantra frequently: "If you can learn to program properly and do well in one language, you know everything you need to work with any other language, ever. Once you know the principles of good programming, the rest is just variations in vocabulary and syntax". Sure, there's more to it than that, but the basic idea behind that statement seems sound.
But if they're in front of you, how will you ever benefit from the G.W. Bush Reach-Around Initiative of 2006? It's coming, you know, and I'm sure you wouldn't want to miss that.
You do not need to do "due diligence" unless... you are attempting to publish your own patent.
If recent news here in the US is to be believed, all you need to apply for and be granted a patent here is one or more of the following: a complete lack of knowledge of that which you are patenting, a quasi-legal monopoly (in that no one seems too worried about actually punishing said monopoly, so it must be okay!), a list of good friends that includes the right sorts of politicians, or the words "...using a computer" or "...over the Internet" at the end of any inane BS that you submit to the patent office.
So, yeah, I'd argue the point of this "due diligence" nonsense that you refer to. Unless you're thinking of the way things are supposed to work...friggin' optimist.
I think you've got a typo there, right around "That considered, the future oppinion of Bush could get better or worse."
I believe that the correct spelling is "That considered, future opinions of Bush will be considerably worse than the stuff we're seeing on/. today"
I had a conversation with a friend at lunch during which I said "Look on the bright side...after this, GWB can never serve as US President again". Her reply: "...at least not until he amends the Constitution to fix that little loophole."
So what do we do if a left-winger is married to a right-winger? Move each half of the couple to adjacent cities along the border line? Do we get conjugal visits?
Actually, this might not be such a bad plan after all...
FYI, this has been done in some counties in Maryland and throughout Ireland as I understand it...I seem to remember hearing that the Irish smoking ban was repealed not long after it was introduced, but I can't back that up with anything I can find in print.
Of course, I don't think anyone bothered to actually walk into said pubs...it was more of a "sit in office, issue edict, threaten pubs with fines" sort of thing. Immediately after the ban took effect in parts of Maryland, I remember the Washington Post running an article of two that talked about how it was killing business in the bars in those areas.
For the record, I'm not a huge fan of this sort of meddling, by individuals or Big Brother. Unfortunately such entities rarely, if ever, consult me before implementing these brilliant plans.
DOUGAL: It's got a bit of a dent there, Ted. TED: I'll just tap it out with this. (hours pass) TED:No, it's just no good. We can't give that as a prize...
Or, perhaps more appropriate to this thread:
(TED wakes up, stretches, grabs the steering wheel) TED:That was close. Almost nodded off there for a second.
I think you misspelled a word there, earlier. Instead of "is not an industry", the actual spelling should be "should never have been allowed to become its own industry".
I've never has the problem you describe on either of my Win98 machines , but then I haven't been home yet to install RC1 on them either. I have, however, gotten the follwing message and some variants after closing some tabs after opening several at once:
"TypeError: arrViewNodes[j].contentWindow has no properties"
I can consistently reproduce it by opening a new tab that's blank & then closing after a few seconds or a few minutes without loading anything into it. This is on a WinXP Pro machine (no SP2, thank you very much) with an RC1 install that's less than an hour old.
1.1 Sounds a LOT more stable than 9.0 ...if you read from right to left?
(Yes, I know what you mean. I'm being an ass, but I agree with what you're trying to say. I expect to get several converts today who have been waiting for Firefox to "stabilize", actually. )
Seriously, I was thrilled this morning when I loaded up my browser, still pointing to the Firefox home page because I've never bothered to change the defaults. Noticed the 4.5 MB Windows download instead of 4.7 or whatever 0.93 was, clicked it just to see what had caused the change. Loved seeing "1.0" in the file name, though since it's labeled as a "preview release" that may still deter some people. Other than the slight changes to a couple of the icons and the "Subscribe to RSS feed" button in the bottom right-hand corner of the window, though, I'm not noticing a lot of differences.
I have to say, though, the RSS icon is much nicer than the "hey, download a newer version of the browser! It's the SAME FRIGGIN' VERSION you're running now" icon that hasn't gone away since I installed 0.91 or something.
Let's not forget that a lot of the anti-copyright sentiment around here magically disappears whenever we have a GPL violation article.
I don't know that it's exactly the same sort of copyright discussion, though. Yes, I will grant you that there are some zealots on either side either screaming "copyrights aRe teh suck! everything got to be free!" or "obey the RIAA or die", but the more reasonable arguments I've heard against the current state of copyrights are made by people who don't like the fact that the Mickey Mouse copyright, for intance, has been extended to the point that it will not expire until a week after the next ice age.
The GPL, to my knowledge, wasn't created until 1985 at the earliest (I couldn't find an exact date here, but it seemed to cover the topic fairly well for a short read) and therefore anything that's licensed under the GPL can be no more than 20 years old. Ergo, the people who have what I would consider legitimate issues with the current state of affairs in the copyright world won't have the same bone to pick with GPL'd material for a while yet. Also, zealots and non-zealots alike seem to enjoy pointing out that GPL is intended to grant rights to consumers that would not otherwise exist, whereas traditional copyrights mostly appear to do the opposite.
The mouth-foaming extremists, though, let's just agree to ignore them, k?
I have a small database project that I'm working on to track all of my books, movies, & CDs that will eventually make its way onto my home network and possibly one of my web pages ("search my stuff & vote for a movie to watch when we get together for pizza", or whatever). Rather than storing all of these records in MySQL tables, maybe I should change the application to extract tiny flat files from Zip archives for each book/film/CD, so my "/data" directory will be full of things like "TwoTowers.zip", "ReturnOfTheKing.zip", "SpiderMan.zip"....
It would be far too much of a headache if/when I started getting C&D spammed, but the end result would be oh so entertaining if there's any justice left in the universe.
Grandparent was right the first time...
on
Virtual Girlfriend
·
· Score: 1
No, it was definitely lassie fair. The grandparent poster is probably a Scotsman, hence female = lassie. "Fair" enters into the equation when he tells her he's heading to a strip club and not to wait up, which is fair enough in his mind. When he comes home at 3 AM and she kicks him in the crotch until he turns blue, the lassie thinks that's fair too.
Your post reminds me of one day long ago when my mother wanted to send a package to my weird uncle in Alaska. We went to a FedEx/UPS/whatever location (I was very young & didn't care which it was at the time) and my mother was told that she couldn't send the package without paying international rates and indicated which providence Alaska was in. "I think you mean province, but I don't want to send it to Canada, I'm sending it to Alaska." replies my mother. Brain child behind the counter proceeds to explain to us that Alaska is up there (points to color-coded map with all 50 states labeled as such, shows us AK) in Canadia, and in Canadia they have these things called Providences that are like our states, only not. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Finally, my mom loses it and finds a manager who is marginally more intelligent than the counter-drone, convinces everyone that Alaska has been a state for the past 20+ years, and we end up paying the shipping cost for "US Only (AK and HI may be extra)"
This, my friends, is why drugs are bad, mmmkay?
Also, if and when I ever travel internationally again, I'll tell anyone who asks that I'm Canadian. The only negative stereotypes you guys have to deal with involve hockey and saying "eh" far too often, whereas the stereotypical American apparently believes that Alaska is a "providence" in "Canadia". *sigh*
I have to agree with you there. I mean, really...there's always another autographed special-edition James T. Kirk toupee on eBay within an hour or so of me getting sniped out of the last one, so what's the problem?
Now, snipping, on the other hand, detracts from the value of said toupee...
Wait, I've said too much. Don't snipe my stuff, you commie bastards!
Slashdot Mirror
What all of these press releases are leaving out is the fact that MS is going into the litigation business, and right this minute Bill himself is in negotations with Darl McBride to form a software-litigation firm known as MSCO. Also, Longhorn was originally code-named "big long horn right up yer you-know-what", but that was thrown out because it had too many words & was difficult for the top execs to remember.
Is there any undergraduate institution in the US, or the world for that matter, that allows it students to graduate with any sort of degree with a 1.7 GPA?
*shudder*
This reminds me of a conversation I had once.
I was trapped on a runway at the Newark airport for 3 hours some years ago, during the Great Napster Scare when the RIAA was Going Out of Business Due to Piracy. Guy sitting next to me was a fairly interesting, decent type, so we chatted for a while to kill the time.
It turns out that he worked in the recording industry (the company he worked for dealt with mostly classical music, so he couldn't get me a meeting with Britney Spears' chest or anything) and after I told him I was a computer geek the conversation eventually turned to Napster. His opinion? Not worried at all, and his explanation for that has stuck with me through all of the news of the recent RIAA nonsense: "Piracy on a large scale, where all these doomsday scenarios the record companies complain about are actually true...that would be a very bad thing, but that isn't what's happening. Piracy on a smaller scale? That's called free marketing."
Does the level of (internet) piracy taking place today qualify as a small enough scale relative to the overall market that it's actually helping the industry? I don't know the answer to that, and it's probably a grey area that someone a lot more informed than I am would have to spend a lot of time figuring out. It's the fact that the RIAA refuses to even allow for the possibility of positive side effects that makes me doubt much of anything they say or do. Well, that and poking 12-year-old grandmas with sticks or whatever atrocity it is they're pulling this week.
Background: I grew up in the most dag-gummed thirdest world-ed part of the....well, Missouri.
While I was in the Midwest to attend a wedding this past August, I took an extra week to visit dear old mom and dad. The small midwestern town they live in still uses 8-inch, 5.25-inch, and 3.5-inch floppies, as well as zip disks and CDs for data, at least in city hall and the public library. I don't think it's ever occurred to anyone to media-shift, so they keep most if not all of their older machines around until they die, then fix them with as much duct tape as possible and kick 'em till they work again.
This is just a racist jab at "those amusing white fellows with the very red necks"
I've got some bad news for you.
You: I think I'll go for a walk.
LR: You're not fooling anyone, you know...
You: I feel happy. I feel happy.
*THUMP*
Your handle seems oddly appropriate to the topic, in a "that would be funny if so many PHBs didn't actually believe it" sort of way.
</tongue in cheek>
VB6 is dead. Start cranking out .NUT and C# on the double, drone!
Seriously, I think I remember reading that MS said that end-of-life for VB6 is coming up in 2006 or so, but can't find the article where I read that. If it exists, it's likely buried deep within MS's site.
The best advice I could give to someone who's been buried under a pile of MS technology for most of his/her education/career would be to go out and pick up some non-MS languages. That way, if Redmond (or its language of the month) disappears tomorrow, there's a chance that you'll still be employable, and you'll gain a perspective on programming that you might not otherwise have. That's just my opinion, though, and I'm sure there are thousands of MS flamers who would say that once you've gone down that path, you're damaged goods anyway. Take this sort of rambling in either direction with a tumbler of salt.
How can you trust such a non-trustable source anywany?
As soon as you figure that out, give me a call. If I could understand why so many people continue placing their trust in individuals or institutions that seem to exist only to abuse that trust, I'd finally be able to understand why the political system in my country works as well as it does.
I can't remember where I read this, but part my brain wants to say that it was here on Slashdot:
Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get a team of cats to pull a sled through the snow.
When I first read that, I thought to myself "Wait, but wouldn't that mean that cats are dumber, because they...oh, yeah." I'd say that pretty much sums it up.
Disclaimer: I have owned both cats and dogs in my life, and have been very fond of all of them.
I'm in total agreement with the parent post, as I went through a program very much like the one it describes.
One of the professors who taught the bulk of the math-heavy CS classes I took repeated this mantra frequently: "If you can learn to program properly and do well in one language, you know everything you need to work with any other language, ever. Once you know the principles of good programming, the rest is just variations in vocabulary and syntax". Sure, there's more to it than that, but the basic idea behind that statement seems sound.
I feel safer when you're in front of me
But if they're in front of you, how will you ever benefit from the G.W. Bush Reach-Around Initiative of 2006? It's coming, you know, and I'm sure you wouldn't want to miss that.
You do not need to do "due diligence" unless... you are attempting to publish your own patent.
If recent news here in the US is to be believed, all you need to apply for and be granted a patent here is one or more of the following: a complete lack of knowledge of that which you are patenting, a quasi-legal monopoly (in that no one seems too worried about actually punishing said monopoly, so it must be okay!), a list of good friends that includes the right sorts of politicians, or the words "...using a computer" or "...over the Internet" at the end of any inane BS that you submit to the patent office.
So, yeah, I'd argue the point of this "due diligence" nonsense that you refer to. Unless you're thinking of the way things are supposed to work...friggin' optimist.
</tongue in cheek>
3.5. Develop advanced tinfoil-production methods that reduce costs to 1% of the former foil-making budget, mark up the price of hats 137%
....
and then
8. Lobby Congress to pass legislation granting a legal tinfoil-hat monopoly to prevent piracy of copyrighted hat design
9. Sue cockroaches who buy their tinfoil from "bootleg" foil distributors in Hong Kong or over the internet
10. ???
I think you've got a typo there, right around "That considered, the future oppinion of Bush could get better or worse."
/. today"
I believe that the correct spelling is "That considered, future opinions of Bush will be considerably worse than the stuff we're seeing on
I had a conversation with a friend at lunch during which I said "Look on the bright side...after this, GWB can never serve as US President again". Her reply: "...at least not until he amends the Constitution to fix that little loophole."
So what do we do if a left-winger is married to a right-winger? Move each half of the couple to adjacent cities along the border line? Do we get conjugal visits?
Actually, this might not be such a bad plan after all...
FYI, this has been done in some counties in Maryland and throughout Ireland as I understand it...I seem to remember hearing that the Irish smoking ban was repealed not long after it was introduced, but I can't back that up with anything I can find in print.
Of course, I don't think anyone bothered to actually walk into said pubs...it was more of a "sit in office, issue edict, threaten pubs with fines" sort of thing. Immediately after the ban took effect in parts of Maryland, I remember the Washington Post running an article of two that talked about how it was killing business in the bars in those areas.
For the record, I'm not a huge fan of this sort of meddling, by individuals or Big Brother. Unfortunately such entities rarely, if ever, consult me before implementing these brilliant plans.
I can just see the recurring jokes now, destined to become as painful as the "Step 2:???" and "Beowulf cluster" jokes:
No Dougal, we're priests. [Fascists|RIAA Goons|Microsoft Goons|OSS Zealots] run around in all black and tell everyone else what to do. Priests...
DOUGAL: It's got a bit of a dent there, Ted.
TED: I'll just tap it out with this.
(hours pass)
TED:No, it's just no good. We can't give that as a prize...
Or, perhaps more appropriate to this thread:
(TED wakes up, stretches, grabs the steering wheel)
TED:That was close. Almost nodded off there for a second.
I think you misspelled a word there, earlier. Instead of "is not an industry", the actual spelling should be "should never have been allowed to become its own industry".
I've never has the problem you describe on either of my Win98 machines , but then I haven't been home yet to install RC1 on them either. I have, however, gotten the follwing message and some variants after closing some tabs after opening several at once:
"TypeError: arrViewNodes[j].contentWindow has no properties"
I can consistently reproduce it by opening a new tab that's blank & then closing after a few seconds or a few minutes without loading anything into it. This is on a WinXP Pro machine (no SP2, thank you very much) with an RC1 install that's less than an hour old.
1.1 Sounds a LOT more stable than 9.0
...if you read from right to left?
(Yes, I know what you mean. I'm being an ass, but I agree with what you're trying to say. I expect to get several converts today who have been waiting for Firefox to "stabilize", actually. )
Seriously, I was thrilled this morning when I loaded up my browser, still pointing to the Firefox home page because I've never bothered to change the defaults. Noticed the 4.5 MB Windows download instead of 4.7 or whatever 0.93 was, clicked it just to see what had caused the change. Loved seeing "1.0" in the file name, though since it's labeled as a "preview release" that may still deter some people. Other than the slight changes to a couple of the icons and the "Subscribe to RSS feed" button in the bottom right-hand corner of the window, though, I'm not noticing a lot of differences.
I have to say, though, the RSS icon is much nicer than the "hey, download a newer version of the browser! It's the SAME FRIGGIN' VERSION you're running now" icon that hasn't gone away since I installed 0.91 or something.
Let's not forget that a lot of the anti-copyright sentiment around here magically disappears whenever we have a GPL violation article.
I don't know that it's exactly the same sort of copyright discussion, though. Yes, I will grant you that there are some zealots on either side either screaming "copyrights aRe teh suck! everything got to be free!" or "obey the RIAA or die", but the more reasonable arguments I've heard against the current state of copyrights are made by people who don't like the fact that the Mickey Mouse copyright, for intance, has been extended to the point that it will not expire until a week after the next ice age.
The GPL, to my knowledge, wasn't created until 1985 at the earliest (I couldn't find an exact date here, but it seemed to cover the topic fairly well for a short read) and therefore anything that's licensed under the GPL can be no more than 20 years old. Ergo, the people who have what I would consider legitimate issues with the current state of affairs in the copyright world won't have the same bone to pick with GPL'd material for a while yet. Also, zealots and non-zealots alike seem to enjoy pointing out that GPL is intended to grant rights to consumers that would not otherwise exist, whereas traditional copyrights mostly appear to do the opposite.
The mouth-foaming extremists, though, let's just agree to ignore them, k?
I have a small database project that I'm working on to track all of my books, movies, & CDs that will eventually make its way onto my home network and possibly one of my web pages ("search my stuff & vote for a movie to watch when we get together for pizza", or whatever). Rather than storing all of these records in MySQL tables, maybe I should change the application to extract tiny flat files from Zip archives for each book/film/CD, so my "/data" directory will be full of things like "TwoTowers.zip", "ReturnOfTheKing.zip", "SpiderMan.zip"....
It would be far too much of a headache if/when I started getting C&D spammed, but the end result would be oh so entertaining if there's any justice left in the universe.
No, it was definitely lassie fair. The grandparent poster is probably a Scotsman, hence female = lassie. "Fair" enters into the equation when he tells her he's heading to a strip club and not to wait up, which is fair enough in his mind. When he comes home at 3 AM and she kicks him in the crotch until he turns blue, the lassie thinks that's fair too.
Your post reminds me of one day long ago when my mother wanted to send a package to my weird uncle in Alaska. We went to a FedEx/UPS/whatever location (I was very young & didn't care which it was at the time) and my mother was told that she couldn't send the package without paying international rates and indicated which providence Alaska was in. "I think you mean province, but I don't want to send it to Canada, I'm sending it to Alaska." replies my mother. Brain child behind the counter proceeds to explain to us that Alaska is up there (points to color-coded map with all 50 states labeled as such, shows us AK) in Canadia, and in Canadia they have these things called Providences that are like our states, only not. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Finally, my mom loses it and finds a manager who is marginally more intelligent than the counter-drone, convinces everyone that Alaska has been a state for the past 20+ years, and we end up paying the shipping cost for "US Only (AK and HI may be extra)"
This, my friends, is why drugs are bad, mmmkay?
Also, if and when I ever travel internationally again, I'll tell anyone who asks that I'm Canadian. The only negative stereotypes you guys have to deal with involve hockey and saying "eh" far too often, whereas the stereotypical American apparently believes that Alaska is a "providence" in "Canadia". *sigh*
I have to agree with you there. I mean, really...there's always another autographed special-edition James T. Kirk toupee on eBay within an hour or so of me getting sniped out of the last one, so what's the problem?
Now, snipping, on the other hand, detracts from the value of said toupee...
Wait, I've said too much. Don't snipe my stuff, you commie bastards!