I would guess that it's magnetic north that he is sensing, if he's sensing it magnetically!
In practice, declination isn't the issue you might expect it to be {Zennor to Lowestoft is only 7.5 degrees}, as long as you keep correcting yourself by going to the actual landmark you were fixing on {and not the point a few metres away that the compass sent you to} before fixing on a new landmark. Ordnance Survey maps {remember them?} actually used to align with magnetic north once, but it's moved since then.
Either you are privy to the secrets in it, or you don't rightfully own it. That is fundamental to the definition of property. They can't have it both ways. By selling it to you, they have agreed to let you "in" on the secrets. If they didn't want people to have the right to know what is inside their graphics cards, they shouldn't sell them.
The problems with graphics card drivers are not unique to Mandriva.
Graphics card manufacturers are blatantly flouting the law which says that a person is privy to every secret embodied in every article they rightfully own, by simple virtue of the fact of ownership, even if that article be a graphics card and the secret be how to program it. Both ATI and nVidia licence their drivers on egregious and legally unenforcible terms which ride roughshod over the user's common law property rights. They get away with this by having the upper hand to begin with.
Neither ATI nor nVidia are willing to comply with the law by releasing the necessary details that would allow the creation of Free drivers for their cards, for fear that this might help their competitors; despite each spending vast amounts of their R&D budget on deconstructing competitors' products {most of the rest is spent bribing games publishers to make their games run slower on certain setups; ATI will pay good money to any software company to write a game which runs half a frame per century slower on an nVidia display, and vice versa}.
The GPL quite sensibly forbids the linking of non-Free code with the Linux kernel. Everyone must be free to work on the Linux kernel and everything which links to it, otherwise the authors of the non-Free parts would have an unfair advantage over tha authors of the Free parts.
As a half-arsed compromise gesture, ATI and nVidia have created free wrappers that interface between the Linux kernel and the Windows driver for the graphics card. You have to compile the wrapper against the kernel, and the resulting binary is considered to be a derivative work of the kernel source. Now the kernel is under GPL, which does not permit such a derivative work to be made. The only thing allowing it is the Fair Use / Fair Dealing provision of Copyright law. Basically, it's OK to make a copy or derived work if it's an unavoidable, necessary step in doing something else you already have permission to do: for example, the copy of part of an audio CD that exists in the buffer memory of a portable CD player with anti-shock is fair use, since otherwise you would not be allowed to listen to your own CD. The derivative work you make based on Linux is fair use, to the extent that it is being used with a graphics card that you rightfully own. However, distributing it doesn't qualify as fair use, because that isn't an unavoidable step: the recipient could obtain all the parts and build it themself.
This means that you can't distribute a Linux kernel compiled with the ATI or nVidia drivers. You probably could distribute a kernel with one or the other wrapper and no binary driver module, relying on the user to download it. However, this would crash straight away due to the absence of the important bit. And ATI and nVidia have also seen to it that you can't expect for a kernel compiled with more than one option {Free VESA driver, nVidia non-Free driver, ATI non-Free driver} to work.
You may not care a whit for software ideals, but do you care about not getting shafted up the arse by hardware vendors' illegal practices?
Oh, come on, we know this. Microsoft would rather you were using pirated Windows than Linux. In the first case, there's just a chance that they might find a way to extort the money out of you to keep on using it rather than switch to a Free alternative. In the second case, there's practically sod-all way of getting you to switch: why would anyone learn a new way of working, be restricted as to what they can do with it and pay money for the whole privilege?
Sooner or later there's going to be a huge scandal that would have been prevented by the use of Open Source software. Well, there already have been several; but the difference is that this time, just like in every cheesey 1970s disaster movie, somebody will be in a position to say "I Told You So", and somebody else will listen.
Whatever the dimensions you use, sqrt(2) : 1 is the perfect ratio for a piece of paper.
The most important property of a range of paper sizes, apart from all your papers actually coming out the size you specify, is that every sheet of paper must have the same ratio of long side : short side. Otherwise you would get odd effects when you tried to do reductions and enlargements.
Say your "normal" size paper is 216 x 279mm. Now 432 x 558 is four times the size. But suppose you want an intermediate size? The Geometric Mean is 305 x 395, but you can't make two pieces that size out of a single sheet 432 x 558. If you made your paper 279mm. wide so as to be sure of getting 2 pieces, then it would have to be 360mm. tall. And you can only cut one piece 216 x 279 out of that.
Why the strange figures? Well, A4 is half the size of A3, which is half the size of A2, which is half the size of A1, which is half the size of A0. And A0 paper measures exactly 1m2 (or 1 000 000 mm2). Unfortunately, Nature didn't make everything integers! No matter what base you count in (and you can have fractions in other bases beside 10 [actually, all bases are "base 10" in the base in which you're counting; I meant of course base ten]: for instance, 0x0.8 is a half in hex), sqrt(2) cannot be expressed exactly as one integer divided by another, and sqrt(sqrt(2)) hasn't a prayer. The actual dimensions of a sheet of A0 paper (which measures one square metre, and has its sides in the ratio sqrt(2) : 1) are (2 ** 0.25) by (2 ** -0.25)m. == 1.189 by 0.841m.
"PC LOAD LETTER" is an error message found on Haitch-Pee laserjets. It means "load US Letter paper in paper cassette". Americans absolutely despise having to do anything the same way as the rest of the world, so they have their own special paper size: 216 by 279. Everybody else in every country in the entire world is using ( BS | DIN | EN | JIS | ISO ) A4, 210 by 297. The ratio long side : short side is sqrt(2) : 1, which means that there is no wastage when cutting down from one size to the next: cut it in half (with a very, very sharp blade so as to leave no swarf) and the ratio is now 1 : sqrt(2) / 2, which is the same. And of course it's important that the long : short ratio be the same throughout the range of paper sizes, for the sake of enlargement and reduction.
Anyway, what the message actually means is that some luser has left their PC set up to print on US Letter paper. Although Microsoft Windows has a paper size setting somewhere in its control panel, Microsoft Office has its own, completely independent paper size setting. And due to the fact that Microsoft are an American company, even although the US market accounts for a fraction of worldwide sales, and even although Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows CDs are specially tailored to the destination country, even despite all the overwhelming reasons why the default should logically be A4, Microsoft persist in defaulting to US letter anyway.
On the upside, it does give you an excuse to get the cluebat out......
Chances are, just disconnecting one of the terminals from the heater element and shorting out the sensor will work. The most common type of temperature sensor is an NTC thermistor (resistance decreases as temperature increases). There's very unlikely to be any direct monitoring of the heater element integrity: the heater almost certainly is running straight from the mains without isolation. Measuring its temperature with a thermistor is a good enough way to check working / faulty status, and implicitly gives isolation.
Yeah, and I invented real self destructing message tapes when I was about 8 years old. Took a few goes to get the prototype together, but they worked: one play was all you got. However, <adder="black">there was a tiny flaw in this plan</adder>.
If you can't see the flaw, apply for a job with the RIAA / MPAA now.
You really haven't a clue about forestry management, have you?
Paper is made from fast-growing softwood. This is grown on privately-owned land. Since growing land that isn't actually growing anything is not making any money for its owner, there is an automatic financial incentive to replant every tree you cut down to make paper, accounting for "hit rate" (since not every sapling will grow into a good tree). Trees for paper are a cash crop. If you don't object to farmers pulling up carrots, you've no right to object to the way softwood is produced.
This is a (rare) instance of capitalism working well, because the monetary value (in pounds, shillings and pence) of the commodity being produced closely tracks the non-monetary value.
You see? That's why open-vented lead-acid batteries are still the best battery technology bar none. They're damn nigh indestructible in normal use. A lead-acid battery will burn out a short-circuit with almost no noticeable voltage drop. Try to overcharge them, and they gas a bit..... but no worries, you can just top them up with air conditioner runoff. In an emergency, if they're not holding a charge as well as they used to, you can actually physically scrape the shite off the plates with a knife. And what with containing so much lead, they're (1) hard to steal and (2) well worth recycling.
Last time I looked, the GNOME foot was bare. Bare feet do not smell. Feet kept in shoes smell, because perspiration cannot evaporate, and bacteria thrive in the warm, moist environment.
This is hardly news. When you're testing something, you have to use whatever's to hand. There are already existing associations between Dinsey, Pixar and Apple, so it was most probably a formality to get the relevant permission to use Disney material for the testing phase. Apple wouldn't dare risk embarrassment by offering movies for download without the blessing of the copyright holders.
By the time the movie store is up and running for real, I would expect at least some of the major studios to be wanting to get on board. The Apple brand is just too strong to ignore.
You don't need an emulator. Just grab a bootdisk such as Slax or Knoppix. Boot from this. Although you probably won't find Kalzium on the CD, you will still be able to install it from the net. Slax accepts Slackware packages and Knoppix accepts Debian packages.
You might even find you quite like Linux, and decide to install it permanently.....
Other languages do have puns, they just don't translate well because words that sound similar but mean completely different things in one language don't necessarily sound anything like each other in another language. For instance.....
Q. Why is a watch called a watch?
A. Because it shows you the time!
is not funny at all in English; but if you translate it into French, print it on a T-shirt, and wander round Paris, you'll have French people collapsing in paroxysms of laughter. Even the gendarmes won't be able to get near enough to arrest you. You could rob several banks in the time it takes for the authorities to send a non-French-speaker after you.
It's very pretty. Nice use of images..... especially the Noble gases. Even pictures of the scientists after which some of the *cough* harder-to-obtain elements were named! I'm going to order one of the 68x134 ones if they can be shipped to the UK.
If you like this, you'll probably also like Kalzium.
There exists prior art in the form of almost any "teach yourself French" book. Somewhere towards the back, you will find a table of verbs, conjugated in several tenses. In French, the commonly-used ones are: present (I give), imperfect (I used to give / I gave), future (I shall give), conditional (I should give) and subjunctive (for me to give); plus the past (given) and present (giving) participles. Sometimes there will be an indication of whether the imperative (do that!) is taken from the present or the subjunctive, but the latter is rare enough that you're more likely to meet them all when the verbs are introduced. The future, conditional and imperfect all have regular endings, the "gotcha" being the stems. Some verbs are simply given a reference to another which conjugates identically.
Now, how improbable is it that some student with an interest in foreign languages, in some programming class somewhere when the topic got around to things like regular expressions and associative arrays, wrote for an assignment a little program that stored endings in a big associative array, indexed by infinitive, tense and person; and then used a regular expression match on an input verb to deliver a conjugation?
First point, the GPL does not forbid anything. It is a licence -- it only gives you permission to do something you would not ordinarily be allowed to do.
The Law of the Land gives you only very limited permission to copy a program (see "fair use" or "fair dealing"), and would ordinarily take a dim view of you distributing copies. The GPL gives you permission above and beyond your fair dealing rights (which are determined by the courts) to do certain acts dependent on certain conditions. One of the permissions granted by the GPL is to make and distribute copies, gratis or for money, as long as you ensure that everyone who receives a copy of a program from you receives the same permissions as you (hence the requirement at least to mention the GPL), and can exercise them meaningfully {hence the requirement to make source code available).
The nVidia drivers are supplied as a closed-source binary blob, which is distributed under a restrictive licence; and a GPL wrapper which implements an interface between the kernel and the blob. The addresses of things in the Linux kernel are subject to change from one version to the next; but you can find out what is where from files that are generated during the compilation of the kernel. The addresses of things in the nVidia binary blob are also subject to change from one version to the next; but only nVidia know what is where. So nVidia provide the source code for a wrapper that interfaces between the kernel {where addresses of functions can be determined from system files} and the binary driver {where addresses of functions are hard-coded into the wrapper}. nVidia can legally do this because they own the copyright on both bits: the Law of the Land does not prevent a copyright holder from making derivative works. The GPL grants you permission to enjoy, study, share and adapt the wrapper. In order for it actually to be any use, however, you need the binary blob (which, being pure x86 machine code and talking only to graphics hardware, does not depend on a particular OS). The combination of binary blob and GPL wrapper constitute a derived work. You are right that the GPL does not grant you permission to make such a derived work. However, that's irrelevant. The Law of the Land grants you permission to make this derived work, because that is a necessary step in making use of something you legally own -- and therefore constitutes fair dealing.
Once you have combined code covered by two different licences, you are bound by both licences. The GPL demands that you at least offer to distribute source code if you distribute anything, whereas the nVidia licence does not grant you access to the source code and would not let you distrubute it even if you had it. So, unless you live in some jurisdiction where the Law of the Land grants you access to the source code, the only way to satisfy both the GPL and nVidia licences is not to distribute the code produced by combining the GPL wrapper with the closed-source blob.
For what it's worth, I think nVidia are scumsuckers and I hope their binary blobs are reverse-engineered. But the law seems to be on their side.
Actually the idea was never to reward people just for creating new stuff, but for sharing the stuff they crated with the world. And it all went to pot when people were allowed (1) to set their own licencing fee and (2) to charge different licencing fees to different entities, or bar some entities altogether.
Anyway, pure mathematics is not created. It just exists. Zero existed before arabic numerals, even if there wasn't a way to write it; the same as fractions existed before there was a convenient way to write them, and irrational numbers exist even if they can't be represented exactly. Complex numbers existed before anyone had the idea for j.
Have a look at this kid's book for an easy-to-understand explanation of patent misuse.
Does the USA have the concept of a "vexatious litigant" or "enemy of the Courts" -- basically, someone who has been barred from initiating legal proceedings after bringing one case without merit too many? If so, it might be worth trying to have the RIAA branded vexatious litigants, enemies of the Courts or whatever.
I do think that if the authorities were a bit freer with handing out the "vexatious litigant" label, it would kill off a lot of frivolous lawsuits before they were begun.
European law says very clearly: Mathematics is not patentable. And MP3 decoding is pure mathematics -- an autistic kid probably could do the calculations in his* head fast enough to imagine the sounds in real time. Anyone is allowed to do the calculations done by the patented device without paying anything to anyone. Any patents must cover a specific device -- one means to a given end, and not the end in itself. Sandisk's implementation is likely to differ so much from the reference implementation as not to constitute a breach of patent.
Sandisk should move for an annulment, since it's clear that the patents should never have been granted in the first place. And then every manufacturer who has ever paid the bogus licence fee should get together and sue the licencing authority.
*Not intending to be sexist, I just never heard of a girl diagnosed with autism.....
So, if I'm getting this right, a bunch of MP3 players (made in the far East where the relevant patents are in all probability null and void) are seized at a trade show in Germany (where the relevant patents are null and void: Germany is a member of the EU where mathematical operations are specifically excluded from patentability) are seized on the orders of an IP firm based in Italy (where the relevant patents are null and void: Italy is a member of the EU where maths is not patentable) on the grounds that they are in violation of patents?
The fact that the patents in question are null and void will hardly escape the attention of the courts. I don't know whether to expect some good arse-on-plate-handing action, or just a swift "Ting! Next, please!"
All the problems you describe still exist with a system where each side pays their own costs. {Of course, if each side claims their own costs from the other as part of the settlement, then you pretty much turn it into loser-pays anyway.} The richer party can grind the poorer party down just as effectively, just by delaying the proceedings and running up the other side's costs. That's where the other point comes in: no money changes hands till the final verdict -- after any appeal -- is delivered. This gives both sides the incentive against time-wasting {since you delay your own pay-day just as much as the other side's}.
A requirement to prove a party's means before the start of proceedings could be met by plaintiffs taking out insurance against losing the case. Insurers obviously will not back cases without some merit.
Any way of doing things seems to have disadvantages. It's precisely because no two cases are alike that some cases will break any negative feedback loop you try to set up. There needs to be some sort of mechanism for regulation, otherwise justice becomes reduced to a mere matter of pounds, shillings and pence. The courts exist to serve rich and poor alike, and must be seen to do so.
I guess this is just making the "unofficial" DVD-capable free CDRecord a bit more official. And I'd be surprised if Debian didn't patch xcdroast not to complain about cdrecord versions.
Schilling has sold out, pure and simple. CDRecord is a classic bait-and-switch scam. To release unFree software is an expression of nothing but contempt for users' freedoms. Fortunately, the GPL is doing its job, and someone else has done what Schilling was unprepared to do -- released a DVD-capable version of cdrecord which respects users' freedoms. That's a pretty loud raspberry.
ProDVD should be left dead in the water by this; it will obviously find its way into the next Ubuntu, and I can see the likes of Fedora, Mandriva and OpenSUSE adopting it in a heartbeat. I hope that happens. It will make a great cautionary tale.
Schilling became a traitor when he wrote his first piece of unFree software {a version of cdrecord which could handle DVDs}. Of course, an unofficial, DVD-ready fork was soon created..... and remained Free.
My absolute respect to the Debian guys for doing this.
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I would guess that it's magnetic north that he is sensing, if he's sensing it magnetically!
In practice, declination isn't the issue you might expect it to be {Zennor to Lowestoft is only 7.5 degrees}, as long as you keep correcting yourself by going to the actual landmark you were fixing on {and not the point a few metres away that the compass sent you to} before fixing on a new landmark. Ordnance Survey maps {remember them?} actually used to align with magnetic north once, but it's moved since then.
Either you are privy to the secrets in it, or you don't rightfully own it. That is fundamental to the definition of property. They can't have it both ways. By selling it to you, they have agreed to let you "in" on the secrets. If they didn't want people to have the right to know what is inside their graphics cards, they shouldn't sell them.
The problems with graphics card drivers are not unique to Mandriva.
Graphics card manufacturers are blatantly flouting the law which says that a person is privy to every secret embodied in every article they rightfully own, by simple virtue of the fact of ownership, even if that article be a graphics card and the secret be how to program it. Both ATI and nVidia licence their drivers on egregious and legally unenforcible terms which ride roughshod over the user's common law property rights. They get away with this by having the upper hand to begin with.
Neither ATI nor nVidia are willing to comply with the law by releasing the necessary details that would allow the creation of Free drivers for their cards, for fear that this might help their competitors; despite each spending vast amounts of their R&D budget on deconstructing competitors' products {most of the rest is spent bribing games publishers to make their games run slower on certain setups; ATI will pay good money to any software company to write a game which runs half a frame per century slower on an nVidia display, and vice versa}.
The GPL quite sensibly forbids the linking of non-Free code with the Linux kernel. Everyone must be free to work on the Linux kernel and everything which links to it, otherwise the authors of the non-Free parts would have an unfair advantage over tha authors of the Free parts.
As a half-arsed compromise gesture, ATI and nVidia have created free wrappers that interface between the Linux kernel and the Windows driver for the graphics card. You have to compile the wrapper against the kernel, and the resulting binary is considered to be a derivative work of the kernel source. Now the kernel is under GPL, which does not permit such a derivative work to be made. The only thing allowing it is the Fair Use / Fair Dealing provision of Copyright law. Basically, it's OK to make a copy or derived work if it's an unavoidable, necessary step in doing something else you already have permission to do: for example, the copy of part of an audio CD that exists in the buffer memory of a portable CD player with anti-shock is fair use, since otherwise you would not be allowed to listen to your own CD. The derivative work you make based on Linux is fair use, to the extent that it is being used with a graphics card that you rightfully own. However, distributing it doesn't qualify as fair use, because that isn't an unavoidable step: the recipient could obtain all the parts and build it themself.
This means that you can't distribute a Linux kernel compiled with the ATI or nVidia drivers. You probably could distribute a kernel with one or the other wrapper and no binary driver module, relying on the user to download it. However, this would crash straight away due to the absence of the important bit. And ATI and nVidia have also seen to it that you can't expect for a kernel compiled with more than one option {Free VESA driver, nVidia non-Free driver, ATI non-Free driver} to work.
You may not care a whit for software ideals, but do you care about not getting shafted up the arse by hardware vendors' illegal practices?
Oh, come on, we know this. Microsoft would rather you were using pirated Windows than Linux. In the first case, there's just a chance that they might find a way to extort the money out of you to keep on using it rather than switch to a Free alternative. In the second case, there's practically sod-all way of getting you to switch: why would anyone learn a new way of working, be restricted as to what they can do with it and pay money for the whole privilege?
Sooner or later there's going to be a huge scandal that would have been prevented by the use of Open Source software. Well, there already have been several; but the difference is that this time, just like in every cheesey 1970s disaster movie, somebody will be in a position to say "I Told You So", and somebody else will listen.
Whatever the dimensions you use, sqrt(2) : 1 is the perfect ratio for a piece of paper.
The most important property of a range of paper sizes, apart from all your papers actually coming out the size you specify, is that every sheet of paper must have the same ratio of long side : short side. Otherwise you would get odd effects when you tried to do reductions and enlargements.
Say your "normal" size paper is 216 x 279mm. Now 432 x 558 is four times the size. But suppose you want an intermediate size? The Geometric Mean is 305 x 395, but you can't make two pieces that size out of a single sheet 432 x 558. If you made your paper 279mm. wide so as to be sure of getting 2 pieces, then it would have to be 360mm. tall. And you can only cut one piece 216 x 279 out of that.
Why the strange figures? Well, A4 is half the size of A3, which is half the size of A2, which is half the size of A1, which is half the size of A0. And A0 paper measures exactly 1m2 (or 1 000 000 mm2). Unfortunately, Nature didn't make everything integers! No matter what base you count in (and you can have fractions in other bases beside 10 [actually, all bases are "base 10" in the base in which you're counting; I meant of course base ten]: for instance, 0x0.8 is a half in hex), sqrt(2) cannot be expressed exactly as one integer divided by another, and sqrt(sqrt(2)) hasn't a prayer. The actual dimensions of a sheet of A0 paper (which measures one square metre, and has its sides in the ratio sqrt(2) : 1) are (2 ** 0.25) by (2 ** -0.25)m. == 1.189 by 0.841m.
"PC LOAD LETTER" is an error message found on Haitch-Pee laserjets. It means "load US Letter paper in paper cassette". Americans absolutely despise having to do anything the same way as the rest of the world, so they have their own special paper size: 216 by 279. Everybody else in every country in the entire world is using ( BS | DIN | EN | JIS | ISO ) A4, 210 by 297. The ratio long side : short side is sqrt(2) : 1, which means that there is no wastage when cutting down from one size to the next: cut it in half (with a very, very sharp blade so as to leave no swarf) and the ratio is now 1 : sqrt(2) / 2, which is the same. And of course it's important that the long : short ratio be the same throughout the range of paper sizes, for the sake of enlargement and reduction.
......
Anyway, what the message actually means is that some luser has left their PC set up to print on US Letter paper. Although Microsoft Windows has a paper size setting somewhere in its control panel, Microsoft Office has its own, completely independent paper size setting. And due to the fact that Microsoft are an American company, even although the US market accounts for a fraction of worldwide sales, and even although Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows CDs are specially tailored to the destination country, even despite all the overwhelming reasons why the default should logically be A4, Microsoft persist in defaulting to US letter anyway.
On the upside, it does give you an excuse to get the cluebat out
Chances are, just disconnecting one of the terminals from the heater element and shorting out the sensor will work. The most common type of temperature sensor is an NTC thermistor (resistance decreases as temperature increases). There's very unlikely to be any direct monitoring of the heater element integrity: the heater almost certainly is running straight from the mains without isolation. Measuring its temperature with a thermistor is a good enough way to check working / faulty status, and implicitly gives isolation.
Yeah, and I invented real self destructing message tapes when I was about 8 years old. Took a few goes to get the prototype together, but they worked: one play was all you got. However, <adder="black">there was a tiny flaw in this plan</adder>.
If you can't see the flaw, apply for a job with the RIAA / MPAA now.
You really haven't a clue about forestry management, have you?
Paper is made from fast-growing softwood. This is grown on privately-owned land. Since growing land that isn't actually growing anything is not making any money for its owner, there is an automatic financial incentive to replant every tree you cut down to make paper, accounting for "hit rate" (since not every sapling will grow into a good tree). Trees for paper are a cash crop. If you don't object to farmers pulling up carrots, you've no right to object to the way softwood is produced.
This is a (rare) instance of capitalism working well, because the monetary value (in pounds, shillings and pence) of the commodity being produced closely tracks the non-monetary value.
You see? That's why open-vented lead-acid batteries are still the best battery technology bar none. They're damn nigh indestructible in normal use. A lead-acid battery will burn out a short-circuit with almost no noticeable voltage drop. Try to overcharge them, and they gas a bit ..... but no worries, you can just top them up with air conditioner runoff. In an emergency, if they're not holding a charge as well as they used to, you can actually physically scrape the shite off the plates with a knife. And what with containing so much lead, they're (1) hard to steal and (2) well worth recycling.
Last time I looked, the GNOME foot was bare. Bare feet do not smell. Feet kept in shoes smell, because perspiration cannot evaporate, and bacteria thrive in the warm, moist environment.
This is hardly news. When you're testing something, you have to use whatever's to hand. There are already existing associations between Dinsey, Pixar and Apple, so it was most probably a formality to get the relevant permission to use Disney material for the testing phase. Apple wouldn't dare risk embarrassment by offering movies for download without the blessing of the copyright holders.
By the time the movie store is up and running for real, I would expect at least some of the major studios to be wanting to get on board. The Apple brand is just too strong to ignore.
That's more than close enough for anyone who still weighs in pounds.
You don't need an emulator. Just grab a bootdisk such as Slax or Knoppix. Boot from this. Although you probably won't find Kalzium on the CD, you will still be able to install it from the net. Slax accepts Slackware packages and Knoppix accepts Debian packages.
.....
You might even find you quite like Linux, and decide to install it permanently
Other languages do have puns, they just don't translate well because words that sound similar but mean completely different things in one language don't necessarily sound anything like each other in another language. For instance .....
Q. Why is a watch called a watch?
A. Because it shows you the time!
is not funny at all in English; but if you translate it into French, print it on a T-shirt, and wander round Paris, you'll have French people collapsing in paroxysms of laughter. Even the gendarmes won't be able to get near enough to arrest you. You could rob several banks in the time it takes for the authorities to send a non-French-speaker after you.
It's very pretty. Nice use of images ..... especially the Noble gases. Even pictures of the scientists after which some of the *cough* harder-to-obtain elements were named! I'm going to order one of the 68x134 ones if they can be shipped to the UK.
If you like this, you'll probably also like Kalzium.
There exists prior art in the form of almost any "teach yourself French" book. Somewhere towards the back, you will find a table of verbs, conjugated in several tenses. In French, the commonly-used ones are: present (I give), imperfect (I used to give / I gave), future (I shall give), conditional (I should give) and subjunctive (for me to give); plus the past (given) and present (giving) participles. Sometimes there will be an indication of whether the imperative (do that!) is taken from the present or the subjunctive, but the latter is rare enough that you're more likely to meet them all when the verbs are introduced. The future, conditional and imperfect all have regular endings, the "gotcha" being the stems. Some verbs are simply given a reference to another which conjugates identically.
Now, how improbable is it that some student with an interest in foreign languages, in some programming class somewhere when the topic got around to things like regular expressions and associative arrays, wrote for an assignment a little program that stored endings in a big associative array, indexed by infinitive, tense and person; and then used a regular expression match on an input verb to deliver a conjugation?
First point, the GPL does not forbid anything. It is a licence -- it only gives you permission to do something you would not ordinarily be allowed to do.
The Law of the Land gives you only very limited permission to copy a program (see "fair use" or "fair dealing"), and would ordinarily take a dim view of you distributing copies. The GPL gives you permission above and beyond your fair dealing rights (which are determined by the courts) to do certain acts dependent on certain conditions. One of the permissions granted by the GPL is to make and distribute copies, gratis or for money, as long as you ensure that everyone who receives a copy of a program from you receives the same permissions as you (hence the requirement at least to mention the GPL), and can exercise them meaningfully {hence the requirement to make source code available).
The nVidia drivers are supplied as a closed-source binary blob, which is distributed under a restrictive licence; and a GPL wrapper which implements an interface between the kernel and the blob. The addresses of things in the Linux kernel are subject to change from one version to the next; but you can find out what is where from files that are generated during the compilation of the kernel. The addresses of things in the nVidia binary blob are also subject to change from one version to the next; but only nVidia know what is where. So nVidia provide the source code for a wrapper that interfaces between the kernel {where addresses of functions can be determined from system files} and the binary driver {where addresses of functions are hard-coded into the wrapper}. nVidia can legally do this because they own the copyright on both bits: the Law of the Land does not prevent a copyright holder from making derivative works. The GPL grants you permission to enjoy, study, share and adapt the wrapper. In order for it actually to be any use, however, you need the binary blob (which, being pure x86 machine code and talking only to graphics hardware, does not depend on a particular OS). The combination of binary blob and GPL wrapper constitute a derived work. You are right that the GPL does not grant you permission to make such a derived work. However, that's irrelevant. The Law of the Land grants you permission to make this derived work, because that is a necessary step in making use of something you legally own -- and therefore constitutes fair dealing.
Once you have combined code covered by two different licences, you are bound by both licences. The GPL demands that you at least offer to distribute source code if you distribute anything, whereas the nVidia licence does not grant you access to the source code and would not let you distrubute it even if you had it. So, unless you live in some jurisdiction where the Law of the Land grants you access to the source code, the only way to satisfy both the GPL and nVidia licences is not to distribute the code produced by combining the GPL wrapper with the closed-source blob.
For what it's worth, I think nVidia are scumsuckers and I hope their binary blobs are reverse-engineered. But the law seems to be on their side.
Actually the idea was never to reward people just for creating new stuff, but for sharing the stuff they crated with the world. And it all went to pot when people were allowed (1) to set their own licencing fee and (2) to charge different licencing fees to different entities, or bar some entities altogether.
Anyway, pure mathematics is not created. It just exists. Zero existed before arabic numerals, even if there wasn't a way to write it; the same as fractions existed before there was a convenient way to write them, and irrational numbers exist even if they can't be represented exactly. Complex numbers existed before anyone had the idea for j.
Have a look at this kid's book for an easy-to-understand explanation of patent misuse.
Does the USA have the concept of a "vexatious litigant" or "enemy of the Courts" -- basically, someone who has been barred from initiating legal proceedings after bringing one case without merit too many? If so, it might be worth trying to have the RIAA branded vexatious litigants, enemies of the Courts or whatever.
I do think that if the authorities were a bit freer with handing out the "vexatious litigant" label, it would kill off a lot of frivolous lawsuits before they were begun.
European law says very clearly: Mathematics is not patentable. And MP3 decoding is pure mathematics -- an autistic kid probably could do the calculations in his* head fast enough to imagine the sounds in real time. Anyone is allowed to do the calculations done by the patented device without paying anything to anyone. Any patents must cover a specific device -- one means to a given end, and not the end in itself. Sandisk's implementation is likely to differ so much from the reference implementation as not to constitute a breach of patent.
.....
Sandisk should move for an annulment, since it's clear that the patents should never have been granted in the first place. And then every manufacturer who has ever paid the bogus licence fee should get together and sue the licencing authority.
*Not intending to be sexist, I just never heard of a girl diagnosed with autism
So, if I'm getting this right, a bunch of MP3 players (made in the far East where the relevant patents are in all probability null and void) are seized at a trade show in Germany (where the relevant patents are null and void: Germany is a member of the EU where mathematical operations are specifically excluded from patentability) are seized on the orders of an IP firm based in Italy (where the relevant patents are null and void: Italy is a member of the EU where maths is not patentable) on the grounds that they are in violation of patents?
The fact that the patents in question are null and void will hardly escape the attention of the courts. I don't know whether to expect some good arse-on-plate-handing action, or just a swift "Ting! Next, please!"
All the problems you describe still exist with a system where each side pays their own costs. {Of course, if each side claims their own costs from the other as part of the settlement, then you pretty much turn it into loser-pays anyway.} The richer party can grind the poorer party down just as effectively, just by delaying the proceedings and running up the other side's costs. That's where the other point comes in: no money changes hands till the final verdict -- after any appeal -- is delivered. This gives both sides the incentive against time-wasting {since you delay your own pay-day just as much as the other side's}.
A requirement to prove a party's means before the start of proceedings could be met by plaintiffs taking out insurance against losing the case. Insurers obviously will not back cases without some merit.
Any way of doing things seems to have disadvantages. It's precisely because no two cases are alike that some cases will break any negative feedback loop you try to set up. There needs to be some sort of mechanism for regulation, otherwise justice becomes reduced to a mere matter of pounds, shillings and pence. The courts exist to serve rich and poor alike, and must be seen to do so.
I guess this is just making the "unofficial" DVD-capable free CDRecord a bit more official. And I'd be surprised if Debian didn't patch xcdroast not to complain about cdrecord versions.
Schilling has sold out, pure and simple. CDRecord is a classic bait-and-switch scam. To release unFree software is an expression of nothing but contempt for users' freedoms. Fortunately, the GPL is doing its job, and someone else has done what Schilling was unprepared to do -- released a DVD-capable version of cdrecord which respects users' freedoms. That's a pretty loud raspberry.
ProDVD should be left dead in the water by this; it will obviously find its way into the next Ubuntu, and I can see the likes of Fedora, Mandriva and OpenSUSE adopting it in a heartbeat. I hope that happens. It will make a great cautionary tale.
Schilling became a traitor when he wrote his first piece of unFree software {a version of cdrecord which could handle DVDs}. Of course, an unofficial, DVD-ready fork was soon created ..... and remained Free.
My absolute respect to the Debian guys for doing this.