According to today's Chicago Sun Times article, none of the text was released until today. The entire essay hasn't been released yet. The following article has a few quotes from the essay...
Sheesh, what they had was graphic but really not that disturbing. I wrote much more disturbing short stories when I was in middle/high school. Haven't shot anyone. Don't even own a gun.
Of course, that was before Columbine. I'd have probably been locked in a psych ward if I were 10 years younger.
You know, having a sample of the actual text might help in allowing readers to see what the hell is going on. Without that, it's hard to judge, but I'd say there probably isn't a chance in hell these charges stick at trial, and pretty much certainly not at appeal assuming it made it that far.
These are facts. Reported to the SEC. You can't call raw, concrete sales revenue/profit "astrotuf," especially when they provide the breakdown of numbers with coupons excluded. There isn't even any gray area left.
Facts are nothing without interpretation. The submission implies that a relatively modest increase in sales on the heels of the first new OS release in 6 years means that everything is fantastic over at Redmond. This indicates either presence of spin or lack of a brain. You pick. Coupled with the fact that the submitter is anonymous, I lean toward a PR campaign, which MS has been known to do in that fashion.
Just because you don't like Microsoft doesn't mean everything positive about them is astroturf. I'm hoping it's because you didn't bother reading the article,
I don't particularly care about MS, but lack of logic skills in reporting bugs me. The headline of the submission "Vista Sales Strong, Higher Than Expected" is simply not supported by the only externally available evidence ("Profits jumped 65% from the previous year") because Vista DIDN'T EXIST last year.
You want to do a real study, find out how Vista did vs. XP in terms of quarter-over-quarter earnings jump the first quarter after release. Let's not rely on intentionally-low earnings forecasts from MS that have room for built-in good news. Hell, maybe it would show that Vista is doing better. I really don't care. But let's have some intelligent, unbiased reporting and submissions that don't come from anonymous shills.
Sheesh. Basic logic skills are sorely lacking around here.
it figures that sales are higher than last year, XP is not new and is installed mostly everywhere,,,Vista aint, so if we compare growth and sales Vista will surpass sales for Xp since most of every windows users already own a copy of XP and dont need to purchase it every 6 month
Seriously. Between the general lack of logic present in the submission and the fact that it was submitted by an AC, methinks it *could* be astroturf.
it sounds like she did what scientists do routinely, so I can't understand why they're suddenly picking on her.
Typically, scientists seek permission before reproducing figures for publishable work. Short quoted snippets and of course general conclusions regarding the work don't require it.
The response from Wiley sort of hints to this: ask us for permission next time, which we will grant, and this sort of mix up can be averted. This is how things are done.
Encyclopedia != news. Once most articles are "done," the rate at which they're modified should be really low. After all, "new information" about a 500-year-old event doesn't come up very often...
No, but new information about fairly recent events - where wiki excels - does come up often. Really, why do mainstream encyclopedias have to focus on almost primarily out-of-date events? The answer is not "because that's a good way of doing things," the answer is "because otherwise the lengthy editing/publishing cycles would result in an out-of-date encyclopedia."
Having encyclopedia-quality synopses of recent events (ie, events that aren't "done") is fanstastic, and something that did not exist much before wiki.
Gee, thanks. What about us jack-of-all-trade schmoes who only use the basics and aren't running company wide databases? The amount of data I use the database for is actually quite small, relatively speaking. I run (among all my other jobs) our internal webserver, which means I need to write all the code, including the presentation part, and administer the database.
Sorry, we can't all be gurus, but I still need to back up my tables every so often.
Then you don't need to schedule the backup to dynamically determine what databases exist and when to back them up, and you can run a one-line backup script from a mysql cheat sheet. Couldn't possibly get less "guru" than that.
I'd assume the point was implicit, but I'll make it explicit - if your application needs to do powerful things for which the admin tools are insufficient, then your databases should have a trained IT person in charge of them, and that IT person should know what he's doing. The inability to write a script to determine what databases exist and then back them up would indicate that said IT person doesn't know what he's doing.
Ten years ago I wouldn't believe I would ever ask such a question but I have been asking it recently as my retired parents are looking to buy a computer for the web, writing letters and emails. I've told them specifically "DO NOT BUY VISTA" (why on earth would anyone want that ugly memory-hog?), so I just can't think of a single reason why they need even one of the medium-spec machines.
People have been asking this question since there have been PCs. The N-1th (and usually the N-2th) generation of PCs always handles mundane applications fine. This was true 10 years ago too.
The only real difference between now and 10 years ago has more to do with the fact that Win2K was so much better than 98, and nearly as good as XP, that effectively any computer that can run Win2K is modern enough for home use. In fact, I still have a mothballed vintage 2001 computer laying around running Win2K and office 2K quite snappily, and there isn't a damned office-related task it can't do just fine. So pretty much any machine that could have been considered state of the art in 1999 is more than enough to do the things most people need to do.
For a while at least, new generations of computers saw new advances in the types of stuff that was available for home use. Word processors, better graphics, web browsing, etc. But for home use, we're doing pretty much the same crap we were 10 years ago. The only reason not to use a machine from 1997 is because it would be Win98, and a lot of security software no longer supports it.
I wouldn't be so sure: the mysql administrator is not always able to restore a backup correctly. you are well advised to restore backups through the command line. it is also impossible (at least last time I checked) to automatically include all databases in a scheduled backup. You can only select the databases that are present at the time you schedule the backup.
I'd echo the "command line" solution - any admin who couldn't whip up a script in 10 minutes to backup all databases that exist when the script is *run* isn't worth much.
I use FF exclusively on both the Mac and Windows, and I think the Mac version works *better* than on Windows...the Mac version doesn't get sluggish after opening and closing a lot of tabs, doesn't gobble up half a gig of ram, and I have never had it just up and quit on me like it does on Windows.
Interesting. It does on mine (G4 PB 1.25 GHz). Lots of RAM gobbling, lots of spinning beachball, lots of intermittent crashing. Of course, Safari does the same for me, so I use the one that has screwed me less recently.
This really has the potential for providing a third way (versus semiconductor and photochemical systems) for converting light into electricity (for power or signals). Light is just extremely high frequency radio waves. With conductive nanotubes, one could create dipole antenna arrays for submicron wavelengths.
Not really - this is still just a doped semiconductor system, jsut a different architecture (nanowire vs. crystalline). Really, they're not focussing on the problem of light capture - they're focussing on the problem of charge carrier separation, which is a problem inherent to all schemes of photoelectric generation. The usual way is to operate the cells at extremely high V bias, which tends to rip the holes and electrons apart, but that's not always optimal. These guys are simply trying to figure out a good way of getting the carriers apart once they're created by whatever means.
They likely mean it has (or rather, would have) the same structure as the fictional kryptonite (based on nomenclature). Similar compounds usually share some characteristics such as reactivity (e.g. all alkali metals react with water in a similar fashion but with differeing severity), melting point, etc.
That assumption does not typically hold for complicated compounds with so many elements. For one, there are frequently many different possible crystal structures for the same molecule which exist under different conditions, which may have significantly different structures and properties. Additionally, there are often different molecular structures allowed for different formulae (called isomers), which often have drastically different properties. Additionally, the fictional and real versions differ in that the fictional contained fluorine, a very chemically active element that tends to drastically alter the properties of anything with which it bonds for a variety of interesting reasons.
So ultimately, it would be impossible to suggest that they would share the same properties based on similar but not identical chemical formulae, and that might not hold even if they were identical. As such, the press release is nothing more than some jackass wanting his 15 minutes.
it's bad enough when someone does a first post to goatse.cx, why the heck is this making news? internet shock sites should not be posted on popular forums, it's stupid, why do we get a news article about shock sites
Methinks thou doth protest too much. That's really your ass in the picture, isn't it?
i always thought the/. community of moderators were a little more mature.
For some curious reason, Americans seem to mention only the dictators who were inconvenient to their government. Just for sake of completeness, what about Trujillo, Suharto, Pinochet, Videla, the various South Vietnamese rulers, the military juntas of El Salvador and Guatemala, the South African apartheid regime, Batista, the Brazilian dictatorships, Musharraf, the Shah of Persia, Park, various dictators in Thailand, the house of Saud, Papadopoulos, and countless others in Latin America and Africa that I cannot possibly recall them all?
Not fair in my case, I was simply naming the obvious ones that people would recognize. If your point held, I wouldn't have named Noriega, as that was a serious black eye for us since we propped the asshole up for years. You're completely right about Trujillo too. For what it's worth, however, some of the ones you mentioned are assholes, not tyrranical dictators - there's a difference. I did completely miss on Musharraf, however, not sure why I brain cramped on that one. Good call.
I think the major issue is that neither you nor I can name them all. Which illustrates my original point.
And I thought that I was in a rational century without totalitarian governments that have the capabilities to do things like this.
That was naive. I'll assume you don't mean 2000-2007, as that's not much of a century. I'll also assume you're restricting yourself to the last 50 years, getting around Hitler. Of course then you still have Stalin, so that pushes you into the 60s. Then you get Pol Pot. Idi Amin. The ayatollah. Sadaam. Milosevic. Etc.
Even now, you've got Mugabe, Qadaffi, Chavez, Castro, Putin (that's no democracy, friends), Kim Jong Il, etc.
It's not necessarily irrational to want to be a tyrant. Possibly psychotic, but not irrational. The only question is whether you can pull it off.
How many people, aside from the slashdot crowd, actually use POP3/SMTP clients anymore (at home, not work)? Isn't some ridiculous amount like 90% using gmail/hotmail/yahoo mail/aol mail/etc?
I'd say only college kids and people who either pay for good indie ISPs (or run their own server) have the luxury of using actual non-http email services. For what it's worth, for most of the major online email providers, there's a service to scrape from the html interface - I used to use YoSucker back in the day when I used Yahoo? mail.
... every step along the way, they tell you you don't need it and you ought to push the missing logic to the next tier, until they get it, if they get it, then they're so great.
Sounds like they're violating a patent for "Method and Implementation of Field-Based Reality Distortion" held by Apple, Inc.
It was basically a manual DNS attack. With so many waiting until the last minute, what do people expect? File at least a day before the deadline. What difference does a day's worth of interest make on the average IRS tax bill? And if people are so concerned about a day's worth of interest, print the damn return and mail it with a check. That way you get a few more days of interest.
All true, but the fact that people wait until the deadline is not news. If you're going to get into the online tax-prep business, you'd better have a stout server. This kind of failure can kill a business.
I can't relate to the opposite sex very well. I haven't had any real romantic relationship with a female and I'm 25 now. I don't feel comfortable approaching them, and I can't "strike up a conversation" as seems to be so easy for everyone else. What should I do?
You're not a double amputee are you? Do I have to draw you a picture?
Clearly you missed the point that criminals, by definition, do not obey the laws. There is some logic to that whole "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" motto. It's a truism. Gun laws shift the balance of power in favor of those who don't give a shit about the law.
That relies on 2 things: 1) that there is a distinction between good guys and bad guys, and 2) that good guys are good shots. For the first, many (to that point) honest citizens commit "heat of the moment" crimes, which would certainly be made worse with the presence of guns. The second creates problems when well meaning laypeople start playing hero and injure bystanders.
What you're trying to convince people is that a device, whose sole purpose is to maim and kill, should be allowed to be carried in public by anyone, without demonstrating 1) basic competency or 2) psychological dependability. Forget that.
I'm not one of the crazies on either side, but if we have to have licenses for cars, we need licenses for guns. And I'm not interested in the BS slippery slope rhetoric. I'm OK with highly trained civillians carrying guns in public. I'm OK with idiot yokels having guns locked up at home that they use for hunting or target practice. I'm not OK with idiot yokels carrying guns in public. It's not safe.
If you're in favor of licensing, background investigations, testing, and registration, then I'm OK with concealed permit licensing. Until then, no thanks.
He got away with it *both* times because the law emasculates the citizen from carrying a weapon at all times. If there were no restrictions on concealed carry, more people would carry. If V. Tech (like may schools) didn't ban firearms on its grounds, it's probable that some people in either group would have been armed and could have defended themselves.
Christ, can't you shut up with this shit for a day? If morons carried guns everywhere, we'd have many more than 31 killed in spontaneous acts of stupidity every day. There are people who I would generally trust to be around while they carry weapons, but I would not extend that trust of judgement to more than about 5% of the general population. Most of the rest are too damned stupid or impulsive.
In the absence of meaningful regulation of who gets guns - which people like you have fought vehemently against - sane people like me simply don't trust being around any number of idiots with guns. If you want more of society to accept the wisdom of having armed citizens around, you'll have to convince us that there's some method of keeping them in the right hands - which clearly did NOT happen today.
I think you may have missed the point of my post. The idea that the lawyer said I could apply the GPL to it implies that I was legally the author, which means that I could also have commercialized it, and the school would have little recourse (IANAL though).
I don't think they would agree with those implications. Circumstances would depend though - did you write the software as part of your role as an employee? Were you paid to do it? If not - if you did it in your free time - then it's absolutely yours, and you effectively just gave them a free license. But that's a different story than the original thread, which was the notion that student employees can routinely keep the rights to things that they do in their capacity as institutional employees, which they generally can't.
The question hinges on this: 1) did they pay you to do the work? and 2) did you use their resources to do it (computers they probably don't care). If the answer to either is 'yes', you probably don't own it. I'm a scientist, and I definitely couldn't patent my work I accomplished as a grad student on my own and keep the rights. Where I was, I'm pretty sure that applied to software too.
Note in the GPL discussion, you are definitely the author, but to GPL it you have to also have the rights to it. This could be because they have no claim (you did it outside your role with the school), or because they give up their claim.
When I was an undergrad, I wrote an app using school-owned computers for the internal use of the campus radio station. I then wanted to GPL it, so I called the university's legal office. The lawyer I spoke to seemed to be confused about why I was even calling her, because of course I'm allowed to do what I want with it. Probably things are different there for grad students though.
I don't think they much care about using their copy of Visual Studio (or gcc) if you're looking to publicize something you did in the process of your coursework. Most institutions are also lax regarding non-commercial use of software because it's an important part of the collaborative process. But patents and any commercialization of software are generally a different story.
Slashdot Mirror
According to today's Chicago Sun Times article, none of the text was released until today. The entire essay hasn't been released yet. The following article has a few quotes from the essay...
Sheesh, what they had was graphic but really not that disturbing. I wrote much more disturbing short stories when I was in middle/high school. Haven't shot anyone. Don't even own a gun.
Of course, that was before Columbine. I'd have probably been locked in a psych ward if I were 10 years younger.
You know, having a sample of the actual text might help in allowing readers to see what the hell is going on. Without that, it's hard to judge, but I'd say there probably isn't a chance in hell these charges stick at trial, and pretty much certainly not at appeal assuming it made it that far.
These are facts. Reported to the SEC. You can't call raw, concrete sales revenue/profit "astrotuf," especially when they provide the breakdown of numbers with coupons excluded. There isn't even any gray area left.
Facts are nothing without interpretation. The submission implies that a relatively modest increase in sales on the heels of the first new OS release in 6 years means that everything is fantastic over at Redmond. This indicates either presence of spin or lack of a brain. You pick. Coupled with the fact that the submitter is anonymous, I lean toward a PR campaign, which MS has been known to do in that fashion.
Just because you don't like Microsoft doesn't mean everything positive about them is astroturf. I'm hoping it's because you didn't bother reading the article,
I don't particularly care about MS, but lack of logic skills in reporting bugs me. The headline of the submission "Vista Sales Strong, Higher Than Expected" is simply not supported by the only externally available evidence ("Profits jumped 65% from the previous year") because Vista DIDN'T EXIST last year.
You want to do a real study, find out how Vista did vs. XP in terms of quarter-over-quarter earnings jump the first quarter after release. Let's not rely on intentionally-low earnings forecasts from MS that have room for built-in good news. Hell, maybe it would show that Vista is doing better. I really don't care. But let's have some intelligent, unbiased reporting and submissions that don't come from anonymous shills.
Sheesh. Basic logic skills are sorely lacking around here.
it figures that sales are higher than last year, XP is not new and is installed mostly everywhere,,,Vista aint, so if we compare growth and sales Vista will surpass sales for Xp since most of every windows users already own a copy of XP and dont need to purchase it every 6 month
Seriously. Between the general lack of logic present in the submission and the fact that it was submitted by an AC, methinks it *could* be astroturf.
Leave it to Zonk to actually post the thing.
it sounds like she did what scientists do routinely, so I can't understand why they're suddenly picking on her.
Typically, scientists seek permission before reproducing figures for publishable work. Short quoted snippets and of course general conclusions regarding the work don't require it.
The response from Wiley sort of hints to this: ask us for permission next time, which we will grant, and this sort of mix up can be averted. This is how things are done.
Encyclopedia != news. Once most articles are "done," the rate at which they're modified should be really low. After all, "new information" about a 500-year-old event doesn't come up very often...
No, but new information about fairly recent events - where wiki excels - does come up often. Really, why do mainstream encyclopedias have to focus on almost primarily out-of-date events? The answer is not "because that's a good way of doing things," the answer is "because otherwise the lengthy editing/publishing cycles would result in an out-of-date encyclopedia."
Having encyclopedia-quality synopses of recent events (ie, events that aren't "done") is fanstastic, and something that did not exist much before wiki.
Gee, thanks. What about us jack-of-all-trade schmoes who only use the basics and aren't running company wide databases? The amount of data I use the database for is actually quite small, relatively speaking. I run (among all my other jobs) our internal webserver, which means I need to write all the code, including the presentation part, and administer the database. Sorry, we can't all be gurus, but I still need to back up my tables every so often.
Then you don't need to schedule the backup to dynamically determine what databases exist and when to back them up, and you can run a one-line backup script from a mysql cheat sheet. Couldn't possibly get less "guru" than that.
I'd assume the point was implicit, but I'll make it explicit - if your application needs to do powerful things for which the admin tools are insufficient, then your databases should have a trained IT person in charge of them, and that IT person should know what he's doing. The inability to write a script to determine what databases exist and then back them up would indicate that said IT person doesn't know what he's doing.
Ten years ago I wouldn't believe I would ever ask such a question but I have been asking it recently as my retired parents are looking to buy a computer for the web, writing letters and emails. I've told them specifically "DO NOT BUY VISTA" (why on earth would anyone want that ugly memory-hog?), so I just can't think of a single reason why they need even one of the medium-spec machines.
People have been asking this question since there have been PCs. The N-1th (and usually the N-2th) generation of PCs always handles mundane applications fine. This was true 10 years ago too.
The only real difference between now and 10 years ago has more to do with the fact that Win2K was so much better than 98, and nearly as good as XP, that effectively any computer that can run Win2K is modern enough for home use. In fact, I still have a mothballed vintage 2001 computer laying around running Win2K and office 2K quite snappily, and there isn't a damned office-related task it can't do just fine. So pretty much any machine that could have been considered state of the art in 1999 is more than enough to do the things most people need to do.
For a while at least, new generations of computers saw new advances in the types of stuff that was available for home use. Word processors, better graphics, web browsing, etc. But for home use, we're doing pretty much the same crap we were 10 years ago. The only reason not to use a machine from 1997 is because it would be Win98, and a lot of security software no longer supports it.
I wouldn't be so sure: the mysql administrator is not always able to restore a backup correctly. you are well advised to restore backups through the command line. it is also impossible (at least last time I checked) to automatically include all databases in a scheduled backup. You can only select the databases that are present at the time you schedule the backup.
I'd echo the "command line" solution - any admin who couldn't whip up a script in 10 minutes to backup all databases that exist when the script is *run* isn't worth much.
I use FF exclusively on both the Mac and Windows, and I think the Mac version works *better* than on Windows...the Mac version doesn't get sluggish after opening and closing a lot of tabs, doesn't gobble up half a gig of ram, and I have never had it just up and quit on me like it does on Windows.
Interesting. It does on mine (G4 PB 1.25 GHz). Lots of RAM gobbling, lots of spinning beachball, lots of intermittent crashing. Of course, Safari does the same for me, so I use the one that has screwed me less recently.
This really has the potential for providing a third way (versus semiconductor and photochemical systems) for converting light into electricity (for power or signals). Light is just extremely high frequency radio waves. With conductive nanotubes, one could create dipole antenna arrays for submicron wavelengths.
Not really - this is still just a doped semiconductor system, jsut a different architecture (nanowire vs. crystalline). Really, they're not focussing on the problem of light capture - they're focussing on the problem of charge carrier separation, which is a problem inherent to all schemes of photoelectric generation. The usual way is to operate the cells at extremely high V bias, which tends to rip the holes and electrons apart, but that's not always optimal. These guys are simply trying to figure out a good way of getting the carriers apart once they're created by whatever means.
They likely mean it has (or rather, would have) the same structure as the fictional kryptonite (based on nomenclature). Similar compounds usually share some characteristics such as reactivity (e.g. all alkali metals react with water in a similar fashion but with differeing severity), melting point, etc.
That assumption does not typically hold for complicated compounds with so many elements. For one, there are frequently many different possible crystal structures for the same molecule which exist under different conditions, which may have significantly different structures and properties. Additionally, there are often different molecular structures allowed for different formulae (called isomers), which often have drastically different properties. Additionally, the fictional and real versions differ in that the fictional contained fluorine, a very chemically active element that tends to drastically alter the properties of anything with which it bonds for a variety of interesting reasons.
So ultimately, it would be impossible to suggest that they would share the same properties based on similar but not identical chemical formulae, and that might not hold even if they were identical. As such, the press release is nothing more than some jackass wanting his 15 minutes.
Correct. He used to work at Apple. *ducks thrown chair*
I don't think Mr. Ballmer reads slashdot, nor would he be offended by that comment.
it's bad enough when someone does a first post to goatse.cx, why the heck is this making news? internet shock sites should not be posted on popular forums, it's stupid, why do we get a news article about shock sites
Methinks thou doth protest too much. That's really your ass in the picture, isn't it?
i always thought the /. community of moderators were a little more mature.
That's a joke, right?
For some curious reason, Americans seem to mention only the dictators who were inconvenient to their government. Just for sake of completeness, what about Trujillo, Suharto, Pinochet, Videla, the various South Vietnamese rulers, the military juntas of El Salvador and Guatemala, the South African apartheid regime, Batista, the Brazilian dictatorships, Musharraf, the Shah of Persia, Park, various dictators in Thailand, the house of Saud, Papadopoulos, and countless others in Latin America and Africa that I cannot possibly recall them all?
Not fair in my case, I was simply naming the obvious ones that people would recognize. If your point held, I wouldn't have named Noriega, as that was a serious black eye for us since we propped the asshole up for years. You're completely right about Trujillo too. For what it's worth, however, some of the ones you mentioned are assholes, not tyrranical dictators - there's a difference. I did completely miss on Musharraf, however, not sure why I brain cramped on that one. Good call.
I think the major issue is that neither you nor I can name them all. Which illustrates my original point.
And I thought that I was in a rational century without totalitarian governments that have the capabilities to do things like this.
That was naive. I'll assume you don't mean 2000-2007, as that's not much of a century. I'll also assume you're restricting yourself to the last 50 years, getting around Hitler. Of course then you still have Stalin, so that pushes you into the 60s. Then you get Pol Pot. Idi Amin. The ayatollah. Sadaam. Milosevic. Etc.
Even now, you've got Mugabe, Qadaffi, Chavez, Castro, Putin (that's no democracy, friends), Kim Jong Il, etc.
It's not necessarily irrational to want to be a tyrant. Possibly psychotic, but not irrational. The only question is whether you can pull it off.
How many people, aside from the slashdot crowd, actually use POP3/SMTP clients anymore (at home, not work)? Isn't some ridiculous amount like 90% using gmail/hotmail/yahoo mail/aol mail/etc?
I'd say only college kids and people who either pay for good indie ISPs (or run their own server) have the luxury of using actual non-http email services. For what it's worth, for most of the major online email providers, there's a service to scrape from the html interface - I used to use YoSucker back in the day when I used Yahoo? mail.
Sounds like they're violating a patent for "Method and Implementation of Field-Based Reality Distortion" held by Apple, Inc.
Surely Myspace has to be considered some sort of ongoing internet crime against decent taste and humanity in general.
It was basically a manual DNS attack. With so many waiting until the last minute, what do people expect? File at least a day before the deadline. What difference does a day's worth of interest make on the average IRS tax bill? And if people are so concerned about a day's worth of interest, print the damn return and mail it with a check. That way you get a few more days of interest.
All true, but the fact that people wait until the deadline is not news. If you're going to get into the online tax-prep business, you'd better have a stout server. This kind of failure can kill a business.
I can't relate to the opposite sex very well. I haven't had any real romantic relationship with a female and I'm 25 now. I don't feel comfortable approaching them, and I can't "strike up a conversation" as seems to be so easy for everyone else. What should I do?
You're not a double amputee are you? Do I have to draw you a picture?
Clearly you missed the point that criminals, by definition, do not obey the laws. There is some logic to that whole "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" motto. It's a truism. Gun laws shift the balance of power in favor of those who don't give a shit about the law.
That relies on 2 things: 1) that there is a distinction between good guys and bad guys, and 2) that good guys are good shots. For the first, many (to that point) honest citizens commit "heat of the moment" crimes, which would certainly be made worse with the presence of guns. The second creates problems when well meaning laypeople start playing hero and injure bystanders.
What you're trying to convince people is that a device, whose sole purpose is to maim and kill, should be allowed to be carried in public by anyone, without demonstrating 1) basic competency or 2) psychological dependability. Forget that.
I'm not one of the crazies on either side, but if we have to have licenses for cars, we need licenses for guns. And I'm not interested in the BS slippery slope rhetoric. I'm OK with highly trained civillians carrying guns in public. I'm OK with idiot yokels having guns locked up at home that they use for hunting or target practice. I'm not OK with idiot yokels carrying guns in public. It's not safe.
If you're in favor of licensing, background investigations, testing, and registration, then I'm OK with concealed permit licensing. Until then, no thanks.
He got away with it *both* times because the law emasculates the citizen from carrying a weapon at all times. If there were no restrictions on concealed carry, more people would carry. If V. Tech (like may schools) didn't ban firearms on its grounds, it's probable that some people in either group would have been armed and could have defended themselves.
Christ, can't you shut up with this shit for a day? If morons carried guns everywhere, we'd have many more than 31 killed in spontaneous acts of stupidity every day. There are people who I would generally trust to be around while they carry weapons, but I would not extend that trust of judgement to more than about 5% of the general population. Most of the rest are too damned stupid or impulsive.
In the absence of meaningful regulation of who gets guns - which people like you have fought vehemently against - sane people like me simply don't trust being around any number of idiots with guns. If you want more of society to accept the wisdom of having armed citizens around, you'll have to convince us that there's some method of keeping them in the right hands - which clearly did NOT happen today.
I think you may have missed the point of my post. The idea that the lawyer said I could apply the GPL to it implies that I was legally the author, which means that I could also have commercialized it, and the school would have little recourse (IANAL though).
I don't think they would agree with those implications. Circumstances would depend though - did you write the software as part of your role as an employee? Were you paid to do it? If not - if you did it in your free time - then it's absolutely yours, and you effectively just gave them a free license. But that's a different story than the original thread, which was the notion that student employees can routinely keep the rights to things that they do in their capacity as institutional employees, which they generally can't.
The question hinges on this: 1) did they pay you to do the work? and 2) did you use their resources to do it (computers they probably don't care). If the answer to either is 'yes', you probably don't own it. I'm a scientist, and I definitely couldn't patent my work I accomplished as a grad student on my own and keep the rights. Where I was, I'm pretty sure that applied to software too.
Note in the GPL discussion, you are definitely the author, but to GPL it you have to also have the rights to it. This could be because they have no claim (you did it outside your role with the school), or because they give up their claim.
When I was an undergrad, I wrote an app using school-owned computers for the internal use of the campus radio station. I then wanted to GPL it, so I called the university's legal office. The lawyer I spoke to seemed to be confused about why I was even calling her, because of course I'm allowed to do what I want with it. Probably things are different there for grad students though.
I don't think they much care about using their copy of Visual Studio (or gcc) if you're looking to publicize something you did in the process of your coursework. Most institutions are also lax regarding non-commercial use of software because it's an important part of the collaborative process. But patents and any commercialization of software are generally a different story.