People in the Uk trying to encourage you to switch power and water companies got caught doing this a lot a few years back. Basically, when the utilities were privatised, every company in Britain had people knocking on doors asking people if they wanted to change companies. They'd made the switching procedure simple, so that an address and signature was enough, and the people selling door-to-door (who got nothing except signing bonuses before we had a minimum wage here) just forged a huge number of signatures. The first anyone knew about it was when their bills started coming from a different company. I think everyone got a slap on the wrist from Trading Standards, but no-one was actually prosecuted for what were clearly totally illegal acts.
I have no idea if this exists anywhere else in the world, let alone for the EU parliament, but British voters can fill in a form at this site and your letter will be faxed direct to your MP's office.
It's as quick as email and guarantees an actual piece of paper will appear in someone's office somewhere.
It's also completely free.
They check your postcode to make sure you're sending it to your own MP. then 2 weeks later they email you to ask if you've been replied to, and publish stats on how quickly each member replies.
I believe the site said something about sharing their code, so maybe it exists in other places by now.
Holland is a country. In holland they speak dutch. In France (another country) they speak french. In Belgium they speak both, as above. French and dutch are also spoken in other countries, eg former french and dutch colonies.
And Open Source DOESN'T rely on copyright, how exactly? If you throw out copyright law then anyone is free to do anything, including taking your GPL source code, making a few changes, and selling that as a commerical closed source project. I don't think many OSS advocates would stand for that for very long, and you can damn well bet it would cause a lot of people to stop developing free software.
Oh really? Let's say copyright law doesn't exist. There's nothing to stop a software company taking say, gcc or apache, making a few changes and selling it as a commercial closed source product.
However, as copyright law does not exist, they can't stop anyone else using the code in open source projects. They can't stop anyone from making and distributing copies of their product. The one thing they can do is keep their source code closed. However, as the source for the original free project is, uh, free, this only safeguards the changes they made themselves.
While the free software community would probably disapprove, it doesn't seem as though it would be particularly damaging.
Furthermore, given the user's right to distribute the commercial version of the software, and the free availability of the OSS version, there wouldn't be much financial incentive for a commercial software provider to use free software in this way.
I think XP has really improved useability and finally given people like my mother a computer they can understand. A lot of this is simply down to adding text everywhere saying things like "Click here to adjust your computer's settings". This could and should be implemented in a custom version of KDE. However the people who it really helps (ie those who have difficulty with understanding the concept of, for example, folders), are not likely to be switching to Linux in the near future.
It takes like three clicks to set it all back to looking exactly like Windows 2000.
kde takes two clicks - true. Redmond theme, i think it is, for the Windows look and Redmond something else for Windows behaviour (allows you to use Alt-F4, Alt-Tab, etc...).
I think Google produce a HTML version when they cache the document, which they offer you automatically, same as with pds. filetype just narrows down the search to files of a certain type.
In a nutshell, it says that no manufacturer can deny and warranty claim or make any warrany dependont on the use of any aftermarket parts, UNLESS that part can be proven to have caused the damage.
Does this also apply to Linux-enabling modchips in the X-box?
Another way of looking at it is that an operating system represents a considerable intellectual property investment, whereas the means by which ink cartridges are filled does not.
we need to crack down hard on the pirates and protect microsoft's intellectual property rights!
as soon as the third world can't use bootleg copies of windows, they'll switch to linux.
When you start offering that kind of discount, you lose a lot of the advantage you have as near-monopoly. MS can't sell to everyone at that kind of price. If the "free as in speech" model offers "free as in beer" software for many users, there has to be real compatibility / support services / security / etc advantages to keep customers with proprietary software.
a) too good to be true,
b) there has to be a catch, or
c) you get what you pay for
is it just me, or do these three expressions mean (in this context) exactly the same thing?
Slashdot Mirror
These guys are counting.
president/winterwonderland
People in the Uk trying to encourage you to switch power and water companies got caught doing this a lot a few years back. Basically, when the utilities were privatised, every company in Britain had people knocking on doors asking people if they wanted to change companies.
They'd made the switching procedure simple, so that an address and signature was enough, and the people selling door-to-door (who got nothing except signing bonuses before we had a minimum wage here) just forged a huge number of signatures. The first anyone knew about it was when their bills started coming from a different company.
I think everyone got a slap on the wrist from Trading Standards, but no-one was actually prosecuted for what were clearly totally illegal acts.
How lucky for them that all compression formats are fixed in stone and can never be changed.
Also that the pirating industry doesn't have any resources it could dedicate to changing said file formats.
I'm not sure it will help if the FBI actually enforce wrongdoing.
free high class, high quality, highly innovative software
(my emphasis) Hmmm. What happened to high class, highly etc. open source software?
It's as quick as email and guarantees an actual piece of paper will appear in someone's office somewhere.
It's also completely free.
They check your postcode to make sure you're sending it to your own MP. then 2 weeks later they email you to ask if you've been replied to, and publish stats on how quickly each member replies.
I believe the site said something about sharing their code, so maybe it exists in other places by now.
Holland is a country. In holland they speak dutch. In France (another country) they speak french. In Belgium they speak both, as above.
French and dutch are also spoken in other countries, eg former french and dutch colonies.
What's the revenue model?
Oh really?
Let's say copyright law doesn't exist. There's nothing to stop a software company taking say, gcc or apache, making a few changes and selling it as a commercial closed source product.
However, as copyright law does not exist, they can't stop anyone else using the code in open source projects. They can't stop anyone from making and distributing copies of their product. The one thing they can do is keep their source code closed. However, as the source for the original free project is, uh, free, this only safeguards the changes they made themselves.
While the free software community would probably disapprove, it doesn't seem as though it would be particularly damaging.
Furthermore, given the user's right to distribute the commercial version of the software, and the free availability of the OSS version, there wouldn't be much financial incentive for a commercial software provider to use free software in this way.
I think XP has really improved useability and finally given people like my mother a computer they can understand. A lot of this is simply down to adding text everywhere saying things like "Click here to adjust your computer's settings".
This could and should be implemented in a custom version of KDE. However the people who it really helps (ie those who have difficulty with understanding the concept of, for example, folders), are not likely to be switching to Linux in the near future.
kde takes two clicks - true. Redmond theme, i think it is, for the Windows look and Redmond something else for Windows behaviour (allows you to use Alt-F4, Alt-Tab, etc...).
Or in layman's terms:
Like animals, software tends to change a lot until it becomes pretty good, and then not change as much any more.
Does this also apply to Linux-enabling modchips in the X-box?
Another way of looking at it is that an operating system represents a considerable intellectual property investment, whereas the means by which ink cartridges are filled does not.
I'm not sure how saying that could be construed as 'bashing' the US, though?
chalk54923 gets first ever spam...
Delete them. That's like, the whole point of shareware.
As long as you don't have to pay for crap games, who cares?
we need to crack down hard on the pirates and protect microsoft's intellectual property rights! as soon as the third world can't use bootleg copies of windows, they'll switch to linux.
When you start offering that kind of discount, you lose a lot of the advantage you have as near-monopoly. MS can't sell to everyone at that kind of price. If the "free as in speech" model offers "free as in beer" software for many users, there has to be real compatibility / support services / security / etc advantages to keep customers with proprietary software.
a) too good to be true, b) there has to be a catch, or c) you get what you pay for is it just me, or do these three expressions mean (in this context) exactly the same thing?