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User: Raving+Lunatic

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Comments · 39

  1. Re:....uh..... Right. on I Suspect M$ That Has Broken The GPL · · Score: 1

    I'm not saying I agree with this kind of bullshit; I'm a lifetime fan of GNU and everything it stands for, since I started using fsf software, circa 1990. I contemplated posting the name of the consultancy I worked with, but that just opens a can of worms that's really not worth the trouble. The fact is, m$ and anyone else who can get away with this kind of thing - does.

    In the case of the NT utilities, most (but not all) of the IP taken from GNU sources was not simply inserted verbatim - it was "paraphrased". I actually don't know of the legality of that.

    ...and as for april 1st pranks, they're only valid until noon.

  2. ....uh..... Right. on I Suspect M$ That Has Broken The GPL · · Score: 3

    You people have your heads up your asses. I was once directly involved (as a consultant) with a microsoft project through a fairly well-known consultancy, that used the sources for the GNU base utilities to construct... you guessed it: the base NT unix-like utilities. This kind of crap has been going on for the better part of a decade. And really, there's dick-all you can do about it. If I opened my mouth about this publicly, i'd seriously damage my career.

  3. bluetooth on IBM Linux Watch v2.0 · · Score: 1

    the first one ran a bt stack. i wonder if they'll put out their whole linux-bt stack implementation to the open source community? I could use it.

  4. Canadian Retort on MS Wants To Outlaw Open Source: "Threatens" the "American Way" · · Score: 1

    Ah, as a Canadian in anticipation of imminent blame, I feel it necessary to point out the auslander's view that the American Way is supposed to be "do whatever the fuck you want". Gee, where did money factor into the equation?

  5. Re:Oracle File System on MySQL FS · · Score: 1

    Apparently, iFS gives a nice tree-structured filesystem that can be directly accessed via SQL, and you can then use oracle's media-specific procedures to do content-analysis in your queries (on the filesystem). For example, select all gifs under /images where brightness > 0.5 or something like that.

  6. Canada Space Geeks Ueber Alles! on Space Diving · · Score: 1

    Something like this would probably be
    outlawed in the US. One nice thing about
    putting wacky ideas into action in Canada
    is that they have a chance of being put
    into action.

  7. Open Source the Nanotech, not just the dev tools! on Open Source Nanotechnology · · Score: 2

    I've been shooting off my mouth about this for several years... What we need is a "Free Matter Foundation", to prevent corporations from patenting simple combinations of atoms in various uses. Stallman's manifesto should be applied directly to nanotech itself. The key issue here will be access rights to assemblers; if every household has an assembler and a matter feed, then the only thing of value associated with any consumer good will be the information required to produce it. At that point, we will truly enter the age of information. If however we don't let ordinary people have assemblers, then the whole social benefit of nanotech will be lost to the scourge of commercialization. blah blah blah...

  8. All I can say is - EXCELLENT on Gnutella Copyright Enforcement? · · Score: 1

    Thank you, whoever designed said app. Now all
    that remains is for the gnutella community to
    completely prohibit the app and all apps like it
    from ever functioning in gnutella again. Unlike
    Napster, Gnutella will prove to be impossibly
    adaptive for such RIAA ploys to work. Really,
    is there anything to worry about here? If the
    Gn. client software interacts with a boobie-
    trapped file to cooperate with the tracing party,
    then the client needs to be modified; if the
    file is just an executable trap, or something
    that, say, (hypothetically) caused xmms to help
    in the tracing, then xmms or whatever other
    software on the client machine needs to be
    changed - it's just data, people.

  9. That decides it. on The Battlefield Earth Contest · · Score: 1

    There is nothing I love more than B-movie sci-fi. I _must_ see this film, tonight!

  10. BC HO! on Justice Department Decides To Break Up Microsoft · · Score: 1

    At least partially. I think. I would not rule it out; and they planted the story originally.

  11. Re:Not possible! on Natural Capitalism · · Score: 1

    I object wholeheartedly. This close-minded view precludes any and all _real_ technical innovation, such as, (dare I mention it) nanotechnology. When generalized consumer goods can be fabricated using a Stallman Free Matter Compiler, from dirt in one's back yard or from the remnants of disused products, chopping down every tree left in British Columbia or setting fire to what remains of the Amazon Basin will not be economically feasible, let alone morally feasible. Earth will eventually recover, if populations are kept at bay.

    And frankly, for all its good intentions, Marxism has left some real environmental scars on this world - have you seen the Aral Sea lately, or visited the sites of any of the former USSR's fusion-warhead-excavated hydroelectric dam basins?

  12. 3d glasses and descent on Descent 3 for Linux Announced · · Score: 1

    Hey I was at Comdex in Vancouver about 5 years ago and I saw a demo of 3d glasses for the original descent. Does anyone out there know of 3d hardware and drivers that would make descent 3 playable (or Quake or UT, for that matter) in 3d?

    I just love 3d.

    Thanks
    .

  13. Re:Microsoft's trump card on Microsoft's Watered-down Version Of DOJ Remedy · · Score: 1

    HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!

    When I posted that conspiracy re the same, above, I was half kidding. Vancouver has been repeatedely voted by the UN to be the nicest city in the world in which to live, with Melbourne, Australia, running a close second; being a vancouverite myself, I really don't want Microsoft stinking up the place. But shit, they _did_ code-name their next two OSes Blackcomb and Whistler...

  14. Re:Blackcomb on Microsoft's Watered-down Version Of DOJ Remedy · · Score: 1

    Here's a conspiracy theory for you: Vancouver is a growing software hub. It's less than 100 miles from Redmond. It's out of reach of the US Govt. Microsoft already has another "campus" there. They've code named their next PC OSes after two Vancouver ski-hills... Tax shelter after relocation would be a simple matter of paying off a bribe of sorts to Ottawa. Microsoft's revenue is somewhere within a few orders of magnitude of Canada's GDP...

  15. Re:I'm curious.. on World's Biggest Dinosaur Constructed · · Score: 1

    Dude, centripetal acceleration is radially outwards; if the earth was spinning faster, the dinosaurs would have weighed less. Thus, the asteroid would have had to _slow down_ the earth.

  16. fluid dynamics, muscles etc on World's Biggest Dinosaur Constructed · · Score: 2

    Just looking at one of these suckers upright makes
    me laugh at the argument I once heard from
    someone, claiming that humans could probably have out-run a tyrannosaur. The reasoning stringently followed the laws of fluid dynamics and science's knowledge of the properties of present-day muscular tissue, completely ignoring the fact that evolution usually comes up with a way to achieve. Hell, I bet a tyrannosaur could have out-run a 4x4. And I'll bet twinkle-toes here could move, too.

  17. Yeehaw. Good huntin', Bubba! on H.R. 3113: Spam Bounty Hunters Wanted · · Score: 1

    I'm goin ta get me a bran-new 12 guage and head
    out into cyberspace shootin.

  18. R Snakes Suck on NASA Snake-Bots · · Score: 1

    Personally, I hate robotic snakes. In all
    honesty, they get _way_ too much press. Hell
    I've seen then several times just on Slashdot.
    Die Robot Snakes Die!

  19. snake grits on NASA Snake-Bots · · Score: 1

    I wonder if you could train the robotic snakes
    to ingest grits - could give them extra mileage
    on the surface of Mars. Then when the space
    dudes finally arrive to populate the place, they'll be confronted by a horrible race of mutant, robotic redneck snakes.

  20. RPM -> GPM on Suck on Linux Evolution · · Score: 1

    Definitely. And I never use that console mouse crap, anyway. Lose the trademark.

  21. GNU Heavy Encryption Standard?? on U.S. Government Wants Public Encryption Software Removed · · Score: 1

    I think what we need is some sort of package for transparently combining multiple, strong algorithms into a really obnoxious crypt filter, with a nice GUI for using it on files. Not just an email/file package, but an engine with hooks to series of crypt filter-modules, that could be used on anything from filesystems to tcp streams. And possibly make it available as some sort of loadable kernel module. So a key isn't just a key, but a sequence of key/algorithm-id pairs. Obviously, this wouldn't be good for public-key use, but I'd use it; I'm right into obnoxious encryption. Actually, I think there's enough sauce in the gnome libs to get a quick start to this for gnome.

  22. It had to come to this. on UCITA is passed · · Score: 2

    Wait ten years - there will be two kinds of software for sale: totally free, and totally fascist. People that code on a proprietary basis will resort to network-encrypted executables or worse, eventually, to protect their int. property rights and maintain control of the product. On the other hand, OSS will explode in the opposite direction, so I don't think it's much to worry about.

  23. Peer Review on New Ideas for Scientific Publishing Online · · Score: 2

    The one thing I think they'll kick and scream about the most is the notion of "peer reviewed" content, notably how the status-quo, published journal system is reviewed by professionals. My girlfriend is an oncologist (always digging up papers from somewhere) and some med friends of hers were discussing this the other night at dinner; there really seems to be a stigma attached to non-official net-papers. I think that's bunk myself, but perhaps a well-established site could develop its own mechanisms for developing the public-accepted pretense that its content is "peer reviewed", and still maintain the open-source ethic...

  24. Nice on 16.5-inch LCD for Notebook PC · · Score: 1

    When it happens, that is. A portable, PIII Linux station with about 256Mb RAM and a 16" screen is NICE. I wonder if these will do something around 1280x1024 ever.

  25. Re:Ugly as sin. on Pictures of the New Amiga · · Score: 1

    It's those curving extensions on the base that give me the creeps. Like something you'd find on a desk in a Geiger painting...