Actually, its perfectly legal to develop private code against the GPL version of QT for a while, then buy the commercial license and release that code as a commercial product.
As long as you release the part of code that you developed under GPL. You will end up with a commercial software where part of the code is realeased under the GPL and part isn't. Of course you can olly do it if it is your code, or if you obtain a permission of the copyright holder.
In-house software linked against (more accurately "based on") a GPL product need not be GPL itself - its only when you distribute it to others that the GPL stuff kicks in.
Er, wrong. It is still GPL, that just when you don't distribute it, the GPL's requirement to release code does not apply. You cannot, however, switch the code from GPL to closed source, even if you are the copyright holder. Once a code is GPLed once, it is GPLed for ever.
Normally, people don't apply a license to a code before they release it, so that's not a problem. However, in this case trolltex requires you to apply GPL to your code at the moment you start using the open source edition of Qt to develop the software.
What you bring up here, doesn't contradict what I said. Again: if you use the GPL license, you have to release your app under the GPL. If you want to make business with it, it is as with any other GPLed software: it's possible (they nowhere state you are not allowed to), but probably not the classical off the shelf software. You still have to come up with a proof, that what they do is not correct.
That's not what he is talking about at all. If you as the author and sole copyright holder of your GLP software decide to create a closed source, proprietary version of your application and sell it, nobody can stop you. The only thing you have to make sure is that you don't link against any GPLed libraries, or that you don't use somebody else's code (regardless whether it is GPLed or not).
What this guy wants to do is develop an open source application with GPL version of Qt, and then switch his development to closed source model and continue it as a closed source application. He has a problem because he links to a GPL version of Qt. He would have the same problem if he linked to any other GPLed library. That has nothing to do with Qt. He can clearly rewrite the application, replacing Qt by some other library, but that would be a huge task. He is asking "can I just buy the commercial license of Qt and link to that instead?". He reads the FAQ on Trolltech site and concludes that it is impossible. However, I don't agree with him. I don't think the answer on the trolltech site means what he think it means:). I believe it means that the code that was developed with the GPL version of Qt has to stay GPL. Which is kind of obvious, and it is actually GPL that says so, not trolltex. Basically, you cannot buy the commercial license and say "now that I have commercial license, I don't have to release the original code any more." Your original code is still GPLed, the commercial license only applies to the code you developer after you bought it. Again, fairly obvious, and again, it is actually mandated by GPL. GPL clearly states that once you release the code, you cannot bring it back, you can only stop releasing new code.
Try to get a closed source license for the GNU tools for instance, or the Linux kernel
You probably could, if you paid enough. It may be pretty hard with the linux kernel, as it contains code that is copyright of number of people. I think GNU tools have all their copyright transferred to FSF, so you would have to approach FSF an negotiate with them. trolltex makes this easier by simply offering you the option to re-license up front. Dual licensing is quite standard practice. There are many projrects that are licensed under the GPL and for example PERL artistic license, and you can pick which one is suitable for you.
There is no problem with that. If you dvelop an application as an open source, and later decide to change the development model to closed source, it just means that your software will have two parts. First is open source, which was developed with the open source edition of qt, was released and is available as open source. On top of that, there is part of the code that was developed with Qt under the commercial license, which may or may not be open source.
What you cannot do is develop some software with the open source edition, then buy the commercial license and apply it retroactively to the code that you developed with the open source edition. What they are saying here is that the part you developed with the open source edition has to be released as open source, even if you bought the commercial edition later.
I believe that this is actually supposed to make it easier for you to switch your development model from open source to closed source, rather than more difficult. Compare it to a situation where you use a GPLed library. If you want to switch to closed source in that case, you have to rewrite your application to get rid of the library and replace it by something else. With Qt, you just need to re-license.
Can we use the Open Source Edition while developing our non-opensource application and then purchase commercial licenses when we start to sell it?
Answer: No. Our commercial license agreements only apply to software that was developed with Qt under the commercial license agreement. They do not apply to code that was developed with the Qt Open Source Edition prior to the agreement. Any software developed with Qt without a commercial license agreement must be released as Open Source software.
If you develop an open source application, as you mention in your example, this clearly does not apply. In your situation, you clearly do release all the code developed with the open source edition as open source. Therefore you satisfy their requirement, which means that there is no problem whatsoever.
Strangely, that only works if you're going the hard route. If you've ever taken an applied course, you might have been in a situation where understanding is made difficult or impossible. Recently I took an introductory statistics course. This course required only knowledge of algebra, and those with calculus experience usually enrolled in their own appropriate version. The problem was that we used only formulas that were derived by using calculus. The formulas were complicated enough that just reasoning your way to them was out of the question. We were all stuck memorizing with the promise that if we stick by it, after a few more courses it'll all make sense. I've found this to be true of other supposedly simplified courses--they remove that absolutely necessary "why."
Even many formulas in statistics that are indeed often derived using calculus are "understandable" without actually deriving them. When teaching statistics, I always try to explain to the students the meaning of the formulas, their parts, etc, so that they will understand what the formula really says. You can understand a formula intuitively, without being actually able to derive it the hard way. I do that with many formulas in calculus, too, in addition to deriving them formally, I try to explain them intuitively. You are right that in some applied classes, there are some formulas that are to hard to understand, even on intuitive level. In such case, I give students the formulas on the exam.
because you are paying the university does not give you full rights to everything you do, for example, exams. it's you work, but they keep them in most cases (usually because professors are too lazy to write new exams for each class).
Most schools hold onto your old exams for the case you complain about your grade. It is usually a school policy. It has nothing to do with laziness, most of us write new exams every year anyway. Most schools actually require us to do that.
As somebody else pointed out already, your professor usually holds the copyright for the exam, you may possibly own your own answers to the questions on the exam.
your homework, while it might be for your own development and education, can be considered work for the teacher. of course none of this has ever been brought up in a court. i wonder if a student were to write a license for a paper, especially at one of these schools using turnitin.com, would he have the right to sue the school for submitting that paper to that site if the license specifically said it could not be? would that hold up in court?
It's likely the paper would not be accepted with the licence.
About this whole debate: even if you are the sole holder of the copyright for your paper (since most likely you used instructions given to you in class, and perhaps other services your school provides, one could argue that you may hold the copyright jointly with your professor and school), by turning the paper in for grading you specifically allow the professor/school to use the paper in certain ways. This may include giving a copy of the paper to turnitin.com. If you don't like that, don't hand the paper in for grading. You can jolly well use it to wallpaper your bathroom.
You can actually include animations, and even multimedia into a pdf. Linux version of reader does not display embeded multimedia, but you can still use javascript driven animations. I have seen it done many times, and I have done it myself.
PDF presenters do not auto-load the next slide....this leads to an uncomfortable silence between the time you try to advance the slide, and the time the slide actually advances. This effect depends on how complicated the next slide is.
That's true, but I have never seen any slide show where this would be a problem, and I have seen some pretty complicated slides.
PDF cannot embed audio/video, so if you want a multimedia presentation you are screwed.
Wrong. PDF can embed audio/video just fine. The only problem is that you cannot view these on Linux. If you want to embed audio or video with pdflatex, look at the movie15 package.
You cannot draw onto a slide to explain your point.
Actually, it is theoretically possible to draw onto a pdf file if you use Adobe reader v7.0 or newer, and if the document allows commenting. The nasty problem here is that in order to allow commenting, you must use Acrobat 7.0 or newer Professional, which is pretty hefty price. The feature is there in Adobe reader, but it is specifically disabled, and you have to enable it in the document, and it can only be enabled using expensive Adobe software. I personally think Adobe is being nasty and evil here.
You wrote a good response, with passion. Passion is worthy of a human being. That said, academic life and the college system is possibly the greatest scam yet seen by the human race.
Maybe you should specify you are talking about american academic life. I partially agree with you, but still I believe you are deeply mistaken about many things.
I look back in history and don't see that the academic system has anything to do with turning people into really neat people, leaders, shining examples to others, creative, etc.
Hmm, in my experience, most (definitely not all) really neat people I have met in my life had an advanced degree from a university. There are exceptions, and I know people who I deeply respect and admire who in fact droped out of (or have been kicked out of, or never even admitted to) high school, but majority of the people I have great respect for are very well educated. I cannot judge whether their greatness is a result of their education, though. But I also don't see any evidence of, as you say "academic system having nothing to do with turning people into really neat people..."
What is the point of an educational system that doesn't do its very best in these areas? What can it possibly be teaching that is more important?
This way you can discount any human endeavor. It does not do it's best in turning people into really neat people, leaders,..., therefore it is not worth pursuing, and it is a scam.
I didn't go to college recently, going back in the early 70's. I have interviewed students for jobs since then. In the 70's the university classes were pointless. A school that puts students in a class with a TA who can't speak English does not care at all about the students. The professor of the course doesn't, the department doesn't, the faculty as a whole don't, and we end up at the administration which is in the same boat.
Well, I have never seen a TA who couldn't speak English. I have seen many TA's with an accent, and some degree of difficulty with the language (AMOF, I was one of them, and I still have a noticable accent), but I have never seen one who couldn't speak English. Communicating with and even learning from a person who is not a native speaker of your language is an essential skill in today's world. It definitely isn't anything that could stop a motivated student from learning. I have, on the other hand, heard it many times from students as an excuse: "I can understand ny professor,...". Usually the professor in question is perfectly understandable, and there are many students who have no trouble with his/her English whatsoever.
Various comments use the term "cheating". That can be an ethical term, it can also be used in a legal sense. In the first sense what complaint do universities have? They aren't interested in ethics or instilling ethics in their students.
I will have to disagree. Perhaps a university as an institution isn't, after all, most american colleges are really companies that are only interested in making money, right? But most professors I know are definitely dedicated to teaching their students both the subject matter of their classes, and ethical behavior. Of course there are exceptions, as I have myself experienced during my carier as a professor.
The institutions don't demonstrate ethical behavior themselves. Two easy examples, college football
Well, I will have to agree with you here!;)
and the charming tendency for professors who are good teachers to be lower on the pecking order than hot-shot reeearchers with lots of publications.
That is indeed the case at some large research institutions. Although I myself belong in the former group (or so I hope, because I definitely don't belong in the later), I understand why it is that way. It is easier to find a good teacher than an excellent researcher, and the later are therefore more valuable. Why shou
First: If I had an undergraduate student in an American college read a wikipedia article and reformulate it in their own words, I would consider that a success. As long as they cited the article as a source, I would not consider that cheating. It would mean that they actually read it, and thought about it and understood it enough to be able to reformulate it. Most students who try this, in my experience, end up writing nonsense, because they are trying to reformulate an article without understanding it, which is nearly impossible.
Second, there is, IMHO, one more reasons to limit resources. I often have students in lower level classes fussing that I don't let them use formula sheets on exams. I have two answers to them: first, I compare looking up formula to looking up a spelling of a word in a dictionary. It is a very important skill, everybody should be able to do that with words that you use only rarely. However, if you find yourself wrting a paper and having to look up every other word in a dictionary, something is clearly wrong. Either you some serious defficiency in the language, or you are writing a paper on a topic you know nothing about.
My second answer have to do with the fact that you almost never have to "memorize" a formula. What you should do is to understand a formula. Each formula is in fact a piece of theory, or a description of some properties of a mathematical object, simplified to an extreme. If you know the theory and understand how the formula derives from the theory, and what does it really say about the subject, you don't need to memorize it.
Yes, in "real life" you will most likely have a book or a website available where you can look up your formulas, and it is an important skill to be able to do that, but that's not what I want to test on most of my exams.
You are right that most of the books on the list were banned or challenged in the US at some point of time. What's strange is that sometimes they list things like "banned in Ireland", and for one book they even have "banned in Yugoslavia". That confuses me, because if they start adding books that were banned in former communist countries, they will end up with a huge list.
I guess the list has only books that were banned somewhere in US, but for some of them they also list some other countries where they were banned. The result is quite a mess.
I also find it rather ironic that 1984 was banned in some US town for being pro-communist, while it was banned in almost all communist countries for being anti-communist.
For instance "all text should be accessible". In other words whereever I can see some text in GNOME I should be able to copy & paste that text (using the standard selection methods and Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-Ins, Shift-Ins, menu items etc. etc.)
Yes, I agree, I struggle with this all the time - on Windows XP
Any application that displays a list should also allow me to save that list as a plain text file seperated by something like commas (anyone for CSV ?)
How would you trigger it? A shortcut? An item in the right click menu? IMHO this sort of stuff would soon clutter the menus to the point where they would become useless. Most users would probably be confused by a menu item offering them to save a list to a file. I think the idea is good, but it should be combined with the cut and paste operation. Selecting the list, or some items of the list, and cutting it should place the comma separated list in the clipboard. No need to open a "save file" dialog. If you happen to need the data in a separate file, just paste them in an editor window.
Any application that displays a list of files should allow me to double click on a file (or press "carriage return" or enter) and launch the default application associated with that file. Any application whatsoever.
Funny, that's not how it works on Windows, and probably for a good reason, too. If I am trying to for example open a file in Galeon, I get a list of files. If I double click one of them or select one of them and press enter, I expect it to open in Galeon, not in the default application for that file. What windows does, and IMHO it should be added to Gnome too, is to offer you an option to open the file from the right click menu. I would like to see that.
In exactly rhe same way I should always be able to select file(s) from that list and use copy & paste etc.
Interesting. I just tried that on Windows. I opend the "Open File" dialog in excel, selected a file, right clicked, selected "copy". It seemed to work. Then I tried to paste the file in an explorer window. Guess what, the "paste" option was grayed out!
Going back to my previous point I shuld also be able to save that file list in CSV format.
See my comment above. Besides, there are so many faster and easier ways of getting a CSV list of files.
Wherever there's a right mouse button menu this should also be available by pressing the right mouse button on the keyboard. Maybe a MAC keyboard doesn't have a "right mouse button" (don't kno never used n one;) ? So what. They miss out, the rest of the world that does have one (i.e. the vast majority of us) gets to use it in the manner it was designed.
I don't have a Mac, but I really don't understand what you mean by "right mouse button on the keyboard". And what about the middle button?
On another note then for gods sake stop messing around with the right click menus. Using Nautilus you can select "paste" from the "edit" menu. But you can't right click in the file area and select "edit" > "paste" as doing so selects the nearest file to the cursor and removes ("greys out") the paste option.
I don't use Nautilus much, I cannot comment on this. What I would like to see would be an ability to paste arbitrary data into a directory window in a file manager, and have a new file containing that data created. Kind of like when you redirect stdout to a file.
Personalised, "intelligent" menus are simply crap. Look at Microsoft Office or XP hiding things away etc. If there's data on the clipboard that can be processed by the application then paste should be available. Hiding the option is simply dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
True. See above my experience with Windows.
Personally I use GNOME because I use Ubuntu but I find it so bloody hard to do anything productive due to it missing so many simple, easy to implement, features that it usually send me swearing back to Windows to get
As other people noted, this is also true with different versions of Word, actually the problem is even worse there. When I was in graduate school, I had a part time job working for a textbook publisher. We were supposed to use Word for everything, but we had a very strict short list of features we were allowed to use. I remember it said no automatic numbering, no numbered nor buleted lists, no page headers nor footers, etc. The reason was that the documents had to go to a number of people who had different versions of Word, and it had to work well for all of them. If we used some of the "prohibitted" features, some of the editors got complete garbage, not just small differences in linewrap and margins.
You see, theoretically, with a well designed document which uses things like paragraph styles etc correctly, it should not matter what the margins are, where the lines wrap, what is the line-spacing etc. For example changing the margins will change the line wrap, page breaks etc, it wil change the way the document looks, but it should still look perfectly fine, there should be absolutely no functionality lost. The problem with this is that I have never ever seen a well designed document created in Word. I have seen some close calls, but there was always some place where the author used line-breaks and tabs instead of properly formatted and indented paragraps, or something like that. It is just to damn hard to create a properly formatted document in Word, and to damn easy to take some quick shortcut, which works just fine until somebody opens the document in another (version of) wordprocessor, include the part of the document in another document, or change margins of font or something else.
When I was a kid, my dad gave me my first camera for my birthday, and as a part of the present, he arranged a friend of his, who was a professional photographer, to give me lessons. One of the first things this guy told me was that in general you shoot about two or thre rolls of film in order to have one or two great pictures.
So you are right, the problem is not that too many pictures gat taken, the problem is that the photographer does not bother to go through them and select the good ones. Instead, they post everything and leave the job of selecting to the viewer. I took one look at the gallery, clicked on one picture, and left, because there is just too much crap to sort through.
I like to compare fractals to photography. A photographer takes a machine (camera) and uses his skill with the machine to take pictures of the real world. The pictures can be purely documentary (imagine technical documentation) or artistic, or anything in between.
A "fractalist" (for lack of any better term) uses a machine (computer) and his skill with the machine and his knowledge of math to take "pictures" of a purely mathematical world. Again, the pictures can range from purely documentary shots for a math textbook to art.
Of course, in both cases, the purely documentary shots can still be beautiful or interesting for a layman, and an artist can purposely explore this, therefore turning the documentary pictures into art.
When one writes a program that produces pictures, the software may itself be art, but the pictures it produces are not.
This is little bit like saying "when one prepares pigments and canvas, cleans brushes and so on to produce a painting, the pigments and canvas and brushes are art, the painting isn't".
Actually, there are several small publishers (some of them doing ODP) that use some TeX macro package. LaTeX is probably not the most common one, as it was specifically designed for creating scientific articles and textbooks, but with liberal use of the memoir class and other tricks, you can produce quite decent publications with it. I think most of these publishers are either using ConTeXt, or have some homebrewed format.
About using LaTeX for all your needs, that's what I do. I only use OpenOffice.org if somebody sends me a word document I need to read.
I cannot agree more! As far as I know there is no single graphical email client that would give you the option to sort messages in a thread in a "latest first" order. You could easily do that years ago in mutt, you could easily do that in slrn, why can't you do that in evolution or thunderbird?
Re:Al Queda, witches, devil worshippers, and gangs
on
Gangs on the Internet
·
· Score: 1
While we're at it, every "pagan" I've ever met follows a fairly recently concocted hodgepodge of dozens of individual, mutually contradictory bits of pre-Christian religions
Not that I have any sympathy for Wicca, but how is that different from Christianity?
I don't know much about transplants, but as far as your milk example goes, I am not sure it has anything to do with race. My wife, who is Chinese, drinks milk very often, and does not seem to have any trouble with it. I, on the other hand, don't like milk, I don't like the taste of it, and I suspect it makes me slightly sick, even though I drink it so rarely that I am not really able to tell. My mother, who is from central Europe, all her ancestors were born in central Europe, and is blond with blue eyes, cannot digest milk, and it makes her violently ill.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, its perfectly legal to develop private code against the GPL version of QT for a while, then buy the commercial license and release that code as a commercial product.
As long as you release the part of code that you developed under GPL. You will end up with a commercial software where part of the code is realeased under the GPL and part isn't. Of course you can olly do it if it is your code, or if you obtain a permission of the copyright holder.
In-house software linked against (more accurately "based on") a GPL product need not be GPL itself - its only when you distribute it to others that the GPL stuff kicks in.
Er, wrong. It is still GPL, that just when you don't distribute it, the GPL's requirement to release code does not apply. You cannot, however, switch the code from GPL to closed source, even if you are the copyright holder. Once a code is GPLed once, it is GPLed for ever.
Normally, people don't apply a license to a code before they release it, so that's not a problem. However, in this case trolltex requires you to apply GPL to your code at the moment you start using the open source edition of Qt to develop the software.
What you bring up here, doesn't contradict what I said. Again: if you use the GPL license, you have to release your app under the GPL. If you want to make business with it, it is as with any other GPLed software: it's possible (they nowhere state you are not allowed to), but probably not the classical off the shelf software. You still have to come up with a proof, that what they do is not correct.
That's not what he is talking about at all. If you as the author and sole copyright holder of your GLP software decide to create a closed source, proprietary version of your application and sell it, nobody can stop you. The only thing you have to make sure is that you don't link against any GPLed libraries, or that you don't use somebody else's code (regardless whether it is GPLed or not).
What this guy wants to do is develop an open source application with GPL version of Qt, and then switch his development to closed source model and continue it as a closed source application. He has a problem because he links to a GPL version of Qt. He would have the same problem if he linked to any other GPLed library. That has nothing to do with Qt. He can clearly rewrite the application, replacing Qt by some other library, but that would be a huge task. He is asking "can I just buy the commercial license of Qt and link to that instead?". He reads the FAQ on Trolltech site and concludes that it is impossible. However, I don't agree with him. I don't think the answer on the trolltech site means what he think it means:). I believe it means that the code that was developed with the GPL version of Qt has to stay GPL. Which is kind of obvious, and it is actually GPL that says so, not trolltex. Basically, you cannot buy the commercial license and say "now that I have commercial license, I don't have to release the original code any more." Your original code is still GPLed, the commercial license only applies to the code you developer after you bought it. Again, fairly obvious, and again, it is actually mandated by GPL. GPL clearly states that once you release the code, you cannot bring it back, you can only stop releasing new code.
Try to get a closed source license for the GNU tools for instance, or the Linux kernel
You probably could, if you paid enough. It may be pretty hard with the linux kernel, as it contains code that is copyright of number of people. I think GNU tools have all their copyright transferred to FSF, so you would have to approach FSF an negotiate with them. trolltex makes this easier by simply offering you the option to re-license up front. Dual licensing is quite standard practice. There are many projrects that are licensed under the GPL and for example PERL artistic license, and you can pick which one is suitable for you.
There is no problem with that. If you dvelop an application as an open source, and later decide to change the development model to closed source, it just means that your software will have two parts. First is open source, which was developed with the open source edition of qt, was released and is available as open source. On top of that, there is part of the code that was developed with Qt under the commercial license, which may or may not be open source.
What you cannot do is develop some software with the open source edition, then buy the commercial license and apply it retroactively to the code that you developed with the open source edition. What they are saying here is that the part you developed with the open source edition has to be released as open source, even if you bought the commercial edition later.
I believe that this is actually supposed to make it easier for you to switch your development model from open source to closed source, rather than more difficult. Compare it to a situation where you use a GPLed library. If you want to switch to closed source in that case, you have to rewrite your application to get rid of the library and replace it by something else. With Qt, you just need to re-license.
No, you are wrong:
Can we use the Open Source Edition while developing our non-opensource application and then purchase commercial licenses when we start to sell it?
Answer:
No. Our commercial license agreements only apply to software that was developed with Qt under the commercial license agreement. They do not apply to code that was developed with the Qt Open Source Edition prior to the agreement. Any software developed with Qt without a commercial license agreement must be released as Open Source software.
If you develop an open source application, as you mention in your example, this clearly does not apply. In your situation, you clearly do release all the code developed with the open source edition as open source. Therefore you satisfy their requirement, which means that there is no problem whatsoever.
Now wreckless teens will be using these things to flip over my Honda.
You mean they will do that to have a nice wreck, so they won't be wreckless any more?
Strangely, that only works if you're going the hard route. If you've ever taken an applied course, you might have been in a situation where understanding is made difficult or impossible. Recently I took an introductory statistics course. This course required only knowledge of algebra, and those with calculus experience usually enrolled in their own appropriate version. The problem was that we used only formulas that were derived by using calculus. The formulas were complicated enough that just reasoning your way to them was out of the question. We were all stuck memorizing with the promise that if we stick by it, after a few more courses it'll all make sense. I've found this to be true of other supposedly simplified courses--they remove that absolutely necessary "why."
Even many formulas in statistics that are indeed often derived using calculus are "understandable" without actually deriving them. When teaching statistics, I always try to explain to the students the meaning of the formulas, their parts, etc, so that they will understand what the formula really says. You can understand a formula intuitively, without being actually able to derive it the hard way. I do that with many formulas in calculus, too, in addition to deriving them formally, I try to explain them intuitively. You are right that in some applied classes, there are some formulas that are to hard to understand, even on intuitive level. In such case, I give students the formulas on the exam.
because you are paying the university does not give you full rights to everything you do, for example, exams. it's you work, but they keep them in most cases (usually because professors are too lazy to write new exams for each class).
Most schools hold onto your old exams for the case you complain about your grade. It is usually a school policy. It has nothing to do with laziness, most of us write new exams every year anyway. Most schools actually require us to do that.
As somebody else pointed out already, your professor usually holds the copyright for the exam, you may possibly own your own answers to the questions on the exam.
your homework, while it might be for your own development and education, can be considered work for the teacher. of course none of this has ever been brought up in a court. i wonder if a student were to write a license for a paper, especially at one of these schools using turnitin.com, would he have the right to sue the school for submitting that paper to that site if the license specifically said it could not be? would that hold up in court?
It's likely the paper would not be accepted with the licence.
About this whole debate: even if you are the sole holder of the copyright for your paper (since most likely you used instructions given to you in class, and perhaps other services your school provides, one could argue that you may hold the copyright jointly with your professor and school), by turning the paper in for grading you specifically allow the professor/school to use the paper in certain ways. This may include giving a copy of the paper to turnitin.com. If you don't like that, don't hand the paper in for grading. You can jolly well use it to wallpaper your bathroom.
I'm also addicted to my car. Darned if a day goes by that I don't use it to get somewhere too far to walk.
That's nothing! I am seriously addicted to food. I absolutely can't imagine living without it!
You can actually include animations, and even multimedia into a pdf. Linux version of reader does not display embeded multimedia, but you can still use javascript driven animations. I have seen it done many times, and I have done it myself.
PDF presenters do not auto-load the next slide....this leads to an uncomfortable silence between the time you try to advance the slide, and the time the slide actually advances. This effect depends on how complicated the next slide is.
That's true, but I have never seen any slide show where this would be a problem, and I have seen some pretty complicated slides.
PDF cannot embed audio/video, so if you want a multimedia presentation you are screwed.
Wrong. PDF can embed audio/video just fine. The only problem is that you cannot view these on Linux. If you want to embed audio or video with pdflatex, look at the movie15 package.
You cannot draw onto a slide to explain your point.
Actually, it is theoretically possible to draw onto a pdf file if you use Adobe reader v7.0 or newer, and if the document allows commenting. The nasty problem here is that in order to allow commenting, you must use Acrobat 7.0 or newer Professional, which is pretty hefty price. The feature is there in Adobe reader, but it is specifically disabled, and you have to enable it in the document, and it can only be enabled using expensive Adobe software. I personally think Adobe is being nasty and evil here.
There is an easy solution: I am going to patent "cheating using the internet". Then I will charge all those cheaters horrendous fees.
You wrote a good response, with passion. Passion is worthy of a human being. That said, academic life and the college system is possibly the greatest scam yet seen by the human race.
..."
..., therefore it is not worth pursuing, and it is a scam.
...". Usually the professor in question is perfectly understandable, and there are many students who have no trouble with his/her English whatsoever.
;)
Maybe you should specify you are talking about american academic life. I partially agree with you, but still I believe you are deeply mistaken about many things.
I look back in history and don't see that the academic system has anything to do with turning people into really neat people, leaders, shining examples to others, creative, etc.
Hmm, in my experience, most (definitely not all) really neat people I have met in my life had an advanced degree from a university. There are exceptions, and I know people who I deeply respect and admire who in fact droped out of (or have been kicked out of, or never even admitted to) high school, but majority of the people I have great respect for are very well educated. I cannot judge whether their greatness is a result of their education, though. But I also don't see any evidence of, as you say "academic system having nothing to do with turning people into really neat people
What is the point of an educational system that doesn't do its very best in these areas? What can it possibly be teaching that is more important?
This way you can discount any human endeavor. It does not do it's best in turning people into really neat people, leaders,
I didn't go to college recently, going back in the early 70's. I have interviewed students for jobs since then. In the 70's the university classes were pointless. A school that puts students in a class with a TA who can't speak English does not care at all about the students. The professor of the course doesn't, the department doesn't, the faculty as a whole don't, and we end up at the administration which is in the same boat.
Well, I have never seen a TA who couldn't speak English. I have seen many TA's with an accent, and some degree of difficulty with the language (AMOF, I was one of them, and I still have a noticable accent), but I have never seen one who couldn't speak English. Communicating with and even learning from a person who is not a native speaker of your language is an essential skill in today's world. It definitely isn't anything that could stop a motivated student from learning. I have, on the other hand, heard it many times from students as an excuse: "I can understand ny professor,
Various comments use the term "cheating". That can be an ethical term, it can also be used in a legal sense. In the first sense what complaint do universities have? They aren't interested in ethics or instilling ethics in their students.
I will have to disagree. Perhaps a university as an institution isn't, after all, most american colleges are really companies that are only interested in making money, right? But most professors I know are definitely dedicated to teaching their students both the subject matter of their classes, and ethical behavior. Of course there are exceptions, as I have myself experienced during my carier as a professor.
The institutions don't demonstrate ethical behavior themselves. Two easy examples, college football
Well, I will have to agree with you here!
and the charming tendency for professors who are good teachers to be lower on the pecking order than hot-shot reeearchers with lots of publications.
That is indeed the case at some large research institutions. Although I myself belong in the former group (or so I hope, because I definitely don't belong in the later), I understand why it is that way. It is easier to find a good teacher than an excellent researcher, and the later are therefore more valuable. Why shou
First: If I had an undergraduate student in an American college read a wikipedia article and reformulate it in their own words, I would consider that a success. As long as they cited the article as a source, I would not consider that cheating. It would mean that they actually read it, and thought about it and understood it enough to be able to reformulate it. Most students who try this, in my experience, end up writing nonsense, because they are trying to reformulate an article without understanding it, which is nearly impossible.
Second, there is, IMHO, one more reasons to limit resources. I often have students in lower level classes fussing that I don't let them use formula sheets on exams. I have two answers to them: first, I compare looking up formula to looking up a spelling of a word in a dictionary. It is a very important skill, everybody should be able to do that with words that you use only rarely. However, if you find yourself wrting a paper and having to look up every other word in a dictionary, something is clearly wrong. Either you some serious defficiency in the language, or you are writing a paper on a topic you know nothing about.
My second answer have to do with the fact that you almost never have to "memorize" a formula. What you should do is to understand a formula. Each formula is in fact a piece of theory, or a description of some properties of a mathematical object, simplified to an extreme. If you know the theory and understand how the formula derives from the theory, and what does it really say about the subject, you don't need to memorize it.
Yes, in "real life" you will most likely have a book or a website available where you can look up your formulas, and it is an important skill to be able to do that, but that's not what I want to test on most of my exams.
You are right that most of the books on the list were banned or challenged in the US at some point of time. What's strange is that sometimes they list things like "banned in Ireland", and for one book they even have "banned in Yugoslavia". That confuses me, because if they start adding books that were banned in former communist countries, they will end up with a huge list.
I guess the list has only books that were banned somewhere in US, but for some of them they also list some other countries where they were banned. The result is quite a mess.
I also find it rather ironic that 1984 was banned in some US town for being pro-communist, while it was banned in almost all communist countries for being anti-communist.
For instance "all text should be accessible". In other words whereever I can see some text in GNOME I should be able to copy & paste that text (using the standard selection methods and Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-Ins, Shift-Ins, menu items etc. etc.)
;) ? So what. They miss out, the rest of the world that does have one (i.e. the vast majority of us) gets to use it in the manner it was designed.
Yes, I agree, I struggle with this all the time - on Windows XP
Any application that displays a list should also allow me to save that list as a plain text file seperated by something like commas (anyone for CSV ?)
How would you trigger it? A shortcut? An item in the right click menu? IMHO this sort of stuff would soon clutter the menus to the point where they would become useless. Most users would probably be confused by a menu item offering them to save a list to a file. I think the idea is good, but it should be combined with the cut and paste operation. Selecting the list, or some items of the list, and cutting it should place the comma separated list in the clipboard. No need to open a "save file" dialog. If you happen to need the data in a separate file, just paste them in an editor window.
Any application that displays a list of files should allow me to double click on a file (or press "carriage return" or enter) and launch the default application associated with that file. Any application whatsoever.
Funny, that's not how it works on Windows, and probably for a good reason, too. If I am trying to for example open a file in Galeon, I get a list of files. If I double click one of them or select one of them and press enter, I expect it to open in Galeon, not in the default application for that file. What windows does, and IMHO it should be added to Gnome too, is to offer you an option to open the file from the right click menu. I would like to see that.
In exactly rhe same way I should always be able to select file(s) from that list and use copy & paste etc.
Interesting. I just tried that on Windows. I opend the "Open File" dialog in excel, selected a file, right clicked, selected "copy". It seemed to work. Then I tried to paste the file in an explorer window. Guess what, the "paste" option was grayed out!
Going back to my previous point I shuld also be able to save that file list in CSV format.
See my comment above. Besides, there are so many faster and easier ways of getting a CSV list of files.
Wherever there's a right mouse button menu this should also be available by pressing the right mouse button on the keyboard. Maybe a MAC keyboard doesn't have a "right mouse button" (don't kno never used n one
I don't have a Mac, but I really don't understand what you mean by "right mouse button on the keyboard". And what about the middle button?
On another note then for gods sake stop messing around with the right click menus. Using Nautilus you can select "paste" from the "edit" menu. But you can't right click in the file area and select "edit" > "paste" as doing so selects the nearest file to the cursor and removes ("greys out") the paste option.
I don't use Nautilus much, I cannot comment on this. What I would like to see would be an ability to paste arbitrary data into a directory window in a file manager, and have a new file containing that data created. Kind of like when you redirect stdout to a file.
Personalised, "intelligent" menus are simply crap. Look at Microsoft Office or XP hiding things away etc. If there's data on the clipboard that can be processed by the application then paste should be available. Hiding the option is simply dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
True. See above my experience with Windows.
Personally I use GNOME because I use Ubuntu but I find it so bloody hard to do anything productive due to it missing so many simple, easy to implement, features that it usually send me swearing back to Windows to get
As other people noted, this is also true with different versions of Word, actually the problem is even worse there. When I was in graduate school, I had a part time job working for a textbook publisher. We were supposed to use Word for everything, but we had a very strict short list of features we were allowed to use. I remember it said no automatic numbering, no numbered nor buleted lists, no page headers nor footers, etc. The reason was that the documents had to go to a number of people who had different versions of Word, and it had to work well for all of them. If we used some of the "prohibitted" features, some of the editors got complete garbage, not just small differences in linewrap and margins.
You see, theoretically, with a well designed document which uses things like paragraph styles etc correctly, it should not matter what the margins are, where the lines wrap, what is the line-spacing etc. For example changing the margins will change the line wrap, page breaks etc, it wil change the way the document looks, but it should still look perfectly fine, there should be absolutely no functionality lost. The problem with this is that I have never ever seen a well designed document created in Word. I have seen some close calls, but there was always some place where the author used line-breaks and tabs instead of properly formatted and indented paragraps, or something like that. It is just to damn hard to create a properly formatted document in Word, and to damn easy to take some quick shortcut, which works just fine until somebody opens the document in another (version of) wordprocessor, include the part of the document in another document, or change margins of font or something else.
I use home/end/pgup/pgdn all the time. Are there any replaces for them?
^/$/^B/^F
When I was a kid, my dad gave me my first camera for my birthday, and as a part of the present, he arranged a friend of his, who was a professional photographer, to give me lessons. One of the first things this guy told me was that in general you shoot about two or thre rolls of film in order to have one or two great pictures.
So you are right, the problem is not that too many pictures gat taken, the problem is that the photographer does not bother to go through them and select the good ones. Instead, they post everything and leave the job of selecting to the viewer. I took one look at the gallery, clicked on one picture, and left, because there is just too much crap to sort through.
I like to compare fractals to photography. A photographer takes a machine (camera) and uses his skill with the machine to take pictures of the real world. The pictures can be purely documentary (imagine technical documentation) or artistic, or anything in between.
A "fractalist" (for lack of any better term) uses a machine (computer) and his skill with the machine and his knowledge of math to take "pictures" of a purely mathematical world. Again, the pictures can range from purely documentary shots for a math textbook to art.
Of course, in both cases, the purely documentary shots can still be beautiful or interesting for a layman, and an artist can purposely explore this, therefore turning the documentary pictures into art.
When one writes a program that produces pictures, the software may itself be art, but the pictures it produces are not.
This is little bit like saying "when one prepares pigments and canvas, cleans brushes and so on to produce a painting, the pigments and canvas and brushes are art, the painting isn't".
Yes, but hopefully the democrat who lost will be thinking hard about the reasons people voted for a third party candidate rather than for him.
Actually, there are several small publishers (some of them doing ODP) that use some TeX macro package. LaTeX is probably not the most common one, as it was specifically designed for creating scientific articles and textbooks, but with liberal use of the memoir class and other tricks, you can produce quite decent publications with it. I think most of these publishers are either using ConTeXt, or have some homebrewed format.
About using LaTeX for all your needs, that's what I do. I only use OpenOffice.org if somebody sends me a word document I need to read.
I cannot agree more! As far as I know there is no single graphical email client that would give you the option to sort messages in a thread in a "latest first" order. You could easily do that years ago in mutt, you could easily do that in slrn, why can't you do that in evolution or thunderbird?
While we're at it, every "pagan" I've ever met follows a fairly recently concocted hodgepodge of dozens of individual, mutually contradictory bits of pre-Christian religions
Not that I have any sympathy for Wicca, but how is that different from Christianity?
I don't know much about transplants, but as far as your milk example goes, I am not sure it has anything to do with race. My wife, who is Chinese, drinks milk very often, and does not seem to have any trouble with it. I, on the other hand, don't like milk, I don't like the taste of it, and I suspect it makes me slightly sick, even though I drink it so rarely that I am not really able to tell. My mother, who is from central Europe, all her ancestors were born in central Europe, and is blond with blue eyes, cannot digest milk, and it makes her violently ill.