In Soviet America, the cops arrest YOU for not showing papers;-)
Here's where I get flamed to hell and back.
on
Skywalker Ranch Wines
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· Score: 2, Informative
Freedom wines, er sorry, French wines, are still undoubtedly the best. Don't believe me? Buy some in France. Don't confuse the stuff the French export as wine with the real stuff - the export is just the horrid crap they fob off on foreigners. But if you actually go to a shop in France[0], especially one of the caveaus in Nuits St. Georges or any village in a good wine producing region, you will find some top wine at pretty reasonable prices. Of course, you can pay through the nose for the excellent crus, but you can do that anywhere; the point is, even the 3 euros[1] table wine from the supermarket actually tastes good.
But the main thing in their favour is that, apparently unlike almost everywhere else, the French haven't forgotten how to make subtle wines.
[0] No, I don't mean "EastEnders" in Calais. That barely counts as France;-)
[1] Damn. Why has my keyboard stopped producing euro signs...
I used to think that. But occasionally mail worth reading does come from perfect strangers. For example, today I received an email from someone contributing to a project I used to contribute to. He joied after I stopped contributing, so I've never heard from him before, but it's still an interesting email.
Argh! There are enough StudlyCaps in the world already. Drake Linux would be okay, or Linuxdrake. Or Lindrake. Yes, I think that's my favourite: Manux Lindrake:-)
That's exactly what Linus does: there is such a series of release candidates (first introduced prior to 2.4). You can argue that it isn't long enough, but there's an obvious counterargument that if you wait forever nothing will ever get released. I can't think of a x.y.0 release of any software project that's been properly stable. It's not just linux, it's the way the world is. You could argue that software never ever becomes perfectly stable: marking a series as "stable" is really just shorthand for good enough that further development is largely maintenance, therefore we expect the structure and codebase to remain stable", not some guarantee that they'll never go wrong. It's more a development term than a performance or reliability term, though the stability of development generally arises from the performance and reliability being sufficient to obviate the need for large changes to the code.
Even quite late in stable kernel release cycles there's occasionally a shocker - anyone remember 2.0.33?
If you don't like those kernels, just stick with 2.4 until a distribution ships with 2.6.8 or so. For what it's worth 2.6.(1+) has been fine for me.
Nobody's lying to you - there has to be some cut-off where a kernel series is declared stable, and by and large I think Linus judges it pretty well.
You're correct, but what the RIAA is doing is more like lending someone $1, they say they can't pay, the RIAA sues for $100,000 and offers to settle for $1000. I still don't know whether it's enough to count as extortion but both $1000 and $100,000 are very out of proportion to the original $1. Moneylnding gangs who charge excessive interest rates are definitely open to charges of extortion; it does seem at least conceivable that the RIAA is in the same boat. They certainly are morally, even if not legally.
Surely he isn't saying that; rather, that an "ideal" GPL would have a clause where you could say "licensed under the GPL, but if you intend to contribute to this project your contributions have to be free of patent encumberment (ie patent-free or guaranteed to be free of license fees)". This, IMO, would be a Good Thing as it would prevent (say) a media player being contributed to by Sorenson, only for Sorenson to turn round a few years later and say "oh, by the way, all your base are belong to us in patent royalties for that code we submitted". Not that I'm suggesting Sorenson would do that, it's just an example. Extra restrictions in the GPL to counter that kind of thing would be quite welcome (AFAIAC). It doesn't impose additional restrictions, but it does mean that if patent-holders contribute they can't later hamstring the entire project.
ESR, for his rather myopic world-view where open source == god and closed source == bad, regardless of context, or Sun, for their unintentionally ironic response - they claim that ESR is so out of touch while still thinking that java is a healthy vibrant technology with an exciting future.
Is it just me, or does David Dawes sound like an entirely unsuitable person to be entrusted with the leadership of a big project like XFree? I have no idea how l33t a coder he is, and it doesn't really matter. To be a good leader of a project you need to have enormous regard for the stability of the development effort. Cases in point: Linux and GNU. The Linux development effort has changed very little since the early days (the biggest change I can remember was moving to BitKeeper). The license has remained the same; everyone knows what the score is and how to get things done. It works. GNU: everyone knows what license is used for GNU software. For many of the tools the development process seems a bit arcane (maybe I just don't know as much). But everything keeps running nicely. The only occasion I can remember was the gcc/egcs split a few years ago and that wasn't really due to instability in the development effort, rather due to a wish by some people to have a livelier development tree. Eventually all was merged back together and everything went merrily on its way. Again, stability.
Now consider XFree. Code can be licensed under one of several licenses; the whole kaboodle is also licensed under an additional license. This changes every so often, apparently without much notice or reason given. It's no wonder the distributions have finally had enough - now there are other X implementations approaching readiness I bet quite a few are getting ready to leave the sinking XFree ship. Now all we need is nVidia drivers for od.o...
In a few years Darl will be able to settle down in his comfortable one-person apartment (with en-suite bucket and bars on the windows), and begin work on his autobiography: "Lying lies and the SCO that tells them";-)
In between shaftings from Butch the lifer, of course.
Normal spam is bad enough but when politicians start mass-emailing videos they're going to find some serious invective in their inboxes. In fact, what with the bandwidth it would require I'd be surprised if they weren't blackholed extremely quickly.
I was really questioning whether they considered the durability part a good thing. If the media doesn't keep getting scratched and useless the customers won't have to buy replacements.
Save them from your current installation and transfer them to a Mdk10 installation? They're just fonts, after all - no reason I can think of why you couldn't just plug them into a later version of the distro.
Rubbish. It's very clear that isn't the case - applications (or, for that matter, libraries) that run on top of X but do not require a particular flavour of X to work are not considered derivative works. If they were, you couldn't run GPLed programs on any proprietary X server including MacOS, various commercial UNIXes, the commercial X servers that are available for Linux, etc. etc.
You could conceivably argue that a program was derivative if it required a feature present in XFree and only in XFree, but (certainly OTOH) I can't think of any such programs.
I see what you mean, but I suspect the trend is in the opposite direction - rather than buying a chip containing the complete works of Iron Maiden (say), people will become more likely to buy a (pre-encoded) single track by the band, along with various other single tracks they happen to like by other bands.
On the linked website it merely says "hard to copy". I suspect they mean "hard to make copies in the same medium" and are therefore planning to control the availability of the machines to create these ROMs.
Their proposed uses are all very well, but I think this could be even more significant for video. Even with their current versions you'd need 8 chips to hold the same amount as a DVD: it's likely that the capacity will increase pretty quickly once the technology settles down so there's no reason they shouldn't replace HD-DVDs even before the format gets established. The big advantage is that a video based around these could be built into a cartridge a bit like the old games console cartridges. With no exposed optical surface to get scratched, durability could be a lot better than optical discs. Also the readers would be far simpler electromechanically, leading to cheaper, more durable players.
Of course, whether the content-provision industries consider cheap, durable media and players a good thing is open to question...
Last time I checked radar operated at frequencies somewhere in the radio band. Trifoils warn of ionising radiation - ie alpha or beta particles or gamma rays (which have a very very different frequency to radar).
Sigh. I suspect this is the same source of confusion that leads people to believe mobile phone masts will turn them into mutants, or whatever.
Ah, OK. Is there any well-defined point at which it ceases to be a trade secret (on account of everyone and his dog having a copy[0])? Also, is it slashdot, the comment poster, or both, who is screwed?
I wonder whether Microsoft will stick to their new policy of only releasing security updates once a month if there is a big flood of such full-disclosure bug reports. In a way it's the worst of all worlds. Enough of the source code is available for the black hats to give it a good going-over, but not enough that users can patch their system and recompile.
Since it's less than 10% of the total, and slashdot never signed an NDA, doesn't it count as fair use? Or is there some kind of weird exception for code?
> what's wrong with Kerry following the party line? After all, he is hoping to represent that party...
Modded as flamebait but not intended as such - I'm genuinely curious (as an outsider) why it's thought to be a bad thing that someone who wishes to be a Democrat president actually adheres to Democratic policies. If anyone could post a more helpful response than negative moderation (which doesn't really explain anything) I'd be grateful.
Slashdot Mirror
You got it wrong though. I think you meant:
;-)
In Soviet America, the cops arrest YOU for not showing papers
Freedom wines, er sorry, French wines, are still undoubtedly the best. Don't believe me? Buy some in France. Don't confuse the stuff the French export as wine with the real stuff - the export is just the horrid crap they fob off on foreigners. But if you actually go to a shop in France[0], especially one of the caveaus in Nuits St. Georges or any village in a good wine producing region, you will find some top wine at pretty reasonable prices. Of course, you can pay through the nose for the excellent crus, but you can do that anywhere; the point is, even the 3 euros[1] table wine from the supermarket actually tastes good.
;-)
But the main thing in their favour is that, apparently unlike almost everywhere else, the French haven't forgotten how to make subtle wines.
[0] No, I don't mean "EastEnders" in Calais. That barely counts as France
[1] Damn. Why has my keyboard stopped producing euro signs...
I used to think that. But occasionally mail worth reading does come from perfect strangers. For example, today I received an email from someone contributing to a project I used to contribute to. He joied after I stopped contributing, so I've never heard from him before, but it's still an interesting email.
Argh! There are enough StudlyCaps in the world already. Drake Linux would be okay, or Linuxdrake. Or Lindrake. Yes, I think that's my favourite: Manux Lindrake :-)
That's exactly what Linus does: there is such a series of release candidates (first introduced prior to 2.4). You can argue that it isn't long enough, but there's an obvious counterargument that if you wait forever nothing will ever get released.
I can't think of a x.y.0 release of any software project that's been properly stable. It's not just linux, it's the way the world is. You could argue that software never ever becomes perfectly stable: marking a series as "stable" is really just shorthand for good enough that further development is largely maintenance, therefore we expect the structure and codebase to remain stable", not some guarantee that they'll never go wrong. It's more a development term than a performance or reliability term, though the stability of development generally arises from the performance and reliability being sufficient to obviate the need for large changes to the code.
Even quite late in stable kernel release cycles there's occasionally a shocker - anyone remember 2.0.33?
If you don't like those kernels, just stick with 2.4 until a distribution ships with 2.6.8 or so. For what it's worth 2.6.(1+) has been fine for me.
Nobody's lying to you - there has to be some cut-off where a kernel series is declared stable, and by and large I think Linus judges it pretty well.
You're correct, but what the RIAA is doing is more like lending someone $1, they say they can't pay, the RIAA sues for $100,000 and offers to settle for $1000. I still don't know whether it's enough to count as extortion but both $1000 and $100,000 are very out of proportion to the original $1. Moneylnding gangs who charge excessive interest rates are definitely open to charges of extortion; it does seem at least conceivable that the RIAA is in the same boat. They certainly are morally, even if not legally.
Surely he isn't saying that; rather, that an "ideal" GPL would have a clause where you could say "licensed under the GPL, but if you intend to contribute to this project your contributions have to be free of patent encumberment (ie patent-free or guaranteed to be free of license fees)". This, IMO, would be a Good Thing as it would prevent (say) a media player being contributed to by Sorenson, only for Sorenson to turn round a few years later and say "oh, by the way, all your base are belong to us in patent royalties for that code we submitted". Not that I'm suggesting Sorenson would do that, it's just an example. Extra restrictions in the GPL to counter that kind of thing would be quite welcome (AFAIAC). It doesn't impose additional restrictions, but it does mean that if patent-holders contribute they can't later hamstring the entire project.
ESR, for his rather myopic world-view where open source == god and closed source == bad, regardless of context, or Sun, for their unintentionally ironic response - they claim that ESR is so out of touch while still thinking that java is a healthy vibrant technology with an exciting future.
It's called _logging in_. Omitting it makes you look like an anonymous coward. Oh, wait...
Is it just me, or does David Dawes sound like an entirely unsuitable person to be entrusted with the leadership of a big project like XFree? I have no idea how l33t a coder he is, and it doesn't really matter. To be a good leader of a project you need to have enormous regard for the stability of the development effort. Cases in point: Linux and GNU. The Linux development effort has changed very little since the early days (the biggest change I can remember was moving to BitKeeper). The license has remained the same; everyone knows what the score is and how to get things done. It works. GNU: everyone knows what license is used for GNU software. For many of the tools the development process seems a bit arcane (maybe I just don't know as much). But everything keeps running nicely. The only occasion I can remember was the gcc/egcs split a few years ago and that wasn't really due to instability in the development effort, rather due to a wish by some people to have a livelier development tree. Eventually all was merged back together and everything went merrily on its way. Again, stability.
Now consider XFree. Code can be licensed under one of several licenses; the whole kaboodle is also licensed under an additional license. This changes every so often, apparently without much notice or reason given. It's no wonder the distributions have finally had enough - now there are other X implementations approaching readiness I bet quite a few are getting ready to leave the sinking XFree ship. Now all we need is nVidia drivers for od.o...
In a few years Darl will be able to settle down in his comfortable one-person apartment (with en-suite bucket and bars on the windows), and begin work on his autobiography: "Lying lies and the SCO that tells them" ;-)
In between shaftings from Butch the lifer, of course.
Normal spam is bad enough but when politicians start mass-emailing videos they're going to find some serious invective in their inboxes. In fact, what with the bandwidth it would require I'd be surprised if they weren't blackholed extremely quickly.
I was really questioning whether they considered the durability part a good thing. If the media doesn't keep getting scratched and useless the customers won't have to buy replacements.
Save them from your current installation and transfer them to a Mdk10 installation? They're just fonts, after all - no reason I can think of why you couldn't just plug them into a later version of the distro.
Rubbish. It's very clear that isn't the case - applications (or, for that matter, libraries) that run on top of X but do not require a particular flavour of X to work are not considered derivative works. If they were, you couldn't run GPLed programs on any proprietary X server including MacOS, various commercial UNIXes, the commercial X servers that are available for Linux, etc. etc.
You could conceivably argue that a program was derivative if it required a feature present in XFree and only in XFree, but (certainly OTOH) I can't think of any such programs.
I see what you mean, but I suspect the trend is in the opposite direction - rather than buying a chip containing the complete works of Iron Maiden (say), people will become more likely to buy a (pre-encoded) single track by the band, along with various other single tracks they happen to like by other bands.
On the linked website it merely says "hard to copy". I suspect they mean "hard to make copies in the same medium" and are therefore planning to control the availability of the machines to create these ROMs.
I take i you didn't read the article (or the article summary) where it says this is ROM - read-only memory. Doesn't sound too useful for iPods to me.
Their proposed uses are all very well, but I think this could be even more significant for video. Even with their current versions you'd need 8 chips to hold the same amount as a DVD: it's likely that the capacity will increase pretty quickly once the technology settles down so there's no reason they shouldn't replace HD-DVDs even before the format gets established. The big advantage is that a video based around these could be built into a cartridge a bit like the old games console cartridges. With no exposed optical surface to get scratched, durability could be a lot better than optical discs. Also the readers would be far simpler electromechanically, leading to cheaper, more durable players.
Of course, whether the content-provision industries consider cheap, durable media and players a good thing is open to question...
> darn it! are you saying that hugging this mobile phone mast won't give me super powers?
;-)
Fraid not. You need to find yourself a radioactive spider, or some kryptonite, for that
Last time I checked radar operated at frequencies somewhere in the radio band. Trifoils warn of ionising radiation - ie alpha or beta particles or gamma rays (which have a very very different frequency to radar).
Sigh. I suspect this is the same source of confusion that leads people to believe mobile phone masts will turn them into mutants, or whatever.
Ah, OK. Is there any well-defined point at which it ceases to be a trade secret (on account of everyone and his dog having a copy[0])?
Also, is it slashdot, the comment poster, or both, who is screwed?
[0] Note: I don't have a copy.
I wonder whether Microsoft will stick to their new policy of only releasing security updates once a month if there is a big flood of such full-disclosure bug reports. In a way it's the worst of all worlds. Enough of the source code is available for the black hats to give it a good going-over, but not enough that users can patch their system and recompile.
Since it's less than 10% of the total, and slashdot never signed an NDA, doesn't it count as fair use? Or is there some kind of weird exception for code?
> what's wrong with Kerry following the party line? After all, he is hoping to represent that party...
Modded as flamebait but not intended as such - I'm genuinely curious (as an outsider) why it's thought to be a bad thing that someone who wishes to be a Democrat president actually adheres to Democratic policies. If anyone could post a more helpful response than negative moderation (which doesn't really explain anything) I'd be grateful.