I don't contest that much of StudiVZ was copied off Facebook. However, I doubt that the name claim goes very far. "Facebook" is not a synonym for "student directory", it is a specific instance of a student directory. And even if "facebook" were a synonym for "student directory" that still would not give Facebook an automatic claim to any term that describes student directories. "StudiVZ" is a very distinct name that is unlikely to be confused with "Facebook", especially not by the intended audience.
It's also unlikely that someone will think "hey, 'StudiVZ' means 'Studentenverzeichnis', which is the same as a 'facebook'" as StudiVZ operates in Germany where - surprise - everyone speaks German and simply doesn't encounter the term "facebook" anywhere escept the name of the social networking site.
Again, I don't contest Facebook's case per se but I do contest the claim that the name was ripped off. "Studentenverzeichnis" is a rather obvious name choice for a student directory and a contraction that makes it both easier to type and is a non-generic term is the obvious next step. Facebook didn't come up with the term "student directory" so I fail to see why they should get exclusive rights to the term and any derived terms.
Adding datamining is a copy and paste operation, which they've plainly already mastered:
I'm not talking about some function they offer; I'm taking about ridiculously bad security. Last semester one of the members of my student project wrote a little crawler during the lunch breaks that would crawl StudiVZ and extract the personal data of as many users as possible for future application in spam mails. It took him what, two weeks? While he was eating and chatting with the rest of us. (We could finally talk him out of spamming, however. Now he wants to use the data for targetted advertising.)
StudiVZ is simply badly written. If the same applies to Facebook I can see the ripoff, but I haven't heard much about Facebook being extensively mined against their own will so far.
I have never heard the word "Gesichtsbuch" (indeed a neologism in German) and it would certainly not be translated into "Studentenverzeichnis" (not a neologism). A Verzeichnis is a directory, something you can search through to get current information on something. A yearbook serves a different purpose and wouldn't be called a Verzeichnis. The proper term here would indeed be Jahrbuch.
IAAGUS (I Am A German University Student).
Oh, and don't forget that it's difficult to claim rights to generic terms. The site is called "StudiVZ" because "Studentenverzeichnis" is generic enough to be difficult to defend. So even if "Facebook" translated into "Studentenverzeichnis" Facebook would have a hard time claiming that their name was ripped off because a) it's a generic term used by lots of people (a quick google shows the sites FriendScout24, CampusNet.de, StudentenNet.de, pruefungsgeil.de, LINKSILO.DE and LinkARENA.com all using the term - and that's just the first page) and b) the site's name is different; even though it's a contraction of the term it is quite different.
I don't think that they reuse the code. Facebook doesn't have nearly as bad a reputation as StudiVZ, which is a data mining goldmine. If you submit ANY data to the website you can be sure that someone can extract it from their database with minimal effort.
Anyone using "focus follows mouse" with or without "auto raise" solved that problem long ago. We're just waiting for everyone else to catch up.;-)
I was actually thinking of non-touch typists and gamers there. Imagine your character doing a funny little dance every time you look at the corner of the screen to check the radar for enemies (which would also be a bit more difficult while you're doing a Top Man imitation).
But don't make up bogus arguments to justify that.
Such as? The advantages of the Allman style I enumerated were explicitly stated as applying to me. Of course you can claim to know better than me how my brain works but that would be rather far-fetched, as would be claiming that all code blocks are always indented sensibly all the time everywhere.
It might be that 1TBS has more advantages if you consider a completely average coder but my very point is that not everyone is average and thus not all advantages/disadvantages apply for everyone.
The mouse will take the back seat - as soon as we have 99% reliable 99.9% accurate eye/thought tracking. Probably the latter; eye tracking requires you to look all over the place instead of straight into the monitor and punishes you for looking somewhere without wanting to point there.
So all we need is reliable, cheap, unobstrusive brainwave detection within the next few years to make that prediction come true. Oh, and I'd like a pony while we're at it.
I really think that source control systems should have client side hooks. That way you could run ident autmaticaly on every commit and update, and decouple your style from the team's.
If Eclipse was either scriptable or could be called from the shell to indent a file, a simple script would do nicely. Actually, if it isn't possible to do this in Eclipse: Why so?
s/debugging/rewriting from scratch/. PHTML is usually about as readable and maintainable as code that emulates any kind of control structure through GOTO. Even less, probably.
I was always under the impression that whatever the coder groks best is the most efficient style. People think differently and thus prefer different code styles.
I think that having the opening brace on one line makes the block easier to identify as the conditional/method name/etc. looks similar to code; as my parse speed sometimes lags behing my reading speed I might overlook the beginning of an oddly-indented block. The additional linebreak is no problem because modern mice have scroll wheels and keeping long methods in mind is what short-term memory is for. That works well for me, but I have better short-term memory than most people.
For you, keeping as much memory free as possible is more important than being able to identify a block without having to parse a line. Fine for you, but not universally superior.
Most of these holy wars continue only because people forget that not everyone is the same and different people have different requirements. As in most cases there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
Remember that the War on Drugs was effectively started by a bunch of lobbies who feared that hemp would put them out of business. Everyone profited: The government (or rather certain parts of it) received funding from the lobbies and the lobbies received safety from competition.
So yeah, while for certain drugs legalization and regulation could have a positive effect on society and the country's finances, that's not going to happen because harsh bans have a net positive effect on the lawmakers' bank accounts. Same as it has always been, same as it always will.
I don't know where you draw that connection from-- wait a second, my download just finished.mmmmm;;;;M,;;;;;;;;M,,,,,,,,,, M,m;;;;;;;;;;;;mmmmm;NBnnnnnnnnnnnnnn;;;;;;;;MB;;;;;;Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnbn,nMMMM,mnb;N,Nbbbbbbbbbbnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn;Mnmmmmmmmmmmmm,nmbN;
Atleast in this country, LAW goes over EULA anytime. EULA says you cannot lend your DVD to friends but LAW says that it's your right as a consumer, that EULA is useless. That is, atleast in Finland.
Even better in Germany. Most forms of EULA are unenfocable over here because the unilaterally restrict the customers rights without even being valid contracts (if they weren't the restriction wouldn't be unilateral, of course). As a result "a license to use the game according to the terms of the EULA" essentially translates into "a license to use the game".
It is, though, not sure whether no-CD cracks are legal in Germany - the circumvention of "effective technical copy protection measures" is illegal ( 95a UrhG), but that paragraph is explicitly not applied to software ( 69a.5 UrhG). Also, the creation of such cracks is perfectly fine; decompiling legally acquired software in order to create interoperability is explicitly allowed ( 69e UrhG). Following that logic, it might* be fine to apply a no-CD crack if the copy protection renders the game unplayable on your system (see Bioshock). And, of course, people still aren't really sure what makes a technical copy protection measure effective.
IANAL, but the paragraphs I referred to are refreshingly easy to understand.
* Giving your crack to someone else is illegal - except if he needs it to create interoperability on his system ( 69e.2.2 UrhG). I can't find anything on acquiring a crack.
I second the notion of filtering out Idle. However, I'd also like to see this filtering apply to the RSS feed. I rely on RSS to get the story list and it'd be nice if I could customize that as well. Maybe give the feed page a UID parameer. No need for passwords/cookies/etc.; which Slashdot sections I want filtered is hardly compromising personal information.
Or you put the filter right into the feed URL - http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot?filter=idle would return a feed for all sections except Idle, for example. Quick and easy to implement.
No, it's a badly written keypress handler. Keypress handlers can intercept keypresses and suppress the Firefox search function (it's an arcane hack called return false). You can even selectively let keypresses through if the user is in a text field. You just have to code it (and, admittedly, jump through hoops to get it to work everywhere).
I would *love* to have the minimal interface to finally lose the curvy button edges [...]
Actualy, why buttons at all? The old text links worked just fine. (Then again, having text links in one mode and buttons in another might break the Slashdotter Firefox extension again and I'm kind of reliant on that one.)
We got a new and controversial discussion interface. Oh, and we once exceeded the database limit on post IDs, so they had to change the table structure. Don't know if that helps you.
It's hard to legislate creativity. You can't say "oh, now is an inconvenient time to be inspires; I'll have that idea next week instead". When inspiration hits you you immediately sit down and work with it or you lose it. Whedon most likely got hit by an inspiration during the strike and he sat down and worked it into a concept.
Yes, I get hit by inspiration often. If my ideas weren't so random and I had a bit more perseverance I'd have published at least three books by now.
I know that in some cases it's because of copyright issues - the website might not have redistribution rights for all countries, which could put them or their visitors in legal trouble if someone from the wrong country downloaded something. Given how ludicrously rabid the content industry is at the moment I'd sure as hell lock out 50% of my visitors to avoid a potential lawsuit.
Of course in this case it appears that the "no streaming outside the US" is a blanket policy of the streaming service and they are in talks about it (as they appear to have the rights).
Slashdot Mirror
I don't contest that much of StudiVZ was copied off Facebook. However, I doubt that the name claim goes very far. "Facebook" is not a synonym for "student directory", it is a specific instance of a student directory. And even if "facebook" were a synonym for "student directory" that still would not give Facebook an automatic claim to any term that describes student directories. "StudiVZ" is a very distinct name that is unlikely to be confused with "Facebook", especially not by the intended audience.
It's also unlikely that someone will think "hey, 'StudiVZ' means 'Studentenverzeichnis', which is the same as a 'facebook'" as StudiVZ operates in Germany where - surprise - everyone speaks German and simply doesn't encounter the term "facebook" anywhere escept the name of the social networking site.
Again, I don't contest Facebook's case per se but I do contest the claim that the name was ripped off. "Studentenverzeichnis" is a rather obvious name choice for a student directory and a contraction that makes it both easier to type and is a non-generic term is the obvious next step. Facebook didn't come up with the term "student directory" so I fail to see why they should get exclusive rights to the term and any derived terms.
I'm not talking about some function they offer; I'm taking about ridiculously bad security. Last semester one of the members of my student project wrote a little crawler during the lunch breaks that would crawl StudiVZ and extract the personal data of as many users as possible for future application in spam mails. It took him what, two weeks? While he was eating and chatting with the rest of us. (We could finally talk him out of spamming, however. Now he wants to use the data for targetted advertising.)
StudiVZ is simply badly written. If the same applies to Facebook I can see the ripoff, but I haven't heard much about Facebook being extensively mined against their own will so far.
I have never heard the word "Gesichtsbuch" (indeed a neologism in German) and it would certainly not be translated into "Studentenverzeichnis" (not a neologism). A Verzeichnis is a directory, something you can search through to get current information on something. A yearbook serves a different purpose and wouldn't be called a Verzeichnis. The proper term here would indeed be Jahrbuch.
IAAGUS (I Am A German University Student).
Oh, and don't forget that it's difficult to claim rights to generic terms. The site is called "StudiVZ" because "Studentenverzeichnis" is generic enough to be difficult to defend. So even if "Facebook" translated into "Studentenverzeichnis" Facebook would have a hard time claiming that their name was ripped off because a) it's a generic term used by lots of people (a quick google shows the sites FriendScout24, CampusNet.de, StudentenNet.de, pruefungsgeil.de, LINKSILO.DE and LinkARENA.com all using the term - and that's just the first page) and b) the site's name is different; even though it's a contraction of the term it is quite different.
I don't think that they reuse the code. Facebook doesn't have nearly as bad a reputation as StudiVZ, which is a data mining goldmine. If you submit ANY data to the website you can be sure that someone can extract it from their database with minimal effort.
I was actually thinking of non-touch typists and gamers there. Imagine your character doing a funny little dance every time you look at the corner of the screen to check the radar for enemies (which would also be a bit more difficult while you're doing a Top Man imitation).
Such as? The advantages of the Allman style I enumerated were explicitly stated as applying to me. Of course you can claim to know better than me how my brain works but that would be rather far-fetched, as would be claiming that all code blocks are always indented sensibly all the time everywhere.
It might be that 1TBS has more advantages if you consider a completely average coder but my very point is that not everyone is average and thus not all advantages/disadvantages apply for everyone.
The mouse will take the back seat - as soon as we have 99% reliable 99.9% accurate eye/thought tracking. Probably the latter; eye tracking requires you to look all over the place instead of straight into the monitor and punishes you for looking somewhere without wanting to point there.
So all we need is reliable, cheap, unobstrusive brainwave detection within the next few years to make that prediction come true. Oh, and I'd like a pony while we're at it.
If Eclipse was either scriptable or could be called from the shell to indent a file, a simple script would do nicely. Actually, if it isn't possible to do this in Eclipse: Why so?
s/debugging/rewriting from scratch/. PHTML is usually about as readable and maintainable as code that emulates any kind of control structure through GOTO. Even less, probably.
Funny? Insightful! Python is the language I would love to like.
I was always under the impression that whatever the coder groks best is the most efficient style. People think differently and thus prefer different code styles.
I think that having the opening brace on one line makes the block easier to identify as the conditional/method name/etc. looks similar to code; as my parse speed sometimes lags behing my reading speed I might overlook the beginning of an oddly-indented block. The additional linebreak is no problem because modern mice have scroll wheels and keeping long methods in mind is what short-term memory is for. That works well for me, but I have better short-term memory than most people.
For you, keeping as much memory free as possible is more important than being able to identify a block without having to parse a line. Fine for you, but not universally superior.
Most of these holy wars continue only because people forget that not everyone is the same and different people have different requirements. As in most cases there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
Remember that the War on Drugs was effectively started by a bunch of lobbies who feared that hemp would put them out of business. Everyone profited: The government (or rather certain parts of it) received funding from the lobbies and the lobbies received safety from competition.
So yeah, while for certain drugs legalization and regulation could have a positive effect on society and the country's finances, that's not going to happen because harsh bans have a net positive effect on the lawmakers' bank accounts. Same as it has always been, same as it always will.
I don't know where you draw that connection from-- wait a second, my download just finished.mmmmm;;;;M,;;;;;;;;M,,,,,,,,,, M,m;;;;;;;;;;;;mmmmm;NBnnnnnnnnnnnnnn;;;;;;;;MB;;;;;;Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnbn,nMMMM,mnb;N,Nbbbbbbbbbbnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn;Mnmmmmmmmmmmmm,nmbN;
Okay, okay. "I used to be perfectly happy to pay more for unencumbered songs back when they actually cost more than the DRM'd versions." Better? ;)
Even better in Germany. Most forms of EULA are unenfocable over here because the unilaterally restrict the customers rights without even being valid contracts (if they weren't the restriction wouldn't be unilateral, of course). As a result "a license to use the game according to the terms of the EULA" essentially translates into "a license to use the game".
It is, though, not sure whether no-CD cracks are legal in Germany - the circumvention of "effective technical copy protection measures" is illegal ( 95a UrhG), but that paragraph is explicitly not applied to software ( 69a.5 UrhG). Also, the creation of such cracks is perfectly fine; decompiling legally acquired software in order to create interoperability is explicitly allowed ( 69e UrhG). Following that logic, it might* be fine to apply a no-CD crack if the copy protection renders the game unplayable on your system (see Bioshock). And, of course, people still aren't really sure what makes a technical copy protection measure effective.
IANAL, but the paragraphs I referred to are refreshingly easy to understand.
* Giving your crack to someone else is illegal - except if he needs it to create interoperability on his system ( 69e.2.2 UrhG). I can't find anything on acquiring a crack.
See "iTunes Plus". I'm perfectly happy to pay more to get unencumbered audio files.
That's configurable now? Can CmdrTacos sexual preference be set on a per-user basis? Does this apply to other people as well?
I wish more online communities had the sexual preferences of the staff as a per-user preference.
I second the notion of filtering out Idle. However, I'd also like to see this filtering apply to the RSS feed. I rely on RSS to get the story list and it'd be nice if I could customize that as well. Maybe give the feed page a UID parameer. No need for passwords/cookies/etc.; which Slashdot sections I want filtered is hardly compromising personal information.
Or you put the filter right into the feed URL - http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot?filter=idle would return a feed for all sections except Idle, for example. Quick and easy to implement.
No, it's a badly written keypress handler. Keypress handlers can intercept keypresses and suppress the Firefox search function (it's an arcane hack called return false). You can even selectively let keypresses through if the user is in a text field. You just have to code it (and, admittedly, jump through hoops to get it to work everywhere).
Yeah, right. I'm not stupid enough to click on some article link just because they tell me to; I only read the summary. Take that, Slashdot editors!
Actualy, why buttons at all? The old text links worked just fine. (Then again, having text links in one mode and buttons in another might break the Slashdotter Firefox extension again and I'm kind of reliant on that one.)
We got a new and controversial discussion interface. Oh, and we once exceeded the database limit on post IDs, so they had to change the table structure. Don't know if that helps you.
It's hard to legislate creativity. You can't say "oh, now is an inconvenient time to be inspires; I'll have that idea next week instead". When inspiration hits you you immediately sit down and work with it or you lose it. Whedon most likely got hit by an inspiration during the strike and he sat down and worked it into a concept.
Yes, I get hit by inspiration often. If my ideas weren't so random and I had a bit more perseverance I'd have published at least three books by now.
I know that in some cases it's because of copyright issues - the website might not have redistribution rights for all countries, which could put them or their visitors in legal trouble if someone from the wrong country downloaded something. Given how ludicrously rabid the content industry is at the moment I'd sure as hell lock out 50% of my visitors to avoid a potential lawsuit.
Of course in this case it appears that the "no streaming outside the US" is a blanket policy of the streaming service and they are in talks about it (as they appear to have the rights).
Ooo-eee-ooo-ah-ah? I sure hope Whedon's musical show has better than that to offer!