The usual complaint about BSD-style licenses is that companies can take the hard work of others and profit from that without benefiting the community who provided the source in the first place. They do allow you to lock NEW features away ; they let you add things to the code, and distribute software without offering that new code.
That's the reason that corporate types like BSD-style licenses ; it lets them use existing code as a springboard to build the next great thing with a reduced risk of others taking that ball and running with it. Of course, it means they can't do the same thing, so it's a double-edged sword.
Being shown the door over something so trivial, without any previous warnings? He wanted to downsize you, but didn't want to give you your severance pay. Or he's just a psychotic idiot.
Either way, just caving isn't helping yourself out, or your co-workers. If he was just looking to downsize you, he may well have backed down at this point. If not, he's basically being asked to be hauled in front of an industrial tribunal, which is what should happen, because he needs to know he's being an idiot, instead of bathing in a rosy glow the rest of the day thinking "I sure showed him!"
They don't need to be secret ; they just need to be complex and numerous. You and I probably already broke several laws today, without realising it. Unhappily for us, ignorance is not a defence.
A state that keeps it's law secret wouldn't be bothered about due process either - because they couldn't try these cases in the open, for fear of revealing these laws. At this point, you're just disappearing people you don't like, so you don't need laws, secret or otherwise. The one law becomes "don't piss off The Man".
Of course, there is a point where you just have the appearance of justice. Perhaps we're approaching it. Perhaps we've passed it.
Is it possible this guy was fired for trying to help prove something that would offend the religious beliefs of the supervisor - who may believe that we are alone in the universe because we were specially created by god?
'an educational institution... cannot support the search for E.T
Is this in the same vein as "An educational institution cannot support the teaching of evolution" ?
It doesn't actually explain why until you get 93% of the way through a 1272 line manual. And it's still pretty counter-intuitive.
I guess I may have missed it because I was desperately poring over the bit of the manual for the -prune predicate, trying to figure out why it was behaving the opposite way to what's expected.
I just routinely click on the "X" thing to remove every result from expert-sexchange from the list ; worse than useless, they clutter up otherwise potentially useful result lists. Perhaps if enough people do the same thing, their PageRank will suffer enough that they die.
Getting the detail you want out of a man page is often harder than finding the relevant bits on Google. And of course, man pages don't help you at all if you don't know which command you want to be using ; and let's face it, for a given task, there might be three ways of doing it.
I'm still a relative Linux novice despite having used it for some time now, but I'm a programmer and prepared to slog through documentation and web pages to get things going.
Example - the prune argument of find. I'll give a limited-edition photon to the first person who figures out the way to use the prune argument to produce a list of files that _doesn't_ match a particular path pattern, solely limiting themselves to the man page, without using Google.
find . -path '*/not-these' -prune # This does basically the opposite of what you'd expect it to.
Yes, I know how to do it NOW. Well, Google remembers which page I found most relevant for the search terms that eventually found the right way.
In a similar vein, I take the opposite view of corrective lenses ; I actually wear glasses that are the inverse of those an optician would prescribe. I noticed that my distance vision gets worse when I read screens and paper for long hours, so reasoning that this was the source of the problem I bought a pair of cheap pharmacy +1.0 reading glasses to wear while I work. This moves the apparent focal point of my screens further away and results in less deterioration of my distance vision.
The optician wanted to give me glasses to correct my distance vision. This wouldn't have made my problem any better and would probably eventually help it get worse. Of course, an optician has no incentive to reduce your need for glasses.
1) They want to track all vehicles in the EU. Galileo is designed to have much better performance in urban areas than GPS.
Proposals were on the UK Department for Transport website which detailed the desire to place a satellite positioning tracker with a cellular modem in every vehicle, by law, for the alleged purpose of "road pricing" ; charging for transit on key congested roads at certain times. Road pricing is horseshit because if having to drive on a congested road isn't sufficient deterrent to stop you doing it, then taxation isn't going to achieve it. You could also achieve the same goal much more cheaply with a mandatory active RFID numberplate and a pickup loop on these "key" roads, so Occams razor says that they want something that doesn't just track your use of certain roads.
2) Military reasons
Let's face it. Would you want your military dependant on a system that a culture of well known isolationists who live half a world away can switch off at their whim? Neither would I. Independance from US control is the second motivator.
I would be surprised if the set of people who really understand GPL and it's benefits has a significant intersect with the set of people who think it's just OK to copy anything anyhow.
But if you don't follow the GPL you are a horrible, horrible company, even worse than people that illegally download copyrighted materials.
Well, you are. Good code represents a much larger investment of time than music. By definition, you can only violate the GPL by distributing software without it's sources. I've got no problem with companies taking GPL code, making a derivative work, and using it in-house. Nothing compels them to release their changes back to the originating project, so they are not reciprocating, but the license allows this, and it's their right. Companies typically only start distributing software when they receive reciprocation from their customers in the form of money. At this point they are not just free-riding (which is what most "media pirates" are doing), they are actively engaged in profiting from the work of others, without living up to their side of the bargain. It's more like the guy who downloads DVD ISOs and sells burned copies in the local market, than the teenager who downloads tracks to fill his iPod.
Note that this is entirely permissible if they just offer to provide the sources under GPL - it doesn't prevent you charging whatever the hell you like, it only addresses availability of the sources.
There was a product designed to do this ; I think it had the existing polarised layer composed of 1-pixel wide vertical stripes of alternate polarization. I'm not sure how well it actually worked.
They're not the first in the UK to screen a show using this system ; Virgin 1 screened an episode of "Chuck" in this system. I tried to watch it using my red / cyan glasses without knowing this first. They included the glasses with one of our TV guide publication and Virgin 1 has much lower ratings than Channel 4 so I doubt many people saw it in 3D.
Channel 4 are having a major supermarket chain hand out the glasses free and are much more watched so it could gain some traction.
From what I can tell blue / orange is supposed to reduce the colour problems that red / cyan has by reducing the luminance in one eye a lot and using it effectively just for depth cues.
Take it a step further ; who can actually use that much data (again, with the exceptions). I see people whining on about being unable to use their 20Mbit/s connections at full speed 24/7 ; so let's try and extrapolate what they are using it for.
20Mbit/s 24/7 is 216GB per day.
Music? Even FLAC is only ~ 1.4 Mbit/s, so even if they have found an internet radio station founded by a generous billionaire who doesn't have to concern himself with his bandwidth charges, there's no way one domestic subscription needs to listen to 12 channels simultaneously.
Games? Most "big" games these days are around the 5GB ISO mark. I don't know anyone who could play 43 "Dragon Age" or "Mass Effects" per day. (and certainly no-one who could afford to pay for them).
Video? If it's raw DVD ISOs... 20. At about 90 minutes each, you'd have to double up some of the movies, and display a certain willingness to be catheterized and have your meals delivered by a nursemaid. Oh, and the benzamphetamines to stay awake so you could keep up would be pretty expensive.
Pr0n? Well, most people do skip through most of it, but then you lose interest after you get... excited. It's a subset of video, and again, you really have to try hard to consume 20Mbit/s constantly watching it. And I think the catheter would chafe.
Text? You can download the entire Project Gutenberg archive in less than 2 days.
Software? The chunkiest meatiest Linux distributions are still a single-layer DVD ISO, 4.7GB. Oracle 11g is ~2.5GB. The entire MSDN reference is 2GB.
Combine all this with the necessity to sleep, work, and eat, and it becomes even more incredible. I'd actually like to see the figures for how much data the media industry actually releases in terms of DVD and CD each day ; and I'm willing to bet it's not an order of magnitude different from about 200GB a day.
Slashdot Mirror
"Geek" already seems to be a more honourable badge. "Nerd", on the other hand, will always rhyme with "turd".
I like to prepend the initial for Microsoft and make it "MOO-XML". Memorable.
GPL doesn't stop you making money.
The usual complaint about BSD-style licenses is that companies can take the hard work of others and profit from that without benefiting the community who provided the source in the first place. They do allow you to lock NEW features away ; they let you add things to the code, and distribute software without offering that new code.
That's the reason that corporate types like BSD-style licenses ; it lets them use existing code as a springboard to build the next great thing with a reduced risk of others taking that ball and running with it. Of course, it means they can't do the same thing, so it's a double-edged sword.
contracting some politically tied corporation to manufacture umbrellas
Hopefully, not The Umbrella Corporation
I would have insisted that he fire me.
Being shown the door over something so trivial, without any previous warnings? He wanted to downsize you, but didn't want to give you your severance pay. Or he's just a psychotic idiot.
Either way, just caving isn't helping yourself out, or your co-workers. If he was just looking to downsize you, he may well have backed down at this point. If not, he's basically being asked to be hauled in front of an industrial tribunal, which is what should happen, because he needs to know he's being an idiot, instead of bathing in a rosy glow the rest of the day thinking "I sure showed him!"
They don't need to be secret ; they just need to be complex and numerous. You and I probably already broke several laws today, without realising it. Unhappily for us, ignorance is not a defence.
A state that keeps it's law secret wouldn't be bothered about due process either - because they couldn't try these cases in the open, for fear of revealing these laws. At this point, you're just disappearing people you don't like, so you don't need laws, secret or otherwise. The one law becomes "don't piss off The Man".
Of course, there is a point where you just have the appearance of justice. Perhaps we're approaching it. Perhaps we've passed it.
Is it possible this guy was fired for trying to help prove something that would offend the religious beliefs of the supervisor - who may believe that we are alone in the universe because we were specially created by god?
'an educational institution ... cannot support the search for E.T
Is this in the same vein as "An educational institution cannot support the teaching of evolution" ?
The knarly bit is the "-o -print".
It doesn't actually explain why until you get 93% of the way through a 1272 line manual. And it's still pretty counter-intuitive.
I guess I may have missed it because I was desperately poring over the bit of the manual for the -prune predicate, trying to figure out why it was behaving the opposite way to what's expected.
I just routinely click on the "X" thing to remove every result from expert-sexchange from the list ; worse than useless, they clutter up otherwise potentially useful result lists. Perhaps if enough people do the same thing, their PageRank will suffer enough that they die.
Getting the detail you want out of a man page is often harder than finding the relevant bits on Google. And of course, man pages don't help you at all if you don't know which command you want to be using ; and let's face it, for a given task, there might be three ways of doing it.
I'm still a relative Linux novice despite having used it for some time now, but I'm a programmer and prepared to slog through documentation and web pages to get things going.
Example - the prune argument of find. I'll give a limited-edition photon to the first person who figures out the way to use the prune argument to produce a list of files that _doesn't_ match a particular path pattern, solely limiting themselves to the man page, without using Google.
find . -path '*/not-these' -prune # This does basically the opposite of what you'd expect it to.
Yes, I know how to do it NOW. Well, Google remembers which page I found most relevant for the search terms that eventually found the right way.
In a similar vein, I take the opposite view of corrective lenses ; I actually wear glasses that are the inverse of those an optician would prescribe. I noticed that my distance vision gets worse when I read screens and paper for long hours, so reasoning that this was the source of the problem I bought a pair of cheap pharmacy +1.0 reading glasses to wear while I work. This moves the apparent focal point of my screens further away and results in less deterioration of my distance vision.
The optician wanted to give me glasses to correct my distance vision. This wouldn't have made my problem any better and would probably eventually help it get worse. Of course, an optician has no incentive to reduce your need for glasses.
They use CorelDRAW and Maya.
There is only One True CSV (character separated value) format.
One separator. One escape char. One record end char. None of the ridiculous rules about quoting.
At first I thought you meant we needed another effigy to burn, and thought that Sith Lord Mandy would probably make a good candidate.
If it's personal use, anyone who should be installing software will already have root.
Pah, by 2013 you'll be able to buy plutonium in any corner drugstore.
They are getting funding from the government.
1) They want to track all vehicles in the EU. Galileo is designed to have much better performance in urban areas than GPS.
Proposals were on the UK Department for Transport website which detailed the desire to place a satellite positioning tracker with a cellular modem in every vehicle, by law, for the alleged purpose of "road pricing" ; charging for transit on key congested roads at certain times. Road pricing is horseshit because if having to drive on a congested road isn't sufficient deterrent to stop you doing it, then taxation isn't going to achieve it. You could also achieve the same goal much more cheaply with a mandatory active RFID numberplate and a pickup loop on these "key" roads, so Occams razor says that they want something that doesn't just track your use of certain roads.
2) Military reasons
Let's face it. Would you want your military dependant on a system that a culture of well known isolationists who live half a world away can switch off at their whim? Neither would I. Independance from US control is the second motivator.
Recycling and clean manufacturing processes will become economically viable because the energy to do it will be cheap.
Planting in the desert will become economically viable because the energy to desalinate water will be cheap.
People will fight fewer wars over geographically concentrated energy resources.
Wealthy people reproduce less than poor ones, so population growth will be slowed or even reversed.
Cheap clean energy will save the planet.
I would be surprised if the set of people who really understand GPL and it's benefits has a significant intersect with the set of people who think it's just OK to copy anything anyhow.
But if you don't follow the GPL you are a horrible, horrible company, even worse than people that illegally download copyrighted materials.
Well, you are. Good code represents a much larger investment of time than music. By definition, you can only violate the GPL by distributing software without it's sources. I've got no problem with companies taking GPL code, making a derivative work, and using it in-house. Nothing compels them to release their changes back to the originating project, so they are not reciprocating, but the license allows this, and it's their right. Companies typically only start distributing software when they receive reciprocation from their customers in the form of money. At this point they are not just free-riding (which is what most "media pirates" are doing), they are actively engaged in profiting from the work of others, without living up to their side of the bargain. It's more like the guy who downloads DVD ISOs and sells burned copies in the local market, than the teenager who downloads tracks to fill his iPod.
Note that this is entirely permissible if they just offer to provide the sources under GPL - it doesn't prevent you charging whatever the hell you like, it only addresses availability of the sources.
There was a product designed to do this ; I think it had the existing polarised layer composed of 1-pixel wide vertical stripes of alternate polarization. I'm not sure how well it actually worked.
Not those of us with wives that have enormous emotional investments in their collection of Jane Austen movies...
They're not the first in the UK to screen a show using this system ; Virgin 1 screened an episode of "Chuck" in this system. I tried to watch it using my red / cyan glasses without knowing this first. They included the glasses with one of our TV guide publication and Virgin 1 has much lower ratings than Channel 4 so I doubt many people saw it in 3D.
Channel 4 are having a major supermarket chain hand out the glasses free and are much more watched so it could gain some traction.
From what I can tell blue / orange is supposed to reduce the colour problems that red / cyan has by reducing the luminance in one eye a lot and using it effectively just for depth cues.
Take it a step further ; who can actually use that much data (again, with the exceptions). I see people whining on about being unable to use their 20Mbit/s connections at full speed 24/7 ; so let's try and extrapolate what they are using it for.
20Mbit/s 24/7 is 216GB per day.
Music? Even FLAC is only ~ 1.4 Mbit/s, so even if they have found an internet radio station founded by a generous billionaire who doesn't have to concern himself with his bandwidth charges, there's no way one domestic subscription needs to listen to 12 channels simultaneously.
Games? Most "big" games these days are around the 5GB ISO mark. I don't know anyone who could play 43 "Dragon Age" or "Mass Effects" per day. (and certainly no-one who could afford to pay for them).
Video? If it's raw DVD ISOs... 20. At about 90 minutes each, you'd have to double up some of the movies, and display a certain willingness to be catheterized and have your meals delivered by a nursemaid. Oh, and the benzamphetamines to stay awake so you could keep up would be pretty expensive.
Pr0n? Well, most people do skip through most of it, but then you lose interest after you get ... excited. It's a subset of video, and again, you really have to try hard to consume 20Mbit/s constantly watching it. And I think the catheter would chafe.
Text? You can download the entire Project Gutenberg archive in less than 2 days.
Software? The chunkiest meatiest Linux distributions are still a single-layer DVD ISO, 4.7GB. Oracle 11g is ~2.5GB. The entire MSDN reference is 2GB.
Combine all this with the necessity to sleep, work, and eat, and it becomes even more incredible. I'd actually like to see the figures for how much data the media industry actually releases in terms of DVD and CD each day ; and I'm willing to bet it's not an order of magnitude different from about 200GB a day.
Hmm, I correct myself ; FilmFour just picked up the distribution rights for the UK.
Both 28 Days Later and Resident Evil were made respectively by a UK director (in the UK), and by a UK company (FilmFour)....