The "an ye redistribute none, do what ye will" clause has always been the loss leader of the GPL. Given that the web apps you describe are just an extension of standard web browsers, I can't see any way to enforce things more strongly without pissing off a lot of people.
There most certainly is. For example, if you take OOo and serve it up as a web page, shouldn't you be required to release the changes you've made to it?
If I understand what you're saying, your suggestion is that the right to view the code should be attached to the viewing of the web page generated by the code. I feel that I should point out the logical extension of this, which is that anyone who compiles something with GCC would then have a responsibility to provide GCC source code to whoever used the resulting compiled program. Which would be a decidedly odd requirement. My mum uses OOo to produce documents and presentations. If I told her she had to be ready to provide source code to her clients, she'd switch back to MSOffice in a blink.
The Microsoft EULA has certain provisions, such as the refund, that imply a contract between the licensor and licensee. If MS refuses to live up to its requirements under said document, I can't see how the licensee could be expected to live up to theirs. I imagine that the product would default back to canonical copyright rules of "copy this and die".
If so, that would cut through 95% of the crap in the license.
As I understand it, EULAs that offer concessions such as "we will refund your cash" fall partially under contract law. As such, once the contract is broken (for example by a refund not being provided) surely all bets are off.
The GPL is a pure license, so doesn't have this sort of worry.
So the guy buys this laptop. However, at this point in time he hasn't accepted the Microsoft EULA for the operating system. This EULA specifically states: "YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS EULA BY INSTALLING, COPYING, OR OTHERWISE USING THE PRODUCT. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE, DO NOT INSTALL OR USE THE PRODUCT; YOU MAY RETURN IT TO YOUR PLACE OF PURCHASE FOR A FULL REFUND."
If he hasn't agreed, he can return it for a full refund. If no-one is willing to give him a refund then Microsoft is in breach of its own license.
OT: if MS has breached its requirements to a person, is that person then justified in breaching his/her requirements? For example, the one about not decompiling. Just a thought.
Most stuff taught in schools is dumbed down to the extent that it's at least 40% complete bull. This is generally quite an effective teaching technique and only becomes an issue when there's a bunch of religious types of varying degrees of education with a vested interest in picking holes in said stuff.
Philosophically speaking, the situation you've just described would imply that your work is Free Software (as in freedom) not Open Source. Free Software is based on the idea that you should be able to see how your programs work (a political movement); Open Source is based on the idea that the more eyes you get looking at something the better (a development model).
Because, of course, in the UK we have no fair use! That's right. The consumer has absolutely no rights to prevent greedy monopolies ripping them off. Which they do with great abandon - ever heard of Ripoff Britain?
And then they wonder why filesharing numbers go through the roof... Not that I'm bitter or anything.
The "twice as long" bit was if you allow them to leak power at a constant rate. The "half as long" bit was basically what happens if you short-circuit them.
If these new batteries deliver approx. 4 times as much power when short-circuited then they will use up twice a standard battery's energy in approx. half the time (give or take my complete failure to do the math properly).
As a maths degree student I can confirm that a very large portion of mathematics is devoted to finding new metaphors and angles of attack for a given situation.
This takes a ridiculous amount of pattern recognition skill (which is one area where computers tend to be outperformed by all comers) and the ability to find new ways to abstract data. A computer could possibly come up with an idea like more-than-3-dimensional space on its own, but I'd be very surprised if even the best one could think of something like topology or tensors on its own.
Production of unusual metaphors for things we thought we knew is a major driving force for the most important mathematical developments. It's not something I can see computers managing at any time in the near future.
Thank you thank you thank you
on
CherryOS On Hold
·
· Score: 0, Troll
I've been trying to get this habit of thought into people's heads for ages - glad to see it's not just me.
I don't know about anyone else, and it could just be cos I go to a rather high-pressure university, but I'm completely drained by the end of term. I'm about to hit 4 or so weeks of holiday and will need every last one for a) rest and recuperation, b) catching up on work and c) getting ready for the next term's worth of stress in the form of exam season.
I get your point, and I think it's an interesting one. But be careful about encouraging students to move quickly into the world of work for the sake of it. It is perfectly possible to burn out at this age.
The spammers are genuinely breaking the law here, and in a generally unpleasant way. The only possible legal justification I can think of for breaking Oklahoma state law is that they didn't know Mumma lived in Oklahoma (email addresses being relatively hard to pinpoint), but that defence ended when he rang up and told them to stop.
Spam is a classic case of the few playing silly buggers with the many, and the spammers are being called on this. I think it's deserved.
For the record, I'm a linux man myself. Unfortunately, it's apparently not for everyone - the only non-techie person I know who uses it is only doing so cos XP won't install and everyone who has a clue is refusing to help him. One too many cracks about "linux-loving geeks", iirc...
Security is, for me, one of the major reasons for installing Firefox. As a resident of a decent-sized campus type university, I regularly find myself doing tech support for friends' spyware-encrusted computers. That's why I carry the CD of Doom at all times.
Currently it includes Firefox, Zone Alarm (freebie version), Spyware S&D and AdAware. Wipes out 95% of spyware and prevents reinfections - it makes the chore almost fun.
Any thoughts on other stuff that could be usefully added to it?
At worst, they have to wait another 6 months before filing for their next patent. I can't imagine that would cause too much trouble for a modern Edison (correct me if I'm wrong) but it would put a severe damper on patent spamming.
My only worry is that it would be too easy to get around. Two possible examples (using MS as the generic company):
MS gets employees to file patents on their own behalf then buys them up en masse as and when they get through.
MS waits the six months then floods the patent office. Then waits six months. Then floods the patent office.
Solutions would be as follows:
Put some kind of restriction on patent transactions. Either restrict the number a company can buy in a given time period (unlikely to work) or disallow patent reselling for a period of (say) 5 years. There are probably other, better solutions.
Make the hiatus on filing retroactive - any patents applications filed after the date of the earliest rejected patent should be rejected without prejudice - come back in 6 months and refile, please.
I'm currently trying to get the hang of the C/C++ programming languages - I'm a mathmo so haven't had to deal with it til now. Now, I run linux and am exposed to a decent amount of raw C code, so one would have thought I'd figure out what was going on quite quickly.
Wrong! Evidently the people writing the code I read have tried to make it self-documenting. They use what are apparently standard names for variables and structures, and fail to provide any comments whatsoever.
This is completely useless for me since I have *no idea* wtf these names refer to. Animal, mineral, vegetable or pointer? Who knows? The code is completely illegible to me, and as such is completely useless regards the FOSS secondary purpose of education.
When I started the maths/computer projects I am required to do for my course, my dad gave me an interesting piece of advice. "Son," (he said), "I measure the value of code by weight. The more comments the better." This was obviously a simplification and resulted in my producing Python code that was 2/3 comment - complete overkill.
However, I'm reasonably confident that no-one could read my code without realising what was going on, whether they knew the Python language or not. In addition, I'm pretty sure that it's possible to learn at least the basics of Python by studying my code.
I intend to keep this habit as I get more experienced at programming. Possibly a few FOSS developers could stand to do the same?
Personally, I'd have capitalised "unethical" rather than "illegal" as I consider it to be the more serious issue.
I recently wrote an IRC bot. That is currently illegal in the USA (read up on the ActiveBuddy patent) and will, as a result, probably be illegal in short order in the EU (where I live). However, I'm not bothered.
If I'd done something that I considered immoral, I would be worried. But my opinion is that allowing governments to define your morality is lazy at best and idiotic at worst. This applies particularly strongly in this situation where, as far as I can tell, people are being kicked out for receiving their letters before they were due to be sent.
I can't see any good reason why this should be a major offence, certainly not why people's lives should be messed up on this basis. Especially if they are able to produce a detailed argument as to why they considered their behaviour ethical.
Windows died on his computer, Linux was the only thing that worked as-is and the only person to date who's had a clue how to fix it is the one that was being mercilessly ribbed for geekiness for running linux prior to all this happening. No way he's gonna help reinstall windows.
Moral of the story: be kind to geeks, for they have root access.
If I recall correctly (please, someone tell me if I'm wrong), easy prime factorisation is a problem of a specific class - the P=NP problems.
Basically, the P=NP conjecture says that, if it's easy to prove, it's easy to solve. So, for example, it's easy to check that a jigsaw has been completed correctly, but jigsaws seem hard to solve. A proof of the conjecture would imply that there is in fact an easy (mathematically speaking) way of solving jigsaws.
The interesting thing about the conjecture is that a proof of it for any one instance (prime factorisation, jigsaws, whatever) would instantly give a proof for every other instance. It would be one of the major mathematical discoveries of the century, and would instantly render dodgy every form of public-key encryption currently known to man.
As such I severely doubt that the NSA has solved the problem of easy prime factorisation. Even with their renowned culture of secrecy, word would have leaked out. They may have found a way of making it slightly less tough though, or, as the parent says, built a bloody big computer cluster.
As another example, there's still no real (noncommercial) support for WinModems under Linux. Reverse-engineering is time-consuming and, these days, fraught with legal peril. As such, it makes sense to concentrate on getting a full feature suite in the areas where specs are available, rather than wasting ages trying to get one device to work cos the blasted manufacturer won't tell you what's in the box.
My feeling is that, when the full specs of these devices are made publically available, Linux support will follow in months. If that.
---------- > To accuse a person of sabotage, a crime, is a serious matter. If the > accusation comes from Brett Glass, it can be ignored, but when other > people do say it I'm entitled to refute it. I am sorry that the > accusation was made on your mailing list. > > Yesterday you said you would, so > keep your word for once. > > I did not make any promises to you yesterday; I stated a decision that > I had made for my own reasons.
Bugger off, Richard.
Get off these lists, or you'll see me on the gnu lists much more.
----------
Now there's a threat... glad to see they've made up.
I broadly agree - this is, after all, what law is for. However, I'd make a couple of additional points:
- The punk with a shell exploit today stands a decent chance of being the computer expert of tomorrow. Educate them; don't destroy them.
- Prosecution should never ever EVER be considered a solution to the problem of dodgy security. That's just asking for an Independence Day scenario where one Irani (for example) hacker brings down all the American motherships the moment war breaks out.
Slashdot Mirror
My apologies, I see what you're getting at.
The "an ye redistribute none, do what ye will" clause has always been the loss leader of the GPL. Given that the web apps you describe are just an extension of standard web browsers, I can't see any way to enforce things more strongly without pissing off a lot of people.
There most certainly is. For example, if you take OOo and serve it up as a web page, shouldn't you be required to release the changes you've made to it?
If I understand what you're saying, your suggestion is that the right to view the code should be attached to the viewing of the web page generated by the code. I feel that I should point out the logical extension of this, which is that anyone who compiles something with GCC would then have a responsibility to provide GCC source code to whoever used the resulting compiled program. Which would be a decidedly odd requirement. My mum uses OOo to produce documents and presentations. If I told her she had to be ready to provide source code to her clients, she'd switch back to MSOffice in a blink.
I stand by the unobtrusive approach of the GPL2.
The Microsoft EULA has certain provisions, such as the refund, that imply a contract between the licensor and licensee. If MS refuses to live up to its requirements under said document, I can't see how the licensee could be expected to live up to theirs. I imagine that the product would default back to canonical copyright rules of "copy this and die".
If so, that would cut through 95% of the crap in the license.
...this whole conversation is confusing to me. Are people trying to say the EULA allows returning Windows?
Yes - see this comparison for more details (relatively small pdf).
As I understand it, EULAs that offer concessions such as "we will refund your cash" fall partially under contract law. As such, once the contract is broken (for example by a refund not being provided) surely all bets are off.
The GPL is a pure license, so doesn't have this sort of worry.
So the guy buys this laptop. However, at this point in time he hasn't accepted the Microsoft EULA for the operating system. This EULA specifically states: "YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS EULA BY INSTALLING, COPYING, OR OTHERWISE USING THE PRODUCT. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE, DO NOT INSTALL OR USE THE PRODUCT; YOU MAY RETURN IT TO YOUR PLACE OF PURCHASE FOR A FULL REFUND."
If he hasn't agreed, he can return it for a full refund. If no-one is willing to give him a refund then Microsoft is in breach of its own license.
OT: if MS has breached its requirements to a person, is that person then justified in breaching his/her requirements? For example, the one about not decompiling. Just a thought.
Most stuff taught in schools is dumbed down to the extent that it's at least 40% complete bull. This is generally quite an effective teaching technique and only becomes an issue when there's a bunch of religious types of varying degrees of education with a vested interest in picking holes in said stuff.
Philosophically speaking, the situation you've just described would imply that your work is Free Software (as in freedom) not Open Source. Free Software is based on the idea that you should be able to see how your programs work (a political movement); Open Source is based on the idea that the more eyes you get looking at something the better (a development model).
Because, of course, in the UK we have no fair use! That's right. The consumer has absolutely no rights to prevent greedy monopolies ripping them off. Which they do with great abandon - ever heard of Ripoff Britain?
And then they wonder why filesharing numbers go through the roof... Not that I'm bitter or anything.
The "twice as long" bit was if you allow them to leak power at a constant rate. The "half as long" bit was basically what happens if you short-circuit them.
If these new batteries deliver approx. 4 times as much power when short-circuited then they will use up twice a standard battery's energy in approx. half the time (give or take my complete failure to do the math properly).
As a maths degree student I can confirm that a very large portion of mathematics is devoted to finding new metaphors and angles of attack for a given situation.
This takes a ridiculous amount of pattern recognition skill (which is one area where computers tend to be outperformed by all comers) and the ability to find new ways to abstract data. A computer could possibly come up with an idea like more-than-3-dimensional space on its own, but I'd be very surprised if even the best one could think of something like topology or tensors on its own.
Production of unusual metaphors for things we thought we knew is a major driving force for the most important mathematical developments. It's not something I can see computers managing at any time in the near future.
I've been trying to get this habit of thought into people's heads for ages - glad to see it's not just me.
Now if only we can convince the **AA
I don't know about anyone else, and it could just be cos I go to a rather high-pressure university, but I'm completely drained by the end of term. I'm about to hit 4 or so weeks of holiday and will need every last one for a) rest and recuperation, b) catching up on work and c) getting ready for the next term's worth of stress in the form of exam season.
I get your point, and I think it's an interesting one. But be careful about encouraging students to move quickly into the world of work for the sake of it. It is perfectly possible to burn out at this age.
The spammers are genuinely breaking the law here, and in a generally unpleasant way. The only possible legal justification I can think of for breaking Oklahoma state law is that they didn't know Mumma lived in Oklahoma (email addresses being relatively hard to pinpoint), but that defence ended when he rang up and told them to stop.
Spam is a classic case of the few playing silly buggers with the many, and the spammers are being called on this. I think it's deserved.
For the record, I'm a linux man myself. Unfortunately, it's apparently not for everyone - the only non-techie person I know who uses it is only doing so cos XP won't install and everyone who has a clue is refusing to help him. One too many cracks about "linux-loving geeks", iirc...
Security is, for me, one of the major reasons for installing Firefox. As a resident of a decent-sized campus type university, I regularly find myself doing tech support for friends' spyware-encrusted computers. That's why I carry the CD of Doom at all times.
Currently it includes Firefox, Zone Alarm (freebie version), Spyware S&D and AdAware. Wipes out 95% of spyware and prevents reinfections - it makes the chore almost fun.
Any thoughts on other stuff that could be usefully added to it?
At worst, they have to wait another 6 months before filing for their next patent. I can't imagine that would cause too much trouble for a modern Edison (correct me if I'm wrong) but it would put a severe damper on patent spamming.
My only worry is that it would be too easy to get around. Two possible examples (using MS as the generic company):
Solutions would be as follows:
Any thoughts?
I'm currently trying to get the hang of the C/C++ programming languages - I'm a mathmo so haven't had to deal with it til now. Now, I run linux and am exposed to a decent amount of raw C code, so one would have thought I'd figure out what was going on quite quickly.
Wrong! Evidently the people writing the code I read have tried to make it self-documenting. They use what are apparently standard names for variables and structures, and fail to provide any comments whatsoever.
This is completely useless for me since I have *no idea* wtf these names refer to. Animal, mineral, vegetable or pointer? Who knows? The code is completely illegible to me, and as such is completely useless regards the FOSS secondary purpose of education.
When I started the maths/computer projects I am required to do for my course, my dad gave me an interesting piece of advice. "Son," (he said), "I measure the value of code by weight. The more comments the better." This was obviously a simplification and resulted in my producing Python code that was 2/3 comment - complete overkill.
However, I'm reasonably confident that no-one could read my code without realising what was going on, whether they knew the Python language or not. In addition, I'm pretty sure that it's possible to learn at least the basics of Python by studying my code.
I intend to keep this habit as I get more experienced at programming. Possibly a few FOSS developers could stand to do the same?
Personally, I'd have capitalised "unethical" rather than "illegal" as I consider it to be the more serious issue.
I recently wrote an IRC bot. That is currently illegal in the USA (read up on the ActiveBuddy patent) and will, as a result, probably be illegal in short order in the EU (where I live). However, I'm not bothered.
If I'd done something that I considered immoral, I would be worried. But my opinion is that allowing governments to define your morality is lazy at best and idiotic at worst. This applies particularly strongly in this situation where, as far as I can tell, people are being kicked out for receiving their letters before they were due to be sent.
I can't see any good reason why this should be a major offence, certainly not why people's lives should be messed up on this basis. Especially if they are able to produce a detailed argument as to why they considered their behaviour ethical.
Please, please get your priorities straight.
Windows died on his computer, Linux was the only thing that worked as-is and the only person to date who's had a clue how to fix it is the one that was being mercilessly ribbed for geekiness for running linux prior to all this happening. No way he's gonna help reinstall windows.
Moral of the story: be kind to geeks, for they have root access.
If I recall correctly (please, someone tell me if I'm wrong), easy prime factorisation is a problem of a specific class - the P=NP problems.
Basically, the P=NP conjecture says that, if it's easy to prove, it's easy to solve. So, for example, it's easy to check that a jigsaw has been completed correctly, but jigsaws seem hard to solve. A proof of the conjecture would imply that there is in fact an easy (mathematically speaking) way of solving jigsaws.
The interesting thing about the conjecture is that a proof of it for any one instance (prime factorisation, jigsaws, whatever) would instantly give a proof for every other instance. It would be one of the major mathematical discoveries of the century, and would instantly render dodgy every form of public-key encryption currently known to man.
As such I severely doubt that the NSA has solved the problem of easy prime factorisation. Even with their renowned culture of secrecy, word would have leaked out. They may have found a way of making it slightly less tough though, or, as the parent says, built a bloody big computer cluster.
Who knows?
As another example, there's still no real (noncommercial) support for WinModems under Linux. Reverse-engineering is time-consuming and, these days, fraught with legal peril. As such, it makes sense to concentrate on getting a full feature suite in the areas where specs are available, rather than wasting ages trying to get one device to work cos the blasted manufacturer won't tell you what's in the box.
My feeling is that, when the full specs of these devices are made publically available, Linux support will follow in months. If that.
A few posts later:
----------
> To accuse a person of sabotage, a crime, is a serious matter. If the
> accusation comes from Brett Glass, it can be ignored, but when other
> people do say it I'm entitled to refute it. I am sorry that the
> accusation was made on your mailing list.
>
> Yesterday you said you would, so
> keep your word for once.
>
> I did not make any promises to you yesterday; I stated a decision that
> I had made for my own reasons.
Bugger off, Richard.
Get off these lists, or you'll see me on the gnu lists much more.
----------
Now there's a threat... glad to see they've made up.
I don't think your pizza oven is gonna get much work when you have such a lovely fire going on inside the server :)
I broadly agree - this is, after all, what law is for. However, I'd make a couple of additional points:
- The punk with a shell exploit today stands a decent chance of being the computer expert of tomorrow. Educate them; don't destroy them.
- Prosecution should never ever EVER be considered a solution to the problem of dodgy security. That's just asking for an Independence Day scenario where one Irani (for example) hacker brings down all the American motherships the moment war breaks out.