As an answer (I know, I shouldn't try)...
Lets start with WikiPedia:
"A journalist is a person who practices journalism, the gathering
and dissemination of information about current events,
trends, issues and people."
What dismisses my boss from being a journalist, when he tells me that
production is ramping up, and I should hurry to get the new systems in
place? He's disseminating information about a current event.
Was Ben Franklin being a common ruffian when he wrote the famous
Dogood letters?
What I'm suggesting is... maybe there shouldn't be a definition
for Journalist beyond what is accepted in common use. I think
it's dangerous to put an 'unreasonable cost of entry' into a field that
is supposed to be about free information. I also hate to put
'Media Conglomerate' employees in a category beyond the rest of us. ...At least not without a way ANYONE can freely apply for the same
benefits. Of course, the article explains this part of my the
point better than I do.
Then again, I'm just one semi-anonymous geek among friends.
The old ATI drivers, don't even get a decent frame-rate on my screensaver. GLGears gets a little choppy - it's far better than non-accellerated, but still not acceptable for a modern 3D video card.
Now, now. ATI is a royal pain, which has failed on me under several distros, and several computers - but the nVidia drivers have always been fairly reliable. Finicky maybe, but I've always been able to get theme to work.
Notably, to this discussion, William of Ockham was also a priest. Read the WikiPedia article for more info.
hcoop - seems a useful thing. I could use that for inbound Email forwarding or even backup DNS. If it ever gets off the ground, I'd be interested. The home-page has been bookmarked.
T_M_P and I had a discussion about this once, and I think we agreed that Creationism and Intelligent Design were both well suited to be taught during Social Studies (as it's a social, not a scientific, issue).
Otherwise, I expect my son to be able to rationalize these things for himself, and if he decides one day that he's found God, my only interfearence will be to make sure he's not joining a cult.
Ockham's Razor is a method of simplification, not the scientific method. It's more relevent in triage than science. In science it's only for saving time, as in - "it's easier to prove the simplest explanation, so start there."
Same for maching learning. It's merely a simple method of optimization, not a 'proof'. It's about making "likely" assumptions, and working with the new inputs, it's not about scientific discovery.
When it comes to A.I. - a decent implimentation of the principles of Ockham's Razor make the machine "seem intuitive", which is an important step in making machines more interactive, and user friendly.
Yes and no. Both are necessary, and often features that would be "wanted" at the User Guide level are both shaped, and or made redundant at the Requirements Document level.
Having very good "call" trees is even more important (for human portablility).
It's amazing how far a simple comment block can go if it's ACTUALLY kept up to date, and available on every function:
/** ** foo ** returns: int - value is a count of modified foo ** accepts: int foo - value initializes foo ** calls: foo.c:foohelper() ** called from: foo.c:main() ** - foo2.c:whatTheFoo() ** - foo2.c:fooYou() ** - foomodule.c:whereArtFoo() */
Woa. Wrong here too. He got his permission from the song writer... Stevie Wonder*. And pays his royalties. Coolio backed up on Stevie Wonder's work, and Weird Al did the same. Coolio got all bent out of shape, but he really has zero legal ground to stand on because it was not his song to sell.
Bottom line... if Weird Al doesn't get permission, then he can't charge money for the song. Thus he always has permission. It's just that lines are easy to cross in the world of "hip-hop" sampling.
Weird Al had expected that his people would have cleared it through both Coolio and Stevie Wonder, but they hadn't, as they simply followed the ASCAP catalogue back to the owner, instead of actually asking the artist who was actually being parodied as well.
*Pasttime Paradise by Stevie Wonder, released on his "Songs in the Key of Life" album, 1976.
No... if you want to commercially MARKET a parody of a song, you must pay royalties and obtain permission. If you want to simply make a parody, and give it away - there's nothing to stop that (unless you find financial gain from that parody).
Microsoft last published the internals for any of their file formats in 1996, about 9 years ago. That was the Microsoft "playing nice" and keeping whatever flexability that they want. It's an open standard while you publish (open) the format (standard). If it's not a "collaborative" standard, it can still be "open".
Since then, about a year after Word Perfect/Lotus 123/Corel Office dipped below 5% market share, Microsoft stopped publishing the file format information. Instead telling partners and integrators that they would have to use external hooks (APIs) directly into a local Office installations to work with Office files.
This isn't an unfair decision, but it absolutely degrades the ability of others to work with the files produced by their product. So now, everything that creates and manipulates "office compatible" files does so after a great deal of collaborative reverse engineering.
Meanwhile, StarOffice started as an Office Suite with it's own feature set and file formats, and.. initially.. every file had to be imported to swx and re-exported to doc after it was edited. OpenOffice now makes that a lot more smooth, but internally, it's still converting and reverting. Thus, there _is_ a possibility that something might get lost in translation.
I don't think anybody realistically thinks that Office should lock-down and "collaboratively" open the DOC format. I just think that the Office file formats (all of them) should be accessible. Companies keep important information in there, it would be nice to be able to accurately re-create that information if Microsoft stops supporting Office for some new, more expensive technology.
Doing so would not stiffle innovation, but (and this is why it won't happen) foster competiton.
O.K. - so you use SpamAssassin... so do I. Meanwhile, in the rest of the world...
That is to say - not everybody has the flexability to put in a user-tunable system. Some of the "black-box" systems are more tunable than others, but most of the time, if a black-list is configured - it's "black".
Actually - I fully agree with you there. A solid half of the Open Source projects they've helped have been to bolster a marketable product. And the rest were likely contributions along the lines of seeing if there was a fit to bolster internal products.
It's great work, but it does have a smell of insincerity.
Slashdot Mirror
As an answer (I know, I shouldn't try)...
Lets start with WikiPedia:
What dismisses my boss from being a journalist, when he tells me that production is ramping up, and I should hurry to get the new systems in place? He's disseminating information about a current event.
Was Ben Franklin being a common ruffian when he wrote the famous Dogood letters?
What I'm suggesting is... maybe there shouldn't be a definition for Journalist beyond what is accepted in common use. I think it's dangerous to put an 'unreasonable cost of entry' into a field that is supposed to be about free information. I also hate to put 'Media Conglomerate' employees in a category beyond the rest of us.
...At least not without a way ANYONE can freely apply for the same
benefits. Of course, the article explains this part of my the
point better than I do.
Then again, I'm just one semi-anonymous geek among friends.
Somehow I'm thinking fried silica.
Made even better with the referrer id at the link level.
The old ATI drivers, don't even get a decent frame-rate on my screensaver. GLGears gets a little choppy - it's far better than non-accellerated, but still not acceptable for a modern 3D video card.
So you know the fully open driver, for a fully accellerated video card? Available today? Can I get it on a laptop?
Now, now. ATI is a royal pain, which has failed on me under several distros, and several computers - but the nVidia drivers have always been fairly reliable. Finicky maybe, but I've always been able to get theme to work.
Factory jobs are no longer 'the norm', WalMart is.
Thanks for reminding me of this sad state of affairs.
Just letting you know, as the person you are trying to reply to may not have seen your reply.
Good for you - that's almost what I suggested in my Journal.
Of course you're lazy today. It's your Congressional given right.
(see my journal).
hcoop - seems a useful thing. I could use that for inbound Email forwarding or even backup DNS. If it ever gets off the ground, I'd be interested. The home-page has been bookmarked.
Otherwise, I expect my son to be able to rationalize these things for himself, and if he decides one day that he's found God, my only interfearence will be to make sure he's not joining a cult.
Ockham's Razor is a method of simplification, not the scientific method. It's more relevent in triage than science. In science it's only for saving time, as in - "it's easier to prove the simplest explanation, so start there."
Same for maching learning. It's merely a simple method of optimization, not a 'proof'. It's about making "likely" assumptions, and working with the new inputs, it's not about scientific discovery.
When it comes to A.I. - a decent implimentation of the principles of Ockham's Razor make the machine "seem intuitive", which is an important step in making machines more interactive, and user friendly.
Move, Xorg
Move, Xorg
Move, Xorg
Some stuff can be automated... However, in an Open Source Product, I've seen very, very few with well documented code.
Having very good "call" trees is even more important (for human portablility).
It's amazing how far a simple comment block can go if it's ACTUALLY kept up to date, and available on every function:
Bottom line... if Weird Al doesn't get permission, then he can't charge money for the song. Thus he always has permission. It's just that lines are easy to cross in the world of "hip-hop" sampling.
Weird Al had expected that his people would have cleared it through both Coolio and Stevie Wonder, but they hadn't, as they simply followed the ASCAP catalogue back to the owner, instead of actually asking the artist who was actually being parodied as well.
*Pasttime Paradise by Stevie Wonder, released on his "Songs in the Key of Life" album, 1976.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php3?date=2003-04 -21
A little more than half way down the page.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2003-04 -14&res=l
Thank you. The best citation I could find was in Weird Al's FAQ (which didn't seem worthy).
No... if you want to commercially MARKET a parody of a song, you must pay royalties and obtain permission. If you want to simply make a parody, and give it away - there's nothing to stop that (unless you find financial gain from that parody).
Microsoft last published the internals for any of their file formats in 1996, about 9 years ago. That was the Microsoft "playing nice" and keeping whatever flexability that they want. It's an open standard while you publish (open) the format (standard). If it's not a "collaborative" standard, it can still be "open".
Since then, about a year after Word Perfect/Lotus 123/Corel Office dipped below 5% market share, Microsoft stopped publishing the file format information. Instead telling partners and integrators that they would have to use external hooks (APIs) directly into a local Office installations to work with Office files.
This isn't an unfair decision, but it absolutely degrades the ability of others to work with the files produced by their product. So now, everything that creates and manipulates "office compatible" files does so after a great deal of collaborative reverse engineering.
Meanwhile, StarOffice started as an Office Suite with it's own feature set and file formats, and .. initially .. every file had to be imported to swx and re-exported to doc after it was edited. OpenOffice now makes that a lot more smooth, but internally, it's still converting and reverting. Thus, there _is_ a possibility that something might get lost in translation.
I don't think anybody realistically thinks that Office should lock-down and "collaboratively" open the DOC format. I just think that the Office file formats (all of them) should be accessible. Companies keep important information in there, it would be nice to be able to accurately re-create that information if Microsoft stops supporting Office for some new, more expensive technology.
Doing so would not stiffle innovation, but (and this is why it won't happen) foster competiton.
That is to say - not everybody has the flexability to put in a user-tunable system. Some of the "black-box" systems are more tunable than others, but most of the time, if a black-list is configured - it's "black".
Yeah, but Allan Zadr isn't my real name.
It's great work, but it does have a smell of insincerity.