Well, I purposely didn't say robots.txt - because really, that is a de facto standard (AFAIK, there is no RFC for it..).. everyone building a spider program knows to check that file.
On the other hand, is http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/clock1a.html a standard (de facto or otherwise) for access permissions to NTP servers? AFAIK, it is not. If it isn't, then placing the access restrictions on an arbitrary website is about as useful as me requesting people not to spider my site through a usenet posting (ok, the analogy doesn't work exactly - but it's close enough).
Well, "poorly designed" depends on what their design goals were. If one of their goals was that the list of servers should be easily changed.. then, no, it's not a good design. But maybe that wasn't one of their requirements - and if so, then the design they have now works better.
but I think this guy is being just a bit unreasonable.
Firstly, just because the NTP server is "advertised in the NTP projects list of Stratum 1 NTP servers" (http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/clock1a.html) with a restriction of use does not make what DLink is doing is illegal. Just as if I say in a newsgroup posting "do not spider my website" would not prevent Google from doing so (automatically, or by legal necessity).
Secondly, he says there is "nothing [he] can do to avoid the packets arriving at [his] server", after rejecting the idea of changing the domain name because it would be a "very timeconsuming effort" for the "2000 legitimate users". Yet he asks D-Link to change the firmware on hundreds of thousands (maybe more, maybe less?) of their routers. Now, I don't know how much compensation D-Link has offered him (in good faith, not by any legal obligation).. but it seems to me the most pragmatic solution is to just go ahead and change the name, and as long as D-Link provides adequate compensation to perform this task.. then that is what should be done, and that's the end of it.
OK, so people on./ criticize Microsoft for not complying to standards, for locking people into Office with their proprietary document formats.
Now, when Microsoft does an about face, and wants to support one of these open formats.. do you embrace them for doing what you said they should do? No.. it must be some ulterior motive to sabatoge the standard! Of course!
The problem doesn't come when software *algorithms* are patented (well, depends on who you talk to), but more when obvious "business processes" expressed in software are.
I mean, if someone found an algorithm to solve NP-complete problems in polynomial time, for example, do you not think they should be able to profit from their invention?
"After about one year of development the former GnomeMeeting team has released Ekiga. Ekiga is the successor of the popular GnomeMeeting. Ekiga calls itself the very "first Open Source application to support both H.323 and SIP". Ekiga is based on the h323/sip codebase, provided by the openh323 project. Also introduced with this release is ekiga.net, a platform to provide the community with free sip addresses." Nice description. Without reading TFA, I have no clue what Ekiga does!
DRM done right is not a bad thing.. but the DRM on e-books (at least, those that I've had exposure to) is terribly implemented.
I bought (well, most were actually free, as in beer) some e-books through a promotion Microsoft was running a few years ago for the new version of their Reader software (similar to how there is the "free download of the week" on iTunes).
Read parts of some of the books, and all was good.
Then, I upgraded my computer, and I could no longer access the books that I legally acquired. E-mailing Microsoft tech support was fruitless - I still, to this day, cannot read these books.
Lesson learned. I'm staying away from e-books.. at least until I can be guaranteed that I'll never lose access to the books I legally acquired/purchased.
Sounds like someone screwed up big time. In most (all?) programming languages, str = "null" and str = null
mean two completely different things. Somewhere along the line, they must be converting null(value) to "null"(string), which seems like a dumb thing to do.
Practically, though, GPL software can only be distributed for free, as there's nothing stopping someone who buys a copy of the software from turning around and giving it away for free to everyone else.
Not sure if this post was supposed to be in jest (not modded as funny, so maybe not..), but the OGL Programming guide is called the "Red book" and the Reference is called the "blue book" (because of their respective covers) and have been for years. It only made sense when they added shaders to OGL to refer to the book in the same way.
Yes, it is. If you have iTunes music, you cannot listen to it on any portable device except an iPod. And if you have an iPod, you cannot buy any music online except from iTunes.
Judge Jackson described an "application barrier" that created significant costs to switching to another platform.. I think this is almost analagous.
Apple is a monopoly in this area. Or, more specifically, they hold "monopoly power" - which is all the law (apparently - IANAL, and IANAA; the last A is American) requires.
I think it can be successfully argued that Apple does hold monopoly power - iTunes is the dominant online music store, and the iPod is the dominant portable music player.. and both are incompatible with any other music player/store. Apple has refused to support protected wma in the iPod, and has refused to license the fairplay DRM to others.
But I don't think that Apple has abused their monopoly in order to enter into ther areas - a requirement for a violation of the Anti-trust act, AFAIK. Now, you might be able to argue that since you can no longer get Quicktime without downloading iTunes as well, that they're using their monopoly power in the online music area to expand into media players on PCs.. but I think that's a long shot.
That said, I didn't really believe Microsoft had a monopoly during their antitrust trial days... consumers had the choice of MacOS, or BeOS, or Linx, etc. for their computers. So I may very well be wrong here.
The problem with bundling is Bestbuy advertised the systems at the regular price - but then some locations did not honour this. They *ONLY* sold the systems as a part of a bundle - and only told people of this after they had lined up for hours.
Looks like HDDVD and Blueray are dead already..
on
The Great HDCP Fiasco
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
So, they want me to "upgrade" my monitor which doesn't support HDCP, my video card which doesn't support HDCP, and my TV which doesn't support HDCP.. just so I can watch video in higher resolution?
Sorry, to my eyes DVDs look just fine.. and none of my hardware needs replacing for any other reason. If it ain't broke..
So this fall into the category of "the EFF is overreacting", I think. If it's not enabled by default, and Google makes it clear what the implications are of enabling it.. then all is well in Googleland.
Slashdot Mirror
If it's patented by Philips, it can't be implemented by anyone else! And certainly not by free software.. :->
Well, I purposely didn't say robots.txt - because really, that is a de facto standard (AFAIK, there is no RFC for it..).. everyone building a spider program knows to check that file.
On the other hand, is http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/clock1a.html a standard (de facto or otherwise) for access permissions to NTP servers? AFAIK, it is not. If it isn't, then placing the access restrictions on an arbitrary website is about as useful as me requesting people not to spider my site through a usenet posting (ok, the analogy doesn't work exactly - but it's close enough).
Well, "poorly designed" depends on what their design goals were. If one of their goals was that the list of servers should be easily changed.. then, no, it's not a good design. But maybe that wasn't one of their requirements - and if so, then the design they have now works better.
but I think this guy is being just a bit unreasonable.
l ) with a restriction of use does not make what DLink is doing is illegal. Just as if I say in a newsgroup posting "do not spider my website" would not prevent Google from doing so (automatically, or by legal necessity).
Firstly, just because the NTP server is "advertised in the NTP projects list of Stratum 1 NTP servers" (http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/clock1a.htm
Secondly, he says there is "nothing [he] can do to avoid the packets arriving at [his] server", after rejecting the idea of changing the domain name because it would be a "very timeconsuming effort" for the "2000 legitimate users". Yet he asks D-Link to change the firmware on hundreds of thousands (maybe more, maybe less?) of their routers. Now, I don't know how much compensation D-Link has offered him (in good faith, not by any legal obligation).. but it seems to me the most pragmatic solution is to just go ahead and change the name, and as long as D-Link provides adequate compensation to perform this task.. then that is what should be done, and that's the end of it.
I mean, couldn't Lucent sue over the original XBox, too? Or is the 360 using mpeg2 in a way the original didn't?
ASCII text is an "open data format".. and all word processors support that.
I've used it. Not impressed by any means.
It's a full featured e-mail client.. from the '80s. Sorry, it just doesn't cut it nowadays.
WHAT THE FUCK?
OK, so people on ./ criticize Microsoft for not complying to standards, for locking people into Office with their proprietary document formats.
Now, when Microsoft does an about face, and wants to support one of these open formats.. do you embrace them for doing what you said they should do? No.. it must be some ulterior motive to sabatoge the standard! Of course!
What a completely bogus figure pulled out of someone's, who has no clue about where development is at, ass.
Why the hell would Slashdot publish this junk?
That's much more interesting, IMHO.
Mac hardware is overpriced, IMO (at least, compared to building the system custom myself..)
Is Solaris written in Java, now?
The problem doesn't come when software *algorithms* are patented (well, depends on who you talk to), but more when obvious "business processes" expressed in software are.
I mean, if someone found an algorithm to solve NP-complete problems in polynomial time, for example, do you not think they should be able to profit from their invention?
"After about one year of development the former GnomeMeeting team has released Ekiga. Ekiga is the successor of the popular GnomeMeeting. Ekiga calls itself the very "first Open Source application to support both H.323 and SIP". Ekiga is based on the h323/sip codebase, provided by the openh323 project. Also introduced with this release is ekiga.net, a platform to provide the community with free sip addresses."
Nice description. Without reading TFA, I have no clue what Ekiga does!
DRM done right is not a bad thing.. but the DRM on e-books (at least, those that I've had exposure to) is terribly implemented.
I bought (well, most were actually free, as in beer) some e-books through a promotion Microsoft was running a few years ago for the new version of their Reader software (similar to how there is the "free download of the week" on iTunes).
Read parts of some of the books, and all was good.
Then, I upgraded my computer, and I could no longer access the books that I legally acquired. E-mailing Microsoft tech support was fruitless - I still, to this day, cannot read these books.
Lesson learned. I'm staying away from e-books.. at least until I can be guaranteed that I'll never lose access to the books I legally acquired/purchased.
You're right.
char * id = NULL;
char email[100];
sprintf(email, "%s@vtext.com", id);
printf("%s", email);
prints:
(null)@vtext.com
Sounds like someone screwed up big time. In most (all?) programming languages,
str = "null" and
str = null
mean two completely different things. Somewhere along the line, they must be converting null(value) to "null"(string), which seems like a dumb thing to do.
Practically, though, GPL software can only be distributed for free, as there's nothing stopping someone who buys a copy of the software from turning around and giving it away for free to everyone else.
Not sure if this post was supposed to be in jest (not modded as funny, so maybe not..), but the OGL Programming guide is called the "Red book" and the Reference is called the "blue book" (because of their respective covers) and have been for years. It only made sense when they added shaders to OGL to refer to the book in the same way.
Yes, it is. If you have iTunes music, you cannot listen to it on any portable device except an iPod. And if you have an iPod, you cannot buy any music online except from iTunes.
Judge Jackson described an "application barrier" that created significant costs to switching to another platform.. I think this is almost analagous.
Apple is a monopoly in this area. Or, more specifically, they hold "monopoly power" - which is all the law (apparently - IANAL, and IANAA; the last A is American) requires.
I think it can be successfully argued that Apple does hold monopoly power - iTunes is the dominant online music store, and the iPod is the dominant portable music player.. and both are incompatible with any other music player/store. Apple has refused to support protected wma in the iPod, and has refused to license the fairplay DRM to others.
But I don't think that Apple has abused their monopoly in order to enter into ther areas - a requirement for a violation of the Anti-trust act, AFAIK. Now, you might be able to argue that since you can no longer get Quicktime without downloading iTunes as well, that they're using their monopoly power in the online music area to expand into media players on PCs.. but I think that's a long shot.
That said, I didn't really believe Microsoft had a monopoly during their antitrust trial days... consumers had the choice of MacOS, or BeOS, or Linx, etc. for their computers. So I may very well be wrong here.
The problem with bundling is Bestbuy advertised the systems at the regular price - but then some locations did not honour this. They *ONLY* sold the systems as a part of a bundle - and only told people of this after they had lined up for hours.
So, they want me to "upgrade" my monitor which doesn't support HDCP, my video card which doesn't support HDCP, and my TV which doesn't support HDCP.. just so I can watch video in higher resolution?
Sorry, to my eyes DVDs look just fine.. and none of my hardware needs replacing for any other reason. If it ain't broke..
So this fall into the category of "the EFF is overreacting", I think. If it's not enabled by default, and Google makes it clear what the implications are of enabling it.. then all is well in Googleland.
The new Google Desktop sends "copies of the user's Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-based documents [to] Google's own servers"?
That's scary. What happened to "do no evil"?
Either Google is dropping that premise, or the EFF is overreacting. I wouldn't rule out the latter, in the least..