Apparently your ethics aren't so pure that you'll stop using the products that result from patents.
Well, I have no choice. Should I suicide? If I'm opposed to my government, should I go to live on an iceberg? This is a moronic argument. In the world there are a lot of good, patented products. There is nothing bad about these products in themselves: what's bad is that they are patented (at least per the current definition of "patent").
Obviously in your world there is no civilization.
In "my world" there is a civilization where you can use every intellectual product for free if you do so 1)respecting proper attribution 2)not exploiting it commercially. And it would be a damn rich and advanced world.
They could have sold, let's say, a FreeBSD derived distro. They didn't. They probably see more value in Linux than in FreeBSD (personally I see a lot of value also in FreeBSD, but they thought different) and decided to go along with it. Nothing stopped them. So why whining about GPL?
Unless Linksys had been living under a rock for all these years, Linksys was with all probability fully aware it was not complying with the GPL: yet they went along with it, in the hope no one would have discovered them. They were found violating it and they were forced by the copyright holders to take steps to comply with it. Nothing more, nothing less.
Business is scared of GPL because it doesn't know it or because they willfully want to violate it. If they are informed AND they keep honest, they have nothing to fear: just to choose if it's good for them or not.
As a researcher that sometimes uses spreadsheets for quick-and-dirty graphs, I can assure you that the kind of graphs you are describing are easily well done also with free spreadsheets like Gnumeric or OO.org.
However, it would seem reasonable (from what I understand) for you to automatize things a bit more and script Gnuplot/Matplotlib/whatever to automatically get the right graphs from your logs. It maybe requires you to code a couple of lines first, but after you automagically have graphs from your logs instead of copying-pasting-etc. Are you really sure Excel is the right tool and/or the only one for what you are doing?
Nobody is *making* anybody take a job with one of the crazy non-competes, and you have the option to factor that in when negotiating compensation. As long as both sides feel the agreement is equitable, why should it be illegal to make whatever kind of deal you want? It's your time and your life, nobody should be able to tell you what kind of agreement you can and can't enter it
In theory I very much agree with your position. However if you leave these clauses possible, what happens is that every employer will ask for them -since it's just good for them. So you are basically forced to swallow the clause or not work at all -at least in such a field. The employer knows that if you refuse, someone else, dumber or more desperate, will do: so the employer and the potential employee are not on equal grounds. In theory trade unions would make of the employers a united force able to negotiate on equal basis, but I don't know how does it work in USA (I've never heard about trade unions in/. discussions about working in the IT, and I know sometimes trade unions can do as much harm as good).
So making such clauses unlawful or at least plainly and completely unenforceable (thus, useless) would be a way to level a bit the playground.
Sometimes it works, sometimes not. Expecially journals that want you to practically do the formatting work by yourself. Most provide LaTeX templates, but others not.
In fact I can't understand how can US workers comply and go away with such a draconian practice like a "non compete" clause. What do they think you are supposed to do for a year? Washing cars?
I can understand not copying your previous employer IP property to paste it in your new workplace. But if, for example, I'm a software engineer that worked on PageRank at Google, I understand not re-implementing PageRank at my new workplace, but why should I stop working in search engine technology? Why should I restart from (almost) scratch, doing something I'm not expert in, having probably lesser opportunities and wages, etc.?
What I find more amazing is the "oh well it's pretty standard" attitude. Do you really think such clauses are fair clauses?
As a molecular biologist working in biophysics, this is sometimes slightly difficult. I know that Nature at least doesn't like to receive LaTeX written papers, and a significant number of molecular biology journals want.doc output. Not nice.
I actually use office software only at work, and in my lab we have a "NEVER EVER USE THAT DAMNED TRACK CHANGES FEATURE" unwritten (but enforced) policy. Really. It does more harm than good.
Less-serious question: Does an office package *need* track changes?
Serious question: I've not seen Office 2007, but until Office XP track changes were utter crap. After two passes, they become simply unusable -I don't know who invented the "balloons" visualization but that individual should be tortured. Track changes would be wonderful if (1)works between *selected versions* and not instead *tracking every single stupid change* (maybe there is an option for this, let me know) and (2)has a diff-like side-by-side view instead of the ballon visualization.
I may be wrong, of course, I'll be glad if you prove me to.
I could not agree more. I work in a university lab, so maybe it's different, but I never had any "training". They just tell me "That's the software you need; use it". That is for Office as for Illustrator as for IGOR or MatLab (programming IGOR, brrr, what a nightmare). Of course I can choose any other software I like if it costs zero and does the same things -that's why I have a Kubuntu desktop in my lab.
If you are lucky enough to live and work in an environment that allows this, then it is, IMHO, the absolute best method for developing software.
Being an "amateur", well, not always, because more often than note I had to refactor to allow things that it was never intended to do first. As of today I'm writing a plugin architecture and I'm rewriting the code to be everywhere as elastic as possible. Yes I should have done it first, but I'm not a pro developer and this is a good lesson I'm learning...
Re:if wasn't this format, it would have been anoth
on
How MP3 Was Born
·
· Score: 1
Almost nobody can tell the difference between 320 and flac. So why should people who want to download the latest slammin RnB hit want anything else?
Right *slap on my head* this answers my first question pretty easily. Anyway I still can't find, just for curiosity, a stat on the usage of various music file formats (I guess doing stats on files shared on SoulSeek would be a good indicator). If anyone knows of one, I'd like to see it.
Re:I've been wondering...
on
How MP3 Was Born
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Oh please, who downgraded me as troll? Cannot we joke here?
I am by no mean a professional developer, however I develop a data analysis application that my collegues use in my lab (I hope to release it on Sourceforge soon). I do it not only for *my* data analysis, but also for other kinds of analyses, so I discuss "specs" from my collegues and implement them.
What I found is that when they are in front of the app, after a bit of usage they think "could you add feature X?" "how can I do Y?" and so on. I implement X and Y, and only then they ask "oh, you did Y? So why not Z?" etc. So the spec becomes dynamic, in the sense that only when they see a milestone accomplished new possibilities come to their (and my) mind. It's a climbing process. I don't know if it's the same also for pro developers.
Re:if wasn't this format, it would have been anoth
on
How MP3 Was Born
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I always thought that with the advent of broadband and cheap 10^2-gigabyte storage, FLAC would have overtook mp3, however it is not happened still. Probably by "fault" of portable players, where storage space is still critical. Are there any statistics on the average usage/trends of MP3 vs FLAC/Ogg Vorbis/wma/aac etc.?
Re:I've been wondering...
on
How MP3 Was Born
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Well, to be honest the today conception of vacuum is not that of a space completely devoid of everything. Vacuum has an energy, and literally boils of instantly-annihilating particle-antiparticle couples. This has observable effects that have been measured, like the Casimir effect. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_energy for an explanation.
IE runs under Whine, but you need to launch the application from an existing install of Windoze.
False. You can install IE standalone, and in fact I have IE 6 installed under Wine. And my actual pc has never seen a Windows install (it's a Gentoo system). You can find a dumb-easy script to install IE6 here.
Linux is not ready for prime time when it comes to music software. The only program I've found that automatically detects my MIDI keyboard is LMMS. Whine chokes on Cakewalk software installs.
This is sad but right. LMMS is very promising but is very limited now (However I'm nicely impressed by its painless VST support)
Google Earth installs but the graphics are slower'n crap.
"Installs" under Wine? There is a native Google Earth binary for Linux. I have it running on my machine and works well. If you have problem with slow graphics, check you have direct rendering enabled on your machine.
But if you value positive money the time you spend learning by doing, you actually are rewarded by building a PC. It all depends on how you value things.
Slashdot Mirror
Here is another "nut".
Apparently your ethics aren't so pure that you'll stop using the products that result from patents.
Well, I have no choice. Should I suicide? If I'm opposed to my government, should I go to live on an iceberg? This is a moronic argument. In the world there are a lot of good, patented products. There is nothing bad about these products in themselves: what's bad is that they are patented (at least per the current definition of "patent").
Obviously in your world there is no civilization.
In "my world" there is a civilization where you can use every intellectual product for free if you do so 1)respecting proper attribution 2)not exploiting it commercially. And it would be a damn rich and advanced world.
They could have sold, let's say, a FreeBSD derived distro. They didn't. They probably see more value in Linux than in FreeBSD (personally I see a lot of value also in FreeBSD, but they thought different) and decided to go along with it. Nothing stopped them. So why whining about GPL?
Unless Linksys had been living under a rock for all these years, Linksys was with all probability fully aware it was not complying with the GPL: yet they went along with it, in the hope no one would have discovered them. They were found violating it and they were forced by the copyright holders to take steps to comply with it. Nothing more, nothing less.
Business is scared of GPL because it doesn't know it or because they willfully want to violate it. If they are informed AND they keep honest, they have nothing to fear: just to choose if it's good for them or not.
As a researcher that sometimes uses spreadsheets for quick-and-dirty graphs, I can assure you that the kind of graphs you are describing are easily well done also with free spreadsheets like Gnumeric or OO.org.
However, it would seem reasonable (from what I understand) for you to automatize things a bit more and script Gnuplot/Matplotlib/whatever to automatically get the right graphs from your logs. It maybe requires you to code a couple of lines first, but after you automagically have graphs from your logs instead of copying-pasting-etc. Are you really sure Excel is the right tool and/or the only one for what you are doing?
Whoa, a Linux BIOS with pre-downloaded pr0n! It would have an instant market! "From cold iron to pr0n in 6 seconds!"
Didn't know this annoying issue has finally been formalized the correct way. I really like it, although I doubt it will ever be of general use.
Replacing rxvt by a useful graphical application (still staying under 2MiB) would make for a more convincing demo.
Why? They just wanted to show that they are able to run X. The application you run under X makes no difference.
(God speaks): Yeah, at first I thought my own Universe was funny, but now I found eternity is best wasted playing WoW than forming boring galaxies.
(God replaces universe with WoW world.)
Nobody is *making* anybody take a job with one of the crazy non-competes, and you have the option to factor that in when negotiating compensation. As long as both sides feel the agreement is equitable, why should it be illegal to make whatever kind of deal you want? It's your time and your life, nobody should be able to tell you what kind of agreement you can and can't enter it
In theory I very much agree with your position. However if you leave these clauses possible, what happens is that every employer will ask for them -since it's just good for them. So you are basically forced to swallow the clause or not work at all -at least in such a field. The employer knows that if you refuse, someone else, dumber or more desperate, will do: so the employer and the potential employee are not on equal grounds. In theory trade unions would make of the employers a united force able to negotiate on equal basis, but I don't know how does it work in USA (I've never heard about trade unions in /. discussions about working in the IT, and I know sometimes trade unions can do as much harm as good).
So making such clauses unlawful or at least plainly and completely unenforceable (thus, useless) would be a way to level a bit the playground.
Sometimes it works, sometimes not. Expecially journals that want you to practically do the formatting work by yourself. Most provide LaTeX templates, but others not.
In fact I can't understand how can US workers comply and go away with such a draconian practice like a "non compete" clause. What do they think you are supposed to do for a year? Washing cars?
I can understand not copying your previous employer IP property to paste it in your new workplace. But if, for example, I'm a software engineer that worked on PageRank at Google, I understand not re-implementing PageRank at my new workplace, but why should I stop working in search engine technology? Why should I restart from (almost) scratch, doing something I'm not expert in, having probably lesser opportunities and wages, etc.?
What I find more amazing is the "oh well it's pretty standard" attitude. Do you really think such clauses are fair clauses?
Besides academic papers should be done in TeX
As a molecular biologist working in biophysics, this is sometimes slightly difficult. I know that Nature at least doesn't like to receive LaTeX written papers, and a significant number of molecular biology journals want .doc output. Not nice.
Sorry to sound trollish, but: time to use a real data analysis software?
Spreadsheets are good for quick-and-dirty graphs and statistics, but I wouldn't ever do something serious with them.
I actually use office software only at work, and in my lab we have a "NEVER EVER USE THAT DAMNED TRACK CHANGES FEATURE" unwritten (but enforced) policy. Really. It does more harm than good.
Less-serious question: Does an office package *need* track changes?
Serious question: I've not seen Office 2007, but until Office XP track changes were utter crap. After two passes, they become simply unusable -I don't know who invented the "balloons" visualization but that individual should be tortured. Track changes would be wonderful if (1)works between *selected versions* and not instead *tracking every single stupid change* (maybe there is an option for this, let me know) and (2)has a diff-like side-by-side view instead of the ballon visualization.
I may be wrong, of course, I'll be glad if you prove me to.
I could not agree more. I work in a university lab, so maybe it's different, but I never had any "training". They just tell me "That's the software you need; use it". That is for Office as for Illustrator as for IGOR or MatLab (programming IGOR, brrr, what a nightmare). Of course I can choose any other software I like if it costs zero and does the same things -that's why I have a Kubuntu desktop in my lab.
If you are lucky enough to live and work in an environment that allows this, then it is, IMHO, the absolute best method for developing software.
Being an "amateur", well, not always, because more often than note I had to refactor to allow things that it was never intended to do first. As of today I'm writing a plugin architecture and I'm rewriting the code to be everywhere as elastic as possible. Yes I should have done it first, but I'm not a pro developer and this is a good lesson I'm learning...
Almost nobody can tell the difference between 320 and flac. So why should people who want to download the latest slammin RnB hit want anything else?
Right *slap on my head* this answers my first question pretty easily. Anyway I still can't find, just for curiosity, a stat on the usage of various music file formats (I guess doing stats on files shared on SoulSeek would be a good indicator). If anyone knows of one, I'd like to see it.
Oh please, who downgraded me as troll? Cannot we joke here?
I am by no mean a professional developer, however I develop a data analysis application that my collegues use in my lab (I hope to release it on Sourceforge soon). I do it not only for *my* data analysis, but also for other kinds of analyses, so I discuss "specs" from my collegues and implement them.
What I found is that when they are in front of the app, after a bit of usage they think "could you add feature X?" "how can I do Y?" and so on. I implement X and Y, and only then they ask "oh, you did Y? So why not Z?" etc. So the spec becomes dynamic, in the sense that only when they see a milestone accomplished new possibilities come to their (and my) mind. It's a climbing process. I don't know if it's the same also for pro developers.
I always thought that with the advent of broadband and cheap 10^2-gigabyte storage, FLAC would have overtook mp3, however it is not happened still. Probably by "fault" of portable players, where storage space is still critical. Are there any statistics on the average usage/trends of MP3 vs FLAC/Ogg Vorbis/wma/aac etc.?
Yes, but FreeBSD girls rule!.
Well, to be honest the today conception of vacuum is not that of a space completely devoid of everything. Vacuum has an energy, and literally boils of instantly-annihilating particle-antiparticle couples. This has observable effects that have been measured, like the Casimir effect. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_energy for an explanation.
IE runs under Whine, but you need to launch the application from an existing install of Windoze.
False. You can install IE standalone, and in fact I have IE 6 installed under Wine. And my actual pc has never seen a Windows install (it's a Gentoo system). You can find a dumb-easy script to install IE6 here.
Linux is not ready for prime time when it comes to music software. The only program I've found that automatically detects my MIDI keyboard is LMMS. Whine chokes on Cakewalk software installs.
This is sad but right. LMMS is very promising but is very limited now (However I'm nicely impressed by its painless VST support)
Google Earth installs but the graphics are slower'n crap.
"Installs" under Wine? There is a native Google Earth binary for Linux. I have it running on my machine and works well. If you have problem with slow graphics, check you have direct rendering enabled on your machine.
But if you value positive money the time you spend learning by doing, you actually are rewarded by building a PC. It all depends on how you value things.