...or to distribute copies, or link to libraries, or produce derivative works. the reason for the up-front presentation of the GPL, like any license, is so that folks know what the is or is not allowed in a given case.
i wouldn't say that no hardware makes use of it - just no current Apple hardware. i used this feature when i had one of those rotatable external monitors hooked up to my PowerBook. i was spending the week in another office and the desk they sat me at had one of these things on it; figured i'd give it a shot.
id size (lower is better) is only one part of the algorithm. besides, the guy with a three digit ID already blamed it on Amelio, so you can't even win on that one.
eh. clearly someone doesn't like me, Alan Kay, the future, or some combination thereof. i rather thought i was being quite relevant to the parent. oh, well; i'm over it.
heh. funny, but unfortunate. Amelio had a misstep or two, but it really was his two predecessors who really screwed the company. this is independently verifiable.
Yes, but "feloniously" (while ripe with many meanings) usually means "while committing a felony."
i disagree. certainly in common usage it just means illegal, as most people have no conscious (or certainly not reliable) differentiation between felonies and civil offenses. further, the New Oxford American Dictionary and WordNet both define feloniously similarly: "of, relating to, or involved in crime" (NOAD definition).
an no, joyriding doesn't inherently involve stealing; i can do it in my own car. but if i do it in yours, without your permission, that's stealing. in case the obvious truth of that is too obscure and you don't have a 9 year old handy to ask, NOAD includes that, too. it has nothing to do with deprecating the value of my car; it has to do with the fact that it's my property, and you have no right to use it without my permission.
I believe VERY strongly in private property rights -- the right to do on your land what you want to do with your property, body and time. I think the Constitution originally was prepared to protect property rights, but over time things have changed.
you will note that the US Constitution contains very explicit protection for intellectual property (although it doesn't use that phrase); see Article I Section 8. this is going to be a significant problem for anti-IP advocacy (up with ATM! er, sorry.) in the US. and, IMHO, rightly so. the founders understood the need and motivation for this, and stated the justification for IP law explicitly: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". nothing to do with maximizing anyone's profits there, which is the part the media cartels miss.
From Webster: Steal v. t. "To take, and carry away, feloniously; to take without right or leave, and with intent to keep wrongfully; as, to steal the personal goods of another."
How exactly can I carry away so called intellectual property?
you misunderstand definitions. those things separated by semicolons are not cumulative, but alternatives. so to take something and carry it away feloniously is stealing, but to take without right or leave and with intent to keep wrongfully is also stealing. the first bit covers the case with the teenagers stealing my car every night: they've taken and carried it away feloniously. the second bit is what you do with intellectual property - note the absence of the "cary away" clause.
i find your instructions to "buy a dictionary already" amusing given that you seem to be unable to properly read the one you've got. the fact that you concluded that auto theft for joyriding wasn't stealing should've been a pretty clear indicator that you had something out of whack.
hopefully you don't mean that literally, or it's a bug (although an admittedly minor one); the change didn't happen at midnight for most of the world. for example, it was 19:00:60 in EST.
ah, well there we go then. we've been using differing standards of comparison. i'd agree that the/. populace generally is no more scientifically savvy than the readership of popular science, but i'd also argue that the readership of popular science is much more scientifically savvy than the general public at large, which i'd been comparing it to.
the parent is a troll and an idiot, but you seem to be genuinely asking, so i'll take the time to answer.
GUI quality: The troll gives no indication of what or how he's measuring. it's difficult to deny that MS's GUIs are more polished, but there are numerous inconstancies. GUIs available on unix systems, including FreeBSD, tend to be more configurable. i'm inclined to agree that traditional X11-based GUIs are behind that of Windows, but that's a far cry from FreeBSD not having one, as the troll claims. also, OS X is widely agreed to be easier to use than Windows' and is unquestionably more technically advanced (we'll see what Vista brings). Support: The troll's claims that Microsoft is "the world's most trusted software company" is simply laughable. major failures in security and stability in Microsoft products are legendary; their reputation for quality is thoroughly mediocre. they are, however, quite large and do stand behind their products (such as they are) for defined periods of time, which has a certain level of comfort associated with it. FreeBSD, on the other hand, has much higher initial quality and also has commercial support available from various sources. the open source nature of FreeBSD and the vibrant community existing around it also means particularly obscure problems are more addressable than they are in Windows, where you're left waiting for Microsoft to release a patch. again, there are trade offs to be made, but i think FreeBSD is a clear winner here. Cost and convenience: It is undeniable that having the system pre-installed is a huge win for convenience. but the troll goes way off-track from there. first, XP is available pre-installed, but for how many architectures, maybe two (x86 and itanium)? FreeBSD is available on about a half dozen (NetBSD, incidentally, is available on dozens); this is particularly important in the sever and appliance realms, which are FreeBSD's primary target spaces. FreeBSD is available pre-installed at least on server equipment (i don't know of anyone who does workstations/laptops). the troll claims that XP is free, which is flatly false: the cost is bundled in the cost of the hardware. the troll is also implicitly defining terms like "every major manufacturer" to be only ones he cares about: get me an XP system from Sun or Apple, for example. Stability/scalability:Again, the troll gives no measurements. at a minimum, XP has a reputation for being unreliable. in my experience at work, XP is a step down in stability and reliability from 2000, although both of these are still leaps ahead of any Microsoft system predating that (except probably DOS, which was highly stable by virtue of being so tremendously simple). DoS-style attacks which bring down the system remain common against XP and virtually unheard of against FreeBSD. FreeBSD is highly stable. the standard edition of XP also scales to 2 processors; special versions are available to get it up to higher number, but still pretty modest number of processors (i think it was 16, but i don't remember). i'm not sure specifically what SMP problems the troll is talking about (again, no specifics), but i've personally run FreeBSD on dual-processor SMB systems without issue and other BSDs on systems much, much larger than any Microsoft product has any hope of touching. for reference, note that BSD-based systems hold many places in the Top 500 supercomputer list, including several in the top 20; Windows can't hope to touch that level of performance. Software availability: No, troll, not everyone uses it. but yes, it does have more software. for that reason, when i was Director of IT for our company, we continued to by Windows boxes; our accounting package wasn't available on any other platform. but this very much depends what you need. FreeBSD certainly runs a far cry more than vi. most things that'll run on other open-source systems like Linux,
I'm a physician and I have never heard the word 'cat'.
dude, you totally need to get out of the lab more. go ask a neighbor. small furry thing, clever, likes tummy rubs. Schrödinger had one, which he may or may not have killed.
Hey, mind and reality are not diametrically opposed opposites, as 3000+ years of western philosophy would have you believe.
i think you need to read more/better philosophy. the relationship between what we perceive and the "real" world has been a popular topic for philosophers for quite some time now. check out Austin and Warnock for excelent 20th-century examples, but it goes back at least most of the way to the greeks, the origin of traditional western philosophy.
...the moderation and general comments I see indicate it's a non-science crowd...
well, in defense of/. (WTF?!?), all that shows is that it's not a quantum physics crowd. there's plenty of bio or CS folks in here who could certainly be described as scientists without having any better claim to understanding any of this than anyone else. of course, there's also plenty of kids who think they're a lot smarter than they are...
what exactly do you think NYT is demanding from you? registration is free, they don't do any identity checks, i don't even remember them doing email verification (although i could be wrong on that). if you don't like registration for philosophical reasons, or if you're just lazy, that's fine, and your right. but don't pretend it's anything else or that NYT is putting any sort of particular burden on you. also, most amusingly, this particular link doesn't seem to be requiring registration for some reason.
Want to make AIX (Or any of the other commercial unices) better instantly? Jettison all those crappy old AT&T utilities and replace them with their GNU counterparts.
if by "better" you mean "worse, incompatible, and broken", sure, go ahead. the behavior of the existing tools are there in large part because loads of applications (commercial and in-house, binaries and scripts) rely on the existing behavior. further, note that the AT&T folks often omitted functionality not just because they were lazy or didn't get around to it (although, to be fair, there was some of that), but at least as often because they simply thought it was a bad idea. google for "cat -v considered harmful" for an example, coming right from the original Bell Lab that created Unix in the first place. having more features does not make something better. the GNU folks are notorious for adding functionality without giving much or any thought to how it integrates with the existing system. i'm also very interested in your claim that the GNU tools are more stable. cite?
i'll give you the fact that SMIT is crap. it's impressively bad. but package management is hard in complex systems. apt is better, but it's got more than its fair share of issues, too. myself, i've become more and more convinced of the OS X method: just provide a mostly-self-contained bundle with good system frameworks. sure, it's less efficient in terms of disk use, but that's cheap.
note, incidentally, that OS X uses comparatively little of the GNU userland, opting instead for BSD-derived ones in many cases of overlap. while the BSD folks are far from immune to creeping featuritus, they're at least somewhat more constrained by questions of aesthetics, thanks in large part to the prolonged exposure to the original Bell Labs folks.
that's pretty sad, and in all seriousness i'd take it as an indication that you should be looking around the industry a bit more, or significantly re-evaluating your knowledge
AIX is IBM's Unix system, and has been a commercial offering for nearly twenty years (next year). it's got a very large installed base (as server OSs go), impressive enterprise-grade functionality, and enviable stability. it's also a very large part of the fuss around the SCO v. IBM lawsuit, perhaps the biggest legal issue in IT at the moment. check out AIX's Wikipedia page, which gives a much better overview of history and such than IBM's official AIX page.
i have. i've built X11 on plan 9, even! let me tell you, that was a kick.
imake is archaic and probably overly complex. and sure, that's bad. but the autotool mess is an invitation to cop out of questions of portability. using it as an example of how to write portable code shows a fundamental misunderstanding of C, Unix, standards-based programming, and, well, computer science. it can be used sanely, i suppose, like most tools, but it's simply way too easy to abuse.
i'm glad to see x.org taking modularity seriously, but sad to see them using autotool to do it.
...measures just 12.5 inches wide x 5 inches deep x 1 inch thick...
i'd like to point out that this thing simply isn't really particularly small. my Happy Hacker keyboard, which has the benefit of preserving current typing methods, is about this size or a bit smaller. i fail to see the win here, particularly at such high a cost.
please re-read my post. first: you should be able to find very easily where i explicitly discount the idea that being a Christian means you don't commit sins. second: the "nonsense cited by me" is that a Christian is someone who tries to follow Christ's teachings. are you seriously arguing that the predicate and subject are unrelated there? good luck. third: as to the grandparent, i'll grant that "freedom of the individual" is a little non-obvious as a core defining value for Christianity, but the value of the individual and "her private relationship with God" (the other two points the grandparent included) are absolutely essential. you can easily get to all the same conclusions using just those two. fourth: the grandparent's primary complaint is against those who make up "fear and power-hunger" in Christian trappings. again, this complaint is directly related to the definition of Christianity stated (trying to follow Christ), as Christ spoke directly against both of them numerous times.
i'm forced to conclude that either you're not really trying to engage in a logical argument here (duh; this is the internet, and, worse, slashdot), or you just don't understand the logical elements you're trying to use. if i'm wrong, please explain how "tries to follow Christ" is unrelated to "Christian" in a way even vaguely similar to how "doesn't eat sugar on porridge" is unrelated to "Scotsman". thanks.
Slashdot Mirror
...or to distribute copies, or link to libraries, or produce derivative works. the reason for the up-front presentation of the GPL, like any license, is so that folks know what the is or is not allowed in a given case.
i wouldn't say that no hardware makes use of it - just no current Apple hardware. i used this feature when i had one of those rotatable external monitors hooked up to my PowerBook. i was spending the week in another office and the desk they sat me at had one of these things on it; figured i'd give it a shot.
nah, there's other sane things to do to WMV files.
transcode and delete come to mind...
id size (lower is better) is only one part of the algorithm. besides, the guy with a three digit ID already blamed it on Amelio, so you can't even win on that one.
eh. clearly someone doesn't like me, Alan Kay, the future, or some combination thereof. i rather thought i was being quite relevant to the parent. oh, well; i'm over it.
heh. funny, but unfortunate. Amelio had a misstep or two, but it really was his two predecessors who really screwed the company. this is independently verifiable.
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it" --Alan Kay
an no, joyriding doesn't inherently involve stealing; i can do it in my own car. but if i do it in yours, without your permission, that's stealing. in case the obvious truth of that is too obscure and you don't have a 9 year old handy to ask, NOAD includes that, too. it has nothing to do with deprecating the value of my car; it has to do with the fact that it's my property, and you have no right to use it without my permission.
i find your instructions to "buy a dictionary already" amusing given that you seem to be unable to properly read the one you've got. the fact that you concluded that auto theft for joyriding wasn't stealing should've been a pretty clear indicator that you had something out of whack.
hopefully you don't mean that literally, or it's a bug (although an admittedly minor one); the change didn't happen at midnight for most of the world. for example, it was 19:00:60 in EST.
ah, well there we go then. we've been using differing standards of comparison. i'd agree that the /. populace generally is no more scientifically savvy than the readership of popular science, but i'd also argue that the readership of popular science is much more scientifically savvy than the general public at large, which i'd been comparing it to.
the parent is a troll and an idiot, but you seem to be genuinely asking, so i'll take the time to answer.
GUI quality: The troll gives no indication of what or how he's measuring. it's difficult to deny that MS's GUIs are more polished, but there are numerous inconstancies. GUIs available on unix systems, including FreeBSD, tend to be more configurable. i'm inclined to agree that traditional X11-based GUIs are behind that of Windows, but that's a far cry from FreeBSD not having one, as the troll claims. also, OS X is widely agreed to be easier to use than Windows' and is unquestionably more technically advanced (we'll see what Vista brings).
Support: The troll's claims that Microsoft is "the world's most trusted software company" is simply laughable. major failures in security and stability in Microsoft products are legendary; their reputation for quality is thoroughly mediocre. they are, however, quite large and do stand behind their products (such as they are) for defined periods of time, which has a certain level of comfort associated with it. FreeBSD, on the other hand, has much higher initial quality and also has commercial support available from various sources. the open source nature of FreeBSD and the vibrant community existing around it also means particularly obscure problems are more addressable than they are in Windows, where you're left waiting for Microsoft to release a patch. again, there are trade offs to be made, but i think FreeBSD is a clear winner here.
Cost and convenience: It is undeniable that having the system pre-installed is a huge win for convenience. but the troll goes way off-track from there. first, XP is available pre-installed, but for how many architectures, maybe two (x86 and itanium)? FreeBSD is available on about a half dozen (NetBSD, incidentally, is available on dozens); this is particularly important in the sever and appliance realms, which are FreeBSD's primary target spaces. FreeBSD is available pre-installed at least on server equipment (i don't know of anyone who does workstations/laptops). the troll claims that XP is free, which is flatly false: the cost is bundled in the cost of the hardware. the troll is also implicitly defining terms like "every major manufacturer" to be only ones he cares about: get me an XP system from Sun or Apple, for example.
Stability/scalability:Again, the troll gives no measurements. at a minimum, XP has a reputation for being unreliable. in my experience at work, XP is a step down in stability and reliability from 2000, although both of these are still leaps ahead of any Microsoft system predating that (except probably DOS, which was highly stable by virtue of being so tremendously simple). DoS-style attacks which bring down the system remain common against XP and virtually unheard of against FreeBSD. FreeBSD is highly stable. the standard edition of XP also scales to 2 processors; special versions are available to get it up to higher number, but still pretty modest number of processors (i think it was 16, but i don't remember). i'm not sure specifically what SMP problems the troll is talking about (again, no specifics), but i've personally run FreeBSD on dual-processor SMB systems without issue and other BSDs on systems much, much larger than any Microsoft product has any hope of touching. for reference, note that BSD-based systems hold many places in the Top 500 supercomputer list, including several in the top 20; Windows can't hope to touch that level of performance.
Software availability: No, troll, not everyone uses it. but yes, it does have more software. for that reason, when i was Director of IT for our company, we continued to by Windows boxes; our accounting package wasn't available on any other platform. but this very much depends what you need. FreeBSD certainly runs a far cry more than vi. most things that'll run on other open-source systems like Linux,
of course, there's also plenty of kids who think they're a lot smarter than they are...
what exactly do you think NYT is demanding from you? registration is free, they don't do any identity checks, i don't even remember them doing email verification (although i could be wrong on that). if you don't like registration for philosophical reasons, or if you're just lazy, that's fine, and your right. but don't pretend it's anything else or that NYT is putting any sort of particular burden on you.
also, most amusingly, this particular link doesn't seem to be requiring registration for some reason.
i'm also very interested in your claim that the GNU tools are more stable. cite?
i'll give you the fact that SMIT is crap. it's impressively bad. but package management is hard in complex systems. apt is better, but it's got more than its fair share of issues, too. myself, i've become more and more convinced of the OS X method: just provide a mostly-self-contained bundle with good system frameworks. sure, it's less efficient in terms of disk use, but that's cheap.
note, incidentally, that OS X uses comparatively little of the GNU userland, opting instead for BSD-derived ones in many cases of overlap. while the BSD folks are far from immune to creeping featuritus, they're at least somewhat more constrained by questions of aesthetics, thanks in large part to the prolonged exposure to the original Bell Labs folks.
that's pretty sad, and in all seriousness i'd take it as an indication that you should be looking around the industry a bit more, or significantly re-evaluating your knowledge
AIX is IBM's Unix system, and has been a commercial offering for nearly twenty years (next year). it's got a very large installed base (as server OSs go), impressive enterprise-grade functionality, and enviable stability. it's also a very large part of the fuss around the SCO v. IBM lawsuit, perhaps the biggest legal issue in IT at the moment. check out AIX's Wikipedia page, which gives a much better overview of history and such than IBM's official AIX page.
as opposed to the autotool gunk, which is mostly shell scripts to make makefiles? at least make is designed for this sort of thing.
sigh... i long for mk...
i have. i've built X11 on plan 9, even! let me tell you, that was a kick.
imake is archaic and probably overly complex. and sure, that's bad. but the autotool mess is an invitation to cop out of questions of portability. using it as an example of how to write portable code shows a fundamental misunderstanding of C, Unix, standards-based programming, and, well, computer science. it can be used sanely, i suppose, like most tools, but it's simply way too easy to abuse.
i'm glad to see x.org taking modularity seriously, but sad to see them using autotool to do it.
please re-read my post.
first: you should be able to find very easily where i explicitly discount the idea that being a Christian means you don't commit sins.
second: the "nonsense cited by me" is that a Christian is someone who tries to follow Christ's teachings. are you seriously arguing that the predicate and subject are unrelated there? good luck.
third: as to the grandparent, i'll grant that "freedom of the individual" is a little non-obvious as a core defining value for Christianity, but the value of the individual and "her private relationship with God" (the other two points the grandparent included) are absolutely essential. you can easily get to all the same conclusions using just those two.
fourth: the grandparent's primary complaint is against those who make up "fear and power-hunger" in Christian trappings. again, this complaint is directly related to the definition of Christianity stated (trying to follow Christ), as Christ spoke directly against both of them numerous times.
i'm forced to conclude that either you're not really trying to engage in a logical argument here (duh; this is the internet, and, worse, slashdot), or you just don't understand the logical elements you're trying to use. if i'm wrong, please explain how "tries to follow Christ" is unrelated to "Christian" in a way even vaguely similar to how "doesn't eat sugar on porridge" is unrelated to "Scotsman". thanks.