and same goes for closed source apps, dunno why you single out open source here True. I used open source apps as an example because that what code I've had the most exposure to. That being said, I personally worked on code for 3 years for a big auto company and that program was like maybe 8,000 lines total of ANSI C code. Each module carried it's own copyright though, and each module was like maybe 500-600 lines on average.
Different languages can do much more complicated tasks with fewer lines of code these days, too. Compare processing a two dimensional array in C vs. a Python dictionary for instance.
It's true that you need to spend time with your children to educate them, but you need to have a balance. You also don't want to be one of those control freak parents standing behind them at the spelling bee going "eyes on the prize!"
Basically, I think the important things are to spend quality time with your kids. If they show interest in a particular area of study, skill or art, encourage them by providing what they need to pursue that. Kids with a keen interest in intellectual pursuits you might want to take them to the library, purchase books on their area of interest, or buy them needed equipment, like, a microscope for the aspiring biologist or a telescope for the aspiring astronomer. Take trips to places that will pique their curiosity -- and remember, children curious.
Because they're so curious, you want to try to answer their questions -- or, better yet, show them how to answer their own questions when appropriate. Show them all of the resources available to them -- Internet, books, the library, videos on the subject, software maybe. And, if you yourself have plenty of knowledge in the area they are interested in, teach them what you know about it.
The real answer is to just be supportive. You can't push them to hard, and you can't be an absentee parent. Bear in mind that children have different styles of learning and might need different approaches. Some will take time to learn, others will learn very quickly. That's really the best advice I can give anyone.
I seem to remember reading something about the visual heuristics the brain uses to identify faces and objects and so forth. There's some we do know, but I think you're right in that there is a LOT of information about how the brain works in this area than we don't know. Of course, we've only had what knowledge we do have (or at least think we have) about the brain for a relatively short time. The study of human brain is relatively young compared to the study of other parts of the body -- one of the main reasons being that we didn't have the necessary toolset to study these things until very recently (relatively speaking, of course).
Who may not even remember posting the code in question and may be completely uncontactable. Let's say the code was 5 years old. Do you remember every piece of code you posted in to all the forums you've participated in in the last 5 years? Have you used the same e-mail address in forums for the last 5 years? How many e-mail addresses have you never bothered checking in the last 5 years?
Mod parent up +5, Informative! Totally agree. I just thought of this right after making my last post -- you don't know where the code on the forum came from in the first place. The forum poster could even have pulled it out of a GPL app. That might be bad, depending on how your application is licensed.
Note that short code segments have often been found to be uncopyrightable. It varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but it's often difficult to claim copyright to less than ~ 10K LOC outside the USA. > 10,000 lines of code? You have to be kidding me. By that definition, there quite a few open source apps that aren't copyrightable.
Um, no. If you want to be technical, if there's no license attached to the code, then you can't use it. Copyright happens on an original work from the time it's published. There are no notice requirements. Without a license, you don't have permission to use the work.
Now, in reality, the author posted it to a forum, probably with the intention of giving away the code. It would be entirely up to the author to sue and whether the author would sue or not -- well, I kinda doubt it.
But, if I were you, OP, I'd check with your company's legal department and/or an attorney. Asking questions like this on Slashdot is likely to result in you getting a lot of misinformation.
You're right. It's not. But that's how it's going to be perceived by end-users because the exploit happens with Firefox, but not with Safari or IE.
Here's the deal: This is a QuickTime problem, not a Firefox problem. Apple needs to fix QuickTime. There should be nothing wrong with Firefox handing off the request to an application that's supposed to handle it correct.
Says who? What he's suggesting is a list of features/wants for a hypothetical competitor to the Kindle. There's nothing to stop anyone here from developing one. Make up a prototype, make sure you aren't stepping on any of Amazon's patents, power the thing with free/open source software. Find a way to get it produced, either by pitching it to an OEM or contact or line up some offshore manufacturing muscle in Taiwan or Korea (you may have to do your own manufacturing engineering or hire one), and then find a distributor to sell your wares or hawk it yourself via the Web. Better yet, once you get 'em produced, get Wal*Mart to buy the suckers. Amazon may be big, but they're peanuts compared to Wal*Mart.
"pattern recognition" IS part of artificial intelligence...,/pedant mode = "off" So you're telling me that grep, sed, awk, vi and emacs are examples of artificial intelligence? (Hint: regular expressions are a form of pattern recognition)
Ridiculous. There are plenty of open source projects with American developers that think smaller and more modular is better. Take XFCE, for example. Small, lightweight.
On the other side of the pond, there are plenty of European developers that think bigger is better. Take KDE for example. Much of the development team is German.
I'm not saying one approach is better than the other, but the whole point of open source is to give you some choices. You want big and full featured? You know where to find it. You want small and lightweight? You know where to find it.
More specifically, lack of ability of applications (or lack of applications able) to adapt to the needs of the individual user automagically (top of my wishlist: a memory crutch). Who says you need artificial intelligence to do that? Applications are already able to customize menu picks and available buttons based on context. Memory crutch? Have you used something like Visual Studio or Eclipse, with autocomplete and function-reference-in-a-bubble? None of this requires artificial intelligence, just plain ol' vanilla pattern recognition.
Now, they go one step too far to say that you can determine anything but movie preferences out of a movie rating list. Just because somebody liked or disliked brokeback mountain doesn't mean they are gay or straight, just like their opinion of michael moore movies doesn't give political affiliation. No, but if they liked Brokeback Mountain, every Michael Moore movie ever produced, An Inconvenient Truth, and Fritz the Cat, you can probably bet that they're a card-carrying liberal.
Another piece of New Jersey legislation requires business owners to disclose to the public whether or not they have ties to organized crime. I hear it's quite effective, as there are now no businesses in New Jersey that stating that they do.
My comment had nothing to do with GMO food -- it was only an example. I can see this is an area of great controversy, and perhaps I shouldn't have used it as an example. But, for purposes of my example, I was ignoring the effects to the ecosystem and to the poor farmer via the patent system. I was looking at solely whether or not GMO food is safe to eat. Some say it isn't, but you can't deny that most scientists working in this area consider GMO food safe for human consumption.
Receipts aren't always what they're looking for, but they can help. For Microsoft applications and system software, they're often looking for the Microsoft 'Certificate of Authenticity' with the hologram on it. Only small businesses, many of which use whitebox PCs, often don't save their CoA's because no one told them to.
Anyway, small-to-medium businesses are easily the most likely to pirate software internally because they often don't have the budget for doing software audits and the like. Plus, in order to get a project out quickly, many small firms with tight budgets will pirate a copy of mission critical applications, with the idea that they'll buy the license later, when the project pays out. Unfortunately, they also usually forget to buy the license later, and personnel go on using the pirated software and become reliant on it -- and this happens in large part because they don't have the budget for doing software audits or license management!
If anyone's looking for a killer business idea, it's this: start a company that just does license management for small businesses. Sell the services in a high-volume, low cost subscription model that lets small businesses pay a small fee every month, say $20-30 in addition to the cost of software, to manage their license portfolio. IOW, provide enterprise-level software portfolio support ala Software Spectrum, at a small business price. Hire some guys from India or down South to do customer support and watch the revenue trickle in.
Slashdot Mirror
Different languages can do much more complicated tasks with fewer lines of code these days, too. Compare processing a two dimensional array in C vs. a Python dictionary for instance.
It's true that you need to spend time with your children to educate them, but you need to have a balance. You also don't want to be one of those control freak parents standing behind them at the spelling bee going "eyes on the prize!"
Basically, I think the important things are to spend quality time with your kids. If they show interest in a particular area of study, skill or art, encourage them by providing what they need to pursue that. Kids with a keen interest in intellectual pursuits you might want to take them to the library, purchase books on their area of interest, or buy them needed equipment, like, a microscope for the aspiring biologist or a telescope for the aspiring astronomer. Take trips to places that will pique their curiosity -- and remember, children curious.
Because they're so curious, you want to try to answer their questions -- or, better yet, show them how to answer their own questions when appropriate. Show them all of the resources available to them -- Internet, books, the library, videos on the subject, software maybe. And, if you yourself have plenty of knowledge in the area they are interested in, teach them what you know about it.
The real answer is to just be supportive. You can't push them to hard, and you can't be an absentee parent. Bear in mind that children have different styles of learning and might need different approaches. Some will take time to learn, others will learn very quickly. That's really the best advice I can give anyone.
I seem to remember reading something about the visual heuristics the brain uses to identify faces and objects and so forth. There's some we do know, but I think you're right in that there is a LOT of information about how the brain works in this area than we don't know. Of course, we've only had what knowledge we do have (or at least think we have) about the brain for a relatively short time. The study of human brain is relatively young compared to the study of other parts of the body -- one of the main reasons being that we didn't have the necessary toolset to study these things until very recently (relatively speaking, of course).
Who may not even remember posting the code in question and may be completely uncontactable. Let's say the code was 5 years old. Do you remember every piece of code you posted in to all the forums you've participated in in the last 5 years? Have you used the same e-mail address in forums for the last 5 years? How many e-mail addresses have you never bothered checking in the last 5 years?
Mod parent up +5, Informative! Totally agree. I just thought of this right after making my last post -- you don't know where the code on the forum came from in the first place. The forum poster could even have pulled it out of a GPL app. That might be bad, depending on how your application is licensed.
From the Slashdot meme department: Pot: Hello, Kettle!
Um, no. If you want to be technical, if there's no license attached to the code, then you can't use it. Copyright happens on an original work from the time it's published. There are no notice requirements. Without a license, you don't have permission to use the work.
Now, in reality, the author posted it to a forum, probably with the intention of giving away the code. It would be entirely up to the author to sue and whether the author would sue or not -- well, I kinda doubt it.
But, if I were you, OP, I'd check with your company's legal department and/or an attorney. Asking questions like this on Slashdot is likely to result in you getting a lot of misinformation.
You're right. It's not. But that's how it's going to be perceived by end-users because the exploit happens with Firefox, but not with Safari or IE.
Here's the deal: This is a QuickTime problem, not a Firefox problem. Apple needs to fix QuickTime. There should be nothing wrong with Firefox handing off the request to an application that's supposed to handle it correct.
Are you new here? Nobody RTFA's anyway.
Says who? What he's suggesting is a list of features/wants for a hypothetical competitor to the Kindle. There's nothing to stop anyone here from developing one. Make up a prototype, make sure you aren't stepping on any of Amazon's patents, power the thing with free/open source software. Find a way to get it produced, either by pitching it to an OEM or contact or line up some offshore manufacturing muscle in Taiwan or Korea (you may have to do your own manufacturing engineering or hire one), and then find a distributor to sell your wares or hawk it yourself via the Web. Better yet, once you get 'em produced, get Wal*Mart to buy the suckers. Amazon may be big, but they're peanuts compared to Wal*Mart.
Ridiculous. There are plenty of open source projects with American developers that think smaller and more modular is better. Take XFCE, for example. Small, lightweight.
On the other side of the pond, there are plenty of European developers that think bigger is better. Take KDE for example. Much of the development team is German.
I'm not saying one approach is better than the other, but the whole point of open source is to give you some choices. You want big and full featured? You know where to find it. You want small and lightweight? You know where to find it.
Bill Clinton?
les French? No, it's les français!
Not if you had a sufficient volume of customers.
My comment had nothing to do with GMO food -- it was only an example. I can see this is an area of great controversy, and perhaps I shouldn't have used it as an example. But, for purposes of my example, I was ignoring the effects to the ecosystem and to the poor farmer via the patent system. I was looking at solely whether or not GMO food is safe to eat. Some say it isn't, but you can't deny that most scientists working in this area consider GMO food safe for human consumption.
Thanks,
The MAFIAA
Receipts aren't always what they're looking for, but they can help. For Microsoft applications and system software, they're often looking for the Microsoft 'Certificate of Authenticity' with the hologram on it. Only small businesses, many of which use whitebox PCs, often don't save their CoA's because no one told them to.
Anyway, small-to-medium businesses are easily the most likely to pirate software internally because they often don't have the budget for doing software audits and the like. Plus, in order to get a project out quickly, many small firms with tight budgets will pirate a copy of mission critical applications, with the idea that they'll buy the license later, when the project pays out. Unfortunately, they also usually forget to buy the license later, and personnel go on using the pirated software and become reliant on it -- and this happens in large part because they don't have the budget for doing software audits or license management!
If anyone's looking for a killer business idea, it's this: start a company that just does license management for small businesses. Sell the services in a high-volume, low cost subscription model that lets small businesses pay a small fee every month, say $20-30 in addition to the cost of software, to manage their license portfolio. IOW, provide enterprise-level software portfolio support ala Software Spectrum, at a small business price. Hire some guys from India or down South to do customer support and watch the revenue trickle in.
Okay, okay, you're right everyone. I'm confusing CC with Sci Fi. Still, I think Futurama would have been better served by Adult Swim than by CC.