/. automatically inserts spaces in long things with no spaces to stop people screwing up the formatting on purpose; unfortunately this can break URLs. Take out that space and it'll work... --
My flatmate works in a big Accident and Emergency department serving Edinburgh and a whole lot of places around it. They've drafted in scads of extra doctors who haven't been seen in years. The extra doctors are all sitting around reminiscing about the way the hospital used to be, because people don't seem to be doing themselves injuries at the rate expected.
The total absence of Y2K related badness is almost suspicious... --
I'd love to have a go with this, though I don't know if Kaffe/Classpath/Apache currently does it. Have you had a play with Apache's mod_perl, though? That's the technology that drives Slashdot itself - integration of a Perl interpreter with the webserver, that allows damn fine perfomance and scads of flexibility. --
...but I still think it's a bad thing when a man is threatened with death for writing it.
In other words, it's about a point of principle. It's about making sure the precedents go our way. It's about speaking out for the DVD people so they'll be there to speak out for us, and establishing now that we want the freedoms they're trying to take away from us, whether we were going to use them for watching DVD movies or for something else.
In that sense it is precisely a fight to save our individual freedom and no scare quotes are needed. It's a little disturbing to see how rare understanding of the very idea of a point of principle is. --
It comes as quite a surprise to me that Debian is keen to accept new packages so late in its development cycle. Does anyone know why Debian doesn't freeze out new packages earlier? --
Sorry, QM is successful because of its breathtaking predictive power. And if you're familiar with experimental results like the Aspect Experiment, it should be clear to you that no theory with the "common sense" deterministic appeal of Newtonian Mechanics can correctly mirror reality. Your social scientific explanations for theories confirmed again and again by empirical results are, as US people like to say, way off base. --
What's surprising is how long it's taking us.
on
RMS on Java and GPL
·
· Score: 5
As is so often the case, RMS is right on the money. In many ways, what's most surprising is the way Sun have successfully stayed some way ahead of the free implementations in their commercial offering, especially in the class libraries: given what Java has to offer, you'd normally think we'd snap up the chance to create a free implementation. Perhaps dirty tricks like the SCSL have successfully divided us and our efforts.
I look forward very much to the major release of Classpath he mentioned! --
If there is such a thing as an "ideology" that's unarguably bad in the sense that Brin means it, it's an excessivly simplistic analysis of a complex and intricate problem. In that sense, Brin's seeming belief that ideology is the sole source of bad stuff this century seems like a prime candidate.
Hitler and Stalin were no more than particularly gruesome manifestations of this fever -- a passion for simplistic visions of utopia, shared with almost hysterical ardor by millions who invested their favorite manifestos with the kind of devotion formerly given to kings and religions. These hypnotic formulas were nearly always based on reducing human beings to formulas or paper caricatures, denying our true complexity.
I get particularly annoyed by this mistake because this simplistic definition and condemnation tend to be attached to anyone who sees large-scale problems and calls for large-scale solutions. Sometimes the assertion that problems are complex is used to paralyze any kind of action at all, on the grounds that we have to complete our analysis before we do anything even if that takes forever. It's important that over-simplistic thinking be refuted where it's spouted, but I think trying to create a category called "ideology" meaning "analysis of society, its problems and solutions that I don't like" is as meaningless as talking about "pornography" meaning "erotica that I don't like".
There are ills that Hitler and Stalin have in common, but this way of looking at them doesn't capture them. --
Roblimo never said he thought that this was in any way reprehensible. But it sure is interesting. That M$ ackowledge our existence is one thing: that we're so widespread that such instructions might be useful to more than a few people is quite another. I'm glad the story was posted. --
Let me die a youngman's death not a clean & in between the sheets holy water death not a famous-last-words peaceful out of breath death
When I'm 73 & in constant good tumour may I be mown down at dawn by a bright red sports car on my way home from an all night party
Or when I'm 91 with silver hair & sitting in a barber's chair may rival gangsters with ham fisted tommy guns burst in & give me a short back and insides
Or when I'm 104 & banned from the Cavern may my mistress catch me in bed with her daughter & fearing for her son cut me up into little pieces & throw away every piece but one
Let me die a youngman's death not a free from sin tiptoe in candle wax and waning death not a curtains drawn by angels borne what a nice way to go death
Claim 1: a system whereby hilarity and/or despair is brought to a large group of people through the broadcast of the details of granted patents.
Claim 2: a system as in Claim 1 whereby the details are provided in the form of a Uniform Resource Locator identifying the patent on an Internet accessible patent repository such as the IBM patent site.
Claim 3: a system as in Claim 1 and/or Claim 2 whereby the method of broadcast is an article on a popular portal site such as Slashdot.
Claim 4: a system as in Claims 1-3 whereby the patent applicants are obviously massively taking the piss.
Please see appendix XXX for the full text of the Artistic License. Although this license was originally developed for Perl, it's since been used for other software. It is, in my opinion, a sloppily-worded license, in that it makes requirements and then gives you loopholes that make it easy to bypass the requirements. Perhaps that's why almost all Artistic-license software is now dual-licensed, offering the choice of the Artistic License or the GPL.
Section 5 of the Artistic License prohibits sale of the software, yet allows an aggregate software distribution of more than one program to be sold. So, if you bundle an Artistic-licensed program with a 5-line hello-world.c, you can sell the bundle. This feature of the Artistic License was the sole cause of the "aggregate" loophole in paragraph 1 of the Open Source Definition. As use of the Artistic License wanes, we are considering removing the loophole. That would make the Artistic a non-Open-Source license. This isn't a step we would take lightly, and there will probably be more than a year of consideration and debate before it happens.
The Artistic License requires you to make modifications free, but then gives you a loophole (in section 7) that allows you to take modifications private or even place parts of the Artistic-licensed program in the public domain!
Avoid. If you want to allow commercial forks, go for the X license (not the BSD license: see RMS's article on The BSD License Problem. If you don't, go GPL or LGPL. --
Slashdot | Posted by CmdrTaco on 1999-0-0 from the just-because-you're-paranoid dept.
About twenty minutes ago, a gang of three Scientology agents collected outside Taco Mansions. They tried to harass one of my visitors when they arrived, telling them that I was hosting child pornography and was a convicted felon. If anyone's in the XXX area just now, you might like to come and look, they're on the corner of XXX and XXX. I've posted PNG images of them *here*. I could use some backup on this one.
Cheers, CmdrTaco.
No, I don't think the Co$ would be stupid enough to try that one. The Commander is far from powerless. --
I don't think they'd do this for all sorts of reasons. But even if they tried it, the DOJ could have an injunction stopping them from running away from justice until it is served in an instant. And even if everyone who works for Microsoft moved, the intellectual property is owned by Microsoft US, so they need the US governments cooperation if they expect it to be protected. --
It's marvellous to see an Open Source solution win such a clear victory over proprietary rivals, but I hope someday to see Apache start to lose market dominance again, in favour of some of its open source rivals (like Zope). The way Apache does things isn't always the best way to manage Web content provision, and a monoculture of Web servers would certainly be a Bad Thing. --
Andrea Arcangeli lives in Imola, Italy
on
Under The Radar
·
· Score: 2
Here's his homepage, so you can find out what he looks like. --
Domain names in the.com,.net, and.org domains can now be registered with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net for detailed information.
No match for "SLOPPYLARGETITTIES.COM".
>>> Last update of whois database: Tue, 30 Nov 99 00:40:30 EST <<< --
the thing is so resource-hungry, you'll need access to mains power to run it for more than three minutes!
Wouldn't it just guarantee victory for our side if Symbian went open source? How come the hardware manufacturers don't realise this is in their interests? "The Magic Cauldron" makes it all fairly clear... --
Remember that if the courts decide that the GPL is so much toilet paper, the consequence is that distributors have no right to distribute code at all, since it's only the GPL would grant them that right. It's pretty much a fail-safe license: there's simply no legal route by which someone could distribute GPL'd code as if it placed no obligations on them unless the court returns a seriously perverse verdict.
You're mistaken about Common Law. It's possible you're thinking of trademark law; this isn't trademark law. --
Slashdot Mirror
/. automatically inserts spaces in long things with no spaces to stop people screwing up the formatting on purpose; unfortunately this can break URLs. Take out that space and it'll work...
--
My flatmate works in a big Accident and Emergency department serving Edinburgh and a whole lot of places around it. They've drafted in scads of extra doctors who haven't been seen in years. The extra doctors are all sitting around reminiscing about the way the hospital used to be, because people don't seem to be doing themselves injuries at the rate expected.
The total absence of Y2K related badness is almost suspicious...
--
I'd love to have a go with this, though I don't know if Kaffe/Classpath/Apache currently does it. Have you had a play with Apache's mod_perl, though? That's the technology that drives Slashdot itself - integration of a Perl interpreter with the webserver, that allows damn fine perfomance and scads of flexibility.
--
...but I still think it's a bad thing when a man is threatened with death for writing it.
In other words, it's about a point of principle. It's about making sure the precedents go our way. It's about speaking out for the DVD people so they'll be there to speak out for us, and establishing now that we want the freedoms they're trying to take away from us, whether we were going to use them for watching DVD movies or for something else.
In that sense it is precisely a fight to save our individual freedom and no scare quotes are needed. It's a little disturbing to see how rare understanding of the very idea of a point of principle is.
--
It comes as quite a surprise to me that Debian is keen to accept new packages so late in its development cycle. Does anyone know why Debian doesn't freeze out new packages earlier?
--
Sorry, QM is successful because of its breathtaking predictive power. And if you're familiar with experimental results like the Aspect Experiment, it should be clear to you that no theory with the "common sense" deterministic appeal of Newtonian Mechanics can correctly mirror reality. Your social scientific explanations for theories confirmed again and again by empirical results are, as US people like to say, way off base.
--
As is so often the case, RMS is right on the money. In many ways, what's most surprising is the way Sun have successfully stayed some way ahead of the free implementations in their commercial offering, especially in the class libraries: given what Java has to offer, you'd normally think we'd snap up the chance to create a free implementation. Perhaps dirty tricks like the SCSL have successfully divided us and our efforts.
I look forward very much to the major release of Classpath he mentioned!
--
I get particularly annoyed by this mistake because this simplistic definition and condemnation tend to be attached to anyone who sees large-scale problems and calls for large-scale solutions. Sometimes the assertion that problems are complex is used to paralyze any kind of action at all, on the grounds that we have to complete our analysis before we do anything even if that takes forever. It's important that over-simplistic thinking be refuted where it's spouted, but I think trying to create a category called "ideology" meaning "analysis of society, its problems and solutions that I don't like" is as meaningless as talking about "pornography" meaning "erotica that I don't like".
There are ills that Hitler and Stalin have in common, but this way of looking at them doesn't capture them.
--
Eh? Tove *is* his wife. And six times karate champion of Finland.
--
Seeing as how Tove is a karate champion. That should ensure the best people win...
--
Roblimo never said he thought that this was in any way reprehensible. But it sure is interesting. That M$ ackowledge our existence is one thing: that we're so widespread that such instructions might be useful to more than a few people is quite another. I'm glad the story was posted.
--
For those who don't want to go through the whole thing, here's a nonsense words version
--
Let me die a youngman's death
not a clean & in between
the sheets holy water death
not a famous-last-words
peaceful out of breath death
When I'm 73
& in constant good tumour
may I be mown down at dawn
by a bright red sports car
on my way home
from an all night party
Or when I'm 91
with silver hair
& sitting in a barber's chair
may rival gangsters
with ham fisted tommy guns burst in
& give me a short back and insides
Or when I'm 104
& banned from the Cavern
may my mistress
catch me in bed with her daughter
& fearing for her son
cut me up into little pieces
& throw away every piece but one
Let me die a youngman's death
not a free from sin tiptoe in
candle wax and waning death
not a curtains drawn by angels borne
what a nice way to go death
(Roger McGough)
--
Claim 1: a system whereby hilarity and/or despair is brought to a large group of people through the broadcast of the details of granted patents.
Claim 2: a system as in Claim 1 whereby the details are provided in the form of a Uniform Resource Locator identifying the patent on an Internet accessible patent repository such as the IBM patent site.
Claim 3: a system as in Claim 1 and/or Claim 2 whereby the method of broadcast is an article on a popular portal site such as Slashdot.
Claim 4: a system as in Claims 1-3 whereby the patent applicants are obviously massively taking the piss.
US5443036: Method of exercising a cat
--
--
I foudn the quote from this comment hard to believe, so I did a search, and sure enough: he really said it.
Boggle.
--
Scientology agents are watching my house
Slashdot | Posted by CmdrTaco on 1999-0-0
from the just-because-you're-paranoid dept.
About twenty minutes ago, a gang of three Scientology agents collected outside Taco Mansions. They tried to harass one of my visitors when they arrived, telling them that I was hosting child pornography and was a convicted felon. If anyone's in the XXX area just now, you might like to come and look, they're on the corner of XXX and XXX. I've posted PNG images of them *here*. I could use some backup on this one.
Cheers,
CmdrTaco.
No, I don't think the Co$ would be stupid enough to try that one. The Commander is far from powerless.
--
I don't think they'd do this for all sorts of reasons. But even if they tried it, the DOJ could have an injunction stopping them from running away from justice until it is served in an instant. And even if everyone who works for Microsoft moved, the intellectual property is owned by Microsoft US, so they need the US governments cooperation if they expect it to be protected.
--
I'll email you with... oh. Never mind.
--
Zope can run as a web server on its own, or handle requests through Apache. I think the latter is recommended though.
At least, this was so last time I looked. I know they've put quite a bit of work into making the Apache path faster since then.
But you're right, what I wrote was misleading.
--
It's marvellous to see an Open Source solution win such a clear victory over proprietary rivals, but I hope someday to see Apache start to lose market dominance again, in favour of some of its open source rivals (like Zope). The way Apache does things isn't always the best way to manage Web content provision, and a monoculture of Web servers would certainly be a Bad Thing.
--
Here's his homepage, so you can find out what he looks like.
--
$ whois sloppylargetitties.com
.com, .net, and .org domains can now be registered with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net for detailed information.
[rs.internic.net]
Whois Server Version 1.1
Domain names in the
No match for "SLOPPYLARGETITTIES.COM".
>>> Last update of whois database: Tue, 30 Nov 99 00:40:30 EST <<<
--
the thing is so resource-hungry, you'll need access to mains power to run it for more than three minutes!
Wouldn't it just guarantee victory for our side if Symbian went open source? How come the hardware manufacturers don't realise this is in their interests? "The Magic Cauldron" makes it all fairly clear...
--
Remember that if the courts decide that the GPL is so much toilet paper, the consequence is that distributors have no right to distribute code at all, since it's only the GPL would grant them that right. It's pretty much a fail-safe license: there's simply no legal route by which someone could distribute GPL'd code as if it placed no obligations on them unless the court returns a seriously perverse verdict.
You're mistaken about Common Law. It's possible you're thinking of trademark law; this isn't trademark law.
--