1) If a piece of software is developed anonymously then how can you be sure that someone didn't come along and copy code into it from a piece of proprietary software? Some nefarious individual could (anonymously and secretly) copy their code into a piece of open source software with the express intention of then suing users of that software in the future for copyright infringement.
2) Even though the code is developed anonymously, how does that protect me, as the user of that software, from being sued for patent infringement? Again, a patent holder could secretly add features to a piece of software and then sue users of the software for infringing their patents.
I think that we need more transparency in software development, not more secrecy.
Umm yes, the point was that google maps existed for almost two years as US only
Two years as US only? How long has it been around? I was under the impression that it launched in 2005: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps/ and within a few months there was coverage of the UK and Canada if this Register article is anything to go by: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/29/google_bus h_map/. They added coverage of most of Western Europe within the last few months. Now, point taken, it was probably an annoyingly long wait if you *really* wanted Google Maps to cover the area where you live (and it even more frustrating if your country isn't yet covered...) but be fair, it hasn't even been around for two years yet.
Yes but the Old English (Anglo Saxon) language spoken in England before the Norman Conquest was a Germanic language that was pretty much completely unrelated to Latin. The people who became the English arrived in Britain after the Romans left. The huge number of Latin-derived English only began to enter the language after the Norman conquest, as others have already pointed out in this thread.
Incidentally, the Welsh language is descended from the languages that were spoken in Britain during Roman times and, as such, it contains a fair few Latin loanwords. I'd guess that these entered the language from contemporary Latin while the Romans were still in Britain.
You know, that game Civilization has a lot to answer for, chiefly confusing people as to the meaning of words... Try looking up the words "Republic" and "Democracy". You'll see that they are pretty much orthogonal concepts.
Even if the cable companies paid for the infrastructue, am I, the user, not paying for the use of that structure? I sure won't be happy about paying for a deliberately slowed connection to my favorite sites.
I bet you would be less than happy about the matter. Now, if you have a choice then no problem, you vote with your feet. However, if your local cable co is a monopoly then you are basically screwed. That's the most annoying thing about all this.
Incidentally, your given examples of Google and Amazon are not the sorts of services that the telcos are likely to screw over. More likely is stuff like VOIP/video downloads... the stuff that actually needs a lot of bandwidth, way more than just browsing the web. I can kind of understand the telcos' point of view regarding wanting to screw more money out of stuff like that but I couldn't see them daring to do it if there was a chance of half their customers jumping ship for a competitor who does do the net-neutrality thing. However, in the absence of such competition, they could get away with it, somewhat annoyingly.
No sooner do I post the question than I find the answer myself since I never stopped looking for answers elsewhere. So then I am faced with the question: Should I attempt to retract my posting or should I reply to my own question with the solution?
Do the latter! I wish more people would... that way, the next guy Googling for your problem will find your solution:-) I know what you mean about finding the answer yourself right after you ask for help tho (and not just on message boards either). Sod's Law is what I think it is;-)
Absolutely. It seems to me that the guy can't think of any other way to avoid extradition and thus is using Guantanamo as a defence/defense since he can't think of any other. It's highly unlikely that he would end up in Guantanamo, given the success that the British government has had persuading the American government to release other British citizens held there. However, even if there is a small chance that a British court would refuse extradition based on this argument then it's got to be worth trying if all else fails... right?
It's ok, it works with Firefox now and I didn't have to disable anything. I suspect that I was merely hitting the same problem as everyone else - the site was Slashdotted and consequently wasn't working very well in any browser.
However, my comment about the UI (that it sucks) still stands. What's up with that horrible scrollbar? The GGP was right, if this was a Google beta then it would have sucked a heck of a lot less;-)
When I checked Last.fm's similar artists to the reggae legend Bob Marley, first on the list was James Brown, followed by The Chemical Brothers, then Aerosmith.
All that this indicates is that a lot of people who listen to Bob Marley also happen to listen to James Brown etc. That's how last.fm works, as far as I understand - it recommends stuff based on what other people listen to. If fans of artist A also listen to artist B then it makes the link between the two and recommends artist B to all fans of artist A. I think that if last.fm started trying to exclude stuff because eg: "Bob Marley fans are never going to want to listen to The Chemical Brothers!" then they'd be missing a trick if their data clearly show that a lot of people *do* listen to both.
Recommending Aerosmith to Bob Marley fans is like recommending Slayer to Beach Boys fans.
Again, if a lot of last.fm users listened to The Beach Boys and Slayer then yes, it would make that recommendation.
Re:kinda crap but makes sense in the UK
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Supermarket VOIP
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The best thing about this is that you'll need to have broadband. If you want broadband over BT lines (most likely) then you're still going to have to have a BT phone line coming into your house in order to get it - so you'll still pay BT at least 11 pounds per month in order to make your free calls. Hmmmm....
Worse yet: the mono-developers are suggesting one migth want to develop OSS applications with a primary target being Free OSes under Mono. Doing so would be double hurtful: It'd ensure that any such application developed for Linux works perfectly under Windows (because mono is a *subset* of the MS-environment, AND because all OSS-applications come with source), but *not* the oposite.
I take your point here but I don't agree with your conclusion. I have to use Windows machines a lot at work and I have a Windows partition on my home computer. Open source apps like Firefox and Cygwin make my life a heck of a lot easier when I have to use Windows. Especially Cygwin (what does is say about Windows that my faviourite Windows app is one that makes it look just like UNIX....;-). Now, you can argue against the mere presence of these open source apps on Windows on the grounds that it increases the attractiveness of Windows. Maybe so. However, I argue that it's a good thing for two reasons:
As I said, it makes like easier when you *have* to use Windows from time to time.
It makes it easy to move from Windows to Linux (or other open source/free OS) because you don't have to learn a set of different apps. The number of people I know who use Firefox on Windows, for example, is growing rapidly and all of these people wouldn't have a problem using it on Linux either. Maybe one day, the same will be true of Mono apps too.
Exactly - Google just spent a billion dollars protecting a big chunk of their revenue stream which is highly vulnerable. The problem (for Google) that I see is that every knows this - Microsoft know it and, most importantly, AOL know this. It seems to me that AOL have Google over a barrel to a certain extent because AOL could still jump into bed with Microsoft and screw Google over. Who's to say that AOL won't continue to require favours from Google in the future in order to prevent this?
Had there been a reliable Solaris x86 port before 2003...
Well I don't know what you mean by reliable (presumably "with drivers for the relevant laptop hardware") but my first experiences of UNIX were on Solaris x86 in 1998.
Well there's the problem: these works are in the public domain and copyright law needs to be fixed. Let's extend the period that works stay under copyright to, say, 300 years, thus increasing the incentive for classical composers to write more ace symphonies and ensuring that the record labels get the megabucks they deserve.
Well exactly - they have the choice of either compling with the Chinese govt's wishes and censoring content that the regime doesn't like or giving up a potentially very lucrative market to their competitors. Would Microsoft do that? It appears not.
The thing that really worries me about all this is that if the Chinese govt is in a position to make demands like this on a company as a price for doing businss in China then in the future they may be in a position to make greater demands, ones that affect folks in other countries directly.
To be fair to them, they have expanded the features that they have eg Google Maps (including low-res satelite images) was expanded to the UK and I dare say will be expanded to other countries in time.
If you're desperate to know when they plan to support your country then why not ask them http://www.google.com/support/maps/bin/request.py/ ? You never know, they might be good enough to tell you...;-)
I disagree with the assertion that Slashdot is a wonderful example of self-policing. Sure, we all mod each other but the ultimate power to enforce the "law" still resides with the Slashdot admins. They may happen to deputise a rather large number of ordinary users in order to get the job done but it is they who are the law.
It's not as though Slashdot relies on white-hat hackers to regularly hack in to the site and delete any nasty posts;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, George Lucas turned him from evil super-villain to whiny teenage brat in the space of just three films.
I can see two problems with this idea:
1) If a piece of software is developed anonymously then how can you be sure that someone didn't come along and copy code into it from a piece of proprietary software? Some nefarious individual could (anonymously and secretly) copy their code into a piece of open source software with the express intention of then suing users of that software in the future for copyright infringement.
2) Even though the code is developed anonymously, how does that protect me, as the user of that software, from being sued for patent infringement? Again, a patent holder could secretly add features to a piece of software and then sue users of the software for infringing their patents.
I think that we need more transparency in software development, not more secrecy.
Umm yes, the point was that google maps existed for almost two years as US only
Two years as US only? How long has it been around? I was under the impression that it launched in 2005: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps/ and within a few months there was coverage of the UK and Canada if this Register article is anything to go by: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/29/google_bus h_map/. They added coverage of most of Western Europe within the last few months. Now, point taken, it was probably an annoyingly long wait if you *really* wanted Google Maps to cover the area where you live (and it even more frustrating if your country isn't yet covered...) but be fair, it hasn't even been around for two years yet.
Yes but the Old English (Anglo Saxon) language spoken in England before the Norman Conquest was a Germanic language that was pretty much completely unrelated to Latin. The people who became the English arrived in Britain after the Romans left. The huge number of Latin-derived English only began to enter the language after the Norman conquest, as others have already pointed out in this thread.
Incidentally, the Welsh language is descended from the languages that were spoken in Britain during Roman times and, as such, it contains a fair few Latin loanwords. I'd guess that these entered the language from contemporary Latin while the Romans were still in Britain.
You know, that game Civilization has a lot to answer for, chiefly confusing people as to the meaning of words... Try looking up the words "Republic" and "Democracy". You'll see that they are pretty much orthogonal concepts.
I take "Republic (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=republic /) to mean a country where the head of state is not a monarch.
I take Democracy (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=democrac y/) to mean a country where the people elect their government.
Thus, the UK is a democracy and not a republic, China is a republic and not a democracy and the USA is both.
Yeah, the Java source to the class libraries ... sans the C source to all of the native stuff and the source for the JVM.
I bet you would be less than happy about the matter. Now, if you have a choice then no problem, you vote with your feet. However, if your local cable co is a monopoly then you are basically screwed. That's the most annoying thing about all this.
Incidentally, your given examples of Google and Amazon are not the sorts of services that the telcos are likely to screw over. More likely is stuff like VOIP/video downloads... the stuff that actually needs a lot of bandwidth, way more than just browsing the web. I can kind of understand the telcos' point of view regarding wanting to screw more money out of stuff like that but I couldn't see them daring to do it if there was a chance of half their customers jumping ship for a competitor who does do the net-neutrality thing. However, in the absence of such competition, they could get away with it, somewhat annoyingly.
No sooner do I post the question than I find the answer myself since I never stopped looking for answers elsewhere. So then I am faced with the question: Should I attempt to retract my posting or should I reply to my own question with the solution?
Do the latter! I wish more people would... that way, the next guy Googling for your problem will find your solutionAbsolutely. It seems to me that the guy can't think of any other way to avoid extradition and thus is using Guantanamo as a defence/defense since he can't think of any other. It's highly unlikely that he would end up in Guantanamo, given the success that the British government has had persuading the American government to release other British citizens held there. However, even if there is a small chance that a British court would refuse extradition based on this argument then it's got to be worth trying if all else fails... right?
It's ok, it works with Firefox now and I didn't have to disable anything. I suspect that I was merely hitting the same problem as everyone else - the site was Slashdotted and consequently wasn't working very well in any browser.
However, my comment about the UI (that it sucks) still stands. What's up with that horrible scrollbar? The GGP was right, if this was a Google beta then it would have sucked a heck of a lot less ;-)
If you're going to compare this this with Google then at least be fair and compare it with Google Video ;-)
It doesn't work at all for me in Firefox and when I ty it in IE, I find that it does work but the UI sucks. Great work, guys...
When I checked Last.fm's similar artists to the reggae legend Bob Marley, first on the list was James Brown, followed by The Chemical Brothers, then Aerosmith.
All that this indicates is that a lot of people who listen to Bob Marley also happen to listen to James Brown etc. That's how last.fm works, as far as I understand - it recommends stuff based on what other people listen to. If fans of artist A also listen to artist B then it makes the link between the two and recommends artist B to all fans of artist A. I think that if last.fm started trying to exclude stuff because eg: "Bob Marley fans are never going to want to listen to The Chemical Brothers!" then they'd be missing a trick if their data clearly show that a lot of people *do* listen to both.
Recommending Aerosmith to Bob Marley fans is like recommending Slayer to Beach Boys fans.
Again, if a lot of last.fm users listened to The Beach Boys and Slayer then yes, it would make that recommendation.
The best thing about this is that you'll need to have broadband. If you want broadband over BT lines (most likely) then you're still going to have to have a BT phone line coming into your house in order to get it - so you'll still pay BT at least 11 pounds per month in order to make your free calls. Hmmmm....
I take your point here but I don't agree with your conclusion. I have to use Windows machines a lot at work and I have a Windows partition on my home computer. Open source apps like Firefox and Cygwin make my life a heck of a lot easier when I have to use Windows. Especially Cygwin (what does is say about Windows that my faviourite Windows app is one that makes it look just like UNIX.... ;-). Now, you can argue against the mere presence of these open source apps on Windows on the grounds that it increases the attractiveness of Windows. Maybe so. However, I argue that it's a good thing for two reasons:
As I said, it makes like easier when you *have* to use Windows from time to time.
It makes it easy to move from Windows to Linux (or other open source/free OS) because you don't have to learn a set of different apps. The number of people I know who use Firefox on Windows, for example, is growing rapidly and all of these people wouldn't have a problem using it on Linux either. Maybe one day, the same will be true of Mono apps too.
Exactly - Google just spent a billion dollars protecting a big chunk of their revenue stream which is highly vulnerable. The problem (for Google) that I see is that every knows this - Microsoft know it and, most importantly, AOL know this. It seems to me that AOL have Google over a barrel to a certain extent because AOL could still jump into bed with Microsoft and screw Google over. Who's to say that AOL won't continue to require favours from Google in the future in order to prevent this?
A cynic might say that Google is in a weak position here and are getting played... wonder who will have the last laugh....
Maybe they have a birthday every year.
What country keeps setting off bombs in Moscow? Uzbekestan or is it Checkizstan. The Chenyans I think.
Perhaps you're thinking of Chechnya? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chechnya)
Well I don't know what you mean by reliable (presumably "with drivers for the relevant laptop hardware") but my first experiences of UNIX were on Solaris x86 in 1998.
Here, I googled for "Solaris x86 timeline": http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/solaris/versions/
Well there's the problem: these works are in the public domain and copyright law needs to be fixed. Let's extend the period that works stay under copyright to, say, 300 years, thus increasing the incentive for classical composers to write more ace symphonies and ensuring that the record labels get the megabucks they deserve.
LOL It's like IE saying it's going to catch Netscape!
The thing that really worries me about all this is that if the Chinese govt is in a position to make demands like this on a company as a price for doing businss in China then in the future they may be in a position to make greater demands, ones that affect folks in other countries directly.
To be fair to them, they have expanded the features that they have eg Google Maps (including low-res satelite images) was expanded to the UK and I dare say will be expanded to other countries in time.
If you're desperate to know when they plan to support your country then why not ask them http://www.google.com/support/maps/bin/request.py/ ? You never know, they might be good enough to tell you... ;-)
I disagree with the assertion that Slashdot is a wonderful example of self-policing. Sure, we all mod each other but the ultimate power to enforce the "law" still resides with the Slashdot admins. They may happen to deputise a rather large number of ordinary users in order to get the job done but it is they who are the law. It's not as though Slashdot relies on white-hat hackers to regularly hack in to the site and delete any nasty posts ;-)
Me. I'll tell them how much fun I have using ace windows software like Firefox and Open Office. And Cygwin ;-)