A perfect example of why NOT to complain about your article being rejected. Dude, you think CLOUDS are newsworthy. Heck, why not pictures of your carpet?
I've noticed a strain of anti-intellectualism on slashdot, and your post is a great example of it. Hard science and math nerds are treated like second class citizens by mere computer programmers. It is completely absurd. We're all nerds here. But note well -- this site is for news for nerds, not news for you.
John, it's simple. A license that says "for non-commercial use only" means "for non-commercial use only". I know it's all complicated (you mentioned that, I believe), but that's the best I can do.
It's simple, but not that simple. Even if a license says "for non-commercial use only," it can be used by a commercial entity under fair use provisions. Excerpts for reviews in magazines, for instance.
Thus enter my version.
Its very simple.
Entirely consistent.
Completely unrestrictive.
Easy to apply.
The "No problem Bugroff" license is as follows...
The answer to any and every question relating to the copyright, patents, legal issues of Bugroff licensed software is....
Sure, No problem. Don't worry, be happy. Now bugger off.
Can I have the exclusive right to distribute the text containing your license?
Sure, No problem. Don't worry, be happy. Now bugger off.
Then I suggest you take down your website before I sic my lawyers on you.
Correct, but if you don't, you aren't granting the user/reader any rights outside of fair use. This is unattractive to those wishing to give to others the right to redistribute their work, for obvious reasons.
I've always thought of Creative Commons was a simplified DIY copyright kit.
Yes, that's one way to look at it. I always looked at it as a family of licenses, kind of like what the Free Software Foundation calls "Free Software Licenses." If a license meets certain conditions regarding redistribution -- free for non-commercial use at the like -- it can be called a Creative Commons License. This is why a work can be legitimately called "Creative Commons Public Domain."
Mr. Dvorak doesn't understand two simple points:
These minimal conditions have no bearing on other conditions. For instance, just because a particular license grants free redistribution for non-commercial entities doesn't mean it does it for non-commercial entities only.
Fair use is not at issue here, because copyright law guarantees (I hate that fucking word) the freedom to use any copyrighted work in a manner fair to both copyright holder and user. For instance, I can take an excerpt out of any copyrighted work and use it in a review. So can PC Magazine, a commercial entity. In effect, the a Creative Commons license grants the user freedoms that traditionally aren't considered fair.
Considering how even a short visit to http://www.creativecommons.org/ clarifies both these issues, I can only suspect that Mr. Dvorak is being wilfully ignorant for the sake of drawing page views to his miserable little website. I'm sure he has a small penis too.
You know it's sid, but apparently don't know what that means. Sid is an experimental fork, recommended for use by Debian developers only. It is highly unstable, and Debian never claimed otherwise. If you want to use Debian with Xorg, wait at least until it gets into Testing.
PERMITS? We don't need no STINKING PERMITS
SCREW THE CODES AND ANAL-RETENTIVE CODES INSPECTORS!
It's my house and my property I will do WHATEVER I want with it!
That's great. But once you move into an urban area, where what you do affects others, you'll have to comply with permits and inspectors.
Yeah, having to make a choice on the technical merits of a particular technology sucks.
Your complaint is the reason why easy to use distros like Mandriva and Ubuntu exist. They make the hard choices so you don't have to. If there were less diversity among Linux distros, the "beginner" end user would have a far harder time making his way into linux.
Oh god, the ending was the worst part. I'm not going to spoil it for people out there, because it's still worth watching, but the mummy has nothing to do with why this movie is good.
Your algorithm doesn't solve the problem I had in mind -- finding an optimal (in a sense I will soon describe) ASCII rendering of an arbitary image. You were right to call me to task. I claimed that aalib solved the problem of finding an optimal ASCII image, but I don't know if it even tries.
High contrast images, for instance, might have regions where your local -- one AA pixel -- approximations are less than ideal. To keep things intuitive, let's consider a blank block sitting next to a black one: ( , B). Your algorithm would probably come up with something like " #". Presumably "#" is the best local approximation of a black block, and the space is obviously the best local approximation of a blank. But something like "]X" or "]#" might be a better global approximation.
What I'm trying to get at with that (lame) example is that the way one AA pixel looks affects how its neighbors look in relation to it. Finding an arrangement which minimizes the difference between all, say, all pairwise approximations and an image is very computationally intensive because changes will tend to propagate.
Ignoring boundary conditions, once you get to a certain sized image, you'll have to minimize over (a set of) O(4^(p/a)) pairs. It's possible there's enough structure to the problem to make it an honest P, but I really wouldn't be surprised if this were NP-complete.
Slashdot Mirror
Randy Constan is creepy.
Good link, thanks. :-)
Agreed. They have all been trolled by a Microsoft PR guy.
Oh damn my brother to hell. Sorry everybody. :-(
That's right. It says that Snape is the Half-Blood Prince and kills Dumbledore.
That's not even security through obscurity, since your modification will be immediately apparent to anyone trying to log in. Awful advice.
I've noticed a strain of anti-intellectualism on slashdot, and your post is a great example of it. Hard science and math nerds are treated like second class citizens by mere computer programmers. It is completely absurd. We're all nerds here. But note well -- this site is for news for nerds, not news for you.
It's simple, but not that simple. Even if a license says "for non-commercial use only," it can be used by a commercial entity under fair use provisions. Excerpts for reviews in magazines, for instance.
Can I have the exclusive right to distribute the text containing your license?
Then I suggest you take down your website before I sic my lawyers on you.
Correct, but if you don't, you aren't granting the user/reader any rights outside of fair use. This is unattractive to those wishing to give to others the right to redistribute their work, for obvious reasons.
Yes, that's one way to look at it. I always looked at it as a family of licenses, kind of like what the Free Software Foundation calls "Free Software Licenses." If a license meets certain conditions regarding redistribution -- free for non-commercial use at the like -- it can be called a Creative Commons License. This is why a work can be legitimately called "Creative Commons Public Domain."
Mr. Dvorak doesn't understand two simple points:
Considering how even a short visit to http://www.creativecommons.org/ clarifies both these issues, I can only suspect that Mr. Dvorak is being wilfully ignorant for the sake of drawing page views to his miserable little website. I'm sure he has a small penis too.
Mod parent up. This behaviour is shameful.
Only if you had an erection.
That's because slashdotters aren't a homogeneous group.
That place is really cut throat as far as technical writing goes. Most posters expect people to write for less than 2c a word. It's absurd.
You know it's sid, but apparently don't know what that means. Sid is an experimental fork, recommended for use by Debian developers only. It is highly unstable, and Debian never claimed otherwise. If you want to use Debian with Xorg, wait at least until it gets into Testing.
Professor Miles Davis is too cool to find that funny. Professor Miles Davis smiles for no man.
That's great. But once you move into an urban area, where what you do affects others, you'll have to comply with permits and inspectors.
Yeah, having to make a choice on the technical merits of a particular technology sucks.
Your complaint is the reason why easy to use distros like Mandriva and Ubuntu exist. They make the hard choices so you don't have to. If there were less diversity among Linux distros, the "beginner" end user would have a far harder time making his way into linux.
Just curious -- did you put me on your enemies list before or after our brief exchange here?
Bruce was not pleased.
Oh god, the ending was the worst part. I'm not going to spoil it for people out there, because it's still worth watching, but the mummy has nothing to do with why this movie is good.
The Dattebayo release of Naruto routinely breaks 15k peers.
High contrast images, for instance, might have regions where your local -- one AA pixel -- approximations are less than ideal. To keep things intuitive, let's consider a blank block sitting next to a black one: ( , B). Your algorithm would probably come up with something like " #". Presumably "#" is the best local approximation of a black block, and the space is obviously the best local approximation of a blank. But something like "]X" or "]#" might be a better global approximation.
What I'm trying to get at with that (lame) example is that the way one AA pixel looks affects how its neighbors look in relation to it. Finding an arrangement which minimizes the difference between all, say, all pairwise approximations and an image is very computationally intensive because changes will tend to propagate.
Ignoring boundary conditions, once you get to a certain sized image, you'll have to minimize over (a set of) O(4^(p/a)) pairs. It's possible there's enough structure to the problem to make it an honest P, but I really wouldn't be surprised if this were NP-complete.
And by James Spader, you mean Kurt Russell.