Well, it's inaccurate. The highest murder rate in the U.S. is Washington, D.C.: the city with the most restrictive gun laws in the country (all handguns are banned).
Of course, that didn't stop anti-gun columnist Carl Rowan from taking some pot-shots at an intruder at his Washington, D.C. home...
Actually, it's the advocates of BSD/X11-style licensing who want to steal the work of others. They want the "freedom" to take code that has been contributed to free software projects, and resell that code in their own non-free, proprietary package.
That's theft, pure and simple. The GPL protects against this type of abuse; BSD/X11 licenses do not.
So if you're a free software developer, the GPL best protects your interests. If you're a proprietary software developer, the GPL is your worst nightmare.
Minor change; GPL should be GREEN. BSD and X11 licenses should be YELLOW.
Was it not a BSD-licensed package (rdist) that caused this mess in the first place? Could that have happened had rdist been GPLd? Yes, I know if it was authored by a single author, it could, as long as he holds the copyright, but I don't believe that was the case here, was it?
You should look at this from the perspective of the *end user*; that is who the GPL is designed to protect. It is not designed to protect software developers primarily. It protects end users, because it keeps the software free. Not surprisingly, this ticks off developers with dreams of proprietary products, so they FUD the GPL by calling it less free than the BSD license, which is simply a matter of perspective. You cannot rationally define freedom as the freedom to deprive others of freedom.
Read the words: "leagal or not" - what you state is "leagal only" - which is wrong. The amount of people shot is not linear to the number of guns out there, but no one can get shot if there are no guns.
Of course it is difficult to measure illegal gun ownership, but I rather doubt that urban per-capita gun ownership is anywhere near as high as rural per-capita gun ownership in the Great Plains or Intermountain West, even if you throw in illegally possessed guns. In some areas of the West, you've pretty much got guns in every home.
All I'm really trying to point out is that a high level of violent crime most definitely does *not* correlate to a high level of gun ownership, as the Irish fellow had suggested.
With your last statement i do fully agree.
Good. That's really the important thing. People get so hung up on the gun issue, that we tend to forget about the other issues, which I think contribute much more heavily to violent crime, like:
Poverty
Cultural disintegration/lack of community
Lack of/poor education
Familial disintegration/dysfunction
Poor parenting
One interesting statistic that a lot of people seem to miss is that violent crime in the U.S. is concentrated in urban areas; rural areas have *much* lower violent crime rates, nearly identical, in fact, to corresponding rural areas of Canada, and not much higher than in Europe. What is interesting about this is that it differs noticeably from the rest of the world. In most European countries, and even in Canada, urban violent crime rates tend to be somewhat lower than rural violent crime rates.
Why do you suppose that is? (I don't have the answer, but note that my points above are much bigger problems in U.S. urban areas than in rural areas of the U.S.)
Actually, I think the number of people shot is a rather linear function of the number of guns out there - legal or not.
Incorrect. The areas of the U.S. with the highest levels of gun ownership have the lowest incidence of violent crime.
Mexico, as I understand it, has fairly restrictive gun laws, but is a rather dangerous place nonetheless (at least certain parts of it, anyhow; a friend of mine was murdered there).
And, as you know, even in Europe, Switzerland has widespread gun ownership, with no apparent ill effects.
Violent crime is not a gun-related problem; it is much more complex than that.
I go to Powell's Technical Books for all my geek reading needs. I prefer going to a physical store, so I can actually pick up and look at the merchandise.
In his "Claims," he does, in fact, state that the device is portable. Nevertheless, the "idea" (and that's all it is) is derivative, obvious, and broad.
These kind of patents defeat the purpose of having intellectual property; instead of encouraging innovation, they leech off of others' efforts, and discourage new products.
The abstract describes a personal computer with audio recording/playback capability and the ability to link to an online service. It need not be specialized; it doesn't even have to be portable, according to the abstract.
Prior art: IBM PC with OS/2 Warp 3.
The level of disgust I am filled with after seeing this patent actually granted leads me to the conclusion that *all* "intellectual property" should be done away with. It has become obvious that government cannot possibly police this; it has become little more than a lottery.
Because this Permissionist attitude is prevalent, many people don't seem to mind restrictions until they hit them personally. I have heard many people say with a strange mixture of pride and unctuousness that they actually *invite* inspection of their email, because they've got "nothing to hide."
Not to start a pat-on-the-back cascade, but...this is an excellent point. I like the term "Permissionism." It accurately describes (at least for me) the attitude of people who are for censorship, encryption control, gun control, abortion control, the War on Rights^H^H^H^H^H^HDrugs, and a host of other government regulatory schemes. They seem to believe that the government owns them, and therefore has the right to regulate them.
My life is my own; it does not belong to any government bureaucrat to control at his whim. Only if I do actual harm to another person should the government be able to step in.
While the file format may be open, it is useless without the codec information. Practically all new QuickTime video content is using the Sorenson codec, so the open file format is utterly useless.
Secondly, while the codec was developed by Sorenson, Apple apparently has an exclusive license, and it is *Apple*, not Sorenson, that is keeping it away from Linux/Unix users (see the xanim page). So, it is *Apple* that is, quite rightly, getting flamed.
(b) You may use the program for non-commercial purposes only, meaning that the program must not be sold commercially as a separate product, as part of a bigger product or project, or otherwise used for financial gain without a separate license. Please see Section 2, Restrictions, for more details.
The UNIX version of ssh 1.2.27 may be used freely for non-commercial purposes and may not be sold commercially as a separate product, as part of a bigger product or project, or otherwise used for financial gain without a separate license. The definition of "commercial use" is generally interpreted as using ssh for anything that would generate financial gain, such as logging into a customers system to do administration, or providing ssh as a secure login to your partners or vendors.
In email between Data Fellows and the maintainer, the following questions were asked and answered:
================================================== ============= S: Steve Acheson, FAQ Maintainer P: Petri Nyman, F-Secure SSH Product Manager for Data Fellows
S)Can a company use the 1.2.26 release of the SSH software freely for S)internal support and administration without violating the license S)agreement?
P)You can freely use it for internal support and administration of your own P)equipment located in your premises.
S)Does connecting from one machine to another via SSH to S)read email, do work, etc, violate this agreement?
P)No, unless you provide this ability to a third party or connect to a third P)party's computer to provide a service.
S)Does connecting from a purchased PC client SSH software to a non-licensed S)SSH server violate the agreement?
P)No.
S)Does connecting to a remote site, that is not company owned, but company S)administered, via SSH to do administrative work violate the agreement?
P)Yes. You need a commercial license for that. ================================================ ===============
With the next major release of BeOS, y'all Linux weenies will be running for cover. The net networking system will make BeOS just as capable a server as Linux.
I'm curious: out of all of the OSS operating system users out there, how many actually do fix bugs or add features to their kernel?
I haven't actually performed my own hacks on the kernel, but I have tweaked XFMail and a few other open source programs. Source code: that's one handy feature.
The number of Linux users is largely irrelevant at this point. There is a sufficient userbase for many companies to port their software to Linux, so whether there are in fact 5 million, 10 million or 25 million Linux users is unimportant.
What matters is whether Linux will do what you need it to do. In many cases, it will; in some, it won't. That's how you decide whether to use it; not on the basis of "who's winning."
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Re:Technical Trade Unions
on
GEEK Unions?
·
· Score: 1
public education
Public education was around long, long before the 1930s. Thomas Jefferson was a proponent of public education, and it became commonplace in the 1800s.
In its time, Star Wars was noteworthy. It was a daring departure from just about anything being done (at least in the mainstream) at that time. I see Star Wars as Lucas' attempt to bring back the "big" movie.
In the mid-1970s, movies were decidedly non-saga-oriented. There were a lot of excellent movies out, but they tended to stay away from the grander themes. Star Wars revitialized the epic saga.
A lot of people criticize Star Wars and its sequels/prequels, because they are not good SF. But they never were SF! The Matrix is SF; The Martian Chronicles is SF; Star Trek is (borderline) SF. But Star Wars is not SF; it is a fairy tale that happens to occur on other planets and involves the use of space travel. And for what it is, does a pretty good job of entertaining. IMO.
I stand corrected. Yes, after looking further at the site, and perusing DejaNews, it does appear that Mr. Sorokopud has dropped off the face of the earth, unfortunately. The last thing I saw from him was from nearly a year ago. Too bad...he really seems to be a good programmer.
Anyhow, I had no trouble building XFMail that I recall. I did not use the xforms rpm, though...just the regular tarball.
No longer being supported? I don't think that's the case. AFAIK, it's still being worked on. And I've got it running on a RedHat 6.0 box, so I'm fairly certain it works OK. I compiled it from source, though; perhaps there is an XFMail rpm out there that doesn't work right?
XFMail is a very nice mail program; it supports IMAP, POP and local mail spools, and does all the stuff that Netscape Mail doesn't do (like "Include File"). I don't know how Gennady Sorokopud would feel about it, but I'd love to see XFMail ported to KDE and/or GNOME. Unfortunately, that's a bit beyond my capabilities at this point. I don't know how difficult it would be, because I'm not sure how hard it is to port from xforms to another widget set.
xforms, for those who don't know, is a freely-available, but binary-only (the authors say they will open source ver. 1.0, but not under the GPL), widget set, that is considered by many to be the ugliest widget set on the face of the earth. I won't disagree very strongly on this point... Those that use it, swear by it, though, saying that it makes building GUI programs quite easy.
yeah... and look how well that's worked (i.e. it hasn't).
It worked for quite a while, but politicians have cleverly convinced the masses that they need bigger government. Government exists solely to justify itself, so it is extremely difficult to actually shrink it.
Slashdot Mirror
The intelligent, reasonable face of anti-GPL advocacy.
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Of course, that didn't stop anti-gun columnist Carl Rowan from taking some pot-shots at an intruder at his Washington, D.C. home...
--
That's theft, pure and simple. The GPL protects against this type of abuse; BSD/X11 licenses do not.
So if you're a free software developer, the GPL best protects your interests. If you're a proprietary software developer, the GPL is your worst nightmare.
--
Legal? Yes. Nice? No.
--
Was it not a BSD-licensed package (rdist) that caused this mess in the first place? Could that have happened had rdist been GPLd? Yes, I know if it was authored by a single author, it could, as long as he holds the copyright, but I don't believe that was the case here, was it?
You should look at this from the perspective of the *end user*; that is who the GPL is designed to protect. It is not designed to protect software developers primarily. It protects end users, because it keeps the software free. Not surprisingly, this ticks off developers with dreams of proprietary products, so they FUD the GPL by calling it less free than the BSD license, which is simply a matter of perspective. You cannot rationally define freedom as the freedom to deprive others of freedom.
--
SuSE is legally entitled to not play nice, but they will suffer in the marketplace.
--
Of course it is difficult to measure illegal gun ownership, but I rather doubt that urban per-capita gun ownership is anywhere near as high as rural per-capita gun ownership in the Great Plains or Intermountain West, even if you throw in illegally possessed guns. In some areas of the West, you've pretty much got guns in every home.
All I'm really trying to point out is that a high level of violent crime most definitely does *not* correlate to a high level of gun ownership, as the Irish fellow had suggested.
With your last statement i do fully agree.
Good. That's really the important thing. People get so hung up on the gun issue, that we tend to forget about the other issues, which I think contribute much more heavily to violent crime, like:
- Poverty
- Cultural disintegration/lack of community
- Lack of/poor education
- Familial disintegration/dysfunction
- Poor parenting
One interesting statistic that a lot of people seem to miss is that violent crime in the U.S. is concentrated in urban areas; rural areas have *much* lower violent crime rates, nearly identical, in fact, to corresponding rural areas of Canada, and not much higher than in Europe. What is interesting about this is that it differs noticeably from the rest of the world. In most European countries, and even in Canada, urban violent crime rates tend to be somewhat lower than rural violent crime rates.Why do you suppose that is? (I don't have the answer, but note that my points above are much bigger problems in U.S. urban areas than in rural areas of the U.S.)
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Incorrect. The areas of the U.S. with the highest levels of gun ownership have the lowest incidence of violent crime.
Mexico, as I understand it, has fairly restrictive gun laws, but is a rather dangerous place nonetheless (at least certain parts of it, anyhow; a friend of mine was murdered there).
And, as you know, even in Europe, Switzerland has widespread gun ownership, with no apparent ill effects.
Violent crime is not a gun-related problem; it is much more complex than that.
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I go to Powell's Technical Books for all my geek reading needs. I prefer going to a physical store, so I can actually pick up and look at the merchandise.
--
These kind of patents defeat the purpose of having intellectual property; instead of encouraging innovation, they leech off of others' efforts, and discourage new products.
--
Prior art: IBM PC with OS/2 Warp 3.
The level of disgust I am filled with after seeing this patent actually granted leads me to the conclusion that *all* "intellectual property" should be done away with. It has become obvious that government cannot possibly police this; it has become little more than a lottery.
--
Not to start a pat-on-the-back cascade, but...this is an excellent point. I like the term "Permissionism." It accurately describes (at least for me) the attitude of people who are for censorship, encryption control, gun control, abortion control, the War on Rights^H^H^H^H^H^HDrugs, and a host of other government regulatory schemes. They seem to believe that the government owns them, and therefore has the right to regulate them.
My life is my own; it does not belong to any government bureaucrat to control at his whim. Only if I do actual harm to another person should the government be able to step in.
--
Secondly, while the codec was developed by Sorenson, Apple apparently has an exclusive license, and it is *Apple*, not Sorenson, that is keeping it away from Linux/Unix users (see the xanim page). So, it is *Apple* that is, quite rightly, getting flamed.
--
GNU Privacy Guard is a Free alternative to PGP. Take a look at their web site for more information.
--
From the ssh COPYING file:
--------------------------------------------------
(b) You may use the program for non-commercial purposes only, meaning that the program must not be sold commercially as a separate product, as part of a bigger product or project, or otherwise used for financial gain without a separate license. Please see Section 2, Restrictions, for more details.
--------------------------------------------------
And...from the ssh FAQ:
--------------------------------------------------
3.2 May I legally run ssh?
The UNIX version of ssh 1.2.27 may be used freely for non-commercial purposes and may not be sold commercially as a separate product, as part of a bigger product or project, or otherwise used for financial gain without a separate license. The definition of "commercial use" is generally interpreted as using ssh for anything that would generate financial gain, such as logging into a customers system to do administration, or providing ssh as a secure login to your partners or vendors.
In email between Data Fellows and the maintainer, the following questions were asked and answered:
================================================== =============
= ===============
S: Steve Acheson, FAQ Maintainer
P: Petri Nyman, F-Secure SSH Product Manager for Data Fellows
S)Can a company use the 1.2.26 release of the SSH software freely for
S)internal support and administration without violating the license
S)agreement?
P)You can freely use it for internal support and administration of your own
P)equipment located in your premises.
S)Does connecting from one machine to another via SSH to
S)read email, do work, etc, violate this agreement?
P)No, unless you provide this ability to a third party or connect to a third
P)party's computer to provide a service.
S)Does connecting from a purchased PC client SSH software to a non-licensed
S)SSH server violate the agreement?
P)No.
S)Does connecting to a remote site, that is not company owned, but company
S)administered, via SSH to do administrative work violate the agreement?
P)Yes. You need a commercial license for that.
===============================================
--------------------------------------------------
So, I'd say that it's at least legally questionable if you use ssh to connect to client machines, or vice-versa.
--
A *single-user* server? Yeah, sounds great.
--
I haven't actually performed my own hacks on the kernel, but I have tweaked XFMail and a few other open source programs. Source code: that's one handy feature.
--
The number of Linux users is largely irrelevant at this point. There is a sufficient userbase for many companies to port their software to Linux, so whether there are in fact 5 million, 10 million or 25 million Linux users is unimportant.
What matters is whether Linux will do what you need it to do. In many cases, it will; in some, it won't. That's how you decide whether to use it; not on the basis of "who's winning."
--
Public education was around long, long before the 1930s. Thomas Jefferson was a proponent of public education, and it became commonplace in the 1800s.
--
In the mid-1970s, movies were decidedly non-saga-oriented. There were a lot of excellent movies out, but they tended to stay away from the grander themes. Star Wars revitialized the epic saga.
A lot of people criticize Star Wars and its sequels/prequels, because they are not good SF. But they never were SF! The Matrix is SF; The Martian Chronicles is SF; Star Trek is (borderline) SF. But Star Wars is not SF; it is a fairy tale that happens to occur on other planets and involves the use of space travel. And for what it is, does a pretty good job of entertaining. IMO.
--
No. Just another American, I'm afraid.
--
Anyhow, I had no trouble building XFMail that I recall. I did not use the xforms rpm, though...just the regular tarball.
Maybe try that, if you were using the xforms rpm.
--
XFMail is a very nice mail program; it supports IMAP, POP and local mail spools, and does all the stuff that Netscape Mail doesn't do (like "Include File"). I don't know how Gennady Sorokopud would feel about it, but I'd love to see XFMail ported to KDE and/or GNOME. Unfortunately, that's a bit beyond my capabilities at this point. I don't know how difficult it would be, because I'm not sure how hard it is to port from xforms to another widget set.
xforms, for those who don't know, is a freely-available, but binary-only (the authors say they will open source ver. 1.0, but not under the GPL), widget set, that is considered by many to be the ugliest widget set on the face of the earth. I won't disagree very strongly on this point... Those that use it, swear by it, though, saying that it makes building GUI programs quite easy.
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It worked for quite a while, but politicians have cleverly convinced the masses that they need bigger government. Government exists solely to justify itself, so it is extremely difficult to actually shrink it.
--
I agree that as Mozilla gets closer, my anticipation grows. I've used M7, and they're definitely making progress.
--