Apparently, Ruby does not yet understand Unicode either. Ruby 2.0 will, but that seems to be some years off still.
It's a shame, because it's probably the one big thing keeping me away from Ruby. In the modern world of a global internet, unicode is a prerequisite, imho.
Which reminds me: since IRC doesn't specify a character set, are there any moves to standardise on UTF8 use for IRC, since that would solve the problem in a way that works for everyone (at least in future)?
There is only one REAL reason to choose firefox over other major browsers, and that is the one big thing it was created to provide: FREEDOM. If you value it, choose firefox, or perhaps konqueror/mozilla. If not... well, you'll find that all the features in the world won't keep you happy when some company controls your browser and the entire web.
Nevertheless, there is an official kernel which carries more weight than others, and Linus is in charge of it. That could be changed so that people vote on what goes into the kernel, perhaps with a well-defined policy for what's OK, so that votes don't have to take place in simple cases. But it doesn't, so people complain.
No, we should have access to the entire library -- at least of home-grown stuff --, since we pay for the entire organisation, but in fact they're implementing DRM on this, which will probably mean that it won't even be available on my chosen platform.
That's great; thanks. Thanks too, if you're the same Eloquence who has been helping people sort out the Esperanto section for Wikinews -- I'll be looking forward to that:)
Yes, Wikinews precedes this, and has a larger scope. There is also a quite large and serious grass-roots news effort, Indymedia, with branches and local reporters in the US, UK, and (I gather) many other countries.
Problem is... how many of them have RSS? Wikinews doesn't seem to, which is why I'd forgotten all about it until you mentioned it. The idea of a web-based news service without RSS is a bit pointless, never mind a news service that aims to be innovative. Hopefully they'll get that sorted soon:)
This shows a big weakness with patent-oriented companies. Their greedy ideas combined with the need to file a patent on those ideas mean that we'll be TOLD how they're doing it, and can then work out how to get around it. Score one for openness and co-operation vs. secrecy and underhandness.
Yes, nice pictures. It's just a pity they're completely meaningless:(
To me, a simple world map with major links plotted along with attached node counts would be more useful than this.
I realise it's not possible to get geographic locations for all IPs, but that doesn't mean we should "throw the baby out with the bathwater":(
Primarily, intellectual property was always intended to get ideas into the wider community, and out of the minds of those who have the ideas.
In a sense, it is about theft: it's about protecting society from the selfish or paranoid hoarding and squandering of invention. Since every new idea, no matter who it comes from, is essentially just the next step in the ideas previously known to a society, no one really owns them anyway.
downloads just one copy of Firefox and then everyone in the company installs that one copy... at least my company (30+ people) does it
Congratulations, but don't assume that other companies are anywhere near that organised. Most companies are an IT nightmare, if they're even using Firefox at all;)
This is why I always recommend the GPL when possible. Some people have minor issues with it, but essentially, it's a good license, and it has more legal clout behind it than most of the others combined. The only other software license I would consider right now is the Afferro GPL, which covers use on websites.
How does entering another license into the fray solve the problem with there being too many?
You're right: there usually is none. I guess some people just feel more secure with something they made themselves. Which is silly, and even in direct contradiction to what they're about to do: share software development. If you can share the development of complex software, why not define and share a single, well-written legal document?
In this particular case though, we may see a reason yet: some people in governments may think it best to limit the sharing of software to their own country's citizens, or to add some form of workflow restriction across borders. I think they would be very mistaken to do so, but I'm expecting to see it sooner or later. Of course, I wouldn't call such a license Open Source, and certainly not Free Software.
In the Firefly series the big bad was a combination of a corrupt corporation and a near fascist government.
Fox couldn't stand having themselves portrayed as the baddies.
Oh, I don't know. I think I recall that there were some idiot crooks in Firefly, too;)
Agreed, but I'd go a little further...
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Safari vs. KHTML
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that says, in effect, if you use this code to make money, great, but you 'ought' to give back in such a way that we can make use of as well.
I would go a little further, and say that, if you're using a central repository like CVS to get your base code, then your changes should be contributed back to that repository too.
It's also worth noting that using a good distributed version control system (such as Darcs and GNU Arch provide) and "encouraging" other organisations to use the same system (either by social constructs or by legal clauses) would solve a lot of this problem. Their changes would go into their own repository, and then they would either push any useful changes back to the central repository, or the central developers could pull them out as they see fit.
What is wrong with them wanting con
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BBC Launches APIs
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What is wrong with them wanting control over their content and content distribution system? All they are saying is play with it but so will we.
Not exactly. It's fairly natural to want to defend this, but you have to look at it from all sides. They're giving you components to make stuff with, but then saying that, no matter what you build or how important it is, we may simply change our minds at any time, ruining everything you've done.
It may seem like their perogative to do so, but the BBC is a public service organisation, and they are supposed to be working for the good of society, just like, in fact, all organisations should be.
The problem is that they have contributed to society, but in a way that makes society more dependant on them. It's basically the difference between giving someone Free Software, or giving them a free trial that may popup a dialogue asking for unreachable fees any day now in order to continue working.
Now, as for them wanting to continuing playing with their stuff... that is a simple matter of releasing beta APIs that are subject to change, the way all software is. There's no need for such sweeping disclaimers to cover that. In most cases, it would be easy and natural to leave the old APIs, at least for a useful amount of time, when moving on to a new and better one.
Don't get me wrong, I think the BBC are pretty great, and this is a bold move which I really respect and admire, but a few more guarantees would make it much more useful and reliable.
Yep. And another similarity is that MS's "research" seems to be mostly aimed at manipulating people and preying on their vulnerabilities.
The only "security research" microsoft seem to be doing is how to finally admit that Unix has had it right all along, while looking like market leaders offering something new.
It would be great if we could just dump all the business interests from computing and just focus on making great software.
Hence, Free Software;)
*Business* Competition == redundancy and waste
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IBM buys Gluecode
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Competition is a terrible thing to have in any market, and should be discouraged at every opportunity.
You're joking here, but I think this isn't too far from the truth. Too often, we confuse improvements with the inefficient competitive business practices under which they were developed. However, improvements can also come about through cooperation, and in fact, they probably do come about through that method more often.
Take Free Software project branching, for instance: you can branch a project and compete with the original project, developing your own code for new features, but also developing code for features that the original branch is developing too. Or, you can be a true feature branch, and just work on that one new feature, while cooperating on everything else as much as possible.
One -- cooperation -- is efficient, and gives good opportunity for experimenting with minimal waste. The other, competitiveness as we often see between capitalist companies, is wasteful, needlessly secretive, and generally childish.
Maybe I'm tired or something, but I still don't get why Microsoft would be attacking research in motion, what that means, or why we should care either way.
Is RIM a company that makes some competing tech.? Is it another name for the conference? The possibilities probably go on for a while...
If the cops bust you, and you have an encrypted hard drive and you don't hand over the password, you will be charged with obstruction of justice.
One benefit would be that you could still argue the case on principle. The encrypted HD would abstract the loaded issue of "piracy" enough to let you argue about your rights and privacy.
Slashdot Mirror
Apparently, Ruby does not yet understand Unicode either. Ruby 2.0 will, but that seems to be some years off still. It's a shame, because it's probably the one big thing keeping me away from Ruby. In the modern world of a global internet, unicode is a prerequisite, imho. Which reminds me: since IRC doesn't specify a character set, are there any moves to standardise on UTF8 use for IRC, since that would solve the problem in a way that works for everyone (at least in future)?
There is only one REAL reason to choose firefox over other major browsers, and that is the one big thing it was created to provide: FREEDOM. If you value it, choose firefox, or perhaps konqueror/mozilla. If not... well, you'll find that all the features in the world won't keep you happy when some company controls your browser and the entire web.
Nevertheless, there is an official kernel which carries more weight than others, and Linus is in charge of it. That could be changed so that people vote on what goes into the kernel, perhaps with a well-defined policy for what's OK, so that votes don't have to take place in simple cases. But it doesn't, so people complain.
Ahh, that makes sense. I know that copyright originally had a similar purpose.
No, we should have access to the entire library -- at least of home-grown stuff --, since we pay for the entire organisation, but in fact they're implementing DRM on this, which will probably mean that it won't even be available on my chosen platform.
That's great; thanks. Thanks too, if you're the same Eloquence who has been helping people sort out the Esperanto section for Wikinews -- I'll be looking forward to that :)
Yes, Wikinews precedes this, and has a larger scope. There is also a quite large and serious grass-roots news effort, Indymedia, with branches and local reporters in the US, UK, and (I gather) many other countries.
Problem is... how many of them have RSS? Wikinews doesn't seem to, which is why I'd forgotten all about it until you mentioned it. The idea of a web-based news service without RSS is a bit pointless, never mind a news service that aims to be innovative. Hopefully they'll get that sorted soon :)
With MS, it's panes-taking AND painstaking ;)
This shows a big weakness with patent-oriented companies. Their greedy ideas combined with the need to file a patent on those ideas mean that we'll be TOLD how they're doing it, and can then work out how to get around it. Score one for openness and co-operation vs. secrecy and underhandness.
Yes, nice pictures. It's just a pity they're completely meaningless :(
To me, a simple world map with major links plotted along with attached node counts would be more useful than this.
I realise it's not possible to get geographic locations for all IPs, but that doesn't mean we should "throw the baby out with the bathwater" :(
Primarily, intellectual property was always intended to get ideas into the wider community, and out of the minds of those who have the ideas. In a sense, it is about theft: it's about protecting society from the selfish or paranoid hoarding and squandering of invention. Since every new idea, no matter who it comes from, is essentially just the next step in the ideas previously known to a society, no one really owns them anyway.
This is why I always recommend the GPL when possible. Some people have minor issues with it, but essentially, it's a good license, and it has more legal clout behind it than most of the others combined. The only other software license I would consider right now is the Afferro GPL, which covers use on websites.
You're right: there usually is none. I guess some people just feel more secure with something they made themselves. Which is silly, and even in direct contradiction to what they're about to do: share software development. If you can share the development of complex software, why not define and share a single, well-written legal document?
In this particular case though, we may see a reason yet: some people in governments may think it best to limit the sharing of software to their own country's citizens, or to add some form of workflow restriction across borders. I think they would be very mistaken to do so, but I'm expecting to see it sooner or later. Of course, I wouldn't call such a license Open Source, and certainly not Free Software.
It may seem like their perogative to do so, but the BBC is a public service organisation, and they are supposed to be working for the good of society, just like, in fact, all organisations should be.
The problem is that they have contributed to society, but in a way that makes society more dependant on them. It's basically the difference between giving someone Free Software, or giving them a free trial that may popup a dialogue asking for unreachable fees any day now in order to continue working.
Now, as for them wanting to continuing playing with their stuff... that is a simple matter of releasing beta APIs that are subject to change, the way all software is. There's no need for such sweeping disclaimers to cover that. In most cases, it would be easy and natural to leave the old APIs, at least for a useful amount of time, when moving on to a new and better one.
Don't get me wrong, I think the BBC are pretty great, and this is a bold move which I really respect and admire, but a few more guarantees would make it much more useful and reliable.
Yep. And another similarity is that MS's "research" seems to be mostly aimed at manipulating people and preying on their vulnerabilities.
The only "security research" microsoft seem to be doing is how to finally admit that Unix has had it right all along, while looking like market leaders offering something new.
You're joking here, but I think this isn't too far from the truth. Too often, we confuse improvements with the inefficient competitive business practices under which they were developed. However, improvements can also come about through cooperation, and in fact, they probably do come about through that method more often.
Take Free Software project branching, for instance: you can branch a project and compete with the original project, developing your own code for new features, but also developing code for features that the original branch is developing too. Or, you can be a true feature branch, and just work on that one new feature, while cooperating on everything else as much as possible.
One -- cooperation -- is efficient, and gives good opportunity for experimenting with minimal waste. The other, competitiveness as we often see between capitalist companies, is wasteful, needlessly secretive, and generally childish.
Depends. How much did your hardware cost, and how much do you value your sanity? ;)
No, actually, FreeBSD was pretty sweet last time I tried it. I'd be all in favour of it, if it was ported to more archs.
Maybe I'm tired or something, but I still don't get why Microsoft would be attacking research in motion, what that means, or why we should care either way. Is RIM a company that makes some competing tech.? Is it another name for the conference? The possibilities probably go on for a while...