Consider this situation:
X releases V1 of a project under the GPL.
Y contributes to the development of V2 with changes and new code based on V1.
X wants to switch to a non-GPL license.
Does X need Y's permission?
Yes. Y was required to release its version under the GNU GPL, as a consequence of basing it on X's version V1. Nothing required Y to agree to any other license for its code. Therefore, X must get Y's permission before releasing the code under another license.
Of course, if X is the Free Software Foundation, they wouldn't ask for Y's permission. Instead they would request that Y give up all rights they have to the software they wrote.
Is this a case of "Do as I say, not as I do"?
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How the FSF gets around the GPL...
on
GPL FAQ
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· Score: 2
Why does the FSF require that contributors to FSF-copyrighted programs assign copyright to the FSF?
If I hold copyright on a GPL'ed program, should I do this, too? If so, how?
Our lawyers have told us that to be in the best position to enforce the GPL in court against violators, we should keep the copyright status of the program as simple as possible. We do this by asking each contributor to either assign the copyright on his contribution to the FSF, or disclaim copyright on it and thus put it in the public domain.
So, what the FSF is saying is that if you contribute to our software, you give up your rights to whatever you write. This does not seem in line with Free Software. In fact, in the FAQ it states that you should get credit for what you have written and include a copyright notice.
The closer I read this FAQ, the more I think about releasing my software under a different license.
"Personally I think this is lame. If you want to see through walls, fine: It makes playing games lame, but thats your choice"
This my be true for single-player games, but for networked, multi-player it makes the game "lame" for everyone. That doesn't provide a great incentive for people to spend $45 on the next version of Quake or Unreal....
...and this coming from an Evil Dead fan? The only reason you like Evil Dead is because its *hip* to like it. Hell, you probably never heard of the movie until one of your friends told you about Army of Darkness. Lozer, go home!
Heh....the only reason I found his page was becuase I just bought a used RS yesterday. I wish I could have bought a WRX, but at least the RS beats my '93 FWD Legacy.;)
Gee... so if I undo something on the windows panel, it may not be undone because the group properties take precedence over the systemwide settings (doesn't make sense as an implimentation "feature")
If you understood directories and group policies, you would understand why this is so. Of course, most people "happy to run Linux" don't get the purpose of directories (NDS, ADS or otherwise) to control and organize information within a company.
Since you are in a Windows environment with MS Office documents, Microsoft's SharePoint Portal Server is exactly what you're looking for.
Basic features are:
Search Engine
Subscriptions
Categories
Document Versioning
Collaboration
IFilter support (to support more that Office docs)
There's a trial version available to test it out.
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Re:Professionals should not be unionized.
on
IT Unions?
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· Score: 4
...more Slashdot ignorance when it comes unions.
Why do you blame teachers when they strike? Why don't you blame the school boards who will not pay them what they deserve? Why don't you blame the citizens in that district that vote down pro-school referendums, and then complain why schools suck....and then have the nerve to blame teachers for the lack of "morals" in our teens (maybe parents should take time off of work to parent!!).
As for IT professionals.....I am a union IT pro. Two hours of pay a month goes to my union dues. In return I get a benefits package worth an additional 35% of my pay and includes full paid medical, dental and life insurance for the whole family and a generous retirment contribution that is vested immediately. Also, any overtime I work results in 1:1 comp time. All of this and our union has never had to strike! YES, unions work without strikes! Unfortunately, the only time you hear about unions in today's media is during strikes...you never hear about all of the good things they do for the employee (day care, same-sex partner rights, etc).
Finally, just becuase you are a union member does not guarantee job security....a common union myth. I can be fired just like everyone else in the world, however, there must be a reason for it. If my employer wanted to can me because I am doing a poor job, first they would have to notify me that I am doing poorly and give me a chance to improve (usually a month), and if I don't me their satisfaction I am a goner.
Being a union member does not make me a lazy, do-nothing employee. It makes me a happy, appreciative, hard-working employee....one that works to live, not lives to work.
First off, you may be able to determine some "satisfaciton" factor for your search engine, but its meaningless unless compared to the same rating of other search engines. For example, if you creat some rating system on a scale of 1-100, and it rates a 10 as in worthless piece of garbage, a 10 maybe great if all other solutions average under a 5 (becuase search engines suck in general).
The obvious problem is now how do you come up with a rating? The non-tech, and probably most effective, is to survey the users. Ask questions like: Did you find a suitable result? How many times did you refine your search? Where was the result located (1st, 50th, etc)? yadda-yadda.
Another way is to keep track of the average rating of the selected links that the users click on. The search engine probably has a numerical relevance number for each result. When a user clicks a link, store that number. You may also want to store the rank of the link (1st, 50th) link in the survey becuse you may have 50 links with relevance of 99-100%, but the fact that the user has to scroll to link 40 to find what he/she is looking for isn't so great. The problem with both of these methods is how do you know the link the user chose is what they wanted? Maybe it was a totally wrong result and they hit the back button and tried another one. Some session tracking would be in order I would guess. With that, you could track the number of searches a user executes.
Stats would look something like this:
Session 1
=======
Searches: 4
Links followed: 10
Final Link Relavance: 85.4%
Final Link Rank: 3
Use these numbers, compare them to other search engines (along with surveys) and see how you're doing....
I know this isn't the free search solution you are looking for (although IIS and index server are free), but it may be useful to others.
The MS Index Server supports indexing PDF files with an extension from Adobe. These files can be anywhere, not necessarily on a web site or linked to by web pages. However, it is quite easy to search the index (which support free text searching) via the web. Its a fairly easy solution to setup too....
You can flame Microsoft all you want, but from the stand point of a company that is in the business of making money Craig Munie is correct.
He's basically saying that a software company (not a services company, i.e. RedHat) can't use the OSS model as is. In order to gain the benefits that OSS provides, Microsoft has divised Shared Source. This will basically give developers access to the source code to promote the development of services and applications on top of the source. Of course, if MS used the GPL to get the source out there then they would be forced to distribute the source to everyone for free.
This creates a larger software base and which in turn promotes the use of Microsoft software. Microsoft still gets paid and developers get better tools to work with.
In the end you still have to pay for MS software and OSS supporters will still hate Microsoft (well....what do you expect? most only care about the free-as-in-beer aspect of open source anyway).
Of course, Microsoft could work like IBM does and spend a tiny percentage of it's research dollars on a couple of open source projects and maybe open up some old software while they're at it. Then watch all the slashdotters ooh and aah over Microsoft and consider them the big corporate supporter that open source has always needed....just like they think of IBM now.
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Re:Is-it possible to have both?
on
NTFS vs. FAT32
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· Score: 1
All verstions of NT support FAT & NTFS and will allow different files systems on different volumes. FAT32 is supported by Win2K and XP.
Logging file system => consistent data => no need to every run a "scandisk" application
File & Folder compression
Encrypted File System
Less fragmentation: NTFS will write small files directly into the MFT, or if a small file is too big to fit in the MFT it will try and write it close to the MFT to reduce head movement
Smaller blocks and supports partitions up to 2 exabytes
Reparse points, which are like unix symbolic links
Reasons to use FAT:
Need to access FS from another OS that doesn't support NTFS
Less overhead on small partitions, by small I mean
Unless you're dual booting, there is no reason to use FAT32!!
Does anyone have comments on these two services? I just bought a digital camera and was wonder which to use. I like Zing's online storage and photo albums....very sweet stuff. Price seem similar, except Zing charges $0.50 more for S&H. If this is off topic then mod me down. I'm just looking for feedback on these sites. (BTW, Zing's photoalbum is free for unlimited storage and pictures -- that's not offtopic.)
I think you're right about this. However, because it isn't random access, all writes could be done at the end of the written data and the TOC just updated to the new location. Good luck appending to files though...unless the cd file system support non-contiguous files, does it?
Anyway, if you're looking for some removable, bootable media, look into USB hard drives, zip drives, ls120, etc.
I believe if something like this became wide spread in the IT industry, there would be less of these idiots around. Why? There's no longer a need for the server jockey who only knows how to restart a server....those people will be replaces by the intelligent software. The IT staff that survives would be those with acutal knowledge and experience who become designers and implementers. There will be no more room for the IT idiot anymore. (so we hope!!)
I know most Slashdot readers despise "smart" software, and would rather manually configure/tweak/diagnose everything themselves. From my years of managing networks and servers, I have come to the conclusion that the more intelligent the hardware and software, the better. I have better things to do with my time than make sure applications are running properly and the hardware is performing as it should. That may sound like the rant of a lazy-ass admin who would rather read/. all day than work, but here's my reasoning:
1. I don't work 24/7, if the software can fix itself that means a faster response time when I'm not around.
2. Why should I spend my time fixing hardware problems when it's under a support contract? Have the server call IBM/Dell/Compaq/etc, and let them fix it. Why buy 4hr contracts if our personnel end up fixing the problems?
3. In the long run, it is best for my company than I spend my time planning for the future and testing new technologies rather than fixing things that have already been implemented.
I bet most administrators out there would agree with me on this. The only problem I see with IBM's plan is that what if their self-healing platform is so large and complex, that it takes even more of your time to manage it than you would normally spend monitoring/fixing your servers? Worse yet, the possibly that their software introduces more bugs into the systems (anyone remember those great Windows uninstaller apps like Cleansweep?). It will be interesting to see what IBM can come up with....
Yea, just try and call the Psychic Friends 900 number from work and then try and explain to you boss how their support is just as good as Microsoft but cheaper.
"Also, by choosing Linux, Google avoids locking itself into a single vendor for hardware or operating system, Quandt said. "
Umm.....if they're running 8000 copies of RedHat that they've customized to boost performance and improve security, I would say they're locked into an operating system fairly well.
You think the 386 & 486 are smaller than current Pentiums? Try throwing that stick of cache that was on the motherboard onto the same die. That 386 would be the size of a pancake!
AMD will be releasing a processor 1/2 the size of the current P4. Note....that says CURRENT! When AMD will be releasing Clawhammer, Intel will also be releasing there new processor with a 0.13 micron core name Northwood. Clawhammer will be 103 square millimeters and Northwood will be 116. What's the big deal?
Would Cnet write an article that states AMD will release a processor in 2 years that is 2x as fast as the current P4? I doubt it....who cares about comparing future size/speed/etc to current standards. We all know things get faster and smaller.
With a family member that works as a head hunter I find it odd that a company is passing up the chance at hiring cheap, young blood and canning the expensive old-farts. That is very common in the engineering field.
I guess its nice to see a change for the positive every once and a while.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Consider this situation:
X releases V1 of a project under the GPL.
Y contributes to the development of V2 with changes and new code based on V1.
X wants to switch to a non-GPL license.
Does X need Y's permission?
Yes. Y was required to release its version under the GNU GPL, as a consequence of basing it on X's version V1. Nothing required Y to agree to any other license for its code. Therefore, X must get Y's permission before releasing the code under another license.
Of course, if X is the Free Software Foundation, they wouldn't ask for Y's permission. Instead they would request that Y give up all rights they have to the software they wrote.
Is this a case of "Do as I say, not as I do"?
ÕÕ
If I hold copyright on a GPL'ed program, should I do this, too? If so, how? Our lawyers have told us that to be in the best position to enforce the GPL in court against violators, we should keep the copyright status of the program as simple as possible. We do this by asking each contributor to either assign the copyright on his contribution to the FSF, or disclaim copyright on it and thus put it in the public domain.
So, what the FSF is saying is that if you contribute to our software, you give up your rights to whatever you write. This does not seem in line with Free Software. In fact, in the FAQ it states that you should get credit for what you have written and include a copyright notice.
The closer I read this FAQ, the more I think about releasing my software under a different license.
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This my be true for single-player games, but for networked, multi-player it makes the game "lame" for everyone. That doesn't provide a great incentive for people to spend $45 on the next version of Quake or Unreal....
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If you understood directories and group policies, you would understand why this is so. Of course, most people "happy to run Linux" don't get the purpose of directories (NDS, ADS or otherwise) to control and organize information within a company.
ÕÕ
Basic features are:
Search Engine
Subscriptions
Categories
Document Versioning
Collaboration
IFilter support (to support more that Office docs)
There's a trial version available to test it out.
ÕÕ
Why do you blame teachers when they strike? Why don't you blame the school boards who will not pay them what they deserve? Why don't you blame the citizens in that district that vote down pro-school referendums, and then complain why schools suck....and then have the nerve to blame teachers for the lack of "morals" in our teens (maybe parents should take time off of work to parent!!).
As for IT professionals.....I am a union IT pro. Two hours of pay a month goes to my union dues. In return I get a benefits package worth an additional 35% of my pay and includes full paid medical, dental and life insurance for the whole family and a generous retirment contribution that is vested immediately. Also, any overtime I work results in 1:1 comp time. All of this and our union has never had to strike! YES, unions work without strikes! Unfortunately, the only time you hear about unions in today's media is during strikes...you never hear about all of the good things they do for the employee (day care, same-sex partner rights, etc).
Finally, just becuase you are a union member does not guarantee job security....a common union myth. I can be fired just like everyone else in the world, however, there must be a reason for it. If my employer wanted to can me because I am doing a poor job, first they would have to notify me that I am doing poorly and give me a chance to improve (usually a month), and if I don't me their satisfaction I am a goner.
Being a union member does not make me a lazy, do-nothing employee. It makes me a happy, appreciative, hard-working employee....one that works to live, not lives to work.
ÕÕ
The obvious problem is now how do you come up with a rating? The non-tech, and probably most effective, is to survey the users. Ask questions like: Did you find a suitable result? How many times did you refine your search? Where was the result located (1st, 50th, etc)? yadda-yadda.
Another way is to keep track of the average rating of the selected links that the users click on. The search engine probably has a numerical relevance number for each result. When a user clicks a link, store that number. You may also want to store the rank of the link (1st, 50th) link in the survey becuse you may have 50 links with relevance of 99-100%, but the fact that the user has to scroll to link 40 to find what he/she is looking for isn't so great. The problem with both of these methods is how do you know the link the user chose is what they wanted? Maybe it was a totally wrong result and they hit the back button and tried another one. Some session tracking would be in order I would guess. With that, you could track the number of searches a user executes.
Stats would look something like this:
Session 1
=======
Searches: 4
Links followed: 10
Final Link Relavance: 85.4%
Final Link Rank: 3
Use these numbers, compare them to other search engines (along with surveys) and see how you're doing....
ÕÕ
The MS Index Server supports indexing PDF files with an extension from Adobe. These files can be anywhere, not necessarily on a web site or linked to by web pages. However, it is quite easy to search the index (which support free text searching) via the web. Its a fairly easy solution to setup too....
ÕÕ
He's basically saying that a software company (not a services company, i.e. RedHat) can't use the OSS model as is. In order to gain the benefits that OSS provides, Microsoft has divised Shared Source. This will basically give developers access to the source code to promote the development of services and applications on top of the source. Of course, if MS used the GPL to get the source out there then they would be forced to distribute the source to everyone for free.
This creates a larger software base and which in turn promotes the use of Microsoft software. Microsoft still gets paid and developers get better tools to work with.
In the end you still have to pay for MS software and OSS supporters will still hate Microsoft (well....what do you expect? most only care about the free-as-in-beer aspect of open source anyway).
Of course, Microsoft could work like IBM does and spend a tiny percentage of it's research dollars on a couple of open source projects and maybe open up some old software while they're at it. Then watch all the slashdotters ooh and aah over Microsoft and consider them the big corporate supporter that open source has always needed....just like they think of IBM now.
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Security by ACL's
File access auditing
Logging file system => consistent data => no need to every run a "scandisk" application
File & Folder compression
Encrypted File System
Less fragmentation: NTFS will write small files directly into the MFT, or if a small file is too big to fit in the MFT it will try and write it close to the MFT to reduce head movement
Smaller blocks and supports partitions up to 2 exabytes
Reparse points, which are like unix symbolic links
Reasons to use FAT:
Need to access FS from another OS that doesn't support NTFS
Less overhead on small partitions, by small I mean
Unless you're dual booting, there is no reason to use FAT32!!
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Zing.com
Does anyone have comments on these two services? I just bought a digital camera and was wonder which to use. I like Zing's online storage and photo albums....very sweet stuff. Price seem similar, except Zing charges $0.50 more for S&H. If this is off topic then mod me down. I'm just looking for feedback on these sites. (BTW, Zing's photoalbum is free for unlimited storage and pictures -- that's not offtopic.)
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Anyway, if you're looking for some removable, bootable media, look into USB hard drives, zip drives, ls120, etc.
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1. I don't work 24/7, if the software can fix itself that means a faster response time when I'm not around.
2. Why should I spend my time fixing hardware problems when it's under a support contract? Have the server call IBM/Dell/Compaq/etc, and let them fix it. Why buy 4hr contracts if our personnel end up fixing the problems?
3. In the long run, it is best for my company than I spend my time planning for the future and testing new technologies rather than fixing things that have already been implemented.
I bet most administrators out there would agree with me on this. The only problem I see with IBM's plan is that what if their self-healing platform is so large and complex, that it takes even more of your time to manage it than you would normally spend monitoring/fixing your servers? Worse yet, the possibly that their software introduces more bugs into the systems (anyone remember those great Windows uninstaller apps like Cleansweep?). It will be interesting to see what IBM can come up with....
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Umm.....if they're running 8000 copies of RedHat that they've customized to boost performance and improve security, I would say they're locked into an operating system fairly well.
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Would Cnet write an article that states AMD will release a processor in 2 years that is 2x as fast as the current P4? I doubt it....who cares about comparing future size/speed/etc to current standards. We all know things get faster and smaller.
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I guess its nice to see a change for the positive every once and a while. :-)
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What? You fell for Radio Shack's left-handed PC scam?
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