As the old joke goes, the American space programs made the effort to solve the hard technical challenges like designing (and making) a pen that will work in zero gravity, while the Russians just used pencils.
I live in NYC, and whenever I am going somewhere, I usually pull out mapquest to find the address (cross streets) and then sit there with a subway/bus map to try and figure out how to get there.
I live in San Francisco, and the TransitInfo Trip Planner plans trips, including connections between different transit systems.
Here's an example trip. TransitInfo was started by a couple of UC Berkeley students, who ran it on another student's server. Today it's funded by an agency called MTC, a consortium of local (county) governments.
Perhaps people should lobby their local governments to collaborate with MTC. All it takes is a little leg work to coordinate your transit agencies -- they probably publish schedules and maps on the web already, and at the most it'll be some format changes and/or conversions. I'm sure MTC will share their webapp.
... it should have been "BSD vs GPL (or freedom vs. corp)", not the other way around.
Why? I meant no analogy. GPL vs. BSD is a different religious fight from free software vs. proprietary. People write code for all sorts of reasons. As long as everyone plays by the copyright laws things are just fine.
Re:GPL can be dangerous if people don't get it.
on
Why I Love The GPL
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Your argument seems to boil down to:
Some people don't seem to understand the GPL
Some people violate the GPL
In either case, nothing about the GPL itself. The GPL is not "dangerous".
If some clueless idiot puts his code under the GPL and then squawks when someone copies it, just ignore him.
If someone copies GPL'ed code into a commercial non-GPL product, it's no different from any other copyright violation. The GPL sets down the terms under which you may copy some code. Remember, by default you cannot do anything with someone's copyrighted code -- it doesn't matter if the source is visible to all. If you copy the code and are not complying with the terms of the GPL, you are guilty of copyright violation, since the only way are allowed to copy the code is if you comply
with the terms.
If MorphOS is distributing a hacked version of a copylefted program "ixemul" and their modified version has not been released under the GPL -- source code available etc. -- they are in violation of the ixemul copyright. The copyright owner(s) should send them notice to either publish the full source code to their modified ixemul or "cease and desist" distributing it. (Under copyright law, only the copyright holder can enforce the copyright.)
Perhaps the best sign of a high-technology civilization that we can detect is a planet that suddenly emits a burst of gamma rays and then stops emitting any signals forever...
Management does not necessarily mean giving up anything technical.
Managers who insist on also doing tech stuff either burn out, or they're the sucky ones who do neither well. The fact is, management is a very different job from R&D, and they both are full-time jobs. Managers should be managers. (Of course a good tech manager will know the tech.)
Some companies have a tech track running parallel to the management track. (But progress up the tech ladder seems much slower than the management ladder.) You ascend from lowly grunt to tech lead (or architect), and then the lofty levels with names like Distinguished Fellow, all without having to do any management. A couple of companies I've worked for do this -- both medium/large software companies in silicon valley.
... if it's such a freakin' hassle, why do so many try it? Are they are just stupid?
Where is it written that if something's a "freakin' hassle", no one will do it? (Do you think I said that anyone who wants to own/run a business is stupid, or even misguided?)
Hint: here are some things that are a godawful "freakin' hassle": learning to play an instrument; building an airplane; running a marathon; getting a PhD; raising children;...
I also recall standalone touch-tone generators. Just a touchpad on remote-control-sized box with a speaker that you could hold up the the microphone of a rotary phone and dial the number. I honestly don't know if these were actual consumer devices or some sort of technician's/phreak's tool.
Bah, kids today! As recently as the mid-90s you could get a DTMF dialer from Radio Shack. In fact, I have one -- it has a 20 number memory. Before the days of ubiquitous mobile phones and PDAs, it was really handy while travelling -- no need to carry a printed phone list.
The 2600 whistle in a Cap'n Crunch cereal box, that was a phreak's tool.
... if your business has you on-call 24/7 then all you own is a job, it isn't really a business.
I'm the furthest thing from an expert, having neither a business nor a baby; but friends who are the entrepreunerial type and also parents say they're very similar. Ultimately you're responsible, and if you neglect it (or screw up) it dies. This means you never have a day off: you can get a babysitter (or give someone signature authority) while you go to dinner (or on vacation), but if anything happens -- back to work.
I would rather have them learn how to run a business then just be an employee.
One of the hard things about raising kids is that so often what they want from life is not what you want. You might think it's better to run a business than to be an employee -- but maybe your kids prefer to just think about what they're good at, and let someone else handle all the crap that goes with running a business: dealing with paperwork, permits, liability, benefits, infrastructure,... That's how I'm put together. Plus, when I go home in the evening (or the weekend) my time is my own. If I owned/ran a business, I'd be "on call" 24x7.
If I ever have kids, I'd bet they turn out to be capitalists (*) who detest Jazz, and yours will probably work for a non-profit.
(I know this wonderful couple -- the woman is Japanese, the man is midwestern; charming, sensitive, creative,... they met in grad school, and are now on the faculty of a well-known left-wing university. Their son grew up a right-winger and was the president of the College Republicans at the same university.)
--
* The word "capitalist" here is not meant to be pejorative.
what is stopping somebody... from flying a plane like this loaded with explosives to a high-profile target such as the White House...?
Nothing.
We need to realise that we cannot have perfect security from our neighbours. Love they neighbour, so that your neighbour loves you. That's the cost of being social animals, and of living in society.
Sure, there will still be crazy people, nothing we can do about that.
So if I spend millions of dollars producing a non-tangeable product I should not be entitled...
Entitled? And you call yourself a capitalist? No one forced you to "spend millions of dollars producing a non-tangeable product". Just because you spent time and effort to produce something valuable doesn't mean society owes you something. Or do you believe that mothers should be paid when they give birth?
You can't just assert that without copyrights "Counterstrike" wouldn't exist. Read the constitution: copyrights -- an anti-capitalist state-enforced monopoloy -- is justified saying that it's so creators have an incentive to advance the arts. But Free Software gives us a proof by construction that people will write high-quality code and give it away to others without this monopoly incentive.
(I hope you're not going to say the GPL depends on copyright so without copyright the GPL wouldn't exist. Without copyright we don't need a GPL.)
Copyrights are clearly not property -- at least until the current climate of "copyrights in perpetuity through unlimited extension", copyrights are for a limited-time. Owning an apple is clearly different from copyright -- your ownership of an apple doesn't expire.
Copyright is not property, and there's no intrinsic "granted by God" reason intangibles should be. As Jefferson said,
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it.
He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
I don't know my neighbors. I don't trust my neighbors.
That's your biggest problem. If you're a kid in school who's going to move after the year's over it's fine to stay isolated, but after you grow up you realise it's good to have a neighbourhood and a community.
Conmparing lead in solder to leaded fuel is ridiculous. All the lead used in fuel goes directly into the atmosphere. How much lead will leach into groundwater from solder if I throw a PC directly into a stream?
In fact I am a pinko commie terrorist (or whatever they're calling people who care about the environment these days) but even I know the value of perspective.
I don't like the "Happy Hacking" keyboard. No cursor pad, no numeric keypad, no function keys. Nothing to safely map META or SUPER to.
Look at the Happy Hacking Lite 2 (here's a better picture) -- dedicated arrow keys, and four "special" keys for META, compose, etc.: Alt-L, Diamond-L, Alt-R, Diamond-R. For function keys you need to chord: Fn-1 = F1 etc. There are flip-out legs that can change its angle. Full size keys and key travel, not crappy micro travel laptop keys.
It's not for everyone. If you use the numeric keypad and CAPS LOCK all the time, Happy Hacking is not for you. Happy Hackers do not shout or do data entry, so we don't use CAPS LOCK or the numeric keypad.
I have no connection to PFU/Fujitsu except that I have 3 HH keyboards.
Sorry, geosynchronous implies approx. 26,500 miles (22,500 miles above the surface) -- low earth orbit is 90min. The moon at 250,000 miles is in a 28 day orbit. Orbital distance determines orbital period.
Radiation... yes indeed, you hear the most outrageous lies about it...
half-baked gogglebox do-gooders telling everybody its bad for you. PERNICIOUS
NONSENSE!! People could stand a hundred chest X-rays a year. Oughta have 'em
too.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess his Mom never told him it was rude to shout, or to use MS-Word for editing HTML.
Perhaps people should lobby their local governments to collaborate with MTC. All it takes is a little leg work to coordinate your transit agencies -- they probably publish schedules and maps on the web already, and at the most it'll be some format changes and/or conversions. I'm sure MTC will share their webapp.
In either case, nothing about the GPL itself. The GPL is not "dangerous".
If some clueless idiot puts his code under the GPL and then squawks when someone copies it, just ignore him.
If someone copies GPL'ed code into a commercial non-GPL product, it's no different from any other copyright violation. The GPL sets down the terms under which you may copy some code. Remember, by default you cannot do anything with someone's copyrighted code -- it doesn't matter if the source is visible to all. If you copy the code and are not complying with the terms of the GPL, you are guilty of copyright violation, since the only way are allowed to copy the code is if you comply with the terms.
If MorphOS is distributing a hacked version of a copylefted program "ixemul" and their modified version has not been released under the GPL -- source code available etc. -- they are in violation of the ixemul copyright. The copyright owner(s) should send them notice to either publish the full source code to their modified ixemul or "cease and desist" distributing it. (Under copyright law, only the copyright holder can enforce the copyright.)
(I don't know what MorphOS and ixemul are.)
I don't see anything that hasn't been said before. Is this anything more than a call for BSD vs. GPL (or corp. vs. free software) flamewar?
Some companies have a tech track running parallel to the management track. (But progress up the tech ladder seems much slower than the management ladder.) You ascend from lowly grunt to tech lead (or architect), and then the lofty levels with names like Distinguished Fellow, all without having to do any management. A couple of companies I've worked for do this -- both medium/large software companies in silicon valley.
Hint: here are some things that are a godawful "freakin' hassle": learning to play an instrument; building an airplane; running a marathon; getting a PhD; raising children; ...
The 2600 whistle in a Cap'n Crunch cereal box, that was a phreak's tool.
And you can't quit.
If I ever have kids, I'd bet they turn out to be capitalists (*) who detest Jazz, and yours will probably work for a non-profit.
(I know this wonderful couple -- the woman is Japanese, the man is midwestern; charming, sensitive, creative, ... they met in grad school, and are now on the faculty of a well-known left-wing university. Their son grew up a right-winger and was the president of the College Republicans at the same university.)
--
* The word "capitalist" here is not meant to be pejorative.
Nothing.
We need to realise that we cannot have perfect security from our neighbours. Love they neighbour, so that your neighbour loves you. That's the cost of being social animals, and of living in society.
Sure, there will still be crazy people, nothing we can do about that.
You can't just assert that without copyrights "Counterstrike" wouldn't exist. Read the constitution: copyrights -- an anti-capitalist state-enforced monopoloy -- is justified saying that it's so creators have an incentive to advance the arts. But Free Software gives us a proof by construction that people will write high-quality code and give it away to others without this monopoly incentive.
(I hope you're not going to say the GPL depends on copyright so without copyright the GPL wouldn't exist. Without copyright we don't need a GPL.)
Copyrights are clearly not property -- at least until the current climate of "copyrights in perpetuity through unlimited extension", copyrights are for a limited-time. Owning an apple is clearly different from copyright -- your ownership of an apple doesn't expire.
Copyright is not property, and there's no intrinsic "granted by God" reason intangibles should be. As Jefferson said,
(Emphasis mine.)Horse porn, eh? Cool! Where does one find this horse porn?
In fact I am a pinko commie terrorist (or whatever they're calling people who care about the environment these days) but even I know the value of perspective.
It's not for everyone. If you use the numeric keypad and CAPS LOCK all the time, Happy Hacking is not for you. Happy Hackers do not shout or do data entry, so we don't use CAPS LOCK or the numeric keypad.
I have no connection to PFU/Fujitsu except that I have 3 HH keyboards.
It now appears CNN changed their exit poll numbers when it looked like they didn't match the vote counts. It also seems interesting that FL and OH were the states with the exit poll discrepancies... and they use the Diebold "blackbox" voting machines, the ones where vote totals can be changed without leaving a trace.
As in, University of Arizona, in Tucson. Which happens to be a leader in planetary science.