To some extent it is simply a choice to give developers more freedom to write less Free code. If you otherwise would want your library to be LGPL, the main reason for making the header files Runtime GPL is to allow the developer to use inline function calls, macros, templates, etc... without repercussion. The GPL and LGPL are too strict to allow the use of those constructs from GPL code in non-GPL code.
Here is the variant I use for C++:
As a special exception, you may use this file as part of a free software library without restriction. Specifically, if other files instantiate templates or use macros or inline functions from this file, or you compile this file and link it with other files to produce an executable, this file does not by itself cause the resulting executable to be covered by the GNU General Public License. This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the executable file might be covered by the GNU General Public License.
I just want to mention a variant of the GPL that is often used and rarely noticed. All those standard header files included when compiling with GCC are Runtime GPL. If you take the point of view that the GPL is viral, you can think of the Runtime GPL as the completely non-viral GPL.
Using some variants of the GPL linking exception, it becomes possible to release code that must stay Free (as in Libre) in derived works without requiring every last bit of the derived work to be Free.
It as close as you can get to a compromise between the BSD and GPL licenses as far as I am aware. The biggest downside is that neither side believes the license to be trustworthy. It is too GPL for the BSD folks, and not GPL enough for the GPL advocates.
I suppose they mean that a number of extended missions were proposed and evaluated, and this happens to be the mission that was authorized, beating out the other proposals.
Somehow I doubt that issuing a self-destruct signal was one of the other proposals;)
I remember visiting a recycling center when I was in elementary school. One particular item that they picked on as being very difficult to recycle was the Pringles can. A bizarre combination of metal, cardboard, and plastic, it is almost impossible for them to get the components apart.
So, no thanks for failing to consider the environmental impact of your design.
Or, of course, you could have read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. That helped a lot too.
Actually, the subtle differences between the novel and the movie are pretty funny as well. (The big differences aren't as funny.)
SMALL SPOILERS AHEAD:
In the movie, they claim to need Deckard to be a Blade Runner again because he's the best and nobody can do it like he can. Of course, this is after another blade runner failed, and was nearly killed.
In the novel, the blade runner who was nearly killed was the #1 blade runner in the unit, and Deckard was the #2. It painted a much darker picture.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is largely set in a potentially realistic dark future setting, some things more advanced, others decaying. Most of the environment is easy to make real without making it look silly, not to downplay the great work done by Ridley Scott and everyone else involved. The one aspect of the novel that would be difficult to reasonably translate to the silver screen is Mercerism, the animal worshiping cult/religion of the future. So, they dropped it from the film, which takes a slightly different view anyway. (The only reason it would be difficult is because the way in which one tries to become one with Mercer is very abstractly represented throughout the novel.)
Ubik on the other hand is almost entirely abstract stuff. In fact, it is more abstract than the Mercerism stuff. There is some great imagery in Ubik that would be easy to translate, but by and large, making the novel come to life without making it look ridiculous would be very difficult. The way I picture Ubik, the scenes would have to appear incomplete for most of the novel, from the standpoint of anyone in cold-pac, and that would be much harder to pull off. I doubt anyone that the current Hollywood industry is likely to pull it off. The best they could hope to do is to make something reminiscent of The Thirteenth Floor.
Well that is a weird analogy. Just to play devil's advocate, if someone wanted to license a sewer system, what possible use could they have for accessing the neighborhood toilets, from the direction of the sewer, no less?
Agreed. This is so common, and so problematic, that you might expect a law to be passed making it illegal to have more than (let's say) 4 identities' information including social security numbers on a storage device without (at least) trivial encryption measures in place. This really shouldn't be so hard for people.
That is really cool, but this isn't the first story like this I've heard. My question is, how do these unreleased products make their way out into the world? Wouldn't any cartridges used by a major company have been wiped before being sold or trashed? Regardless, I shall continue to look forward to the next such find. Kudos.
"occasional forays of illegal shark, tuna and Napoleon Wrasse fishing"
Couldn't the criminals find a less radioactive region to illegally fish? Who wants to eat radioactive fish anyway? I know the article says that "ambient radiation is low", but I doubt the fish would be rated A-grade.
Why didn't this hit Slashdot sooner? Anyway, it seems to be very "green" as well. It looks as though there is only one computer more powerful than it that beats it on the Green500 complimentary list:
Disclaimer/Plug: I don't work in the video games industry, but I have close ties to a few people who do. Also, I've written my own cross-platform game engine or game development framework that allows OpenGL and Direct3D to be used interchangeably as the rendering engine.
So, with ever improving cross-platform middleware, why are game developers still ignoring Linux, by and large? If they can target Windows XP, Windows Vista, XBox 360, PS2, PS3, and Wii with one title, surely Linux couldn't be hard to add it the list. I'll tell you, it isn't because game developers know how to use Direct3D only or that OpenGL is no good.
When I questioned a friend in the industry about it, he said in the end that the only real reason for ignoring Linux is the time and cost of testing another platform. If they aren't going to profit enough from the release to pay the additional testers required, they won't even break even on the venture. The fact is, testing procedures require much work duplication across different platforms, even when the code doesn't need to be rewritten or significantly modified. So, from what I understand, it all comes down to testing cost.
Why isn't NoScript just a mandatory extension at this point? It seems like it would be pretty unobtrusive with default settings at a slightly reduced paranoia level.
Or more to the point, is a neural network really the correct interpretation of a brain's structure? I suppose we might find out soon, if they can get the "weights" "right".
I'm always glad to hear of a serious attempt to clean up the user interface of a major application. All too often, keeping an interface clean comes second to keeping it similar to how it was in the previous major version. As it sounds like they will be splitting the existing functionality between modes for different classes of tasks, I just hope they don't mess up and force their users to continually switch between different modes to do everyday tasks.
Some policies just aren't reasonable or well thought out. This article is clearly blowing the issue out of perspective by not separating out different behaviors.
Checking personal e-mail from a work computer-- 73% of those who have done this at work believe it is not risky, despite the fact that they could unknowingly download a virus that infects the corporate network. Wow, really? I'll stick to those corporate virus-free e-mail accounts from now on. Are they also completely free of spam? That would be nice too.
FTA:
When switching to battery power,/etc/acpi/power.sh issues the command hdparm -B 1 to all block devices. This leads to extremely frequent load cycles. For example, my new thinkpad has already done well over 7000 load cycles -- in only 100 hours. That's at least one unloading per minute. Googling for "load unload cycles notebook OR laptop" shows that most laptop drives handle up to 600,000 such cycles. As these values clearly show, this issue is of high importance and should be fixed sooner rather than later. It definitely sounds like it is "the Ubuntu" that is at fault in this case. Where is the room for doubt?
I hope Obsidian Entertainment isn't adversely affected by BioWare's latest deals with EA and LucasArts. I'm one of the (few?) people who actually enjoyed KoTOR II and am actively looking forward to Team Gizka's restoration mod. As Obsidian Entertainment has used technology developed by BioWare for some years now, I just hope BioWare manages to maintain their close relationship.
Ah yes, you make a good point... or they make a good point. Any computational device with enough memory should be able to emulate an Intel CPU based computer and could potentially be used to run Microsoft products. So, PowerPC Macs, PS3s, PSPs, and anything else that has been hacked to run an emulator could very well need a license.
Slashdot Mirror
http://catb.org/esr/jargon/html/G/Godwins-Law.html
You may be right about the original law, but apparently you don't know tradition.
To some extent it is simply a choice to give developers more freedom to write less Free code. If you otherwise would want your library to be LGPL, the main reason for making the header files Runtime GPL is to allow the developer to use inline function calls, macros, templates, etc... without repercussion. The GPL and LGPL are too strict to allow the use of those constructs from GPL code in non-GPL code.
Here is the variant I use for C++:
As a special exception, you may use this file as part of a free software library without restriction. Specifically, if other files instantiate templates or use macros or inline functions from this file, or you compile this file and link it with other files to produce an executable, this file does not by itself cause the resulting executable to be covered by the GNU General Public License. This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the executable file might be covered by the GNU General Public License.
I just want to mention a variant of the GPL that is often used and rarely noticed. All those standard header files included when compiling with GCC are Runtime GPL. If you take the point of view that the GPL is viral, you can think of the Runtime GPL as the completely non-viral GPL.
Using some variants of the GPL linking exception, it becomes possible to release code that must stay Free (as in Libre) in derived works without requiring every last bit of the derived work to be Free.
It as close as you can get to a compromise between the BSD and GPL licenses as far as I am aware. The biggest downside is that neither side believes the license to be trustworthy. It is too GPL for the BSD folks, and not GPL enough for the GPL advocates.
I suppose they mean that a number of extended missions were proposed and evaluated, and this happens to be the mission that was authorized, beating out the other proposals.
Somehow I doubt that issuing a self-destruct signal was one of the other proposals ;)
I remember visiting a recycling center when I was in elementary school. One particular item that they picked on as being very difficult to recycle was the Pringles can. A bizarre combination of metal, cardboard, and plastic, it is almost impossible for them to get the components apart.
So, no thanks for failing to consider the environmental impact of your design.
Or, of course, you could have read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. That helped a lot too.
Actually, the subtle differences between the novel and the movie are pretty funny as well. (The big differences aren't as funny.)
SMALL SPOILERS AHEAD:
In the movie, they claim to need Deckard to be a Blade Runner again because he's the best and nobody can do it like he can. Of course, this is after another blade runner failed, and was nearly killed.
In the novel, the blade runner who was nearly killed was the #1 blade runner in the unit, and Deckard was the #2. It painted a much darker picture.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is largely set in a potentially realistic dark future setting, some things more advanced, others decaying. Most of the environment is easy to make real without making it look silly, not to downplay the great work done by Ridley Scott and everyone else involved. The one aspect of the novel that would be difficult to reasonably translate to the silver screen is Mercerism, the animal worshiping cult/religion of the future. So, they dropped it from the film, which takes a slightly different view anyway. (The only reason it would be difficult is because the way in which one tries to become one with Mercer is very abstractly represented throughout the novel.)
Ubik on the other hand is almost entirely abstract stuff. In fact, it is more abstract than the Mercerism stuff. There is some great imagery in Ubik that would be easy to translate, but by and large, making the novel come to life without making it look ridiculous would be very difficult. The way I picture Ubik, the scenes would have to appear incomplete for most of the novel, from the standpoint of anyone in cold-pac, and that would be much harder to pull off. I doubt anyone that the current Hollywood industry is likely to pull it off. The best they could hope to do is to make something reminiscent of The Thirteenth Floor.
I see that there are persistent customizable characters, but how is this an MMO?
I see nothing to indicate that it is, judging from the official website: http://combatarms.nexon.net/
Well that is a weird analogy. Just to play devil's advocate, if someone wanted to license a sewer system, what possible use could they have for accessing the neighborhood toilets, from the direction of the sewer, no less?
Agreed. This is so common, and so problematic, that you might expect a law to be passed making it illegal to have more than (let's say) 4 identities' information including social security numbers on a storage device without (at least) trivial encryption measures in place. This really shouldn't be so hard for people.
That is really cool, but this isn't the first story like this I've heard. My question is, how do these unreleased products make their way out into the world? Wouldn't any cartridges used by a major company have been wiped before being sold or trashed? Regardless, I shall continue to look forward to the next such find. Kudos.
"occasional forays of illegal shark, tuna and Napoleon Wrasse fishing"
Couldn't the criminals find a less radioactive region to illegally fish? Who wants to eat radioactive fish anyway? I know the article says that "ambient radiation is low", but I doubt the fish would be rated A-grade.
Argh... looking at the wrong numbers. It has dropped from the 70s in terms of CPU power per watt to 91. Not very green after all.
http://www.green500.org/lists/2008/02/ranks1-100.php
Why didn't this hit Slashdot sooner? Anyway, it seems to be very "green" as well. It looks as though there is only one computer more powerful than it that beats it on the Green500 complimentary list:
http://www.green500.org/lists/2008/02/ranks1-100.php
Actually, I'm pretty sure that there is an emacs command to make it behave like Firefox 7.0. If only I could remember it...
Disclaimer/Plug: I don't work in the video games industry, but I have close ties to a few people who do. Also, I've written my own cross-platform game engine or game development framework that allows OpenGL and Direct3D to be used interchangeably as the rendering engine.
So, with ever improving cross-platform middleware, why are game developers still ignoring Linux, by and large? If they can target Windows XP, Windows Vista, XBox 360, PS2, PS3, and Wii with one title, surely Linux couldn't be hard to add it the list. I'll tell you, it isn't because game developers know how to use Direct3D only or that OpenGL is no good.
When I questioned a friend in the industry about it, he said in the end that the only real reason for ignoring Linux is the time and cost of testing another platform. If they aren't going to profit enough from the release to pay the additional testers required, they won't even break even on the venture. The fact is, testing procedures require much work duplication across different platforms, even when the code doesn't need to be rewritten or significantly modified. So, from what I understand, it all comes down to testing cost.
Why isn't NoScript just a mandatory extension at this point? It seems like it would be pretty unobtrusive with default settings at a slightly reduced paranoia level.
proprietary software is to constantly sue one another over patent infringement. Both sides are brilliant, no?
Or more to the point, is a neural network really the correct interpretation of a brain's structure? I suppose we might find out soon, if they can get the "weights" "right".
I'm always glad to hear of a serious attempt to clean up the user interface of a major application. All too often, keeping an interface clean comes second to keeping it similar to how it was in the previous major version. As it sounds like they will be splitting the existing functionality between modes for different classes of tasks, I just hope they don't mess up and force their users to continually switch between different modes to do everyday tasks.
I hope Obsidian Entertainment isn't adversely affected by BioWare's latest deals with EA and LucasArts. I'm one of the (few?) people who actually enjoyed KoTOR II and am actively looking forward to Team Gizka's restoration mod. As Obsidian Entertainment has used technology developed by BioWare for some years now, I just hope BioWare manages to maintain their close relationship.
Right, NetBeans, like GCC, never imposed any license restrictions on the code generated.
Ah yes, you make a good point... or they make a good point. Any computational device with enough memory should be able to emulate an Intel CPU based computer and could potentially be used to run Microsoft products. So, PowerPC Macs, PS3s, PSPs, and anything else that has been hacked to run an emulator could very well need a license.