For some reason USA has chosen to make the standards of their own instead of using the same ones the rest of the world is using. Consult your senator for further details and assistance.
And the quiz of the day: Which country still has an analog cell network up and running and considered to be a real option?-)
Fine, UK wants ISPs to babysit every flamewar. But there is some sense behind the anti-censorship-hype: every Usenet article has at least potential to be very public and very widespread. And when the line between freedom of speech and libel is crossed, there must be some way to respond in a civilized way.
I do not say that ISPs should be responsible of every bit and byte they transmit or broadcase. But they should have obligation to remove illegal material. Whether the request to do so should be a court order or just a letter from some other authority or pissed-off company depends on the level of facism your country has adopted...
If you are writing those nice and useful Java-thingies, it is definitely worth the time to browse it through. Maybe we can finally get rid of JSetiTrackers and similar almost tolerable UI:s that are scalable (up to 1 pixel from the default) and flexible (hey, I lost that draggable panel again and there's no way to recover it).
Unfortunaly occasional freeware coders haven't been very eager to read LNF guidelines so far and probably won't start now.
Based on the average level of any intelligence used on a typical IRC channel, it is probably highly overestimated to call a succesfully participating bot AI. After all the purpose is to emulate Authentic Stupidity.
Would it be funny? Yes. Would it be nice to hack a piece of code that would do it? No doubt. Is it a big deal? No way. I remember that lets-find-a-keyword-and-reply programs were popular back in the 80's (at least in Finland half of the BBS:s had one online) and - sad but likely true - I don't expect that anything significantly more brilliant than that would come up now.
But go ahead, at least they could be awarding prizes.;-)
I know, in/. the obvious trend is somewhat anti-IPR. But Google apparently utilizes technology (ok, not anything worth a Nobel but inventive anyway) that has not been commonly used in search engines. If they feel that they have made an invention, why not trying to patent it?
Although software itself is not patentable (and should not be), technologies and algorithms definitely are. The distiction is (and should be) made by the patent office. Self-discretion in this context just means lack of money;-)
Truly commercial-quality Fortran for Linux is definitely good news - despite the fact that Fortran itself has quite a limited number of serious users (a couple of scientists with alphas, not quite a blockbuster) it certainly carries a PR value you cannot just ignore.
Free-but-not-free license is disappointing, but what else can you expect from a company like Compaq.
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And the quiz of the day: Which country still has an analog cell network up and running and considered to be a real option?-)
I do not say that ISPs should be responsible of every bit and byte they transmit or broadcase. But they should have obligation to remove illegal material. Whether the request to do so should be a court order or just a letter from some other authority or pissed-off company depends on the level of facism your country has adopted...
20% have trouble finding power switch of a computer.
20% are absolutely certain that their computers are manufactured by MS.
3% of Americans like MS the way it is.
Unfortunaly occasional freeware coders haven't been very eager to read LNF guidelines so far and probably won't start now.
Would it be funny? Yes. Would it be nice to hack a piece of code that would do it? No doubt. Is it a big deal? No way. I remember that lets-find-a-keyword-and-reply programs were popular back in the 80's (at least in Finland half of the BBS:s had one online) and - sad but likely true - I don't expect that anything significantly more brilliant than that would come up now.
But go ahead, at least they could be awarding prizes. ;-)
Although software itself is not patentable (and should not be), technologies and algorithms definitely are. The distiction is (and should be) made by the patent office. Self-discretion in this context just means lack of money ;-)
Free-but-not-free license is disappointing, but what else can you expect from a company like Compaq.