> How can it be "unlicensed" if it has GPL license on each file?
The same reason the company I work for could call something I developed on their time and dime theirs, whether I GPL it or not. It was released under Nullsoft's name, so AOL technically owned it. GPL'ing it was what was unauthorized, so it was never really licensed properly in the first place. But now that the horses have already left the barn and nullsoft is gutted, AOL doesn't show much sign of pursuing their claims.
Fine, if you retailers want OSS to play ball and write them a POS system, then how about you get on the same field and publish a detailed requirements document publically, so that the community can get a start? The proprietary software community does have an advantage in that the client pays to have developers gather the requirements and perform production tests and so forth, but if there's an OSS solution out there, then all that you need is an integrator. But if all you say is "give me a POS system", you're going to get nothing useful back. And if you throw the requirements document over the wall and never come back with feedback, expect nothing after the initial attempt.
Hardware's another issue... don't expect a lot of cash drawer, manager key, or card reader support without open hardware specs. If you really want an open POS system, you the retailer are going to have to lean on the register manufacturers -- the folks you're giving your money to -- to produce open specs. Otherwise don't expect people to write free software for a platform they cannot freely support.
> How has Howard Stern's right to free speech been violated?
I dunno, ask the stations facing a half million dollar fine for airing him. If they don't pay, men with guns come to lock them in an iron cage. Or perhaps just take all their stuff.
Huh, I wasn't aware you were the author of touchgraph -- I regret the snideness, but I have seen enough navigational metaphors in my day, each one coming with enough evangalism that it was cultlike (see gelerntner's "streams" and fans of pie menus for some more case studies). Nonetheless, I do apologize for the tone.
Snapping instantly to the final location is probably jarring, but might be ideal in a few cases. It sounds like a configuration option to me, to only display n steps of motion, plus the option to tween the motion. Untweened at 0 steps and they'll appear to snap. Tweened at 0 steps and they'll float out to their final destination. 99999 steps and they'll jiggle, tweened or not.
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
(x) Users of email will not put up with it
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
Since AC's are popping out of the woodwork to claim I accuse falsely, the link for GNML goes to a a post on a discission blog, one that allows javascript injection. The post contains this:
Ok, so it's not tubgirl -- I'm not exactly an expert on the subject. I suppose the picture is pretty illustrative of what folks like rkz are doing to slashdot...
Oh well, another entry in the ol enemies list, at least til he gets another account.
Once I got over the "neato" factor of touchgraph, I found myself wondering "how on earth could anyone really find this useful?"
It pops and jiggles around, thus being incredibly distracting. Aside from not being much of a help to the typical ADD-R afflicted geek type, it wastes a lot of time and space doing so until it "settles" down.
It has no history. No way to go "back". No way to reference the history, with even a list, let alone a tree.
It has no spatial organization (other than essentially "random"). You spend a lot of time hunting down anything interesting. If one could draw on the background and pin down nodes so they never ever moved, that would be interesting. Not sure that would help much.
I'm sure the true believers will come popping out of the woodwork saying how this toy somehow aligns with your mental chakras and makes you instantly more productive, but I just cannot buy it. I prefer interfaces that don't jiggle like jello, and I think so does almost everyone else.
> The fact that Intel went to all this work simply shows that AMD made the better decision with it's architecture.
Bah. The IA64 had 256 registers. How few are we still stuck with on this bastardized 32-bit-plus-extensions hack? Yes, it might work out better on unit cost, but architecturally, it looks like the same damn clunky old jalopy to program for that it's always been.
> I think that soldier (whoever he is) is a quiet hero.
Let me get this straight: you get something vile and horrific done to you, and you're an automatic hero? Does your worldview require the creation of good to automatically oppose the evil?
You have no idea what that Russian soldier may have done. Perhaps he was a conscript who just wanted to get back home to see his mom. Perhaps he raped and killed a local girl. Why does his suffering escalate his status to hero?
It starts up mail! I can't believe it, it starts up mail! What an insecure piece of shit, I can't believe it! On firefox, when I view it... it starts up mail!
Oh wait, you wanted me to do it in IE? Oh yeah, that does it too.
No, but the cygwin DLL maintains state such as file descriptor tables and other "kernel level" stuff, so anyone who can write to the DLL's state can screw with any running cygwin process to the point of pretty much owning it. It was designed this way so it would work on Win9x -- if it used the NT native API's exclusively, many of cygwin's design decisions would be a lot more elegant. It's not so much a risk as it sounds though -- any kernel has the same issue, where if you crack the kernel, you can potentially blow open the whole system. But since it's all in user mode emulation, it is pretty darn slow.
You should probably think of MinGW as a native port of gcc and binutils for win32. MSYS runs over MinGW, and is a good deal more like cygwin, but is licensed differently (public domain as opposed to cygwin's GPL) and its emulation is a lot thinner because it eschews hacks to do it; MSYS has no fork(2) for example, but CreateProcess works just fine for shells and most other things. MSYS is noticeably faster than cygwin, but its installation is ultra-simplistic, and its package maintenance and upgrade paths are absolutely nonexistent, whereas cygwin has a sorta-ok installer program you can manage packages with.
Mingw will run just fine out of user space, you can fit your mingw+msys distribution on a usb thumb drive if you want to, and unlike cygwin, you don't have to worry about distributing a runtime DLL for anything you compile with it.
"Okay, now very carefully follow my next few instructions, because you can do some serious damage on this machine... We need to clear out some junk on/tmp, so type 'r', 'm', 'space', 'slash' [pause here a moment, reach over to your coworker, point at their typo, and say...] 'SPACE' [pause another moment, then describe some harmless path off of/tmp]. Okay, now hit return. This might take a minute, the crap can really build up there..."
This of course assumes that you have a trainee who will actually type along while you narrate. In my experience it's been more like: "rm -f. rm... r... m... the m's over there. no, SPACE dash f. no, SPACE dash f. dash. the dash is over there. dash f. no, no space. dash f. space slash. no, SPACE slash."
Just tell him to log in and do everything as root, leave it at that, and be confident that he'll probably do more damage soon than you could have imagined.
> The logical flaw here is the assumption that there is no letter-level parsing when, in fact, there is-- it's just not noticable as a distinct step because we do it so efficiently.
Actually, we do take in whole words at a time when we already know the word, but it's largely based on recognizing the letters at the endpoints. Taht is the mian rseoan tihs snctecne is sltil smwoaht rdaelbe.
I'm sorry to say that there's little objective information to go on as far as condemning "whole language" -- the phonics "movement" is often fueled by these right-wing conservatives who also assail anything associated with "new math" (which was awful.. back in the 70's, but they're not over it) to the point of resisting anything but long division and column multiplication. I suspect that as usual, the truth lives in the middle, blisfully ignorant of ideological extremes.
Slashdot Mirror
> How can it be "unlicensed" if it has GPL license on each file?
The same reason the company I work for could call something I developed on their time and dime theirs, whether I GPL it or not. It was released under Nullsoft's name, so AOL technically owned it. GPL'ing it was what was unauthorized, so it was never really licensed properly in the first place. But now that the horses have already left the barn and nullsoft is gutted, AOL doesn't show much sign of pursuing their claims.
> how about a usable Point of Sale system?
... don't expect a lot of cash drawer, manager key, or card reader support without open hardware specs. If you really want an open POS system, you the retailer are going to have to lean on the register manufacturers -- the folks you're giving your money to -- to produce open specs. Otherwise don't expect people to write free software for a platform they cannot freely support.
Fine, if you retailers want OSS to play ball and write them a POS system, then how about you get on the same field and publish a detailed requirements document publically, so that the community can get a start? The proprietary software community does have an advantage in that the client pays to have developers gather the requirements and perform production tests and so forth, but if there's an OSS solution out there, then all that you need is an integrator. But if all you say is "give me a POS system", you're going to get nothing useful back. And if you throw the requirements document over the wall and never come back with feedback, expect nothing after the initial attempt.
Hardware's another issue
> How has Howard Stern's right to free speech been violated?
I dunno, ask the stations facing a half million dollar fine for airing him. If they don't pay, men with guns come to lock them in an iron cage. Or perhaps just take all their stuff.
> sourceforge has started to suck dick lately
That's what I call a feature.
thankya, I'll be here all week.
Huh, I wasn't aware you were the author of touchgraph -- I regret the snideness, but I have seen enough navigational metaphors in my day, each one coming with enough evangalism that it was cultlike (see gelerntner's "streams" and fans of pie menus for some more case studies). Nonetheless, I do apologize for the tone.
Snapping instantly to the final location is probably jarring, but might be ideal in a few cases. It sounds like a configuration option to me, to only display n steps of motion, plus the option to tween the motion. Untweened at 0 steps and they'll appear to snap. Tweened at 0 steps and they'll float out to their final destination. 99999 steps and they'll jiggle, tweened or not.
You are advocating a
(x) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
(x) Users of email will not put up with it
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(I'm feeling nice today)
Since AC's are popping out of the woodwork to claim I accuse falsely, the link for GNML goes to a a post on a discission blog, one that allows javascript injection. The post contains this:
< /td></tr>
<script>setTimeout("window.location = 'http://wrt.spacker.net/faq/'",1250)</script></p>
Ok, so it's not tubgirl -- I'm not exactly an expert on the subject. I suppose the picture is pretty illustrative of what folks like rkz are doing to slashdot...
Oh well, another entry in the ol enemies list, at least til he gets another account.
rkz posts nothing but trolls. See his history for more.
Thanks to all the moderators who didn't bother following links.
Once I got over the "neato" factor of touchgraph, I found myself wondering "how on earth could anyone really find this useful?"
It pops and jiggles around, thus being incredibly distracting. Aside from not being much of a help to the typical ADD-R afflicted geek type, it wastes a lot of time and space doing so until it "settles" down.
It has no history. No way to go "back". No way to reference the history, with even a list, let alone a tree.
It has no spatial organization (other than essentially "random"). You spend a lot of time hunting down anything interesting. If one could draw on the background and pin down nodes so they never ever moved, that would be interesting. Not sure that would help much.
I'm sure the true believers will come popping out of the woodwork saying how this toy somehow aligns with your mental chakras and makes you instantly more productive, but I just cannot buy it. I prefer interfaces that don't jiggle like jello, and I think so does almost everyone else.
> The fact that Intel went to all this work simply shows that AMD made the better decision with it's architecture.
Bah. The IA64 had 256 registers. How few are we still stuck with on this bastardized 32-bit-plus-extensions hack? Yes, it might work out better on unit cost, but architecturally, it looks like the same damn clunky old jalopy to program for that it's always been.
> In Slashdot Utopia we could mark this article as "-1, Yellow Journalism".
Has anyone submitted a patch to slash for story moderation? At least then the editors can't claim the code isn't there...
> I think that soldier (whoever he is) is a quiet hero.
Let me get this straight: you get something vile and horrific done to you, and you're an automatic hero? Does your worldview require the creation of good to automatically oppose the evil?
You have no idea what that Russian soldier may have done. Perhaps he was a conscript who just wanted to get back home to see his mom. Perhaps he raped and killed a local girl. Why does his suffering escalate his status to hero?
Christ, I sure hope I'm never a hero.
It starts up mail! I can't believe it, it starts up mail! What an insecure piece of shit, I can't believe it! On firefox, when I view it
Oh wait, you wanted me to do it in IE? Oh yeah, that does it too.
> I worked for Verizon and it doesn't surprise me they're playing the 800lb Gorilla in the domain name business.
We might believe you if you knew the difference between Verizon and Verisign.
> But does Cygwin run everything as root?
No, but the cygwin DLL maintains state such as file descriptor tables and other "kernel level" stuff, so anyone who can write to the DLL's state can screw with any running cygwin process to the point of pretty much owning it. It was designed this way so it would work on Win9x -- if it used the NT native API's exclusively, many of cygwin's design decisions would be a lot more elegant. It's not so much a risk as it sounds though -- any kernel has the same issue, where if you crack the kernel, you can potentially blow open the whole system. But since it's all in user mode emulation, it is pretty darn slow.
You should probably think of MinGW as a native port of gcc and binutils for win32. MSYS runs over MinGW, and is a good deal more like cygwin, but is licensed differently (public domain as opposed to cygwin's GPL) and its emulation is a lot thinner because it eschews hacks to do it; MSYS has no fork(2) for example, but CreateProcess works just fine for shells and most other things. MSYS is noticeably faster than cygwin, but its installation is ultra-simplistic, and its package maintenance and upgrade paths are absolutely nonexistent, whereas cygwin has a sorta-ok installer program you can manage packages with.
Mingw will run just fine out of user space, you can fit your mingw+msys distribution on a usb thumb drive if you want to, and unlike cygwin, you don't have to worry about distributing a runtime DLL for anything you compile with it.
> (posted anonymously to avoid Slashdotters you refuse to think about things which don't fit inside their predefined universe).
My predefined universe requires things like proof. Shall I post a list of recent Elvis sightings?
"Okay, now very carefully follow my next few instructions, because you can do some serious damage on this machine... We need to clear out some junk on /tmp, so type 'r', 'm', 'space', 'slash' [pause here a moment, reach over to your coworker, point at their typo, and say...] 'SPACE' [pause another moment, then describe some harmless path off of /tmp]. Okay, now hit return. This might take a minute, the crap can really build up there..."
... r ... m ... the m's over there. no, SPACE dash f. no, SPACE dash f. dash. the dash is over there. dash f. no, no space. dash f. space slash. no, SPACE slash."
This of course assumes that you have a trainee who will actually type along while you narrate. In my experience it's been more like: "rm -f. rm
Just tell him to log in and do everything as root, leave it at that, and be confident that he'll probably do more damage soon than you could have imagined.
> The logical flaw here is the assumption that there is no letter-level parsing when, in fact, there is-- it's just not noticable as a distinct step because we do it so efficiently.
.. back in the 70's, but they're not over it) to the point of resisting anything but long division and column multiplication. I suspect that as usual, the truth lives in the middle, blisfully ignorant of ideological extremes.
Actually, we do take in whole words at a time when we already know the word, but it's largely based on recognizing the letters at the endpoints. Taht is the mian rseoan tihs snctecne is sltil smwoaht rdaelbe.
I'm sorry to say that there's little objective information to go on as far as condemning "whole language" -- the phonics "movement" is often fueled by these right-wing conservatives who also assail anything associated with "new math" (which was awful
How about you?
I sure think so.
Isn't this an ideal format?
It might look a lot like this.
Let's imagine browsing slashdot a sentence at a time.
youre->right(I.think(*lisp>(crufty[t o][(most*)people])));
> Trojan Horse - in its original sense
So you're saying that if we use this, we'll be infiltrated and sacked by the Spartans?
huh.