If you had ever made an install CD set, or an install DVD, you'd have a copy of the "infringing" code. Also, Debian often installs extra packages which another package reccomends; It's quite easy to end up with software you have no personal use for - but you did make a copy. Remember that it's the act of making a copy that affects copyright law, not what you do with it afterward. Just having the software on the DVD is a problem.
Then there's the secondary issue of guilt by association. The common tactic nowadays is to sue everyone and ask questions later. Those without deep pockets will have to cave in for financial reasons, even if the suit lacks any real merit. It would not be difficult to convince a jury that if Debian was making something illegally, anyone installing Debian must also be breaking the same law. You could try and argue about the way dpkg/apt work, but I doubt you'd get too far.
In other words, it's a minefield out there, so it makes sense to tread carefully.
...Why? Because the legal-circle-jerk that is the debian-legal mailing list, decided that it wasn't "legal" to link netatalk (a GPL project) to OpenSSL (license supposedly incompatible with GPL.
This has been discussed at length, and OpenSSL's license is GPL incompatible. Everyone else may simply think it's ok to bend the rules, and that they won't ever get sued for it. That's not a safe assumption for a volunteer-based distribution.
This doesn't stop every other distribution on the planet from compiling netatalk with openssl, and hence supporting encrypted passwords.
"Everyone else breaks the rules, so its ok." That doesn't work for speeding tickets, and it doesn't work in contract/license disputes.
They politely suggested that GnuTLS, which isn't even remotely drop-in, be used instead. That was back in 2002...and the issue still hasn't been addressed. I filed a bug on it and the bug was simply ignored.
Maybe you and any other users of appletalk on unsecure networks ought to band together and fix it. Alternatively you can just switch distributions or upgrade your networking from appletalk (a 1980s protocol, since you were talking about being 10-years backwards).
Does it suck? Yes. It sucks that the OpenSSL people won't change their license, and upstream netatalk doesn't care either. However Debian would risk legal action against ALL users if they break the law, even though 1% of the users use this package. They chose the solution for 99% of their users, which is the best you can hope for in an esoteric case like this.
My own philosophy is to praise people/companies/institutions when they're good (no matter how bad they are normally) and condemn people/companies/institutions when they're bad (no matter how good they are normally).
How true; The current situation is almost unprecedented, since the unemployment rate has only exceeded the current level 8 times in the last 60 years, including most of the 1980s.
I really liked that movie when I was growing up. It's probably one of the factors that led me to pursue robotics in college. Much of the "tech" is off-base, but I thought it was interesting how they looked at the effects on society.
There's a difference between putting a fence on your property that the government asked for, versus having to monitor and report to authorities statistics on who passed through your yard.
Censorship is opaque to the government enacting it; They don't know how many people it is limiting, or how effective it really is at preventing the spread of their unwanted information. Giving search data is one step closer to being an active enforcer of the law, where one picks out users of unwanted information and reports them to authorities. In other words, if you want to be angry at someone now, then be angry at Yahoo.
Asking me to put a lock on my bedroom door or face fines is annoying (censorship). On the other hand, asking me to tell you the race, gender, and number of people passing through that door every week, is an invasion of privacy (statistics).
He wasn't playing Solitaire; he had left it on his computer from a while ago.
According to who?... Oh yeah the person who got fired; Of course he'd tell the truth if he was playing at the time, right? Really, how many people leave Windows applications up that you aren't using? If you're not using it, it should be minimized. Windows doens't have enough screen real estate otherwise, and it blocks your access to the desktop.
So in short, I think the guy is whitewashing his story. Getting canned for playing a game is harsh, but you should know better when a VIP comes to visit.
Would they have to include source code in the warhead?
No, it would suffice to include with the warhead a written offer, good for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than the cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code.
The shuttle engine is not currently capable of in-air ignition, while the J-2 engine did exactly that for Apollo. The shuttle engine would thus have to be modified, while the J-2 engine would not. So it's more like 10 times vs 0.
P.S. This is pretty clearly written in the article.
(1) China has its own constitution, the Bill of Rights means nothing to them. (2) Yes, people do die from lead in their environment (leaded paint) (3) Is Google evil for not promoting the second ammendment in China and Europe?
Like you, I would be mad as hell if Google did this in the US. The point is however, that this is not in the US, nor a product for the US.
P.S. I am also an ardent supporter of the 2nd ammendment (not so popular on slashdot), but I don't think our companies should tell other countries what they should believe.
I'm sorry I don't see what is wrong with obeying the laws of a country in which you do business. Would a European company be evil if it sold non-lead-free electronics in the US? No, it wouldn't... even though they would be breaking the law to sell the same thing in Europe (look up RoHS compliance). Freedom of speech is not the same thing as torture; I think it is indeed up to a country to decide for itself what level of speech can be tolerated (even in the US, there are a lot of things you can't say).
If Google promoted censorship in the US, then I would be unhappy. However I'm not going to fault them for playing by the rules wherever they operate.
Re:Don't suppose the No Nukes freaks will apologiz
on
Pluto Probe Launches
·
· Score: 1
In 1964, about 1 kg of plutonium was released from a Navy navigational satellite, Transit 5BN, that failed to make orbit. It spread radioactive particles over the whole planet.
Mass of lost plutonium: 1 kg Radius of Earth: 6,378,100 m Volume of first 2m of atmosphere: 1,022,404,245,219,396 m^3 Mass of air: 1.3 Kg/m^3 Mass of first 2m of atmosphere: 1,329,125,518,785,216 Kg
So, if it was spread over the Earth as claimed, but assuming it all ended up very near to the surface, we're still talking about 1 part per quadrillion. I wouldn't worry too much. I realize nobody likes an accident, but poeple should really think more and react less.
You are definitely on the right track, though its not clear if its the article summary that's botched or the study itself. Trained cognitive psychologists at least should know better, so I'd lean toward an innacurate summary. The title should probably read "users can judge websites after seeing them for only 50 msec". The "photographic" effect you are referring to is called after-image, and can last long after the initial stimulus is gone. They could make a stronger claim than I stated above if they put up a visual distraction image after the 50 msec (visual memory studies do this a lot). But the summary doesn't mention it so we can't know for sure.
Regarding human reaction time, it varies depending on the task, but rarely is less than 100 msec (usually when you expect something to happen, such as runners starting a race). That means some tasks can be completed faster than 250 msec thouch, so that's not a good lower bound to quote if you are trying to debunk something. 50 msec certainly is too fast for anything I'd call "judgement" though, as people usually cannot even press a button that fast in response to an event.
At any rate, the slashdot summary is far from an accurate description of the phenomenon, but since when is that news...
P.S. I am not a psychologist, but I do have a B.S. double in cognitive science.
One thing to keep in mind though: Since RFIDs seem "foolproof" to many people at the moment, it means that store managers may end up relying on them too much for security . In other words "why do we need new cameras or guards now that we have RFID". Criminals will find a way, and it'll always be a constant battle.
You do realize that many of the top Linux kernel developers are paid to work on it, right? Linus gets paid by OSDL. Many developers work for various distributions. IBM, SGI, and Intel have paid employees who work on Linux full or part time. Your oft-repeated view may have been true years ago, but that system started disappearing in the late 90s.
There are still, of course, plenty of people who work on Linux in their spare time. Some of the bigger contributers do it to get a job: After they have proven themselves as a major contributor, they can get a job doing the same thing.
I believe that the scientific Journal has outlived its usefulness, and will be replaced by... Slashdot!
I seriously doubt that. I think the more likely future is online-only Journals. IEEE conferences are certainly moving in this direction, though they require paid access to their site. IMO the best open journal at the moment is the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research. They have free access to all papers online and keep their costs low.
But seriously, reviewers are biased and sloppy, as are the editors.
I'm sorry, are you describing Slashdot or journals?
The fact that reviews are blind means that they are also unaccountable, which fosters even more bias.
If your research can't stand up to what people might say behind your back, then maybe you ought to support it better.
Journals take months or years to respond to a submision, and often as not they respond with a rejection so the submitter has to give up or start the whole process over with another journal.
Timliness is a problem, but reviewers are human; It takes a while to find the time to do a journal review. There are many other options than outright rejection; In fact at least within computer science, "revise and resubmit" is a popular option. You have to fix what's wrong, and it will get reviewed again. I think that's pretty reasonable.
Now, if your work is completely out of left field, it will get rejected. If you didn't take the time to think something through clearly AND understand what others have already done in your area, then you are simply wasting the reviewers time.
There are so many scandals that one could quote.
Interestingly, you don't give any examples or a reference. Maybe there really aren't that many scandals. Also, there are plently of journals to choose from, so find one that hasn't had a major scandal.
The whole process seems more designed to support the status quo than to promote knowledge.
It's run by a community, and pretty much everything run by a community works that way. You seem to be confused about the roles in this process. It is your job as author to convince the reviewers that you are right, it's not their job to automatically recognize your genius when you don't make enough of an effort to present it.
I have discussed this with many people in academia and they react not with logic, but with horror that I would dare to question a system that they view almost mystical reverence.
Well, maybe that's because you advocate complete removal of a system that failed to serve you, but serves a lot of researchers just fine. Instead of thowing out the baby with the bathwater, why not help journals like JAIR which fix only what's broken in the system, and try to keep the good parts. If you submit to such journals, and reivew in fields what you are well versed in, these journals will quickly rise to prominence. There's no monopoly here; The system can be fixed with competition.
Maybe there ought to be a question when you set up your mac - "rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 on how good you are with computers, and we'll adjust the system alerts accordingly"...
You'd have to make it more of a quiz. After all, there's a lot of people that think they know everything but who really don't have a clue (Go to your local computer shop if you don't believe me). It could be pretty funny:
Slashdot Mirror
If you had ever made an install CD set, or an install DVD, you'd have a copy of the "infringing" code. Also, Debian often installs extra packages which another package reccomends; It's quite easy to end up with software you have no personal use for - but you did make a copy. Remember that it's the act of making a copy that affects copyright law, not what you do with it afterward. Just having the software on the DVD is a problem.
Then there's the secondary issue of guilt by association. The common tactic nowadays is to sue everyone and ask questions later. Those without deep pockets will have to cave in for financial reasons, even if the suit lacks any real merit. It would not be difficult to convince a jury that if Debian was making something illegally, anyone installing Debian must also be breaking the same law. You could try and argue about the way dpkg/apt work, but I doubt you'd get too far.
In other words, it's a minefield out there, so it makes sense to tread carefully.
...Why? Because the legal-circle-jerk that is the debian-legal mailing list, decided that it wasn't "legal" to link netatalk (a GPL project) to OpenSSL (license supposedly incompatible with GPL.
This has been discussed at length, and OpenSSL's license is GPL incompatible. Everyone else may simply think it's ok to bend the rules, and that they won't ever get sued for it. That's not a safe assumption for a volunteer-based distribution.
This doesn't stop every other distribution on the planet from compiling netatalk with openssl, and hence supporting encrypted passwords.
"Everyone else breaks the rules, so its ok." That doesn't work for speeding tickets, and it doesn't work in contract/license disputes.
They politely suggested that GnuTLS, which isn't even remotely drop-in, be used instead. That was back in 2002...and the issue still hasn't been addressed. I filed a bug on it and the bug was simply ignored.
Maybe you and any other users of appletalk on unsecure networks ought to band together and fix it. Alternatively you can just switch distributions or upgrade your networking from appletalk (a 1980s protocol, since you were talking about being 10-years backwards).
Does it suck? Yes. It sucks that the OpenSSL people won't change their license, and upstream netatalk doesn't care either. However Debian would risk legal action against ALL users if they break the law, even though 1% of the users use this package. They chose the solution for 99% of their users, which is the best you can hope for in an esoteric case like this.
My own philosophy is to praise people/companies/institutions when they're good (no matter how bad they are normally) and condemn people/companies/institutions when they're bad (no matter how good they are normally).
You must be new here.
How true; The current situation is almost unprecedented, since the unemployment rate has only exceeded the current level 8 times in the last 60 years, including most of the 1980s.
Oops...
It turns out Edison was not completely wrong: HVDC
In particular, "Increased stability of power systems" is certainly something that individuals in the Northeastern US and London may be interested in.
Of course, AC still has its uses, but the chart is now thought to be:
really long distance -> HVDC
long distance -> AC
short distance -> DC
I really liked that movie when I was growing up. It's probably one of the factors that led me to pursue robotics in college. Much of the "tech" is off-base, but I thought it was interesting how they looked at the effects on society.
So how do you explain the play calling in the Pittsburgh-Indy game?
There's a difference between putting a fence on your property that the government asked for, versus having to monitor and report to authorities statistics on who passed through your yard.
Censorship is opaque to the government enacting it; They don't know how many people it is limiting, or how effective it really is at preventing the spread of their unwanted information. Giving search data is one step closer to being an active enforcer of the law, where one picks out users of unwanted information and reports them to authorities. In other words, if you want to be angry at someone now, then be angry at Yahoo.
Asking me to put a lock on my bedroom door or face fines is annoying (censorship). On the other hand, asking me to tell you the race, gender, and number of people passing through that door every week, is an invasion of privacy (statistics).
He wasn't playing Solitaire; he had left it on his computer from a while ago.
According to who?... Oh yeah the person who got fired; Of course he'd tell the truth if he was playing at the time, right? Really, how many people leave Windows applications up that you aren't using? If you're not using it, it should be minimized. Windows doens't have enough screen real estate otherwise, and it blocks your access to the desktop.
So in short, I think the guy is whitewashing his story. Getting canned for playing a game is harsh, but you should know better when a VIP comes to visit.
Would they have to include source code in the warhead?
No, it would suffice to include with the warhead a written offer, good for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than the cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code.
(see the GPL, section 3b)
The shuttle engine is not currently capable of in-air ignition, while the J-2 engine did exactly that for Apollo. The shuttle engine would thus have to be modified, while the J-2 engine would not. So it's more like 10 times vs 0.
P.S. This is pretty clearly written in the article.
You are riding a container of explosive fuel and remember you are sitting on top of the explosives.
Please RTFA; It's not explosive fuel, it's just violently conflagrative.
(1) China has its own constitution, the Bill of Rights means nothing to them.
(2) Yes, people do die from lead in their environment (leaded paint)
(3) Is Google evil for not promoting the second ammendment in China and Europe?
Like you, I would be mad as hell if Google did this in the US. The point is however, that this is not in the US, nor a product for the US.
P.S. I am also an ardent supporter of the 2nd ammendment (not so popular on slashdot), but I don't think our companies should tell other countries what they should believe.
I'm sorry I don't see what is wrong with obeying the laws of a country in which you do business. Would a European company be evil if it sold non-lead-free electronics in the US? No, it wouldn't... even though they would be breaking the law to sell the same thing in Europe (look up RoHS compliance). Freedom of speech is not the same thing as torture; I think it is indeed up to a country to decide for itself what level of speech can be tolerated (even in the US, there are a lot of things you can't say).
If Google promoted censorship in the US, then I would be unhappy. However I'm not going to fault them for playing by the rules wherever they operate.
In 1964, about 1 kg of plutonium was released from a Navy navigational satellite, Transit 5BN, that failed to make orbit. It spread radioactive particles over the whole planet.
Mass of lost plutonium: 1 kg
Radius of Earth: 6,378,100 m
Volume of first 2m of atmosphere: 1,022,404,245,219,396 m^3
Mass of air: 1.3 Kg/m^3
Mass of first 2m of atmosphere: 1,329,125,518,785,216 Kg
So, if it was spread over the Earth as claimed, but assuming it all ended up very near to the surface, we're still talking about 1 part per quadrillion. I wouldn't worry too much. I realize nobody likes an accident, but poeple should really think more and react less.
Too many pictures of mushrooms, perhaps?
You are definitely on the right track, though its not clear if its the article summary that's botched or the study itself. Trained cognitive psychologists at least should know better, so I'd lean toward an innacurate summary. The title should probably read "users can judge websites after seeing them for only 50 msec". The "photographic" effect you are referring to is called after-image, and can last long after the initial stimulus is gone. They could make a stronger claim than I stated above if they put up a visual distraction image after the 50 msec (visual memory studies do this a lot). But the summary doesn't mention it so we can't know for sure.
Regarding human reaction time, it varies depending on the task, but rarely is less than 100 msec (usually when you expect something to happen, such as runners starting a race). That means some tasks can be completed faster than 250 msec thouch, so that's not a good lower bound to quote if you are trying to debunk something. 50 msec certainly is too fast for anything I'd call "judgement" though, as people usually cannot even press a button that fast in response to an event.
At any rate, the slashdot summary is far from an accurate description of the phenomenon, but since when is that news...
P.S. I am not a psychologist, but I do have a B.S. double in cognitive science.
Not to mention the design mentioned on this page... a long time ago.
How about "downloadable audio"?
Here is one of the earliest "podcasts" I can find. When will the iPod have aiff and au support?
What about the belt or chain that is currently needed to connect the two axles? That doesn't sound easier to make than a more circular wheel.
One thing to keep in mind though: Since RFIDs seem "foolproof" to many people at the moment, it means that store managers may end up relying on them too much for security . In other words "why do we need new cameras or guards now that we have RFID". Criminals will find a way, and it'll always be a constant battle.
You do realize that many of the top Linux kernel developers are paid to work on it, right? Linus gets paid by OSDL. Many developers work for various distributions. IBM, SGI, and Intel have paid employees who work on Linux full or part time. Your oft-repeated view may have been true years ago, but that system started disappearing in the late 90s.
There are still, of course, plenty of people who work on Linux in their spare time. Some of the bigger contributers do it to get a job: After they have proven themselves as a major contributor, they can get a job doing the same thing.
I believe that the scientific Journal has outlived its usefulness, and will be replaced by ... Slashdot!
I seriously doubt that. I think the more likely future is online-only Journals. IEEE conferences are certainly moving in this direction, though they require paid access to their site. IMO the best open journal at the moment is the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research. They have free access to all papers online and keep their costs low.
But seriously, reviewers are biased and sloppy, as are the editors.
I'm sorry, are you describing Slashdot or journals?
The fact that reviews are blind means that they are also unaccountable, which fosters even more bias.
If your research can't stand up to what people might say behind your back, then maybe you ought to support it better.
Journals take months or years to respond to a submision, and often as not they respond with a rejection so the submitter has to give up or start the whole process over with another journal.
Timliness is a problem, but reviewers are human; It takes a while to find the time to do a journal review. There are many other options than outright rejection; In fact at least within computer science, "revise and resubmit" is a popular option. You have to fix what's wrong, and it will get reviewed again. I think that's pretty reasonable.
Now, if your work is completely out of left field, it will get rejected. If you didn't take the time to think something through clearly AND understand what others have already done in your area, then you are simply wasting the reviewers time.
There are so many scandals that one could quote.
Interestingly, you don't give any examples or a reference. Maybe there really aren't that many scandals. Also, there are plently of journals to choose from, so find one that hasn't had a major scandal.
The whole process seems more designed to support the status quo than to promote knowledge.
It's run by a community, and pretty much everything run by a community works that way. You seem to be confused about the roles in this process. It is your job as author to convince the reviewers that you are right, it's not their job to automatically recognize your genius when you don't make enough of an effort to present it.
I have discussed this with many people in academia and they react not with logic, but with horror that I would dare to question a system that they view almost mystical reverence.
Well, maybe that's because you advocate complete removal of a system that failed to serve you, but serves a lot of researchers just fine. Instead of thowing out the baby with the bathwater, why not help journals like JAIR which fix only what's broken in the system, and try to keep the good parts. If you submit to such journals, and reivew in fields what you are well versed in, these journals will quickly rise to prominence. There's no monopoly here; The system can be fixed with competition.
Maybe there ought to be a question when you set up your mac - "rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 on how good you are with computers, and we'll adjust the system alerts accordingly"...
...
You'd have to make it more of a quiz. After all, there's a lot of people that think they know everything but who really don't have a clue (Go to your local computer shop if you don't believe me). It could be pretty funny:
(1) what does RAM stand for?
(2) what is 0xF?
When can we expect Linux support? I'd like to think that Linux is big enough now to demand proper support from Sony, just like Windows and OSX.