if you are contributing to free software code, by definition you are not making any money.
That's not necessarily true. You may not make money directly off the contribution, but the expenditures that go into developing the code that is contributed could be, in effect, a PR and/or R&D expenditure in pursuit of another business (e.g., writing software-related books, or selling consulting services related to the project to which you are contributing.) Heck, if it couldn't be part of a money-making business, big public corporations that certainly aren't doing it out of altruism wouldn't contribute code to free software projects, but there are a bunch that do, mostly because they sell related products and services. Conceptually, the same thing could vary easily be true of businesses that consist of a single person, there certainly are open-source developers that make money off of their relationship to open source projects they contribute to, even excluding those that are paid directly to develop code for a particular open source project.
The US government probably prevents you from selling your open source software to Cuba or Iran. If I read section 7 correctly, that counts as a "condition imposed on you". So really you lose all rights to using that code?
No, because the only way you lose rights given by the GPL (which are not necessary to use code, anyway) is if the conditions "contradict the conditions of this License". Since the GPL does not require you to sell (or even give) software to anyone, rules which prohibit you from selling software to Cuba or Iran don't contradict the license. All it requires is, in essence, that you provide a specified license and make source code available to anyone to whom you do provide the software, whether you are selling it or not.
The content you could put on a 20GB disk would be truly awesome, but what is in it for the game companies?
The fact that that "awesome" content means that there would be something that the e-delivery-only houses couldn't compete with, meaning that they'd lose money to the people doing BD-based content. Particularly if those people were doing BD-based content as well as e-delivery of either standalone content that didn't require anything so big that it would be inconvenient over the net, or supplemental material tied to the BD-based content.
When you P2P, you not only take the data for yourself, you also help spread the data around.
That depends on the P2P network you use and your application. Its certainly possible to download off of some P2P networks with some clients without sharing anything.
Ok, I'm far from an expert on SQL, but if NULL doesn't represent "unknown" in SQL,
"Unknown" is represented by NULL, but NULL does not (necessarily) represent "unknown". As GP says, NULL represents the absence of data (specifically, the absence of data regarding a value for an attribute within the domain defined for the attribute). Among the many meanings NULL can have:
1) The datum exists, but it is unknown (or, equivalently, cannot be determined). 2) The datum does not exist. 3) The entity has the attribute in question, and its value is known, but it is not within the domain defined for the attribute
NULL is a really ugly thing that exists largely for efficiency, and I suspect that many, many databases that use nullable columns do so as an ill-considered premature optimization. But which ever one of of those (or other) meanings apply, the result of any operation on NULL logically must again be a NULL; in SQL implementations, this generally means that calculations with NULL produce NULL and comparisons with NULL are always false, though there are, I think, some odd complications with this in some implementations.
The PS3 will never be $100. Just like the Xbox was never $100, just like the 360 will never be $100. That's not possible when you need to have a hard drive, a Blu-ray drive, a fairly advanced processor that you don't manufacture, and expensive high-speed RAM.
You could have said the same kinds of thing about the hardware in the PS2 when it came out, and you would have been just as right. All of those things were expensive and "fairly advanced" when the PS3 came out, but will probably be dirt cheap in a couple more years.
Can you point me to some sources on people who have been arrested for fraud related to CDS?
The fraud that it encourages (and encourages laxness in detecting on the part of bank officers that aren't actively engaged in fraud themselves) isn't, directly, in the sale of the CDS's themselves, its in the representation (or verification) of income and other qualifications for individual loans. I'm not going to go dig up all the news stories related to problems in that regard that have surfaced over the last couple years, but there have been plenty.
Your reaction is indicative for what is wrong in IT: when in the real world something does not work, you try it again and again
Usually, when I hear about doing something again and again and expecting different results, in when someone is discussion a popular definition of insanity, not suggesting a behavioral norm which IT should do more to respect.
as one studying japanese, all case has begun to look silly. japanese has many writing systems: you'd write steve's name in katakana and the state of employment in kanji, and no-one would confuse one for the other.
that's not to say that japanese is never ambiguous, or that their writing system doesn't have its own problems. but the whole idea of "case" does seem a bit odd, when you think about it.
Case is using different script for a different letter to convey some change in meaning and/or emphasis. Using Kanji vs. Katana is using different script for a larger unit; the instance you describe here is doing for the same purpose that case changes are done. I can't really see either being "odd" if the other isn't.
Maybe financial institutions are catching on to the idea that open source provides a far greater degree of security, accountability, and maintainability than closed source?
Yeah, because the main problem with Credit Default Swaps is that the pricing code used internally in banks wasn't distributed under an open source license, not (among other things) that the distribution of risk of default away from those making lending decisions encouraged those making the lending decisions to commit and encourage others to commit frauds which made the inputs into any pricing model unreliable.
I just priced out a 1U rack mount system with 2xquad core 2.4GHz processors and 8GB of RAM which is equivalent in processing capabilities to about 16 of these guys for the same price (~$1600). Except it also has 320GB of disk space, PCIe slot, and dual gigabit network connection, and only needs one power cable.
And, I'd suspect, probably draws more than 80W (16 times the power draw of the 5W "wall wart").
You mean like Slumdog Millionaire, which just won eight Oscars and is partially in Farsi?
Slumdog Millionaire is, at least according to all the sources I've seen, in English and Hindi, which are the two languages "of the Union" in the Republic of India. If it had been set in, e.g., Iran or Afghanistan, it might have been in Farsi.
None of those systems have been doing well in the mainstream desktop space, which is what all the excitement over Android is about.
Uh, I don't really think any of the excitement about Android is about "the mainstream desktop" market, unless you are using a really odd definition of either "mainstream" or "desktop" in describing that market slice.
Well now an American firm is going to train American workers and everyone accuses them of trying to flood the market with cheap labor.
Uh, Microsoft isn't going to train American workers in any generally-applicable sense. It is going to train people to use its products specifically (partially with its own money, partially "in cooperation with state governments" -- i.e., via public subsidies) as a way of improving its competitive position vis-a-vis other technology firms. Its essentially a PR stunt trying to sell an effort to get public subsidies to help reinforce Microsoft's existing market dominance as if this was somehow a benefit to the public.
The vast majority is of Google's cloud computing is given away free(so people will use their products). To the best my knowledge, they have a fairly open sdk and tos. I'm having trouble envisioning a scenario like the text you quoted(the quote seems so imply it's inevitable so it's more fair to interpret it as a promise of action).
Uh, the quote implies that it is inevitable that some companies will allege that Google is discriminating. Which is pretty much true: if Google has a monopoly, or even if there is a credible argument that they do (whether legally acquired or not) -- and I think the latter, at least, is true now, if not the former -- eventually someone will allege that they eitehr have an illegally-acquired monopoly or are unlawfully leveraging a monopoly position, however acquired, whether or not either of those is, in fact, the case.
Essentially, it seems to me she's pointed out where a likely future battle is, rather than taking a side on it.
Laws are made by legislative branch, not executive branch.
Yes, laws which create school districts and give them authority to act are made by the legislative branch. Violating those laws by defying the authority granted to the district under those laws is a violation of the law.
OCCASIONALLY, the legislative branch SPECIFICALLY grants an agency the power to make a law.
At least in the US system of government, what the legislative branch may do is grant authority to adopt policies subordinate to law ("regulation", broadly) to executive agencies, and failure to comply with any exercise of that authority, generally, violates the law which gives the authority in the first place.
Schools don't have that.
Schools, do, in fact, in most (and I would imagine all) jurisdictions have authority under the law compliance with which is legally mandatory, and defiance of which is contrary to the law.
In particular, in Wisconsin, schools specifically are granted authority under WI statute 118.258 to "adopt rules prohibiting a pupil from using or possessing an electronic communication device while on premises owned or rented by or under the control of a public school.", and, further, WI statute 118.001 calls for broad construction of school district powers (" The statutory duties and powers of school boards shall be broadly construed to authorize any school board action that is within the comprehensive meaning of the terms of the duties and powers, if the action is not prohibited by the laws of the federal government or of this state."), which extends also to the authority under Wisconsin laws of teachers in the schools (see annotation to statute 118.001.)
Activity was described 1. Texting when the TEACHER, not a rule, told her to stop. (even if the school regulation had the force of law, the teacher did not.
Incorrect assumption. Most like, the school rules made obedience to the teacher on that mandatory, and almost certainly those rules were within the scope of the authority of the school under the law, meaning that failing to comply with the teacher's orders was a violation of law.
So We have disobeying a teacher which can in NO way be called disorderly conduct
Really? Again, please post the disorderly conduct statute applicable where this occurred and explained how this act is outside the scope of that statute.
Whoever, in a public or private place, engages in violent, abusive, indecent, profane, boisterous, unreasonably loud or otherwise disorderly conduct under circumstances in which the conduct tends to cause or provoke a disturbance is guilty of a Class B misdemeanor.
Note that one of the annotations of case-law precedents notes that "Defiance of a police officer's order to move is itself disorderly conduct if the order is lawful."
I'm interested to here your argument that, under this law, disrupting instruction in the classroom by refusing to obey a teacher's order, presuming that the order is within the teacher's authority in the classroom under the law, cannot, "in any way", be considered "disorderly conduct", or, alternatively, your explanation as to how this is outside the teacher's authority under the law.
You call police when a law is broken, NOT when a rule is broken.
Most public schools rules, as acts of a government regulatory body within its legal area of competence, have the force of law. Failing to comply with them is breaking the law. It may or may not always be criminal, but that's another issue.
The kid was NOT being 'disorderly', that was a trumped up charge.
Please provide a reference to the disorderly conduct law applicable to the jurisdiction in question and provide an explanation of how the conduct at issue is not within the scope of its prohibitions. Or are you just making stuff up?
Can someone tell us what the stimulus *will* actually do?
No, because no claim about the future is certain. All people can say is what seems to have some probability of occuring based on past experience and the content of the bill.
I'd like to get everything I want for free. But, yes, I'd prefer that the environmental costs were accounted for up-front in the purchase price rather than hidden away, because then people would have a stronger incentive to make choices that didn't have disastrous long-term consequences.
In fact, assuring that externalities are internalized so that the social costs of actions are born by the actors that choose them is, quite arguably, the principal economic role of government.
Let me get this straight. Obama, the man of the people, has a Dept. of Justice filing an amicus brief in order to HELP the extortionate RIAA win their case?
No, the Obama Administration's DOJ is considering filing an amicus brief supporting statutory damages even when they greatly exceed demonstrable actual damages. While that theory being struck down in the instant case might be bad for the RIAA and no one else immediately, if such a precedent were established, it would greatly limit the use of statutory damages in most of the places where they are used, which are often in places where the easily quantifiable portion of direct harms is very small, but the diffuse impact may be very large. This does not benefit only, or even primarily, big corporations, its very common in laws that principally benefit individuals against big corporations (like many consumer protection laws) and other powerful interests (civil actions under many civil rights laws).
Amicus briefs are often filed by parties whose interest in legal precedent that could be set is largely tangential to the interests of the parties in the case; if parties have a direct interest in the case, they probably ought to be intervenors, not amici.
The question is, realistically what would happen if casinos actually allowed the odds of any game to be tilted in the players' favor?
IIRC, the odds in blackjack, played optimally, under the rules that were used in casions used to be very slightly in the player's favor, but casinos still on average made money off of it because (1) the average player did not play optimally, and (2) gamblers ruin -- even playing optimally hand-to-hand, players would often enough play until they hit a streak where they lost their available stake and quit because of how far behind they were.
Persistent in that it is designed to be durable over time, not transient. It relies on cluster architecture rather than storage that is itself persistent at any given node to acheive this, which is a pretty significant difference from the point of view of, say, a system administrator setting up a system relying on it as a data store, but irrelevant from the perspective of its use by applications.
Its function is the same as any other database, it differs in the means by which it acheives it. Saying its not a database because it doesn't use a disk is like saying that an automobile isn't a mode of land transportation because it doesn't use a horse.
In what way is Scalaris" anything like a database?
Its a persistent, transactional data store.
It doesn't even store data on disk.
It achieves persistence by using a cluster of nodes storing data in memory and being tolerant of nodes dropping out, rather than storing on disk. This is, admittedly, not the usual means in which databases achieve persistent data storage, but so what? It provides data storage and retrieval and is transactional and persistent. A database is defined by function, not by how the function is acheived. It is, pretty clearly, a database, albeit a non-relational one.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not necessarily true. You may not make money directly off the contribution, but the expenditures that go into developing the code that is contributed could be, in effect, a PR and/or R&D expenditure in pursuit of another business (e.g., writing software-related books, or selling consulting services related to the project to which you are contributing.) Heck, if it couldn't be part of a money-making business, big public corporations that certainly aren't doing it out of altruism wouldn't contribute code to free software projects, but there are a bunch that do, mostly because they sell related products and services. Conceptually, the same thing could vary easily be true of businesses that consist of a single person, there certainly are open-source developers that make money off of their relationship to open source projects they contribute to, even excluding those that are paid directly to develop code for a particular open source project.
No, because the only way you lose rights given by the GPL (which are not necessary to use code, anyway) is if the conditions "contradict the conditions of this License". Since the GPL does not require you to sell (or even give) software to anyone, rules which prohibit you from selling software to Cuba or Iran don't contradict the license. All it requires is, in essence, that you provide a specified license and make source code available to anyone to whom you do provide the software, whether you are selling it or not.
The fact that that "awesome" content means that there would be something that the e-delivery-only houses couldn't compete with, meaning that they'd lose money to the people doing BD-based content. Particularly if those people were doing BD-based content as well as e-delivery of either standalone content that didn't require anything so big that it would be inconvenient over the net, or supplemental material tied to the BD-based content.
That depends on the P2P network you use and your application. Its certainly possible to download off of some P2P networks with some clients without sharing anything.
Okay, so they are partners with several RedHat competitors, not just one.
This defuses the idea that they might be patent-trolling on behalf of a partner...how?
"Unknown" is represented by NULL, but NULL does not (necessarily) represent "unknown". As GP says, NULL represents the absence of data (specifically, the absence of data regarding a value for an attribute within the domain defined for the attribute). Among the many meanings NULL can have:
1) The datum exists, but it is unknown (or, equivalently, cannot be determined).
2) The datum does not exist.
3) The entity has the attribute in question, and its value is known, but it is not within the domain defined for the attribute
NULL is a really ugly thing that exists largely for efficiency, and I suspect that many, many databases that use nullable columns do so as an ill-considered premature optimization.
But which ever one of of those (or other) meanings apply, the result of any operation on NULL logically must again be a NULL; in SQL implementations, this generally means that calculations with NULL produce NULL and comparisons with NULL are always false, though there are, I think, some odd complications with this in some implementations.
You could have said the same kinds of thing about the hardware in the PS2 when it came out, and you would have been just as right. All of those things were expensive and "fairly advanced" when the PS3 came out, but will probably be dirt cheap in a couple more years.
The fraud that it encourages (and encourages laxness in detecting on the part of bank officers that aren't actively engaged in fraud themselves) isn't, directly, in the sale of the CDS's themselves, its in the representation (or verification) of income and other qualifications for individual loans. I'm not going to go dig up all the news stories related to problems in that regard that have surfaced over the last couple years, but there have been plenty.
Usually, when I hear about doing something again and again and expecting different results, in when someone is discussion a popular definition of insanity, not suggesting a behavioral norm which IT should do more to respect.
Case is using different script for a different letter to convey some change in meaning and/or emphasis. Using Kanji vs. Katana is using different script for a larger unit; the instance you describe here is doing for the same purpose that case changes are done. I can't really see either being "odd" if the other isn't.
Yeah, because the main problem with Credit Default Swaps is that the pricing code used internally in banks wasn't distributed under an open source license, not (among other things) that the distribution of risk of default away from those making lending decisions encouraged those making the lending decisions to commit and encourage others to commit frauds which made the inputs into any pricing model unreliable.
Or like saying someone who builds a house on top of a floatation hull has made a "houseboat".
And, I'd suspect, probably draws more than 80W (16 times the power draw of the 5W "wall wart").
Slumdog Millionaire is, at least according to all the sources I've seen, in English and Hindi, which are the two languages "of the Union" in the Republic of India. If it had been set in, e.g., Iran or Afghanistan, it might have been in Farsi.
Uh, I don't really think any of the excitement about Android is about "the mainstream desktop" market, unless you are using a really odd definition of either "mainstream" or "desktop" in describing that market slice.
Uh, Microsoft isn't going to train American workers in any generally-applicable sense. It is going to train people to use its products specifically (partially with its own money, partially "in cooperation with state governments" -- i.e., via public subsidies) as a way of improving its competitive position vis-a-vis other technology firms. Its essentially a PR stunt trying to sell an effort to get public subsidies to help reinforce Microsoft's existing market dominance as if this was somehow a benefit to the public.
Uh, the quote implies that it is inevitable that some companies will allege that Google is discriminating. Which is pretty much true: if Google has a monopoly, or even if there is a credible argument that they do (whether legally acquired or not) -- and I think the latter, at least, is true now, if not the former -- eventually someone will allege that they eitehr have an illegally-acquired monopoly or are unlawfully leveraging a monopoly position, however acquired, whether or not either of those is, in fact, the case.
Essentially, it seems to me she's pointed out where a likely future battle is, rather than taking a side on it.
Yes, laws which create school districts and give them authority to act are made by the legislative branch. Violating those laws by defying the authority granted to the district under those laws is a violation of the law.
At least in the US system of government, what the legislative branch may do is grant authority to adopt policies subordinate to law ("regulation", broadly) to executive agencies, and failure to comply with any exercise of that authority, generally, violates the law which gives the authority in the first place.
Schools, do, in fact, in most (and I would imagine all) jurisdictions have authority under the law compliance with which is legally mandatory, and defiance of which is contrary to the law.
In particular, in Wisconsin, schools specifically are granted authority under WI statute 118.258 to "adopt rules prohibiting a pupil from using or possessing an electronic communication device while on premises owned or rented by or under the control of a public school.", and, further, WI statute 118.001 calls for broad construction of school district powers (" The statutory duties and powers of school boards shall be broadly construed to authorize any school board action that is within the comprehensive meaning of the terms of the duties and powers, if the action is not prohibited by the laws of the federal government or of this state."), which extends also to the authority under Wisconsin laws of teachers in the schools (see annotation to statute 118.001.)
Incorrect assumption. Most like, the school rules made obedience to the teacher on that mandatory, and almost certainly those rules were within the scope of the authority of the school under the law, meaning that failing to comply with the teacher's orders was a violation of law.
Really? Again, please post the disorderly conduct statute applicable where this occurred and explained how this act is outside the scope of that statute.
Or, better yet, here it is (WI statute 947.01):
Note that one of the annotations of case-law precedents notes that "Defiance of a police officer's order to move is itself disorderly conduct if the order is lawful."
I'm interested to here your argument that, under this law, disrupting instruction in the classroom by refusing to obey a teacher's order, presuming that the order is within the teacher's authority in the classroom under the law, cannot, "in any way", be considered "disorderly conduct", or, alternatively, your explanation as to how this is outside the teacher's authority under the law.
True.
Most public schools rules, as acts of a government regulatory body within its legal area of competence, have the force of law. Failing to comply with them is breaking the law. It may or may not always be criminal, but that's another issue.
Please provide a reference to the disorderly conduct law applicable to the jurisdiction in question and provide an explanation of how the conduct at issue is not within the scope of its prohibitions. Or are you just making stuff up?
No, because no claim about the future is certain. All people can say is what seems to have some probability of occuring based on past experience and the content of the bill.
I'd like to get everything I want for free. But, yes, I'd prefer that the environmental costs were accounted for up-front in the purchase price rather than hidden away, because then people would have a stronger incentive to make choices that didn't have disastrous long-term consequences.
In fact, assuring that externalities are internalized so that the social costs of actions are born by the actors that choose them is, quite arguably, the principal economic role of government.
No, the Obama Administration's DOJ is considering filing an amicus brief supporting statutory damages even when they greatly exceed demonstrable actual damages. While that theory being struck down in the instant case might be bad for the RIAA and no one else immediately, if such a precedent were established, it would greatly limit the use of statutory damages in most of the places where they are used, which are often in places where the easily quantifiable portion of direct harms is very small, but the diffuse impact may be very large. This does not benefit only, or even primarily, big corporations, its very common in laws that principally benefit individuals against big corporations (like many consumer protection laws) and other powerful interests (civil actions under many civil rights laws).
Amicus briefs are often filed by parties whose interest in legal precedent that could be set is largely tangential to the interests of the parties in the case; if parties have a direct interest in the case, they probably ought to be intervenors, not amici.
IIRC, the odds in blackjack, played optimally, under the rules that were used in casions used to be very slightly in the player's favor, but casinos still on average made money off of it because (1) the average player did not play optimally, and (2) gamblers ruin -- even playing optimally hand-to-hand, players would often enough play until they hit a streak where they lost their available stake and quit because of how far behind they were.
Persistent in that it is designed to be durable over time, not transient. It relies on cluster architecture rather than storage that is itself persistent at any given node to acheive this, which is a pretty significant difference from the point of view of, say, a system administrator setting up a system relying on it as a data store, but irrelevant from the perspective of its use by applications.
Its function is the same as any other database, it differs in the means by which it acheives it. Saying its not a database because it doesn't use a disk is like saying that an automobile isn't a mode of land transportation because it doesn't use a horse.
Its a persistent, transactional data store.
It achieves persistence by using a cluster of nodes storing data in memory and being tolerant of nodes dropping out, rather than storing on disk. This is, admittedly, not the usual means in which databases achieve persistent data storage, but so what? It provides data storage and retrieval and is transactional and persistent. A database is defined by function, not by how the function is acheived. It is, pretty clearly, a database, albeit a non-relational one.