Imagine if Linus had got his way and called it freenix. RMS would be having fits demanding it be called GNU/Freenix, that's freenix with a capital f. We'd probably have to say "GNU/Capital-F-reenix".
And then there'd be ESR trying to get everyone to call it "OpenSource-nix".
Windows NT is not based on VMS. It is in essence OS/2 version 3.0. MS did all sorts of things to OS/2 that the IBM engineers were disgusted by so MS took their bat and ball and went to play in their backyard. The only relation that NT has with VMS is the one guy.
There's an article about it somewhere but I can't find it at the moment.
Except they have to be dead first and they have to be musicians (so probably not including most pop stars). There's plenty to choose from as well. We've got a list of thousands still to use. I'm currently hanging out for Aaliyah.
A little lesson in IP law
on
Slashdot IRC Forum
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· Score: 2, Informative
IANAL but have an interest in it and Hemos and CmdrTaco don't seem to understand the issues ( or are trying to hide their true intentions ).
Firstly, copyright (unlike trademarks and to a degree patents) doesn't have to be protected to remain in force. Yuo can allow people to abuse yuor copyright to their hearts content and then at a later date sue them for current infringement (not sure about previous infringement, time passing may equal consent to use it).
Secondly, slashdot has no case against alterslash on the grounds of them reusing comments. Slashdot isn't the copyright holder of the comments (according to Taco or Hemos in the log) and so cannot sue alterslash for copyright violation there. Users can sue alterslash but Slashdot can't (for the comments) They probably can't sue for submitted stories either leaving them with only the small additions to the stories on the front page (and the obligitory corrections). So their main premise for the cease and desist is (to put it bluntly) crap and on par with any large company. They aren't using the slashdot logo anywhere so there's no trademare issue there (they'll have a rough time of it with the background image).
Morally what they are doing is dodgy. Legally they may have a few problems but not the ones Taco and Hemos seemed most annoyed about.
What the internet needs is less stupid people
on
Search Engine Payola
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· Score: 1
Rules, laws, regulations are all pointless. Corporations/politicians/governments have found ways to work around them when they get in the way (they're not POWs because this isn't a war). They rely on the gulibility of the average citizen who will basically believe whatever a guy/girl in a suit tells them.
Unlike people who oppose them, corporations know how to make changes, one slice at a time. Corporations have time and are quite willing to out wait their opposition. Introduce something which isn't really that bad and get the majority of people on side. Wait for people to get used to it, do it again. Wash, rinse, repeat.
They don't have to convince everybody. Just enough so that the people who understand what's going on get shouted down by those who aren't forward looking enough.
As for stupid people I'm not just talking Joe six-pack either. Next time there is a story about a corporation taking libities with your personal data notice the group of people who say "This really isn't such a big deal" and "They've been doing this for years".
Until the majority of people start thinking they will win. So basically the few people who actually think for themselves are screwed and there isn't a damn thing we can do about it.
Since I don't think we're dealing with an vast evil corporate conspiracy here,...
Yuo do realize that "vast evil" corporations don't spring fully formed into the world. They started out as (sometimes several) much smaller pink fluffy bunny companies with customer interests at heart and with good intentions to all. Then as the pink fluffy bunny gets bigger and more powerful it notices that if yuo take away things from people a small slice at a time, they either don't notice or the those who do are shouted down by those who think that it's not that big a change. "Basically they're protecting themselves...".
Before long somebody notices that the pink fluffy bunny company is now a vast evil corporation but by this time it's customers could star in a bondage pr0n film and it's too late to do anything.
They change things like this for a reason. There is no reason what so ever to change the Ts&Cs to say "we don't have to notify yuo of changes to this document". Once a company does that they have something to hide. In light of the other changes Source Forge is up to something that they don't want people to notice.
Always remember. They screw yuo a slice at a time and they are patient.
And in tomorrows fable we will talk about how the evil stepmother fooled her stupid husband into selling his wonderful daughter into slavery because statistics show that 57% of people in slavery are happier than they were before.
Is the insistance on refering to God as "He". If this is the creator of the universe it's sex is pretty much irrelevant. Now this may just be a short falling of the English language (not having a suitable gender neutral reference, "it" not really being Kosher) but it just seems odd.
If this thing is the supreme being then it is almost definitely beyond human comprehension. Kinda like the size of the universe. We can say it's very big but a real comprehension (not just a measurement, a real relative understanding) of it's size is beyond us. So this supreme being is going to need to bring itself down to something we can comprehend. Exactly what this is is really quite irrelevant. It could be male, female, short and funny looking, a toaster or even a guy on cable tv with a bad hair style (although this is kinda unlikely). Anything we can comprehend bears no resemblence to what It actually is. So insisting that It be refered to as He is ludicrous.
As for the argument of "it says so in the Bible", when the bible was written people didn't have any greater comprehension abilities than we do now. Think manifestation, think role of females in society at that time. Do the maths.
Anyway. (-1 Offtopic) Continue flaming. Nothing to see here.
Linus wanted Freeix (Freix? said free-ix) better than minix but who ever ran the ftp server thought that was a dumb name and called it Linux. And I think we all owe them a debt of gratitude.
Better to just ask if they're american... if they protest, chances are they're Canadian.
I usually go the other way. "So you're Canadian then?" Americans don't get too pissed and Canadians are quite chuffed about being called Canadian first:)
- Americans call themselves "Americans" as is their right - Candians would rather be called Candian to avoid being mistaken for "Americans" like this guy.
Having accents which most of the world can't pick from "Americans" like this guy has to be a big disadvantage (and I'm an Australian, we get mistaken for New Zealenders:).
To fight the problem would any Canadians care to point out what the differences in accent are (apart from the -ou- words like "house" and "about").
Oh it's not gone. It lives on in every broken API and horribly complex function call that makes up every MS OS. Just ask anyone who has to code windows for a living.
They have you scared to go out. Scared to open your mail. Willing to give away every one of the rights that you American so loudly tell us (the rest of the world) about at every opertunity.
For what? To quote Tyler Durdin, "The illusion of safety", nothing more. Seen Swordfish? Do you really think these security measures would prevent somebody walking in with a significant amount of C4 strapped to their body? Do you think it would stop a dozen people doing it? And to think horrible, terrorist assiting devices such as watches (for timing) aren't on the list of banned equipment! What an outrage!
Unfortunatly I'm probably preaching to the converted here. The masses of stupid people who think these measures are necessary and A Good Think probably don't read/. *sigh*
Re:MS-DOS is dead; long live AI-OS
on
MS DOS: A Eulogy
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· Score: 1
Another explaination I've heard is that the original DOS didn't have directories at all -> no need for a directory specifier. By the time they were added programs had been written using the / as an option specifier (probably because of it's close relationship to CP/M) so they used \ to specify directories instead.
In the end they were unhappy if they didn't have that days code by 6am (they were changed at midnight). The shortest time it took was 10 minutes.
It was actually a screw up by a German signals officer which gave the British the biggest gains in cracking the code. The officer sent a message but it was scrambled at the receiving end and a retransmit was requested. What he should have done was reset the wheels to what they were and resent the message so sending exactly the same thing again. What he actually did was send the message again with a new wheel setting. Thus giving the British two different encryptions of the same text.
Or he could have been taking the piss.You never can tell with Americans (it's not that their humour is particularily subtle, it's there are some Americans who are that insular).
And no, it wouldn't be funny to point out that I spelt humour wrong:)
They also have a thing called "black humour" which Americans seem totally unable to understand. It's stuff you probably shouldn't be laughing at but you can't help yourself.
Rent "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels". If you don't find it funny then you don't get black humour.
Australia's much the same. Some countries defend their language to the death. Whereas we are quite happy to borrow bits from others. We tend to spell things the British way but pronounciation goes both ways. We say aluminium like the British but lieutenant like the Americans (unless you are in the army and then you say it like the British or get very fit).
And no we don't talk like that complete idiot The Crocodile Hunter. There was a piss take of him on tele here before the actual show was.
Slashdot Mirror
Welcome to the Slashdot Server
Login: CmdrTaco
Password: Handbrake
Imagine if Linus had got his way and called it freenix. RMS would be having fits demanding it be called GNU/Freenix, that's freenix with a capital f. We'd probably have to say "GNU/Capital-F-reenix".
And then there'd be ESR trying to get everyone to call it "OpenSource-nix".
Nightmare.
Windows NT is not based on VMS. It is in essence OS/2 version 3.0. MS did all sorts of things to OS/2 that the IBM engineers were disgusted by so MS took their bat and ball and went to play in their backyard. The only relation that NT has with VMS is the one guy.
There's an article about it somewhere but I can't find it at the moment.
Except they have to be dead first and they have to be musicians (so probably not including most pop stars). There's plenty to choose from as well. We've got a list of thousands still to use. I'm currently hanging out for Aaliyah.
IANAL but have an interest in it and Hemos and CmdrTaco don't seem to understand the issues ( or are trying to hide their true intentions ).
Firstly, copyright (unlike trademarks and to a degree patents) doesn't have to be protected to remain in force. Yuo can allow people to abuse yuor copyright to their hearts content and then at a later date sue them for current infringement (not sure about previous infringement, time passing may equal consent to use it).
Secondly, slashdot has no case against alterslash on the grounds of them reusing comments. Slashdot isn't the copyright holder of the comments (according to Taco or Hemos in the log) and so cannot sue alterslash for copyright violation there. Users can sue alterslash but Slashdot can't (for the comments) They probably can't sue for submitted stories either leaving them with only the small additions to the stories on the front page (and the obligitory corrections). So their main premise for the cease and desist is (to put it bluntly) crap and on par with any large company. They aren't using the slashdot logo anywhere so there's no trademare issue there (they'll have a rough time of it with the background image).
Morally what they are doing is dodgy. Legally they may have a few problems but not the ones Taco and Hemos seemed most annoyed about.
Rules, laws, regulations are all pointless. Corporations/politicians/governments have found ways to work around them when they get in the way (they're not POWs because this isn't a war). They rely on the gulibility of the average citizen who will basically believe whatever a guy/girl in a suit tells them.
Unlike people who oppose them, corporations know how to make changes, one slice at a time. Corporations have time and are quite willing to out wait their opposition. Introduce something which isn't really that bad and get the majority of people on side. Wait for people to get used to it, do it again. Wash, rinse, repeat.
They don't have to convince everybody. Just enough so that the people who understand what's going on get shouted down by those who aren't forward looking enough.
As for stupid people I'm not just talking Joe six-pack either. Next time there is a story about a corporation taking libities with your personal data notice the group of people who say "This really isn't such a big deal" and "They've been doing this for years".
Until the majority of people start thinking they will win. So basically the few people who actually think for themselves are screwed and there isn't a damn thing we can do about it.
And that is why he chose to attribute it to Warhol.
Yuo do realize that "vast evil" corporations don't spring fully formed into the world. They started out as (sometimes several) much smaller pink fluffy bunny companies with customer interests at heart and with good intentions to all. Then as the pink fluffy bunny gets bigger and more powerful it notices that if yuo take away things from people a small slice at a time, they either don't notice or the those who do are shouted down by those who think that it's not that big a change. "Basically they're protecting themselves ...".
Before long somebody notices that the pink fluffy bunny company is now a vast evil corporation but by this time it's customers could star in a bondage pr0n film and it's too late to do anything.
They change things like this for a reason. There is no reason what so ever to change the Ts&Cs to say "we don't have to notify yuo of changes to this document". Once a company does that they have something to hide. In light of the other changes Source Forge is up to something that they don't want people to notice.
Always remember. They screw yuo a slice at a time and they are patient.
And in tomorrows fable we will talk about how the evil stepmother fooled her stupid husband into selling his wonderful daughter into slavery because statistics show that 57% of people in slavery are happier than they were before.
Is the insistance on refering to God as "He". If this is the creator of the universe it's sex is pretty much irrelevant. Now this may just be a short falling of the English language (not having a suitable gender neutral reference, "it" not really being Kosher) but it just seems odd.
If this thing is the supreme being then it is almost definitely beyond human comprehension. Kinda like the size of the universe. We can say it's very big but a real comprehension (not just a measurement, a real relative understanding) of it's size is beyond us. So this supreme being is going to need to bring itself down to something we can comprehend. Exactly what this is is really quite irrelevant. It could be male, female, short and funny looking, a toaster or even a guy on cable tv with a bad hair style (although this is kinda unlikely). Anything we can comprehend bears no resemblence to what It actually is. So insisting that It be refered to as He is ludicrous.
As for the argument of "it says so in the Bible", when the bible was written people didn't have any greater comprehension abilities than we do now. Think manifestation, think role of females in society at that time. Do the maths.
Anyway. (-1 Offtopic) Continue flaming. Nothing to see here.
These are the people having the most children. We are doomed.
Linus wanted Freeix (Freix? said free-ix) better than minix but who ever ran the ftp server thought that was a dumb name and called it Linux. And I think we all owe them a debt of gratitude.
Once you have no right to privacy it becomes much easier to spot those with dissenting views.
Do you trust your government (or the corporations that own it) that much?
Better to just ask if they're american... if they protest, chances are they're Canadian.
:)
I usually go the other way. "So you're Canadian then?" Americans don't get too pissed and Canadians are quite chuffed about being called Canadian first
- Americans call themselves "Americans" as is their right
:).
- Candians would rather be called Candian to avoid being mistaken for "Americans" like this guy.
Having accents which most of the world can't pick from "Americans" like this guy has to be a big disadvantage (and I'm an Australian, we get mistaken for New Zealenders
To fight the problem would any Canadians care to point out what the differences in accent are (apart from the -ou- words like "house" and "about").
The native Australians had the right idea (live with the land without destroying it).
I wouldn't quite go that far. All the mega-fauna (huge kangaroo and emu like animals) disappeared about the same time humans arrived.
Oh it's not gone. It lives on in every broken API and horribly complex function call that makes up every MS OS. Just ask anyone who has to code windows for a living.
It's better if RMS isn't involved.
No. They will require Yahoo to block access to French ISPs seeing as they are the ones breaking the law.
They have you scared to go out. Scared to open your mail. Willing to give away every one of the rights that you American so loudly tell us (the rest of the world) about at every opertunity.
/. *sigh*
For what? To quote Tyler Durdin, "The illusion of safety", nothing more. Seen Swordfish? Do you really think these security measures would prevent somebody walking in with a significant amount of C4 strapped to their body? Do you think it would stop a dozen people doing it? And to think horrible, terrorist assiting devices such as watches (for timing) aren't on the list of banned equipment! What an outrage!
Unfortunatly I'm probably preaching to the converted here. The masses of stupid people who think these measures are necessary and A Good Think probably don't read
Another explaination I've heard is that the original DOS didn't have directories at all -> no need for a directory specifier. By the time they were added programs had been written using the / as an option specifier (probably because of it's close relationship to CP/M) so they used \ to specify directories instead.
In the end they were unhappy if they didn't have that days code by 6am (they were changed at midnight). The shortest time it took was 10 minutes.
It was actually a screw up by a German signals officer which gave the British the biggest gains in cracking the code. The officer sent a message but it was scrambled at the receiving end and a retransmit was requested. What he should have done was reset the wheels to what they were and resent the message so sending exactly the same thing again. What he actually did was send the message again with a new wheel setting. Thus giving the British two different encryptions of the same text.
The poster should apologise to to Alanis Morissette. She probably pretty pissed about being mistaken for an American.
Or he could have been taking the piss.You never can tell with Americans (it's not that their humour is particularily subtle, it's there are some Americans who are that insular).
:)
And no, it wouldn't be funny to point out that I spelt humour wrong
They also have a thing called "black humour" which Americans seem totally unable to understand. It's stuff you probably shouldn't be laughing at but you can't help yourself.
Rent "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels". If you don't find it funny then you don't get black humour.
Australia's much the same. Some countries defend their language to the death. Whereas we are quite happy to borrow bits from others. We tend to spell things the British way but pronounciation goes both ways. We say aluminium like the British but lieutenant like the Americans (unless you are in the army and then you say it like the British or get very fit).
And no we don't talk like that complete idiot The Crocodile Hunter. There was a piss take of him on tele here before the actual show was.