I'm not sure where you're pulling this idea of "decades" from...development of HURD began in 1990, and Linux was released in 1991. That's a difference of one year. HURD wasn't heavily developed after the release of Linux because there was no need for it. If Linux hadn't stepped into that role, there would have been a need for it, and all the effort that's currently going into Linux would just have gone into HURD or some other free software kernel. There's also no reason the BSD kernels couldn't have been bundled with the GNU userland to create a standard free software operating system. In fact, such systems exist today.
I think you're drooling over Linus there just a little too much there. Linux is a nice kernel, but when it came along the GNU project already had a usable user-land, and it was just a matter of time until it got a kernel. If Linus hadn't GPL'd Linux, serious development of HURD would have continued. If that still hadn't turned out, there would be other free software kernels. Linus' contribution was significant, but it's profoundly ignorant to claim that had he not made it, no one else in the entire world would have.
As far as his opinions on things like desktop environments, I've learned to tune him out. He's a great kernel hacker and all, but he has a tendency to be very brusque and very sure of himself in areas where he really doesn't know what he's talking about, and I don't see any particular reason we should care what he says about those areas.
Considering that we've got hundreds of years of copyright extensions on the books pushed through by the media industries, no, a "meet half way" compromise is not acceptable. The original term of copyright in the US was less than 30 years, during which time an artist should be able to make enough off of their government-granted monopoly to make it worthwhile to invest their time and effort in the creation of their work. This was in the 1700s. In 2011, you can potentially turn a profit on your work in less time than it would have taken to get a printing press typeset back then.
By any reasonable application of the same logic which originally inspired copyright, copyright terms should have been shortened drastically in the following centuries. Unfortunately, the entertainment industry figured out how to lobby, and there's pretty much no one in Washington lobbying for the right of the public to have our creative culture enter the public domain...well...how about sometime before our grandchildren are dead?
The status quo established by the entertainment industry in America (and exported abroad through diplomatic bullying) is absolutely not a reasonable place to meet half-way from. That is, unless the position we're starting at is copyright which expires 50 years before the author's birth...I suppose then a right-down-the-middle compromise might be reasonable.
The difference is that if there's a backdoor in a proprietary system then you'll never, ever know about it. Seriously though, if you assume that those in power are just outright manipulating the results, then there's no reason they'd need influential developers to sneak a back door into the system and risk someone catching it on a code audit. They could just as easily pay some lackey to break in wherever the machines are being stored and install a new firmware, pay off poll workers to manually edit results on the machines, or just engage in good old fashioned voter intimidation before anyone got to the polls. Any voting system can be gained, but at least in the case of an open voting system we'd have the opportunity to check and see for ourselves if we were being cheated.
A user can't sue a company violating the GPL, only the copyright holder can do that. It would be up to the Webkit developers to pursue a lawsuit if they chose to.
There is no excuse for software developers who don't have a site, app, or service they can point to and say, 'I did this, all by myself!' in a world where Google App Engine and Amazon Web Services have free service tiers, and it costs all of $25 to register as an Android developer and publish an app on the Android Market.
You didn't even have to read the article, it's right there in the summary. They're not talking about work experience, they're talking about stuff on the level of personal projects.
IIRC, the Apollo astronauts were selected because they were good pilots, not scientists or mathematicians. I wouldn't expect your run of the mill astronaut to know anything more about the economics, physics, and chemistry involved in this proposition than any other random senator. If anything, I would take a former Apollo astronaut's opinions about lunar travel with a grain of salt because of their personal emotional investment in space travel.
That entire argument is pure semantics, however. The patent holder has not invented some novel new device for information storage and retrieval which physically implements the algorithm, they've simply come up with a set of instructions for existing machines which allows them to perform that algorithm. To make a less than perfect analogy, a waiter, if given instructions to wash dishes for the evening, does not in fact become a new person who is a dishwasher rather than a waiter. They're just doing something different than they did before.
The fact that the patent office considers this an "invention" is an absurd technicality. Maybe you can technically twist the letter of the law to fit the idea of a patent on a software technique, but at that point you've completely abandoned the spirit of the law. While the judicial system is busy tangling over fine points of language, America's technological industries are going to hell in a hand basket. Unless you're a massive multinational corporation, good luck trying to implement any useful software without using at least a couple dozen "novel" computational techniques from the last two decades...
There are few long term uses for manufactured animal skin
You may not be aware of this, but humans actually use animal skin at a massive rate in clothing, footwear, sporting goods, etc. "Leather," I believe they call it...
Neither solution makes any sense. Mandatory traffic school is no better a remedy for traffic violations than this "copyright school" is for copyright infringement. Not that the two are really comparable, because no one is going to be forced to watch these videos in lieu of being fined, but lets go with the analogy for now. People don't violate traffic laws because they don't understand them, they violate traffic laws because they don't think they'll get caught. Same goes for copyright. "Educating" infringers about laws they almost certainly already understand isn't going to do anything...well, I guess in the case of traffic violations it makes for an effective transfer of money from citizens to the companies that run the traffic schools...
That's how CS students usually are. They're either in it for the money, or they're in it because they like video games and think it will be fun to make them, having no idea what's actually involved. Those kinds of students either drop out/switch majors after a year or two (at my University they require passing a foundation exam before moving on to any 3000-level CS classes, and the pass rate is typically around 30%), or they barely scrape by, get their degree, and subsequently wonder why they're not pulling in six figures as they drift around never really caring enough to learn to be great at what they do.
On the bright side, it makes it easier for the students who really want to be in CS to stand out. On the not-so-bright side, it makes group projects a real pain.
I can't speak for other projects, but I think Rockbox (a digital audio player firmware) got some good work done last year. I built a new parser for their theme language and a graphical theme editor that's got some regular users. Another student successfully ported Rockbox to Android as an app. I'm sure other projects saw success as well.
From what I've read, the Chinese people generally support their country's censorship, and honestly believe in the importance of the state protecting them from "immoral" things and so on. You would be amazed what people will rationalize when they've grown up with it. For instance, I have a friend who I met in high school who lived in the UAE for most of her life, where the Internet is censored, the government enforces harsh religious law, and the law gives special preference to natives in many areas. She was pretty much like a normal teenager in every respect, mostly liberal, but her reaction to things like Internet censorship by the government was pretty much "meh." She was once casually explaining to me how native Emirati were, for instance, allowed to tint their car windows darker than immigrants, and sincerely didn't care at all about such rules, even though they worked against her (she's Egyptian).
When an injustice is introduced to you as child, it doesn't seem to you like an injustice, it just seems like business as usual. After all, it's not like there aren't significant injustices right here in the US that most of us just ignore while going about our lives...
Wouldn't using one large transformer vs. 50 smaller ones reduce the energy lost to heat and noise significantly? Not to mention moving the heat of that process to somewhere it can easily be vented rather than the inside of a computer.
Any device that converts energy from one form to another inevitably loses energy along the way, and combining the function of multiple such devices into one should generally yield less waste overall, because there must be some fixed cost for each device, in addition to the variable cost relative to the amount of power you run through. For instance, why do we invest billions in power infrastructure and massive power plants rather than just all running our own generators at home? Presumably because one massive generator is more efficient, even after accounting for the energy lost in transit, than thousands of smaller generators.
Gnu Free Call would be a pain to say every time...which is probably why it will be commonly referred to as GFC if it acquires a significant userbase...
For some perspective, do people not also die mining the fuel for nuclear reactors? I imagine the risk is still far less because nuclear reactors get so much more energy per mass of fuel, but it's hard to believe that no one ever dies in the process.
First, have you listened to the audio in that video? The crew was practically begging for permission to shoot, bantering back and forth like they were playing a video game. As far as I'm concerned, when you approach a situation that could involve taking life with that kind of attitude, nothing that follows is an "accident." As for "your buddy's life on the line," whose life, exactly, was on the line? The only "engagement" going on was the helicopter gunning down a bunch of men who didn't even know anything was coming. That helicopter was far enough away that the "enemy" probably couldn't even see them, let alone hit them with anything, even if they had presented a weapon, which that vehicle didn't.
And most importantly, if it truly was an accident, they should still be in jail. I guarantee you that if a civilian "accidentally" killed multiple individuals, none of whom had given any indication of danger, we would lock them up for a long time on manslaughter charges...but if a soldier does it, they're off scott free? You're right, being a soldier does mean making difficult decisions with little time, but they all knew that when they signed up and accepted that responsibility. Stress, fear, excitement...none of it is an excuse for making a mistake that takes innocent life.
Because that clearly would have accomplished oh so much. They didn't prosecute that helicopter crew even when the entire world saw a video of them opening fire on an unarmed, civilian vehicle attempting to collect dead and wounded after their first attack...you really think they would have done something if only they saw it? You can argue all day long about whether the first attack was "justified," but there's no getting around those pesky Geneva Conventions when it comes to engaging medics and wounded enemies.
Because it's transparently useless for preventing copying (anything I want to download I can go find on TPB or what-have-you) and media should be transmitted and handled with free and open protocols that don't require the user running software designed to take control of their computer away from them.
Aside from the fact that no one would use the app if it were being used to issue speeding tickets, attempting to gauge someone's speed remotely with periodic GPS readings would be laughably inaccurate. "Sir, the readings here show that you accelerated from 10 to 180 mph in the course of five seconds...in a school zone. I'm afraid we're going to have to take your license..."
I know courts in the US aren't always the most astute when it comes to judging the scientific validity of instruments used to measure our compliance with the law, but I like to think that they would recognize how completely, wildly inaccurate such a measurement would be and not allow the issuance of tickets based on it.
Putting aside the obvious privacy laws they'd be breaking in the first place, of course.
I believe the point the summary is trying to make is that they won't be tracking your location all the time, but simply recording it when you go over a pothole. Hopefully even then they'll just store the location in a database without any identifying data, but if you're really worried about someone extrapolating your route from the locations of potholes you've driven over, then this app isn't for you.
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I'm not sure where you're pulling this idea of "decades" from...development of HURD began in 1990, and Linux was released in 1991. That's a difference of one year. HURD wasn't heavily developed after the release of Linux because there was no need for it. If Linux hadn't stepped into that role, there would have been a need for it, and all the effort that's currently going into Linux would just have gone into HURD or some other free software kernel. There's also no reason the BSD kernels couldn't have been bundled with the GNU userland to create a standard free software operating system. In fact, such systems exist today.
I think you're drooling over Linus there just a little too much there. Linux is a nice kernel, but when it came along the GNU project already had a usable user-land, and it was just a matter of time until it got a kernel. If Linus hadn't GPL'd Linux, serious development of HURD would have continued. If that still hadn't turned out, there would be other free software kernels. Linus' contribution was significant, but it's profoundly ignorant to claim that had he not made it, no one else in the entire world would have.
As far as his opinions on things like desktop environments, I've learned to tune him out. He's a great kernel hacker and all, but he has a tendency to be very brusque and very sure of himself in areas where he really doesn't know what he's talking about, and I don't see any particular reason we should care what he says about those areas.
Just to be certain, this was a joke, right?
Considering that we've got hundreds of years of copyright extensions on the books pushed through by the media industries, no, a "meet half way" compromise is not acceptable. The original term of copyright in the US was less than 30 years, during which time an artist should be able to make enough off of their government-granted monopoly to make it worthwhile to invest their time and effort in the creation of their work. This was in the 1700s. In 2011, you can potentially turn a profit on your work in less time than it would have taken to get a printing press typeset back then.
By any reasonable application of the same logic which originally inspired copyright, copyright terms should have been shortened drastically in the following centuries. Unfortunately, the entertainment industry figured out how to lobby, and there's pretty much no one in Washington lobbying for the right of the public to have our creative culture enter the public domain...well...how about sometime before our grandchildren are dead?
The status quo established by the entertainment industry in America (and exported abroad through diplomatic bullying) is absolutely not a reasonable place to meet half-way from. That is, unless the position we're starting at is copyright which expires 50 years before the author's birth...I suppose then a right-down-the-middle compromise might be reasonable.
The difference is that if there's a backdoor in a proprietary system then you'll never, ever know about it. Seriously though, if you assume that those in power are just outright manipulating the results, then there's no reason they'd need influential developers to sneak a back door into the system and risk someone catching it on a code audit. They could just as easily pay some lackey to break in wherever the machines are being stored and install a new firmware, pay off poll workers to manually edit results on the machines, or just engage in good old fashioned voter intimidation before anyone got to the polls. Any voting system can be gained, but at least in the case of an open voting system we'd have the opportunity to check and see for ourselves if we were being cheated.
A user can't sue a company violating the GPL, only the copyright holder can do that. It would be up to the Webkit developers to pursue a lawsuit if they chose to.
There is no excuse for software developers who don't have a site, app, or service they can point to and say, 'I did this, all by myself!' in a world where Google App Engine and Amazon Web Services have free service tiers, and it costs all of $25 to register as an Android developer and publish an app on the Android Market.
You didn't even have to read the article, it's right there in the summary. They're not talking about work experience, they're talking about stuff on the level of personal projects.
IIRC, the Apollo astronauts were selected because they were good pilots, not scientists or mathematicians. I wouldn't expect your run of the mill astronaut to know anything more about the economics, physics, and chemistry involved in this proposition than any other random senator. If anything, I would take a former Apollo astronaut's opinions about lunar travel with a grain of salt because of their personal emotional investment in space travel.
That entire argument is pure semantics, however. The patent holder has not invented some novel new device for information storage and retrieval which physically implements the algorithm, they've simply come up with a set of instructions for existing machines which allows them to perform that algorithm. To make a less than perfect analogy, a waiter, if given instructions to wash dishes for the evening, does not in fact become a new person who is a dishwasher rather than a waiter. They're just doing something different than they did before.
The fact that the patent office considers this an "invention" is an absurd technicality. Maybe you can technically twist the letter of the law to fit the idea of a patent on a software technique, but at that point you've completely abandoned the spirit of the law. While the judicial system is busy tangling over fine points of language, America's technological industries are going to hell in a hand basket. Unless you're a massive multinational corporation, good luck trying to implement any useful software without using at least a couple dozen "novel" computational techniques from the last two decades...
There are few long term uses for manufactured animal skin
You may not be aware of this, but humans actually use animal skin at a massive rate in clothing, footwear, sporting goods, etc. "Leather," I believe they call it...
Neither solution makes any sense. Mandatory traffic school is no better a remedy for traffic violations than this "copyright school" is for copyright infringement. Not that the two are really comparable, because no one is going to be forced to watch these videos in lieu of being fined, but lets go with the analogy for now. People don't violate traffic laws because they don't understand them, they violate traffic laws because they don't think they'll get caught. Same goes for copyright. "Educating" infringers about laws they almost certainly already understand isn't going to do anything...well, I guess in the case of traffic violations it makes for an effective transfer of money from citizens to the companies that run the traffic schools...
That's how CS students usually are. They're either in it for the money, or they're in it because they like video games and think it will be fun to make them, having no idea what's actually involved. Those kinds of students either drop out/switch majors after a year or two (at my University they require passing a foundation exam before moving on to any 3000-level CS classes, and the pass rate is typically around 30%), or they barely scrape by, get their degree, and subsequently wonder why they're not pulling in six figures as they drift around never really caring enough to learn to be great at what they do.
On the bright side, it makes it easier for the students who really want to be in CS to stand out. On the not-so-bright side, it makes group projects a real pain.
I think you might have a little bit of an output escaping bug there, /.
I can't speak for other projects, but I think Rockbox (a digital audio player firmware) got some good work done last year. I built a new parser for their theme language and a graphical theme editor that's got some regular users. Another student successfully ported Rockbox to Android as an app. I'm sure other projects saw success as well.
From what I've read, the Chinese people generally support their country's censorship, and honestly believe in the importance of the state protecting them from "immoral" things and so on. You would be amazed what people will rationalize when they've grown up with it. For instance, I have a friend who I met in high school who lived in the UAE for most of her life, where the Internet is censored, the government enforces harsh religious law, and the law gives special preference to natives in many areas. She was pretty much like a normal teenager in every respect, mostly liberal, but her reaction to things like Internet censorship by the government was pretty much "meh." She was once casually explaining to me how native Emirati were, for instance, allowed to tint their car windows darker than immigrants, and sincerely didn't care at all about such rules, even though they worked against her (she's Egyptian).
When an injustice is introduced to you as child, it doesn't seem to you like an injustice, it just seems like business as usual. After all, it's not like there aren't significant injustices right here in the US that most of us just ignore while going about our lives...
Wouldn't using one large transformer vs. 50 smaller ones reduce the energy lost to heat and noise significantly? Not to mention moving the heat of that process to somewhere it can easily be vented rather than the inside of a computer.
Any device that converts energy from one form to another inevitably loses energy along the way, and combining the function of multiple such devices into one should generally yield less waste overall, because there must be some fixed cost for each device, in addition to the variable cost relative to the amount of power you run through. For instance, why do we invest billions in power infrastructure and massive power plants rather than just all running our own generators at home? Presumably because one massive generator is more efficient, even after accounting for the energy lost in transit, than thousands of smaller generators.
Gnu Free Call would be a pain to say every time...which is probably why it will be commonly referred to as GFC if it acquires a significant userbase...
For some perspective, do people not also die mining the fuel for nuclear reactors? I imagine the risk is still far less because nuclear reactors get so much more energy per mass of fuel, but it's hard to believe that no one ever dies in the process.
First, have you listened to the audio in that video? The crew was practically begging for permission to shoot, bantering back and forth like they were playing a video game. As far as I'm concerned, when you approach a situation that could involve taking life with that kind of attitude, nothing that follows is an "accident." As for "your buddy's life on the line," whose life, exactly, was on the line? The only "engagement" going on was the helicopter gunning down a bunch of men who didn't even know anything was coming. That helicopter was far enough away that the "enemy" probably couldn't even see them, let alone hit them with anything, even if they had presented a weapon, which that vehicle didn't.
And most importantly, if it truly was an accident, they should still be in jail. I guarantee you that if a civilian "accidentally" killed multiple individuals, none of whom had given any indication of danger, we would lock them up for a long time on manslaughter charges...but if a soldier does it, they're off scott free? You're right, being a soldier does mean making difficult decisions with little time, but they all knew that when they signed up and accepted that responsibility. Stress, fear, excitement...none of it is an excuse for making a mistake that takes innocent life.
Because that clearly would have accomplished oh so much. They didn't prosecute that helicopter crew even when the entire world saw a video of them opening fire on an unarmed, civilian vehicle attempting to collect dead and wounded after their first attack...you really think they would have done something if only they saw it? You can argue all day long about whether the first attack was "justified," but there's no getting around those pesky Geneva Conventions when it comes to engaging medics and wounded enemies.
It's both. This should be legal under fair use and the copyrights should have expired a long, long, long time ago.
Because it's transparently useless for preventing copying (anything I want to download I can go find on TPB or what-have-you) and media should be transmitted and handled with free and open protocols that don't require the user running software designed to take control of their computer away from them.
Aside from the fact that no one would use the app if it were being used to issue speeding tickets, attempting to gauge someone's speed remotely with periodic GPS readings would be laughably inaccurate. "Sir, the readings here show that you accelerated from 10 to 180 mph in the course of five seconds...in a school zone. I'm afraid we're going to have to take your license..."
I know courts in the US aren't always the most astute when it comes to judging the scientific validity of instruments used to measure our compliance with the law, but I like to think that they would recognize how completely, wildly inaccurate such a measurement would be and not allow the issuance of tickets based on it. Putting aside the obvious privacy laws they'd be breaking in the first place, of course.
I believe the point the summary is trying to make is that they won't be tracking your location all the time, but simply recording it when you go over a pothole. Hopefully even then they'll just store the location in a database without any identifying data, but if you're really worried about someone extrapolating your route from the locations of potholes you've driven over, then this app isn't for you.