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Slashback: Juveniles, Sand, Trickery, MoBos 90
Tell me again why my motherboard needs it own OS? Goatbert writes: "Penguin Hardware has posted an interview with John Tsai, head of ABIT's Gentus department. He goes into ABIT's future open source plans and what they plan to do about accusations of GPL violations."
Lifestyles of the young and precocious. PerlDiver writes: "The 'Programming for Kids' thread reminded me of this, and I thought it was worth a story of its own. Former Xerox PARC researcher Ken Kahn has created an amazing tool for teaching kids how to program. Even very young children (old enough to know their letters and numbers) can be started on object-oriented programming with ToonTalk, an animated programming kit that introduces such advanced concepts as recursion, object methods, and functions in a fully visual, direct-manipulation, non-notation-based way. Kids learn by playing with an on-screen toolbox, robots (methods), birds (message passing channels), and bombs (memory deallocation :-). I saw Ken give a ToonTalk demo a few years ago and I was blown away by it. It looks great... sort of PeeWee's Playhouse meets Lego."
Mirror, mirror on the wall -- damn, where was I? Warrior writes "GameSpy was able to get some in-depth information on the closing of Looking Glass Studios by talking to LGS game designer Tim Stellmach. He gave us some good explanations of what happened and who owns what."
Oh, as long as you say it, I guess it's OK! Remember the trouble between CyberPatrol and Network Associates' 'ultra-secure' Gauntlet firewall? The ever-prolific Anonymous Coward wrote us with an interesting bit to sprinkle in that wound: "Peacefire tricked several "parental control" software vendors into revealing their double standards through an amusing gambit: they took anti-gay quotes from several large, well-funded organizations (e.g. Focus on the Family) and put them on "bait" pages on various free Web hosting systems. Then they submitted those pages to the censorware companies as objectionable hate speech which ought to be filtered, and the companies obligingly added them to the blacklists. Next, they submitted the home pages from which they got the quotes. But apparently it's not hate speech if it's on the home page of a political organization with a large legal department ..."
The wheels of government creak ever slowly. teddyfu writes "I found this link regarding the EU's decision to oepn up crypto exports. It seems that decision has only been *postponed*; hopefully the decision will still be made, just at a later date."
Who dares provide House Atriedes with ADSL? Craig E. Engler writes "The first trailer for the SciFi Channel's upcoming miniseries Frank Herbert's Dune has been posted online. ... The site also has the latest news about the miniseries (which has wrapped principal photography and is now in post-production) as well as photos, notes from the director's assistant, and more."
Oh no! Poor Zoid! (Score:1)
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ack...my /. time is now screwed up (Score:1)
That kids programming software. (Score:2)
My question is, if:
Beta testing of ToonTalk began in January 1995 at the Encinal School in Menlo Park, California
why isn't this software in general circulation yet. We studied logo when I was in elementary school, if we would have had this stuff, there'd be more programmers out there today.
tcd004
Here's my Microsoft Parody [lostbrain.com], where's yours?
caLANder? (Score:1)
caLANder, IIRC, was a shared scheduling program in the 80's. So, maybe we should be checking our calendars instead...
8-)
-Twid
Toontalk!?! (Score:2)
When I was a kid, all we had was LOGO and BASIC... I learned some of my worst habits in Apple BASIC.
Could be worse though; my father started working on computers in the late 60's, so he can get away with the "When I was your age, we coded in 1's and 0's and sometimes didn't even have 1's..." Punch tape; ick.
shivers (Score:1)
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Abit GPL violation (Score:2)
Even after being told they have a violation, they refuse to release the code (Abit and nVidia) and then proceed to praise the open source movement for it's work, well get do what you preach companies, you are quite happy to use open source code, however when it comes to releasing a few thousand lines of code back to the community, then you should do.
Give something back to the community, open YOUR code
Blocking... (Score:1)
I wonder what would happen if you simply submitted some random sites from free web hosting services such as Tripod [tripod.com]? I have a feeling that *anything* from Tripod and others might be automatically added without being even looked at in the theory that as the free hosting is uncontrolled anything might be on it, and also it isn't worth our time to bother to check anyway.
Gauntlet firewall Troll (Score:2)
Dune (Score:1)
Wow... I just realized it's been 16 years since the release of David Lynch's movie, Dune.
I'm wondering what the six-hour miniseries (with commercials) will add to the story that the 190 minute directors cut left out. With any luck, they'll expand the role of Lady Jessica and Gurney Halleck
William Hurt as Duke Leto... I'll try to keep an open mind. I thought Jurgen Prochnow was perfect in the movie.
Moods are for cattle and loveplay, not for fighting!
Purposely violating the GPL (Score:5)
GPL authors: if your code gets released in binary form only, you (and only you) have the right to demand that the source code be released. Everyone else can ask, but if it is not released that means the license to copy is revoked. But only the copyright owner can enforce the copyright.
If we wish to encourage the opening of source, why aren't these violations used as the wedge to say, "open, or be sued!"? It seems to me that GPLed software is being used as a fast-time-to-market convenience. It would do a lot to raise awareness of the GPL if it were enforced. These companies would never (or would they?) think of stealing other copyrighted software. Why should they think they can steal GPLed? Let me say it again: if you start with someone elses source code, you know you need a license. IMHO, these violations are not accidental, and should not be treated that way.
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Abit : I'd call that a win. (Score:2)
Looks like it was worth publicising Abit's breach, and pressuring them to do something about it...
Pax,
White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++
Re:Toontalk!?! (Score:1)
All you young wippersnappers don't know what the meaning of "tough" life is. Punch tape was still alive and well in the seventies. It truly sucked. Aside from card sorting, and the inevitable missing card, it was generally faster to work out problems using pen and paper.
It was so cool when magnetic media came out, not to mention breaking that 2K memory barrier.;-)
Blocking Software has a market (Score:4)
On the other hand, if the software is being used by public entities, then there is a need to provide fair-handedness along with responsibility to the people paying for the public entity.
What would be interesting is to see software the provides filters for various religious affiliations. That would be quite a circus.
Got me! ;) (Score:1)
Actually, since I carefully compose each edition of Slashback using those special letter-shaped pasta, what I meant to say was "check your *colander*"!
Heh. Fixing it now, thanks for the tip.
Tim
ABIT hypocrites. (Score:1)
GPL violations (Score:2)
Something just occurred to me. If a company uses part of GPL code in their product, what is to stop them from obfuscating all the non-GPL code, and releasing that? That way they are technically allowing downloads of "GPL code", while still keeping it closed source. This is, of course, assuming that a majority or important minority of the code is original.
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Re:The Dune Miniseries Does Not Cater To US... (Score:1)
thank you.
Re:Purposely violating the GPL (Score:2)
Finally, because we're the good guys. Just because most everyone else on earth would bend you over in court for a nickel doesn't mean you have to hand out the shaft as well.
Peacefire missing some correspondence? (Score:2)
That strikes me as odd. Anybody know the reason? I'm inclined to think that after a company took the bait, they got email from the main Peacefire account saying "Ha ha! Fooled you! Gonna block Dr. Laura now?" IMHO, it'd have been better to send in the request to block the powerful sites from the same fake Hotmail accounts.
OTOH, this is still a very satisfying bit of news. Yay, Peacefire.
Re:Yeah, But Your Spell-Checker Needs a Tune-Up (Score:1)
The fabulous invisible slashdot T-shirt is on its way to reward you for spotting the intentional error! :) I hope xl fits OK, but the cloth costs something unbelievable.
I bet Shakespeare would have spelled it the same way I did, some days.
My bad, now fixed.
timothy (Isn't it about time we kicked these amateur clowns out of office and installed some professional clowns instead?!")
The source is there - finally (Score:1)
Before, they said that they had released the source, then pointed to the kernel-source RPM.
sigh
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censoreware (Score:1)
Ryan
Chopping the web into little peices (Score:2)
I know PopeAlien.com [popealien.com] has been placed on a List of potentially offensive webcomics [keenspot.com] based on the domain name.. (funny 'cause it's so innoffensive) How can I tell if filters are blocking any of my sites? -especially with 'closed list' filters like Mattels?
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Re:we DONT want this in schools (Score:1)
Re:Purposely violating the GPL (Score:2)
Kids are not that stupid (Score:1)
"Hey Junior, you want to use a real computer? Well, no, it doesn't run any of your games. No, none of your graphics programs work on it. Er, uh, yeah, the browser looks a lot worse. I don't know why the fonts are so small. But, hey, it's a grown-up computer!
"No thanks, Dad."
Re:GPL violations (Score:1)
But that isn't closed source: it is shrouded source, which is more useful. Obfuscation typically involves removing whitespace and renaming variables. However, the architecture of the code is preserved. If I had a choice between reverse-engineering machine code vs. shrouded-source code, shrouded would be the hand down winner. (And you could legally reverse enginer it -- the GPL guarantees that by the "You may not impose any further restrictions..." clause.)
But this is beside the point. Companies shouldn't think of it as choosing between machine vs shrounded sources. They should think of it as customers choosing between documented, extendable systems vs undocumented, dead-end systems.
Hell no! (Score:1)
>shivers when they saw Paul's character with the
>spice-blue eyes?
More like the shudders.
As much as it pains me, I gotta agree with an AC here. If you do a frame-by-frame on the
More probs:
Nowhere in the trailer is anyone wearing anything resembling a stillsuit! And I don't mean the bodybuilder rubber jobbies from lynch's flick. NOTHING that these guys wear looks sturdy and body fitting enough to be a stillsuit, not even the outfits where they weat the masks.
Speaking of face masks... HELLO!!! Stillsuits use nose tubes (called filt-plugs I think)! That wasn't a lynchism, that's from the book!
The Baron Harkonen does NOT look so fat that he would require a suspensor belt to stay up. Also not a lynchism, he needed suspensors in the book. Tho, IIRC, he couldn't acutally fly in the book, just bounce around real good when he had to (getting away from the tooth).
Also, that orange hair color is NOT natural by any means. You need Manic Panic dye to get your hair to look like that. The Harkonens were supposed to be NATURAL redheads.
I don't recall Duke Leto being a blonde in the book. We're talking feudal families with inherited charistics here! In all the books, Harkonens tended to be redheads, Atradies had black hair, and Corrino had the blonde genes. Kinda like the Hapsburgs of Spain were known for big noses and pronounced chins.
The Reverend Mother (where did they get "Bene Gesserit Mother" for a title, or why didn't they use her name (Helen Gaius Moheium (bad spelling on my part, I know))) looks most undignified. Like a cheap carnival foutune teller. The Bene Gesserit Order was RICH. And this was a very advanced HIGH TECH (except for computers) soceity! A reverend mother would not be dressed in gaudy rags like that!
Can you say "water dicipline"? Can you say "lack of any evidence therof"?
Looks like this one is gonna be just as bad as that david lynch monstrosity. And as bad as lynch mangled the plot (wierding modules? heart plugs? rain on Arrakis at the end of the FIRST book??? Give me a page number. I dare you), at least he captured the ATMOSPHERE fairly good. You could actually beleive that lynch's movie took place on a water starved planet like Arrakis. And you could beleive that the nobility were nobles, and the Imperial Court was rich and decadent.
Who knows if this mini-series will get the plot right or not. It's obvious that they've failed on several points however, and have totally failed to capture the atmposphere.
Wouldn't that be the irony? If we got one Dune movie with the atmosphere but no plot, and another with the plot but no atmosphere?
john
Re:we DONT want this in schools (Score:1)
Abashed the Devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is
Re:GPL violations (Score:1)
I probably wasn't clear. I don't mean code that could still be compiled, I mean code that literally has been obfuscated with "X" characters or something. Another way to say it is, why not just release the GPL parts but excise the original parts?
As far as I know, the GPL doesn't (and can't) require all the source code in the company to be released just because some GPL code sneaks in.
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Re:we DONT want thisin schools???still serves purp (Score:1)
Abashed the Devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is
Re:we DONT want this in schools (Score:1)
Re:GPL violations (Score:1)
If it doesn't compile, then it isn't source code. That's kinda the definition of source code. The whole point of the GPL is so the user can recompile the program. If they leave out anything (other than standard compilers, header files, and so forth), then they're violating the GPL.
WRT the second point, of course the GPL doesn't affect all the company's sources. Just the sources for binaries derived from GPLed code.
Re:we DONT want this in schools (Score:1)
Have you ever contributed any useful piece of software to the world, or do you just want software to be free so you can leach off of those who do contribute? Do you really think the world would be a better place if no one was paid to develop software, art, science, literature, or music?
It sounds to me like what you really mean is, "the world would be a better place FOR ME if all software were free."
Someday, you probably will make something valuable and useful. And some other jerk like you will steal it. You'll think it's unjust, but you still won't see the irony.
Re:we DONT want thisin schools???still serves purp (Score:1)
Re:we DONT want thisin schools???still serves purp (Score:1)
Abashed the Devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is
Re:Toontalk!?! (Score:1)
When I typed on it, I'd get about 2.5 words before I jammed the keys - he could do 50 wpm. I understand the reason behind the QWERTY keyboard.
Re:we DONT want this in schools (Score:1)
I have contributed according to my ability. Since my ability is not great, neither are my contributions, but both will increase in time.
Do you really think the world would be a better place if no one was paid to develop software, art, science, literature, or music?
Yes. I cannot think of a single breakthrough in science, art or literature that was motivated by financial gain.
It sounds to me like what you really mean is, "the world would be a better place FOR ME if all software were free."
Indeed it would be a better place for me. And what is good for me is also good for you and everyone else. If your personal good is not the same as the global good, it probably means what you consider to be good is, in fact, bad.
Someday, you probably will make something valuable and useful. And some other jerk like you will steal it. You'll think it's unjust, but you still won't see the irony.
Yes, I probably will make something useful. But it will be a piece of code, an idea, and therefore quite impossible for anyone to 'steal' from me. If a million people all copied it, i would still have it, and therefore i would have lost nothing. That is the difference between 'intelectual property' and real property. It is one of the most important differences in the world today, yet it is one that most people still fail to grasp.
Abashed the Devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is
Thoughts on the Dune miniseries (Score:2)
Is it just me or are the eyes wrong? I may be wrong but wasn't the spice melange addiction supposed to turn the eyes entirely blue? Whites as well as iris? One thing's certain in my mind - they didn't glow like that!
Also check out http://www.scifi.com/dune/gallery/dd3.jpg [scifi.com] for a pic captioned "Costume designer Theodor Pistek supervises Alec Newman (Paul) trying on his Stillsuit."
Short(ish) list of things I noticed:
It's a shame they've finished shooting or some things could've been corrected if they were willing. Oh well, hopefully I'll like it better than the movie when/if it is shown in Australia.
Of course, what I'd really like to see is a one-to-one adaptation. There'd have to be some adaptation/alteration as far as purely internal dialogue is concerned but I can live with that. Production would probably be difficult. Can you imagine filming the entire book using current methods? Maybe it could be digitally rendered once the tech reaches the point where it's indistinguishable from meat actors.
I even know a great pulicity stunt: Instead of rendering it all on one server farm do something like distributed.net [distributed.net] or SETI@home [berkeley.edu] and enlist the world in rendering part or all of the movie. Upstream bandwidth definitely, and processor power would have to be better than today's average but maybe do just a few frames as a work unit and it might be workable.
Copyright could be handled by encrypting input and output but it could be a nice incentive to have a random frame saved to the users hdd with a watermark. The programmers/animators could provide designators as to what frames could be saved so that scenes could be kept secret if needed/wanted.
I think I'll stop here. My apologies for waffling on but I've been awake for almost 40 hours and my mind is starting to wander and to produce weird thoughts.
I'm done! Thank the gods for that preview button.
The text entry area is too damn small though. I think it'd be better if it was 5 or 6 lines taller and maybe 50% wider. It could be made a user option: Big post entry box or small?
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"When I was a kid computers were giant walk-in wardrobes served by a priesthood with punch cards."
Hypothetical situation... (Score:1)
What if I take a Linux kernel, and somebody else's COTS product, and perform my own black-magic-and-voodoo manipulations to make them do something neat - what code do I have to release? Just the Linux kernel base? My own mods built on top of it? For the purposes of the posit, let's assume there's no way I'm going to get to the somebody else's source code... what is my exact obligation to release?
(waits for his ignorance to get stamped out...)
Re:we DONT want this in schools (Score:1)
Start at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html and then work your way through all the other essays on the web written on this topic and then tell me there is no evidence.
he world would also be a better place if all food and housing was free. But given that we (or at least most of us) live in the real world, everything is not always appropriate to be free software.
It appears you do not even grasp the difference between free beer and free speech. Of course you cannot compare software to food or houses. Try comparing it to music, art and literature.
Of course, I have evidence to back up my statement. There are no free regular end-user applications that are superior to their closed source equivalents. Zero, Zilch, Nada.
So what exactly is this email client I am using right now (pine)? Or the SSH client that I have running? Some sort of optical illusion on my monitor perhaps? I have tried closed source clients for both, but never found any as good. There are many other examples, but those happen to be two that I can see at this moment in front of me, which demonstrates that you dont know what you are talking about. Perhaps you are only familiar with Microsoft Windows, on which there are very few open souce programs.
On the other hand, server apps are the one place that OSS has shown some potential, so it clearly is not a complete failure.
Any fool can see that OSS is actually a complete sucess server-side, so again you are distorting reality.
But something tells me that it's going to take a few years for the blind idealism to fall from your eyes. Good luck to you.
If you wish me good luck, then wish that I always remain an idealist. The world may not be everything that it should be, but if we give up and stop dreaming, as you have, how can we ever hope to mould the world to fit those dreams?
Abashed the Devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is
Speaking about ABIT support... (Score:1)
Re:we DONT want this in schools (Score:1)
I accept that those artists were paid, but I do not believe that they were motivated by profit. They were paid because people wanted to reward them. If no-one had wanted to reward them, they would have still produced art.
I like being naive. If everyone was naive they would be much happier.
Abashed the Devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is
Re:GPL violations (Score:1)
Why, the first sentence of the second paragraph of section 3 of the GPL [gnu.org], of course:
Clearly if you're saving the unobfuscated version of the code for yourself, it's not the preferred form of the work for modifying.Re:we DONT want this in schools (Score:1)
Abashed the Devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is
Re:we GNU Fascism (Score:1)
As to your utopian OSS world; How about the OSS coder who
decides he wants to tinker with BeOS? He ports an device driver
for a NIC, puts it on his site, with all source and sources included
- all wrapped up in a pretty GPL. GNU forces him to remove
the driver because "a device driver requires the OS to function."
He would have to publish the source of the BeOS (which he does
not own) to be legal.
It Happened.
Re:we DONT want this in schools (Score:1)
Philosophy is a lot like religious faith--when it comes right down to it, you can't actually prove much of anything. There are no universally accepted axioms in philosophy, which you would need in order to prove anything.
Which is not to say that you can't prove a philosophy wrong, you just can't prove it right...the most you can do in that direction is prove it valid. I.e. the initial assumptions do not contradict each other, and argument follows logically from them.
It is unlikely that the free software movement and proprietary software vendors will ever agree on a philosophical level. They are operating from different initial assumptions, and their arguments are both technically valid. That's where the Open Source (pragmatist rather than idealist--although they aren't mutually exclusive) approach comes in, and why the Open Source movement has been more successful than the FSF.
Fortunately, the goals of the Open Source movement overlap with those of the the Free Software advocates, so their extent.
degee---
Zardoz has spoken!
Lots of reasons (Score:2)
Well, I like to think that the GPL has a live and let live attitude to things. A lot of people are going to disagree with me on that. The reason tha the provision is placed there is not so we can crowbar the source code out of an author who made a simple mistake, but to prevent GPL'd source from being included in those programs. I usually tend to agree with the FSF that software probably shouldn't be owned, but until things are changed, I'd rather convince people that it's better to free their source than to take it from them forcibly by using a GPL provision. Note that I'm saying this assuming that they did it on purpose. The GPL violations we've seen thus far I really think were mistakes. Not to say that they couldn't have been WAY more careful, but I don't think they did it with malicious intent.
Also, suing costs a holy shitload of money, even if you win there's a large initial capital outlay unless you know a lawyer who will do it pro bono. (If you do, then share that name, please)
But for me, it comes down to this: I'd rather that my software simply not be incorporated. As a GPL source author, I don't really want to pry the source away from an author that made a mistake, I just want them to know what the rules are and make sure that they play by them. Suing should always be the last option IMHO since for the most part humans can be reasonable and come to an agreement if they try. It shouldn't be ruled out, it's just that I don't think it should be the first thing we jump to.
context (Score:1)
Take another set of quotes, from the same articles, and you could probably come up with something totally different on a totally different topic.
I mean, politicians do this all the time, they slam each other by quoting each other out of context.
A better experiment would have been to take an entire antigay article (or website), put it on GeoCities, and see if that will get blocked.
Re:Dune (Score:2)
Lynch has disavowed the TV extended version to the point that it says "an Alan Smithee film" in reference to the Director's Guild pseudonym that is used when a film is abused by the studio w/o the director's consent.
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
Re:Gauntlet firewall Troll (Score:1)
Huh? I'm confused... how was this a troll, and what's WHBT HAND?
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Re:Hell no! (Score:1)
BTW, I'm glad to see somebody point out that Dune the movie does have at least one good point - the atmosphere. It's hardly worth getting into all the various plot problems (too many to count, although you pretty much covered the important ones!). I enjoy the movie for the look and feel; I read the book for the story (and an even better aSKphere created by Herbert in my mind).
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Re:Dune (Score:1)
Lynch has disavowed the TV extended version to the point that it says "an Alan Smithee film" in reference to the Director's Guild pseudonym that is used when a film is abused by the studio w/o the director's consent.
That's interesting. Harlan Ellison [harlanellison.com] uses the pseudonym "Cordwainer Bird" [enteract.com] for the same purpose.
Looks like Toontalk is feelin' that /. effect. (Score:1)
Boy That SUCKS!!!!!
Re:Purposely violating the GPL (Score:1)
certainly, that's a good reason. but, in every case I've seen, the cave-in takes place on day one, and comes with statements that say it was never considered. I think the GPL would have a lot more teeth if it were enforced. Get creative. Lawyers will work on contingency: these companies should be willing to pay a settlement if their precious source is worth so much to them. They have, after all, broken the law. Also, they have competitors: how much of a lawsuit would one MB mfr pay to spank another, and see their source. So, doesn't seem like that good a reason.
Another, we'd rather have a company fix their mistake and take a public 'we screwed up' spanking than duking it out in court.
who is "we"? If "we" believe that open source is a good thing, then we believe it's a good thing even if some of the participants get dragged kicking and screaming into the quicksand that they stepped into. Your reasoning seems to imply that you think that open source is something to be avoided.
Finally, because we're the good guys. Just because most everyone else on earth would bend you over in court for a nickel doesn't mean you have to hand out the shaft as well.
Again, open source is not the shaft. It's a good thing. And, the GPL should be and would be meaningful. You release a binary, you release the source. We all benefit, including you, as you will discover when you release the source which you have to release because of the choices you have made.
Perhaps the GPL should add a UCITA click-wrap to the license: you use this source, and you agree to abide by the terms. We'll see how much "the industry" likes UCITA when it applies to the technology they steal ;)
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Re:Hypothetical situation... (Score:1)
If you release a modified Linux binary, you must also make avalable all the source nessisary for someone else to make an identical Linux binary.
Re:The source is there - finally (Score:1)
IMHO, the nerd "sigh" is a giant flag that says, "I've got a stick up my ass"
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Re:Purposely violating the GPL (Score:1)
Anyway, you're confused: they aren't using the license, that's the problem. They're distributing the code without a license.
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Because that's all they can do. (Score:2)
Re:we DONT want this in schools (Score:1)
From a 15 minute reading of the license, it looks like it's similar to the GPL, excepting that it's a bit more restrictive about providing source code (must come with every copy; pointing isn't good enough, though if they're in the same archive (say, an ftp site) but different files/packages, that's fine), and there can be no charge for the program alone (it may be charged for in a collection, as with the GPL). Oh, and this license only applies when not on a Microsoft O/S (no joke, read the license); that has a seperate shareware license.
So yes, MySQL is open. Sort of.
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Re:Purposely violating the GPL (Score:1)
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Re:Purposely violating the GPL (Score:2)
GPL'ed authors for the most part, screaming
it's a good thing even if some of the participants get dragged kicking and screaming into the quicksand
In short, no. GPL/GNU is an idelogy more than a license. That statement is what made the spread of Socialism such a fearful thing; That the vehement Socialist would kill his brethren in order to enforce the ideal.
Your reasoning seems to imply that you think that open source is something to be avoided.
Not at all! I dislike the US court system, where money and the sheen of false respectability can get you through the judicial finish line first with a Ford Pinto entrant.
Again, open source is not the shaft.
You are correct. Hauling someone's ass into court and hiding behind a lawyer when a 'Hey you! Knock it off' in person would have sufficed is the shaft.
Re:Purposely violating the GPL (Score:2)
If you've released a binary to anyone that includes GPL code, but have not released the complete source (under the GPL) to the same person, you've violated the license and the law (if the GPL stands up in a court...). You can't take the binary back to correct it. You can't make a new binary without the GPLed code to correct it.
But of course, IANAL.
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Re:The source is there - finally (Score:1)
My point was that before, they seemed to think that the "source code" referred to in the GPL consisted only of the kernel source. To anyone who asked, they pointed to kernel-source-2.2.14.src.rpm. The sigh referred to the fact that they thought they were covered by this. Obviously confused.
And if YOU read the article, and the previous one, you'd see that at first they provided NO code to ANYTHING, and now they are finally providing source to everything but one package. Which is still a problem of course, but at least they're showing just a little bit of good faith...
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Re:Lots of reasons (Score:1)
Making a mistake by accidently incorporating GPLed code? I don't buy it. Everybody knows that source is copyrighted and you would by default need to inquire as to by what license do you come by having that source.
Making a mistake of knowingly violating the license? OK, you don't need to slit your wrists, but you should make restitution. It's the socially responsible thing to do.
And why do you keep talking about prying and crowbarring source away? Open source is a good thing: you're doing people a favor if you convince them to open their source. Closed source is dying, but open provides life everlasting. With all those eyes, your bugs become shallow. There are many itches out there: you can't scratch them all. You (the copier) know the benefit of open source... that's why you chose it! time to feel the power by releasing it that way too.
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Re:Purposely violating the GPL (Score:1)
take a deep breath and focus on some reasonably topical point you wish to make. GPL is a license allowing one to distribute copyrighted works. It is not an economics ideology, nor is it a judicial system, nor is it totalitarianism. I know, I know... you feel oppressed.
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Re:Dune (Score:1)
the only "Director's Cut" of DUNE was the theatrical release.
My bad then... I assumed that what the SCI-FI Channel called the director's cut was just that.
Can you fill me in on the details?
thanx
Re:Because that's all they can do. (Score:1)
How do you prove damages on a program you charge nothing for?
You do raise an interesting issue, but it does not necessarily go the way you are assuming. The non-source-releaser is not covered by the GPL. Since you, as the copyright holder, own and have the right to sell your work, you are at least entitled to any proceeds from someone else selling it, plus punitive damages. If you can show that they were selling it cheaper than you could have, it's worth even more. Might be good to let 'em go for awhile, your rights don't evaporate :)
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Re:Purposely violating the GPL (Score:1)
He missed the obvious sociomanipulative streak, and didn't deserve to live..
Seriously though. GPL is an ideology manifested in license. In simplest form, that information, source code, knowledge, cheese, etc, is best when shared. Stallman just happened to be a code monkey when the mental light went on, so this is how it manifested itself.
Re:The source is there - finally (Score:1)
yes, your clarification is correct, but your orginal post was wrong. A more appropriate clarification would be, "oh, I'm sorry, I didn't say that right", rather than accusing me of not reading the article when I clearly had.
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Re:Purposely violating the GPL (Score:1)
yes, there is an element of truth to the history you are recounting, but still, the GPL is just a license.
Just like Marx was wrong about most of what he said, but still, religion is the opiate of the masses.
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Re:Dune (Score:2)
You can grab MPEG versions from http://house.ofdoom.com/~hungerf3/video/dune/ [ofdoom.com]
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Regarding kids and computers... (Score:1)
Re:Blocking Software has a market (Score:1)
Plus their whole veil of secrecy about which sites they actually do block seems incredibly dodgy to me.
Re:Dune trailer as mpeg (Score:1)
Thank you!
Re:we DONT want this in schools (Score:1)
This gets tedious. We're not. We're on a site that offers 'news for nerds. stuff that matters', whose constituency includes a large number of open source advocates, many of whose discussions concern open source and free software issues, and which uses open source software. Just because all elephants are gray, it doesn't mean anything gray is an elephant.
TomV
Re:Gauntlet firewall Troll (Score:1)
You won't find "YHBT HAND", but look up "YHBT" and all will be revealed...
Re:Kids are not that stupid (Score:1)
Thanks A Lot. I've got coffee all over my keyboard, again.
The true humor is in the truth of it.
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Re:Regarding kids and computers... (Score:1)
'Round these here parts, thems fightin' words.
Don't you know, there is no future in the Big Blue Room. Your life must consist of nothing but:
There is nothing in that list about getting fresh air and exercise, or honing inter-personal relationships, face to face, or developing a skill which doesn't require keyboarding or a small screwdriver and a static strap.
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Re:That kids programming software. (Score:1)
'Beta testing of ToonTalk began in January 1995 at the Encinal School in Menlo Park, California'
why isn't this software in general circulation yet. We studied logo when I was in elementary school, if we would have had this stuff, there'd be more programmers out there today."
You were in elementary school in 1995???
carlos
I think... (Score:1)
Or something.
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Re:Chopping the web into little peices (Score:1)
SurfWatch's "Test a site" page [surfwatch.com]
CyberPatrol's "CyberNOT Search Engine" [cyberpatrol.com]
CyberNanny's "Check a site" page [netnanny.com]
WebSense's "site look up" page [netpart.com]
SmartFilter's SmartFilterWhere [securecomputing.com] (this one's pretty nasty as it asks you for some personal info (name, phone, etc.) but I'm not sure if it's absolutely required to fill out those fields).
By the way, I only checked the blocking software mentionned on this peacefire page [peacefire.org] so if there are others, you're on your own.
Greg
Re:I think... (Score:1)
Re:we DONT want this in schools (Score:1)
What you fail to see here is that whether or not your point is correct (which, incidentally, it isn't) it is really irrelevant to this discussion. The point isn't that there will no longer be a financial incentive to create things. The point is that if no one gets paid to create, no one will be able to devote their full time to the creation of non-tangible material. There will no longer be any full time musicians, artists, scientists, writers, or any other profession which makes its money by selling things which have a zero or near zero reproduction cost.
Yes, I probably will make something useful. But it will be a piece of code, an idea, and therefore quite impossible for anyone to 'steal' from me. If a million people all copied it, i would still have it, and therefore i would have lost nothing.
What you still fail to grasp is that you will also have gained nothing. That's fine if you're just a hobbyist, cranking out programs on weekends, but if you were considering a career in programming, writing, art, music, or science? Forget it! No one will pay you for something you've created when they can just take it instead.
Re:Toontalk!?! (Score:1)
I'm not that old, but I at college (in the late 80s) I was in my school's last assembly language class to use punch cards.
I think this was a great benefit. Having to punch out those cards, using one card per instruction, really gave me a deep intuitive understanding of how a computer Reads. One. Instruction. At. A. Time. And. Has. Only. The. Information. You. Have. Already. Given. It.
"It's that guy!"
Re:That kids programming software - ToonTalk (Score:1)
Before I try to answer this question, as the author of ToonTalk, I'm very pleased with all the interest that these SlashDot discussions have generated in ToonTalk. So much interest that www.toontalk.com [toontalk.com] has become overloaded so I made a mirror at www.animated-programs.com/ToonTalk [animated-programs.com].
So if ToonTalk started beta testing in 1995 then why isn't it better known? Well first off beta testing revealed that too few kids were comfortable with just exploring ToonTalk unaided. So I generated many narrated demos, puzzle sequences, and added Marty, a speaking guide/coach, to ToonTalk. Also beta testing revealed that while kids really mastered the basic stuff in ToonTalk they found the sprite/game stuff confusing. So that needed to be completely redesigned and rebuilt. (And I'm proud to say that it is working so well now that a big European research project is using it to enable 6 to 8 years to build their own games - see www.ioe.ac.uk/playground [ioe.ac.uk].)
So ToonTalk was ready in 1998 and I showed it to more than a dozen publishers of kids or educational software. The typical response from the technical people was very positive and from the marketing people I heard comments like "It is too hard to explain", "We're not in the business of educating customers", and "What line or two on the box could make it sell in big numbers". A publisher in Sweden was the first exception, followed by one in the UK, then Portugal, and then Brazil. And a Japanese version is in final testing.
So ToonTalk was self-published in North America. This means there is no marketing budget and a small PR budget (already spent). So it has been spreading by word of mouth, nice articles like the one in Dr. Dobb's Journal (Feb 99), some things I've written (e.g. March 2000 Communications of the ACM), and forums like this one.
Best,
-ken kahn (kenkahn@toontalk.com)Max von Sydow (Score:1)
Except their implementations are corrupt (Score:2)
Parents may innocently think they're protecting their children with a censorware package, but they don't realize how the content is being filtered by these censorware vendors, and how their children are being manipulated. Censorware vendors don't disclose the list of sites they block, claiming it's a "trade secret". Thus, they can block anything they want, and all the customer sees is a "site blocked" page. It's more cost-effective for them to block a thousand innocent sites that their users will never know are innocent, than to let one page about AIDS slip through, and bring the wrath of a parent down upon them. Thus, some popular censorware products have something like a 75% false positive rate.
This is all well-documented. I think peacefire.org has a lot of links.
Re:I think... (Score:1)
I allow that there may have been technical considerations when the costumes were designed but I can't think of any.
As far as Chani goes I wasn't talking about giving her a callous; my point was the fact that she had one is in my mind an indication that the noseplugs & mouth covering were not as depicted in the photos.
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"When I was a kid computers were giant walk-in wardrobes served by a priesthood with punch cards."