faq
code
awards
journals
subscribe
older stuff
rob's page
preferences
submit story
advertising
supporters
past polls
topics
about
bugs
hof
| Abusing the GPL? |
Posted by
Cliff
on Wednesday March 06, @08:28AM
from the manipulations-and-loopholes dept. Anonymous with good reason, a reader would like to bring this important question to your collective attention: "Our (technically savvy) lawyer has advised my company that 'incidental resources' do not a work derive. For example: If I have a student's version of a development environment whose license does not allow me to distribute code compiled with it for commercial use, I am legally allowed to use the environment to create my ANSI C++ code, which, when I compile it with GCC, I am free to use to whatever commercial end I like.
This seems fairly intuitive. (After all, you could have written the same thing in a text editor, and the debugging, etc, that you need the IDE for doesn't actually 'show up' in the final code).
Here's the kicker: My company wants to translate this to an abuse of the GPL and has been advised 'full speed ahead!'"
(
Read More... | 1696 bytes in body | 227 of 313 comments
) ACPI Disabled in WinXP-Certified Motherboards |
Posted by
Cliff
on Tuesday March 05, @10:40PM
from the BIOS-incompatibility-or-something-more dept. stealth_zipper asks: "I just got off the phone with a rep from Soyo Computer Inc trying to get the ability to change IRQs for the onboard hardware. It turns out that because of a deal to get WindowsXP certification, the Dragon-series motherboard ended up having the ability of Enabling/Disabling ACPI in the BIOS disabled. Now FreeBSD has complications with multiple devices on the same IRQs (especially sound, video, and nic all off the same one). Is there a way to get around this for new hardware? Has anyone else encountered this?" Why in the world does XP need this feature disabled, and are there workarounds to get OSes like FreeBSD working properly with motherboards of this sort?
(
Read More... | 273 of 421 comments
) Liquid Nitrogen Cooling at Home? |
Posted by
Cliff
on Tuesday March 05, @09:06PM
from the stuff-not-usually-found-in-your-cupbord...for-good-reason dept. newell98 asks: "Given the rise in popularity of water cooling systems for home computers, I was wondering how many slashdotters have played with the idea of cooling their system with liquid nitrogen? Lots of super-comps use them (or used to at least), and I'm curious about who's played with the idea of taking home computing to the same level?" The thing to remember about Liquid Nitrogen is that this stuff is generally not safe for home use. It must be stored and used with care or serious injury can result. I think this is why not-too-many people use such in overclocking. Water is by far more easier to obtain and is harmless to boot. Now, after saying all that, have any of you tried using liquid nitrogen in cooling a home or garage-built computer rig? What kind of safety precautions did you take, and how well did your cooling system work?
(
Read More... | 33 of 38 comments
) Linux Laptop Recommendations for 2002? |
Posted by
Cliff
on Tuesday March 05, @07:45PM
from the a-perennial-question dept. ocasek asks: "I have been looking into buying a laptop again and one of the requirements I have is that it will be able to run Linux with all features turned on (i.e. suspend, APM, etc.). I used to own a Dell Inspiron 8000 that I had Mandrake 8.0 configured and running on, and aside from the wonderful BIOS hooks for PCMCIA that never worked completely, it was a good laptop.
My question to the /. Community is, in your opinion, what is the best laptop out there to run Linux? I would be interested to hear what OS's you are running on what brand of laptop."
(
Read More... | 23 of 29 comments
) Modem Accelerators? |
Posted by
Cliff
on Tuesday March 05, @01:14AM
from the sounds-like-digital-snake-oil dept. An Anonymous Coward asks: "I was browsing on the web and came across a reference to Coastal Web Online's claim of a modem accelerator Apparently it is a service which is supposed to make your modem 3x faster. Is this possible? I've already got a v.92 modem and I thought it already did compression. It is possible it is a proxy doing some compression on white space in HTML or something, but I don't think so, since it apparently only works with Windows 9x and Internet Exploder. For $8.00 a month ontop a the dialup access sounds kinda snake oilish. Does anybody on Slashdot use the service? Would they recommend it? This sounds remarkably similar to the old idea of 'waxing your modem'. Am I missing out on something here?"
(
Read More... | 35 of 40 comments
) Misrepresentation in DOJ's Response? |
Posted by
Cliff
on Monday March 04, @06:22PM
from the this-smells-fishy dept. Robb Timlin asks: "Ok, so I'm checking over the DOJ's response to the public comments, and I notice they reference mine, among others, in Paragraph 149 (footnote 162): '149. Section III.B is limited to the twenty OEMs with the highest worldwide volume of licenses of Windows Operating System Products. Some commentors criticize this limitation, arguing that it leaves Microsoft free to retaliate against smaller OEMs, including regional "white box" OEMs.(162)' Problem is, I never said anything like that in my comment! Now it could be a simple error, or it could be deliberate misrepresentation of what I had to say (my criticism of Section III.B of the RPFJ centered on allowing MS to provide rewards to OEMs who toe the line, in lieu of retaliating against those that don't). A friend of mine urged me to bring this to the attention of somebody official, but who?"
(
Read More... | 783 bytes in body | 13 of 16 comments
) Linux and Biometrics? |
Posted by
Cliff
on Monday March 04, @05:48PM
from the third-time's-the-charm dept. OctaneZ asks: "While this topic has been brought up Twice Before, once in May 1999 and again in October 2000, yet another year has gone by with very little discusion, at least that I have seen in the field of UNIX and biometric scurity. There are now projects like the BioAPI Consortium. But very little has actually come of it. Is anyone out there using biometrics for UNIX security? Or security period? Any advice on implementations? Anyone with experience, give us the heads up: What works and what doesn't?"
(
Read More... | 4 of 7 comments
) Hardware Streaming MP3 Components? |
Posted by
Cliff
on Monday March 04, @04:45PM
from the adding-the-network-cable-into-the-A/V-mix dept. woogie asks: "I have finally broken down and ripped all my CDs, and I have a mod_mp3 server with a bunch of different streams based on genres that can deliver those mp3s to anywhere in my house. Anywhere, that is, except my stereo system. Anyone know of decent audio hardware that will read a Shoutcast stream? Sure, I can plug my laptop line out into my tuner's inputs, but I'd really like a device I can just stack on top of my tuner that will accept Shoutcast streams. The only device I've seen that allows this is the Audiotron which appears to want to read your mp3s from an SMB share, but can be configured to read Shoutcast streams if you use special Windows based software to configure it. It would work, but seems a bit pricey given that it targets my needs as an afterthought. There is some promising hacking going on with the Rio Receiver here and here, but getting one to read a Shoutcast stream might be beyond my abilities. Am I missing anything else out there? A simple device that I could just cycle through different preconfigured streams with a remote would suffice."
(
Read More... | 25 of 30 comments
) Turnitin.com - Placebo for Plagiarism or Worse? |
Posted by
Cliff
on Monday March 04, @03:45PM
from the why-don't-corps-understand-the-concept-of-personal-IP? dept. Foo Shackelford asks: "At my University I have noticed a disturbing trend and was wondering if there are any other students, faculty, or staff who have concerns about the web based anti-plagiarism service called Turnitin.com? Turtnitin.com is supposed to be is a placebo for plagiarism where students submit papers for analysis. While plagiarism is by all accounts bad and should not be tolerated, the implementation of Turnitin.com on University campuses leaves many questions unanswered. If you read their terms of use it appears that students papers become the property of Turnitin.com. Turnitin.com keeps a copy of every student paper submitted and students have no choice in this matter. Where are the rights of the student? Also, there appears to be no warrantee to the accuracy of the service. Where does this leave the student who is accused of plagiarism? It would be nice for those who decide to implement the usage of services like these within their institutions to look beyond the placebo and consider issues of privacy, intellectual property, and most of all trust relationship that they hold with their students. Any thoughts on this?" We last touched on a related issue in this
article on students GPLing their work. Might such a solution work here in terms of protecting a student's right to use any work that they submit to other sites/services that have implicit contracts like the one described here for Turnitin.Com?
(
Read More... | 293 of 390 comments
) Telecommuters and Downtime? |
Posted by
Cliff
on Saturday March 02, @01:14PM
from the keeping-the-communication-lines-open dept. clearcache asks: "I'm a new telecommuter. My wife and I, former New Jersey residents, moved to a Midwestern city in January. I remain employed with the same NYC company that I worked for when we lived in Jersey. Aside from the normal moving hassles, I experienced some connectivity issues due to the complete incompetence of my telephone company. These issues repeated themselves, and, due to the lack of a good problem escalation policy on their end, it took quite some time to get them resolved (some are not yet resolved!). These problems resulted in a serious loss of time on the job. When I approached the phone company to discuss compensation for downtime, they responded that, since it is a residential line, they do not compensate for downtime. With more and more people telecommuting, it's only a matter of time before the blurred distinction between 'residential' and 'business' telephone lines becomes an issue. Has anyone had experiences like this? If so, what did you do? Does anyone have any general advice about telecommuting and pitfalls that I should avoid in the future? How do the companies that you work for deal with your downtime?" When my connections to the 'net fail and I can't find someplace in the area where I can leech some bandwidth, I am forced into taking the day off. Fortunately for me, Blacksburg, VA is extremely well connected for its size and such occurances have remained rare. How do you telecommuters out there deal with those Bad Computing Days, where for one reason or another, things just refuse to work?
(
Read More... | 229 of 325 comments
)
|
|
|