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Comment misappropriation? (Score 2) 497

by sobolwolf (#45090719) Attached to: Cost of Healthcare.gov: $634 Million — So Far
I would like to know if there are any connections between contractors and those awarding the contracts - ie Family ties, business connections, etc... in this day and age there is absolutely no way a website should cost this much. I team of around 20 proficient Web professionals should be able to make almost anything in around 1-2 years max, with a max cost no more than 10 million. Half a billion? Follow the money, this is at best gross negligence on the part of those awarding the contracts, at worst misappropriation.

Comment Ever heard of (Score 0) 42

by sobolwolf (#44767747) Attached to: GNU MediaGoblin 0.5.0 "Goblin Force" Released
don't look a gift horse in the mouth? Say thanks or just STFU. Maybe it's not the best it can be, but it is free and maybe, just maybe there is some hot source code under the hood that may fuel something you may laud in the future. Now run along and make something better or, as most of you couldn't code for two shits, go use instagram or some other spyware disguised in pretty UI.

Comment Re:Unfortunatly, they are required. (Score 1) 2

by sobolwolf (#44226369) Attached to: CAPTCHA - Are robots really a threath for your website?
Completely true, there is just no way get around not having one especially if you are using open source apps like WordPress or Joomla and their accompanying plugins. I remember when I launched my site with Kunena forum for Joomla - in a matter of days there were hundreds of accounts created with names like "ASDHSGD123", etc and the board was flooded with advertisements. This dropped off a lot after adding recaptcha for registration, but still not completely until I added a spam filter... so there are either bots that can beat recaptcha or someone was manually registering, not sure.

Submission + - CAPTCHA - Are robots really a threath for your website? (wikipedia.org) 2

Submitted by ertmania
ertmania writes: CAPTHA was invented to prevent bots from adding URLs to their search engine, taking part in online polls, registering for free email accounts (which may then be used to send spam) and collecting email addresses and so on.
I can see a point in that.
Now a days everybody must have CAPTCHA to protect their website from being overtaken by robots? Your local Rabbit Welfare Association has CAPTCHA to prevent robots from signing up for the annual news letter.
Personal I find CAPTCHA annoying. When I, for the 20th time has been filling out some registration form and then guessed the obscured CAPTCHA image wrong, resulting in clearing the form, I get pissed.
It is often impossible to tell the difference between cC, wW, xX, yY and lI.
My point is: Don't use CAPTCHA unless it is necessary. Use some other kind of submission control or like in the rabbit case; don't use any.

Submission + - New research into creating Hydrogen gas from water using sunlight and rust.

Submitted by selectspec
selectspec writes: Despite being the most abundant element in the universe, creating Hydrogen gas here on Earth is a relatively expensive process. While Hydrogen can be cheaply produced from hydrocarbons like natural gas, extracting it from water has proved tricky with most methods being rather inefficient and impractical. Some new research has emerged involving a process involves nano-materials made out of rust (iron oxide) immersed in water exposed to sunlight. The process is 15% efficient in terms of capturing the solar energy, which isn't bad considering current generation photovoltaic solar panels operate around 20% efficiency.

Comment Re:This is what happens (Score 1) 224

If I make free software that looks terrible, and someone else pretties it up, complies with the terms of the license, and manages to sell a product, good for them.

Selling the product is not the problem, restricting the distribution is. Are you going to be happy if someone takes your terrible looking product then essentially limits it's distribution because they have just prettied up some css and images? What if this new product becomes more popular than yours, what if this new product starts making lots of money while your project dies in obscurity?

What you are saying is that it is ok for someone to essentially use all your hardwork and give you nothing in return, ie not allow you to use their work. Will you feel like continually upgrading your product while the person that can make pretty css and images makes a killing off it and you make nothing?

On the other hand if the images and css were GPL, you would be able to integrate the work back into your product, thus your enhancements would benefit the other developer and the other developers enhancements would benefit you. Basically you will then have a symbiotic relationship with the other developer as opposed to a parasitic one. It is my view that split licensed GPL / proprietary distributions are indeed parasitic, they take and give nothing in return.

I don't see a problem here. Especially when someone can take a free thing and add enough value to it, without writing code, that people are willing to buy a free product.

WordPress has decided to enforce their philosophy by restricting people who contribute a product that, some can argue, enhances WordPress. And restrict them from interacting with the WordPress community. That is a difficult situation, to restrict contributors because what they contribute isn't free.

I think you are confused about this. Nobody is restricting anyone from selling the product - WordPress actually hosts commercial GPL themes on their main site. The problem is limiting distribution, something I feel is wrong due to the reasons I outlined above.

Submission + - When GPL becomes Almost GPL - The CSS, Images and Javascript Loophole.

Submitted by sobolwolf
sobolwolf writes: It has been apparent for sometime that many developers (mainly theme designers) are split licensing PHP based Based GPL distributions, releasing proprietary files alongside GPL files with the excuse that CSS, Javascript and Images are "immunized" from the GPL due to the fact that they run in the browser and not on the server. This is almost always done to limit the distribution of the entire release, not just the proprietary items (most extensions will not function in any meaningful way without the accompanying CSS, Images and Javascript). Some of the more popular PHP based GPL projects like WordPress have gone as far as to apply sanctions to developers distributing split licensed themes/plugins while others such as Joomla have openly embraced the split licensed model, even to go as far as changing their extension directory submission rules to cater specifically to split licensed distributions.

In light of all this I would like to ask the following question: While it seems to be legal to offer split licensed GPL distributions, is it in the spirit of the GPL for a project such as Joomla (who's governing body has the motto "Open Source Matters") to openly embrace such a practice when they can easily require that all CSS, Images and Javascript be GPL (or GPL compatible) for extensions that are listed on the Joomla Extensions Directory?

Comment does php suck or do I (Score 1) 219

by sobolwolf (#44073327) Attached to: PHP 5.5.0 Released
Really, the quality of PHP depends on the person writing it. Bad code is bad code in any language, PHP does not cause you to write bad code, the problem is you! PHP is the most popular scripting language, most servers support and more importantly, there is a ton of documentation and examples about. I really can't see why people hate it so much, I guess we are probably looking at some form of Fanboi war, apple vs m$ type bullshit. There are many ways to skin a cat (in regards to programming) with PHP being probably the most inexpensive way to achieve what you need to do on the server side. It is either this or use one of the "cool" languages and pay more... whatever

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