Because in the USA, at least, you can't patent an interface. You can patent all sorts of other stuff, but interface patents are one of the few things you can't patent? That's why AMD and Compaq were able to waltz in and kick IBM's and Intel's ass when it came to pin-socket compatible PC's.

http://thepiratebay.se/

Seems legit to me :)

I don't see why he can't be let go. Name the people he's harmed. Sure he's embarrassed a bunch of government bureaucrats, but since they work for me - the tax paying citizen, I can hardly see a problem with that.

I suppose what he did was treason, violated the government's legal edicts, but seriously here. This US is a man made institution, not a god, not an ends in itself. Freedom is the ends, the state is supposed to be the means to protect that. Letting him go is going to harm everybody how?

Your id isn't from 97 as some others have already pointed out. I think it was late 97 early 98 when the registration system was implemented. I think I waited a while before registering and still have a four digit one. People liked the anonymity of the original site, heh.

In the science of praxeology, they don't claim to know the mechanisim of what makes humans tick. They just presume that the mechanisims behind human behavior is too complicated to prefectly predict in many areas, and then work from there. Even though this is not hard science, you can still make extremely usefull predictions about human behavior in society and in large groups, and what kinds of social structures favor optimum desired outcomes.

Anyhow, the point is that praxeology implies free markets for optimum economic success, and public benefit, and many of the AGW proposals addressing global warming fly directly in the face of this. So obviously something is screwed up somewhere. Especialy when they say that disaster is immenent, and that we need to have insane taxes, regulations, and global government right this second to fix it. Also, predictions about AGW fly all over the place ranging from 1 degree in 100 years to a catistrophic heating event in the next decade. Also, every time a new discovery is made ... like the amount plankton plays a role in the oceans, like methane generation in the soil ... their computer models go to hell, and they all go running back to redo them and recalculate. Even with people screaming loudly that the debate is closed. Also, why does the UN have a pannel on climate change? This is not a science orginisation, it is a political one ... at times there seems almost to be a desparate push as in, fuck it all to hell right now we must have a big co2 tax, or something similar this minute.

Yea, who better to host this than HP, lmfao. I worked there as a direct hire for a while last year but it was such a clusterf*ck I left and let them know why in my written exit interview, they don't even bother to do them in person. I will have to say my coworkers and direct supervisors were all top notch people but the upper management is just insane. Of course it didn't hurt that I got a huge pay increase at the same time, but I wouldn't have been looking for that job in the first place if HP wasn't so bad off.

I agree with a previous poster that most of the time a person will leave a company due to a bad (direct) manager, but in HP's case it is unfortunately upper management that is driving all the good employees away.

For decades I have heard fear mongering about immigrants taking away IT jobs, and without fail just the opposite has been true, every time. In fact, what usually happens is that a bunch of cheap immigrants end up working for a start-up, a certain percentile of those start-ups that wouldn't have existed otherwise make it big, and then they hire 10000 engineers driving demand for IT talent through the roof, and pushing demand for even more immigrants. While I keep hearing these stories that the immigrants are going to push me out of a job, just the opposite has happened to the extreme. Talented people from a low freedom and low capital environment end up moving to a high capital high freedom environment, and creating wealth that never existed before - a lot of wealth.

In truth, software and most IT is global. But notice how things like Linux flourish in silicon valley the most, even though they can afford MS windows a lot easier than the 3rd world. That's because when you mix freedom with capital, it creates growth.

Though probably not until after me, as mine is lower.

Darn noobs get off my lawn! ;-)

CDDL was definitely referenced frequently during the initial drafting of MPL 2; it resolved some problems that we knew MPL 1.1 had so it made sense to see how they had solved the problems. I'm not sure how much actual CDDL language actually survived into MPL 2 (that part of the drafting was almost two years ago now), but probably at least some.

No, that's wrong. Because the new license is compatible, when the relicensing (from MPL11/GPL/LGPL->MPL2) is complete, the software will still be licensed in a way that is compatible with GPL and LGPL code.

The only usage that will now be discouraged that was previously possible is the simple case where someone took the old code, and republished under only one license without combining it with GPL/LGPL code- in other words, they did it because they wanted it to be incompatible. (This was something that Stallman publicly stated was poor form, but some people did it anyway.) This is prohibited by the new language- you have to have a real reason now to switch the licensing, and you still have to do your first publication under both licenses instead of just one.

IAABP (I am a biology professor).

For basic maths or physics, I agree with you that open source textbooks would be a great idea. The problem is when you talk about textbooks for more rapidly evolving fields, such as the life sciences. I can see how open source textbooks would be a very difficult proposition for biology texts. If the government wanted to fund such an endeavor it would not be "write once then forget about it", you would have to constantly update and revise it every few years. This means that there would need to be a permanent editorial board with support staff. The editorial board would have to have sufficient expertise in the field(s) to recognize what constitutes a significant advance in biology, as well as be able to decide what is an appropriate level of knowledge to present in textbook format. What with my teaching schedule and research demands, I just don't see me or anyone else in my field doing this, because it would be a full time endeavor that would take me out of the loop of my other professional duties. Unless there is a permanent position created for this (e.g., an NSF directorate with program officers and associated staff), I just don't see anyone risking their career for this.

A completely open and crowd-sourced book in the vein of Wikibooks is also doomed from the get-go, because any dolt can come along and edit things that have been carefully considered and written by an expert in the field (this is why I no longer contribute to Wikipedia). I suppose a hybrid model is possible, wherein edits may be submitted to a transparent editorial board for consideration, but again there is the issue of who would be willing to act as editor?

I suppose a third possibility to hold down costs is the formation of a non-profit publishing corporation that would publish works just as traditional publishing houses would, except that with a non-profit charter it would be able to keep prices low.

Most students who take an anatomy class at the level that requires animal dissection fall into two categories: those who are interested in an allied health profession (e.g., nursing, physical therapy) and those who are either interested in becoming professional biologists or medical doctors. I think you could make a pretty good case that in both cases, real dissections are an essential part of the students' training. Your average college student is not masochistic enough to take what is typically a course much tougher than a garden variety general education class. I don't know how the education system works in India, but I think the vast majority of biology departments in the US would not be willing to use models exclusive of real dissection. That being said, we do use models to supplement instruction, but these are physical models, not computer-based. Unless 3D displays become radically better and give tactile feedback, I don't see computer dissecting simulations displacing physical models either.

I'm not sure that anyone actually nailed the complete reason. I scanned through the response so far but none seem to really cover it.

1. Debian policy -- this is by far the biggest reason, Debian policy is very detailed and packages are required to adhere to it to be in the official repos
2. Debian repository -- it contains nearly all open source software, which combined with 1 makes Debian/Ubuntu based systems much more stable in general
3. deb format -- this is actually more of a toss up but the deb format is still much more flexible than rpm
4. apt -- existed since at least the mid 90s, long before yum was added to replicate the feature on rpm based distros, so not so much a reason now

I might have missed some additional reasons but the above are the biggest. You can still break a Debian/Ubuntu system but that is usually due to using non-official repositories by people who haven't properly made debs, eg some random launchpad ppa, which haven't gone through vetting process via Ubuntu REVU, or lintian, etc.

I've used Debian/been a DD for 13 years, and used Ubuntu/core dev for 7 years. I've used RH/Fedora on and off for 15 years.

lol, you predate me a bit, I didn't start using Linux until around Feb 1995.