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Comment Re:Kudos to Nokia (Score 4, Insightful) 263

Or isn't the GPL considered open anymore?

Not if you want to write commercial software on top of it, which is what Nokia wants to enable.

I know the terms of the GPL and LGPL, thank you. I simply think it's unfair to make Riverbank look like the bad guys and Nokia the saviours. Riverbank provided superb Python bindings for a long time and Phil (the guy behind PyQt and Riverbank) offered great support for GPL-users on the mailing list. PySide has a long way to go to offer a comparable experience (just read the blog post on PySide of the main PyKDE developer)

Comment Re:Clearly full of spy tools. (Score 3, Informative) 218

What about the countries they originally came from? Do they not want them back? Why? Or is it that they don't want to go back? If so why?

Oh, most of their countries of origin would love to take them back. Then throw them into jail and torture them. In the specific case of the 17 Uighurs, the country of origin is China. We all know how much China likes members of ethnic minorities, especially if said members were in Afghanistan and could have been subject to terrorist training. The Wikipedia article got a bit of background information on the topic.

The Guananamo Uighurs are also a subject of discussion in e.g. Germany. While the possible threat of terrorism is generally assessed as non-existant, the German government tries hard to avoid any quarrels with China. Granting asylum to these detainees would certainly stress the diplomatic relationship between the two countries.

Comment Re:Facts & fiction (Score 1) 325

"The Swiss government walked a tightrope between doing the morally right thing and securing its own survival." You could say the same of Vichy. The fact is, all governments were faced with a choice between resisting or submitting. Some fought, some submitted. Czechoslovakia, Poland, Britain, France -- fought. Switzerland, Norway, Spain, Austria, Vichy France -- submitted. I am not talking about the people, just the governments.

OK, you'll have to brush up your WWII history knowledge. Comparing Switzerland's stance towards the Nazis to that of Austria is completely wrong. Austria welcomed the Führer with open arms. Switzerland shot down German planes and let its people know that any declaration of surrender should be considered an enemy lie.

Please read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland_during_the_World_Wars#World_War_II

Comment Re:Facts & fiction (Score 3, Insightful) 325

The Swiss had an ignominious history in WWII. They looked out for their own financial interests at the expense of all others.

Won't this ever stop? Yes, there where some assholes that made a profit out of the desperate situation of wealthy Jews, yes, in hindsight, the Swiss government didn't criticize Nazi Germany as much as it should have. But, as always, you have to consider the context. As of 1940, Switzerland was completely surrounded by the Nazis. The Swiss government walked a tightrope between doing the morally right thing and securing its own survival. Calling Switzerland a profiteer of WWII is, quite simply, historically wrong.

Besides, Switzerland formed an independant comission to illuminate its role in the war. I'm not aware that any other country did something comparable to look at its past failings.

Red Hat Software

Red Hat & AMD Demo Live VM Migration Across CPU Vendors 134

An anonymous reader notes an Inquirer story reporting on something of a breakthrough in virtual machine management — a demonstration (not yet a product) of migrating a running virtual machine across CPUs from different vendors (video here). "Red Hat and AMD have just done the so called impossible, and demonstrated VM live migration across CPU architectures. Not only that, they have demonstrated it across CPU vendors, potentially commoditizing server processors. This is quite a feat. Only a few months ago during VMworld, Intel and VMware claimed that this was impossible. Judging by an initial response, VMware is quite irked by this KVM accomplishment and they are pointing to stability concerns. This sound like scaremongering to me ... All the interesting controversy aside, cross-vendor migration is [obviously] a good thing for customers because it avoids platform lock-in."
Security

Submission + - The IRS Will Fax Your Life to Anyone Who Asks

An anonymous reader writes: Apparently, the IRS is more than happy to fax all your private tax information to anyone who calls up and knows a little bit about you. Identification not required. Really scary with all the identity theft going on. You should have to at least fax in an ID.
Programming

Submission + - Free hosting of open and closed source projects (origo.ethz.ch)

ButcherCH writes: There is a new software development and hosting platform, called Origo that not only provides free hosting for open source software but also for closed source software. As opposed to Google code it has fewer restrictions on the siz of the releases and supports metalink It also has some neat features like wiki pages, a subversion repository, an issue tracker, a simple interface and various API integrations (Eclipse, Visual Studio and EiffelStudio). It's hosted by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
Programming

Submission + - A new opensource software development platform (origo.ethz.ch)

mburgener writes: http://origo.ethz.ch/

Origo is an opensource software development platform -
use it to host your open- and your closed-source projects! For free of course!

Origo is the one-stop platform for your project needs.
Not only can you use it together with your friends to write code and manage issues,
but you also get a wiki page to document your project and for interacting
with users and to distribute releases. So what are you waiting for?

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