News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

PieterH

Re:Bogdanov affair on Saturday September 24, 2016 @10:06AM (#12570961)
I've been using VJS for years and can testify to its performance and ease of use. It literally took no effort to install and use.
Re:Confessions of a Necromancer on Saturday September 24, 2016 @04:04AM (#12569990)
My pleasure... :) I've really enjoyed this trip, the last five months.
Re:Confessions of a Necromancer on Friday September 23, 2016 @04:56PM (#12567890)
The many ZeroMQ projects already govern themselves and have done so for years. So yes. Also, see C4 protocol.
Re:Confessions of a Necromancer on Friday September 23, 2016 @04:55PM (#12567878)
Then you leave. If needed there are a host of other techniques to also use, see my psychopaths book. Doesn't require you to become like them.
Re:Confessions of a Necromancer on Friday September 23, 2016 @12:38PM (#12565909)
It might help. I take Medrol, which definitely helps. It's a corticosteroid.
Re:Confessions of a Necromancer on Friday September 23, 2016 @11:41AM (#12565432)
Yeah, it's true, the last five months have been a more intense sensation of living than I've ever known.
Re:Confessions of a Necromancer on Friday September 23, 2016 @11:14AM (#12565204)
This often happens, the previous article didn't get any visibility so people post it again, not realizing. I think the old one is the dupe :-) We need a name for a "dupe that was ahead of its time."
Re:Confessions of a Necromancer on Friday September 23, 2016 @11:13AM (#12565197)
Well, I'm steadily losing weight, down to about 65kg now from 76kg when I was diagnosed. I'm finding it harder and harder to eat, and I've steadily increased my painkillers from 10mg to 50mg or more per 12h.

So, clearly, things are not getting better. I'm dying and it is just a matter of what bed I die in, and whether it'll be a vital organ like the liver that gives up first, or euthanasia if the breathing gets too hard, and the pain too much.

What the extended horizon does is let me write a little more in that article (there are still stories to tell) and wonder if maybe it'll be enough for a book.

Weirdly the main emotion I feel is a kind of embarrassment at raising a false alarm that gets so many people worried. Also, happiness of course to still be alive and see my family & friends and chat a little more with people on the Internet :-)

Re:Confessions of a Necromancer on Friday September 23, 2016 @10:17AM (#12564784)
It got better, I had a bad reaction to paracetamol I'd just started taking, it seems.
Re:The MIT License, Line by Line on Friday September 23, 2016 @01:08AM (#12562456)
If you claim that copyleft is almost 'untested in court' you are either wilfully ignorant or trolling.
Re:The MIT License, Line by Line on Thursday September 22, 2016 @06:48PM (#12560983)
I explained the ways it's suboptimal, worst IME is for drive-by contributors from larger firms.
Re:The MIT License, Line by Line on Thursday September 22, 2016 @05:48PM (#12560614)
You cannot modify a work so much that the original licence no longer applies, unless you in effect create a new work.
Re:The MIT License, Line by Line on Thursday September 22, 2016 @04:45PM (#12560223)
I've fixed it. There are various models, CLA, assignment, etc. I didn't want to get into details of that.
Re:The MIT License, Line by Line on Thursday September 22, 2016 @04:37PM (#12560160)
That is excellent.
Re:The MIT License, Line by Line on Thursday September 22, 2016 @04:21PM (#12560032)
This is a really good article. There's one part in particular that struck me:

"Despite the assumption of some newer open-source developers that sending a pull request on GitHub “automatically” licenses the contribution for distribution on the terms of the project’s existing license—what Richard Fontana of Red Hat calls “inbound=outbound”—United States law doesn’t recognize any such rule. Strong copyright protection, not permissive licensing, is the default."

In other words the fork + pull request + merge flow does not work on a project unless you have an explicit step like a CLA, or an alternative solution.

We faced this problem early on in ZeroMQ, that asking contributors to take this extra step increased the work for maintainers (to check, is this the first time person X contributes, and have they made a CLA?) It also scared off contributors from businesses, where this often took approval (which took time and was often denied).

Our first solution in ZeroMQ was to ask contributors to explicitly state, "I hereby license this patch under MIT," which let us safely merge it into our LGPL codebase. Yet, again, another extra step and again, needs corporate approval.

Our current solution is I think more elegant and is one of the arguments I've used in favor of a share-alike license (xGPL originally and MPLv2 more these days) in our projects.

That works as follows:

* When you fork a project ABC that uses, say, MPLv2, the fork is also licensed under MPLv2.

* When you modify the fork, with your patch, your derived work is now also always licensed under MPLv2. This is due to the share-alike aspect. If you use MIT, at this stage the derived work is (or rather, can be) standard copyright. Admittedly if you leave the license header in the source file, it remains MIT. Yet how many maintainers check the header of the inbound source file? Not many IMO.

* When you then send a patch from that inbound project, the patch is also licensed under MPLv2.

* Ergo there is no need for an explicit grant or transfer of copyright.

I wonder if other people have come to the same conclusion, or if there are flaws in my reasoning.

Not the expected angle, that is a fair bet. See http://hintjens.com/blog:122
Re:Microsoft aren't forcing Lenovo to block free operating systems on Thursday September 22, 2016 @02:08AM (#12554778)
I've been in tech for 35 years and never flashed a pc bios. My MP3 player, sure. You think tech means installing servers?
Re:Three Sheldons on Thursday September 22, 2016 @01:59AM (#12554741)
Yes, Buzzfeed has done a few good long articles. Surprising in a good way.
Re:Tor Browser Exposed: Anti-Privacy Implantation at Mass Scale on Wednesday September 21, 2016 @05:31PM (#12552442)
A more dangerous side-effect of branding Tor as a "human rights" tool is that whereas if it's a "privacy" tool, people in oppressive regimes can legitimately use it (e.g. people working for such regimes), whereas as a "human rights" tool, its simple presence on a computer is evidence of guilt.
Re:Microsoft aren't forcing Lenovo to block free operating systems on Wednesday September 21, 2016 @04:58PM (#12552173)
I disagree. I'm happy to install Linux from a USB stick. I'm not happy reflashing a BIOS. Have installed many, many laptops with Linux (ironically, my all time favorites are older Lenovos like the X220). I've not once flashed a BIOS.

Not being able to change the OS on a laptop severely reduces its aftermarket value too. My laptop originally ran Windows. I bought it second hand to run Linux on.

Re:Microsoft aren't forcing Lenovo to block free operating systems on Wednesday September 21, 2016 @04:53PM (#12552133)
"It was a shame to see the initial posts this morning hit the top of the page..."

If it raises the issue of running Linux on laptops, it's fine IMO. And both Lenovo and Microsoft have a lot of accumulated badwill that does not play in their favor. Guilty until proven innocent seems fair here.

Re:Confessions of a Necromancer on Wednesday September 21, 2016 @12:46PM (#12549904)
It's very long because I didn't have time to write a short version.
Re:Linux can’t be installed on a recent Lenovo laptop on Wednesday September 21, 2016 @05:58AM (#12546748)
Abuse of monopoly power.
Re:Getting things done on Tuesday September 20, 2016 @09:50AM (#12539448)
If it is never the next most urgent problem, then never.
Funding an attack on a patent is also a great way to solicit counter attacks. Patent trolls like to sue.
Actually, patents do precisely claim commercial monopolies over ideas.
Re:Why we use progressive enhancement to build Gov.uk on Tuesday September 20, 2016 @05:45AM (#12538240)
The gov.uk site is wonderful to use! It is incredibly fast, just a tenth of a second latency, it feels.
Re:Getting things done on Tuesday September 20, 2016 @04:39AM (#12538019)
Best philosophy I've found is: take most urgent problem, solve minimally, check, repeat forever.
Re:A Theory of Creepiness on Tuesday September 20, 2016 @02:41AM (#12537602)
This essay is a troll, surely? Or, the author is mentally disturbed.
Re:Ways to implement computer languages on 6502s (1994) on Tuesday September 20, 2016 @02:14AM (#12537483)
I implemented a forth based language on C64 in 1983, it was tiny and fast. The 6502 was well suited to this. The REPL nature of forth languages is also perfect for machines with limited offline storage.

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