NewsIsFree Search:

ADV:

[Video]Olympic Gymnast Alicia Sacramone Knocks Out Dude

She may have lost the Gold Medal for the USA gymnastic team, but she can sure throw a punch!
[in eNews from eBaumsworld]

World's tallest woman dies in Indiana

The 7 feet, 7 inches tall woman,"world's tallest woman" has died in Indiana at age 53.
[in WABC: Strange News]

Cocaine found hidden in police car

Police say an unmarked cop car came with a half-pound of cocaine hidden behind the radio.
[in WABC: Strange News]

Bear back at animal refuge after 'cubnapping

A stolen bear cub is back with his brother at a South Carolina animal park.
[in WABC: Strange News]

Disney 'Dive In' underpants cause uproar

(UPI - 13 Aug, 21:20) British parents and child protection groups are objecting to girl's underpants marketed by Disney that bear a message some see as sexually suggestive.
[in Camel Khazi]

Strong Court Ruling Upholds the Artistic License

Posted by timothy (35% noise) View Skip
dilute writes “The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (an authoritative court that normally deals with patent law), has issued a strong ruling (PDF) upholding the Artistic License in a copyright dispute between the developers of the Java Model Railroad Interface (JMRI), and Kamind, a company that used portions of DecoderPro to develop a competing product. The product at issue was DecoderPro, an open source project released on SourceForge under the Artistic License, for interfacing with model railroad control chips. Kamind used a number of DecoderPro files in developing its product, Decoder Commander. However, Kamind did not comply with the Artistic License in a number of respects, including attribution, copyright notices, tracked changes or availability of the underlying standard version.” Read on for more, below.

Dilute continues: “The lower court denied relief, saying that the Artistic License merely imposed “contractual” promises, and that a violation did not constitute copyright infringement (any contract-based relief would probably have been meaningless). In a strong ruling, the Federal Circuit found that the Artistic License is legally enforceable, that its terms constituted “conditions” for reliance on the license, and consequently that a violation of those conditions would put the violating product outside the license and thus make the violator a copyright infringer, potentially liable for an injunction. The case lays out a clear and compelling description of the rationale for open source, and reflects a complete willingness by the court to lend the force of law to these licenses.” Reader ruphus13 point to Lawrence Lessig’s commentary on the ruling; Lessig calls it “huge and important news,” and notes that the reasoning is generalizable to the GPL and other Free software licenses, as well.

Smack down - by tjstork (Score: 5, Informative) Thread

Katzer and company really need to be smacked down.

On their web site, they try to create the impression that they had their own solution and didn’t copy any code from the open source guys, but, then, in court, they fully admit that they in fact, did that.

So, they stole a bunch of code, made some money on it, then, they admitted it in court, but continue to lie to the public about what they did.

I mean, how sickening is that?

Finally, a court for the 21st century! - by langelgjm (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
It was refreshing to read certain portions of the ruling. I suggest everyone take a look at it. Here’s what stuck out at me:

Traditionally, copyright owners sold their copyrighted material in exchange for money. The lack of money changing hands in open source licensing should not be presumed to mean that there is no economic consideration, however. There are substantial benefits, including economic benefits, to the creation and distribution of copyrighted works under public licenses that range far beyond traditional license royalties.

This too:

The copyright holder here expressly stated the terms upon which the right to modify and distribute the material depended and invited direct contact if a downloader wished to negotiate other terms. These restrictions were both clear and necessary to accomplish the objectives of the open source licensing collaboration, including economic benefit… Copyright holders who engage in open source licensing have the right to control the modification and distribution of copyrighted material.

Good to know the court system can still work!

Good for GPL but… - by Anonymous Coward (Score: 3, Interesting) Thread

; Lessig calls it “huge and important news,” and notes that the reasoning is generalizable to the GPL and other Free software licenses, as well.

As well as most EULAs I suppose… or is a legal distinction made between license for personal use vs. license for redistribution?

Re:Good for GPL but… - by mrchaotica (Score: 3, Insightful) Thread

IANAL— It’s stronger copyright law - but for ‘our’ side I guess.

On the contrary, the issue being decided here is copyright law. To say that the Artistic License is “stronger than copyright law” makes no sense, as it relies on copyright law for its enforcement. In essence, the court ruled that the Artistic License works the same way as the GPL (even though the GPL makes it explicit and the Artistic License doesn’t):

You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program. Ancillary propagation of a covered work occurring solely as a consequence of using peer-to-peer transmission to receive a copy likewise does not require acceptance. However, nothing other than this License grants you permission to propagate or modify any covered work. These actions infringe copyright if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or propagating a covered work, you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so.

(GPL version 3, section 9; emphasis mine)

The argument made by the emphasized text is the same argument that the JMRI people made here (and that the judge agreed with).

Re:Good for GPL but… - by fishbowl (Score: 4, Informative) Thread

>or is a legal distinction made between license for personal use vs. license for redistribution?

Yes, there is such a distinction from the start — copyright protects distribution, not use.
You need a specific contract if you want your license to speak to use. For distribution, you
reserve all rights under copyright law, license or no license.

[in AlterSlash (Extended Remix)]

Student builds own energy-efficient home

(UPI - 13 Aug, 21:20) A future Yale University grad student is preparing for her move to New Haven, Conn., by constructing her own portable energy-efficient house in Byfield, Mass.
[in Camel Khazi]

Rat-Brained Robots Take Their First Steps

Posted by timothy (56% noise) View Skip
missb writes “Brain tissue cultured from rats has controlled a wheeled robot around a lab, according to New Scientist this week. Researchers in the UK have harnessed signals from thousands of disembodied rat neurons, and manipulated them to get a robot to respond to instructions. The team at the University of Reading in the UK hope their research will help provide treatments for diseases like Alzheimer’s and epilepsy.”

Future LucasArts project… - by fahrbot-bot (Score: 4, Funny) Thread
Reading about disembodied rat-brains and what George Lucas can do with a script got me thinking about future projects for LucasArts… Announcing the new animated film from George Lucas, Scott Adams and George Romero, Night of the Living Ratbert, featuring the disembodied brain of Jar Jar.

Qui-Gon: You almost got us killed. Are you brainless?
Jar Jar: I spake.
Qui-Gon: The ability to speak does not make you intelligent.
Jar Jar: “The Bosses would do terrible tings to me, terrible tings to me if me goin’ back dere!”
Qui-Gon: “Do you hear that? ”
Jar Jar:“Yah.”
Qui-Gon: “That is the sound of a thousand disembodied rat-brains heading this way.”
Off in the distance: “Brains, braaiinnss…”
Qui-Gon: (Starts hacking with lightsaber.)
Jar Jar: Messa feel strange… Brains, braaiinnss…

What was that sound? - by Red Flayer (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
It was the whoosh of grant money going down the drain.

This work will hopefully contribute to our knowledge of how brains work, but its potential should not be exaggerated, says Potter. “This system is a model. Everything it does is merely similar to what goes on in a brain, it’s not really the same thing. We can learn about the brain - but it may mislead us.”

What? Is he serious, making a statement like that? Does he think grants grow on trees, that he can so blithely disregard the opportunity for sensationalistic coverage and the resultant exposure to those who issue private grants? Sure, Alzheimer’s is mentioned, which is a nice hook, but he needs to make ridiculous claims in order to break through the wall of grant-deniers.

Sheesh. What is the academic world coming to, that they make responsible statements regarding their research?

Aaargh - by Sockatume (Score: 5, Funny) Thread
Suddenly, I just can’t stop screaming.

That outcome is very much exaggerated. - by Futurepower(R) (Score: 4, Insightful) Thread
“The team at the University of Reading in the UK hope their research will help provide treatments for diseases like Alzheimer’s and epilepsy.”

That outcome is very much exaggerated, apparently to try to get more attention. Any such result would depend on other huge advancements not yet made.

Names please. - by snspdaarf (Score: 5, Funny) Thread
What was the lead researcher’s name? Davros?

[in AlterSlash (Extended Remix)]

Some neighbors upset with made over house

(UPI - 13 Aug, 21:20) Neighbors of a house in North Carolina that got an 'Extreme Makeover' courtesy of ABC say the attention was a mixed blessing.
[in Camel Khazi]

Bash Cookbook

Posted by samzenpus (66% noise) View Skip
Chad_Wollenberg writes “Anyone who has used a derivative of Unix over the past 20 years has used Bash, which stands for Borne Again Shell. The geek in all of us makes us want to extend our ability to rule the command line. To truly master a Unix environment, you need to know a shell, and Bash is easily the most popular of them. Any Unix/Linux/BSD administrator knows the power at your fingertips is fully extended by what you can do within the Bash environment, and all of us need the best recipes to get the job done.” Keep reading for the rest of Chad’s review.

Enter Bash Cookbook. Properly named for the series of O’reilly books that gives you valuable information on subjects in the form of recipes, this book was refreshing in that it was properly organized, and surprisingly contemporary, even citing Virtualized platforms as a way to try out different OS’s for Bash. The book does a good job of pointing out the different operating systems that do run Bash, even citing Cygwin for Windows. They also use the POSIX standard, so that all of the examples are portable across platforms.

Bash Cookbook is by no means for the feint of heart. It seems that the book is meant for intermediate and above users of Bash. However, the first several chapters do a significant job of over viewing basic concepts of Bash navigation and combing simple commands. The book quickly changes gears to complex statements on how to get things done in Bash.

By Chapter 7, Bash Cookbook extends out of Bash commands and begins exploring combining the power of bash scripting with useful command such as grep, awk, and sed. To quote the authors, “if our scripting examples are going to tackle real-world problems, they need to use the wider range of tools that are actually used by real-world bash users and programmers.” And that is exactly what they do. This chapter alone gave me the ability to do more in the command line environment simply by explaining the functions of the scripts put forth. That is something that any reader, intermediate to expert, can take from this book. The detailed explanations really do give everyone the ability to learn something about the commands, and the references to additional resources often lead me to the computer, looking up further details.

I found Chapter 11 to be very useful (pun intended) finally grasping some concepts on the find command that have previously escaped me. From Chapter 12 on, the book focuses on writing useful and complex scripts. This is where the book really begins to shine for the Unix enthusiast and system administrator. The scripts found in Chapter 12, and their elaborate descriptions begin to show the true power of Bash scripting, and how much you can automate. Chapter 14 is about securing your scripts, and is a heavy read, but well worth reading for any administrator that would be using their scripts in a production environment.

Just when you think this book has reached its limits, it gives very handy customization examples in Chapter 16 on how to configure and customize Bash. And also goes into common mistakes made by the novice user. Combine all of that with the Appendices for quick reference, and this book has not left my side since it arrived. While I would not recommend this book for the novice user, I would recommend this book to any system administrator that has to work with Unix or Linux. If nothing else, the examples given here are full of good, reusable code to make tasks easier in your day to day functions. Well done.

You can purchase Bash Cookbook from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers’ book reviews — to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Re:Holding Out - by corbettw (Score: 4, Funny) Thread

Do you really want a shell that runs out of memory and starts killing all of your processes?

Obligatory. - by pushing-robot (Score: 4, Funny) Thread

http://xkcd.com/149/

Bash cookbook? - by mea37 (Score: 4, Funny) Thread

Well, ok… Cookbook sucks!

Oh, did I parse that wrong?

Re:Nice review, but I don’t understand something. - by techstar25 (Score: 5, Funny) Thread
Why is everybody bashing his review?

Okay, somebody had to say it.

What about the Advanced Bash Scripting Guide? - by UltraMathMan (Score: 5, Informative) Thread
Not knocking the book, especially as I haven’t read it, but I’ve found the Advanced Bash Scripting Guide (available free online) http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/ extremely helpful on numerous occasions.

[in AlterSlash (Extended Remix)]