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I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

code.mendhak.com

481–490 of 585 posts

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I refuse to believe there are adults out there where things like using a pen to write and mailing a letter are alien concepts that need to be learned. Some adults were born in 2007

Anyone, even someone born in 2007, should know how to use pen and paper. This is a basic component of being an educated person, not knowing how to do that is as shocking as being illiterate.

Sure. But why are they mailing letters? I remember being 18 myself (a looong time ago), and having a helpful adult shocked that nobody had ever taught me how to write a check. I think I've written a total of 8 in my whole life now?

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#482
post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Postal mail, for all its faults, is universally accessible by design I think it's important to note that this isn't actually true. For a lot of homeless people or people who move often postal mail isn't as good. Online communication is actually more universal. Most (all?) public libraries have computers now.

Not sure if this works in other countries, but here in the Netherlands, homeless folks can get a postal address at municipal offices. People who move can set up (albeit paid) mail forwarding for up to a year. Other than that, there’s good old ‘poste restante’, in which you can supposedly address mail to any post office and they’ll hold it for the recipient (even internationally), although I’ve never tried this. (I ap…

I wonder if any post offices have digital post box services to open, digitise, email and incinerate any incoming letters.

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FSF offices have moved again if you weren't aware. The new address is Free Software Foundation 31 Milk Street, # 960789 Boston, MA 02196 USA https://www.fsf.org/about/contact/mailing

In Gnulib we distribute and use the license with just a link to https://www.gnu.org/licenses/ > [1]. I would just use that. Many GNU projects use a rule that will fail 'make distcheck' when it sees an address in the sources [2]. [1] https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnulib.git/commit/?id=bf31... [2] https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnulib.git/commit/?id=086c...

Hmm, I wonder if there is a linter somewhere for copyright notice and license grant smells.

Made a note to add an fsf-address check to check-all-the-things.

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#484
post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hard to believe that waiting two hours is normal for customers of the USPS. You can order stamps online, they have (collection) postboxes and even offer a pick-up service for parcels. At $0.73 to send a letter anywhere in the USA, that sounds like a pretty impressive offering to me.

It's lining up multiple times. When I walk in with a box, I don't know how the hell to mail it, what to fill out, what the pricing vs. delivery ETA grid is so I can decide where I want to position myself on that curve, the different forms you need to fill to be on different parts of that curve. I usually end up screwing it up a few times in the process too. I didn't realize that the free boxes they give you are only…

If you have this much difficulty mailing a package I think your consulting rate should be a lot more than $200 an hour.

Shipping quotes are trivial to get online. It's also easy to print shipping with pirateship.

USPS picks up packages for free with your regular delivery.

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#485
post #89
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> legal (letter but longer) This one surprised me quite a bit. I think most people have A4/letter-sized folders. Why does anyone think that papers slightly longer than those folders are a good idea?

Legal size folders exist and are widely used by people who use ... legal size paper. Legal folders can be great to be able to print letter-sized things on, then you have an area at the bottom to write notes and stuff.

> Legal size folders exist and are widely used by people who use ... legal size paper.

Sure. But I didn't know I use legal size paper or even what it is before I asked the apartment complex to print the lease agreement, and it didn't fit in their own folder with the other move in papers. In my rank of weirdness discovered upon moving to the US, this is at about the same level as the different ounces.

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#486
post #14

> Writing the address on the envelope was awkward, as I haven’t used a pen in several years; it took a few attempts and some wasted envelopes... Wow -- I mean, sure, I don't use a pen that often, but I'm sure I hand-write something at least once a month...

I'm not sure if I go one day without writing something.

For my blog, I can usually go straight to typing, but for my bigger projects I start by writing out any ideas, research, etc. I find that writing stuff helps me recall it later, even if I don't actually read the notes. It's especially helpful for big blobs of interconnected ideas.

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#487
post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His difficulty was finding postage stamps for the self-addressed return envelope, and clearly the author is not American. Do you think it would be quite so easy to "buy envelopes and stamps" if you had to send a stamped return envelope to Nepal or Manila? Is that a "basic life skill" or would you have to do a little research to figure out what you'd need?

He had difficulty writing an address on an envelope. This skill is something we expect of 8 year old children.

Maybe we used to. When sending letters was still a thing people did.

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#489
> Writing the address on the envelope was awkward, as I haven’t used a pen in several years;

I wonder if this was just rhetorical flourish? Are there really people who never ever use a pen?

I barely ever handwrite anything but there are still crosswords and the occasional form to fill in.

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#490
post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the paper, the stuff on the paper scales the same. Want a large poster and then also handbills to give out? They're identical. Got 15 full size sheets of colour information but now want to turn it into a pocket handout ? No problem, it's the same thing but smaller. This feels obvious - of course it works like that, until your paper sizes aren't using this ratio (which the US ones don't) and then the frustration i…

Isn't the important part here just using a consistent aspect ratio? Like the fact that the aspect ratio chosen allows manufacturers to just use one base sheet and then subdivide it into smaller page sizes is convenient for manufacturers, but it's not a necessary property for scaling the contents of the page.

Sort of. For scaling something to different paper sizes, the constant aspect ratio is the important part. But the subdivision property is also important for a few reasons. Take booklet printing as an example. You need a paper size that's twice as wide as the normal paper size to print that on (so Ledger/Tabloid for booklet printing Letter pages). But ideally you'd want this larger paper size to have the same aspect ratio, so you could scale up something like a poster to it. The only aspect ratio that works for is 1:√2.

Same for printing two copies per page (2-up). With a 1:√2 ratio, you can perfectly fit two copies of something side-by-side on the same paper size. This was incredibly common back when I was at school, where A4 worksheets were printed 2-up on A4 paper so that each individual one was A5 in size (half the area, √2/2 the length). With A4, you then just chop the printed pages in half and the worksheet fits perfectly. With any other aspect ratio, either there'd be wasted space due to the different aspect ratio of the chopped-in-half paper to the original, or you'd have to print 4-up on larger paper and chop it into quarters. The 1:√2 aspect ratio of ISO paper sizes means you can just chop a page in half and get the same aspect ratio, and that's useful to people doing printing, not just manufacturers.

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