Slashdot Mirror

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

That doesn't exist yet.

So, right now, the parent would be sitting in front of a computer.

Well meaning no disrespect, it is a Techfest where research scientists get to show off everything they've been working on, mostly to other Microsoft employees plus a few journalists and academics. (As usual the slashdot summary is woefully inaccurate and misleading.)

I didn't read anything that implied that this bear was a product actually for sale, and I'd presume that it exists only as much as all of the wired up dream homes that Microsoft has been showcasing for the past several years. Example quote from here on the techfest:

"Though Schofield declined to say how many of these products will eventually make it into the real world, the tech that reaches implementation will most likely be reworked and repackaged before it's sent into circulation."

If it were sold and primarily used as a product to help parents by babysit their children without having to take an active part, I admit I'd have very similar concerns to yourself.

I sometimes wonder if it is ethical to attract the employees of a rival organization (maybe by offering better perks)

Poaching may or may not be ethical.

But,"turnabout is fair play," or in other cliche, "what's good for the goose is good for gander."

See: Borland Brain Drain Continues

Too bad the story submitter and the slashdot editors have worked together to give us a dollar amount an label it a server unit number, but still.... when looking at server deployments, I'm going to guess that if you're just looking for percent increases in units shipped, nobody this past year is going to beat XServe numbers.

These statistics are always hard to digest, though... what segment of the server market are we talking about, what constitutes a server, is that UnixTM or does BSD/Darwin count, etc... I always have more questions than such articles are prepared to answer.

Still, any increase in Linux sales is good news.

That opinion is so last century.

The XServe is so insanely great that people are really starting to take notice, even with Apple's historically bad server-side track record. A 36% revenue increase? That's nothing compared to the XServe over 119% unit sales increase. We're installing ours now, and I can see why people like them. They just work, they're damn fast, and they're really pretty cheaply priced when you compare them to similarly-capable systems, and it's honestly really, really hard to think of something they can't do.

Apple may not come off as a server company to you, but if you were to fairly evaluate the XServe? That thing sells itself... complete with BSD unixy goodness.

"Can any informed Europeans tell us why the Comission can just ignore what they've been told to do?"

Follow the money.

"Can any informed Europeans tell us why ICANN is so bad"

Follow the money.

"Can any informed Europeans tell us why the US invaded Iraq"

Follow the money.

*this is a recording*

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (30 Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

Mod me down if you like, but if an old rant from an ex developer is considered "interesting", whis should be as well.
Facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (30 Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (30 Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

MS could not do that. They'd have to release the MS-Linux (I feel icky just saying that) in the GPL, and that would just chafe them big time.

It would probably mean that manufacturers would say: Heck, leenooks people want drivers, microsoft wants drivers, let's just write linus drivers, since MS can use their MS-Linux.

That woul dbe the death of the current windows Codebase.

OT: Longhorn will not be released. Microsoft will have collapsed enough by then that they won't be able to support the core dev team.

Fine, don't believe me. Just remember that windows 2003 server is already 2 years old, it is an overkill already.

That, and if you want real enterprise-grade software, you go Linux (free as in Zero Dollars)

For those of you who have a hard time accespting the last statement:
Oracle is the de-facto enterprise database. See http://www.itp.net/news/details.php?id=13678&categ ory=

IBM's newest mainframe, the zSeries, supports Redhat, Suse, and Turbolinux. But no MS Windows. See http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/os/

Linux on cellphones:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1765103,00.as p?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594

Linux at Merryl Lynch, etc etc etc.

You can't kill linux. Even Linus can't kill Linux. If Linus decided he had had enough of the rat race and decided to spend all his time at home with his wife, Linux would go on withour missing a beat.
Microsoft can't kill linux for the very same reasons.

Especially since it would be easy enough to wave an RFID reader at people's purses, back pockets, etc. At, say, $24 each, in a large crowd, you could amass quite a bit of money, and many people would never know it happened.

Plus the advice summary is bullshit:

Install anti-virus software
That's corrective action. How about prevenaitive action like pointing out secure products and warning the public to avoid defective ones? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Keep your anti-virus software up to date
You can't patch fast enough. That includes so called anti-virus software. Someone has to get hit first. AV companies have to then react and update the AV software profile. Then users have to add the updated profile, over a modem that can take time. MS-Slammer reached saturation in 8.5 minutes.

Install a personal firewall
Web pages and e-mail go right through that fire wall, they're supposed to, so do outgoing connections usually. Unfortunately most MS malware comes in via MSIE (the web) or MS-Outlook (mail), so how exactly is a firewall going to help? How about swapping out vulnerable applications and services instead?

Use Windows updates to patch security holes
There are other systems besides MS-Windows. Currently these do not even get viruses or worms. Some of these (e.g. Ubuntu) are easy to install and work on existing x86 hardware. Macintoshes are low maintenance and work out of the box. Unless you're a heavy gamer, you don't need MS-Windows.

Do not open e-mail messages that look suspicious
A virus is only harmless data, unless your system is designed to run it on sight. How about choosing an e-mail client that's not designed to spread viruses. Thunderbird, Mozilla, and Eudora are excellent choices.

Do not click on e-mail attachments you were not expecting
Use one of the above mail clients and/or switch to an operating system not designed to spread viruses.

Anyone CAN get one! All you have to do is pay X amount of money.

Besides, do you really trust people such as Verisign to actively control certs?

eWeek.com is reporting that "Dozens of blogs hosted by Google Inc.'s Blogger service can install programs that are widely considered to be spyware and adware onto visitors' computers...In many cases, users are discovering the offending sites as they browse among blogs through Blogger's navigation bar. The offending blogs typically prompt visitors to accept downloads through misleading pop-up windows." Here is the link to the article: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1768836,00.as p

Seems that there is already some official complaints on this patent from Real Software. From the article:
"Their patent is only for this operation in BASIC languages. We are the biggest threat to Microsoft in the area of BASIC languages, so there's no other way to read this other than as an attempt to restrict our success," Perlman said.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1767520,00.as p

Expect bad news for Lexmark on all fronts. You may recall that Dell has been using Lexmark printers for a few years. But now, even Dell is moving away from them in favor of other printer vendors.

Not sure if it relates back directly to their frivolous use of the DMCA, but it seems like they are being hit from all sides right now.

large sections of the Spanish (esp. Extremadura, Basque Country, Catalunya, Andalucia, Zaragoza), Brazilian, Peruvian, German (Munich leading), Chilean, Austrian (Vienna, Linz) and French Governments already use Linux heavily (and sometimes under mandate) in both desktop and server installations.

corporations? i didn't think that was news.

grep http://www.eweek.com/category2/0,4148,1237915,00.a sp?kc=600, believe it or not, Linux is already very popular in pub/mil/gov, EAL or otherwise.

i don't follow Governmental adoptions of Linux in America, the country is off my radar.

Gytis Barzdukas, director of product management in Microsoft's security business technology unit, said the free anti-spyware tools would only be available for a "personal edition" and made it clear that an enterprise version with management capabilities will carry a price tag.

"We're planning a refresh [of the anti-spyware beta] within the next few months. In the meantime, we're talking to enterprise customers, asking them about the management capabilities they need. Once we figure all that out, we will release a managed version," Barzdukas said in an interview with eWEEK.com.

The benefit is clear: Solaris would have slowed its death spiral from its great height. Why else do you think they Open Sourced it in the first place? They just miscalculated, manouvered badly, and picked the wrong license. Jeers instead of cheers. Not a good marketing move, and certainly not something to garner the same community fervor as only the GPL-oriented can expend. They would have had a majority of defenders instead of detractors. Not something to take lightly in this slippery market. Public noise can make the difference between being independent, and being a subsidiary.

It may even have split the Linux community into adopters of Solaris in addition to Linux. It would have given Sun breathing space in the market, as even IBM would find it hard to argue the point of using Linux to their customers when another robust and battle-tested GPL OS was out there. But, even more importantly, it could have given Linux a real competitive fight, giving both a chance to evolve and surpass each other. The community could've benefited greatly.

Linus understands Sun very well when he says that:

"...from Sun's perspective, the CDDL had to be incompatible with the GPL. Sun "wants to keep a moat against the barbarians at the gate," he wrote in an e-mail interview. Torvalds said he does not expect developers clamoring to start playing with that source code.

"Nobody wants to play with a crippled version [of Solaris]. I, obviously, do believe that they'll have a hard time getting much of a community built up," Torvalds wrote. "I think there are parallels with the Java 'we'll control the process' model. I personally think that their problem is that they want to control the end result too much, and because of that they won't get any of the real advantages of open source." "

And...

"He contrasted Sun's CDDL with the wide-open nature of the GPL. "One of the beauties of the GPL," he said, is that "you have to totally give up control over the project (because everybody literally has the same rights to the whole project), but exactly because nobody can control it, it makes everybody feel like true owners.""

He's right, and Sun will have to learn it the hard way.

So what you end up as you almost always do is a religious argument based on hypothetical scenarios that have no substance in reality. Fine but don't image that it makes anyone with any sense or perspective think that Sun is out to damage GPL. It isn't and in fact all the evidence is that Sun is out to support GPL where it is sensible.

Any GPL developer would be in danger of contaminating his projects if he were to work on Open Solaris AND Linux due to Sun's questionable patent stance. Yes, witholding patents makes sense if you intend to hurt the users of what you consider a competing community. Why else withold from some and give to others? They've performed an action that doesn't require explanation.

Sun was doing Open Source or something rather like it when the perceived wisdom was that this was a very stupid move commercially.

Let's see, Unix source code was floating around and being shared by various universities and companies. Everyone was sharing their improvements. Now that was enlightenment. Sun relicenses what other people had worked on, decides to close their source and suddenly they were enlightened? Please, it's because of companies like Sun that GNU was started in the first place.

The benefit is clear: Solaris would have slowed its death spiral from its great height. Why else do you think they Open Sourced it in the first place? They just miscalculated, manouvered badly, and picked the wrong license. Jeers instead of cheers. Not a good marketing move, and certainly not something to garner the same community fervor as only the GPL-oriented can expend. They would have had a majority of defenders instead of detractors. Not something to take lightly in this slippery market. Public noise can make the difference between being independent, and being a subsidiary.

It may even have split the Linux community into adopters of Solaris in addition to Linux. It would have given Sun breathing space in the market, as even IBM would find it hard to argue the point of using Linux to their customers when another robust and battle-tested GPL OS was out there. But, even more importantly, it could have given Linux a real competitive fight, giving both a chance to evolve and surpass each other. The community could've benefited greatly.

Linus understands Sun very well when he says that:

"...from Sun's perspective, the CDDL had to be incompatible with the GPL. Sun "wants to keep a moat against the barbarians at the gate," he wrote in an e-mail interview. Torvalds said he does not expect developers clamoring to start playing with that source code.

"Nobody wants to play with a crippled version [of Solaris]. I, obviously, do believe that they'll have a hard time getting much of a community built up," Torvalds wrote. "I think there are parallels with the Java 'we'll control the process' model. I personally think that their problem is that they want to control the end result too much, and because of that they won't get any of the real advantages of open source." "

And...

"He contrasted Sun's CDDL with the wide-open nature of the GPL. "One of the beauties of the GPL," he said, is that "you have to totally give up control over the project (because everybody literally has the same rights to the whole project), but exactly because nobody can control it, it makes everybody feel like true owners.""

He's right, and Sun will have to learn it the hard way.

So what you end up as you almost always do is a religious argument based on hypothetical scenarios that have no substance in reality. Fine but don't image that it makes anyone with any sense or perspective think that Sun is out to damage GPL. It isn't and in fact all the evidence is that Sun is out to support GPL where it is sensible.

Any GPL developer would be in danger of contaminating his projects if he were to work on Open Solaris AND Linux due to Sun's questionable patent stance. Yes, witholding patents makes sense if you intend to hurt the users of what you consider a competing community. Why else withold from some and give to others? They've performed an action that doesn't require explanation.

Sun was doing Open Source or something rather like it when the perceived wisdom was that this was a very stupid move commercially.

Let's see, Unix source code was floating around and being shared by various universities and companies. Everyone was sharing their improvements. Now that was enlightenment. Sun relicenses what other people had worked on, decides to close their source and suddenly they were enlightened? Please, it's because of companies like Sun that GNU was started in the first place.

Nonsense. Sun's leadership developed a license that is almost GPL-like, yet they purposely went out of their way in making it incompatible with the GPL. This is a clear sign of contempt for the GPL. It may be too late for them to switch their other products over to this license, they'd lose all credibility, but if they could they would. They still aren't able to articulate a defense for their action, only that they don't see the big deal. This from a company that uses the GPL in other open source products. Most open source advocates haven't missed the message on this one.

...they are the largest commercial donator of code under GPL. We have discussed OpenOffice in detail but Sun has also made huge donations to NetBeans, Grid Engine and a whole host of other GPL or GPL compatible projects.

Don't confuse market tactics against a dangerous monopolistic rival (MS Office, Visual Studio) to be approval or acceptance of a license. Sun is fully aware which license is more effective (BSD or GPL) against M$, and have used it strategically. But, Sun's leadership is not how you make them out to be. They are the opposite. They could have easily made their license compatible with the GPL rather than exclude it, but they didn't.

= 9J =

Even if NAC does not currently use Trusted Computing:
Cisco Systems and Broadcom are already developing switches that will use the TPM for authentication and more

recent move by members of the Trusted Computing Group to create an open standards NAC alternative

and While Cisco presents NAC as an industry-standard approach, at this point, it's a Cisco approach, which apparently Cisco is hoping will become a de facto standard. Elsewhere, there's the Trusted Network Connect standard that's being put together under the auspices of the TCG (Trusted Computing Group), which is intended to accomplish the same thing.

So one way or another the Trusted network admission system *is* a genuine project and genuine threat. Plus the governent call for ordinary ISPs to impose exactly this sort of system on the public as part of their Terms of service. That government plan used to be documented at this BSA address, unfortunately they have taken the PDF down and I cannot find another copy anywhere. I did save some quotes from the President's Cyber Security Advisor's keynote speech:

I think we need to decide that from now on IT security functionality will be built in to what we do, to the products that we bring to market.
-
TCPA, the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance, is an example of bringing hardware and software manufacturers together. But TCPA is not enough.
-
It is not beyond the wit of this industry to figure out a way of forcing down patches.
-
ISPs and carriers can insist that when cable modems and DSL hookups are made, firewalls are installed. It is not enough for an ISP or carrier to say, oh, and by the way, you might want to think about a firewall.

-

Even if NAC does not currently use Trusted Computing:
Cisco Systems and Broadcom are already developing switches that will use the TPM for authentication and more

recent move by members of the Trusted Computing Group to create an open standards NAC alternative

and While Cisco presents NAC as an industry-standard approach, at this point, it's a Cisco approach, which apparently Cisco is hoping will become a de facto standard. Elsewhere, there's the Trusted Network Connect standard that's being put together under the auspices of the TCG (Trusted Computing Group), which is intended to accomplish the same thing.

So one way or another the Trusted network admission system *is* a genuine project and genuine threat. Plus the governent call for ordinary ISPs to impose exactly this sort of system on the public as part of their Terms of service. That government plan used to be documented at this BSA address, unfortunately they have taken the PDF down and I cannot find another copy anywhere.

-

that eweek url is from RSA 2004 (last year). this is the story from this year's conference.

More on Carrier Grade Linux Spec.

As a few people have mentioned, this idea seems very akin to just having a raw, uncompressed audio format, like WAV, which I would agree. However, the thought occured to me, what if future audio files were distributed in a truly raw data file, unable to be played until it was converted to a popular format?

What kind of security risk would this provide? We've already heard about the adware that can crop up in media files. Imagine, 1337 h4x0rz creating a corrupted raw audio file that, when formatted, causes a buffer overflow...

I guess that since this is already happening to some degree, it wouldn't be anything new, but with a raw data file taking on any arbitrary audio format, could this pose an increased risk of malicious media files?

MS does not buckle under this threat, they never do.

Even with cost as a factor...the transition to OpenOffice, the support of OpenOffice and the maintenance of OpenOffice all cost money.

Does anyone have a link to a reliable study that compares the maintenance cost of OpenOffice with MS Office?

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (30 Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

You know, it seems completely lost on the people that are quoted in that article that BEFORE Carly, HP was doing fine financially. Her culture change screwed that company in many ways, the financial included.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (30 Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

Taylor rose through the ranks, and for the past 18 months was director of business strategy for CEO Steve Ballmer. His latest mission was helping Microsoft develop a way to measure customer satisfaction with Microsoft partners.

In his platform-strategist role, Taylor succeeds Peter Houston, senior director of Microsoft's Windows Server Strategies, as chief Linux watcher.

From here

I have always thought that Discovery is the most interesting area of research on the Internet. The idea of applications seeking out each other, learning about their resources and interfaces, and hooking up and communicating, without any human intervention is fascinating.

Windows Media Player permits the installation of
spyware. Ever use that?

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1749993,00.as p/

No, you don't. =) Most software makers will license by counting the number of sockets, Microsoft included. But others will count the number of cores. See this.

There's no XP Server; the existing products are Win2K Server and Win2K3 Server Standard.

Again, Microsoft has stated that they will treat one CPU as a single CPU for licensing purposes, no matter how many cores it has.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1680142,00.as p

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (30 Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

this is the while point.

if MCI won't listen to complaints from non-customers who are victimized by them, the pressure to change needs to come directly from MCI customers.

IOW, RBLs _make_ spam MCI's problem. the more MCI ignores their abusive customers, the more MCI will be blocked, and the more MCI customers will complain to them.

the idea is that either:
1) mci will come to their senses and nuke their spammers, or
2) go out of business after all their customers leave in disgust.

it looks like they're hellbent on 2), especially after their ceo was indicted and their CFO plead guilty to fraud.

AFAIK, no WMA or Word Document DRM etc has been exploited, so I can't really see what that has to do with these news.

Well, now you do know that WMA's DRM has been exploited.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (30 Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

Of course, you should understand that you understate the level of agreement we are in when you say, "I don't mean to criticize you."

EULAs have definitely been legally upheld. Not every one, but, of course, we're speaking very general anyway. The concept of an EULA is definitely upheld.

This article describes another incidences where software shrink-wrap licences have been upheld. Even ruling against reverse-engineering!

This doesn't apply to the US directly, but this PDF describes how the GPL, just another EULA when you get down to it, was upheld in Germany. Eben Moglen says it's more than fine in the US as well.

Of course, you argue that, even then, you are still allowed to do things like reverse-engineer because it's in your rights and the license isn't valid. That's a normative argument, and I have nothing to say to that though(when you look at things like the GPL I'm sure it doesn't take you long to come up with some good arguments against yourself though). The fact is, the law does see EULAs as valid, that's all I'm describing.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (30 Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

Interesting, thanks for the link. Gates wanted to meet with President da Silva of Brazil last week in Davos to work things out. The story you linked to said that they did meet in Davos two years ago, but didn't mention if they met this time. From eWeek, The Open-Source Challenge :

Competitive pressure intensifies when whole countries move toward open-source platforms and applications. Brazil is following the example of China in embracing Linux both for government workers and citizens. This year, Brazil plans to subsidize the purchase by lower-income individuals of PCs running Linux and 25 other open-source programs. Last year, Microsoft sued Sergio Amadeu, the head of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's National Institute of Technology, when he compared Microsoft to a drug pusher; in 2003, the Brazilian government signed a letter of intent with IBM to boost Brazil's use of Linux. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates reportedly was seeking a meeting with President da Silva at the World Economic Forum last week in Davos, Switzerland.

I wasn't able to find out if they met this time or not, but if they did, I guess they didn't work it out. They certainly didn't see eye to eye on economic policies discussed at the conference last week... From the World Peace Herald:

Chirac urged leaders to charge levies on cross-border financial transactions and tax air and ship transport fuel -- an idea backed by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva. But the idea met with short shrift from most Davos panelists Thursday. "How long would it take to get an international tax in place? Five years? Ten years? How many lives would be lost in that time?" asked Gates.

It will be interesting to see if Brazil stands firm in their stance supporting open source, instead of caving in like many governments before them (Mexico, Peru, Israel come to mind). If they don't back down, it will set a strong example for other developing (and developed, for that matter) countries to follow.

And here a nice old news about
GPL enforcing and related comment
from uncle Ballmer about the
viral nature of GPL:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1654625,00.as p

No, they aren't.I mean come on! We already heard about these rumors a loooong time ago. It's not true. Stop posting about it.

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (30 Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

Wake Up

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
W hat's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (30 Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
W hat's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (30 Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

GOOGLE, the internet search engine company, admitted it may have broken United States stock market rules after it revealed it illegally issued about 30 million shares worth £1.69 billion to current and former staff. ... ...
The firm, whose search engine gets more than 200 million inquiries every day, said it may have broken federal securities laws and the securities laws of 18 states , including New York, Texas and Virginia, by failing to register the stock and options or exempt them from registration.

All software patents are evil, and Google's search algorithm is patented and owned by Stanford University. Stanford isn't exactly a saintly university fulfilling its original mission of educating the children of California. Instead, the university has become a vehicle for fattening the wallets of the so-called "professors", who spend little time on their charades of teaching, and a lot of time on finding ways to get more money. See also http://www.epinions.com/content_73675148932 for similar information.

A case in point: On the Google board of directors is Stanford University president, John Hennessey, who was personally given $6 million worth of shares (or more precisely 65,000 shares).

This is a conflict of interest, which is bad in many ways.

First it almost looks like a payoff of some sort. A payoff is a bad thing, because it breeds the potential for wasting money. For example, three Stanford professors serve on the board of directors of Oracle, a database company, and Stanford miraculously bought its services to migrate its internal financial software to Oracle's.. The result was a disaster to the tune of $93.4 million in wasted money, five years late and over-budget, with a lot of unhappy users in the end. (See the article by Deborah Gage at http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1609179,00.as p

Second, it drains Hennessy's time away from working on the multitude of problems at Stanford, including uneven undergraduate advising (see the November 23, 2004, issue of the Stanford Daily which states "For several years now, Stanford students have generally agreed that undergraduate advising at the Farm is unreliable and ineffective.") and a shortage of freshman/sophomore seminars (see the January 19, 2005, issue of the Stanford Daily) , which causes a lack of faculty-student interaction. In the May 19, 2004, issue of The Stanford Report, journalist Ray Delgado revealed

-Faculty participation in advising has dropped from as much as 48 percent in the late 1970s to 12 to 15 percent today, partly due to ever-increasing demands on their time.

-Some advisers complained that they were matched with groups of students with nothing in common with each other or their adviser and felt uncomfortable participating in the standard socialization events. He said some faculty also complained about having too much information to digest when they became advisers.

About 60% of the undergraduates are on financial aid, so please none of the rubbish about Stanford students being rich snobs.

Third, Hennessey doesn't need the money. As President of Stanford, Hennessy earns about $400,000 a year in salary. In addition he is rich from the company he founded (and is a board member of), MIPS Technologies, which licenses its chip architecture and CPU cores to everything from game consoles (the Nintendo 64 , the original PlayStation, and the PlayStation 2) to PVRs, earning the company several hundred million dollars a year.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (30 Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.