Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: SmoothWall, Gopher, Be
But can you backtrack through a google cache? pointym5 writes "Checked out the ZeoSync web site lately? Remember all those PhDs on the scientific staff? Well, like I'm sure others did, I sent e-mail to a few of them expressing interest in more technical details. All that I contacted responded with absolute disclaimers of any relationship whatsoever with ZeoSync. This morning I note that most names are gone from the 'org chart' and the scientific team list. There are only five left, including Dr. Piotr Blass, 'developer of one of the world's first web sites.' Wow!"
How smooth is smooth? juct writes: "I appreciate it, that Slashdot gave the SmoothWall Team an opportunity to answer to the concerns in my review of their firewall. But it is full of errors and might leave a wrong feeling of security. So I invite everybody to my Tour on SmoothWall where you can judge for yourself."
Whispered words of wisdom, 'Let it be.' Sander van Dragt writes: "Many BeOS news lately. Not all so good for the BeOS community though. BeUnited, the organization which tried to license BeOS from Palm, has received today a final answer from Palm: '...we have made a firm decision NOT to license any part of this technology other than that which we incorporate into the Palm OS.' It is already known that the new 32-bit PalmOS will feature some elements of the Be technology, but that OS is built for PDAs, not for the desktop."
You can read that letter and the rest of the article on OS news.
And take this as you will -- An Anonymous Coward writes: "osnews.com is reporting that there is a new version of BeOS on the way... A German company called 'yellowTab' is said to be ready to ship a new version of BeOS (Just when everyone thought it was dead, and the final shovel full of dirt laid on top), get the full article here ... Hrm, I sure liked BeOS, I hope this one works out."
Dig, my brethren -- the Gopher Palace is almost complete! SuperguyA1 writes "Lwn is reporting that the gopher team has done it again with a 3.0 release marking Gopher's 10th anniversary. Happy birthday gopher. Thanks for helping me find all the muds I wasted so much time in college on:)"
"Bad connection, say again, you invented WHAT?" mi writes: "Yahoo! reports a potential problem, the Segway Scooter may have in Japan -- a Japanese robotics professor seems to have a patent on something very very similar since 1996. On the other hand, the USPTO knew about, when granting the patent to Segway's Dean Kamen, but still found Mr. Kamen's invention worthy of a patent in 1999. My favorite is the Kazuo Yamafuji's words: 'I would hand over my patent for one dollar if Mr. Kamen admitted that we were first.' Indeed, he just sat on the invention for 15 years."
The others didn't leave, they were simply compressed down to only 5 people using their revolutionary compression algorithm.
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
BeOS makes quite a capable OS for embedded systems. It seems completely logical that a portable computing company would want an interest in them. It's one of the most efficient OSes (on a operation/cycle) level and it's compatible with many different boards (x86, PPC, 68k, etc). It's really a waste that Palm's letting it go... in some ways, it's the wave of the future, but I guess (to Palm) it's also a relic of the past.
- Kamen has been working on the Segway for a lot longer than 15
years. Most people don't realize how old Dean Kamen is; Yamafuji probably
was just a young tot when Kamen introduced his "cripple cart."
- The Segway employs a sophisticated transmission system that adjusts
gear ratios depending on how difficult the terrain is (uphill, flat, or
downhill) and the desired speed. This improves battery life and
performance. Kazou's project had no such feature.
- As was clearly stated in the patent, Kamen used a gyroscope while
Yamafiji used a clumsy set of concentric rings and Hall effect sensors.
It's like the difference between using GNOME 1.0 and KDE 2.0 - there's just
no comparison.
- Kamen's software was considerably more streamlined because it was
written as a true embedded system, in pure ASM. Yamafiji's model used C++
because, well, it was just a model and it would have been useless if it
were not hooked up to the portable computer he used to build it.
Kamen deserves every penny he can make frmo Segway, both here and in Japan. For once, the USPTO did the right thing - and the media owes it to DK to stop complaining.Mr. Uptime
Free Open Source Naked Ladies!
the Be auction the day after tomorrow for those who are lucky enough to be near menlo park.
Who knows, maybe some of that stuff will become collectible.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
I have recently become quite interested in Gopher and I got to reading "The Whole Internet" which was basically the first internet book. When I got to the chapter on Gopher, it also mentioned the "Web" and said that:
"Admittedly, Web servers and hypertext editors are scarce; but the potential here makes the World-Wide Web one of the most interesting new tools on the Internet."
Oh how the tables have turned.
Just downloaded smoothwall 0.9.9se and had a search on google.
/usr/sbin/pppoe
/usr/sbin/pppoe
/usr/sbin/pppoe -D /etc/test
/etc/test
/etc/test
bash$ id
uid=99(nobody) gid=99(nobody) groups=99(nobody),14(smoothwa)
bash$ ls -l
-rwsr-x--- 1 root nobody 23888 Aug 6 12:36
bash$
bash$ ls -l
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root nobody 367 Jan 10 03:11
Though it's not surprising it's full of holes with code that the smoothwall people write:
...
if (setgid(0)) { fprintf(stderr, "Couldn't set GID to 0\n"); return 0; }
if (setuid(0)) { fprintf(stderr, "Couldn't set UID to 0\n"); return 0; }
...
snprintf(command, STRING_SIZE - 1, "/var/patches/%s/setup", argv[1]);
if (!(p = popen(command, "r")))
return -1;
etc. etc.
It's full of setgid(0);setuid(0);system(command);
absolutely unbelievable.
So yes it's really over. well that goes only for the Palm deal, since there are already some projects to make an OpenSource BeOs:
:-(
http://www.openbeos.org/
http://blueos.free.fr/
And those surely won't stop their efforts !
That's yet another example of the dangers of closed source systems...
RIP BEOS.
So it looks like BeOS is going to be lost forever -- the modern day equivalent of being bulldozed into a pit, burned, and buried under concrete.
... and in the end you have no one but yourself for getting fucked over and spit out.
Think of this as another example of the failure of modern-day copyright law. The purpose of copyright law is to place fine examples of the arts into the public domain -- if instead of computer software, BeOS consisted of a series of patents, then 20 years from now we would all have complete, free, access to BeOS, because the patents would have:
(1) been disclosed when the monopoly was granted
(2) expired
However, in the case of copyrighted computer object code, in exchange for granting a government monopoly of 95 years, the public gets nothing. Zilch. Nada. Copyright law hasn't just "tilted" to the side of copyright holders, it has no other master. The public interest is completely removed from consideration. Modern copyright law is NOTHING more then corporate welfare. It no longer benefits the public, and like all laws that work directly against the public interest, no longer deserves respect. Want to get rid of ancient, outdated, overreaching copyright law? Disobey it. Sit in the front of the bus -- in the seat labeled "for corporations only."
Take this as a warning. No matter how "cool" a piece of software is, if it is proprietary software, it is absolutely worthless. It can disappear at any moment, and it contributes nothing to the progress of computer science. nothing. Sure, you can pretend that you're part of the future by playing with a "cool" proprietary OS, but you're just wasting your time and energy on someone else's game.
Score: -1: Troll