Slashback: Civilians, Rubyx, Restrictions

Slashback this evening brings you a dose of updates and clarifications to previous stories about Yahoo!'s block on third-party messaging products, the Ruby-based Linux distro called Rubyx, and a few notes of caution on "unlimited" wireless internet service.

Do they have the original Coneheads novels? seattlenerd writes "Largely lost in the TV coverage and media hype surrounding Friday's opening of Paul Allen's Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle is the fact that SFM celebrates books as much as TV/film SF, according to at least one review. Lots of first editions and several manuscripts are on display as the font of SF ideas. Also not covered much: There's no fantasy or horror. It's all science fiction, with no apologies. And ain't it cool that someone has acknowledged that there are actual writers behind some of the best science-fiction depictions? And that some of these writers are on SFM's advisory board?"

(Reader Comte offered a sneak peek at the museum last week.)

That's why it's called software. An anonymous reader writes "News.com.au is reporting an Australian company has released "The Worlds First" anti-virus software for mobile phones to fix the recent 'Caribe' virus and attempts to prevent future exploits."

Simon Crean of Mobile security company Jamanda wrote to say that his company is also has "just delivered a comprehensive fix to the widely publicised mobile virus Cabir and made this fix available to the public via its website at www.jamanda.com. As a gesture of goodwill and to maintain market confidence, concerned mobile users can currently download and install this fix at no charge."

Speaking of quick fixes, baudilus writes "The good folks at Cerulean Studios have already released a patch for Trillian, addressing the block attempt by Yahoo!. In half a day they've outdone Yahoo!'s latest scheme. How's that for support?"

Click two ISOs together, go /home. awalrond writes "Rubyx is a source-based Linux distro which achieved far too much interest a couple of months back after a mention on Slashdot. The author had to pull the plug due to the massive bandwidth costs of users downloading all the sources. Well now it's back, fully converted to use the new White Water bandwidth-sharing download utility. A line has been drawn in the sand, and this e-gauntlet thrown back at Slashdot.

Rubyx can be downloaded, built and installed with a single command to the small rubyx script (written in the ruby language) The same script handles all subsequent package management, and can even create a bootable ISO image of the distro."

I want to see the floating candy instead. Mike Taht writes "Bruce Damer, curator of the Digibarn, got some stunning pictures and movies of the historic SpaceShipOne launch event on Monday. Check it out!"

Also in civilian space news, Walkiry writes "The Russian Space Comittee has rejected Gregory Olsen, who was set to become the third space tourist, due to health reasons. This comes as a bit of a surprise, given that Olsen himself seemed quite condfident about his performance during the physical training and claimed that the hardest part was actually learning Russian. A real shame."

(The linked story is less clear about whether Olsen will eventually be able to make the trip; in it, a spokesman for Space Adventures denies that this rejection precludes Olsen's flight.)

His meaning is clear. Matheus Villela writes "Sergio Amadeu, Brazilian president of ITI, the third authority in Brazilian government being below only of Brazilian president and the minister of civil house and recently sued by Microsoft have released an official note to Brazilian and international press; here's a translation of what he said:

' In atention to the demands of national and international press, which seens solidary with Brazilian Govern at this moment with no precedences in the history, when a controller of an important public institucion of this country personally suffers the action from those interested in mantain a hegeomonic model, i come, after hear my federal lawyers and solicitors, say that the judicial provocation moved against my person is, by itself, so insultant and improper, that does not deserve reply.

For other hand, i would like to register that the act of contract software preserving the values freedom and opening is, for the Brazilian Government, a question of indissolvable form to the democratic principle.
And because a long and painful way was covered to arrive at the current period of stage of development of the democracy in this Country, we will not stop in our fight. If democracy is a value replect of ideology, is not never an insignificant value. If democracy is a dream, is a dream of which this Country never will wake up again.

The future is free.'"

By reading this far, you irrevocably agree to all the text that follows. emtboy9 writes "If you happen to live in the Raleigh-Durham area, Nextel is now officially offering wireless Broadband via its cell towers. With all the discussion about BPL as of late, its refreshing to finally see someone in my local area doing wireless which is a much better mechanism for broadband access.

Nextel's coverage area looks to be about the same as the trial area they had been running, but if this takes off, it shouldn't be too much longer until they are offering this coast to coast, especially with coming pressure from Cingular Wireless."

However, be choosy about wireless internet service, which can come with some hidden snags: HEXAN writes "With all the recent hubub over wireless access at broadband speeds, I decided to check out Verizon's plan. Although the price is a bit steep, it seemed ok until I got to the "Terms and Conditions."

Here's a sampling of what you cannot do with Verizon's "unlimited" Internet Access: "...cannot be used for" "uploading, downloading or streaming of movies, music or games" [Ugg], "Web camera posts or broadcasts" [No camgirls], "telemetry applications" [No GPS], "substitute or backup for private lines" [No VOIP]. If I cannot use the service to play games, video conference, make calls, download movies or MP3's, what exactly am I paying for? More importantly, how badly will they impinge on my privacy to enforce this agreement? P.s. You cannot reach that special agreement until you go beyond the "front door". The gotcha clauses are not mentioned in the standard, consumer friendly, litigation-approved agreement."

Comments

meh

[grahagre]

yahoo shouldnt be _that_ worried since it seems that nobody appears to use the yahoo messenger in the first place (anymore).

Re:meh

[cheekyboy]

80% of yagoo msg usage are the 'bots' on the chat channels which are themselves, unauthorized clients...
how the hell do they manage that?

The future is free.

[rd4tech]

The future is free.

...and so bright, I have to wear sunglases...
seems like I've been outsorced to Brazil

Re:The future is free.

[Anonymous Coward]

...and so bright, I have to wear sunglases...

uh, that's 'shades'.

Re:The future is free.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a good thing Microsoft is suing because the Brazilians probably weren't put off enough by the Simpsons lampooning them. We need to make sure there's not a nation in the world that doesn't hate the USA.

Maybe we can ship a boatload of frat boys to Antartica to pee out a giant "USA Rules!" in the snow.

Re:The future is free.

[s20451]

Free, huh?

This is the same country where a NYT reporter was threatened with deportation after he said (backed by sources) that President Lula da Silva was an alcoholic? link

Re:The future is free.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe we can ship a boatload of frat boys to Antartica to pee out a giant "USA Rules!" in the snow.

I know one frat boy I'd volunteer for that mission.

Re:The future is free.

[Sepodati]

It's fraternity, not frat. You don't call your country a cunt, do you?

Re:The future is free.

[Teancum]

Brazil is a free and democratic society, of that there should be no doubt. There are cultural difference (substantial!) between Brazil and America. In fact, from my own experience, it is sort of a cross between America and Europe, with a unique South American flavor.

The Portuguese, while a major ethnic group, is not the dominant one. I lived in the Italian part of Sao Paulo and some old timers could still speak Italian, but almost none of the kids (under 18 crowd) could speak languages of the Old World other than Portuguese and English, with English being a rather mottled version that was only studied in School like Americans (if you are into it) study French, German, or Spanish. English is not a daily language. Many teachers in Brazil learn British English, but with American cultural twists (which makes some very interesting conversations in English).

What I'm trying to say is that Brazil is not the backward country that you seem to be thinking it is. Freedom is relative, and there are many things you can do in Brazil that if done in America will get you arrested and thrown in jail. I also find the attitude to discuss religion in a public forum to be refreshing compared to almost official atheism in the U.S.A. (the ACLU's attitude about this not withstanding).

That Brazil has more respect for its elected officials than the NYT has for American politicians is totally understandable. If a reporter had done something similar during the JFK administration they probabaly would have been treated in a very similar fashion in the USA. It was just habit for that journalist to forget he was in a different country with a different culture, and not reporting from Texas.

Re:The future is free.

[Cobralisk]

No, I call it a count! One count, ah ah ah...

Re:The future is free.

[Anonymous Coward]

OMFG it happened in the same country? THen it logically follows that the entire population of that country are all a bunch of fucking hypocrites full of shit and can be safely ignored QED.

Re:The future is free.

[Photon Ghoul]

I also find the attitude to discuss religion in a public forum to be refreshing compared to almost official atheism in the U.S.A. (the ACLU's attitude about this not withstanding).

Official atheism? Are you in Bizarro U.S.A.? I'll give you one since you seem to not be from the U.S. We have an official "seperation" of church and state - but not official athiesm. Christianity and theism is the accepted belief system. If you can, watch close as the U.S. presidential debates begin - I guarantee they will try to out-religion each other.

Re:The future is free.

[sageman]

...almost official atheism in the U.S.A.

Hear, hear! I wish! Unfortunately we aren't quite there yet, what with crowds of religionists still (hey, they have the right to believe in their silly ideas, just like others have the right to disbelieve their ideas) abound and a president openly chrestian. I have never seen an issue in discussing religion openly here in the states so I'm a little confused about the attitude to discuss religion in a public forum comment. Whatever, not trolling, just flinging random ideas around, without much cohesion. Time to go to sleep.

Re:The future is free.

[sumdumass]

He was speaking about the push to make religion politicaly incorect. In some if not most public forums (not just internet) religious speak and attitue is mostly ousted as undesireable by someone. For some reason we have to apease the minority of the comunity and stop saying the pledge or talking about money or somethign because it has a reference to god. In some areas, some people are almost embarassed to admit they goto church. This is the "official atheism" he is refering to.

Even in this enviroment (./) if you admit to being of a religious nature you will have someone trying to call you stupid or a mindless sheep that has to follow some book that was made up by stoner thinking of a way to control the masses. God forbid you actually state your religion, then you will have a bunch more people telling you your wrong for beliveing in a certain god, worship cows, or somethign of the sort. Religion has basically become taboo in america unless your in an enviroment were it is expected to talk about religion. It is verry hard to find people willing to have a conversation about religion outside one of these enviroments and it is even harder to just meet new people and talk about how being faithfull to your worship has helped you thru tough times.

Re:The future is free.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, given that the media and the universities are composed almost entirely of anti-religious bigots, our nation is rapidly becoming one of official atheism.

Re:The future is free.

[Anonymous Coward]

You frat boys sure are pissy for a bunch of sadomasocistic closeted homos. Did someone take your date rape drugs away from you?

Re:The future is free.

[Teancum]

I didn't want this to devolve into a religious freedom argument, but rather point out important differences in attitudes regarding freedom between Brazil and the USA.

In Brazil, Catholcism is a very dominant force, and in just about every public building you will find a picture of the Pope, even police stations and DMV bureaus. I am not talking about one on the desk of one of the employees or officers, but one in a very prominent place in very plain view, with generally nothing else around it. Kinda like having a U.S. flag or a picture of the current President of the USA (or governor of the respective state in state offices), but even more likely to be found than those symbols are in the U.S. Of course the most bizzare was finding a huge picture of JFK where the Pope would normally be found, but that is another story. And that was in the late 1980's.

The Roman Catholic Church isn't quite as dominant as it once was, and if I'm not mistaken, a majority of Sao Paulo (meaning just slightly larger than 50%) is now protestant, primarily a mixture of hard-core evangelical churches (Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Baptists, Penecostal, and a few home-grown Christian-based religions unique to Brazil like the Brazilian Catholic Church (not Roman Catholic). Sao Paulo is also unique in that there is also a rather large minority that is Buddahist, something you normally don't find in the USA or anywhere else in the Americas for that matter. In some ways this Buddahism has entered the culture, together with a history of fighting Portuguese bureaucracy that can only be experienced to be fully appreciated. Rio was the capital of Portugual for about 20 years (no kidding), and that heritage of being a European(???) capital has never left that city either.

It is also telling how Brazil "fought" their war of indendance: The Prince-Regent (kinda like the Prince of Wales in England, but this was a Portuguese Prince) was called back to Europe and to put his deputy in charge of Brazil. He threw down his coat and proclaimed that Brazil was no longer under the authority of Portugual. Some people around him proclaimed him to be the new "Emperor" of Brazil, a few shots from rifles were fired into the air, and the Revolution was over. Quite a bit different from what Washington had to go through.

Getting back to public discussions of religion: It is indeed sad that religion as a topic can't be discussed publicly. It is a part of life and even if you belive or not, others do have religion as a central part of their lives. If you want to understand what makes people tick, you need to understand at least what viewpoint a religious attitude does to change people's perspectives about many topics. To ignore this or to "compartmentalize" religion to be only discussed in churches doesn't allow this topic to be explored even by people who have other beliefs.

When a candidate for political office who ignores religion suddenly finds him/herself losing and election, they should realize that religion is a big deal.

I could enumerate specific examples of where my speech has been stopped and surpressed due to talking about religion. Not preaching a specific religion but discussing the impact of religious thought in an historical context or even suggesting that people who lived 100-200 years ago had religious motivations to many of the things they did, including religious repression. I was encouraged to pretend that religion never played a part in the history of the USA. That is a hard pill for me to swallow.

Re:The future is free.

[KnightStalker]

In some areas, some people are almost embarassed to admit they goto church

I suspect that applies to very few areas. I live in one of the least religious towns around, and it's not like that here. If some people feel embarrassed to admit they go to church, I doubt it has anything to do with any anti-religious taboo. It's probably because they are shy of being identified with the growing numbers of intolerant, deliberately ignorant fundamentalists. There is a public taboo against intolerance, and I think that's quite appropriate. Yes, there is a small minority of people who will attack any expression of religion, but it hardly constitutes a culture of repression.

There is a separate issue of church/state separation. This has really been an issue since before the constitution was signed, and there have always been churches on both sides of it. You want a public taboo against religion? There were states in 1789 that prohibited Jews and Roman Catholics (and - ladies, cover your ears - atheists) from holding public office. Why? Because Protestantism is the correct religion, of course. That is why the constitution forbids a religious test for public office, and that's why the government is forbidden to favor any religious expression. Does it offend your religion for the words "under god" to be removed from the official pledge of allegiance? Don't you think that means it offends someone else's religion (or lack thereof) for it to be in there? Having it there is just a little bit of the way to "No one but a Mormon shall hold any public office in Utah". Which is, in many areas, de facto the case, but, thank Jefferson, not de jure.

Personally, I think there shouldn't even *be* an official pledge of allegiance. But that's a different issue altogether :-)

Re:The future is free.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank God, talk radio is free of the growing atheist menace! I suggest you hunker down. It'll all be over soon!

Re:The future is free.

[Anonymous Coward]

Athiests have no problem with the pledge. Well, at least not in its original form. We like the pledge because we enjoy that same feeling of nationalism that you do.

There is only this one little thing wrong with it. During the red scare, the words "under God" were added as in insult to the communist(!) athiests.

And yes, it is an insult to athiests. Imagine some people in government had thought it would be nice to add the words "under no God" 50 years ago, just to alienate people like you that believe in a God.

I wouldn't like that either.

On the other hand, had the words "under God" been a part of the original pledge, and were simply an expression of one man's faith, it would not be an insult to athiests. God bless America is an example of a nice song that few people object to.

It's that simple.

Do people care about the "in God we trust" on our money? I don't think so. It's my impression that that is just an exaggeration used as an argument against getting rid of "under God" from the pledge. (Give them an inch, and they'll be asking us to get rid of every reference to God!) It's just not as much of an issue. People find something wrong with everything, and the "In God We Trust" just seems to be at the same level as background noise.

Look, all I'm saying is that you religious people are not mindless sheep. I consider athiesm a religion, so you be sure that I mean that. I understand that people like to wear their religion on their sleeve (I do!), and that is all I consider "In God We Trust" and "God Bless America" to be.

But please don't use your majority power to insult people like me. That's just wrong no matter what religion you believe in.

Also,
I also have to disagree with your position that because of the religious (or lack thereof) climate in the US, people are more likely to disagree with you or call you stupid, etc. when you discuss religion. For every Christian that is afraid of admitting they go to church, there is an Athiest that is afraid of admitting that they don't go to church. Religion has always been a subject of much disagreement well before there was a US of A. People from all ages, from the distant past to the present have disagreed so much that they have/are committed genocide against those that they disagreed with. It is not a modern "push" as you called it, but a universal constant. You have to expect disagreement when you discuss religion, because none of it is based on irrefutable fact (yes, even athiesm :). I do agree with you that the only place to discuss religion without fear of being disagreed with is when you are with your peers, but that isn't really saying much.

Well there you go. I welcome your (offtopic) comments :o)

Re:The future is free.

[sumdumass]

Does it offend your religion for the words "under god" to be removed from the official pledge of allegiance? Don't you think that means it offends someone else's religion (or lack thereof) for it to be in there? Having it there is just a little bit of the way to "No one but a Mormon shall hold any public office in Utah". Which is, in many areas, de facto the case, but, thank Jefferson, not de jure.

Well, "under god" doesn't offend me. I don't think that "under god" is actually a religious thing. It is more of a statement of what the one nation is answerable to. Almost every religion has a god, the names, meaning, and acomplishments might be different but it is still the basic definition of god. I will go further in saying that even the athiest acknowledge there is a higher power, may it be nature, laws of science or whatever. "Under god" is easily meant to be that too. I know when the under god was added in the 60's it was ammended to mean that we have one nation with the consent of the higher power or "god" if you will. I do also know that some people feared it would cross the seperation of church and state (more corectly the freedom of religion) when people compelled to attend public instatutions for what ever reason (schooles, courts, city hall meetings) were required to recite it.

I also think you are on to somethign about the fundamentalist making a bad name for everyone. This might be the cause and effect of what i was trying to say.. One thing to note, maybe it just apears to be worse then it is because fo the press coverage the fringe and extream cases get. It would appear to be an agenda but then so would all the slashdotters that find it neccesary to force me to spell corectly and use good grammar. ( you know who you are. :). I give meaning to your lives)

Maybe the apearance of the politicaly incorect religios nature thing would vary from age group to age group too. Were one generation is more of the oposit of the other. It is somethign i have noticed, I work for a pastor sometimes and get a little shit about it too. I'm sure it isn't all in my head.. maybe the some but not all.

Re:The future is free.

[rburgess3]

God, I hope so! :)

Re:The future is free.

[Assembler]

You realize that any argument that says that an athiest believes in God is false, right?

One entry found for atheist.
Main Entry: atheist
Pronunciation: 'A-thE-ist
Function: noun
: one who believes that there is no deity

I mean, sure athiests can believe in God if you change the meaning of God, but c'mon. Let's be realistic here.

Re:The future is free.

[Assembler]

That's the full definition from Merriam-Webster (www.m-w.com), btw.

Re:The future is free.

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, I shouldn't have spoken for all athiests. I can only speak for myself.

Re:The future is free.

[sumdumass]

Well yea i'm changing the conceptual meaning of god. Not to give god a new definition but to say the concept wich it is infered can be aplied to atheism.. more to the point, "under god" represents under the consent of the highest power possable. And i would say that is the intent of the wording (as i take it) when it is in the pledge. One nation with the consent of the highest power possabl.

I may be injecting my own opinion here alittle but thats how i take it.. BTW, i'm kind of agnostic when it comes to religion.. athiest almost. just so you know were i'm comming from.

Re:The future is free.

[benjj]

I don't think that "under god" is actually a religious thing. It is more of a statement of what the one nation is answerable to.

Slashdotters do say the funniest things

I will go further in saying that even the athiest acknowledge there is a higher power, may it be nature, laws of science or whatever. "Under god" is easily meant to be that too. I know when the under god was added in the 60's it was ammended to mean that we have one nation with the consent of the higher power or "god" if you will.

What - one nation with the consent of the laws of physics? That's meaningless.

Re:The future is free.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think that "under god" is actually a religious thing. It is more of a statement of what the one nation is answerable to. Almost every religion has a god, the names, meaning, and acomplishments might be different but it is still the basic definition of god.

You're forgetting that some religions have more than one god and that there are loads of people who don't believe in any god.

Re:The future is free.

[greenrd]

Well, "under god" doesn't offend me. I don't think that "under god" is actually a religious thing.

Then you're a fucking idiot. Would you listen to yourself? "God isn't religious" - Of course God is a fucking religious concept!

It is more of a statement of what the one nation is answerable to. Almost every religion has a god,

Yeah, but nonreligious people don't. That's the whole point. (Aside from those little tiny religions that aren't monotheistic, like hinduism and buddhism, but who cares about them, they don't count, eh? That was sarcasm, in case you didn't notice.)

I'll tell you straight why a lot of people have a problem with religious people. If they just said "I believe in a supreme power but I can't prove it exists" and left it at that (which has nothing much to do with Christianity at all, please note) I wouldn't have too much of a problem with that. Personally. I might debate the statement in a friendly manner, but it wouldn't get my back up very much. It's when they start to say things like "God wants me to do this", "God doesn't want me to have sex before marriage", "Let Jesus into your heart, or you will go to hell", "Homosexuality is forbidden by the bible therefore it's wrong", and even worse, saying things about their own religious book which aren't even true, that I get annoyed. When you start using religion as an alternative to rational thought, then that becomes a problem. If, on the other hand, you just believe in a higher power but you don't let that influence your decisionmaking in an irrational direction, that's OK.

Re:The future is free.

[sumdumass]

Actually you the fucking idiot.. probably a moron too. god has been used to describe dogs, suns, moons, the damn trees, the pool spirit.. the only thing religous about it is what you want it to mean.. ACtually if you get that upset over it then i think you deserve to.. i laugh at listenign to you.. i couldn't help but to , imagine a pimple getting ready to pop on some sweaty teenager's forhead..

-- you do realize your arguing with sumdumass

Re:The future is free.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, we call frat boys cunts.

Re:The future is free.

[squiggleslash]

This looks to me like deliberately misstating the views of someone you disagree with to embarass them and make yourself look like the "victim".

The issue over the pledge is a simple one, you can't have the government exerting pressure on people to believe in God. If people, on their own, without being lead by taxation-funded institutions, want to add "under God" to their pledge of allegience (I say add it, because it wasn't there originally), then that's fine and constitutional. What isn't is congress passing a law blessing an official version that deliberately adds those words, and taxation-funded teaches encouraging children to say it.

You don't have to "stop saying the pledge", nobody has called for that, either stopping you from saying the original version or Congress's mangled religious version. (It's worth noting also right now that the case hasn't even been decided, the Supreme Court opted last week not to rule on the issue because the person who'd brought the case didn't legally have the right to bring the case.)

I'm sure that in "some areas some people are almost embarassed to admit they goto(sic) church", but that's because you'll get the occasional pocket of atheism in any country coupled with discomfort from those who really are in a minority. I face the opposite issue in that when I reveal my atheism in this part of Florida (which isn't even West Coast or Northern Florida, I'm generally surrounded by ex-New Yorkers) people are usually shocked. If I didn't have the reputation as being a fairly nice guy and didn't take care in who I reveal it to, I know it would be used against me. I'm pretty certain from what I've seen of the US that this is the case in most of the country. Most of the US is the opposite of what you describe.

What we've got at the moment is a government which currently has leant too far to the "supporting religion" side, and there's a movement correcting that. Most people seeing that movement who are religious will, naturally, be - if they're not careful enough to be logical and rational about the situation - concerned because they'll see the government moving away from supporting something they stand for. Likewise, if the government's view ever started to support atheism I'd probably initially feel - should this start to be undermined - a little concerned too.

But this isn't a "They're changing the government to support atheism" thing as assumed by more hysterical xtians, this is a "We're changing the government to remove its support for religions based upon a God. We're changing the government to be neutral", as it should be, as the First Amendment calls for.

If the government ever does stop you saying "Under God" when you recite your version of the PoA, you can be pretty sure you'll win a First Amendment case and you'll also get pretty much universal support. However, to remain neutral, it's right that it shouldn't be encouraging (or discouraging) belief in a God, and right now, that's what it's doing.

As a postscript, the default mode for countries that support a class of religions is to get more specific as time goes on. The only argument right now I've heard from supporters of the corrupted PoA is that a majority of Americans believe in one of that class of religions that encompases one God. The same argument can be used for further state support for a specific religion that believes in God that also is in the majority. That's what everyone who believes in religious freedom is trying to fight against.

Re:The future is free.

[hummassa]

2nd paragraph: I live in a more-catholic and more-religious in general state than Sao Paulo (Minas Gerais). And I have yet to see a Pope snapshot apart from the one in my wife's granny's living room. And I don't see your point, even if this were true, which it is not.

4th paragraph: It's true, but I could not see its relevance. Portugal did not have the resources (and the armada) England have. When young Pedro said "I will not get back to Lisbon 'cause I like the mulatas down here" (yes, that's the *real* reason), they did not have the armed forces to try it.

Re:The future is free.

[Teancum]

I will admit that the reference to Pedro was a random thought. The point here is even on things like war Brazil tends to be much more passive than the USA, and other than the military involvement in political affairs, the Brazilian military has not really had reason to be tested for good or ill like the U.S. military has been. It is another aspect of Brazilian culture that frankly I admire and wish that some part of this could be taken back to America where I live now. The militarization of America that is happening right now concerns me because I see the worst aspects of military occupation that Brazil suffered with during the military dictatorships occuring right here in America. Al-Queida got what they asked for: War with America. I hope they realize what they are getting.

My experience with Papal photos in public offices is admittedly dated (from about 15 years ago), but I assure you that it really was there, and in most public offices I had to deal with, including the Post Office. And it wasn't isolated to just one specific area, although I mainly stayed in the State of Sao Paulo when I was in Brazil. The point here was a tolerance toward religious symbols and concepts in a public setting. That you no longer see those symbols may mean that Brazil is becoming more like America in this aspect.

Re:The future is free.

[hb253]

This atheist does not believe in a higher power.

I find the whole faith in ghosts thing appalling. Intelligent (and not so intelligent) people are willing to believe in angels, answered prayers, virgins in heaven, etc. What a crock...

Re:The future is free.

[Anonymous Coward]

secrets of larry rohter

> "OS SEGREDOS DE LARRY ROHTER"
>
> Célia Ladeira **
>
>
> Eu não digo nada que não pode ser provado por
> qualquer bom jornalista, do Brasil ou de fora dele.
> Basta um pouco de paciência e vão ver que é tudo
> absoluta verdade. Passo esta mensagem porque gosto
> muito de jornalismo e de jornalistas, mas o Larry
> Rohter tem mostrado que não é um colega de verdade,
> e que tem uma outra vida, muito sombrosa, que não
> tem nada a ver com nossa missão informativa. Conheci
> essa pessoa há muitos anos e convivo com pessoas que
> o conhecem muito bem. Portanto, eu não estou dizendo
> muita coisa nova, mas dizendo coisas que poucas
> pessoas estão hoje sabendo.
>
> 1) Larry não é só jornalista, mas um tipo de agente
> civil, bem pago, que faz coisas que CIA e FBI não
> podem fazer. Ele tem trabalhado em toda
> latinamerica, sempre com um caderninho de missões
> debaixo do braço. Quem conhece o Arquivo 33, do US
> State Department, Bureau of International
> Information Programs sabe do que eu estou falando.
> Pesquisem isso e vão descobrir muitas coisas sobre
> esses mísseis teleguiados. Bureau of International
> Information Programs.
>
> 2) Eu pergunto: o que Larry Rohter foi fazer cinco
> vezes no US State Department of State nos últimos
> anos? Média de uma visita a cada ano, e sem contar
> os almoços com gente estranha dos serviços secretos.
>
> 3) O jornalismo-estado americano tem usado Larry
> para vários serviços. Basta pesquisar e ver que ele
> foi a pessoa que fez a reportagem para desacreditar
> a prêmio Nobel da Paz Rigoberta Menchu, desacreditar
> da Guatemala. Como fez com o presidente Lula, Larry
> a ridicularizou, fazendo a líder dos pobres passar
> por mentirosa. Isso está na imprensa e todos sabem
> que métodos Larry usou nesta reportagem.
>
> 4) Larry sempre foi instruído a trabalhar no setor
> da Amazônia. No artigo de junho de 2002, ele diz que
> os "brasileiros são ensinados desde o nascimento que
> a Amazonia é deles, mas seu governo não tem sido
> capaz de exercer efetiva soberania sobre a região".
> Isso está em Deep in Brazil, a Flight of Paranoid
> Fancy.
>
> 5) Em outro artigo, Larry arranjou jeito de dizer
> que a carne brasileira exportada saía da Amazônia,
> produzida por trabalho escravo. O governo
> brasileiro, ainda de Henrique Cardoso, reclamou na
> época. Isso prejudicou muito o Brasil no Exterior.
>
> 6) Na Venezuela, Larry foi várias vezes, sempre
> fazendo artigos muito negativos contra o presidente
> Chavez. Ele foi uma ponte entre gente do golpe e
> centrais de inteligência americana. O dedo de Larry
> no atentado foi bastante comentado por David Smilde,
> da University of Chicago. Vários colegas de
> Venezuela reclamaram dos artigos mentirosos de
> Larry, que conseguiram ajudar a desestabilizar o
> país.
>
> 7) Procurem saber quem é Mark Rasch, um cyber
> policial americano que foi proibido investigar ações
> de Larry Rohter. Por que será?
>
> 8) Larry Rohter é amigo de Cláudio Humberto, ex
> assessor de Collor de Mello. Trocam muitos favores.
> É fácil comprovar.
>
> 9) Larry esteve envolvido até o pescoço com a
> montagem do cenário para justificar o plano
> Colômbia. Todo mundo sabe da relação entre
> U.S.troops e os paramilitares que mataram civis
> naquele país. A anistia internacio

Re:The future is free.

[Photon Ghoul]

My initial reply to this was a little on the flaming side so here I go again.....

I respect the fact that (I'm assuming here) you adhere to your religious beliefs. However, you have to remember that you live in a world populated by people who are not all Christians. We believe many different things.

When you refer to the 'media' as being officially ahtiestic, I have to wonder what you're talking about. I never see athiests in the news in a positive light. I can't even name one well-known living person who claims to be an athiest, except for the nutcase that took the state to court over the pledge.

Maybe the fact that the media attempts to be unbiased towards religion comes across to you as being athiestic. I really don't see this official athiesm in the media. If you're really interested in the religious bias in the media, you might be interested to know that the Washington Times (considered a more conservative media outlet) is owned by a cult leader. While most likely not your own religion, I don't think that makes the Times athiestic.

I'm not sure how you think religion is taboo in America. Religion (or the pretense of it) is absolutely required for a presidential candidate - why do you think that is? Because the established religion in the U.S. is..... Christianity! Name one politician who doesn't claim to believe in a higher power.

Meanwhile, Bush pushes faith-based charities for receiving government funding, "Under God" was added to the pledge in the 50's, "In God We Trust" was added to the dollar, we still say "So Help Me God" in the courtroom, Congress still prays before every meeting, televangelists are still on the airwaves, the Promisemakers still tour.

It seems you might be interpreting things wrong here, perhaps it looks that way from the pews. When you claim that you can't speak about religion outside of "an enviroment were it is expected" perhaps what's actually going on is that people expect you to respect their beliefs? Some people think that trying to push beliefs on someone else, especially in work or casual social settings is extremely rude and obnoxious. Maybe you see that and think that everyone is an athiest. Somehow, I find it hard to believe that you've had an actual conversation on this topic with the masses of people you're claiming are now suddenly athiests.

There is no way religion is taboo in America. Religion gave us all of our taboos. The Whipping of the Christ raked in millions of dollars. We have multitudes of churches, synagogues, mosques, cults and so many varieties of belief systems that it's dizzying. All existing in one country while peacefully coexisting. Ah.. that peacefully coexisting thing - yes there are some religious people who can't stand that and attempt to influence the media, government and public opinion. I guess the latest tactic is to appear as the underdog. You'll find that most people don't buy that.

You are very safe from Athiesm becoming the official "religion" of the United States.

Re:The future is free.

[LeaInShadow]

I can see you don't live in the south. Nearly everyone here is GLAD to discuss religion with anyone and everyone that talks with them. As long as it is THEIR religion, and they are trying to convert the person on the other end of the conversation. And if your not religious, or don't live in a way that they find right (both of which apply to me), then they are more then willing to shove their religion down your throat. This is why people react so vehemently to religious discussions on the net. They are simply lashing back at the mindset that they see as hurting them IRL. Doesn't mean they are right, or it's good to do so, but understand that the Atheists in the world are outnumbered, and it makes us mighty skittish sometimes.

Re:The future is free.

[mi]

In some if not most public forums (not just internet) religious speak and attitude is mostly ousted as undesireable by someone.

Because these forums are discussing various aspects of government and/or public policy. Banning "religious speak and attitude" from such forums is only consistent with the principle of separation of Church and State -- religion-based arguments should not be affecting decisions under this principle anyway.

Re:The future is free.

[KnightStalker]

I won't be quite as extreme as some others here, but you really can't extend "under God" to cover atheists. I think it's quite a stretch to make it cover Buddhists, Hindus or even Muslims. It might not be provable in court -- I don't know -- but certainly everyone I've actually discussed the subject with has assumed that to mean the God of Christianity. I certainly suppose it to mean that. In particular, when it was added in 1954, it was "officially" meant to represent a vague higher power, but was added specifically to emphasize that the U.S. *was not atheist* like the USSR.

You will definitely get a lot of shit for being a public Christian on Slashdot... but you don't really think this place is representative of the real world? :-)

Re:The future is free.

[tbannist]

In some areas, some people are almost embarassed to admit they goto church.

Maybe you should be embarassed to admit you go to church. If you told a psychiatrist: " I think someone is watching me at all times and monitoring my every move and judging me constantly", the psychiatrist would be halfway finished writing your prescription before you got to " and his name is God". Then the psychiatrist would throw out the prescription and tell you that you're the good kind of crazy.

Re:The future is free.

[Anonymous Coward]

OK. Let's stay OT for a while. The "Pledge," as recited by by parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, did not contain the words "under God." Those two words were added - at the insistence of religious fanatics - during the Eisenhower administration. The Pledge was a response to the Civil War, a reminder that we settle our differences under the law by legal means.
Did that make my ancestors any less pious? Not one whit.
We have changed from "one Nation, indivisible.." to a nation divided by God. Evidence: The blatantly religious agenda that has become part of the Republican Party's platform (the part, that is, that is not concerned with gutting civil liberties and Constitutional restraints on the executive branch, deficit spending to fund corrupt and/or tax-dodging expatriate corporations, unjust wars, and major campaign contributors, stealing from the poor to give to the rich, etc).
PS THIS AC is 1) deeply religious, 2) a veteran, and 3) an MBA - just in case you were going to call me a godless, gutless, socialist peacenik liberal.

Re:The future is free.

[nlindstrom]

See http://dict.lindstromconsulting.com/?q=atheist.

Re:The future is free.

[Anonymous Coward]

Foreign journalists have been deported from the US for not arriving with a specific journalist's visa. Normally it's countries like Iran, North Korea, etc. that do things like this...

Re:The future is free.

[sumdumass]

This looks to me like deliberately misstating the views of someone you disagree with to embarass them and make yourself look like the "victim".

NO i was just stating my observations in society as seen from the news, social enviroments i'm asociated with and simular activities. This is were i would agree with the grandparent's statement that it is becoming oficially atheism.. If it is seen any other way from my post, then it is only my in ability to compunicate my thoughts the way i desired to.

That being said, The "movment corecting the leaning of the government to one side of the religous spectrom is probably the key factor in my seeing it as being pushed to atheism. Also i agree with you that a public finded instatution shouldn't require anything about the mentoin of a god or gods. The words "under god" in the PoA, To me don't mean any specific god, it is meaning the highest power. That is the way they told us in school some 15-20 years ago (in central ohio) when we studied the pledge and all. I don't see the problem with it and get offended easily to thoise that doo. Even when i was in school, you had the option not to cross your heart and or recite the pledge. You also had the option to say it without saying the words under god. When the principale read it across the loud speakers on holid ays and such, he didn't say it.

The only problem i see with it is a bunch of athiest trying to remove any form of religion from any thing outside church.. they are even in some areas trying to tell churches they can only be so large with only so many menbers, requireing churches to have twice as much road frontage and ofset as any other buisiness in the comunity. (fox and cnn both just did a piece on it about a week ago)

I don't know, maby because I havn't went to church in 30 years, and I don't hate religion or somethign i see it as a non issue. I see it more of an issue with everyone huffing and puffing about it then i do with what they are complaining about.

Re:The future is free.

[sumdumass]

well i wasn't just counting government forums

what i was getting at it, basically you could have a church group goto the county fair and get a resonse form someone in the group. Most cities have spnsored event like carinvals or ralleys to raise money and or promote whatever the current politicaly corect themeof the day.. you'll get a responce there too.

I'm not a religous person but I have noticed some of the dumbest things in places like this. One such remeberable instance, Some guy was drinking a beer at a music festival my city puts on to showcase local artists. Another guy walks over and talks to him and i heard the conversation wich was peacful turn to talking about wether or not they would be in church Sunday or not. Another person buts in and proceeds to tel them to take the gospel smewere else and pretty soon the tensions got high. needless to say, the guy drinking ends up sluging the other guy after some words about his ol'lady was said. Now here was 2 guys about 5 foot from me, talking about everythign under the sun in an ordinary tone of voice and a regular volume, once the conversation turned to s eeing them in church another person buts in and caused a problem. Thats the type of situation i'm talking about not going to the couthouse for city counsil meetings.

Re:The future is free.

[Ohreally_factor]

Wait a minute! You went to school?

Re:The future is free.

[sumdumass]

What - one nation with the consent of the laws of physics? That's meaningless.

Thats my point about the words "under god". It only means somethign to those who want it too. And what it means is as different as thier religous (or lack of) convictions. To lable it as a chistian god is presumtous and maybe even hinting to a subliminal feeling on those doing it.

Re:The future is free.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you retarded or something?

So...

[phraktyl]

For those of us who want to try Rubyx out, when is White Water going to make it into the Gentoo portage tree?

Re:So...

[CableModemSniper]

Damn man, just download the tarball. For all this "Gentoo is source-based!" business, you can't compile some source unless theres a .ebuild file somewhere in your FS for it?

Re:So...

[phraktyl]

Already done---it was done before I posted. There is a big difference between not being *able* to do something, and having reasons not to do it.

Random binaries hanging around my system just annoy the crap out of me.

Re:So...

[vadim_t]

Try to make the ebuild yourself. It's surprisingly easy, and pretty safe as well, since portage will let you try until you get it right.

Unless something complicated is required to install it, you probably can get a basic ebuild, tweak the filename and paths and have it work.

Re:So...

[pseudochaotic]

For that matter, why White Water? Why not just use BitTorrent(for which several clients are in portage) like everybody else?

Re:So...

[Nasarius]

And don't forget to submit it to Bugzilla when you're done :)

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

For that matter, why write a package management system in Ruby? Lets just be honest; Rubyx is a complete waste of time.

the hall of fame

[L-Train8]

The Sci-Fi "Hall of Fame" part of the museum is comprised completely of authors. Later, it will be expanded to include those involved with film and television. This is because Paul Allen took over the existing Sci-Fi Hall of Fame, which has been around for a while. It had no actual building, it just awarded plaques to inductees each year. It started out as a SciFi/Fantasy Hall of Fame, but fortunatley for the SciFi museum, all the inductees had at least some sci-fi in their bodies of work. They were able to make it into sci-fi only without kicking anyone out.

Re:the hall of fame

[Anonymous Coward]

Later, it will be expanded

Unfortunately, it will most likely follow the course of the Experience Music Project, also an Allen project, and will shrink not expand. In fact, it's in space in the EMP that's not being used due to lack of interest. Hell, several local papers in Seattle ran articles that could have very well been entitled 'What about after all the nerds have come and gone.'

Re:the hall of fame

[L-Train8]

dude, thats creepy your website has a bunch of naked kids on it;

That was the only picture of my house that I could find at the time. The kids are just running through the sprinkler. Crap, I'm probably going to get investigated for child pornography now that you pointed that out. Our yard has a high fence, so while none of my neighbors have seen the kids running around naked, *millions* of people on the internet have.

In a related note, I did own the Thriller album in high school.

Yahoo: GAIM Has Fix, Expecting New Release

[sabat]

GAIM's mailing list on sourceforge has postings saying that they have received info on a Yahoo fix from the Trillian people. They expect to do a release of GAIM tonight. I'd expect that other projects will also get this info and will be doing releases shortly.

Re:Yahoo: GAIM Has Fix, Expecting New Release

[Endareth]

Nice to see Trillian and GAIM developers working together on these sorts of issues!

Re:Yahoo: GAIM Has Fix, Expecting New Release

[name773]

i'll second that, hats off to them

Gaim & Yahoo

[seasleepy]

In case people are curious, the Gaim developers seem to be collaborating with the Trillian folks like they did last time Yahoo broke. (Here's the bug about the breakage.)

Apparently there will be a release out tonight with the fix included.

Re:Gaim & Yahoo

[Anonymous Coward]

A fix has been available in their CVS since at least 1:30.

I'm running Gaim 0.79.

All for Yahoo Blocking 3rd parites

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm all for Yahoo blocking 3rd party IMs because it would cut down on a lot of spam!

Re:All for Yahoo Blocking 3rd parites

[wibs]

One question... how?

Re:All for Yahoo Blocking 3rd parites

[NynexNinja]

The biggest spammer on yahoo is yahoo themselves. Yahoo allows spammers, just do a search through profiles.yahoo.com... they must allow it, because they definately dont do anything about the major offenders.

Re:All for Yahoo Blocking 3rd parites

[unraveled]

I'm all for Yahoo blocking 3rd party IMs because it would cut down on a lot of spam!

Well, I'm all for yahoo blocking 3rd party IMs because hopefully people will stop using their service and I won't have to build gaim from cvs once a week (okay, not every week) so I can IM people who won't give it up.
The sooner people start moving towards open protocols like jabber, the easier it is for all of us!

My $.02

WhiteWater, BitTorrent's successor?

[Colonel Panic]

An explanation of WhiteWater from it's creator:


"A Massive increase in internet efficiency is possible with persistent
bandwidth sharing. BitTorrent started the ball rolling; now White Water takes
the next step with proxy/server and mirroring facilities."

Persistent bandwidth sharing is the key. Consider:

- When you download a file with ftp or http, you connect to and download the
WHOLE file from the publishing server.

- When you download a file with bitTorrent, you get CHUNKS of the file from
loads of other people who are downloading the file AT THE SAME TIME AS YOU.
If you are the only downloader, you'll get the WHOLE file from the publishing - When you download with White Water, you get CHUNKS of the file from any WW
proxy which has ever downloaded the file and still has it in it's cache.

White Waters' proxy mode provides this _persistent_ or _ongoing_ file sharing.
Even if you are the only person currently downloading the file, you will
receive chunks from every WW proxy which still has the file (or chunks of it)
in its cache. If there are a hundred proxies with the file, and your local
bandwith is wide enough, you could receive the file 99 times faster than
would be possible from the original publishing server alone, which might be
on a simple home broadband connection.

"Imagine that 10 of your hard working employees download the latest Harry
Potter movie trailer. Thats 10 identical huge files saturating your internet
connection. If instead the trailer was published using WW, you could run a WW
proxy on your gateway server and only 1 copy would be downloaded, even if a
hundred employees decided to fetch it. Better yet, they would all be sharing
the data amongst themselves, massively reducing the load on your gateway
server."

This is only possible with the proxy/server mode WW provides.

"Now imagine that your ISP provided a WW proxy. Thousands of downloads are
reduced to one, freeing up Gigabytes of the ISPs upstream bandwidth!"

As you can see, the implications are quite profound.

"Best of all, JK could publish the trailer on her home broadband connection,
and even a mention on Slashdot couldn't kill it!"

Re:WhiteWater, BitTorrent's successor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you hate it when people try and push a "new and improved" protocol/format/application when they haven't even taken the time to understand the thing they are trying to replace?

When you download a file with ftp or http, you connect to and download the WHOLE file from the publishing server.

Wrong. Both FTP and HTTP allow for partial file transfers.

When you download with White Water, you get CHUNKS of the file from any WW proxy which has ever downloaded the file and still has it in it's cache.

Why is this an improvement over HTTP caching? With HTTP caching, you get the file from a closer point on the network. With WW, you could quite easily get a slower download by attempting to download from proxies that are down/far away/unreliable.

"Imagine that 10 of your hard working employees download the latest Harry Potter movie trailer. Thats 10 identical huge files saturating your internet connection.

No, that's your HTTP proxy downloading it once on behalf of your ten users. HTTP was designed with this scenario in mind.

"Now imagine that your ISP provided a WW proxy. Thousands of downloads are reduced to one, freeing up Gigabytes of the ISPs upstream bandwidth!"

They already do this with HTTP.

Re:WhiteWater, BitTorrent's successor?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is that different to HTTP's cache headers? (I guess that this can cache parts of a file -- but that's it?)

Re:WhiteWater, BitTorrent's successor?

[CatGrep]

WhiteWater sounds interesting, however, let's say I've got a broadband connection (and I'm not an ISP) what is my incentive to run a WW Proxy other than altruism? Unless I missunderstand, the more files I download with WW the more likely I'll lose bandwidth as others download pieces of those files from my cache.

Of course, I've never used BitTorrent either, but it would seem that you would have similar bandwidth loss issues with BT.

Under that scenario given by the OP I can see that it could be a good idea for an ISP to run a WW proxy, but I can't quite see why I as an individual would want to (unless I just wanted to be altruistic). Am I missing something?

Re:WhiteWater, BitTorrent's successor?

[bcrowell]

OK, use crayons with me. Here's an explanation of cool features of White Water, but are any of them features that BitTorrent lacks? What's the justification for saying that White Water is destined to leave BitTorrent in the dust?

Re:WhiteWater, BitTorrent's successor?

[womby]

bittorrent has proved that just using ftp or http to transfer large amounts of data is not practical in many real situations
and has also proved that it is better for a number of those situations

WW is not replacing ftp or http it is trying to bridge the gap between bittorrent and http or ftp

1. bittorrent puts a huge strain on the central tracker as it keeps track of every peer WW would only need to keep track of the proxies
2. bittorrent users on the same local network cant "find" eachother WW knows about the internal and external network
3. bittorrent depends on the peers staying arround for a long time WW is designed to be left running on a gateway 24/7

will it be better or worse than BT we wont know but what we do know is will be better than http caching

Re:WhiteWater, BitTorrent's successor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Taking time to understand is the key, right?

The http protocol allows requests for partial transfers, but single URL defines a single source from which to pull (or else source forge wouldn't have the mirror picker page) and neither the http nor ftp (protocols) define a mechanism for automatically simultaneously pulling a single file from multiple auto-located server sources with crypto file chuck integrity validation.

http caching is great, but this _is_ different from it and from ftp and from bt. Not like Stone age to Bronze age leap, but what I would characterize as a significant evolution of personal file publishing power.

I guess I would describe it more like a distributed bt server system that has built in mirroring of your favorite sites.

Again, with the source forge example - if all the source forge mirrors used ww, you could eliminate the mirror picker page and using a single ww URL your system would automatically download chucks of the file from all the currently running mirrors that held any portion of the file.

I think any sites that do large file serving should consider using it and that way anyone who wants to could help serve out those files, too by using the ww --mirror command to mirror your files. I mirror the rubyx stuff now and would certainly mirror other software, art and info that I want to support and see widely disseminated.

White Water

Re:WhiteWater, BitTorrent's successor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Errr... you're the nitwit, he spelled it correctly.

Re:WhiteWater, BitTorrent's successor?

[Vaevictis666]

The White Water advantage (presumably) is that it keeps its own cache. So whereas with Bit Torrent, if you finish a download and move on, you lose even the potential to share it again. With White Water, as long as you're using it you're available to share older downloads.

I'm not a fan since that means it's taking up slack space on my HD that I could be putting to more productive uses.

Re:WhiteWater, BitTorrent's successor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing that there isn't a place for WW. But when the creator of WW indicates he is either ignorant of HTTP and FTP's capabilities or is willing to FUD competing protocols, it starts ringing alarm bells. Either way, his claims about HTTP and FTP are not true.

Re:WhiteWater, BitTorrent's successor?

[Anonymous Coward]

bittorrent has proved that just using ftp or http to transfer large amounts of data is not practical in many real situations

No. A new protocol can't prove any such thing. Failed attempts to use FTP and HTTP in such manners can prove that, but Bittorrent cannot. Bittorrent can show that there is a demand for something above and beyond FTP and HTTP, but it cannot prove that FTP and HTTP are not practical.

will it be better or worse than BT we wont know but what we do know is will be better than http caching

"We" know no such thing. I'm perfectly happy to concede that under some circumstances WW will be better than HTTP caching.

Re:WhiteWater, BitTorrent's successor?

[beegle]

The WhiteWater page says:

• Written in c++ - portable, accessible, small and fast

However, if I try to compile it on anything but a Linux system, I see something like:

set -e; g++ -MM -MF joystick.d -Wall -Werror -DLINUX -I../ joystick.cpp
joystick.cpp:20:28: linux/joystick.h: No such file or directory
make[1]: *** [joystick.d] Error 1
make: *** [winux] Error 2
Why is portable code looking for linux/joystick.h? Maybe, by portable, they mean "you can use it on more than one linux distro."

Re:WhiteWater, BitTorrent's successor?

[Oktal1984]

Maybe he meant the verb, "loose," to let loose, to let fly, to release pressure or obligation from, to make less strict :)

Re:WhiteWater, BitTorrent's successor?

[awalrond]

The website also says: "Right now, WW is only known to build and run on Gnu-Linux based operating systems. If you try some other platform, let me know how you get on." Thanks for the report; What platform were you compiling on? WW links against a general library (hence the joystick stuff amongst things, which is not necessary and discarded at linktime.

Re:WhiteWater, BitTorrent's successor?

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF?
If FTP or HTTP protocols have the "capability" to telport the damn file to me on DVD doesn't matter. The fact is that the way browsers and ftp clients operate now is to pull the whole damn file from a single source, and although there is an option to request a chunk and to restart broken transfers there is no auto-discovered-multi-source-simultaneous-distribu ted-crypto-integrity-checked option. Note that several comments here are alluding to pattern of standards and protocols evolving and replacing each other based on changes in the world in which the protocols live, such as this - asymetrical internet connections and wide spread interest in participating in serving content have made single sourced services [conventional http and ftp servers] less attractive. The same way http servers/clients made gopher et al less attractive back in the day. Those two things taken together make things like:
bt
White Water
konspire2b (which hasn't gotten enough attention IMO)
much more attractive for distribution of non-webpage content/files. Why? Tons of distributed upload capacity and interest and relatively huge download pipes - I can dl at 3 Mb/s but server X cannot by itself fill that pipe, but 47 DSL users can.

Please explain in more depth how you think http and ftp already cover the ground covered by bt and white water and/or what capabilities of http and ftp that we are ignorant of, then it might be more clear what you are having trouble with.

Re:WhiteWater, BitTorrent's successor?

[awalrond]

Very well said. I was just too jaded to bother :)

Re:WhiteWater, BitTorrent's successor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please explain in more depth how you think http and ftp already cover the ground covered by bt and white water

Sigh. What part of "I'm not arguing that there isn't a place for WW" don't you understand? I never said HTTP and FTP can do everything WW can. Read my fucking post and understand plain English.

and/or what capabilities of http and ftp that we are ignorant of

I already pointed out several falsehoods in your claims about HTTP and FTP. I'm not going to bother going through your site to find more. Either you haven't done your homework (ignorance) or you are dishonestly representing competing protocols (malice).

Re:WhiteWater, BitTorrent's successor?

[pixelcort]

Actually, the Official BT client for Mac OS X uses Rendezvous (ZeroConf) to discover other local peers with the same file and proceeds to connect to them trakerless.

Many times I've created an Ad-Hoc network and used BT to efficiently transfer a large file between multiple computers.

Now if only ZeroConf was more standard on more platforms, or another local resource inquiry system.

Disclaimer: Rendezvous (ZeroConf) does not provide a transport system, just a service and host discovery system that you can use to locate hosts and ports to connect to yourselves. Apple has mashed this concept somewhat, leading some to believe that Rendezvous is doing all the work.

Re:WhiteWater, BitTorrent's successor?

[Anonymous Coward]

I already pointed out several falsehoods in your claims about HTTP and FTP. I'm not going to bother going through your site to find more. Either you haven't done your homework (ignorance) or you are dishonestly representing competing protocols (malice).

Well, you pointed some out and I refuted some of the ones I thought you pointed out. Some of the ISP running ww stuff is what I think is a misdirection of where whitewater's strengths are. Yes, http caching works well at the corp or ISP level but I don't know if http caching is tuned towards keeping large iso's, tarred up software files, etc around for a number of days.

There are the components of the http and ftp protocols and there are the features of most common http and ftp servers and clients and then there are separately, the more exotic and less common software features and protocols for http caching. http caching is great
None of the features of the protocols or software cover the territory of bt, whitewater or konsire2b. In trying to describe his project, the author of ww may have made what you consider grevious injuries towards http and/or ftp by somewhat oversimplifying but the fact still is that neither the http protocol nor most http servers have a capability to "get the file from a closer source". In constrast, all whitewater software does auto-discovered-multi-source-simultaneous-distribu ted-crypto-integrity-checked file retrieval. Mis-statements can be made without ignorance or malice. Apparently, these "uber" capabilities of ftp and http will have to remain a mystery to me and presumably whitewater's author.

Re:WhiteWater, BitTorrent's successor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you pointed some out and I refuted some of the ones I thought you pointed out.

Well go back and read the thread again. You were bringing up things that I didn't mention at all. The only part of my post you touched upon was the byte range requests, and the claim that they don't exist in the real world is categorically false, they are very common. Even if they weren't, it would take much less effort to implement these protocol features than come up with an entirely new protocol.

Yes, http caching works well at the corp or ISP level but I don't know if http caching is tuned towards keeping large iso's, tarred up software files, etc around for a number of days.

It can handle any size files. What matters is how the individual caches are tuned. If an ISP's users are downloading ISOs on a regular basis, then the ISP will tune their caches appropriately. In most cases, the caches will be set up to alter their behaviour automatically in relation to popularity, file size, and a range of other factors.

In trying to describe his project, the author of ww may have made what you consider grevious injuries towards http and/or ftp by somewhat oversimplifying

Don't mince your words. These were flat out falsehoods. Do I have to point you to the exact parts of the HTTP specification that deals with things like range requests?

the fact still is that neither the http protocol nor most http servers have a capability to "get the file from a closer source".

That's one of the main points of HTTP caching! Private caches are about as close a source as you can get, and public caches are about as close as is practical to get otherwise.

In constrast, all whitewater software does auto-discovered-multi-source-simultaneous-distribu ted-crypto-integrity-checked file retrieval.

Once more, you are bringing up features that I haven't mentioned. I'm not comparing HTTP and FTP to WW feature-by-feature. I'm saying that it appears that the WW designer is ignorant of protocols in the same problem space as WW. You don't think that's a problem?

Apparently, these "uber" capabilities of ftp and http will have to remain a mystery to me and presumably whitewater's author.

Give me a break. Read the HTTP spec. - it's a simple protocol, it's not rocket surgery.

Re:WhiteWater, BitTorrent's successor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, you shouldn't lie to us saying it is portable then (as you do in the web site).

This Rubyx thing

[Tarantolato]

Sounds interesting. If the custom bootable iso creator works as well as it's supposed to it'd be a godsend to those of us who have to put together kiosks vel sim. fairly often.

One complaint though: I wish the author would quit calling it an "operating system" as if it wasn't yet another source-based [Linux | GNU/Linux] distribution. Sure, call it a meta-distribution like Gentoo, but don't get carried away. I'm glad he did so in the writeup; I hope he'll change the webpage too.

One question though: why isn't there a Sourceforge or Rubyforge page for the script? Also, there seems to be a namespace conflict with an in-development Ruby-based Enhydra clone.

Re:This Rubyx thing

[killjoe]

Geez the so called enhydra clone hasn't been updated since 2001 and does not even have a home page.

I hope they don't raise a stink.

Re:This Rubyx thing

[awalrond]

I think to label a modern 'Gnu/Linux distro' as such is useful in that everybody then understands what you mean, but rather unfair.

Rather like calling the English football team "Rooney and his mates"

The gnu tools and linux kernel, though important, are an ever diminishing part of the whole.

Indeed, it was suggested on the Rubyx mailing list a while ago that the Linux kernel become just one of several selectable kernels, Linux, BSD, Hurd ...

Then what would it be called? "Operating System" sounded sensible to me :)

What am I paying for?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I cannot use the service to play games, video conference, make calls, download movies or MP3's, what exactly am I paying for?

Spam. Lots and lots of Spam, and not the semi-gelatinous mystery meat in a can, either.

Re:What am I paying for?

[Chaos1]

Not necessarily. You're not allowed to download. It doesn't seem to specify, so they can say that your standard web browsing is downloading! You evil bastard!

Re:What am I paying for?

[pixelcort]

My parents, as well as many other idiotic parental-entities, seem to hate the concept of 'downloading'.

My friend even has a lockdown on his web browser to prevent the download manager from ever showing up. Strangely, he can still download into his temporary internet files.

For the love of God, why can't people get the idea that when you request a URL from a web browser it is actually downloading a page?

Whitewater bandwidth sharing utility

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they call it 'White water' because that's what comes out of you after the majority of downloading?

Re:Whitewater bandwidth sharing utility

[awalrond]

;) Hadn't thought of that... It was actually a tip of the cap to the BitTORRENT guys. Get it??

Wanted!

[gmuslera]

There is a funny image here related to Sergio Amadeu. The translation (i'm not good at all in portuguese and not so good at english): is something like:
-------
Wanted
(photo here)
Sergio Amadeu do Silveira
Criminal Charges

1. Democratization of technologic knowledge
2. Technologic liberation of Brazil
3. Capacitation of 2000 civil servant
4. Publisher of several books
5. (er, not sure how to translate this line :)

Beware, this man is dangerous!
Any information about where is this man contact immediately with the Justice Department of Microsoft
Your identity will be hidden
(Microsoft logo)
Always caring about Brazil own good
-----
Well, i'm not good translating, but at least brazilians will have fun with that :)

A quasi-official word from Yahoo.

[Ryu2]

A good friend of mine is the product manager for Yahoo Messenger (or one of them). I remember asking him over dinner one time why Yahoo was blocking Trillian, as well as why Yahoo didn't let you create your own IMVironments.

The answer to both were the same: that Yahoo views Messenger and more specifically, the IMVironemnts contained within Messenger as basically a revenue generator and a advertising vehicle to draw traffic to their other properties, not just a text messaging service.

Since Trillian and other alternative clients don't you view the IMVironment ads, they don't want you to use them...

Re:A quasi-official word from Yahoo.

[jdwegner]

Just after I saw the article about Yahoo, I launched Trillian (Pro) and it reported: "Update Available!"

Lo, and behold, it does again interface with YIM. That was fast!

Re:A quasi-official word from Yahoo.

[hey]

Well, that's sort of obvious isn't it.
On one hand I feel kinda sorry for Yahoo IM (that its being using with 3rd party tool). On the other hand ... what the heck am I feeling sorry for them for... Everyone should have switched to Jabber years ago!

Re:A quasi-official word from Yahoo.

[Timesprout]

Everyone should have switched to Jabber years ago!

And do you think Yahoo would continue to provide free IM servers and bandwith to users if this were the case?

Re:A quasi-official word from Yahoo.

[mstra]

That's interesting. The Mac client from Yahoo doesn't have the IMvironments. There are no ads. Where's the revenue from us Mac users?

(For the record, I'd happily use the "official" YIM client if the Mac version didn't suck so hard. Instead I use Adium.)

Re:A quasi-official word from Yahoo.

[dmaxwell]

And do you think Yahoo would continue to provide free IM servers and bandwith to users if this were the case?

Yahoo providing the service would be irrelevant. A Jabber server running at each ISP would make IM more distributed.

Re:A quasi-official word from Yahoo.

[Erwos]

If Yahoo asked very politely for third-party clients to display advertising and provided info on how to do so, there'd probably be a better than zero chance of at least seeing a plug-in.

I don't begrudge AOL, Yahoo, or even MSN for trying to make some money on ads. If they explained intelligently and elegantly why Gaim users _should_ view with ads, I bet some people would do it.

-Erwos

Re:A quasi-official word from Yahoo.

[cubic6]

"A Jabber server running at each ISP would make IM more distributed."

I like my IM centralized, and I can't see any benefits to distributing it like that. With my centralized IM, I can connect to one or two networks and get 99% of my friends. If Jabber became popular, would I have to connect to the ISP-run server of everyone on my contact list?

Even if they addressed that via a forwarding mechanism or something, they're just following the footsteps of another tech that already does what they want: IRC. It just seems like a whole lot of work and technology for no usable benefit.

Re:A quasi-official word from Yahoo.

[gstaines]

Well the Mac Client for Yahoo just doesnt suck, it totally doesnt do half the stuff the windows version does like voice chat support.

Re:A quasi-official word from Yahoo.

[ColdWetDog]

Why should they bother for all three of you...

Re:A quasi-official word from Yahoo.

[Anonymous Coward]

I like my IM centralized..

Then use IRC!

Re:A quasi-official word from Yahoo.

[hey]

Jabber addresses work just like mail. So your friends Jabber IDs might be: friend1@isp1.com, friend2.isp2.com, etc. You only need to connect to myisp.com (just like mail where you only connect to your local SMTP server). myisp.com connects to isp1.com and isp2.com. Its a beautiful thing.

Better translation

[Raindance]

Anyone have a better translation of that fellow's response? It sounded like he's saying really cool things but the translation offered on this slashback is a bit mangled, to say the least.

Re:Better translation

[ChipMonk]

Never mind the grammar (and ignore the double negative). Just follow the concepts. And if you can't do that, just read the last line. It says enough.

Re:Better translation

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically, he is saying that Microsoft's claims are silly and irrelevant. (first paragraph)

Second paragraph,
Open Source is similar to democracy (in the sense that it's not one person/company (microsoft) making all of the choices. Democracy is good, and it (open source) is the future .

(dont you just hate formal language?)

Re:Better translation

[Raindance]

I followed the concepts just fine, but the guy's clearly a statesman, and experienced at phrasing things just how we wants them. The translation mangled that rather badly.

It'd be like running the U.S. Declaration of Independence through babelfish a few times then trying to get at the nuances of what the framers were saying.

There's something to be said for reading good translations of elegant writings instead of bad ones.

Re:Better translation

[TrekkieGod]

It was a good translation...the spirit was there, if not the grammer. However, since I had trouble as well, I'll try to improve on the original job. Notice I say improve rather than replace, I'll just correct the grammer :)

In regards to the demands of the national and international press, that empathizes with the Brazilian Government in this moment without precendent in our history, in which the director of an important public institution of this country is personally attacked by those interested in maintaining a homeogenic model, I will, after discussing the matter with my lawyers and federal prosecutors, attest that the judicial action taken against me is, by itself, so insulting and without merit that it does not deserve a response.

On the other hand, I would like to maintain that the move to software that protects the values of openess and freedom is, to the Brazilian Government, something intimately connected to the democratic principle. And because we have come through a long and difficult road to reach our current level of democracy in this country, we will not surrender in our battle.

If democracy is an ideal, it is never insignificant. If democracy is a dream, it is a dream this country will never wake up from.

The future is free.

I have an even greater respect for the original translator now. Although I'm fluent in both languages, it's quite difficult to make direct translations (I guess I just never have to).

Re:Better translation

[Raindance]

Thanks to both of you. That was much better than the Slashback one. :)

Re:Better translation

[beanyk]

Yes, I *know* this is petty, but the word is "grammAr".

That one spelling point notwithstanding, thanks for improving the translation.

I never understand licenses

[fermion]

One thing that Sinclair pointed out in The Jungle was how new immigrants were abused on their arrival by the meat packing plants. They could work at the plants, but the plants didn't pay enough to live. They could have a company sponsored place to live, but could be kicked with little cause. They could pay to have a lawyer look at the contracts, but all lawyers were connected to the company, and there would be no job and no house if all terms were not agreed to.

This seems absolutely socialist behavior compared to what is being promoted by these licensing agreements. At least the immigrants knew they were being fucked and had the ability to discern exactly how fucked they were before they signed the papers. Now agreements are not even generally made available prior to the contract signing, i.e. purchase, and are often made available in hard copy only after the additional agreement is reached. I admire companies like verizon suppling their agreements before a contract, i.e. sale, is reached. However, one has to wonder when the courts are going to decide that the general populous is just too stupid to comprehend these agreements. which are written for corporate lawyers, and therefore have to be ruled null and void.

Re:I never understand licenses

[B.D.Mills]

Discalimer: IANAL, this is not legal advice, if you want legal advice then hire a lawyer, blah blah blah.

We have had successful lawsuits where people didn't know that coffee is hot, among other such failings of commonsense. I'm waiting for the day when someone wins in court by claiming to agree to only that part of the agreement that can be seen on screen when an "I Agree" button is clicked.

Let me give you a common example. Agreements are often presented in text boxes in web browsers that are only 10 to 20 lines high, but the actual agreement is hundreds of lines long. To read the agreement, you have to use the scrollbar in the text box to scroll though the agreement. It's only a matter of time when someone sues because they didn't know how to work the scrollbar. Far-fetched? Just ask McDonald's about the hot coffee lawsuit.

To maximise your chances of winning such a hidden-terms lawsuit, print out two or three copies of the agreement as rendered by the web browser before pressing "I Agree". Make sure these copies are as accurate a rendering of the text on screen as possible. Keep these copies safe. If you are the lucky person that chooses to sue, tender these copies in court as the agreement. If they point out in court that you have to use the scrollbar to read the full text of the agreement, ask "What's a scrollbar?" The "What's a scrollbar" question should have the same effect to your case as "I didn't know that coffee was hot" did against McDonald's: a fatal hit below the waterline.

If that lawsuit wins, then it will set a precedent where all text of online agreements must be clearly visible on screen. That will put a stop to the "hide big agreement in small text box" crowd, but also put a stop to the "hidden terms" clowns like Nextel.

If any terms of a contract are not clearly presented to a customer before the company takes the customer's money, are those terms legally binding?

Re:I never understand licenses

[dspeyer]

There's a slightly more serious version of this which may be legally valid. Certian provision, including extreme disclaimers of warrentee, must be "emphasized" in order to hold legal weight. This is why such paragraphs are often written in ALL CAPS. (IMHO, this only makes them harder to read, but that's besides the point.) The argument which might hold water is that these sections are not adequately emphasized if one must scroll very far to read them.

The other legal argument I wannt to see is the proof that a user agreed. It is usually possible to re-write an installer so as not to display the license, or simply to make the "I agree" button read "I refuse" (this can be done editing the binary). Some one will have fun with that case.

Of course, the courts have hardly ruled at all, so click-through licenses way be illigitimate to begin with.

Re:I never understand licenses

[Anonymous Coward]

> We have had successful lawsuits where people didn't know that coffee is hot, among other such failings of commonsense.

Ahem. The woman didn't know the coffee was hot enough to inflict third-degree burns. A reasonable expectation when you purchase coffee (or any food, whether served hot, cold, or in-between) is that it is at an appropriate temperature for human consumpation at the time of purchase.

The coffee McDonald's served this woman was not at such a serving temperature. Furthermore, by McDonald's record of buying off (by paying their hospital costs) dozens of people who had been burned by their coffee, it can be shown that they were aware of the problem and chose to ignore it.

Finally, the woman only sued for the recovery of her hospital costs, which McD's only offered 10% of; the exorbitant amount awarded by the court was awarded with the intent of punishing McDonald's.

Re:I never understand licenses

[Aneurysm9]

I was just going to mod you down, but I think it's important to, once again, clarify the misconception you (any many others) seem to have regarding the "McDonald's Coffee Lawsuit." The large punitive damages award in that lawsuit had nothing to do with whether a warning was provided that the coffee was hot or whether the woman knew that the coffee was hot. It had everything to do with the fact that McDonald's maintained their coffee at an unsafe temperature, knew the temperature to be unsafe, and failed to remedy that problem. That is often called wanton disregard for the consequences of your actions or gross neglegence. Further, the excessive punitive damages award was significantly reduced on appeal.

As for your "what's a scrollbar" argument, I doubt it would fly very far as it's likely that the user would have to operate a scrollbar to obtain the software they're installing if the software was obtained from a website. It's an interesting argument, but it assumes that the opposing party is just going to roll over and say, "gee, you don't know what a scrollbar is. Ok, we're not going to challenge that. You win." Not likely.

Re:I never understand licenses

[aardvarkjoe]

We don't have misconceptions about the coffee lawsuit. It's just that most of us believe that it's common sense not to dump boiling liquids on yourself, and if you do it, it's your own damn fault. And the fact that the damages were only reduced, rather than overturned completely, helps demonstrate how out of control our legal system is.

Re:I never understand licenses

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that one lawsuit (McDonalds' too hot coffee) the basis for all your thoughts on the consumer protection process of the legal system? That one trick pony is pretty played out, especially to anyone who followed the case all the way to the end. Go googling and update your meme.

Re:I never understand licenses

[Anonymous Coward]

A reasonable expectation when you purchase coffee (or any food, whether served hot, cold, or in-between) is that it is at an appropriate temperature for human consumpation at the time of purchase.

Do you smoke crack? Or take it rectally?

Fresh coffee is, by definition, boiling water that was just poured over ground, roasted coffee beans. Did you never leave the rock you live under to actually visit a, you know, restaurant and watch people drink coffee? Do it sometime. People start drinking their coffee with extreme care, on account of it being ludicrously hot. Quite a few folks just set it aside for a few minutes without even trying it, knowing it's bloody hot.

So when some biddy decides to hold a flimsy paper cup full of this dangerous substances with her damn knees, no right-thinking person can have much sympathy for her, no more than if she had gulped the coffee down and severely burned her esophagus. She could have chosen to treat the coffee carefully and thus avoided harm, but instead she chose to treat it with a total disregard for safety.

And what about other foods, like flambes, which by definition are served on fire. Or fajitas, which ought to be served sizzling. Are you going to lecture us on how those ought to be served "at an appropriate temperature for human consumpation at the time of purchase"?

Re:I never understand licenses

[winwar]

"It had everything to do with the fact that McDonald's maintained their coffee at an unsafe temperature, knew the temperature to be unsafe, and failed to remedy that problem."

HUH? Look up the proper brewing and holding temps for coffee sometime. Brewing temps are just below boiling. Holding temps are near 180 degrees. Properly brewed coffee and properly stored coffee can cause 3rd degree burns. Therefore, under the conclusions of this asinine lawsuit, ALL hot coffee served properly EVERYWHERE (in the region covered by the courts concerned) is UNSAFE.

In reality, only coffee spilled on yourself is unsafe. If a McDonalds employee did the spilling, then yes, it would be reasonable to sue them. But as it was self-inflicted by a person of (I am making a large assumption here) sound mind, there was no basis for a lawsuit FOR ANY REASON, not even to recover medical costs (that's why we have health insurance).

Obviously, you don't have the common sense to figure out that the only person at fault here is the woman who spilled the coffee on herself. Unfortunately, based on the outcome of the lawsuit and the other people who agree with you, it is obvious that common sense is not that common.

Re:I never understand licenses

[Mycroft_VIII]

Well yes that definition of fresh coffe could be considered valid, however we're talking about McDonalds 'cofee' which I don't know many who would consider it cofee by any standard.

But seriously there was more to it than that. She recieved 2nd degree burns from this 'cofee'. McDonalds was serving it well above the accepted serving standard. There is also a difference between a product served at a drive through, where one might resonably expect it to be at drinking temperature, and somthing you've cooked/brewed at home, where you can have full knowledge of the practices followed from brewing to serving.
I Used to think it was a stupid case myself, especially as I've worked in management at resturaunts, untill I found out about the details. Many resturaunts have a system, not always obvious, that reduces the temp of food to somthing reasonably safe before serving. I thought perhaps the lady had recieved small 1st degree burns in sensitive part of her anatomy doing somthing stupid, such as driving a manual transmision with the cup between her legs. She recieve large 2nd degree burns on her upper legs when the cup lid came off and the cup collapsed. Go find some pictures of second degree burns and tell me that's reasonable for coffee, which usually drops below that point in a few minutes without artificial means to keep it dangerously hot. If the employee had said "be carefull, this was just brewed and is still nearly boiling", then maybee I can understand. But it was actually at that temp on purpose.
Trust me I know how resturaunts work, and deliberately serving food at dangerous temperatures, especialy without warning, is quick way to get fired usually, here it was institutionalized and part of thier policy.
The example of flambe and other special case foods you mentioned belies the point. Go to a resturaunt that serves such, in most cases someone will stay there and caution you, etc. to make shure you don't do somthing stupid with a food that by definition is hazardous. It may sound like just friendly/helpfull chatter but I guarantee thier required to say it to cover themselves.

Mycroft

Re:I never understand licenses

[Mycroft_VIII]

Try looking into the case. I thought, from experience in resturaunt management, that customer stupidy followed by a sympathetic jury, was what happened myself till I found out the fact.
Then, again from resturaunt experienced, decided McDonalds had screwed up royally. Trust it's not just "little old lady pours cofee on crotch, gets millions". It's company repeatedly takes actions it KNOWS leads to 2nd degree burns of customers and takes no actions remedie the problem or to even warn customers.

Mycroft

Re:I never understand licenses

[TiggsPanther]

It's one of the drawbacks of the legal system. Certainly the American system, but I'm not sure that the British system is any better.

They had to find a side as being wrong. I've read some reports on the whole case. From what I could see both sides had goofed.
McDonald's really shouldn't have been selling coffee at that temperature. It was quite simply dangerous. However, even at allowable temperatures I would say that anyone who puts a cup of coffee in their lap in a car is simply asking for trouble.

It doesn't put McD's in the right, but it doesn't negate the woman's lapse in judgement.

Common Sense (or it's lack) has to count for something. But litigation has been seen to be more important. People are taking, and winning, court cases for events that owed mroe than a little to stupidity. If you're doing something you shouldn't then you shouldn't be awarded for it just 'cos it went wrong.

I think there should be some sort of clause for things like this. Yes, if companies use shady practices they shoudl be penalised. But if the injury is caused by error on the victim's part then there shouldn't be compensation. Take money from the guilty party, but don't give it to the person - or at least no more than a (very) small token amount.
Both sides should have to accept responsibility. It really is damaging modern societies, because people are being conditioned to believe that there's only ever one wrong side, and there's always someone in the right. It's about time the message was sent that in come circumstances both sides are in the wrong.

Tiggs

Re:I never understand licenses

[lobsterGun]

A few more things:

Yes she was in a car. But she was the passenger - not the driver.

The car was stopped.

The old lady received 3rd degree burns ofer 6% of her body.

McDonnalds had over 700 coffee burn complaints against it. Many of those complaints were for burns very similar to the old lady's.

McDonnalds kept their coffee at 190 degrees. that is over 40 degrees hotter than what is considered optimal by most coffee drinkers.

Re:I never understand licenses

[Mycroft_VIII]

Minor nit-picks, actually they were 2nd degree burns (deep meat cooking, possibly minor charring) in 3rd degree burns you have major charring and ashes.
And the temp was 180, but this is indeed 40 degrees hotter than the recomended safty guidelines, not just customer preference. Now if only I could remember who set those guidlines, I want to say it was a federal agency of some sort.

Mycroft

Any cockpit or chase plane views?

[FleaPlus]

Are there any photos or videos available from inside the cockpit, or from one of the chase planes? I've been looking all over for them, but to no avail.

Re:Any cockpit or chase plane views?

[cmowire]

I think that the rights have been, at least partially, purchased by the Discovery Chanel. I know, at the very least, that they were the ones paying for the Alpha Jet's flight.

Re:Any cockpit or chase plane views?

[Weird O'Puns]

At least in Europe they have been able to show some(very short) footage from the SpacheShipOne. It included shot looking back from the top of the craft during the burn and one where Melvill was throwing M&Ms in the cockpit. I think BBC was one of the channels that showed it so it could be available in their website.

Verizon TOC means "do not use"

[eskwayrd]

Here's a sampling of what you cannot do with Verizon's "unlimited" Internet Access: "...cannot be used for" "uploading, downloading or streaming of movies, music or games"...

Unfortunately, uploading means "sending data from your system", and downloading means "receiving data to your system".

If this TOC is going to be enforced, you can plug in the adapter, but you couldn't technically use the service at all (everything else relies on these two capabilities).

Why exactly would you pay them any money?

Re:Verizon TOC means "do not use"

[supersandra]

I'm unsure if this was supposed to be a humorous post... it almost feels like it, but not quite. If it is a joke, it unfortunately doesn't work out.

Uploading and downloading are modifying "movies, music, or games" correctly. Even if one were to try to separate the two, one could only truly say that by that wording they are prohibiting uploading. Downloading is directly connected to "movies, music or games" in their wording.

(Then she eats, shoots, and leaves.)

Re:Verizon TOC means "do not use"

[Hatta]

I believe the term "streaming of movies music or games" is meant to be distributed over the terms "uploading, downloading, or streaming"

(A || B || C ) && (D || E || F)

is what they're saying.

Re:Verizon TOC means "do not use"

[jesterzog]

Unfortunately, uploading means "sending data from your system", and downloading means "receiving data to your system".

It's lazy grammatical translation on the part of the slashdot submitter and editors. (Not terribly unusual at that, and conveniently arranged to provoke more flaming than what's warranted.) The actual terms of service say:

... Unlimited NationalAccess/BroadbandAccess cannot be used (1) for uploading, downloading or streaming of movies, music or games, (2) with server devices or with host computer applications, including, without limitation, Web camera posts or broadcasts, automatic data feeds, telemetry applications, automated functions or any other machine-to-machine applications, (3) as a substitute or backup for private lines or dedicated data connections. ...

Put in context, it quite clearly indicates to me at least that they only care about uploading and downloading of movies. Of course, it doesn't mean that the rest of the terms of service aren't also very restrictive and perhaps the "unlimited" in the name is misleading.

But essentially they don't want you using your connection to run a server, or to otherwise transfer anything that might end up hogging excessively high bandwidth compared with their regular customers. It doesn't rule out using the connection for general web browsing and email, which is probably all that 95% of their target market want anyway. In fact, the earlier parts of the terms of service (not quoted here) specifically state that those tasks are what it's intended for.

Re:Verizon TOC means "do not use"

[sabinm]

It doesn't rule out using the connection for general web browsing and email, which is probably all that 95% of their target market want anyway

you don't need broadband to surf the net or to read email.

Re:Verizon TOC means "do not use"

[Teancum]

In other words, they are technologically incompetent and don't know how to throttle bandwidth to a specific customer or exactly what the internet really is about. They are lazy in regards to trying to monitor individual connections, and have oversold their bandwidth to the point that if you and everybody else really used the bandwidth they claim to be offering to you, they would be unable to actually deliver that amount of data.

Prohibiting a server connection of any sort is prohibiting you from every sending data from your computer. Period. The rest is just semantics from a lawyer who thinks he understands computers but really doesn't.

Of course, they probably think that the only internet protocol is HTTP.

Re:Verizon TOC means "do not use"

[Oligonicella]

Do you, or do you not, understand the use of commas?

Re:Verizon TOC means "do not use"

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean you can't use this for a remote desktop connection or to ssh into your server?

Re:Verizon TOC means "do not use"

[Waffle Iron]

It doesn't rule out using the connection for general web browsing and email, which is probably all that 95% of their target market want anyway.

If their bandwidth is so precious that it only supports web browsing and email, then it's not quite "broadband", is it? It reminds me of Monty Python's "Insurance Sketch":

Vicar (Eric Idle): But my car was hit by a lorry while standing in the garage and you refuse to pay my claim.

Insurance Agent (Michael Palin): Oh well, Reverend Morrison ... in your policy... in your policy... here we are. It states quite clearly that no claim you make will be paid.

Vicara: Oh dear.

Agent: You see, you unfortunately plumped for our 'Neverpay' policy, which, you know, if you never claim is very worthwhile ... but you had to claim, and, well, there it is.

Re:Verizon TOC means "do not use"

[fiftyfly]

Put in context, it quite clearly indicates to me at least that they only care about uploading and downloading of movies. Of course, it doesn't mean that the rest of the terms of service aren't also very restrictive and perhaps the "unlimited" in the name is misleading.

I think it clearly says "This is how we're going to structure an incredibly misleading add compaign". It's an attempt to sell an 'unlimited' service with a contract giving them the right to restrict said service in pretty much any way they want. Nothing more, nothing less.

Re:Verizon TOC means "do not use"

[Llynix]

It doesn't rule out using the connection for general web browsing and email, which is probably all that 95% of their target market want anyway.

This is broadband we are talking about. If the target market is just browsing the web or reading email why would they need broadband? Before I had broadband that's all I did, and it was plenty fast enough.

I think what bothers me the most is that they don't specifically limit the illegal grey area and instead broadly ban everything. What if I were watching movies available free on the internet (red vs blue, the broken episodes) or various free mp3's or for that matter internet radio.

I'm trying to think of a single thing I do with my cable modem that doesn't include games, music or video. To mind the only thing is the occasional download of a linux ISO. Broadband would be a pretty boring place under these restrictions.

Re:Verizon TOC means "do not use"

[praksys]

It's lazy grammatical translation on the part of the slashdot submitter and editors.

Didn't read the license did you? It clearly stated...

By reading this far, you irrevocably agree to all the text that follows.

If you don't like the translation or the editing you should complain before you read it.

Re:Verizon TOC means "do not use"

[psiphre]

You don't need a car to go to work, either, but the standard method of transportation if you have to use the highway is a car.

Trying to use a modem to browse the web now is like trying to use a bicycle to commute to work on the highway.

Re:Verizon TOC means "do not use"

[sabinm]

on the contrary -- web browsing and email reading has become so efficient that I could surf the web on my treo 180 (you know the one with the 33mhz proc) and read my email from a eudora email client. if you need more than a standard computer to surf the web and more than a 28.8 modem, your computer is in terrible shape.

I can even watch flash presentation with 56k. the small programs that I "need" to surf the web (java, flash etc) can either be avoided (note web content is not java-flash dependent, web candy is) or downloaded over time if absolutely crucial, not worth the money for a one-time download. That I would pay up to five times more for a broadband connection to surf and check mail is an insult to a consumer.

To further your broken analogy, how about paying billions of dollars for a new freeway only to find out that it's good for nothing except riding bicycles. Later to find out that the contractors tricked you into funding its overhyped construction by not divulging the details of it's limited use.

You've bought into the marketroids hook line and sinker. By the way I've got this awsome Dell I want to get rid of dual 3.2 ee pentium proc 1 gig of ram windows xp professional edition, gigabit ethernet ati radeon 9800 --only $5000 dollars. you can surf the web with it anytime.

Re:Verizon TOC means "do not use"

[KnightStalker]

Hrm, I do both. Coincidence? :-) (Yeah, part of my bike commute is technically a highway.)

Re:Verizon TOC means "do not use"

[nacturation]

on the contrary -- web browsing and email reading has become so efficient that I could surf the web on my treo 180 (you know the one with the 33mhz proc) and read my email from a eudora email client. if you need more than a standard computer to surf the web and more than a 28.8 modem, your computer is in terrible shape.

Sure, and 640K is enough for anyone. Some people enjoy having web pages download fully in 2 seconds rather than waiting 15 seconds for it to load. It's great when you're doing web searches and need to visit a lot of links to find *just* the right information you wanted. But I guess if you have unlimited patience and time doesn't mean much to you, it doesn't matter if it takes longer. For myself, I'd rather pay an extra $20 a month, not tie up a phone line with dialup, and not waste my time waiting.

Re:Verizon TOC means "do not use"

[Anonymous Coward]

No, grammatically it means that you may not use the service for any transfer (downloading or uploading or streaming) of three things: movies, music, or games. If "music" and "games" were verbs, then it would mean grammatically what you claim, but as nouns, syntax requires that the verbs apply to all three nouns to prevent the list from being unbalanced. See the final "simple parallelism" example on the LEO: Parallelism page for more proof. The LEO example is constructed so that most people would agree the unbalanced version sounds incorrect, though it is incorrect whether it sounds good to you or not.

Note, this means you can't visit any webpage with sound (not that I'd want to) or movies, (including flash advertisements) and you can't download free games (eg from sourceforge). As a side effect, you must not download any linux distribution that includes something such as "solitaire" (eg knoppix comes with both games AND separate music). You can't use the connection to buy (and download) music from itunes or retreive music from any free source, nor can you listen to internet radio (that plays music; pure speaking is fine). You can't update many types of software (such as getting an update to a game you already own, if the update includes a new level with new music or movies).

If their service is an "unlimited web browsing and email checking service" it should be called that, rather than an "unlimited internet service" which implies that the full range of internet capabilities are permitted.

Re:Verizon TOC means "do not use"

[Anonymous Coward]

Quote: "or any other machine-to-machine applications".

That seems to me to rule out absolutely any form of IP traffic, since it is not possible for humans to transmit IP without a machine to encode/decode it. You can't operate a morse key fast enough to send broadband. The prohibition of more specific activities like downloading music is superfluous.

Re:Verizon TOC means "do not use"

[Alan Cox]

But you can't use it for email - if one spammer sends you an image in an email or a bit of midi you've breached the contract by downloading your email

Alan

Re:Verizon TOC means "do not use"

[lachlan76]

as a substitute or backup for private lines or dedicated data connections

And I suppose that means we shouldn't use IM instead of the phone, or going out to see people.

Re:Verizon TOC means "do not use"

[lumpenprole]

Yeah, but what the hell defines a 'Movie'? Seriously. Does it have to have an mpaa rating? Does it have to be feature length? Because if we're just talking about any time-based display of information involving simulated movement, well that bans most banner ads as well.

So is Verizon offering ad blocking as part of it's service? Or perhaps I could sue them for serving moving ads on my Verizon home page over my Verizon service, thereby forcing me to violate their terms of service. You know, if I used Verizon....

Re:Verizon TOC means "do not use"

[Sigma 7]

Unlimited NationalAccess/BroadbandAccess cannot be used (1) for uploading, downloading or streaming of movies, music or games, (2) with server devices or with host computer applications, including, without limitation, Web camera posts or broadcasts, automatic data feeds, telemetry applications, automated functions or any other machine-to-machine applications, (3) as a substitute or backup for private lines or dedicated data connections. ...

But essentially they don't want you using your connection to run a server, or to otherwise transfer anything that might end up hogging excessively high bandwidth compared with their regular customers. It doesn't rule out using the connection for general web browsing and email, which is probably all that 95% of their target market want anyway. In fact, the earlier parts of the terms of service (not quoted here) specifically state that those tasks are what it's intended for.

Not by how I read it. Item 2 results in the context stating "Unlimited NationalAccess/BroadbandAccess cannot be used with ... any other machine-to-machine appliations." Last time I checked, the entire internet is build around machine-to-machine applications, where a web browser connects to a web server, where an FTP client connects to an FTP server, where a telnet client connects to a telnet server, and so on.

Even if the letter of the contract does not use this as it's officially sanctioned meaning, it does imply that the internet cannot be used using this service, and therefore appears to have customers pay $70 a month for absolutly no service. While the spirit of the contract may be only designed to cut out servers, it only takes one disgruntled employee or lawyer to "misinterpret" the spirit and disconnect every person under a fully legitimate reason (and receive a big black mark on their record.)

It's more like a contract that was written by a lawyer who does not have a sufficient understanding of the computer field. That's just as bad as having a computer expert writing a document that should have been written by a lawyer (or paralegal).

Re:Verizon TOC means "do not use"

[Sigma 7]

Some people enjoy having web pages download fully in 2 seconds rather than waiting 15 seconds for it to load.

Last time I checked, pages that take more than 15 seconds to load into a usable state on a dial-up connection will still take more than 15 seconds to load on broadband. This is primairly due to the annoying flash animations that almost always pop something up slowly when you move your mouse over the control, in addition to slowly removing the menu when you accidently move the mouse off the target area.

In fact, I tend to queue up mutliple multiple loading operations, and start reading the ones that have already loaded. Not only does it save time, but it helps me work on multiple things at once much more easily.

Re:Verizon TOC means "do not use"

[psiphre]

You've bought into the marketroids hook line and sinker [blah blah blah...]

Your tone is needlessly pretentious and inflamatory.

I've been building computers since it was a viable hobby; your assumption is unfounded.

I can even watch flash presentation with 56k
Sure, and I can shower with a squirtgun. doesn't mean it's the best way to do it or the most efficient.

if you need more than a standard computer to surf the web and more than a 28.8 modem, your computer is in terrible shape.

I contest this by saying that if you can browse the internet with a 28.8 modem, your browsing habits are in terrible shape.

we have a word for people like you, it's "luddite".

we have a word for people like you, it's "luddite".
you'll probably throw my statement about needless pretentiousness and inflamatoriness back in my face. before you do that, you should take into account the fact that i've already decided that you're a waste of oxygen.

Re:Verizon TOC means "do not use"

[sabinm]

I apologize for the rudeness. I agree. Name calling reveals my low character. Sorry bout that.

Luddite I am not--as evinced by my treo 180 ( a luddite would say that a cellphone should only be used as a cellphone)

My opinion stands--a website is broken if it takes too long to load on a 56k modem. Browsing is adequate on a 28k modem. You'd be surprised how much bottleneck is in the browser and not the connection. Processor and memory quality have much to do with it too.

Since you are a long time hobbyist, you must remember when you could get all the content you needed off the bbs system. My contention is this--has the quality of the content improved drastically enough to merit paying twice as much for what is essentially text? Since I'm not allowed to stream movies or play games or download massive files on the system -- i'm relegated to doing things I can do on 56k--that is listen to the radio and read.
The reasons i purchased broadband are these. I don't think they are inconsistent with others who are on the web
1. play bandwidth intensive games
2. stream video and music
3. download software like operating systems and productivity programs
4. video conference

So . . . what of these things can I do on the 'broadband' that verizon is offering in this program? The question is not about them not providing bandwidth. The question is about them selling and marketing more bandwidth and then preventing use of bandwidth intensive applications

If I buy a yacht, I want to go sailing. I don't want it to sit in the harbor collecting mold. If I buy broadband, I want to use broadband applications, not be limited to the same applications that I could have used with my 56k line.

Scaled Composites VIPs incomplete!

[rsw]

Conspicuously missing was Chuck Yeager. Why wasn't he invited!? He's the original badass test pilot!

Re:Scaled Composites VIPs incomplete!

[booch]

Chuck Yeager must be too young to appear along with the SpaceShipOne crew.

oh, c'mon.

[orangesquid]

it won't be a killer app until you can download porn with it.

*wink*

Re:Rubyx... and Ruby itself

[Anonymous Coward]

It's so small that...you can build the entire distro with only one line of code.

Re:Rubyx... and Ruby itself

[Colonel Panic]

Okay, how small is Ruby in comparision with Perl and Python...

Ruby is quite a bit smaller (in MBs) than Perl. The whole sourcecode to Ruby is less than 1MB - (well, now that they've added several packages and extensions in 1.8.1 it's closer to 2MB, but that includes GUI toolkit bindings, web server modules, etc. - lots of useful stuff.)

Last I checked Perl's sourcecode was in the >5MB range, but that was a while ago.

I included the ruby executable and a few libraries on a CD recently (it was used for installing packages from the CD) and it took up less than 3MB total including the ruby scripts written for installation and C extention that I wrote (a shared library).

So, Ruby's footprint is relatively small compared to Perl's. I don't know about Python's footprint, though.

Translation to English from Portuguese

[Teancum]

I'll try my hand at this:

Wanted

Sergio Amadeu da Silveria

Criminal Record

1. Democratization of Technological Knowledge
2. Technological Liberation of Brazil
3. Assisting 2000 Civil Servants (presumably to switch to Linux, or at least helping them with technology)
4. Publication of Diverse Books (in a context indicating that he is the author)
5. Pushing for the end of monopolies through litigation. (Anti-trust lawsuits)

WARNING:
This man is dangerous!

Any information about the location of this person should be sent to the Legal Department at Microsoft. This information will be kept confidential.

MICROSOFT

Always wanting the best for Brazil.

(P.S. I spent a couple of years in Sao Paulo, and although I have a hard time being able to translate INTO Portuguges, I can understand it fairly well and turn it into English. Your translation was pretty good though.)

Re:Translation to English from Portuguese

[SpaceLifeForm]

I guess I lost some stuff in the translation,
but I came up with:

Fuck you Microsoft!

Everybody's free

[rasafras]

It's just that, you know, some are more free than others.

Re:Rubyx... and Ruby itself

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I don't know what this proves, but:

% du -sh /usr/lib/{ruby,python2.3}
5.7M /usr/lib/ruby
38M /usr/lib/python2.3

Generally, Ruby code can be very compact because there's not a lot of extra "stuff" you have to do. For instance to define the stringification of a class:

def to_s
"#{field1} #{field2}"
end

In Python (how I do it usually):

def __str__(self):
return "%(field1)s %(field2)s" % self.__dict__

Ruby doesn't need "self", or "return", or underscores or whitespace or other distractions. It also encourages highly dynamic programming so your programs can be very small, but not small the way Perl can be small (instead of making everything terse and unreadable, it allows you to factor out more).

Quick and dirty translation translation

[kfg]

"In response to the requests of the national and international press, which seems in agreement with the Brazilian Government at a moment in time which has no precedent in history, when a director of an important public institution of this country suffers from an action taken against him by those interested in maintaining a hegemonical model, I come before you, after being advised by my federal lawyers and my solicitors, to say that the judicial provocation of the motion against me is, by itself, so insulting and improper that it does not even deserve a reply.

On the other hand, I would like to say that contracting to use software that preserves the values of openess and freedom is, for the Brazilian Government, an issue indivisble from the principles of democracy.

And because it has been a long and painful road that we have traveled to arrive at the current stage of democratic development in the country, we will not stop in our fight. If democracy is a value reflective of an ideology its value is never insignificant. If democracy is just a dream, it is a dream from which this country will never awaken again.

The future is free."

-Sergio Amadeu

KFG

Re:Rubyx... and Ruby itself

[Tarantolato]

Depends on if you mean the interpreter and standard libraries or the source code you produce.

For the source code, you can often get quite small while still being readable. Ruby's designer, Matz, takes things like aesthetics, intuitiveness and liveable design more seriously than most language designers. Whether it succeeds or not is a personal judgement call. It leads to some useful things being excluded from the standard base because they are deemed "not the Ruby Way", but also to a tool base that is (in the estimation of fans) very clean, useful and fun to use.

You can read about the ideas behind Ruby here in a presentation by Matz called "How Ruby Sucks". Also an extended Python/Ruby comparison here.

Basically if you want to see what Perl would look like if it was created by a crazy Japanese guy with a peculiar philosophy of programming instead of a crazy American guy with a peculiar philosophy of programming, take a look at Ruby.

I refuse to buy virus software for a cell phone

[craXORjack]

an Australian company has released "The Worlds First" anti-virus software for mobile phones to fix the recent 'Caribe' virus and attempts to prevent future exploits.

I will not be dragged into yet another scam where I constantly pay to patch up problems that should not exist in the first place. If my service is interrupted by a virus my phone company had better release a firmware update to fix it or I won't be paying the bill. If they cut off my service for not paying for a phone that can't be used then all that will have happened is that they lost another customer. I can easily live without a cell phone.

Re:I refuse to buy virus software for a cell phone

[tmbg37]

The only problem with such a philosphy is that most likely, 99% of their customers do not care and will still pay. In fact, if you do cancel your service, a whole nother bunch of people will take your place. You as an individual customer mean very little to nil to the companies.

Re:I refuse to buy virus software for a cell phone

[craXORjack]

You may be right but that argument can be used to talk yourself out of voting too. I hope you see the danger in that.

I vote in every election, and I also vote every day in the marketplace with my pocketbook.

Questions

[TubeSteak]

Would there be any problems in having the ISPs maintain such a large cache of potentially infringing materials? I see the possibility of takedown notices being sent to ISPs for items sitting around in their White Water mirror (like a dvd copy of Harry Potter 3 or whatever else you can imagine). Would this just form another layer of monitoring for the infringement police?

and just to make a correction(?)

When you download a file with bitTorrent, you get CHUNKS of the file from loads of other people who are downloading the file AT THE SAME TIME AS YOU. If you are the only downloader, you'll get the WHOLE file from the publishing - When you download with White Water, you get CHUNKS of the file from any WW
proxy which has ever downloaded the file and still has it in it's cache.

My understanding (and experience) is that with BT you download from any/everyone who's got parts of the file & that as long as someone has the completed file, you're set... even if the original seeder is long gone. The only difference i see is that this provides another way to download a file & setup a 'tracker'. anyone care to explain what the exact differences are?

Re:Questions

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, this is just a permanent peer - I think.

Re:Questions

[pwarf]

BitTorrent is great for dealing with peak demand and for reducing demand on reasonably popular files. However, if the file has been out for a while, the chances of starting a download when no other BitTorrent users are downloading that file or have that window open is reasonably high. This keeps all the bandwidth burden on the original provider.

From what I read, it looks like WW is very similar to BitTorrent, but server-side WW proxies will cache any WW content that passes through them. This saves outside bandwidth because if the local server has a copy of the file fragment, it will be sent before resorting to the rest of the internet. Also, even if there are no other users downloading or sharing the file, the servers may still have a copy of the file. I would imagine this would be particularly beneficial for medium-sized files where bandwidth costs are still appreciable, but download times are not sufficient to make concurrent user downloads dependable.

Also, you significantly reduce the need for users to keep their clients open after downloading, because the info would often be cached on a server running WW.

Re:Capitalize the damn i's

[Graspee_Leemoor]

using all lower case is super-uber-hyper leet. just ask unix or e.e. cummings.

graspee

the difference as I understand it:

[jbellis]

when you close the BT instance that was downloading/uploading a file, that's it, you're done uploading.

With WW you keep uploading as long as it's in your Temporary Internet Files or wherever WW put it.

Re:the difference as I understand it:

[mhesseltine]

when you close the BT instance that was downloading/uploading a file, that's it, you're done uploading.

With WW you keep uploading as long as it's in your Temporary Internet Files or wherever WW put it.

Of course, this assumes that you leave the WhiteWater client running constantly. If you close it once you're done, it's the same as Bittorrent.

I guess I see this as being more of a "Peer Akamai" where local users get the file from a close WW server; one that's run by your ISP, for example.

Re:the difference as I understand it:

[Nogami_Saeko]

I see this as a disadvantage myself - after I've downloaded files with BT, I usually keep seeding those which I've found to be worthwhile. I dump the chaff and stop seeding stuff that I don't find to be good.

Therefore my (somewhat limited) upstream DSL bandwidth is reserved for sharing only those files that I actively want to support, not everything I've downloaded.

Now, the other issue is that I don't know how much benefit that WW would have for individual users that are downloading "questionable P2P content". Sure, if you have proxies at the ISP or business level that are promoting caching, it is a valuable tool for distributing big open-source projects and such, but let's face it, the majority of BT/P2P traffic is stuff that ISPs and businesses certainly do NOT want on their proxy servers for fear of huge lawsuits.

So while WW does have some uses, to classify it as the successor to BT does seem just a little premature.

N.

Re:the difference as I understand it:

[TubeSteak]

That's basically what i was getting at. BUT the DMCA allows exceptions for ISP's and caching services, so i imagine that there will not be any big lawsuits. This does seem like a convienent distribution system for questionable files, though i think an RSS type system where you can push files would be better for the less scrupulous. setup zombie machines, sell file hosting, push the content onto them & allow downloading.

I think the main reason this won't fly very far as a way of spreading around illegal files is that it doesn't offer much control over the original content and the release groupz love their elite status. everything from password protected zip/rar's to protected forums & irc channels. this might be a little too public

Re:Rubyx... and Ruby itself

[bcrowell]

IIRC, quite a big fraction of Perl's bulk is due to its extensive facilities for handling unicode (UTF-8). The lack of simple, automatic, thoroughly integrated unicode support is actually one of the reasons I've never wanted to do much with Ruby, even though it seems like compared to Perl it's a nicer language qua language.

Extortion

[zelurxunil]

(The linked story is less clear about whether Olsen will eventually be able to make the trip; in it, a spokesman for Space Adventures denies that this rejection precludes Olsen's flight.)

Translation:Doesn't preclude the flight, just makes it cost Olsen a couple more roubles.

Re:Rubyx... and Ruby itself

[42forty-two42]

And if you want to learn Ruby, check out Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby [unfortunately, it's currently unfinished]

Re:Rubyx... and Ruby itself

[Anonymous Coward]

lol... This is what I get:

107M -> ruby
81M -> python2.3

BUT this is because I have a HUGE amount of extras under each........ Thats still big. I do a lot or Ruby so thats why its probably so big.

Modem vs Broadband

[some guy I know]

Trying to use a modem to browse the web now is like trying to use a bicycle to commute to work on the highway.

(I asume that by "modem" you mean "dial-up modem", as opposed to cable modem, etc.)

I have no problem using a dial-up modem to surf the web.
It helps that I use a tabbed browser like Mozilla, so that I can view one page while downloading others.
(For example, I middle-click all of the stories on Slashdot's front page in which I am interested.
By the time that I've clicked the 20th or 30th, the first story has finished loading.)

It does not feel to me like a bicycle on a highway.
I think that you are exaggerating.

Now, if I could gain access to broadband at a reasonable price, I would, and then going back to a dial-up modem might be difficult (like going back to a non-tabbed browser would be), but since I've never used broadband, that's not an issue with me yet.

Re:Modem vs Broadband

[psiphre]

Your situation is the exception, rather than the rule.

while I was stationed in japan, dial-up modem was the only internet access available on base. it was astoundingly slow; so bad that if I were doing something that the internet is good for nowadays (like, say, recieving 10-15 pictures that my parents sent from home), I could literally click the link (or the 'download attachments' button) and get up, make a sandwich, pick a couple CDs and pop them in the stereo, eat the sandwich, walk to the duty and BS for a few minutes, and come back just in time to have loaded them. God forbit that I want to send pictures home.

on the other hand, my parents are cheap -- they are using the same digital camera that they were using then, now; and the same emails (same number of pictures, same size per picture) take only a few seconds to download.

there are worlds of difference, even just in email. you don' thave to be filesharing to feel the benefits of broadband.

respect for elected officials?

[bodrell]

What the hell are you talking about?

I agree that it was pretty disrespectful for the NY Times to call Lula an alcoholic. From what I've seen of him, I like Lula. And if I were leader of a country, I wouldn' be surprised if I drank heavily. But are you really going to try to defend former leaders of Brazil? Like Collor de Mello? Or Sarney? That's not even mentioning the series of general-presidents during the military regime in the '60s.

Lula has earned my respect through his years as a labor leader, and the initiatives he's taken since he's been president. He's made strides in using open source in government, and has a decent record in environmental and economic issues. If I were Brazilian, I'd be pissed about a specious attack on the first good president my country had in a long time. He's more of an exception than the rule, regarding getting respect.

But I don't think much of the US's leadership either, so maybe it's just me.

Re:respect for elected officials?

[Teancum]

Up until the mid-1970s here in the USA, it was considered, culturarlly, that you would not directly criticize a political leader because of his (almost always male) personal behavior. Even Ted Kennedy only superficially was hurt due to Chappaquidick, and that was only to stop him from becomming President of the USA. He is still a Senator from Massachusetts.

Discussions of the sexual habits of JFK, while talked about now to some extent, were never reported or discussed in common public forums in the 1960's. When Nixon was revealed to be a constant swear-word user, it was a shock to ordinary Americans.

Defending the Presidents of Brazil? Frankly it doesn't matter what their personal habits were. It is legitimate in a democracy to be critical of public policies but what they do when they are trying to unwind at the end of a day shouldn't be the topic of a journist, regarless of what they do.

I have my own (different) opinions of what PT has done to Brazil, but that is policy and tactics of that political party, and not the private activities of its leaders. Why a NYT reporter should feel special protection simply because he is a "reporter" is beyond me.

SHH!!

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't want to let grandma with the brand new AMD 64 computer know that!

Indeed.

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

Freedom is relative, and there are many things you can do in Brazil that if done in America will get you arrested and thrown in jail. For example, racial discourse in Brazil is in some ways more open than in the USA (and less so in others). For example: Caetano Veloso, one of the leading singers in Brazil, recorded in one of his albums in the 90's somebody's poem about a slave ship flying a Brazilian flag, which had some lines in the end that went something like "it would have been better if my country's flag had been destroyed in battle, than it be flown by slave ships like this one."

Now try to imagine the outrage that would ensue in the USA if a popular singer tried to record anything of the sort.

Re:Indeed.

[Teancum]

Another example is most of what happens during Carnival. The closest it gets to that sort of activity is with the Mardi Gras festival in New Orelans, and even that is quite tame in comparison to what happens in Sao Paulo, not to mention Rio. Most American communities would simply arrest most of the participants in a typical Carnival parade for public indecency (because of partial nudity), just to start with. Don't think they wouldn't simply round up everybody in a parade like that and put them in one huge prison holding area. I've seen more from American police officers. Many other Carnival activities would also be hit hard, which is why I mention Mardi Gras as a comparison to what it would be like in the USA. (BTW, they both celebrate the same event.... the week before Lent of the Roman Catholic Church).

problem with whitewater

[Nailer]

Too many tech people will read 'WW proxy' as 'WWW proxy'. They should avoid that acronym, it makes everything quite hard to understand.

Question to US lawyers

[Lonewolf666]

In Germany, we have a simple law to handle this problems:
If you cannot access the terms of service/ licensing agreement/ whatever before a sale is made, it does not become part of the contract.
This seems so obvious that I'd like to ask the guys on /. who know US law: isn't there something similar in your laws?
It would not be the first time that a company tries to bully its customers with legally unenforcable clauses in some "agreement".

Try...

[hummassa]

3. training of 2000 civil servants.
4. publishing many books
and
5. pushing for the end of "linked sales" in licitatory processes
(this last one means: sometimes M$ would enter a licitatory process to sell MS-Windows [to which they did not have a concurrent] and would only sell MS-Windows if the govment bought MS-Office)

Good attempt, but the natives can do better ;-)

Ruby OS

[frederik]

Others even plan on developing a full RubyOS , but there hasn't been much work done yet afaik

Nobody?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use it, but only because it's the only IM client I can find that has a working file transfer as well as handling certain non-English languages on my Powerbook.

Re:Rubyx... and Ruby itself

[Anonymous Coward]

Hm, I thought Ruby would have Unicode stuff since a lot of the developers are Japanese.

Not really, God forbid ! ;-)

[hummassa]

1. we *are* definitively more passive than USofAns, but we had our quota of bloody war, too (we -- and i'm definitively not proud -- eliminated more than half the Paraguayan male population in a war on which our generals dumped the dead bodies in the Paraguayan rivers in order to poison them); not to mention what our army and police corps have done during the late sixties and seventies during the military dictatorship era.

2. about the Papal photos: it's not forbidden. I work in a common office space with 10 other people and it would not offend the (1) Protestand (2) atheist people here that I put up a Papal photo in the wall by my side. More animosidy would ensue if I put an Atletico Mineiro flag, even though there is only one Cruzeiro fan here (my State's two main -- and opposing -- soccer teams -- in the room next door things are inverted, 9 Cruzeirenses and only 1 Atleticano)

2. (continued, trying to get on-topic [?] again) the case of religious symbols is that we (as a culture) think is a disrespect forbidding religious symbols. such nonsense as it has being happening in France (Muslim girls forbidden to use the veil) would never happen here. I can display a large cross, and the guy in the next table a large David star, and the other one an enourmous Shiva statue; no one cares. This is our cultural definition of religious respect.

Socialist?

[Red Rocket]

This seems absolutely socialist behavior...

Why do you characterize that as "socialist." Socialism proscribes that resources be shared among the group. The conditions described in The Jungle seem more like an extreme form of capitalism to me. The workers were considered human capital -- similar to the buildings and equipment -- to be used and depreciated on the balance sheet. I don't see anything socialist about it (unless you're just using "socialist" as a synonym for "bad.")

Re:Socialist?

[PurpleBob]

Clue: the next two words were "compared to". He was making an exaggerated comparison, for effect, and that was in fact the entire point of him mentioning The Jungle at all.

Were you so eager to rant about socialism that you stopped reading right there, in the middle of the sentence?

Difference between GUIs of official BT and Azureus

[tepples]

So whereas with Bit Torrent, if you finish a download and move on, you lose even the potential to share it again.

Not if you start the torrent again.

This need to restart each torrent manually is a limitation not of the BitTorrent network but of one specific client's GUI. The one-download-per-window GUI of the official BitTorrent client somewhat encourages the user to close each client soon after each download completes, if only to free up precious System Resources on Windows 9x and taskbar space on Windows pre-XP. However, another popular BitTorrent client called Azureus lists multiple active torrents in the same main window and can show their "details" in a tabbed MDI. In effect, it achieves nearly the same "cache" behavior, as it continues to share other files it has downloaded until the user unshares them.

White Water is Linux only

[tepples]

Unlike BT, White Water doesn't compile without GNU/Linux installed. So how can I get Rubyx if I don't already have GNU/Linux?

Re:White Water is Linux only

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, who the fuck do these people think they are trying to get stuff working on one OS before testing it on all the OS's that they don't have and making sure it works under *BSD, SkyOS, OS/400, VM, MVS, Solaris, AIX, DOS, IBM Mainframe DOS, HP-UX, DG-UX, VMS, OpenVMS, AmigaOS, OpenBeOS, BeOS, Windows 95/98/ME/XP/NT/2K/2K3/LongofHornandTooth, TinyOS, Minix, SC"Open blahblah", OS X, Darwin, IRIX, AtheisticOS, Gentoo, HURD, Flock, Pride, School, etc.

Come fucking on, the guy is working on it, fuck set up and start fucking porting yourself.

God damn! Everybody is so fucking entitled these days, one more bad characteristic of the rich that is catching on with everyone.

Re:White Water is Linux only

[awalrond]

:) Thanks! I'm working on BSD this weekend BTW

Re:Rubyx... and Ruby itself

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC Unicode is something on the TODO list.

Ruby handles plain ASCII/ANSI text, and Japanese text just fine, but that's not really "internationalization"...

Completely off-topic...

[cr0sh]

Actually, if I remember the case properly, said customer of McDonalds actually put the cup (with lid) between her legs, near her crotch - I can't remember if she was the driver or the passenger.

Now, I don't know about you (some people can stand it), but hot water (ie, hot water from your water heater for a bath, say 125 degrees F) doesn't feel good in the crotch area. This *should* be common sense. It should also be common sense that to make coffee, you need to boil it, then keep it hot (at least 125 degrees - which is still hot enough to "burn" the skin - maybe not physically as in "going to the hospital", but it can be painful) before serving it (iced cappucino notwithstanding, of course).

Now, McD's did make it very hot (180 degrees F, IIRC) - but even so, even if it was "bath water hot" - that would still have been hot enough to potentially hurt.

Common sense should tell you not to put hot liquids (ie, anything over say 115-125 degrees F) on or near your crotch, lest they spill, and at a minimum cause some pain - or worse.

This woman gambled by doing something really stupid (even if it was cold liquid - you don't want to put it there because it could either freeze the jewels, or spill, leaving a wet spot, leaving others to wonder whether you urinated on yourself - not a good social situation, right?) - and she lost big time because the coffee was extremely hot (2nd degree burns?).

Honestly, I think she and the jury screwed up - she should not have gotten any compensation. There wasn't any negligence on the part of McDonalds - they didn't spill it on her. They simply brewed the coffee (which involves using boiling water), then kept the coffee at a high temperature (but well below boiling) to keep it tasting good (well, as good as McDonalds coffee can taste - eh) - I would be willing to bet that the majority of restaurants, at the time, did this as a matter of standard cooking practice. They served it in a cup with a lid (now, if the lid was loose - which I can't remember if it was - then that could be an issue - but common sense has always told me the first thing you do at any two bit fast food joint, when you get your drink, is check the lid on it - followed by checking your order in the bag to make sure it is all there). This is all standard.

When the woman decided it was a good idea to put the coffee between her legs, knowing it was hot, without verifying the lid was on correctly - how can the producer be liable?

So nowadays, we see all sorts of disclaimers on our food: "Caution! The food you are about to eat is hot!" (no shit, like I paid for cold egg rolls), etc.

I am waiting for the day they put a warning stamping (a sticker wouldn't last), and/or color markings, on or near the tailpipe of an automobile "Caution: Tailpipe is HOT!!!" - Here's your f'ing sign, you Amerikan sheeple.

Fix for Yahoo Jabber Transport Available

[sabat]

To whom it matters:

I have found an unofficial patch for the Yahoo Transport (2.3.1) that fixes the authentication problem. It is working for me. (I did not write this patch, however.)

http://www.the-b.org/~kenny/yahoo-t-2.3.1-authfix. patch.gz

You weren't using your upstream much anyway

[billstewart]

First of all, if you're greedy, this gives you a way to download the stuff you want, when you want it, without getting stuck behind everybody else who's also trying to download today's Slackware release from their hopelessly overloaded mirror site. Because the more people trying to download at once, the faster it goes (well, mumble, unless the tracker gets overloaded like Slackware's did yesterday, mumble mumble.) And if you're not greedy, but you _are_ cheap, it's a way you can offer large files you've developed to the public without getting swamped by people downloading from you; put out the torrent and let them share it with each other.

But yes, altruism is a big part of it. But it's altruism that doesn't cost you anything, because if you're like most people, you weren't using your upstream much anyway, except for file sharing (think of this as different file sharing.) (It's only burning downstream bandwidth when you're getting new stuff, not when you're forwarding old stuff to other people.) Sure, you need to keep some upstream bandwidth for TCP ACKs, and sending email, and it would be nice if there were a way to prioritize your outgoing traffic so that applications like this get extra-low priority.

Another reason that, if you're a greedy person, you want to be altruistic is so that when you want to get stuff, there are people out there sharing it. This works best by having a community in which people share stuff a lot, which works best when they can trust the community to have things they want when they want it so they'll bother installing and running the software.

If you're running a web server that gets a lot of traffic, then that's a different matter, because you need the upstream bandwidth you've got. And if you're trying to have a video-conference with somebody, you need the bandwidth, so put your file sharing application on hold for a while. If you're trying to do Voice Over IP, make sure your file sharing software limits its upload bandwidth to less than your max upstream speed, and even then you might need to hit the Pause button while you're on the voipphone if the sound quality gets bad. But otherwise, you usually aren't losing much by running a well-tuned Bittorrent-like application. I don't know if WhiteWater is well-tuned or not; haven't played with it. BitTorrent can be.

Re:You weren't using your upstream much anyway

[IncohereD]

it would be nice if there were a way to prioritize your outgoing traffic so that applications like this get extra-low priority.

It's called traffic shaping. Most of your business grade routers will do it, and there's more than one open source project that will do it as well.

Re:You weren't using your upstream much anyway

[billstewart]

I do understand a lot about traffic shaping... The average BitTorrent user isn't behind a full-scale Cisco router. They've got some stripped-down DSL or cable modem box, possibly a separate firewall box, and one or often more computers behind it. Most consumer-DSL price hardware doesn't have much traffic-shaping capability, so if you've got two PCs fighting it out, you're going to lose. (You've got more control if you're trying to do things inside one Linux box.) Also, standard IP type of service bits let you mark stuff as more important than routine, but not as _less_ important, so your router is going to have to recognize the low-priority applications by other means, such as TCP/UDP port - that means you're going to have to configure it to know what BitTorrent looks like. (BitTorrent's not too bad for that, but there are other file-sharing protocols that deserve low priority and are harder to recognize, especially if they're deliberately trying to look like Port 80 or Port 443 or other innocuous material.)

Re:You weren't using your upstream much anyway

[IncohereD]

I do understand a lot about traffic shaping..

Sorry for the assumption.

Also to keep in mind is that most of the 'better' (i.e. open source or hacked) filesharing clients at least let you set a limit on the upload rate they'll use. This obviously isn't perfect, as its not very adaptive. Although I think I saw at least one that would allocate more bandwidth if your screen saver came on, or some other inactivity hint.

Re:Difference between GUIs of official BT and Azur

[Vaevictis666]

So whereas with Bit Torrent, if you finish a download and move on, you lose even the potential to share it again.

Not if you start the torrent again.

Which is where it breaks down. When I download something (a music album, for the sake of argument) it goes into my temp downloads folder. As does whatever I download from Firefox, Mirc, Trillian, or Shareaza. When I have received it and want to do something with it, I move it to a "better" spot on my hard drive. In this case it's My Music\.... Once here, Azureus no longer knows about it, and if I want to resume the torrent I need to start from scratch, or mangle the torrent import to grab it off of the correct location, which still doesn't work all the time if I need to rename any of the files.

If I had a pissload of free HD space, then I could copy it out of the temp folder instead of moving it (which for most popular things I do, but only to get to a healthy ratio) but I don't usually have the floating free space to do that.

The HD space problem with the WW cache is similar, but if I could set a constant space for it I could mitigate that. The cache could be smart and keep around the more popular bits of files, freeing me from needing the whole torrent available.

Re:Difference between GUIs of official BT and Azur

[tepples]

When I download something (a music album, for the sake of argument) it goes into my temp downloads folder.

Azureus pops up the Save As dialog when it starts a download. Why, specifically, can't you just put it in a "better" spot to begin with?

Re:Difference between GUIs of official BT and Azur

[awalrond]

FYIW Cache size management is on the TODO list for WW. It's a reasonably complicated extra layer, so I decided to get the transmission protocol rock solid before implementing it.

The significance of lacking a Win2K client

[tepples]

who the [expletive] do these people think they are trying to get stuff working on one OS before testing it on all the OS's that they don't have

In other words, you seem to recognize that White Water isn't yet ready for prime time. So why is somebody distributing a program exclusively through White Water? It seems one needs to have Linux to get Linux nowadays, except through a commercial vendor.

Come [expletive] on, the guy is working on it

Please use fewer instances of "fuck".

Face it. Comparatively few serious Internet users with a residential broadband connection are using anything other than Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP. By distributing Rubyx only under a currently Linux-only P2P system, the maintainer of Rubyx is discouraging prospective users from trying Rubyx. I respect this decision if it amounts to an admission that Rubyx is nowhere near ready for prime time either.

Re:The significance of lacking a Win2K client

[Anonymous Coward]

One does not need Linux to get Linux, every distribution I have downloaded of Linux, BSD, Planet 9, BeOS, Solaris 10 preview, etc has been to an iso on Windows where my CD burner lives. If you want to run Rubyx you have to have Linux already because there are no isos released yet. Yes, that is different than some other distributions, but that is part of the point - it _is_ different.

In other words, you seem to recognize that White Water isn't yet ready for prime time.

It is ready for prime time on Linux, software is released on single platforms. Just because it is only released so far on Linux doesn't mean it shouldn't be released - I thought one of the points of doing OpenSource, Free or even Shareware software projects was so that you can release iterations that are alpha, beta or even fairly release quality but maybe they don't have all the features (yet) - cross platform being a feature.

If it is one person doing all the work, it could well be that they focus on working through issues on a single platform even if they are writing code in a cross platform friendly style. This seems so obvious, esp looking at projects on Source Forge that I feel I am being trolled.