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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

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...

[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.

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.'

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.

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.

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]

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

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.

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.

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.

[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.

[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

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

[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.

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.

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"

[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"

[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"

[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.

Scaled Composites VIPs incomplete!

[rsw]

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

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: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).

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

[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.

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.

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: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