Indeed, I don't know who the moron that got the idea of suing segfault/UF was, but they managed to forget at least two principles:
Parodies of political or public figures has been explicitly protected by the Supreme Court on at least 4 different occasions. Very heavy precedents here. And there are dozens of cases that the various Circuit Courts have ruled where they include public companies as legal targets of such parodies. All protected under the 1st Amendment.
To prove libel in the US, you have to prove at least 3 things: (a) that the speech was false (b) that the speaker knew it was false and (c) it caused measurable damage. The second is hard to prove, and the third is even more difficult. However, even here, parodies are afforded extra protection. For all of you who missed The People vs. Larry Flynt: parodies are protected as Free Speech even if they fulfill the previous 3 conditions if the speaker shows that no one would believe that the parody was true. Essentially, if everyone (ie "the average reader") knows that the speech is false, then it's protected (even if it's otherwise libelous).
Even if they were suing simply as a way to "win-by-bankrupt", they should be careful. The thing that this company seems to forget is that it's becoming much simpler these days to counter-sue for malicious damages. The courts are very receptive to summary judgments in cases like this, and, depending on the judge, I wouldn't be suprised if it's thrown out immediately, and counter damages awarded without even a basic trial. I'd really like to see Illiad and Segfault make a bundle off of them.
By the way, the "Death Star" thing actually got me to thinking of AT&T, even before LucasArts. Getting old....
-Erik
Codebreaking and the Wired article...
on
Wired on Kipling
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· Score: 1
OK, I don't know MoobY, and I can't comment on his cryptographic skills. So I don't know how he obtained the password. However, there's things the article misses:
The "traditional hacker" manner for breaking such a site has nothing to do with decyphering the mathematical algorythm. It would be to attack the web server, gain root, and read the internal database. Not that difficult for a good chunk of script-kiddies (or some of us old fogies, too. (bad! Erik. Don't do that anymore!) (Really.)) However, this isn't even remotely intellectually challenging. So, if all we were interested in was Kipling crap (which we obviously weren't), there would have been as mass attack against the site. There wasn't. (Unless you count the/. effect.:-)
Instead, there was alot of debate about the mathematical underpinnings of the code. I think this is the best illustrated distinction between cracker/hacker that has come out recently: what the obvious goal was the glory for the intellectual accomplishment of cryptoanalyzing the cypher NOT just getting the answer.
Of course, I wasn't surprised that no-one here seems to have broken the code. Cryptoanalyzing stuff is very hard, and requires very specialized education. I've had alot of it, and would consider myself (at best) a poor amateur. I'm going to hazzard a guess and say that less than 10% of/. readers have sufficient crypto education and experience to do a good job of even analyzing the algorythm. And how many of us can honestly say we understand more than half of the math in Applied Cryptography. I can't.
Anyway, until someone posts a good analysis of the code, here's what about 14 hours of frustration have produced about it:
The main "crypto" routine is simple XOR, which is easily reducable (and cryptoanalyzable). The problem is in key generation/setup. The key generation appears to be a trap-door one-way function used as a hash. I've tried most of the ones I can find (ie, all from App Crypto, some from sci.crypt.moderated archives, and some from elsewhere), and can't find any match. The hashing function exhibits a good avalanche effect, but apparently has collision problems. The length of the keyspace is less than the obvious, but still large enough to resist brute-force search. Also, the use of JavaScript is problematic, since it's slow and not really easily portable to C without some substantial effort (anyone have a % operator for floats that mimic's JavaScript's ?)
I wrote a recursive intelligent brute-force search, but it still requires way to much resources and time to run (it's far from memory efficient). Basically, what you do is this:
Given that you know the "cyphertext" characters (http://... ), you can work backwards to determine that the first possible character of the login is about 4 choices. So, for each of them, you make a tree. It turns out that at each node, there are about 4-6 possible leafs that continue to give the correct URL. Eventually, each leaf runs into a problem where no possible characters result in the correct cyphertext - thus, you trim that branch. (or you've managed to find a solution.) Rather than about 73^20 (about 2^123) possibilities, the algorithm above runs about 2^40 possibilities. However, it has exponential memory requirements. Even I don't have that kind of memory on this box.:-)
Hopefully, someone will point out mistakes in my analysis, and we might eventually get a full disection of the algorithm. I'm not interested in the login/password, I want to know what the trapdoor is...
OK, I've read everyone's posts, and am going to summarize the arguments here, plus include my own short opinion/experience.
Oracle/NT sucks - the universal experience is that NT isn't ready to run a serious production DB. My personal experience with both Oracle (in a test env.) and MSSQL 6.5/7.0 (in production) verify this.
Oracle is more stable on Solaris than Linux - there is some debate about this. Oracle is indeed originally written on Solaris/SPARC; however, the Linux port is by far the easiest to do (from a friend at Oracle who works on Oracle/Linux). The deciding factor here is probably simple longevity. The longer something is publicly available to beat on, the more confidence I have in it's stability. Edge goes to Solaris.
SPARC vs Intel - Oracle/Linux is Intel-only right now. I've repeatedly asked all Oracle reps and developers I know when Oracle/Linux AXP or SPARC will be out. No time guess at all . The problem with PC hardware (and, to a lesser extent, the SPARC ATX motherboards) is that commodity hardware sucks. It fails all over the place (from a production point of view). So, you can't buy cheap Intel stuff. A good DB server from IBM or Compaq (with the support contract, and Linux support) will run $10-20k at least. Sun hardware (Ultra 10, UE 450) starts at $10k and runs to $50k real fast. Still, Sun hardware fails at a far lower rate than PC hardware. Call it the simple law of combinations.
Intel vs. SPARC (scalability) - SPARC hardware scales far better than Intel hardware. Period. If you look at the raw CPU numbers, Intel can be more than competative in CPU vs. CPU, but that's only part of the equation. The memory/bus architecture of a Sparc is far superior to even a high-end Intel box. Much greater Memory to CPU bandwidth, bigger backplane, etc. A DB server will stress virtually your entire system, so a balanced system design is much more important. Though Oracle 8 is still 32bit (and thus can't use more than 4GB of ram per instance), you can run multiple instances of Oracle per SPARC box, and can cram far more memory into a SPARC. Also, right now Linux has a 4GB limit on Intel (acutally, if you tune it, a 3GB usable). Most SPARCs can stuff well over 4GB of ram in them - you can't get more than 1GB in an Intel box unless you pay for Xeons. (which, by the way, eliminate most of Intel's price advantage).
Linux vs. Solaris - from an OS point of view, which is better for Oracle? Oracle itself does smooth out alot of the differences (Oracle Linux can do raw volumes). Linux runs faster on less hardware than Solaris. As usual, though, Linux isn't really tested on the Big Iron stuff (I'm not sure it's quite as good on a 8-way box as it is on a 4-way box). Solaris scales virtually linearly (up to 64-CPUs). As previously mentioned, about the only other relevant point is total memory: you get 3GB usable in Linux, and lots more in Solaris. Also, the availability of a superior filesystem/software volume manager for Solaris is not to be underestimated (they really make a difference). The rest of the OS issues are religious, and reasonably irrelevant (or, at least, sufficiently ignorable).
Oracle Support? - this is a valid concern. While I highly doubt Oracle will suddenly jump off the Linux bandwagon (though, it would certainly abandon Linux before Solaris, at least in the next 10 years), there is a more crutial problem: support. Yes, Oracle is mostly a self-contained env, so an Oracle DBA should be able to run/maintain Oracle on any platform. However, there are ALWAYS platform-specific dependencies. There are hordes more Oracle/Solaris DBAs, and more importantly, Oracle support itself is extremely familiar with Solaris. I'm not sure if they can even (really) deal with Linux-specific support calls yet. Oracle support is simply far more mature, available, and accessible for Solaris than for Linux.
Oracle App availability - if you plan to use any of the suite of various Oracle Apps, many (if not most) are not yet available for Linux. There are a huge number being ported (since the work isn't terribly difficult), but others (like the Financial Suite) aren't, since people haven't demanded it yet. So, if any of these are a concern, Linux/Oracle loses right now. Check back on this is 6 months, though.
I'm looking at your original post, and the main advantage of Linux over Solaris is price. Intel hardware (even the quite heavy-duty stuff you should buy for a serious DB server) is less than equivalent SPARC hardware. However, there are other concerns:
For this use, your Oracle license will dominate in cost. There is no difference between an Linux and Solaris license cost. The Oracle license is going to dominate your hardware costs (I'm looking to spend $100k for Oracle and $50k on Hardware for something similar to what you describe). So, the hardware savings looks less relevant.
Like I mentioned before, you really have to spend alot of money to get quality hardware. Otherwise, there's no sense in buying Oracle. Why would you put a 450cc big-block in a VW? Same principle here. I simply can't seen it being a sane choice to run Oracle on anything less than a high-end Dual P2/3 or Xeon with major RAID. $15k minimum for that. More like $25k for a good setup. $50k for a quad Xeon. A stocked UE 250 runs under $35k. A mid-range UE450 runs $60k.
If you are running a small database (ie, 2-3GB max) that doesn't get hit extremely hard, Linux is certainly fine. However, given that you seem to be wanting a enterprise-level solution, Solaris is simply the better way to go. You might spend 25% more on the hardware, but remember, TCO is so much more than just the hardware. In the long run, Solaris is the much better choice from a feature set, performance/scalability, and support/maintenace viewpoint.
Hopefully, in about 2 years, we can redo this comparison, and Linux will be a truly equal competitor. Right now, Linux really doesn't belong in the datacenter running hard-core enterprise apps. Soon, though.
Yes, on the odd occasion, Linux (even RedHat) can be severely annoying.
On the whole, however, I find that NT is much more annoying than Linux.
NT:
Boot off cdrom. Answer basic questions. Occasionally put in board-specific drivers if ones on CD aren't current enough (eg. newer SCSI-based SuperMicro boards). Reboot
NT comes up with slick install interface. Answer all questions, inserting appropriate driver disks to right points to get current drivers. Reboot
NT comes up. Log in, update to correct video drivers (since NT won't let you install correct ones in previous step). Reboot
Log in, and install correct sound drivers. Reboot.
When NT comes up, log in and install SP3 (SP4 still has lingering problems). Wait for NT to ask you if you want to replace the drivers installed above with the SP drivers. Click "No". Reboot
Install IE 4.0 (since it's required by virtually all MS products nowdays). Reboot
Install other desired products (remember, Reboot after installing each product!)
Re-apply SP3. Reboot
Apply the 12 relevant hot-fixes to SP3. Reboot after each one.
Total time: ~3 hours per machine (assuming about 2 minutes to fully reboot a machine).
Linux (or Solaris x86, for that matter)
Boot off of CDROM (or floppy, then CDROM). Answer questions. Wait while it installs everything. Reboot
Log in, install latest updates (perhaps a new kernel, too). Reboot if you feel like it.
Build a custom kernel. Reboot
Total time: 30 minutes.
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On another note, I'm having a slight problem. By boot disk (a new IBM 4.5G SCSI) has more than 1024 cylinders. My boot partition is below the 1024 limit. A normal RH 5.2 install works fine, and boots OK, however:
fdisk complains that the partition table isn't correct (slices don't end on cylinder boundaries).
If I build a new kernel, add it to lilo.conf, then do a "/sbin/lilo", it complains all over the place, and craps out. If I do a "/sbin/lilo -P fix", things work fine, and it boots fine. However, if (after that), I at anytime do a "/sbin/lilo" without the "-P fix", it screws up the boot loader and I can't boot anymore. Still searching throught the docs for info on this one...
Problem is, the Supreme Court has always interpreted Sec 9 as referring to the States, NOT the Federal Gov't. So, that leaves it wide open for a US-wide sales tax on e-commerce. There is also wide dispute over the exact meaning, so it is by no means likely that any e-sales-tax is unconstitutional.
Also, mail-order has never been exempt from sales tax. The reason you don't really see taxation on out-of-state sales is: (A) the mail-order retailers have an extremely vocal and organized trade organization that screams every time someone brings up the subject (B) up till now, the states have generally conceded that tracking all the sales and distributing the tax would be "too hard" (this is generally bogus, but it's a convenient lie to get out of the fact that they cave to (A))
In reality, when you buy an article through mail-order, you owe YOUR state's sales tax to YOUR state.
Basically, if the state can show that it's not discriminating against other states, then it bypasses Sec 9. So, if a state taxes ALL ecommerce by it's citizens at a flat rate, well, it should withstand any court challenge.
They'd pick a single, flat rate instead of going with the mishmash of state sales tax we have to deal with.
Use part of the revenue stream to benefit the internet (like, maybe funding a domain-dispute resolution arbiter:-)
Don't go anywhere near connection fees.
This should get interesting. I'm assuming that they're going to try to start enforcing sales tax on mail-order too. If they don't - wait for some internet company to sue. If they do, wait for the mail-order giants to start lobbying congress for exemptions to both. Should be one right big mess!
Despite the tag line ("News for Nerds"),/. really isn't a "News" site in the same manner as CNN, ABCnews, and such try to be. Rob et al do not claim to be unbiased - in fact, you can see sagan's bias off the top (he waves in front of everyone's face). If you want more "journalistic" news, go see another site.
What/. is, and what makes it popular, is that it's a discussion site. Think of Rob, et al, as you friendly neighborhood moderator. Noone ever claims they're bias-free. It's more of an exercise in free-thought. If you want your thinking done for you, go see the traditional media, where they have decades of experience with packaging, presenting, and massaging your news for you (and of course, presenting it as "unbiased"). They just manage to politely hide their biases from the user.
By the way, I don't buy the story about the competing site. Just who pressured him? People posting to the site? If you provide something people find useful, then, well, there you go. Obviously, not enough people thought he was doing a useful thing. Don't like it - vote with your feet (metaphorically speaking). And, noone is forcing you to read this. So don't bitch to me about how you don't have any choice. Of course you do.
This has to be one of the few times I've seen Al really screw up something horribly. He's usually very good at being a technically-savvy politican, and actually isn't stupid (at least, the couple of times he visited us (and I actually got to talk to him!) at the Media Lab). One wonders what Tipper fed him that morning. Or maybe... IT'S A REPUBLICAN PLOT!!!! THAT'S IT!!!
My personal opinion is that I like Al (though Libby intrigues me) - GWB, Jr isn't my style. Just my opinion though (hey, remember to express yours - VOTE next November)!
On a side note to the above poster:
The internet caught on long before the WWW. I happened to be using it quite nicely way back in '89 for what it was originally intended for: research communication.
If you mean "mass-culture acceptance", well, it has to do more with NCSA's Mosaic than the base WWW. The WWW was being used for 3-4 years before Mosaic came along. B-L's stuff is the underpinnings of the WWW, just like IP is the underpinnings of the Internet. The mass-appeal is the interface, not the structure. That's not to say B-L's wasn't crucial to the development of the Internet today. It's all a bunch of Lego blocks - all important, but remove one, and the whole thing falls apart.
Perhaps I do agree with you in some senses that artists currently under contract can't bitch and whine too much. However, bear in mind this thing: most artists sign long-term deals with labels when they start out, so the label effectively "owns" them for a period of years (at least 3 in most cases, and possibly up to 10).
Now, backflash to 1994. You're a new group/singer, and are on the edge of hitting it big. A label comes to you, feeds you a contract (which, if you weren't totally stupid, you had a good lawyer look at), and you sign it. Did you think about MP3? Of course not.
So, don't blame all the artists. They made an informed decision at the moment, and are getting screwed by technological progress. You can bet your sweet @$! that the next time those artists go in for contract renegotiation, this will be explicitly stated in their contract (one way or the other).
The big problem here is the RIAA. They're treading the dangerous line of collusion to prevent competition. I wouldn't be surprised if someone files a complaint soon with the FTC alledging strong-arm tactics and anti-competative actions.
The RIAA (and it's component labels) are too stupid to see a great oportunity. MP3 gives you the chance to do huge shipments. Think of it this way: a hit sells 100,000 or 200,000 copies. A big hit does a million or so. Smashes do a couple million. So, maybe you (ie the label) make $4 profit for each CD = $8 million for a smash. Now, if you managed to sell the songs on that CD for $0.25 each (figure 4 songs/CD that sell, the rest are small potatoes (volume wise)) but, because they're so cheap, you sell 20 million copies instead of 1 million. So: 20e6 x.25 x 4 = $20 million. Even if you lose half to artist royalties, promotion, and misc costs, you still make more than the CD sales.
-Erik
(still waiting for the RIAA to take it's head out of the sand and smell the money in MP3s)
So, I guess that just leaves us 2.9 MIT folks here... (by the by, MIT is on a 5.0 scale. So, 4.0 is a "B" average...)
I think the more relevant issue is how big the company is. If you're a big company, chance (at least statistically) that a person with power reads/. is low. However, if there are 30 people in your company, and only 1 reads/. - there's a good chance either the right person is reading it, or that person knows the right person.
Back on topic: I wouldn't be surprised if there is a licensing issue with the OpenGL libraries. Meaning, they (Be) may not be able to independently distribute them. Who knows. We should hear from Be before toasting them with the flamethrowers.
There is something to be said for waiting for a product to "jell" into a coherent whole first, then releasing it, rather than doing a rolling release. That's part of GNOME's problems with the general user population. It's great for developers to get early access to stuff (and in fact, I think it should be required), but releasing something to the general population before all parts are finished can be very bad.
Host limitations are mostly a thing of the past with UTP (since you only get 1 host per segment). If you were referring to # hosts per collision domain, I don't know what the previous number was, but most modern "managed" 10/100/1000 E-net hubs can handle at least 2048 MAC addresses (i've seen some at 8192). It's primarily a function of the amount of RAM dedicated to the on-board ASIC.
Packet loss is still a problem in a shared environment.
Essentially what pulls E-net ahead of TR is switching. Switching aleviates all the above problems with Ethernet - unlimited number of cascaded switches, no colision problem, # hosts based only on available switch RAM.
Token-ring technology is indeed nice for high-load environments: FDDI is much preferable in my server rooms to FastEthernet (until maybe I see a _working_ Gigabit Enet solution). In a large-scale user environment, though, switched 10Mbps ethernet performs better than 16Mb TokenRing. And the cost is far less these days...
I, too missed the LWE talk by Larry. Now I'm really sorry. Great speech, Larry. Now I know why perl has always looked like the contents of your average apartment complex dumpster: lots of cool, useful shit people throw out, hidden among even more nasty, disgusting stuff...
I do agree with most of Larry's "analysis" of post-modernism. He even touches on what I think is the biggest downfall of post-modernism, and, coincidently enough, the biggest problem with perl . Larry called it the "Cult of Subjectivity". It's the subject of this talk, er, post:
Despite Larry's attempts to label it as part of the modernist movement, absolute cultural relativism isn't: it's a natural (and logical) continuation of the post-modernist movement. It's what bothers most people living in the post-modernist age: the feeling that nothing has any absolute value, or that "It all depends on your point of view..." We tend to swallow the discomfort that comes along with being exposed to this concept, as long as it doesn't rear it's ugly head too often. The big problem with cultural relativism (and by some extention, post-modernism), is that you can't build a society on it. What makes a functioning society is common rules. Everyone has to agree that certain conventions are valuable enough that we all have to abide by them. Hence: laws.
OK, enough philosophizing. How does this all relate to perl? In so far as perl is a post-modern language, it suffers from a problem similar to cultural relativism: the Cult of Mediocrity. Larry's point about the flexibility of perl to produce both beautify and stupifyingly ugly code is well taken: you can produce extremely nice code in perl much easier than many other languages. However, it's also much easier to writing totally unmaintainable code in perl than anything else.
Perl supports to the Cult of Mediocrity (so does Visual Basic, and many others). It allows a minimally-competent programmer to write code, without thought to the community in general. In sort, perl allows you to be both lazyANDrude. The problem with the Cult of Mediocracy is that it places higher value on getting anything to work, rather than stopping to think if it should work.
As it has been pointed out by luminaries much greater than myself, the difficulty in writing good code is not in mastering the language. The difficult is in producing a good algorithm (or structure). Programming languages should help the programmer by providing a framework where it is rather difficult to produce nasty code. B&D languages (like Forth) that enforce a single, "correct" standard lack the flexibility to be creative; however, flexibility for it's own sake is equally damaging (like, why are there 6 ways to do a case structure in perl?)
The post-modernistic view of borrowing is good. However, perl seems to take this to an extreme, where it simply amalgamates other languages, and doesn't sythesize.
In the end, that's my complaint about perl. It's far to easy to write ugly, nasty, unmaintainable code. A programming language should enforce some minimum standard of style in the name of communal good, and the standard in perl seems to be: "well, I sort of understand what it's supposed to do..." Not good enough.
This wouldn't be a problem if perl was a restricted-domain (ie niche) language. However, it's a general-use language. No, I don't blame Larry for all the nasty perl code I see, but he does bear a good chunk of the responsibility for designing a language that allows that previous idiot to barf on a page and actually run it.
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All this said, I still like perl. If the programmer puts enough forethought into a perl script, it's great. Far easier and quicker than doing the same in C, C++, or even python. But I'll be more careful where I use it, and how I write code. Hopefully, everyone here will be to.
It isn't called the "Swiss Army Chainsaw" of programming languages for nothing. Treat it with respect, and care, and it's very powerful. Screw around with it, and it'll rip your leg off (or at least, the programmer who has to read your code will hunt you down, and do so...)
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By the way, Larry, that's what your daughter meant when she says "That sucks!". It's OK to be post-modernist to a certain extent, even to a greater extent, but there have to be certain boundaries. Some things are BAD. And there has to be agreement that they are BAD. Of course, the trick here is to figure out who gets to set the boundaries. Never said it was easy. It's just that the bar is a little too low in perl's case.
What it means (for the lazy)...
on
QPL 1.0 Released
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· Score: 1
IANAL, but after careful reading of the QPL, here is my interpretation of it. Mind you, I'm not infalible by any means (and I'm sure I'll get corrections if my mistakes), but this is meant as a rough "layperson" interpretation of the QPL. (note when I say "FreeQT" I'm referring to the code from Troll, plus any mods covered by this license.)
1. You are granted the non-exclusive rights set forth in this license provided you agree to and comply with any and all conditions in this license. Whole or partial distribution of the Software, or software items that link with the Software, in any form signifies acceptance of this license.
If you use our software or any software derived from it, you have to agree to this license. Using it implies acceptance. Everyone can use this software.
2. You may copy and distribute the Software in unmodified form provided that the entire package, including - but not restricted to - copyright, trademark notices and disclaimers, as released by the initial developer of the Software, is distributed.
You must distribute the package as a whole - you may not remove any component.
3. You may make modifications to the Software and distribute your modifications, in a form that is separate from the Software, such as patches. The following restrictions apply to modifications:
You can modify our software; however, when you give it to others, you have to distribute the unmodified version (as per #2), with your mods in a seperate form. patch(1) is a typical form, though not the only one. Also, when distributing your mods with the original, you must follow these rules:
a. Modifications must not alter or remove any copyright notices in the Software.
Your mods can't remove the creator's IP notices. Fair is fair - you must recognize other's contributions to the work.
b. When modifications to the Software are released under this license, a non-exclusive royalty-free right is granted to the initial developer of the Software to distribute your modification in future versions of the Software provided such versions remain available under these terms in addition to any other license(s) of the initial developer.
You give Troll Tech the right to include your mods in a future version of the FreeQT (with no payment to you), provided that the future version of FreeQT is distributed with terms similar to this license. That is, your code may become part of FreeQT. It is not clear if they have to acknowledge your contribution in any way (though I would hope they do).
4. You may distribute machine-executable forms of the Software or machine-executable forms of modified versions of the Software, provided that you meet these restrictions:
You can distribute compiled versions of FreeQT, or a compiled version of your mods+FreeQT. That is, you can compile their software to a library, or patch their software, then compile it. The resulting binary must follow these rules for distribution:
a. You must include this license document in the distribution.
The QPL must come in the same package that you distribute the compiled binaries in.
b. You must ensure that all recipients of the machine-executable forms are also able to receive the complete machine-readable source code to the distributed Software, including all modifications, without any charge beyond the costs of data transfer, and place prominent notices in the distribution explaining this.
You must give away the source code to both the original FreeQT code and the modifications you made. You must tell people that you are doing so in an obvious place (eg. the README or LICENSE file). You can charge a reasonable sum to cover distribution for the source, and no more.
c. You must ensure that all modifications included in the machine-executable forms are available under the terms of this license.
The QPL is "infectious" in a manner similar (but not identical) to the GPL. Any modifications you make are automatically covered under the QPL. It is not clear if this allows the code to be GPLed (I think not, but this is another matter).
5. You may use the original or modified versions of the Software to compile, link and run application programs legally developed by you or by others.
You can write programs that use the software (either in pristine or modified form). You can also compile programs written by others that require FreeQT (or a modified version). You can also run programs that require the FreeQT (or modified) binaries. Duuuuhh.:-)
6. You may develop application programs, reusable components and other software items that link with the original or modified versions of the Software. These items, when distributed, are subject to the following requirements:
You are allowed to write programs that use the software (or a modified version of it). When you distribute the resulting program, you have to follow these rules: (note, that if you don't distribute the program, A and B do not apply).
a. You must ensure that all recipients of machine-executable forms of these items are also able to receive and use the complete machine-readable source code to the items without any charge beyond the costs of data transfer.
You have to give away the source code to any application you write that uses the software. You can charge a small distribution fee, but that's it. Anyone who gets the binaries of your program must also either be given the source code or must be provided a way to easily get them for no more than a nominal distributuion fee.
b. You must explicitly license all recipients of your items to use and re-distribute original and modified versions of the items in both machine-executable and source code forms. The recipients must be able to do so without any charges whatsoever, and they must be able to re-distribute to anyone they choose.
Any programs you write that use FreeQT must be freely distributable, in both source and binary form. That is, once a recipient has either the binary or source of your program, they can give it away to anyone, and you cannot charge them anything for doing so. They may modify your source code and give both the mods and the new binary away, too. Also, this implies that the recipient can get the source code, compile it, and then give away the resulting binary.
c. If the items are not available to the general public, and the initial developer of the Software requests a copy of the items, then you must supply one.
If you choose not to distribute your application outside of your organization, or are only using it personally, you do not have to abide by clauses A and B. However, if Troll Tech finds out about your application, they can (at their option) force you to give them a copy. What is unclear is what Troll Tech can do with the copy. The implications are that TT must then release it as per A and B, but I'm not sure about that.
Disclaimer, Warranty, etc...
Standard "I'm not responsible for anything that happens when you use my code" legalese boilerplate. Ignore it - it's generally of questionable legality anyway (though everyone includes it, like some voodoo magic that will ward off lawsuits. Ha!)
Note that my reading of the QPL does not preclude a app developer from selling his or her software (perhaps bundled with support or documentation). You are free to sell the binaries of applications that use FreeQT, but you have to give away the source.
How the QPL plays with other licenses (BSD, NPL/MPL, GPL, LGPL) is beyond the scope of this post. Perhaps someone else will take on that job.
Why does this bother you? They sell Intel stuff, and now Intel funds them. Logical.
If you want Alpha, you know where to find it. (to paraphrase Dennis Ritchie).
Seriously, if VA Research doesn't sell your preferred platform, simply take your business elsewhere. Aspen Systems, Apache Digital and DCG all sell Alpha (and Sparc)-based linux boxes. Where is it written that a good Linux vendor has to sell all flavors of processors?
Excuse me, but last time I looked, blackmail, extorition, kidnapping, and murder are a piss-poor substituted for a political revolution. Killing/injuring people to make a "statement" is inane (and immoral), not to mention highly hypocritical.
There is a huge difference between those willing to stand up for their ideals, speak up, and put themselves at personal risk while attempting to change a political system, and those who advocate violence in the name of "progress" (ie, if you don't agree with me, well, Death To You).
If you can't see the difference between the students of Tiannamin Square and the IRA, or the American Revolution and the Reign of Terror, I feel sorry for you. But I won't feel sympathy when a grinning "freedom fighter" parks a U-Haul full of chemicals outside your place of employ.
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and lest we forget, the last moron to do the above in these parts was an "american".:-/
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"How do you have patience for people who claim they love America, but clearly can't stand Americans?" - Annette Bening in The American President
Last time I checked, Cyrix was never owned by IBM. IBM is their primary foundry (ie the people who actually make their chips). Which is why you saw people referring to the chips as IBM/Cyrix 6x86 (and M2). Cyrix is now owned by National Semiconductor.
Both AMD and Cyrix (and IDT, for that matter) are not "native" x86 chips anymore. Both quit being so at the K5/5x86 level. Instead, both are natively a RISCish chip, with a microcode layer that translates the x86 instructions to the underlying RISC architecture. It's considerably more cumbersome (from a chip designer's standpoint) than doing the translation in software (ala DEC's FX!32), but an order of magnitude faster.
Don't know about their market share, though they only target the low-end now. Cyrix has abandoned the $1000+ PC market, and is strictly interested in the "integrated" CPU, ala their MediaGX stuff. This seems a reasonable way to go, since for NCs and similar stuff, if you can integrate alot of the normal chipset and other accessories onto the main CPU, it's alot cheaper. Problem is, it crowds out die space that could otherwise be used to improve performance. Oh well, don't get 'nothing for free!
I'll trade you lemonade, crushed ice, a blender, and some Stoli for Jeff's girlfriend.
(Ouch, hey, Kira, I was only kidding!)
I think I can part with my Oster for a week or so, and I'm sure I've got a good supply of misc Kool-Aid and such, and a couple of pitchers. I'll stop by Tuesday, probably around lunch time or so.
As I've stated in previous posts, the whole problem of DNS and trademark/IP disputes arises from the abuse of the DNS system. DNS was NOT DESIGNED and is ILL-SUITED to serve as an identification system for concepts larger than simple number-avoidance (ie it solves the problem of addressing machines by IP number only).
The solution to the current problem is two-fold:
Most importantly, a new schema for mapping concepts to machines is needed. The smart-browsing functions of Netscape 4.5 and 5, and IE 5 are a large step in that direction. Yahoo-like search engines/portals also are along the appropriate lines. (see below for more on this).
Creation of an exclusiveTLD that allows only those with a registred trademark (NOT a Service Mark, or anything else but a TradeMark) to register. I just looked, and nothing is assigned the.TM domain (ie, you could get McDonalds.TM ).
The first solution is a technical one, and will require some forethought and evolution. It is in fact currently underway, as the flaws in the existing DNS-naming solution are evident (to everyone of course except the Bureaucrats, lawyers, and marketing idiots). This system needs to be heavily encouraged, as it will ultimately solve the problem we are having. This is the long-term solution, and should receive all due priority and attention (particularly at the IETF-level).
The second proposal is a band-aid that should work sufficiently long until the first (technical) solution is in place. It's a stop-gap measure.
A couple of things about the second proposal: Once the.TM domain is created, and a formal dispute-resolution policy is in place for that domain (I'm not saying this will be easy, but it's certainly much easier implimenting a policy for a currently-vacant TLD than trying to retro-fit one onto the existing TLD structure), several things must happen:
All othe domains must be freed from trademark/IP suits. The first registrant of that domain in the non-TM space owns the domain. Period. End of discussion.
DNS-registration agencies must prohibit organizations from registering the identical name in multiple TLDs to prevent name-space pollution and gratuitous squatting. Thus, if you happen to one Foo.com, you can't register foo.org, foo.co.uk, or other such names. I recognize that this will be difficult across international registration agencies, but it's trivially enforcable within a single agency's perview.
People registering a TradeMark in the.TM domain must provide documentation of an internationally-recognized trademark in order to be given that domain. ownership of a.TM domain precludes ownership of the identical name in other TLDs (once again, to prevent name-space squatting).
The.TM domain is designed to be the "Official Recognition" of the owner's trademark. As such, browser and search engines should be encouraged to search for under that domain first when attempting to resolve ambiguous names. A cannonical example is this: Netscape has (for at least 3 releases) attempted to resolve the name "foo" input into the Location URL first as a local machine named "foo", then as a machine named "www.foo.com". Netscape (and other browser manufactures) should be officially encourages (probably by RFC throught the IETF) to change this behavior such that it searches for "www.foo.TM" first. This provides a mechanism for the protection of trademark owner's "fame" and such associate with owning a trademark.
The establishment of the.TM domain should come with an international agent responsible for administering such a domain, and who has final say in arbitration. This most likely requires a formal international treaty to be signed by nations; however, such is necessary to give the proposal teeth. As part of the treaty, the TM-administering agency should be given absolute power to resolve disputes - suing in a local national court to overturn an unfavorable ruling should be explicity denied.
The.TM domain is for use by TradeMark owners ONLY. Other forms of IP are not accomodated, and should not be allowed. While Service Marks are disputably part of this, I would expresively exclude them for the following reasons: (1) most service marks are longer phrases, which are unsuitable for domains anyway (2) Service Marks are useful mostly in advertising, and often are only recognizable as a graphical image, which does not translate to the text-only of a TLD (3) Service Marks do not have the wide recognition that TradeMarks generally do.
The proposed solution by the WIPO is typical of a large bureaucratic committee: it proposes an ill-defined, nebulous system heavy on bureaucracy and favorable to the well-financed. Throw it out.
First off, let me state a couple of things up front:
I've met and talked fairly extensively with RMS. Though I doubt he'd remember my name (face, maybe...)
I've listened to ESR and Allman on Open Source on numerous occasions.
I've never heard Tim O'Reilly speak, though I've had a couple of conversations with some of the Sr. Editor/Publishers at ORA.
I'm an admin; as such, there is precious little code out there that's got my name on it; however, I like to think that significant portions of code that developers I've worked with is due to me. And lots of that is out in the World, Making Things Better(tm).
I'd agree with the majority of posters here that the fracture actually represents a healthy community, complete with stress and differences. That all being said, I really dislike the massive chip on the Open Source community's shoulder about Business, in general. Many businesses are closed-minded, hording everything they own, unwilling to share, extorting every last penny from those that need their service/product. Others protect what they have, yet are willing to sell it at a very friendly price (ie, they make money, but aren't being greedy). Still others see that they can share what they have, and still make a living. Far too many people see only the first and last categories, and refuse to accept the middle one.
I just don't get the argument over ORA. In my mind, they definately fit in the middle category. Sure, they have copyright-protected works. And they're not about to give that up, since that's how they make money. On the other hand, I don't consider their pricing outrageous (hey, anyone looked at what Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment costs these day?), and they definately consider it to be neighborly to cosy up to the O-S community - look at the resources they expend to sponsor and promote various O-S stuff. Sure, in the end, they make money, but that means they're actually good, smart people.
One of the major things that galls me about people who complain about the cost of books, and how information should be free, is that it is. Let's take the Bible of SysAdmins: ORA's Essential Systems Administration.
I can read through the book, writing down interesting concepts and thoughts it points out. I can also read The System Administrator's handbook, Advanced Solaris Systems' Administration, and go dig up the Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System. By my very own willpower, I can take the best ideas from each of those books, plus my very own ones, and come up with a complete documentation. What I can't do is outright copy the entire books.
The difference between code and books is that often, the major effort in code is production of the actual algorithm (ie the code itself) that results in a certain functionality. Of course, we 'd like to promote that duplication of that massive effort is avoided, thus we want people to be able to copy code.
In books, the major effort is the idea, not the actual words. In many cases the actual words are poorly written, and I certainly don't want that copied. What you can copy from ORA books is the ideas themselves. Look at how they lay out the book - use their organizational thoughts. How is the material presented? What tips and pointers do they use? What's left in, and what's left out? How are things explained clearly?
Technical manuals are by far the easiest to reproduce, since at their base, they all are talking about the same thing. So borrow from the masters - don't be lazy and require that they do all your work for you, but take what they've already expressed and produce something of your own. If you want to give that away, fine, that's up to you. Just don't condemn them if they don't feel the exact way you do. After all, you're probably not deriving your sole source of income from those works...
One last thing. I talked with one of the Publishers from ORA last USENIX, and inquired about whether or not they would be doing more of the electronic collections (such as Webmaster in a Nutshell, Deluxe Edition). Her response was enlightening: it wasn't remotely profitable. She said that the volume of sales for such an item turned out to be below what it cost to make it and maintain it. Then she said something even more startling: a really popular ORA book (like Essential SysAdmin) sold about 25,000 copies, while less popular ones (like, say, Java in a Nutshell) might sell 10,000 or so. I used to work in the publishing industry, and I know what typical margins are (let's just say that they're not much above 10%). So, for a excellent seller for ORA:.1 x 25000 x $30 = $75,000. Oh, yeah, like they're raking in the dough on this all over the planet.
First off, I'm going to compare the Music Industry with another segment of the market that neatly parallels it, and ultimately which (hopefully) both will follow the same model: the publishing industry (specifically: books).
In both industries, you have a large number of potential sources (ie performers and authors), with a very small number of intermediaries (the labels and publishers). The publishers (music & book) serve to promote the product and provide distribution/manufacturing channels in order to facilitate large-scale sales. Let's look at the Internet's effect on these three functions of the publisher (in reverse order):
Manufacturing As everyone knows, copying a digital file is free (for all real intents and purposes). There are no manufacturing costs here whatsoever. However, the artist still has some costs, since the production requires physical access to equipment (ie a recording studio). Likewise, the author needs profesional editors and typesetting people/equipment to produce the final work. While the manufacturing end of the deal from the publisher is no longer needed, the publisher still provides significant value-add by providing the skills/equipment to aid in the original production of the work.
Distribution This is probably the largest effect the internet has. In both cases, the artist/author can bypass the publisher completely - the sophisticated retail channel for distributing the resulting work is not needed, as the artist/author can contact third party distributors (ie, pick your web site!), or possibly do it themselves. This is what has the Record Industry scared. Currently, they make HUGE profits on the distribution of stuff.
Promotion This is what the big value-add for the publisher is. They're able to push sales through promotion. No band/author has the kind of contacts and resources available to do this.
MP3s aren't going to kill the Music Industry (maybe in the longggggg run, but certainly not for several decades). Artists still need the labels for their facilties and promotional savvy, and for their normal retail & manufacturing stuff. What they fail to see is that it's a different channel for sales. What scares the RIAA is piracy. What they don't realize is that for all intents and purposes, piracy is controllable to minimal damage with two easy steps (the first of which is by far the most important): proper pricing and aggressive attack on known (and discovered) pirates.
The problem here is that the RIAA folks have gotten fat on the big profits you get from CD sales. They love the $4 or so profit they get from a typical $15 CD. Yes, that's right - your typical artist sees maybe $1 from each CD in royalties, another $3 or so goes to the retail outlet you bought it from (from which they have to pay rent/promotion/etc.), about $3 goes to manufacturing and distribution, and $3 goes to promotion and in-house costs of the labels.
Given what my reading of the market for MP3s is (and I in no way pretend to be a professional marketing person (Please, Shoot me!)), I think that you could probably sell MP3s for:
$0.25 each for B-sides and less-popular stuff.
$0.50 for "big-hit / eating-all-airtime" song
$1.50 for a complete album of a not-so-big name
$2.00 for a complete album of a big name.
If the record industry goes after pirate MP3 sites seriously (as MP3.com says they should), you should be able to limit your losses to pirates (probably about to what they "lose" now to people ripping off CD and making Live recordings...) They'll just have to get used to living off of smaller profits. But on the other hand, if I can get my favorite songs cheap, I'll probably buy more of them. So, the total amount I spend on music won't change - I'll just get more music, while the RIAA people will still have my (total) amount of cash. Win-Win.
Not all of my Music Industry arguments apply to the Book Industry, but there are enough parallels for interest. That's another discussion.
A side note: the proposal of someone previous that bands should release their music for free and make money off the tours is stupid. Tours are massively expensive, and only those with large backing can do it to begin with. Sure, bar-style touring is possible, but from all the people I know that do this, you make virtually no money (well, you can eat, but no real cash) doing it this way. The big tours do make significant cash, but it's a case of "Have money to make money". You need several hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy all the equipment, rent the facilities, hire the techs, etc. And you need it up front - you can't do all that after ticket sales. That's what the record companies provide - resources for bands. You have to remember, maybe 0.1 of 1% of all artist out there do a "big" (ie stadium) tour. Maybe 10% of all signed artists get to headline their own tour. The rest tour with another (bigger name) band, or in smaller-settings (ie few 1000s). And remember, music is similar to game sales: almost 90% of all sales is within 3 months of release. The rest is residual.
Music has intrinsic value, and I have no problem whatsoever with an artist profiting by selling me his music. What I don't like is the massive markup I pay to the middleman these days.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed, I don't know who the moron that got the idea of suing segfault/UF was, but they managed to forget at least two principles:
Even if they were suing simply as a way to "win-by-bankrupt", they should be careful. The thing that this company seems to forget is that it's becoming much simpler these days to counter-sue for malicious damages. The courts are very receptive to summary judgments in cases like this, and, depending on the judge, I wouldn't be suprised if it's thrown out immediately, and counter damages awarded without even a basic trial. I'd really like to see Illiad and Segfault make a bundle off of them.
By the way, the "Death Star" thing actually got me to thinking of AT&T, even before LucasArts. Getting old....
-Erik
OK, I don't know MoobY, and I can't comment on his cryptographic skills. So I don't know how he obtained the password. However, there's things the article misses:
The "traditional hacker" manner for breaking such a site has nothing to do with decyphering the mathematical algorythm. It would be to attack the web server, gain root, and read the internal database. Not that difficult for a good chunk of script-kiddies (or some of us old fogies, too. (bad! Erik. Don't do that anymore!) (Really.)) However, this isn't even remotely intellectually challenging. So, if all we were interested in was Kipling crap (which we obviously weren't), there would have been as mass attack against the site. There wasn't. (Unless you count the /. effect. :-)
Instead, there was alot of debate about the mathematical underpinnings of the code. I think this is the best illustrated distinction between cracker/hacker that has come out recently: what the obvious goal was the glory for the intellectual accomplishment of cryptoanalyzing the cypher NOT just getting the answer.
Of course, I wasn't surprised that no-one here seems to have broken the code. Cryptoanalyzing stuff is very hard, and requires very specialized education. I've had alot of it, and would consider myself (at best) a poor amateur. I'm going to hazzard a guess and say that less than 10% of /. readers have sufficient crypto education and experience to do a good job of even analyzing the algorythm. And how many of us can honestly say we understand more than half of the math in Applied Cryptography. I can't.
Anyway, until someone posts a good analysis of the code, here's what about 14 hours of frustration have produced about it:
The main "crypto" routine is simple XOR, which is easily reducable (and cryptoanalyzable). The problem is in key generation/setup. The key generation appears to be a trap-door one-way function used as a hash. I've tried most of the ones I can find (ie, all from App Crypto, some from sci.crypt.moderated archives, and some from elsewhere), and can't find any match. The hashing function exhibits a good avalanche effect, but apparently has collision problems. The length of the keyspace is less than the obvious, but still large enough to resist brute-force search. Also, the use of JavaScript is problematic, since it's slow and not really easily portable to C without some substantial effort (anyone have a % operator for floats that mimic's JavaScript's ?)
I wrote a recursive intelligent brute-force search, but it still requires way to much resources and time to run (it's far from memory efficient). Basically, what you do is this:
Given that you know the "cyphertext" characters (http:// ... ), you can work backwards to determine that the first possible character of the login is about 4 choices. So, for each of them, you make a tree. It turns out that at each node, there are about 4-6 possible leafs that continue to give the correct URL. Eventually, each leaf runs into a problem where no possible characters result in the correct cyphertext - thus, you trim that branch. (or you've managed to find a solution.) Rather than about 73^20 (about 2^123) possibilities, the algorithm above runs about 2^40 possibilities. However, it has exponential memory requirements. Even I don't have that kind of memory on this box. :-)
Hopefully, someone will point out mistakes in my analysis, and we might eventually get a full disection of the algorithm. I'm not interested in the login/password, I want to know what the trapdoor is...
-Erik
OK, I've read everyone's posts, and am going to summarize the arguments here, plus include my own short opinion/experience.
I'm looking at your original post, and the main advantage of Linux over Solaris is price. Intel hardware (even the quite heavy-duty stuff you should buy for a serious DB server) is less than equivalent SPARC hardware. However, there are other concerns:
If you are running a small database (ie, 2-3GB max) that doesn't get hit extremely hard, Linux is certainly fine. However, given that you seem to be wanting a enterprise-level solution, Solaris is simply the better way to go. You might spend 25% more on the hardware, but remember, TCO is so much more than just the hardware. In the long run, Solaris is the much better choice from a feature set, performance/scalability, and support/maintenace viewpoint.
Hopefully, in about 2 years, we can redo this comparison, and Linux will be a truly equal competitor. Right now, Linux really doesn't belong in the datacenter running hard-core enterprise apps. Soon, though.
-Erik
Of course that is important. However, you know you're not supposed to discuss this in an open forum. Smoke-filled rooms, only.
Didn't you get your Official Eric Conspiracy Kit(tm) in the mail?
-Erik (the one, true way to spell it.)
Can't use God. That's reserved by us SysAdmins.
-Erik
Yes, on the odd occasion, Linux (even RedHat) can be severely annoying.
On the whole, however, I find that NT is much more annoying than Linux.
NT:
Total time: ~3 hours per machine (assuming about 2 minutes to fully reboot a machine).
Linux (or Solaris x86, for that matter)
Total time: 30 minutes.
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On another note, I'm having a slight problem. By boot disk (a new IBM 4.5G SCSI) has more than 1024 cylinders. My boot partition is below the 1024 limit. A normal RH 5.2 install works fine, and boots OK, however:
-Erik
Problem is, the Supreme Court has always interpreted Sec 9 as referring to the States, NOT the Federal Gov't. So, that leaves it wide open for a US-wide sales tax on e-commerce. There is also wide dispute over the exact meaning, so it is by no means likely that any e-sales-tax is unconstitutional.
Also, mail-order has never been exempt from sales tax. The reason you don't really see taxation on out-of-state sales is: (A) the mail-order retailers have an extremely vocal and organized trade organization that screams every time someone brings up the subject (B) up till now, the states have generally conceded that tracking all the sales and distributing the tax would be "too hard" (this is generally bogus, but it's a convenient lie to get out of the fact that they cave to (A))
In reality, when you buy an article through mail-order, you owe YOUR state's sales tax to YOUR state.
Basically, if the state can show that it's not discriminating against other states, then it bypasses Sec 9. So, if a state taxes ALL ecommerce by it's citizens at a flat rate, well, it should withstand any court challenge.
-Erik
Knew this was gonna happen. I just wish:
This should get interesting. I'm assuming that they're going to try to start enforcing sales tax on mail-order too. If they don't - wait for some internet company to sue. If they do, wait for the mail-order giants to start lobbying congress for exemptions to both. Should be one right big mess!
-Erik
Maybe so, but at least she has the good taste not to date you...
:-P
-erik
Despite the tag line ("News for Nerds"), /. really isn't a "News" site in the same manner as CNN, ABCnews, and such try to be. Rob et al do not claim to be unbiased - in fact, you can see sagan's bias off the top (he waves in front of everyone's face). If you want more "journalistic" news, go see another site.
What /. is, and what makes it popular, is that it's a discussion site. Think of Rob, et al, as you friendly neighborhood moderator. Noone ever claims they're bias-free. It's more of an exercise in free-thought. If you want your thinking done for you, go see the traditional media, where they have decades of experience with packaging, presenting, and massaging your news for you (and of course, presenting it as "unbiased"). They just manage to politely hide their biases from the user.
By the way, I don't buy the story about the competing site. Just who pressured him? People posting to the site? If you provide something people find useful, then, well, there you go. Obviously, not enough people thought he was doing a useful thing. Don't like it - vote with your feet (metaphorically speaking). And, noone is forcing you to read this. So don't bitch to me about how you don't have any choice. Of course you do.
-Erik
This has to be one of the few times I've seen Al really screw up something horribly. He's usually very good at being a technically-savvy politican, and actually isn't stupid (at least, the couple of times he visited us (and I actually got to talk to him!) at the Media Lab). One wonders what Tipper fed him that morning. Or maybe... IT'S A REPUBLICAN PLOT!!!! THAT'S IT!!!
My personal opinion is that I like Al (though Libby intrigues me) - GWB, Jr isn't my style. Just my opinion though (hey, remember to express yours - VOTE next November)!
On a side note to the above poster:
-Erik
Perhaps I do agree with you in some senses that artists currently under contract can't bitch and whine too much. However, bear in mind this thing: most artists sign long-term deals with labels when they start out, so the label effectively "owns" them for a period of years (at least 3 in most cases, and possibly up to 10).
Now, backflash to 1994. You're a new group/singer, and are on the edge of hitting it big. A label comes to you, feeds you a contract (which, if you weren't totally stupid, you had a good lawyer look at), and you sign it. Did you think about MP3? Of course not.
So, don't blame all the artists. They made an informed decision at the moment, and are getting screwed by technological progress. You can bet your sweet @$! that the next time those artists go in for contract renegotiation, this will be explicitly stated in their contract (one way or the other).
The big problem here is the RIAA. They're treading the dangerous line of collusion to prevent competition. I wouldn't be surprised if someone files a complaint soon with the FTC alledging strong-arm tactics and anti-competative actions.
The RIAA (and it's component labels) are too stupid to see a great oportunity. MP3 gives you the chance to do huge shipments. Think of it this way: a hit sells 100,000 or 200,000 copies. A big hit does a million or so. Smashes do a couple million. So, maybe you (ie the label) make $4 profit for each CD = $8 million for a smash. Now, if you managed to sell the songs on that CD for $0.25 each (figure 4 songs/CD that sell, the rest are small potatoes (volume wise)) but, because they're so cheap, you sell 20 million copies instead of 1 million. So: 20e6 x .25 x 4 = $20 million. Even if you lose half to artist royalties, promotion, and misc costs, you still make more than the CD sales.
-Erik
(still waiting for the RIAA to take it's head out of the sand and smell the money in MP3s)
So, I guess that just leaves us 2.9 MIT folks here... (by the by, MIT is on a 5.0 scale. So, 4.0 is a "B" average...)
I think the more relevant issue is how big the company is. If you're a big company, chance (at least statistically) that a person with power reads /. is low. However, if there are 30 people in your company, and only 1 reads /. - there's a good chance either the right person is reading it, or that person knows the right person.
Back on topic: I wouldn't be surprised if there is a licensing issue with the OpenGL libraries. Meaning, they (Be) may not be able to independently distribute them. Who knows. We should hear from Be before toasting them with the flamethrowers.
There is something to be said for waiting for a product to "jell" into a coherent whole first, then releasing it, rather than doing a rolling release. That's part of GNOME's problems with the general user population. It's great for developers to get early access to stuff (and in fact, I think it should be required), but releasing something to the general population before all parts are finished can be very bad.
-Erik
In response to your questions:
Essentially what pulls E-net ahead of TR is switching. Switching aleviates all the above problems with Ethernet - unlimited number of cascaded switches, no colision problem, # hosts based only on available switch RAM.
Token-ring technology is indeed nice for high-load environments: FDDI is much preferable in my server rooms to FastEthernet (until maybe I see a _working_ Gigabit Enet solution). In a large-scale user environment, though, switched 10Mbps ethernet performs better than 16Mb TokenRing. And the cost is far less these days...
I, too missed the LWE talk by Larry. Now I'm really sorry. Great speech, Larry. Now I know why perl has always looked like the contents of your average apartment complex dumpster: lots of cool, useful shit people throw out, hidden among even more nasty, disgusting stuff...
I do agree with most of Larry's "analysis" of post-modernism. He even touches on what I think is the biggest downfall of post-modernism, and, coincidently enough, the biggest problem with perl . Larry called it the "Cult of Subjectivity". It's the subject of this talk, er, post:
Despite Larry's attempts to label it as part of the modernist movement, absolute cultural relativism isn't: it's a natural (and logical) continuation of the post-modernist movement. It's what bothers most people living in the post-modernist age: the feeling that nothing has any absolute value, or that "It all depends on your point of view..." We tend to swallow the discomfort that comes along with being exposed to this concept, as long as it doesn't rear it's ugly head too often. The big problem with cultural relativism (and by some extention, post-modernism), is that you can't build a society on it. What makes a functioning society is common rules. Everyone has to agree that certain conventions are valuable enough that we all have to abide by them. Hence: laws.
OK, enough philosophizing. How does this all relate to perl? In so far as perl is a post-modern language, it suffers from a problem similar to cultural relativism: the Cult of Mediocrity. Larry's point about the flexibility of perl to produce both beautify and stupifyingly ugly code is well taken: you can produce extremely nice code in perl much easier than many other languages. However, it's also much easier to writing totally unmaintainable code in perl than anything else.
Perl supports to the Cult of Mediocrity (so does Visual Basic, and many others). It allows a minimally-competent programmer to write code, without thought to the community in general. In sort, perl allows you to be both lazy AND rude. The problem with the Cult of Mediocracy is that it places higher value on getting anything to work, rather than stopping to think if it should work.
As it has been pointed out by luminaries much greater than myself, the difficulty in writing good code is not in mastering the language. The difficult is in producing a good algorithm (or structure). Programming languages should help the programmer by providing a framework where it is rather difficult to produce nasty code. B&D languages (like Forth) that enforce a single, "correct" standard lack the flexibility to be creative; however, flexibility for it's own sake is equally damaging (like, why are there 6 ways to do a case structure in perl?)
The post-modernistic view of borrowing is good. However, perl seems to take this to an extreme, where it simply amalgamates other languages, and doesn't sythesize.
In the end, that's my complaint about perl. It's far to easy to write ugly, nasty, unmaintainable code. A programming language should enforce some minimum standard of style in the name of communal good, and the standard in perl seems to be: "well, I sort of understand what it's supposed to do..." Not good enough.
This wouldn't be a problem if perl was a restricted-domain (ie niche) language. However, it's a general-use language. No, I don't blame Larry for all the nasty perl code I see, but he does bear a good chunk of the responsibility for designing a language that allows that previous idiot to barf on a page and actually run it.
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All this said, I still like perl. If the programmer puts enough forethought into a perl script, it's great. Far easier and quicker than doing the same in C, C++, or even python. But I'll be more careful where I use it, and how I write code. Hopefully, everyone here will be to.
It isn't called the "Swiss Army Chainsaw" of programming languages for nothing. Treat it with respect, and care, and it's very powerful. Screw around with it, and it'll rip your leg off (or at least, the programmer who has to read your code will hunt you down, and do so...)
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By the way, Larry, that's what your daughter meant when she says "That sucks!". It's OK to be post-modernist to a certain extent, even to a greater extent, but there have to be certain boundaries. Some things are BAD. And there has to be agreement that they are BAD. Of course, the trick here is to figure out who gets to set the boundaries. Never said it was easy. It's just that the bar is a little too low in perl's case.
IANAL, but after careful reading of the QPL, here is my interpretation of it. Mind you, I'm not infalible by any means (and I'm sure I'll get corrections if my mistakes), but this is meant as a rough "layperson" interpretation of the QPL. (note when I say "FreeQT" I'm referring to the code from Troll, plus any mods covered by this license.)
1. You are granted the non-exclusive rights set forth in this license provided you agree to and comply with any and all conditions in this license. Whole or partial distribution of the Software, or software items that link with the Software, in any form signifies acceptance of this license.
If you use our software or any software derived from it, you have to agree to this license. Using it implies acceptance. Everyone can use this software.
2. You may copy and distribute the Software in unmodified form provided that the entire package, including - but not restricted to - copyright, trademark notices and disclaimers, as released by the initial developer of the Software, is distributed.
You must distribute the package as a whole - you may not remove any component.
3. You may make modifications to the Software and distribute your modifications, in a form that is separate from the Software, such as patches. The following restrictions apply to modifications:
You can modify our software; however, when you give it to others, you have to distribute the unmodified version (as per #2), with your mods in a seperate form. patch(1) is a typical form, though not the only one. Also, when distributing your mods with the original, you must follow these rules:
a. Modifications must not alter or remove any copyright notices in the Software.
Your mods can't remove the creator's IP notices. Fair is fair - you must recognize other's contributions to the work.
b. When modifications to the Software are released under this license, a non-exclusive royalty-free right is granted to the initial developer of the Software to distribute your modification in future versions of the Software provided such versions remain available under these terms in addition to any other license(s) of the initial developer.
You give Troll Tech the right to include your mods in a future version of the FreeQT (with no payment to you), provided that the future version of FreeQT is distributed with terms similar to this license. That is, your code may become part of FreeQT. It is not clear if they have to acknowledge your contribution in any way (though I would hope they do).
4. You may distribute machine-executable forms of the Software or machine-executable forms of modified versions of the Software, provided that you meet these restrictions:
You can distribute compiled versions of FreeQT, or a compiled version of your mods+FreeQT. That is, you can compile their software to a library, or patch their software, then compile it. The resulting binary must follow these rules for distribution:
a. You must include this license document in the distribution.
The QPL must come in the same package that you distribute the compiled binaries in.
b. You must ensure that all recipients of the machine-executable forms are also able to receive the complete machine-readable source code to the distributed Software, including all modifications, without any charge beyond the costs of data transfer, and place prominent notices in the distribution explaining this.
You must give away the source code to both the original FreeQT code and the modifications you made. You must tell people that you are doing so in an obvious place (eg. the README or LICENSE file). You can charge a reasonable sum to cover distribution for the source, and no more.
c. You must ensure that all modifications included in the machine-executable forms are available under the terms of this license.
The QPL is "infectious" in a manner similar (but not identical) to the GPL. Any modifications you make are automatically covered under the QPL. It is not clear if this allows the code to be GPLed (I think not, but this is another matter).
5. You may use the original or modified versions of the Software to compile, link and run application programs legally developed by you or by others.
You can write programs that use the software (either in pristine or modified form). You can also compile programs written by others that require FreeQT (or a modified version). You can also run programs that require the FreeQT (or modified) binaries. Duuuuhh. :-)
6. You may develop application programs, reusable components and other software items that link with the original or modified versions of the Software. These items, when distributed, are subject to the following requirements:
You are allowed to write programs that use the software (or a modified version of it). When you distribute the resulting program, you have to follow these rules: (note, that if you don't distribute the program, A and B do not apply).
a. You must ensure that all recipients of machine-executable forms of these items are also able to receive and use the complete machine-readable source code to the items without any charge beyond the costs of data transfer.
You have to give away the source code to any application you write that uses the software. You can charge a small distribution fee, but that's it. Anyone who gets the binaries of your program must also either be given the source code or must be provided a way to easily get them for no more than a nominal distributuion fee.
b. You must explicitly license all recipients of your items to use and re-distribute original and modified versions of the items in both machine-executable and source code forms. The recipients must be able to do so without any charges whatsoever, and they must be able to re-distribute to anyone they choose.
Any programs you write that use FreeQT must be freely distributable, in both source and binary form. That is, once a recipient has either the binary or source of your program, they can give it away to anyone, and you cannot charge them anything for doing so. They may modify your source code and give both the mods and the new binary away, too. Also, this implies that the recipient can get the source code, compile it, and then give away the resulting binary.
c. If the items are not available to the general public, and the initial developer of the Software requests a copy of the items, then you must supply one.
If you choose not to distribute your application outside of your organization, or are only using it personally, you do not have to abide by clauses A and B. However, if Troll Tech finds out about your application, they can (at their option) force you to give them a copy. What is unclear is what Troll Tech can do with the copy. The implications are that TT must then release it as per A and B, but I'm not sure about that.
Disclaimer, Warranty, etc...
Standard "I'm not responsible for anything that happens when you use my code" legalese boilerplate. Ignore it - it's generally of questionable legality anyway (though everyone includes it, like some voodoo magic that will ward off lawsuits. Ha!)
Note that my reading of the QPL does not preclude a app developer from selling his or her software (perhaps bundled with support or documentation). You are free to sell the binaries of applications that use FreeQT, but you have to give away the source.
How the QPL plays with other licenses (BSD, NPL/MPL, GPL, LGPL) is beyond the scope of this post. Perhaps someone else will take on that job.
Why does this bother you? They sell Intel stuff, and now Intel funds them. Logical.
If you want Alpha, you know where to find it. (to paraphrase Dennis Ritchie).
Seriously, if VA Research doesn't sell your preferred platform, simply take your business elsewhere. Aspen Systems, Apache Digital and DCG all sell Alpha (and Sparc)-based linux boxes. Where is it written that a good Linux vendor has to sell all flavors of processors?
-Erik
Excuse me, but last time I looked, blackmail, extorition, kidnapping, and murder are a piss-poor substituted for a political revolution. Killing/injuring people to make a "statement" is inane (and immoral), not to mention highly hypocritical.
There is a huge difference between those willing to stand up for their ideals, speak up, and put themselves at personal risk while attempting to change a political system, and those who advocate violence in the name of "progress" (ie, if you don't agree with me, well, Death To You).
If you can't see the difference between the students of Tiannamin Square and the IRA, or the American Revolution and the Reign of Terror, I feel sorry for you. But I won't feel sympathy when a grinning "freedom fighter" parks a U-Haul full of chemicals outside your place of employ.
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and lest we forget, the last moron to do the above in these parts was an "american". :-/
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"How do you have patience for people who claim they love America, but clearly can't stand Americans?" - Annette Bening in The American President
-Erik
Last time I checked, Cyrix was never owned by IBM. IBM is their primary foundry (ie the people who actually make their chips). Which is why you saw people referring to the chips as IBM/Cyrix 6x86 (and M2). Cyrix is now owned by National Semiconductor.
Both AMD and Cyrix (and IDT, for that matter) are not "native" x86 chips anymore. Both quit being so at the K5/5x86 level. Instead, both are natively a RISCish chip, with a microcode layer that translates the x86 instructions to the underlying RISC architecture. It's considerably more cumbersome (from a chip designer's standpoint) than doing the translation in software (ala DEC's FX!32), but an order of magnitude faster.
Don't know about their market share, though they only target the low-end now. Cyrix has abandoned the $1000+ PC market, and is strictly interested in the "integrated" CPU, ala their MediaGX stuff. This seems a reasonable way to go, since for NCs and similar stuff, if you can integrate alot of the normal chipset and other accessories onto the main CPU, it's alot cheaper. Problem is, it crowds out die space that could otherwise be used to improve performance. Oh well, don't get 'nothing for free!
These are my friends, and my old place of work, so...
If you want the definative place to see research on Agents and related technologies, see the M.I.T. Media Lab.
Specifically, the following three groups:
I'll trade you lemonade, crushed ice, a blender, and some Stoli for Jeff's girlfriend.
(Ouch, hey, Kira, I was only kidding!)
I think I can part with my Oster for a week or so, and I'm sure I've got a good supply of misc Kool-Aid and such, and a couple of pitchers. I'll stop by Tuesday, probably around lunch time or so.
-Erik
trims@netdemons.com
.TM is indeed taken (as the link for Frankin (www.law.tm) indicates). The argument is still valid, though, we just need to pick another TLD name.
-Erik
As I've stated in previous posts, the whole problem of DNS and trademark/IP disputes arises from the abuse of the DNS system. DNS was NOT DESIGNED and is ILL-SUITED to serve as an identification system for concepts larger than simple number-avoidance (ie it solves the problem of addressing machines by IP number only).
The solution to the current problem is two-fold:
The first solution is a technical one, and will require some forethought and evolution. It is in fact currently underway, as the flaws in the existing DNS-naming solution are evident (to everyone of course except the Bureaucrats, lawyers, and marketing idiots). This system needs to be heavily encouraged, as it will ultimately solve the problem we are having. This is the long-term solution, and should receive all due priority and attention (particularly at the IETF-level).
The second proposal is a band-aid that should work sufficiently long until the first (technical) solution is in place. It's a stop-gap measure.
A couple of things about the second proposal: Once the .TM domain is created, and a formal dispute-resolution policy is in place for that domain (I'm not saying this will be easy, but it's certainly much easier implimenting a policy for a currently-vacant TLD than trying to retro-fit one onto the existing TLD structure), several things must happen:
The proposed solution by the WIPO is typical of a large bureaucratic committee: it proposes an ill-defined, nebulous system heavy on bureaucracy and favorable to the well-financed. Throw it out.
-Erik
First off, let me state a couple of things up front:
I'd agree with the majority of posters here that the fracture actually represents a healthy community, complete with stress and differences. That all being said, I really dislike the massive chip on the Open Source community's shoulder about Business, in general. Many businesses are closed-minded, hording everything they own, unwilling to share, extorting every last penny from those that need their service/product. Others protect what they have, yet are willing to sell it at a very friendly price (ie, they make money, but aren't being greedy). Still others see that they can share what they have, and still make a living. Far too many people see only the first and last categories, and refuse to accept the middle one.
I just don't get the argument over ORA. In my mind, they definately fit in the middle category. Sure, they have copyright-protected works. And they're not about to give that up, since that's how they make money. On the other hand, I don't consider their pricing outrageous (hey, anyone looked at what Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment costs these day?), and they definately consider it to be neighborly to cosy up to the O-S community - look at the resources they expend to sponsor and promote various O-S stuff. Sure, in the end, they make money, but that means they're actually good, smart people.
One of the major things that galls me about people who complain about the cost of books, and how information should be free, is that it is. Let's take the Bible of SysAdmins: ORA's Essential Systems Administration.
I can read through the book, writing down interesting concepts and thoughts it points out. I can also read The System Administrator's handbook, Advanced Solaris Systems' Administration, and go dig up the Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System. By my very own willpower, I can take the best ideas from each of those books, plus my very own ones, and come up with a complete documentation. What I can't do is outright copy the entire books.
The difference between code and books is that often, the major effort in code is production of the actual algorithm (ie the code itself) that results in a certain functionality. Of course, we 'd like to promote that duplication of that massive effort is avoided, thus we want people to be able to copy code.
In books, the major effort is the idea, not the actual words. In many cases the actual words are poorly written, and I certainly don't want that copied. What you can copy from ORA books is the ideas themselves. Look at how they lay out the book - use their organizational thoughts. How is the material presented? What tips and pointers do they use? What's left in, and what's left out? How are things explained clearly?
Technical manuals are by far the easiest to reproduce, since at their base, they all are talking about the same thing. So borrow from the masters - don't be lazy and require that they do all your work for you, but take what they've already expressed and produce something of your own. If you want to give that away, fine, that's up to you. Just don't condemn them if they don't feel the exact way you do. After all, you're probably not deriving your sole source of income from those works...
One last thing. I talked with one of the Publishers from ORA last USENIX, and inquired about whether or not they would be doing more of the electronic collections (such as Webmaster in a Nutshell, Deluxe Edition). Her response was enlightening: it wasn't remotely profitable. She said that the volume of sales for such an item turned out to be below what it cost to make it and maintain it. Then she said something even more startling: a really popular ORA book (like Essential SysAdmin) sold about 25,000 copies, while less popular ones (like, say, Java in a Nutshell) might sell 10,000 or so. I used to work in the publishing industry, and I know what typical margins are (let's just say that they're not much above 10%). So, for a excellent seller for ORA: .1 x 25000 x $30 = $75,000. Oh, yeah, like they're raking in the dough on this all over the planet.
-Erik
(What It Really Should Mean...)
First off, I'm going to compare the Music Industry with another segment of the market that neatly parallels it, and ultimately which (hopefully) both will follow the same model: the publishing industry (specifically: books).
In both industries, you have a large number of potential sources (ie performers and authors), with a very small number of intermediaries (the labels and publishers). The publishers (music & book) serve to promote the product and provide distribution/manufacturing channels in order to facilitate large-scale sales. Let's look at the Internet's effect on these three functions of the publisher (in reverse order):
MP3s aren't going to kill the Music Industry (maybe in the longggggg run, but certainly not for several decades). Artists still need the labels for their facilties and promotional savvy, and for their normal retail & manufacturing stuff. What they fail to see is that it's a different channel for sales. What scares the RIAA is piracy. What they don't realize is that for all intents and purposes, piracy is controllable to minimal damage with two easy steps (the first of which is by far the most important): proper pricing and aggressive attack on known (and discovered) pirates.
The problem here is that the RIAA folks have gotten fat on the big profits you get from CD sales. They love the $4 or so profit they get from a typical $15 CD. Yes, that's right - your typical artist sees maybe $1 from each CD in royalties, another $3 or so goes to the retail outlet you bought it from (from which they have to pay rent/promotion/etc.), about $3 goes to manufacturing and distribution, and $3 goes to promotion and in-house costs of the labels.
Given what my reading of the market for MP3s is (and I in no way pretend to be a professional marketing person (Please, Shoot me!)), I think that you could probably sell MP3s for:
If the record industry goes after pirate MP3 sites seriously (as MP3.com says they should), you should be able to limit your losses to pirates (probably about to what they "lose" now to people ripping off CD and making Live recordings...) They'll just have to get used to living off of smaller profits. But on the other hand, if I can get my favorite songs cheap, I'll probably buy more of them. So, the total amount I spend on music won't change - I'll just get more music, while the RIAA people will still have my (total) amount of cash. Win-Win.
Not all of my Music Industry arguments apply to the Book Industry, but there are enough parallels for interest. That's another discussion.
A side note: the proposal of someone previous that bands should release their music for free and make money off the tours is stupid. Tours are massively expensive, and only those with large backing can do it to begin with. Sure, bar-style touring is possible, but from all the people I know that do this, you make virtually no money (well, you can eat, but no real cash) doing it this way. The big tours do make significant cash, but it's a case of "Have money to make money". You need several hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy all the equipment, rent the facilities, hire the techs, etc. And you need it up front - you can't do all that after ticket sales. That's what the record companies provide - resources for bands. You have to remember, maybe 0.1 of 1% of all artist out there do a "big" (ie stadium) tour. Maybe 10% of all signed artists get to headline their own tour. The rest tour with another (bigger name) band, or in smaller-settings (ie few 1000s). And remember, music is similar to game sales: almost 90% of all sales is within 3 months of release. The rest is residual.
Music has intrinsic value, and I have no problem whatsoever with an artist profiting by selling me his music. What I don't like is the massive markup I pay to the middleman these days.