I'll try not to rant, but here's a couple of things to everyone should consider...
The referenced keynote speech is truly detailing more personal opinions than citing facts...
The references keynote speech is not entirely accurate, the SLED 10 does indeed provide access to proprietary drivers and proprietary applications through Novell hosted and/or sponsored repositories.
Greg is a very outspoken person in regards to his open source beliefs, you can verify that by doing a Google search for his name - some might even argue he reaches the zealot level...
Most -important-, I don't believe the "viral" concept of the GPL has been tested in any major court of law to this date. I am referring to the concept of "derivative work" in the language of the GPL license being applied specifically to things like third party kernel drivers. I don't believe there is much disagreement and I do believe the courts have upheld that you cannot take a piece of code released under GPL and not comply with it's licensing agreements, but I do not believe they have ruled on what the licensing obligations are to -interface- with a piece of GPL code and whether or not the license could become "viral" in nature. Please, if you do have a -citing- of a legal case that deals with this, then post it.
The impacts of "viral" licensing far exceed the limited focus of GPL licensed software.
Calling it racial profiling is probably a little harsh, but it's probably not far from it either. I mean, really, wouldn't it be great and improve the system if we also knew what religion the person flying believed in? Now, come to think of it, shouldn't we also know about their parents, immediate family and close associates?
I wouldn't say "the terrorists" have won, but it does sure seem like they scored a major victory in the US. What is that saying, freedom for me and you - as long as everyone agrees with me?
Theoretically, there is one major difference, "the people" still elect officials in the United States. If people really don't like what's going on, they should be more active and find out about their elected officials and where they stand on issues that are important to them.
I'm not a lawyer and maybe this wouldn't apply everywhere, but I believe in most places it is already illegal for someone to impersonate you - it's just a matter of finding out about it and prosecuting it properly. I didn't read the article, but if the MPAA really did lobby and state that they need "pre-texting" in order to obtain information about downloads, that sounds dangerously close to an admission of committing a crime.
Actually, with the current architecture there are often many reasons that you need to upgrade the kernel - one that immediately comes to mind is in order to support newer devices.
Nobody else has mentioned this yet, but does everybody really want to put their e-mail on somebody else's web server? Personal e-mail is one thing, but considering most companies run a fair amount of their daily operations by e-mail, do you really want your companies internals stored online by another company? Not to mention customer confidentiality and liability concerns depending on your type of business (example: medical).
If it hasn't become clearer in the last couple of years, there really isn't such a thing as "free" software. Corporations in producing commercial software have placed restrictions designed to protect their IP interests, market share, etc. FSF/GNU software is not "free" either, rather than being concerned about IP and in most cases capitalization, there are restrictions based on ideals. If you doubt that, try exercising your "free" -choice- to run a proprietary driver alongside a Linux kernel - if you don't encounter the GPL import macro issues your kernel runtime will still get a flag of "tainted".
The third-party software released under the "GPL" is more of a gray area, as some release it with the clear intent of subscribing to the FSU/GNU ideals while others just want to contribute their work without getting totally walked over.
If the software were really "free" as in "freedom", there would not be restrictions other than those to protect the same freedom that you received. The true test of supporting freedom is the toleration of others who do not always believe exactly the same way as you do. The original language of the GPL does not fall in to this category and definitely the perversion with the more recent re-interpretations of the GPL does not fall in to this category.
Thanks for the link, that was actually interesting and funny. Personally, I would like to think Mark meant well, but in my opinion it was a little bit tacky for the founder of a competing distribution to post an open invitation to join on their mailing list.
I know this is an open invitation for flame bait, but what the hell... I wonder if opinions would change if Novell took a substantial portion of the money Microsoft is giving for pre-purchased SUSE support licenses (say $250 - $350M) and divided it amongst the open source community. Would that make Novell not-so evil and just a little dirty instead?
You might be right about that one, in retrospect I shouldn't haven't included that in the post as I definitely don't want to get in to that controversial discussion, sorry. Regardless, as most will point out, micro-film aside there are still "workable" components on display at various places that can and I believe have already been analyzed
Thanks for the link, but I already do have a bit of understanding about the subject...;) I wasn't trying to imply it's an easy task, especially when most of the people doing the development on WINE are volunteers and have regular full-time jobs. What I was trying to say is that if I'm XYZ game developer, I have a certain API that I write my code to use and if that API is known then a compatibility layer can be written - the question would become one of performance. One way performance could easily be a concern is if the native implementation is able to perform something with hardware (GPU) assistance and the compatibility layer must perform the same action on the shared CPU.
At the end of the day, it really is just about implementing the API exposed to the applications (games) and providing the same expected result, whether that be a rendering instruction or memory mapping.
What NASA really needs to do is to take a step back and redesign their platforms if we really want to get manned space exploration / commercialization back on track. The shuttle fleet is already beyond its EOL cycle and we don't have a viable alternative ready at the moment. In order to fulfill current promises and to keep in the race with other countries, current plans call for the re-development of basically what we were flying in the 1960s, rockets with capsules - albeit updated. Interestingly enough, the congress that authorized the money for the development of the shuttle also made a stipulation that the plans of the previous generation of Apollo rockets had to be destroyed - in other words, go forward or don't go.
I know NASA has been researching alternative technologies capable of achieving orbit for many years, but I'm not sure the US (or another country for that matter) has made a significant commitment of money and support by the people to further the technologies required for effective manned space travel. IMO, if I were to compare the development of the space programs to the development of the aeronautical industry, we are still flying single engine prop planes with an open cockpit.
The necessary base technologies in my opinion are...
1) Propulsion mechanism
Albeit with different chemicals and forms (solid/liquid), we are using the same propulsion mechanisms as those engineered in WWII. Thankfully the guidance system has been greatly improved though...
2) Energy
Whether it be for the propulsion mechanism or for powering the facilities on the craft/facility, power generation or harvesting is very important.
3) Gravity
For short term missions (1-3 weeks) it is not a great concern, but the longer people stay in space or even reduced gravity environments, more time must be spent on maintaining the body so that it has a fighting chance when returning to Earth. While vigorous exercise might be good for a lot of us, it doesn't make a lot of sense to need to spend a lot of time on exercise when you're doing a mission that costs as much as it does.
If you can write a game to run under Windows w/ DirectX 10 - you can provide a compatibility layer for it through Wine - the only question will be the performance.
You are right about Linux (or Mac OS X) - it has the same concerns as Windows, maybe just different symptoms. However, stop using 'C' to write code? I am assuming that you are saying that another programming language should be used instead - just out of curiosity, you do realize that most other languages are written in C, right?
On a different note, the article is pure sensationalism - they are saying that they can use a long SSID to "take control" of another computer - to use a technical term, that's bullshit. At best, you are going to cause the other machine with the affected driver to crash (or in the Windows world, BSOD). You are not going to start copying files from another machine or magically take control of the remote machine's console.
Common sense is a lost art...
Made in Taiwan, Developed in India and Delivered by USA...
I am actually for a global economy, but you just got to draw the line somewhere - it's not like the Pentagon has investors its trying to appease... Besides, if you were a foreign company, would you really want to be developing software that might be used by a foreign military against you or your friends?
Thank you for taking the time to reply, I am still confused, but I'm probably not the only one - at some point if I cry thief, it seems that I should have to state clearly what has been stolen or violated...
Out of curiosity, was that a shared folder in the sense of a file sharing (like torrent) folder or a shared folder as in a Windows or SMB shared folder?
Okay, I am not a lawyer, can someone please answer me this; I read in the original and the amended filings that the RIAA is claiming that the defendant either received or distributed copyright works, but I have a few questions...
1) Which is it? Did she receive or distribute - isn't there a legal difference?
2) What is it? Maybe it's in the exhibit A mentioned in the claim that I didn't see in the PDF, but what is she accused of receiving or distributing?
Yes, I know they want the hard drive so they can garner evidence, but there has to be some standard of suspicion with some level of evidence in order for the case to proceed, doesn't there? Shouldn't they have to spell it out - on this date and time we believe that this IP address was assigned to you and during that time frame you where in communication through TorrentWorld and downloaded the file entitled "MyFavoriteMusic.mp3" which we know to be a work of art that we currently hold copyright over. When do they actually have to provide the most basic of details like previously stated?
Also, this is really more to the blogging sites like Slashdot and TechDirt that love to publish articles about the scummy RIAA tactics, which thank you BTW. Why are the artists getting a free ride through all of this? Sony is a publisher, but there is also an artist involved, why aren't we publishing their names as well so the public knows which artists either through inaction or direct involvement are also involved in the cases with scummy tactics?
Microsoft is not fixing the problems, they are conceding they exist and that you must run another product (whether Symantec, McAfee or Microsoft) to compensate for the deficiency. If they were fixing the problem, then they wouldn't need to bundle a product with the operating system.
It is definitely a fair comparison.
Not that its important, but if you really are interested, no, I would dig a little deeper in to the article and relevant write-ups about it before making a statement like that...
Slashdot Mirror
I'll try not to rant, but here's a couple of things to everyone should consider... The referenced keynote speech is truly detailing more personal opinions than citing facts... The references keynote speech is not entirely accurate, the SLED 10 does indeed provide access to proprietary drivers and proprietary applications through Novell hosted and/or sponsored repositories. Greg is a very outspoken person in regards to his open source beliefs, you can verify that by doing a Google search for his name - some might even argue he reaches the zealot level... Most -important-, I don't believe the "viral" concept of the GPL has been tested in any major court of law to this date. I am referring to the concept of "derivative work" in the language of the GPL license being applied specifically to things like third party kernel drivers. I don't believe there is much disagreement and I do believe the courts have upheld that you cannot take a piece of code released under GPL and not comply with it's licensing agreements, but I do not believe they have ruled on what the licensing obligations are to -interface- with a piece of GPL code and whether or not the license could become "viral" in nature. Please, if you do have a -citing- of a legal case that deals with this, then post it. The impacts of "viral" licensing far exceed the limited focus of GPL licensed software.
Calling it racial profiling is probably a little harsh, but it's probably not far from it either. I mean, really, wouldn't it be great and improve the system if we also knew what religion the person flying believed in? Now, come to think of it, shouldn't we also know about their parents, immediate family and close associates? I wouldn't say "the terrorists" have won, but it does sure seem like they scored a major victory in the US. What is that saying, freedom for me and you - as long as everyone agrees with me?
Theoretically, there is one major difference, "the people" still elect officials in the United States. If people really don't like what's going on, they should be more active and find out about their elected officials and where they stand on issues that are important to them.
I'm not a lawyer and maybe this wouldn't apply everywhere, but I believe in most places it is already illegal for someone to impersonate you - it's just a matter of finding out about it and prosecuting it properly. I didn't read the article, but if the MPAA really did lobby and state that they need "pre-texting" in order to obtain information about downloads, that sounds dangerously close to an admission of committing a crime.
Actually, with the current architecture there are often many reasons that you need to upgrade the kernel - one that immediately comes to mind is in order to support newer devices.
My apologies Dark Coder, I was wrong - thanks for correction Xant.
Actually, I was thinking something a little more grounded... HP, or more specifically competitors using investigators, etc...
You are correct, but unfortunately that's just not how the service works and hence the original poster is correct.
Nobody else has mentioned this yet, but does everybody really want to put their e-mail on somebody else's web server? Personal e-mail is one thing, but considering most companies run a fair amount of their daily operations by e-mail, do you really want your companies internals stored online by another company? Not to mention customer confidentiality and liability concerns depending on your type of business (example: medical).
How about first representing yourself and not posting as an anonymous coward? ;)
If it hasn't become clearer in the last couple of years, there really isn't such a thing as "free" software. Corporations in producing commercial software have placed restrictions designed to protect their IP interests, market share, etc. FSF/GNU software is not "free" either, rather than being concerned about IP and in most cases capitalization, there are restrictions based on ideals. If you doubt that, try exercising your "free" -choice- to run a proprietary driver alongside a Linux kernel - if you don't encounter the GPL import macro issues your kernel runtime will still get a flag of "tainted". The third-party software released under the "GPL" is more of a gray area, as some release it with the clear intent of subscribing to the FSU/GNU ideals while others just want to contribute their work without getting totally walked over. If the software were really "free" as in "freedom", there would not be restrictions other than those to protect the same freedom that you received. The true test of supporting freedom is the toleration of others who do not always believe exactly the same way as you do. The original language of the GPL does not fall in to this category and definitely the perversion with the more recent re-interpretations of the GPL does not fall in to this category.
Thanks for the link, that was actually interesting and funny. Personally, I would like to think Mark meant well, but in my opinion it was a little bit tacky for the founder of a competing distribution to post an open invitation to join on their mailing list.
I know this is an open invitation for flame bait, but what the hell... I wonder if opinions would change if Novell took a substantial portion of the money Microsoft is giving for pre-purchased SUSE support licenses (say $250 - $350M) and divided it amongst the open source community. Would that make Novell not-so evil and just a little dirty instead?
You might be right about that one, in retrospect I shouldn't haven't included that in the post as I definitely don't want to get in to that controversial discussion, sorry. Regardless, as most will point out, micro-film aside there are still "workable" components on display at various places that can and I believe have already been analyzed
Thanks for the link, but I already do have a bit of understanding about the subject... ;) I wasn't trying to imply it's an easy task, especially when most of the people doing the development on WINE are volunteers and have regular full-time jobs. What I was trying to say is that if I'm XYZ game developer, I have a certain API that I write my code to use and if that API is known then a compatibility layer can be written - the question would become one of performance. One way performance could easily be a concern is if the native implementation is able to perform something with hardware (GPU) assistance and the compatibility layer must perform the same action on the shared CPU.
At the end of the day, it really is just about implementing the API exposed to the applications (games) and providing the same expected result, whether that be a rendering instruction or memory mapping.
What NASA really needs to do is to take a step back and redesign their platforms if we really want to get manned space exploration / commercialization back on track. The shuttle fleet is already beyond its EOL cycle and we don't have a viable alternative ready at the moment. In order to fulfill current promises and to keep in the race with other countries, current plans call for the re-development of basically what we were flying in the 1960s, rockets with capsules - albeit updated. Interestingly enough, the congress that authorized the money for the development of the shuttle also made a stipulation that the plans of the previous generation of Apollo rockets had to be destroyed - in other words, go forward or don't go. I know NASA has been researching alternative technologies capable of achieving orbit for many years, but I'm not sure the US (or another country for that matter) has made a significant commitment of money and support by the people to further the technologies required for effective manned space travel. IMO, if I were to compare the development of the space programs to the development of the aeronautical industry, we are still flying single engine prop planes with an open cockpit. The necessary base technologies in my opinion are... 1) Propulsion mechanism Albeit with different chemicals and forms (solid/liquid), we are using the same propulsion mechanisms as those engineered in WWII. Thankfully the guidance system has been greatly improved though... 2) Energy Whether it be for the propulsion mechanism or for powering the facilities on the craft/facility, power generation or harvesting is very important. 3) Gravity For short term missions (1-3 weeks) it is not a great concern, but the longer people stay in space or even reduced gravity environments, more time must be spent on maintaining the body so that it has a fighting chance when returning to Earth. While vigorous exercise might be good for a lot of us, it doesn't make a lot of sense to need to spend a lot of time on exercise when you're doing a mission that costs as much as it does.
If you can write a game to run under Windows w/ DirectX 10 - you can provide a compatibility layer for it through Wine - the only question will be the performance.
You are right about Linux (or Mac OS X) - it has the same concerns as Windows, maybe just different symptoms. However, stop using 'C' to write code? I am assuming that you are saying that another programming language should be used instead - just out of curiosity, you do realize that most other languages are written in C, right? On a different note, the article is pure sensationalism - they are saying that they can use a long SSID to "take control" of another computer - to use a technical term, that's bullshit. At best, you are going to cause the other machine with the affected driver to crash (or in the Windows world, BSOD). You are not going to start copying files from another machine or magically take control of the remote machine's console. Common sense is a lost art...
Ubuntu does have a installation process geared towards OEM installations - it's just that most OEMs are not offering it ... ;)
Made in Taiwan, Developed in India and Delivered by USA... I am actually for a global economy, but you just got to draw the line somewhere - it's not like the Pentagon has investors its trying to appease... Besides, if you were a foreign company, would you really want to be developing software that might be used by a foreign military against you or your friends?
Thank you for taking the time to reply, I am still confused, but I'm probably not the only one - at some point if I cry thief, it seems that I should have to state clearly what has been stolen or violated... Out of curiosity, was that a shared folder in the sense of a file sharing (like torrent) folder or a shared folder as in a Windows or SMB shared folder?
Okay, I am not a lawyer, can someone please answer me this; I read in the original and the amended filings that the RIAA is claiming that the defendant either received or distributed copyright works, but I have a few questions... 1) Which is it? Did she receive or distribute - isn't there a legal difference? 2) What is it? Maybe it's in the exhibit A mentioned in the claim that I didn't see in the PDF, but what is she accused of receiving or distributing? Yes, I know they want the hard drive so they can garner evidence, but there has to be some standard of suspicion with some level of evidence in order for the case to proceed, doesn't there? Shouldn't they have to spell it out - on this date and time we believe that this IP address was assigned to you and during that time frame you where in communication through TorrentWorld and downloaded the file entitled "MyFavoriteMusic.mp3" which we know to be a work of art that we currently hold copyright over. When do they actually have to provide the most basic of details like previously stated? Also, this is really more to the blogging sites like Slashdot and TechDirt that love to publish articles about the scummy RIAA tactics, which thank you BTW. Why are the artists getting a free ride through all of this? Sony is a publisher, but there is also an artist involved, why aren't we publishing their names as well so the public knows which artists either through inaction or direct involvement are also involved in the cases with scummy tactics?
Good point, but are you sure this really isn't a case of correct usage? Or maybe they should have used jettison? ;)
Microsoft is not fixing the problems, they are conceding they exist and that you must run another product (whether Symantec, McAfee or Microsoft) to compensate for the deficiency. If they were fixing the problem, then they wouldn't need to bundle a product with the operating system. It is definitely a fair comparison.
Not that its important, but if you really are interested, no, I would dig a little deeper in to the article and relevant write-ups about it before making a statement like that...