...that I can even tie it back to a slashdot article from 1998!...now SCO has indeed been corrupted by The One Ring, but Linux is still like Tom Bombadil.
I agree, and there isn't much we can do about them--I would have voted Nader in the last election, if my state had been counting those votes. But no candidate has the sort of support needed to break that corporate stranglehold, and I don't think that any of them are likely to in the near future.
I understand your concerns about your children, but there are better ways to try to fix this than a one-size-fits-all solution. Several others have suggested tying access to library cards in some fashion. You could also allow logins for uncensored (or less censored) access, because obviously what might be appropriate for your son might not be appropriate for your daughter. Maybe one day biometrics will be cheap and reliable as well--and could be used as a login option, or used to assess your physical age--but it isn't there yet.
However, in my experience, kids will generally pay attention to what appeals to them in the first place. In some ways that should make them less likely to encounter porn, or to be influenced by it. And if they do see something they don't like, they'll probably tell you about it. But I would be in favor of blocking pop-ups and whatnot by default, as they can also hamper web browsing in general. And I have no problems with blocking or restricting access to explicit pornography on library computers--it's just that filtering software these days blocks a lot more than that.
Thank you as well; if you enjoy discussions like this, you might want to take a look at kuro5hin; I think it's better for that sort of thing.
It sounds like you're smart enough that you should be able to figure it out for yourself; I agree with you that the Federal government probably shouldn't be directly funding libraries, by the way. I'd much rather have them give that money to the states, with the condition that it goes to the libraries. But that's not going to happen, any more than the Feds are going to voluntarily give up their control over their tax revenue that goes to the states anyhow.
Personally, I think it's about the failure of our Constitution to protect our values. It's about good intentions gone horribly wrong, or bad intentions masking themselves as good ones. It's about the encroachment of corporate interests into our everyday lives. It's about rallying people by saying "think of the children!" on the one side, and then censoring people who aren't children on the other. It's about the growing divide between the wired and the unwired. All in the name of the "greater good".
But we'll see how it turns out, eh? It probably won't affect me much, but I feel sorry for the people I know who depend on those library computers in their day-to-day lives, and those kids who are still in school and depend on such things for their work. At least they'll grow up knowing how useful such filtering measures are; maybe that will help them make more educated decisions for their children.
I might agree with you if I thought that internet filters magically filtered out only porn. Sadly, they don't. Why don't you do some research, so you can become informed, and find out what this is actually about?
It sickens me to see the Federal government use federal funding as a club to make local libraries comply with Federal guidelines--and then have the gall to talk about 'community standards' in the same breath! And they do this *all the time*.
What if my 'community standards' involve protecting the bill of rights and upholding The Constitution? Why is the Federal government suddenly against that?
So Madonna, are you going to ban the "shuffle" button on my CD player, because it interferes with your "work of art"?...or is it all about the mon..er, control?
As others have mentioned, it obviously isn't about the money for some of us; I stopped buying albums long ago because they're a *waste* of money. However, that doesn't mean that we're in the majority; I'm sure they get a lot of album sales regardless.
I don't know if outlawing singles would help or hurt sales, but it's just downright spiteful *and* greedy to get rid of singles in the hopes of making more money. Don't think this has anything to do with "art", though, because it doesn't. Unless you're talking about the "art" of accumulating more money.
I never claimed that NWN was open source; the open source phenomenon here is that people are writing their own--freely available--mods, which sometimes even get folded back into the game itself! The platform in this case is NWN; the mods are the source.
I'm sorry if my analogy was unclear to you, but I don't think it was at all inaccurate, though perhaps a bit vague. Would you concede that it's possible for open source Java apps to run on a closed-source JVM? As far as I'm concerned, this is a similar situation.
And is there a thriving Dungeon Siege mod community, and does Microsoft work with them to improve the game? Seriously, I don't know anything about it.:)
I also played the Windows version for a while (now the Linux version, but you get the idea...) but I've been going through it slowly. I'm somewhere in the middle of chapter 2 now, and I also played around with a few different mods and servers in the past.
But apart from our personal habits, the fact of the matter is, the NWN community is still going strong, and it'll be a while before their engine runs out of steam. (and hopefully when it does, there will be an upwardly-compatible NWN II to replace it, but we'll see, eh?:)
You're right that gamers tend to move on to bigger and better things, but not all gamers rush out and buy games when they're first released, and I know I often come back to games I like to play them more--and ESPECIALLY if they release new content. Sometimes it's all about the expansion packs.... and I'm probably the guy who would still be playing Bard's Tale I; as much as I like NWN, I liked the Baldur's Gate games better. Maybe someone can hack in a zoomed-out, low-detail, top-down view into NWN??
The NWN community has been getting broader and more interesting, perhaps mainly due to the VAST number of third-party modules out there, and the new module content that Bioware puts out as well. Think of it as another manifestation of the miracle of Open Source; a lot of things that were added to the latest NWN expansion pack actually came from the community and were added in.
From your post, it's obvious to me that you know nothing about this, and the only reason I'm replying is because it pains me to see such an uninformed post sitting at +5.
That's why God created expand and unexpand; all you have to do is figure out how to use them once, and then you can make all your tabs/spaces problems go away forever.
Sometimes inconsistency is worth it; it all depends on the situation. Remember, "foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds".
The thing is, you could say the same thing about BASIC programmers, or PHP programmers. And you might often be right, as well. It's a common generalization, a stereotype, if you will.
Perl--like BASIC--gives the programmer a lot of rope to hang himself with. It's quite possible that if that's all you know, you'll have a lot of trouble in a more structured environment. I know I had to learn a lot going from BASIC to Pascal, for example.
However, if you're an experienced programmer, if you learned good habits in the first place, or if you have some sort of bizarre knack for writing structured, well-maintained code in any language, maybe you won't have that many 'bad programming habits'. And after a certain point, a lot of this is subjective, anyhow. One person's bad habits can be another's coding guidelines.
Ok, let me get this straight. SCO's argument is that any works derived from System V Unix (if not the source code then the concept??) are covered under the old AT&T Unix Licenses. However, such code that was GPL'ed was not GPL'ed with SCO's permission, and therefore shouldn't have been contributed at all, and therefore should be removed from any GPL'ed codebase at once.
Now, Linux wasn't derived from any AT&T source code; it was written from scratch, under the GPL, much as System V Unix wasn't derived from Linux. Therefore, any System V Unix code that was contributed to Linux was improperly contributed, and should be removed as well! Right?
...and if you write your own code, and you can get it to work under either one... well, you're the copyright holder, you can choose how you want to license your code!
I have a feeling that if SCO tries to use this particular line of reasoning as stated in that Byte article, they'll get their asses handed to them. Or at least they should...
Here's my dream for a sequel to TITANIC; it's also a love story, and could also pave the way for an awesome TITANIC 3:
Start like the first movie, panning around underwater, until you find Jack's dead, bloated corpse. Play some heart-rending music, pan around, whatever. Then, just like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, the corpse WAKES UP.
He rises up and starts walking. Then feel free to add whatever adventures or misadventures with sharks, undead pirates, giant squids, whatever, etc., etc. As much fun as that is, it is secondary to our main focus.
However, as the movie goes on, Jack's appearance should get more and more gruesome, with decomposing bits of flesh that fall off or get eaten, barnacles, sea weed, whatever. By the end he should appear to be part zombie, part skeleton, with some debris thrown in for good measure. However, he should also be totally grotesque in appearance, and therefore still be recognizable as Leonardo DiCaprio.
Finally, our (anti-)hero gets close to his goal. He looks up, and sees a ring falling through the water. He grabs the ring, floats/swims upward, looks up at the old woman leaning over and staring down, and says in his best boyish Leo voice "Hey, you dropped this!"
She then has a heart attack, falls into the water, and dies. And they're finally together, forever! Cue triumphant romantic music.
When did you go from "We were all going to make money doing stuff that was cool and fun, PLAYING WITH LINUX!" to "We were all going to make money doing stuff that was sleazy and assinine, like VIOLATING THE GPL and FILING LAWSUITS OVER ANCIENT IP!" -- please answer with precise times. After all, Caldera was playing fast and loose with the GPL ever since they first got on the scene, which is what originally earned them the attention and scorn of some people in the/. community.
I appreciated what they were doing with OpenDOS, and if they kept on with that, they might have managed to change my opinion. So what did they do? They closed it back up again, and just used it as a stick to extort money from Microsoft. Now, I'm not a big fan of Microsoft, but the DR-DOS lawsuit--coming from CALDERA--was an incredibly sleazy and reprehensible tactic.
And you know what? It worked for them. So what do they do? They continue to buy up old IP, change their name (because they've already burned any credibility they might EVER have had), and try to sue ANOTHER big company. And now you're wondering how it all ended up like that. Hmmmm. I wonder.
In the future, maybe you and your buddies should think about the CONSEQENCES OF YOUR ACTIONS. Like, if the/. community says "Caldera doesn't care about us or the GPL", then PROVE THEM WRONG. Build credibility, don't burn bridges. No, the fact of the matter is, Caldera had its chance; several chances, actually. And it has shown itslef to be completely untrustworthy, and in fact utterly, utterly vile. And nothing they have done in the past few years has served to significantly change that opinion for the better.
The "big media monopoly" isn't a myth at all; what you're stating is, however--that the media is owned or controlled by one group. In fact, there are several very large groups that own or control different parts of the media, and they each have their own strengths and weaknesses.
However, each of these may constitute a local monopoly in a given area of the media or region of the world. And even if any one giant corporation doesn't have a monopoly on a given area of the media or region of the world, that media is most likely still owned by one giant corporation or another, which--ultimately--is what people object to the most.
It wasn't always like this, you know. There once was a much larger place for small businesses and innovation in radio, music, TV, and newspapers, where people could get in on the ground floor, and offer something new, interesting, and unique. But those days are over, and the sort of power that the big media corporations hold is absolutely stunning. They have more power to censor now than the government ever had.
Ultimately, some big corporations are evil; it has to do with the amount of power they have, and how power corrupts. If you have lots of small companies around to keep them honest, then you can expect fair competition. But if you don't, well then you have the mess we have now.
I managed to compile WASTE under Linux with a few minor changes here and there, but it looks like it's only the server at the moment. The key generator looks Windows-only, and I'm betting the client is too.
Has anyone here actually used WASTE? Also, does it scale, or is it only good for small groups, as the original webpage implies?
That's all you have to do, but a lot of people don't even do that; if they did, then there'd be some mention of BSD or the Regents of the University of California somewhere in the Windows EULA, right? I mean, IIRC, there are still references to Spyglass and MOSAIC in IE's About box; you'd think Microsoft's legal people could give credit where credit is due...
about that big glue layer...
on
Today's SCO News
·
· Score: 5, Informative
It exists. SCO calls it the Linux Kernel Personality Technology (LKP), and claims that it "provides a more scalable, stable, secure and reliable environment than Linux can offer today".
...so, SCO, is there any copied Linux code in your kernel? Because it seems like a huge coincidence that your "UNIX" system runs Linux binaries; how could a two-bit operation like Caldera reimplement so much of Linux without some help, eh?:)
(And for the record, they probably could have stolen...err appropriated code from FreeBSD. Also, note that Linux can run SCO binaries, through iBCS2. But that's likely because there's a standard that governs those binaries...)
Slashdot Mirror
...that I can even tie it back to a slashdot article from 1998! ...now SCO has indeed been corrupted by The One Ring, but Linux is still like Tom Bombadil.
I agree, and there isn't much we can do about them--I would have voted Nader in the last election, if my state had been counting those votes. But no candidate has the sort of support needed to break that corporate stranglehold, and I don't think that any of them are likely to in the near future.
I understand your concerns about your children, but there are better ways to try to fix this than a one-size-fits-all solution. Several others have suggested tying access to library cards in some fashion. You could also allow logins for uncensored (or less censored) access, because obviously what might be appropriate for your son might not be appropriate for your daughter. Maybe one day biometrics will be cheap and reliable as well--and could be used as a login option, or used to assess your physical age--but it isn't there yet.
However, in my experience, kids will generally pay attention to what appeals to them in the first place. In some ways that should make them less likely to encounter porn, or to be influenced by it. And if they do see something they don't like, they'll probably tell you about it. But I would be in favor of blocking pop-ups and whatnot by default, as they can also hamper web browsing in general. And I have no problems with blocking or restricting access to explicit pornography on library computers--it's just that filtering software these days blocks a lot more than that.
Thank you as well; if you enjoy discussions like this, you might want to take a look at kuro5hin; I think it's better for that sort of thing.
It sounds like you're smart enough that you should be able to figure it out for yourself; I agree with you that the Federal government probably shouldn't be directly funding libraries, by the way. I'd much rather have them give that money to the states, with the condition that it goes to the libraries. But that's not going to happen, any more than the Feds are going to voluntarily give up their control over their tax revenue that goes to the states anyhow.
Personally, I think it's about the failure of our Constitution to protect our values. It's about good intentions gone horribly wrong, or bad intentions masking themselves as good ones. It's about the encroachment of corporate interests into our everyday lives. It's about rallying people by saying "think of the children!" on the one side, and then censoring people who aren't children on the other. It's about the growing divide between the wired and the unwired. All in the name of the "greater good".
But we'll see how it turns out, eh? It probably won't affect me much, but I feel sorry for the people I know who depend on those library computers in their day-to-day lives, and those kids who are still in school and depend on such things for their work. At least they'll grow up knowing how useful such filtering measures are; maybe that will help them make more educated decisions for their children.
I might agree with you if I thought that internet filters magically filtered out only porn. Sadly, they don't. Why don't you do some research, so you can become informed, and find out what this is actually about?
It sickens me to see the Federal government use federal funding as a club to make local libraries comply with Federal guidelines--and then have the gall to talk about 'community standards' in the same breath! And they do this *all the time*.
What if my 'community standards' involve protecting the bill of rights and upholding The Constitution? Why is the Federal government suddenly against that?
So Madonna, are you going to ban the "shuffle" button on my CD player, because it interferes with your "work of art"? ...or is it all about the mon..er, control?
As others have mentioned, it obviously isn't about the money for some of us; I stopped buying albums long ago because they're a *waste* of money. However, that doesn't mean that we're in the majority; I'm sure they get a lot of album sales regardless.
I don't know if outlawing singles would help or hurt sales, but it's just downright spiteful *and* greedy to get rid of singles in the hopes of making more money. Don't think this has anything to do with "art", though, because it doesn't. Unless you're talking about the "art" of accumulating more money.
I never claimed that NWN was open source; the open source phenomenon here is that people are writing their own--freely available--mods, which sometimes even get folded back into the game itself! The platform in this case is NWN; the mods are the source.
:)
I'm sorry if my analogy was unclear to you, but I don't think it was at all inaccurate, though perhaps a bit vague. Would you concede that it's possible for open source Java apps to run on a closed-source JVM? As far as I'm concerned, this is a similar situation.
And is there a thriving Dungeon Siege mod community, and does Microsoft work with them to improve the game? Seriously, I don't know anything about it.
I also played the Windows version for a while (now the Linux version, but you get the idea...) but I've been going through it slowly. I'm somewhere in the middle of chapter 2 now, and I also played around with a few different mods and servers in the past.
:)
... and I'm probably the guy who would still be playing Bard's Tale I; as much as I like NWN, I liked the Baldur's Gate games better. Maybe someone can hack in a zoomed-out, low-detail, top-down view into NWN??
But apart from our personal habits, the fact of the matter is, the NWN community is still going strong, and it'll be a while before their engine runs out of steam. (and hopefully when it does, there will be an upwardly-compatible NWN II to replace it, but we'll see, eh?
You're right that gamers tend to move on to bigger and better things, but not all gamers rush out and buy games when they're first released, and I know I often come back to games I like to play them more--and ESPECIALLY if they release new content. Sometimes it's all about the expansion packs.
I was playing NWN on Linux for months before that, originally with WineX, in fact. :)
However, I like the Linux client quite a bit; I'm only using beta 4, and even that is much better than the Windows client, IMO.
The NWN community has been getting broader and more interesting, perhaps mainly due to the VAST number of third-party modules out there, and the new module content that Bioware puts out as well. Think of it as another manifestation of the miracle of Open Source; a lot of things that were added to the latest NWN expansion pack actually came from the community and were added in.
From your post, it's obvious to me that you know nothing about this, and the only reason I'm replying is because it pains me to see such an uninformed post sitting at +5.
That's why God created expand and unexpand; all you have to do is figure out how to use them once, and then you can make all your tabs/spaces problems go away forever.
Sometimes inconsistency is worth it; it all depends on the situation. Remember, "foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds".
The thing is, you could say the same thing about BASIC programmers, or PHP programmers. And you might often be right, as well. It's a common generalization, a stereotype, if you will.
Perl--like BASIC--gives the programmer a lot of rope to hang himself with. It's quite possible that if that's all you know, you'll have a lot of trouble in a more structured environment. I know I had to learn a lot going from BASIC to Pascal, for example.
However, if you're an experienced programmer, if you learned good habits in the first place, or if you have some sort of bizarre knack for writing structured, well-maintained code in any language, maybe you won't have that many 'bad programming habits'. And after a certain point, a lot of this is subjective, anyhow. One person's bad habits can be another's coding guidelines.
Now, Linux wasn't derived from any AT&T source code; it was written from scratch, under the GPL, much as System V Unix wasn't derived from Linux. Therefore, any System V Unix code that was contributed to Linux was improperly contributed, and should be removed as well! Right?
I have a feeling that if SCO tries to use this particular line of reasoning as stated in that Byte article, they'll get their asses handed to them. Or at least they should...
as seen on slashdot, almost exactly one month ago.
Can we get a special section for reposts?
Here's my dream for a sequel to TITANIC; it's also a love story, and could also pave the way for an awesome TITANIC 3:
Start like the first movie, panning around underwater, until you find Jack's dead, bloated corpse. Play some heart-rending music, pan around, whatever. Then, just like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, the corpse WAKES UP.
He rises up and starts walking. Then feel free to add whatever adventures or misadventures with sharks, undead pirates, giant squids, whatever, etc., etc. As much fun as that is, it is secondary to our main focus.
However, as the movie goes on, Jack's appearance should get more and more gruesome, with decomposing bits of flesh that fall off or get eaten, barnacles, sea weed, whatever. By the end he should appear to be part zombie, part skeleton, with some debris thrown in for good measure. However, he should also be totally grotesque in appearance, and therefore still be recognizable as Leonardo DiCaprio.
Finally, our (anti-)hero gets close to his goal. He looks up, and sees a ring falling through the water. He grabs the ring, floats/swims upward, looks up at the old woman leaning over and staring down, and says in his best boyish Leo voice "Hey, you dropped this!"
She then has a heart attack, falls into the water, and dies. And they're finally together, forever! Cue triumphant romantic music.
THE END
When did you go from "We were all going to make money doing stuff that was cool and fun, PLAYING WITH LINUX!" to "We were all going to make money doing stuff that was sleazy and assinine, like VIOLATING THE GPL and FILING LAWSUITS OVER ANCIENT IP!" -- please answer with precise times. After all, Caldera was playing fast and loose with the GPL ever since they first got on the scene, which is what originally earned them the attention and scorn of some people in the /. community.
/. community says "Caldera doesn't care about us or the GPL", then PROVE THEM WRONG. Build credibility, don't burn bridges. No, the fact of the matter is, Caldera had its chance; several chances, actually. And it has shown itslef to be completely untrustworthy, and in fact utterly, utterly vile. And nothing they have done in the past few years has served to significantly change that opinion for the better.
I appreciated what they were doing with OpenDOS, and if they kept on with that, they might have managed to change my opinion. So what did they do? They closed it back up again, and just used it as a stick to extort money from Microsoft. Now, I'm not a big fan of Microsoft, but the DR-DOS lawsuit--coming from CALDERA--was an incredibly sleazy and reprehensible tactic.
And you know what? It worked for them. So what do they do? They continue to buy up old IP, change their name (because they've already burned any credibility they might EVER have had), and try to sue ANOTHER big company. And now you're wondering how it all ended up like that. Hmmmm. I wonder.
In the future, maybe you and your buddies should think about the CONSEQENCES OF YOUR ACTIONS. Like, if the
Got it?
Lay off the porn!
No, really; we told you you'd go blind!
Use of Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS) in the U.S. Department of Defense -- This report documents the results of a short email-mediated study by The MITRE Corporation on the use of free and open-source software (FOSS) in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD).
The "big media monopoly" isn't a myth at all; what you're stating is, however--that the media is owned or controlled by one group. In fact, there are several very large groups that own or control different parts of the media, and they each have their own strengths and weaknesses.
However, each of these may constitute a local monopoly in a given area of the media or region of the world. And even if any one giant corporation doesn't have a monopoly on a given area of the media or region of the world, that media is most likely still owned by one giant corporation or another, which--ultimately--is what people object to the most.
It wasn't always like this, you know. There once was a much larger place for small businesses and innovation in radio, music, TV, and newspapers, where people could get in on the ground floor, and offer something new, interesting, and unique. But those days are over, and the sort of power that the big media corporations hold is absolutely stunning. They have more power to censor now than the government ever had.
Ultimately, some big corporations are evil; it has to do with the amount of power they have, and how power corrupts. If you have lots of small companies around to keep them honest, then you can expect fair competition. But if you don't, well then you have the mess we have now.
I managed to compile WASTE under Linux with a few minor changes here and there, but it looks like it's only the server at the moment. The key generator looks Windows-only, and I'm betting the client is too.
Has anyone here actually used WASTE? Also, does it scale, or is it only good for small groups, as the original webpage implies?
It does indeed happen in Mozilla; probably some 'clever' CSS trick that "works in IE"...
That's all you have to do, but a lot of people don't even do that; if they did, then there'd be some mention of BSD or the Regents of the University of California somewhere in the Windows EULA, right? I mean, IIRC, there are still references to Spyglass and MOSAIC in IE's About box; you'd think Microsoft's legal people could give credit where credit is due...
That is some nasty page-widening HTML.
Can we say "browser testing"?
(And for the record, they probably could have stolen...err appropriated code from FreeBSD. Also, note that Linux can run SCO binaries, through iBCS2. But that's likely because there's a standard that governs those binaries...)