The problems with M$, with understanding anything they do, what, when or why, is of course, the secrecy.
Do I think that this will slow down the OpenSource community in the least... No!
Secrecy is a double-edged sword. Any Linux distro could be entered into public record without a ripple. In fact that might be a good idea to do so now in preparation for any potential eventuality.
But I don't see M$ dragging their APIs and source code into court for the public record anytime soon. That's what they would have to do to even allege with intent to procecute against anyone for supposedly stealing any of their code.
They would have to identify the code and prove it came from them and the only way to do that is by bringing their own code to court and doing so in such a way as to prove the code repository had not been tampered with since the discovery of the break in.
Then M$ would have to argue that it could not possibly have come from any other source but their code. All a developer has to do is keep a clear paper trail of what ideas come, as they come, and the very plausibility of the defense would dispell any allegation M$ might make.
Making those allegations is a great deal more difficult than you think... Basically, M$ has a choice that I doubt they'd ever make even when their backs were against the wall.
If you live in secrecy, you can't step into the sunlight too quickly. I think we're safe from an open source M$ for a long time to come.
Can I tell you what the kids in my neighborhood are going to be up to behind a curtain on a Friday night?
Who's the moro.... genius, who came up with this?
"Strip-quake" will be played by drunken, half-naked teens in malls all over town...
I don't know which is funnier, Every or ...
on
Is UNIX An OS?
·
· Score: 2
In some very limited respects Every was right. His failing was thinking that Unix ever (or will ever,) stop evolving.
When I first read the piece (was it that long ago?,) I thought he'd screwed up the facts but no worse than some of the other journalists I've read. He's a hardware guy. His editors should not have told, (and from personal experiance, I can tell you that this piece was requested according to the dictates of an editorial calendar,) [told] him to write about software.
Its a fluff OS X piece. Treat is as such and move on. OS X is a real OS in an Aqua wrapper.
Its too bad for Apple that Apple hardware lasts so long that there's a lot of old systems out there who'll have to install LinuxPPC et alia to get the benefits of a real OS...
But as the owner of several working, well designed, well built boxes (after trashing a few poorly cobbled together boxes, running a just as poorly lashed together kind-of, almost an OS,) I wish them well.
It may have been coined by Heinlein in "Stranger in a Strange Land" but it is sufficiently succinct and useful that it made it into the dictionary.
Language is either evolving or, like Latin, its dead.
"Perchum et rotatum" dude...:-)
Anyone know if they're planning a port to OS X?
on
Grokking The Gimp
·
· Score: 2
I'd really like to use the Gimp but my LinuxPPC box is a little too slow (a five year old 7200/75 running my personal site.)
My main machine is a well loaded G3 that I will upgrade to OS X when it gets here. (Don't talk to me about this week's fastest PC, they're all built like cheap, ugly, ephemeral crap.)
I'd love to use the Gimp on it. In OS X, it would really rock!
Hey, this chipset is for some serious computing. Serious, serious. The range of boring, mundane software that would get a big boost from these fat, fat pipes into these fast, fast cores is limited.
Quake]|[ would absolutely drip with 3D VR gore. (I get ill just thinking about it. Gibs everywhere!)
But would you really need that kind of horsepower to run Word or an Excel spread sheet of even the maximal complexity that Excel can handle? I thought not. (Excel plays fast and loose with some math functions, Newton's approximations, etc. I just implemented algorithms which don't. Banks can't use Excel for real world amounts.)
Face it, M$ can't use it. Even GHz x86 chipsets are a waste for the desktop.
The server market is better served by Unix solutions that runs multi-user(NT is not), multi-threaded,) and across a range of big iron that's growing steadily bigger.
M$ support this? I hope the [expletive deleted] not!
Once the hardware platform's gone, you can't possibly sell anymore copies of the game. Fuggedaboudid. Its over Jack. Go ByeBye.
Trying to enforce copyright is pure greed.
If they want to enforce the copyright, pull all the copyright holder's games off the site. Leave a nice black-eye for the greedy huckster and screw 'em. Consign 'em to oblivion.
What now?
You can write a new game, based on the old game, and release it, without copyright. If you're not willing to do that, you deserve the same fate.
- OR - (And this is better IMHO.)
Charge a micro-payment to download and let it get deposited to the programmer who originated the game.
Congratulations! Linux (and unix-es in general,) has made a major transition: Product-ization, commoditization & "appliance" wrappering.
The development of simple, easy to use specialty devices for the home (a process started with routers like the product from LinkSys,) is bringing to the home simple devices, not complex systems, which fulfill specific needs in a secure and un-interruptible manner.
That all of these devices can interoperate or at least communicate, is a testament to the connectivity available, painlessly, in Linux.
What does this mean in the larger sense? That appliances will evolve as our understanding of their roles (and the limits we wish to place on those roles,) evolve.
It is antithetical to the current PC-centric evolution of centralized authoritative control of everything by distributing the intelligence required to control a device to that device itself.
The power of the press has always belonged to those who owned one.
AOL/TW are going to be in every damn living room and theatre and TV set.
Except mine, I guess. I don't own one!:-) And I get my fun from the Web and from MP3s.
Its not as if we didn't have a choice NOT to go there. We just have to insure that they can't choke off everywhere else to go to (Sort of like the RIAA & MPAA and other neo-Ludddites.)
Apart from systems which are arguably for national defense, any software developped for or by the government is open source.
Its your tax dollars that were spent. The Freedom of Information Act here and other laws in other countries, clearly state that what's your's is yours That includes the software that controls the operation of any device.
If specific software was developped for specific devices that are bought by public funds, the source code to that software is also part of the purchase. That implies absolutely no warrantees on the part of the vendor. There are no contractual obligations on the part of either party inferred by the availability of the software.
Its simply a question of getting what you have paid for.
Before you think M$ has to turn over their code... They don't sell their software. And its not written to specification to actually control specific devices in the hands of the government.
New York City and the MTA are screwed because they're morons who got into a shady deal (there's probably some corruption story in there somewhere,) and walked in a field full of bear traps with eyes wide shut. And the strap-hangers are bent over and greased up. [I'm one of them!]
Technology's no solution. The problem's more basic
on
SDMI Cracked Too Soon
·
· Score: 3
Encryption's cute but its only encryption. Todays algorithms are tomorrow's object lessons in how not to do it.
The problem is one of economic distribution. How to get money from the consumers into the pockets of the producers in some fair and equitable way.
One model which almost works is ASCAP. They're in charge of charging radio stations and other broadcasting media, based on their market penetration numbers, some money for every piece of material the boadcasters, uh, broadcast, (ASCAP IS Big Brother,:-) and then they shovel that money into the pockets of the "authorities of record" who can claim to be the producers of the material that was broadcast. (That's how artists still get screwed today. NEVER, ever, give away your copyright.)
One model which would work in the "Age Of Napster" is to use micro-payment to charge a published sum from the recipient of a file, if the transmission is not declined, regardless of the content or the size of the file, for every transmission of the file over the internet.
Purely local transmission of the file can be presumed to be fair use, back-ups, change of media etc. Re-transmission over the internet would kick-in the micro-payment scheme which would insure that the Metallica's of the world can please just shut up!
This could even be applied to establishing connections for streaming media.
By the way that leaves the RIAA, the MPAA and other neo-Luddites out in the cold. Let those parasites get real jobs.
Everybody in my family eventually died of something.
I guess none of us are insurable. So why buy any? Ain't that a bitch...
Insurance for profit is a myth. Insurance should be so that the 85% of the population who's healthy (and which individuals are in that 85% changes,) can take care of the 15% who aren't (and likewise which individuals are in that 15% changes.)
Basically, if you need insurance you'll be barred from it so they don't have to pay. Takes care of the liability side of the balance sheet now doesn't it.
But on the reverse side, if a company is willingto insure you, you can be sure that don't need it. That will certainly cause a divot on the asset side of the balance sheet.
And as for the poor souls who get thrown out in the street to hobble on their make-shift crutches:
WE DON'T GIVE A FUCK! WE'RE HEARTLESS AND HEALTHY (we hope) SONS-OF-BITCHES!
Corel's original OfficeSuite 8 was developped in Java and now that the Java VMs and average processor speeds are adequate to support it, they have the experience (and a codebase to start from,) to build M$.NET and propagate it beyond the x86 architecture, something which M$ has repeatedly and demonstrably failed at.
But M$ file formats are locked tight and get changed every time M$ needs some cash.
Slashdot Mirror
The problems with M$, with understanding anything they do, what, when or why, is of course, the secrecy.
Do I think that this will slow down the OpenSource community in the least... No!
Secrecy is a double-edged sword. Any Linux distro could be entered into public record without a ripple. In fact that might be a good idea to do so now in preparation for any potential eventuality.
But I don't see M$ dragging their APIs and source code into court for the public record anytime soon. That's what they would have to do to even allege with intent to procecute against anyone for supposedly stealing any of their code.
They would have to identify the code and prove it came from them and the only way to do that is by bringing their own code to court and doing so in such a way as to prove the code repository had not been tampered with since the discovery of the break in.
Then M$ would have to argue that it could not possibly have come from any other source but their code. All a developer has to do is keep a clear paper trail of what ideas come, as they come, and the very plausibility of the defense would dispell any allegation M$ might make.
Making those allegations is a great deal more difficult than you think... Basically, M$ has a choice that I doubt they'd ever make even when their backs were against the wall.
If you live in secrecy, you can't step into the sunlight too quickly. I think we're safe from an open source M$ for a long time to come.
Make the penalties so ridiculous that the law becomes unenforcable.
Anyone in possession of a compiler should serve a mandatory twenty years in prison.
NO excuses. And when something breaks, we don't fix it...
Did you see the piss-poor poor quality of the morphs?
I'd be embarrassed to be associated with the amateur, chicken-sh*t outfit that cobbled that ad together...
Ouch... My ribs hurt.
M$ had the right idea when they were just ignoring Linux. Because it looks like they're about to pull another campain as successful as Bob!
Can I tell you what the kids in my neighborhood are going to be up to behind a curtain on a Friday night?
Who's the moro.... genius, who came up with this?
"Strip-quake" will be played by drunken, half-naked teens in malls all over town...
In some very limited respects Every was right. His failing was thinking that Unix ever (or will ever,) stop evolving.
When I first read the piece (was it that long ago?,) I thought he'd screwed up the facts but no worse than some of the other journalists I've read. He's a hardware guy. His editors should not have told, (and from personal experiance, I can tell you that this piece was requested according to the dictates of an editorial calendar,) [told] him to write about software.
Its a fluff OS X piece. Treat is as such and move on. OS X is a real OS in an Aqua wrapper.
Its too bad for Apple that Apple hardware lasts so long that there's a lot of old systems out there who'll have to install LinuxPPC et alia to get the benefits of a real OS...
But as the owner of several working, well designed, well built boxes (after trashing a few poorly cobbled together boxes, running a just as poorly lashed together kind-of, almost an OS,) I wish them well.
It may have been coined by Heinlein in "Stranger in a Strange Land" but it is sufficiently succinct and useful that it made it into the dictionary.
:-)
Language is either evolving or, like Latin, its dead.
"Perchum et rotatum" dude...
I'd really like to use the Gimp but my LinuxPPC box is a little too slow (a five year old 7200/75 running my personal site.)
My main machine is a well loaded G3 that I will upgrade to OS X when it gets here. (Don't talk to me about this week's fastest PC, they're all built like cheap, ugly, ephemeral crap.)
I'd love to use the Gimp on it. In OS X, it would really rock!
Stand under a tree in a nasty rain strom.
:-)
Of course, the problem is one of control. Will you get killed or merely sterilized?
As long as you're out of the breeding pool...
Also, I hope not.
Hey, this chipset is for some serious computing. Serious, serious. The range of boring, mundane software that would get a big boost from these fat, fat pipes into these fast, fast cores is limited.
Quake]|[ would absolutely drip with 3D VR gore. (I get ill just thinking about it. Gibs everywhere!)
But would you really need that kind of horsepower to run Word or an Excel spread sheet of even the maximal complexity that Excel can handle? I thought not. (Excel plays fast and loose with some math functions, Newton's approximations, etc. I just implemented algorithms which don't. Banks can't use Excel for real world amounts.)
Face it, M$ can't use it. Even GHz x86 chipsets are a waste for the desktop.
The server market is better served by Unix solutions that runs multi-user(NT is not), multi-threaded,) and across a range of big iron that's growing steadily bigger.
M$ support this? I hope the [expletive deleted] not!
This is all I get trying to get to the page!
. cfm
An Error Occurred While Attempting to Process the Request
Date/Time: 10/18/00 09:13:50
Template: D:\html\users\deankent\realworldtechcom\html\page
Remote Address: 12.20.217.130
Refering URL: http://slashdot.org/
Diagnostics
ODBC Error Code = S1000 (General error)
[Microsoft][ODBC Microsoft Access Driver] Could not update; currently locked by user 'admin' on
machine 'CFX1'.
SQL = "UPDATE adlog SET total = 12394 WHERE stamp = '2000/10/18' AND adid = 10 AND type
= 1.0"
Data Source = "ADS"
That what this piece read like. I'm sending this an angry email telling him that I resent his calling me a thief for having done my job while legally employed firms conducting legitimate business.
[expletive deleted] [expletive deleted]
I mean c'mon.
Once the hardware platform's gone, you can't possibly sell anymore copies of the game. Fuggedaboudid. Its over Jack. Go ByeBye.
Trying to enforce copyright is pure greed.
If they want to enforce the copyright, pull all the copyright holder's games off the site. Leave a nice black-eye for the greedy huckster and screw 'em. Consign 'em to oblivion.
What now?
You can write a new game, based on the old game, and release it, without copyright. If you're not willing to do that, you deserve the same fate.
- OR - (And this is better IMHO.)
Charge a micro-payment to download and let it get deposited to the programmer who originated the game.
Why not?
Then you can tell all these jack-offs to couch up!
Why not?
Then you can tell all these jack-offs to cough up!
Or put it on a file that'll never get found because you encrypt it using CSS.
:-)
Then write an applet or better yet some JavaScript to decrypt it and display it on a page.
Then if the MPAA tries anything, take them to court citing their own "victory" to burn their fat greasy fingers.
Hey, I got a web site
Look for it soon as I get some free time. (Or I'll host it for anybody who writes it for me.)
The rush to have a be-all and end-all box means that, once we have it, civilization might as well end. :-/
And I agree. Most boxes (Apple hardware to the contrary,) are hideous.
They are not designed. They are cobbled together by people who are trying to win the lowest bid.
The closest we have to a component-ized product line is stereo systems. (Most are boring boxes but some, like Bang & Olufsen, have style.)
Congratulations! Linux (and unix-es in general,) has made a major transition: Product-ization, commoditization & "appliance" wrappering.
The development of simple, easy to use specialty devices for the home (a process started with routers like the product from LinkSys,) is bringing to the home simple devices, not complex systems, which fulfill specific needs in a secure and un-interruptible manner.
That all of these devices can interoperate or at least communicate, is a testament to the connectivity available, painlessly, in Linux.
What does this mean in the larger sense? That appliances will evolve as our understanding of their roles (and the limits we wish to place on those roles,) evolve.
It is antithetical to the current PC-centric evolution of centralized authoritative control of everything by distributing the intelligence required to control a device to that device itself.
That there will be more. Many many more.
Have you no soul?
Is your heart made of brass?
Have you no shame?
Then kiss my...
How can you say what you did and then claim it had a finite lifespan? There's some logical inconsistency there.
Its a pile of wires. But its loss is our own just as the wonders we saw through its instruments were.
I don't care.
:-) And I get my fun from the Web and from MP3s.
The power of the press has always belonged to those who owned one.
AOL/TW are going to be in every damn living room and theatre and TV set.
Except mine, I guess. I don't own one!
Its not as if we didn't have a choice NOT to go there. We just have to insure that they can't choke off everywhere else to go to (Sort of like the RIAA & MPAA and other neo-Ludddites.)
Apart from systems which are arguably for national defense, any software developped for or by the government is open source.
Its your tax dollars that were spent. The Freedom of Information Act here and other laws in other countries, clearly state that what's your's is yours That includes the software that controls the operation of any device.
If specific software was developped for specific devices that are bought by public funds, the source code to that software is also part of the purchase. That implies absolutely no warrantees on the part of the vendor. There are no contractual obligations on the part of either party inferred by the availability of the software.
Its simply a question of getting what you have paid for.
Before you think M$ has to turn over their code... They don't sell their software. And its not written to specification to actually control specific devices in the hands of the government.
New York City and the MTA are screwed because they're morons who got into a shady deal (there's probably some corruption story in there somewhere,) and walked in a field full of bear traps with eyes wide shut. And the strap-hangers are bent over and greased up. [I'm one of them!]
Oooh boy.
Heart attack and cancer. What a choice...
Encryption's cute but its only encryption. Todays algorithms are tomorrow's object lessons in how not to do it.
The problem is one of economic distribution. How to get money from the consumers into the pockets of the producers in some fair and equitable way.
One model which almost works is ASCAP. They're in charge of charging radio stations and other broadcasting media, based on their market penetration numbers, some money for every piece of material the boadcasters, uh, broadcast, (ASCAP IS Big Brother,:-) and then they shovel that money into the pockets of the "authorities of record" who can claim to be the producers of the material that was broadcast. (That's how artists still get screwed today. NEVER, ever, give away your copyright.)
One model which would work in the "Age Of Napster" is to use micro-payment to charge a published sum from the recipient of a file, if the transmission is not declined, regardless of the content or the size of the file, for every transmission of the file over the internet.
Purely local transmission of the file can be presumed to be fair use, back-ups, change of media etc. Re-transmission over the internet would kick-in the micro-payment scheme which would insure that the Metallica's of the world can please just shut up!
This could even be applied to establishing connections for streaming media.
By the way that leaves the RIAA, the MPAA and other neo-Luddites out in the cold. Let those parasites get real jobs.
Hey, I just realized something.
Everybody in my family eventually died of something.
I guess none of us are insurable. So why buy any? Ain't that a bitch...
Insurance for profit is a myth. Insurance should be so that the 85% of the population who's healthy (and which individuals are in that 85% changes,) can take care of the 15% who aren't (and likewise which individuals are in that 15% changes.)
Basically, if you need insurance you'll be barred from it so they don't have to pay. Takes care of the liability side of the balance sheet now doesn't it.
But on the reverse side, if a company is willingto insure you, you can be sure that don't need it. That will certainly cause a divot on the asset side of the balance sheet.
And as for the poor souls who get thrown out in the street to hobble on their make-shift crutches:
WE DON'T GIVE A FUCK! WE'RE HEARTLESS AND HEALTHY (we hope) SONS-OF-BITCHES!
If you're sick, DIE!
Corel's original OfficeSuite 8 was developped in Java and now that the Java VMs and average processor speeds are adequate to support it, they have the experience (and a codebase to start from,) to build M$ .NET and propagate it beyond the x86 architecture, something which M$ has repeatedly and demonstrably failed at.
But M$ file formats are locked tight and get changed every time M$ needs some cash.
If we can't obstruct, we can at least RESIST!