In order for 3Com to make this decision, it would have to be profitable. Currently, 3Com makes money selling new hardware, and loses money supporting hardware no longer on the market. Additionally, if they support hardware not on the market, they create an incentive for people to not buy new hardware. As a result, releasing specifications will decrease their value.
But we want open hardware, right? Well, the solution is to propose a scenario by which it is profitable for 3Com to open their hardware.
The solution is for 3Com to announce that ALL new products will be supported for X years, after which their specifications and code will be released into the public domain (or GPLed if they are worried that Cisco would grab them). As a result, new hardware buyers would know that their products would work for AT LEAST X years and perhaps beyond that.
With Cisco or other competing gear, customers have no idea how long they will work. As a result, customers have an incentive to purchase 3Com gear because it has a longer lifespan. This should make 3Com gear more valuable, and theirfore be in 3com's interests.
Now as to existing hardware? Perhaps 3Com could make this somewhat retroactive. Why would they do that? Well, if groups of developers support their old gear, than 3Com's claims of longevity are more likely to succeed. They have a reality.
Also, this community, as other posters mention, consists of large numbers of technical people involved in purchasing decisions. As a result, 3Com would find an increased market for their hardware by creating this sort of environment.
The reality is that businesses will NOT spend money maintaining their old hardware, they will buy new gear. Hobbyiest (like my college living group with a network strung up with end of life products) and users will use and maintain this gear.
Why will this help sales? 3Com needs to realize that there is little market for old hardware, and this change would do nothing towards that. However, the techies often take home the old gear when it is replaced. As techies interested in toys, they would be more likely to recommend the purchase of hardware that they can play with at the end.
3Com benefits as the first mover, therefore they should do so.
I'm going to qualify this. I am an MCSE and CCA, I professionally support Microsoft and Citrix based solutions. On my own I've been playing with Linux for a few years (on and off for about 3 or 4), but I have far more experience with NT 3.51/4.0 and some on Win2K (Pro, not server).
Now, I'm probably going to be working on my own as a consultant instead of for a firm, and for the project I'm looking at, I'm debating the merits of a Linux (more likely FreeBSD though) solution or an NT solution.
Now, the obvious advantages to the UNIX approach is stability. I like Exchange Server, it's easy to manage, pretty straightfoward, and pretty powerful. Complain all you want, the Outlook Web Client and the Calendar/Tasks/Contacts integration is REALLY clean.
It also has the advantage that when I leave, any moron can maintain the system (adding users, etc., not properly babysitting it).
Now, Exchange is really unstable, but stopping and restarting the services usually fixes things and only needs to be done every once in a while.
However, the stability and cost of a Linux approach appeals to me. My personal mail server (that serves mail for myself and a few friends) is a Linux system, and it works pretty reliably.
Here is my question:
I ideally would like to run the Linux or FreeBSD solution for stability. My concern is maintenance. No, I'm a reasonably competant programmer, so I could probably hack out some Windows tools to maintain the accounts (don't worry, I'll release them free as in beer, and even GPL them if I'm not TOO humiliated by my VB code), but I'm wondering if I should bother.
Are there good tools available for maintaining such a system? I haven't found any. I've found a few X11 based ones that I could probably adapt (even compile them for NT with an X Server), but will any have the ease of use?
Also, I've had a nightmare of a time trying to integrate a Linux and NT domain. I mean, I could move them to a straight Unix solution, SAMBA would handle the file sharing fine, but I need something that ANYONE can maintain. Somehow a collection of HTML pages doesn't seem like a good solution.
How would you go about integrating UNIX-like servers in a Windows environment? I can rule out moving the desktops to Linux, so I need everything to play nicely. Is LDAP the solution? How do you go about a project like this?
I said more systems than FreeBSD, I meant NetBSD. While I'm certain that all of you realized what I meant, I look foward to the 10 replies correcting this...:)
Alex
Atomic Operations are key
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Why Not MySQL?
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· Score: 4
Something that kills me from some of this software is that their wasn't enough research. The Linux kernel was HEAVILY criticized (the Tennenbaum thread) because it was obsolete... this also applies to mySQL, and both criticisms are correct!
But Linux and mySQL are fast and popular. Windows 9x is popular too, your point? NT's IIS scores well on benchmarks and is fast, your point?
Popularity and speed are no excuse for correctness. Linux went through several MAJOR revisions (until 2.2 I would argue) to compensate for a bad initial design.
No disrespect for Linus, it was an impressive one man operations, and all the hobbyists did an impressive job, but there is no exuse for writing incorrect code.
We CONSTANTLY criticize Microsoft for intentionally doing things in a dumb way. Why do we do the same?
Operating System theory has solved many of the problems plaguing Linux, and solved them 10+ years before Linux was began. All the "modern" work on the Microkernel, etc, and we still don't have it? Even NT has a microkernel architecture, and they were able to support 4 platforms with minimal effort, they dropped to one for marketing, not technical reasons.
Linux supports many platforms, but at what cost? Each port seems to be such a big deal that we make a big deal out of it. If Linux had moved to a microkernel, it would be on more platforms than FreeBSD, but I digress.
In my architecture class (forget product development, and undergraduate class) we discussed atomic operations and how to provide for them. This was a very difficult thing and took a lot of time to work out. In fact, real solutions weren't really available until the late 70s.
HOWEVER, there is no excuse for pushing a database in the late 90s/early 00s without atomic operations.
Speed is NOT important. Processing power is SO cheap that saving cycles is irrelevant, especially for a constant different. There is no order of growth problem, it might take 2-3 times as long, that's irrelevant, but more horsepower.
Benchmarks that show less than an order of magnitude difference are irrelevant. If you need 3 times the power, get a 4 processor system. Do NOT sacrifice correctness to save money.
If you are doing REAL database work you need the atomic transactions and transaction rollbacks.
If I am running a bank, I need to make certain that the money is taking out of account 1 and placed in account 2 at the same time. It is not okay to remove it from 1 and if it crashes, oh well, it disappears.
In Slashdot's case, maybe it's okay, who cares if a post or two are lost. But if you are running a real site dealing with e-commerce, etc., you need to worry about it. Perhaps for discussion forums this doesn't matter, but for anything more serious, it does.
I find it interesting that there are so many obvious mistakes made in free software. The GNU stuff is solid, but that is written by academics who want correctness before anything else. RMS didn't care if EMACS was 10 times as big and 1/4 the speed if it worked all the time. mySQL takes the Microsoft approach: "yeah, it isn't correct, but few people will see the problems so they don't matter."
That's absurd.
Furthermore, this constant comparison to Microsoft products needs to stop... NOW.
It is not relavent if Linux based systems are more reliable than Windows 98. EVERYTHING is more reliable than Windows 98. (but Windows 98 is a market leader, waah, waah, waah) So what? Windows 98 is used for the ease of use and available applications.
Linux to compete on the desktop needs to beat them.
For Linux to win on the server (not Web servers, REAL servers) market, it needs to be better than the competition.
Being better than NT/IIS will allow Linux/Apache to fight in the low end, not MS. However, running a Linux system is as complicated as a Sun system. So why use Linux instead of Sun? If your only reason is cost or availability of source code that you've disputed the "Cathedral and the Bazarre" arguement.
If the reason is that it is free (like RMS argues for) than you've made a wonderful personal decision, but STOP TRYING to argue that businesses should make it, they don't care about freedom, they exist to make profits.
I think that the slashdot community (although I hope it is limited to here and not the rest of the OSS/FS community) needs a REAL wakeup call.
Instead of comparing yourself to mediocre systems, start doing things right. Instead of suggesting that you are good enough (the way MS does), aim to be correct. Instead of championing the uneducated hacker mentality, do a LITTLE research. You don't need a Ph.D, but you can read 5-10 articles on the system design by academics before you design your system, can't you? Invest 10-50 hours in research and do things RIGHT, instead of wrong.
If your persist in doing things wrong, then continue comparing yourself to Microsoft. Microsoft and some of the OSS stuff follow the same mantra: get it done, mostly working, and who cares if it is correct.
This MAY produce large gains in the marketplace, but it guarantees that we will join Microsoft in holding back the computer industry.
Luckykaa wrote: "Most people upgrade based on the assumption that any 0.0.01 improvement must be a huge difference.
I still use a 2.2.9 kernel because I can't quite stop feeling that kernel 2.2.15 should come halfway between 2.2.1 and 2.2.2"
I respond No!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Don't give into the Microsoft numbering scheme. They screwed EVERYTHING up!
They numbered updates to Dos 6.2 as 6.21 and 6.22. That is INCORRECT. The correct numbering scheme is 6.2.1 or 6.2.2. Why? Because 21 is 2 + 19, not 2+1. 2 + less than one would be 2.x, like 2.1, 2.2, etc.
That is how a decimal system works. Microsoft choose the other because it "looks right"
However, by that logic, the upgade path allows Major and Minor X.Y and upgrades off that are tricky... X.YZZZZ However, that means that you can ONLY have 10 minor upgrades per major upgrade, and only 10 patches off that.
That is CLEARLY a bad design. Especially because the correct idea:
Major.Minor.Minor-Minor.Minor-Minor-Minor etc., etc.
Allows infinite numbers of fixes. Within a single major release (Linux 2) you can have as many minor releases (2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, and so on, BEYOND 2.9.) Also, it means taht you can have updates on the minor ones.
Your warped numbered scheme means that you CANNOT go beyond 2.2.9. I mean, 2.2.15 is the 15th revision of the 2.2 Major/Minor combo. Each portion between the decimal points is an integer, not the decimal part.
As a reminder, the GPL explicitly states that you can use the software freely WITHOUT agreeing to the license. However, if you would like to distribute it, you must agree to the license, or you may not.
This is obvious, because copyright law DOES NOT give you the right to prevent people from using your works, only from distributing them. If I write a book, I can put a license that say only people with a name beginning with a vowel may read this book, but I would NOT be able to legally enforce this. I could refuse to sell it to them, and refuse to allow anyone else to sell it to them, and make everyone agree to keep it from them. However, if someone gets it, I can't do ANYTHING to them, however, I can sue the person who provided it to them for copyright infringement.
Why is this? Copyright means that nobody can copy or distribute something other than me. I can sell my copyright (someone else can then have those rights), I can also license it out. A license is an agreement to do something. The GPL is a license that allows you to distribute the copyrighted work and derivatives under certain circumstances.
As a USER, I can certainly combine any amounts of software however I want. Indeed, if my friend buys software that I can't buy and gives it to me, there is NOTHING that anybody can do to me. They can go after my friend if he agreed to not give it to me, but otherwise, they can do nothing.
The KDE/QPL thing is quite silly. KDE developers are free to develop their stuff however they want. Additionally, they can distribute it however they want. The only issue became whether you could distribute the combined issue. KDE clearly wants you to be able to, Trolls clearly wants you to be able to. What is the problem? If you are distributing the combination and are concerned, I suggest writing a letter to both organizations requesting permission. I'm certain that you will get it, and then you can distribute.
There was a statement somewhere in this mess claiming that they don't buy the "you can have it on your disk without permission" arguement... well, you can. You have the right to use this software. If you have questions regarding your right to distribute, contact the copyright owners requesting it. Request the ability to include their permission with your copies for everyone who receives it through you to have that explicit permission.
If you would like your version of KDE under the FSF's suggested version of the GPL (which is the GPL's code with a statement giving permission to distribute with QT or other QPL'd software), I bet that the KDE people would license your version under that agreement. In that scenario, that you would have a completely legal license to distribute it. In that scenario, offer Debian a copy of your licensed KDE, which is perfectly legal with no question.
It seems like most people are looking as to if this could be used to store, illegally, copyrighted data.
This is for SCIENTIFIC journals. While the journal does have copyright protection, they run articles written by researchers at various universities (and in industry).
The desire of more researchers to be published has resulted in additional journals being formed. Because publishing a journal on the web is dirt cheap, it makes sense that with the Internet available, more of these journals will appear.
The problem is, you need an archive of it. This system is a system to guarantee that we do not lose knowledge. It doesn't even have to be available. They could cut a deal with the publishers of the journals that they will maintain the archive, but that if the company goes out of business or stops providing old articles, the archive can show them.
This would be voluntary, but the publishers would jump at it. Why? Because this system gives them more credibility than a web page alone. The guarantee against the future loss is the best protection for their journal, which makes it more likely to get high quality entries.
While Freenet or other groups may use similar technology, this is a COMPLETELY different project. This isn't about letting people submit data and protect it, this is about preserving the body of scientific knowledge so we don't lose it when a company goes bankrupt. Digital versions are easier to duplicate than paper equivalents, but our system of copyrights is trying to discourage that. E-books, E-journals, E-magazines have a significant risk. A copy of an article in a manilla folder can be lost or destoryed, but is otherwise perfect. A bookmark to a website can disappear at the whim of a publisher, and there are legal AND technical attempts to prevent you from properly saving an article...
It's a very strange situation, and projects like this are VERY important to prevent us from losing knowledge.
I know this sounds elitist, because I'm worrying about the body of knowledge of scientists but not other people. Here is the thing, the information age has allowed more people to publish their ideas and beliefs. However, because we have all jumped onto this technology, we didn't take adequate safeguards to ensure that we don't LOSE anything in this transistion.
If we archived everything that was traditionally published, we'd have the old status quo. If we archive everything traditionally published and let others publish non-archived, we have a better system than the status quo. An environment where we publish everything, maintain nothing is questionable. In some ways it is better than the status quo, more liberal publishing, and in other ways worse, more data loss.
The idea is to come up with a STRICTLY better system, where NOTHING is lost and we gain some advantages. Normally, there are tradeoffs. The goal is to avoid tradeoffs, and just make things better.
In my Industrial Organization class, we went over the renting vs. selling monopoly model, and it is kinda interesting.
If you have a good, Widget, that will depreciate over time, you want to rent it, not sell it. The simple model is a two term model, where the good is worthless at that time.
You can calculate the rental price in both terms (S and D) easily. However, the sale price is interesting, because in term 2, the sale price is the rental price in term 1. The price in the first term is less than the price of renting for two terms.
Why? Well, in the rental scenario, the company produces Q* (where Q* = Q1 + (Q2 - Q1)) and rents Q1 of them in term 1, and Q2 in term 2.
In the buying scenario, the company produces Q1 units in term one, but in term 2, the old ones are "for sale" because the same people can keep them or resell them).
What is the point of all this? The CoS has a STRONG desire to eliminate the secondary market. Yes, anybody can buy them from them, but E-bay for the first time creates a secondary market. As it stands, because of the CoS's alledged behavior, former members probably hide as much as possible. As a result, I doubt that the old stuff is sold if people leave.
However, with E-bay, there is a valid secondary market. As the CoS doesn't seem to be growing (if it is, it isn't very fast, or the CoS would be a major religion by now), the number of E-meters needed by CoS people would be pretty constant. I mean, if the # auditors increases by 3% each year (I'm assuming the CoS keeps up roughly with the population, no more) than the market for new E-meters is VERY small. However, if you keep the already sold E-meters off the market, and see all the new ones, the market is larger and the prices are higher. That is why the CoS wants to stop this.
There probably are copyright issues... they probably own the images in use, have the name Trademarked, etc... As a result, they probably are legally at least somewhat on target. While they would probably lose, they can make it too costly.
Now, the CoS can write a letter (at most, a few hundred dollars in legal fees) and keep the secondary market closed, while each individual would have to fight the CoS in a large lawsuit to create the secondary market. Without a class action suit, there is no way to fight the lawsuit, as no individual involved has the incentive to fight, and the CoS WOULD fight. I mean, if they back down it is more profitable, but the credibility to legally fight is important to maintain. That way, they keep the secondary market closed.
Clearly, the electronic device is sold to users and can be resold. Even if it is licensed, arguing non-transferability would probably fail. Software non-transferability makes sense in some cases (Partition Magic... I mean, just not being able to use two copies at once is meaningless) but I think that trying to apply it to hardware would fail. I mean, copyright prevents copying, but that would be an interesting lawsuit.
The Church of Scientology no doubt has multiple copyrights on images, terms (well, trademarks), statements, etc. If the pictures were taken by the owner but intentionally designed to looks like official photos, that may also be a copyright violation.
Now, the Church clearly doesn't have a legal leg to stand on to prevent sales (and if they sell it anyway, why would they, I mean, the resale market through E-bay won't really effect their bottom line to the extent legal fees will), but they can probably protect certain terms.
Especially if the listings are critical of the church. I mean, isn't in a copyright owner's privalige to not allow their copyrighted work to be used to disparage them? IANAL, but they should have SOME right to prevent the distribution of copyrighted images and terms, and trademarked names.
Now, the DCMA's loophole, designed to protect copyright owners, is clearly being exploited. The Church of Scientology is well known for alledgedly filing motions that won't be upheld merely to by time or harass the victim. Indeed, this is standard legal manuevering.
I would like to see more of this with specifics as to the auctions, before we just bash on the Church of Scientology. If this is using a loophole for harassment, time for a letter writing campaign, getting the law fixed would be easy in that case. The government officials are not terribly thrilled with the CoS, and if it is being used to harass law abiding citizens, it will no doubt be fixed.
Now, I have as low an opinion of the CoS as the rest of the people here. HOWEVER, that does not make them guilty in this case. Indeed, I am willing to grant them significant breadth of actions as a religious organization, so I want to see facts before I attack them.
How'd you pull this off? I've been looking into this, and I can't figure out how to build it for less than a thousand... What did you do about the case? Where did you find that Mobo? What OS's does it support?
I just bought the LCD w/ Keypad interface for mine, that will take a while to put together, your idea sounds like it would save me a few hundred bucks...
This is a nice idea... If your court system is overloaded, put the most common 100 or 200 things in a simple database. You hit a few buttons, the software figures out what specific violation it is (if you say, have 10 levels of reckless driving, etc), and prints out a reasonable judgement.
As long as the appeals process is unchanged, this is helpful. Instead of needing the judge to lookup the difference between the different laws and write up a whole judgement, a simple mail-merge type deal prints out a judgement.
This won't be used on major crimes, but it a good way to determine what should happen with traffic type crimes.
Many people here are criticizing the "OSS diehards" for being critical of closed source Linux drivers. They talk about how this is good for Linux, and therefore it is good. They like to be able to use Linux in this was or that, etc., etc.
Quite frankly, you miss the point. Proprietary software companies charge for their software to be used in a restrictive manner, and either you decide you like the tool or you don't.
People the write free software decided that they wanted to make a system that respects the user's right to copy and and do whatever they want with the software.
Using a loophole and interpretation, people have been allowed to release drivers that violate these rights.
These people wrote software, said that anybody could use it on the condition that modifications and derived works ALSO respected people's freedoms.
This company is NOT doing so. Those of you that use Linux and these drivers are NOT being fair to the developers of this system.
They provided it for free with the SIMPLE condition that derived works be made with the same freedom. This driver VIOLATES that principle, because nVidia is standing on the shoulders of giants without giving back.
You are ALSO doing so. You have no problems using the work of people's hard labor without respecting their intentions. Instead of charging you money, licensing, etc., they chose a simple requirement. Instead, they are being cheated.
The workstation market? Some of this Linux exploitation is disgusting. To take the labor of thousands of programmers, use it for free, and find ways to AVOID contributing back to this effort is disgusting. The home market and workstation market of people not planning to write code but use Linux is okay, the authors allow this. What they DO NOT allow is the use of these work with people riding on their efforts for free.
nVidia did not write GNU and Linux. The people claiming that source doesn't matter did NOT write GNU and Linux.
As they are NOT paying for the right to use the software, they should respect the MUCH simpler restrictions placed upon it.
Those of you that claim that OSS doesn't matter, you are leeches on the system. You take Linux because it is better, but not only do you not contribute back, you encourage OTHERS to leech off the system. That is DISGUSTING. You take GNU and Linux as though they were your right. They are a gift, and the requirement of that gift is that you respect the writes of others.
nVidia IS spitting in the communities face, but more importantly they are spitting in the face of rms and the other programmers that wrote the code you use.
This is the MOST disrespectful I have ever seen.
They ask you to follow a license, but they do whatever they can to NOT follow that license... and definitely not the spirit of the license.
Lessig is one of the nations's greatest scholars on Constitutional law, particularly with regards to computers. I had the pleasure of taking a class with him joint between MIT and Harvard Law, and his lectures were incredible. The connections that he makes are quite impressive, and he sees many aspects to a legal regime that we fail to look at.
While most of us have a guy instinct towards the Libertarian ideal of no government, he makes a very compelling arguement as to why it is absurd.
One arguement that I found compelling, is that regulation comes in a few forms, legal regulations, social regulations, physical/code regulations, and another that I forget. I don't recall if this was from one of his papers or one of the papers that was background to read some of his other works...
The arguement is that while the state can pass a law, social rules have as much influence as the law. Additionally, there are fundamental laws as well. For example, there is no need for a legal regime preventing you from breaking the speed of light... physics does so. In the computer world, different rules apply.
In other words, if Microsoft controlled the browser market and required that HTML be formatted in a certain way, that would have as much power as a legal regime. True you could switch browsers and systems, but you can also break the law.
There is a VERY compelling arguement that the libertarian view, while beautiful in a Jeffersonian agrarian society, the realities of a connected world make regulation an important if less significant role. For example, in Jefferson's era, the government played a much bigger role in the people's lives if it chose to (despots were a real threat to a free society), in our era and in regards to an electronic world, the people writing the standards, software, and hardware designs have much more influence than the government. They essentially write the physicals of our virtual universe.
This is absurd... We have had HOW MANY Cyber Patrol stories? This is a discussion site, right? Nobody in the Slashdot community is going to come out in support of them. Even if some did, they get marked down as trolls.
As a result, this is another story to karma whore by walking the party line.
I love slashdot, but this is ABSURD.
When there is a real technical topic, I love this forum as it is the only place that I know of with REAL discussions on very meaty subjects.
When there is a Linux topic, sometimes there is interested subjects, although the Linux is G-d's OS crowd as moderators try to kill it by only allowing one view to show.
But this is rediculous. I mean, if there was a bill banning technical debates online, it would warrant a story, as it would effect us. But if you ran it constantly, it is dumb, because there is NO room for discussion.
We ALL know everybody's view of censorware, can we stop reporting EVERYTHING that can result in 300 censorware sucks posts?
I am an undergrad at MIT in CSE, and several of my friends are currently in your class. More than one is interested in working for your company, and it is widely known through Course 6 (the EECS department) that someone doing well in your class will be automatically made an offer if they apply for a job at your company.
As a student, I have been widely critical of MIT's undergrad education for being intentionally non-practical, although things like 6.170 (Software Engineering Lab) switching from Clu to Java is an improvement.
As a result, I should be thrilled with a course like yours being available, as it takes computer science ideas and uses a real world application.
However, the fact that your class is also a recruiting ground has me worried. By training people that will work for you and competitors, you seem to remove some of that concern, as you are training all the people interested in this field. However, I can't help but consider their to be an ethical question of teaching a class as a recruitment in. Things that I have heard include the completition of the first three problem sets satisfactorily being an in for a job, and/or the completion of the course with a B or better doing so has me worried.
I wonder, how do you separate your academic ethics from your business decisions? Do you see an ethical problem of teaching at MIT and recruiting your own students?
The problem was NOT that Microsoft had a monopoly in operating systems. Not only is having a monopoly legal, but operating systems are a natural monopoly. Because of the single API, it is more efficient to have one OS than 10, therefore, one OS dominates the general market and the rest handle niches were specialization trump the efficiency.
The charge that Microsoft faces is using one Monopoly to try to establish another (forcing you to get IE if you get Windows... and as Windows is a monopoly...) and anti-competitive practices to maintain their monopoly. Netscape offered the use of a web browser to replace operating systems. Microsoft, in a competitive world, would make their operating system a better idea than the web browser, i.e. some sort of network software distribution model... like RDP and Multi-Win that they bought from Citrix. Instead, Microsoft used its cash reserves to run Netscape out of business. IE was created for ONE purpose, the destruction of Netscape and the protection of the Windows monopoly.
By separating Windows and Office, the monopolies could not enforce each other. Microsoft Windows is a monopoly, by rigging Windows to support Office best (releasing the Win95 version of the Win32 APIs to the Office development team before competitors), they use this monopoly to get and keep the Office Suite monopoly... In face, this monopoly first existed in Office 95, which they gave an unfair advantage to. As a result, Microsoft Office is a monopoly. Well, they refuse to port this to another OS (the Apple port is half assed, intentionally), which reinforced Windows as the only OS to run Microsoft Office.
If the OS and Application divisions were separate companies, it would be in MS-OS's interests to get as many office suites running best on Windows, because otherwise, they'll lose to other OSes. It is in MS-Apps interests to support every OS, because they want to dominate the Applications market, not lose it to cross platform competition.
Some conduct remedies are required to prevent collusion (because obviously Monopoly rents are too nice, and they know each other...), but in the long run, this would work.
Alex
Re:What it is and why Linux won't run on it.
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No, the zealots usually aren't coders. They are users who don't right code, don't understand the concept of Free Software (or the less philosophical open source), and don't care.
They decided that Linux was cool, and that they are better people for using it. They realized that/. gives Karma for championing Linux at all costs, and post accordingly. Also, many of them are young (high school), and therefore have not been exposed to industrial equipment.
Like the sig, most slashdot readers think that the entire Internet could run on beige x86s, these people approach computing from a very narrow view.
They assume that because Linux is more stable than Win98, it is the most stable system on the planet. Also, because they don't crash it, they assume that it doesn't crash. They don't appreciate the value of real time OSes, and other things in the field. While people are working and hacking away at a real time Linux, the zealots don't care and champion Linux for real time work anyways. They compare a Beowulf cluster to an actual supercomputer (while it is a cheap way to get LOTS of processing, it isn't a supercomputer... it doesn't do what supercomputers do...), assume that Linux can replace S/390s, etc., etc.
Linux is getting hurt by the zealots, because they turn off potential users that are interested and could become interested in free software by criticizing all that disagree.
Further, just to alienate some people, I'm going to disagree with Linux being where it is because the zealots hacked code. Linux is where it is by an even MORE amazing set of circumstances than those that led Microsoft to it's position. Linux is here because RMS and company were finishing up the GNU tools around the time that Linus's kernel started to function. The combination formed an OS, and as the kernel got polished, the tools became useful. A few other projects worked, and Linux gained in popularity because of the GNU System and other free software.
Linux did NOT get anywhere by obnoxious teenagers insulting others for running another OS.
Explicitly protected rights in the Constitution are granted the strictest protection. For the state to curb them, they must demonstrate:
1) A compelling state interest 2) The law is the least restrictive approach
The state can show that preventing minors from accessing porn is in the state's interest. This is TRUE, if for no other reason than certain parents, fearing their children's exposure to pornography, will prevent their children from accessing new technology. This will prevent those children from having the same opportunities as others.
Regardless of whether you think that exposure to porn is detrimental, it is believed that it is, and there are genuine harms from not having a solution.
However, site owners have a Constitutional right to this protected speach. Adults have the legal right to access this speach. However, the state has the right to try to protect children from this speach.
The ACLU's argument is that there is a less restrictive means, censorware. Requiring adults to register to receive persecuted speach would be horrific. This is speach that many Americans want to silence, therefore, requiring adults to admit to partaking would be effective censorship. As a method for protecting children, this is NOT the least restrictive means, as the censoring products can accomplish the goals without restricting the rights of others.
Now, the censorware has problems. In general, these problems are not the availability of porn, but rather the other stuff blocked. As a result, children behind this wall are having their rights to access protected speach violated. Therefore, the state cannot impose it on something like a library.
Clearly these views ARE consistent. Filtering software CAN be used by parents to protect children, so a restrictive law is not needed. Mandatory filtering prevents minors from accessing protected speech, so are also bad.
Actually, that's not true. The company faces a lawsuit in a foreign country. They either defend the lawsuit, or refuse to acknowledge another country's legal system. If they refuse, the plaintiff will likely win given that they face no opposition, and they can get a court order to freeze the company's assets...
You can legislate in the world economy, you need to obey the laws in every country that you do business...
To quote someone, you have to cite them. To quote someone and make them "not identifiable" which is what Hemos said, you aren't quoted, but rather your Intellectual Property stolen. They could quote you by name, Handle, whatever, but they can't invent names to quote people... to do that they would IMO, need a release signed....
IANAL, but I think that fair use to use someone's work for profit DEFINITELY requires them to give credit to the copyright owner... and everything is automatically copyrighted...
One of our projects in my Systems class was to design a computer system for the library of Congress. The observation made was that there was too much data to simply make backups, so you'd need a real-time mirroring solution. Also, if a Fire, earthquake, meteor etc., hits one of the computer installations, you don't want to lose all of the information. I bet that most of the really good LoC stuff is far beneath the ground, in case of nuclear war.
The solution was to have 5 or more sites, and effectively replicate new data as entered throughout the system, etc. It was a surprisingly hairy problem.
I am certain that people in Congress are deciding how to digitize the LoC, and then they will send the LoC it's orders, who is then responsible for insuring massive cost overruns to beef up their budget. That's how this government works.
I mean, if the LoC picks a good format, they can ask publishers to submit it to them electronically for archival purposes. They can probably get the past 5-8 years (when did computers replace typesetting in publishing?), but we are talking what, 200+ years of stuff that isn't available in digital form? That's a pretty big deal.
There needs to be a format, ASCII text won't necessarily cut it, although the bulk of the data is simply.
Don't forget the copyright details. Copyrights owned by a person last what, 50 years after their death with corporate copyrights lasting 75 years? I would suggest that the majority (where majority => >51%) of their collection is still protected by copyright. You can borrow a copy of their book, but can you borrow their digital copy? We're still working this out in the courts and state and federal legislatures, so it is a little early for the LoC to weigh in...
One of the big things Open Source advocates have been asking companies to do is BSD or GPL applications that they plan to drop support for. If they no longer plan to profit off them, why not allow the users to keep, maintain, and improve them. The real answer is the upgrade treadmill, but no need to discuss that.
I am not terribly familiar with this product, but obviously this is a good thing, you can learn something from any sample of code.
What I wonder, is when companies release their source code like this, how much do users pick it up, redistribute, etc.? I mean, Darwin and Mozilla looked dead for a while, but then they picked open some help (I know Mozilla did, did Darwin?). Mozilla and Darwin were HUGE projects, it makes sense that users took a while to jump in there. On the otherhand, will a project like this be picked up and improved by proponents of open source, or will we just say, "finally, they get it" take their software and run?
I mean, the idea is, according to RMS, we have a fundamental right to copy digital data, and that licenses that prohibit this are fundamentally immoral, so he'll write a free OS that we can copy.
The Linux community says, we'll work with corporate interests, because they can sell support. We'll help improve the product, and you can sell support for it and make lots of money.
Now, is the latter true? Are we helping the companies that are releasing their source code with the promise that we will help, or are we grabbing their code and adding the useful bits into our pet GPL projects?
I'll agree that it isn't the most useful set of benchmarks, but I disagree with your server only comment.
The Xeon has been marketted as a Workstation/Server chip, and has seen it's way into the SGI NT workstations, etc. With 256KB RAM, this is clearly intended for the Workstation Market. The wider cache bus and the new motherboard are nice additions for the workstation market, but I think that the server market would give up some MHz for the larger caches of the "old" Xeons or get the "new" Xeon in the 512KB, 1M, or 2M (if available?) versions. I mean, 256KB of L2 cache is going to be useless in a large database server, as you'll never make a cache hit, while a larger cache is useful if most of the accesses are within a general range.
However, I agree that this was mostly a stupid review. Testing it against obviously inferior hardware wasn't interesting. I mean, testing it against dual 800 MHz P3s or 1GHz P3s would give an understanding as to what the new cache system does. Testing it against processors from the same family at 2/3s the speed and shouting, wow, it's fast, is kinda silly.
One area that you have been clear on is that to be incorporated into the GNU System, is that fixes must have copyright assigned to the FSF. I understand that this is important to allow the FSF to defend the GPL in regards to GNU software.
However, much of the "open source community" has taken the "code is code" mentality. When the GNU project is "complete" and we have a fully functional free system made available by the FSF, will the Linux "open source" group join us to create a truly free system or will we settle for almost completely free.
I make this distinction, because if I understand copyright law and your structure, then GPL'd software isn't enough. Unless all the code is copyrighted by the same person (fictional or real), then the license would be difficult to enforce.
Also, how do we get other hackers to do so. I mean, you were an MIT professor, many of the programmers in the "open source community" are in high school or college. While I'm not implying that education = intelligence, I am implying the education makes you more likely to have read up on these topics. The average hacker GPLing code doesn't. How do we get copyright assignments made so that the GNU system can include all the wonderful contributions that have been made.
Slashdot Mirror
In order for 3Com to make this decision, it would have to be profitable. Currently, 3Com makes money selling new hardware, and loses money supporting hardware no longer on the market. Additionally, if they support hardware not on the market, they create an incentive for people to not buy new hardware. As a result, releasing specifications will decrease their value.
But we want open hardware, right? Well, the solution is to propose a scenario by which it is profitable for 3Com to open their hardware.
The solution is for 3Com to announce that ALL new products will be supported for X years, after which their specifications and code will be released into the public domain (or GPLed if they are worried that Cisco would grab them). As a result, new hardware buyers would know that their products would work for AT LEAST X years and perhaps beyond that.
With Cisco or other competing gear, customers have no idea how long they will work. As a result, customers have an incentive to purchase 3Com gear because it has a longer lifespan. This should make 3Com gear more valuable, and theirfore be in 3com's interests.
Now as to existing hardware? Perhaps 3Com could make this somewhat retroactive. Why would they do that? Well, if groups of developers support their old gear, than 3Com's claims of longevity are more likely to succeed. They have a reality.
Also, this community, as other posters mention, consists of large numbers of technical people involved in purchasing decisions. As a result, 3Com would find an increased market for their hardware by creating this sort of environment.
The reality is that businesses will NOT spend money maintaining their old hardware, they will buy new gear. Hobbyiest (like my college living group with a network strung up with end of life products) and users will use and maintain this gear.
Why will this help sales? 3Com needs to realize that there is little market for old hardware, and this change would do nothing towards that. However, the techies often take home the old gear when it is replaced. As techies interested in toys, they would be more likely to recommend the purchase of hardware that they can play with at the end.
3Com benefits as the first mover, therefore they should do so.
Alex
I'm going to qualify this. I am an MCSE and CCA, I professionally support Microsoft and Citrix based solutions. On my own I've been playing with Linux for a few years (on and off for about 3 or 4), but I have far more experience with NT 3.51/4.0 and some on Win2K (Pro, not server).
Now, I'm probably going to be working on my own as a consultant instead of for a firm, and for the project I'm looking at, I'm debating the merits of a Linux (more likely FreeBSD though) solution or an NT solution.
Now, the obvious advantages to the UNIX approach is stability. I like Exchange Server, it's easy to manage, pretty straightfoward, and pretty powerful. Complain all you want, the Outlook Web Client and the Calendar/Tasks/Contacts integration is REALLY clean.
It also has the advantage that when I leave, any moron can maintain the system (adding users, etc., not properly babysitting it).
Now, Exchange is really unstable, but stopping and restarting the services usually fixes things and only needs to be done every once in a while.
However, the stability and cost of a Linux approach appeals to me. My personal mail server (that serves mail for myself and a few friends) is a Linux system, and it works pretty reliably.
Here is my question:
I ideally would like to run the Linux or FreeBSD solution for stability. My concern is maintenance. No, I'm a reasonably competant programmer, so I could probably hack out some Windows tools to maintain the accounts (don't worry, I'll release them free as in beer, and even GPL them if I'm not TOO humiliated by my VB code), but I'm wondering if I should bother.
Are there good tools available for maintaining such a system? I haven't found any. I've found a few X11 based ones that I could probably adapt (even compile them for NT with an X Server), but will any have the ease of use?
Also, I've had a nightmare of a time trying to integrate a Linux and NT domain. I mean, I could move them to a straight Unix solution, SAMBA would handle the file sharing fine, but I need something that ANYONE can maintain. Somehow a collection of HTML pages doesn't seem like a good solution.
How would you go about integrating UNIX-like servers in a Windows environment? I can rule out moving the desktops to Linux, so I need everything to play nicely. Is LDAP the solution? How do you go about a project like this?
Alex
I said more systems than FreeBSD, I meant NetBSD. While I'm certain that all of you realized what I meant, I look foward to the 10 replies correcting this... :)
Alex
Something that kills me from some of this software is that their wasn't enough research. The Linux kernel was HEAVILY criticized (the Tennenbaum thread) because it was obsolete... this also applies to mySQL, and both criticisms are correct!
But Linux and mySQL are fast and popular. Windows 9x is popular too, your point? NT's IIS scores well on benchmarks and is fast, your point?
Popularity and speed are no excuse for correctness. Linux went through several MAJOR revisions (until 2.2 I would argue) to compensate for a bad initial design.
No disrespect for Linus, it was an impressive one man operations, and all the hobbyists did an impressive job, but there is no exuse for writing incorrect code.
We CONSTANTLY criticize Microsoft for intentionally doing things in a dumb way. Why do we do the same?
Operating System theory has solved many of the problems plaguing Linux, and solved them 10+ years before Linux was began. All the "modern" work on the Microkernel, etc, and we still don't have it? Even NT has a microkernel architecture, and they were able to support 4 platforms with minimal effort, they dropped to one for marketing, not technical reasons.
Linux supports many platforms, but at what cost? Each port seems to be such a big deal that we make a big deal out of it. If Linux had moved to a microkernel, it would be on more platforms than FreeBSD, but I digress.
In my architecture class (forget product development, and undergraduate class) we discussed atomic operations and how to provide for them. This was a very difficult thing and took a lot of time to work out. In fact, real solutions weren't really available until the late 70s.
HOWEVER, there is no excuse for pushing a database in the late 90s/early 00s without atomic operations.
Speed is NOT important. Processing power is SO cheap that saving cycles is irrelevant, especially for a constant different. There is no order of growth problem, it might take 2-3 times as long, that's irrelevant, but more horsepower.
Benchmarks that show less than an order of magnitude difference are irrelevant. If you need 3 times the power, get a 4 processor system. Do NOT sacrifice correctness to save money.
If you are doing REAL database work you need the atomic transactions and transaction rollbacks.
If I am running a bank, I need to make certain that the money is taking out of account 1 and placed in account 2 at the same time. It is not okay to remove it from 1 and if it crashes, oh well, it disappears.
In Slashdot's case, maybe it's okay, who cares if a post or two are lost. But if you are running a real site dealing with e-commerce, etc., you need to worry about it. Perhaps for discussion forums this doesn't matter, but for anything more serious, it does.
I find it interesting that there are so many obvious mistakes made in free software. The GNU stuff is solid, but that is written by academics who want correctness before anything else. RMS didn't care if EMACS was 10 times as big and 1/4 the speed if it worked all the time. mySQL takes the Microsoft approach: "yeah, it isn't correct, but few people will see the problems so they don't matter."
That's absurd.
Furthermore, this constant comparison to Microsoft products needs to stop... NOW.
It is not relavent if Linux based systems are more reliable than Windows 98. EVERYTHING is more reliable than Windows 98. (but Windows 98 is a market leader, waah, waah, waah) So what? Windows 98 is used for the ease of use and available applications.
Linux to compete on the desktop needs to beat them.
For Linux to win on the server (not Web servers, REAL servers) market, it needs to be better than the competition.
Being better than NT/IIS will allow Linux/Apache to fight in the low end, not MS. However, running a Linux system is as complicated as a Sun system. So why use Linux instead of Sun? If your only reason is cost or availability of source code that you've disputed the "Cathedral and the Bazarre" arguement.
If the reason is that it is free (like RMS argues for) than you've made a wonderful personal decision, but STOP TRYING to argue that businesses should make it, they don't care about freedom, they exist to make profits.
I think that the slashdot community (although I hope it is limited to here and not the rest of the OSS/FS community) needs a REAL wakeup call.
Instead of comparing yourself to mediocre systems, start doing things right. Instead of suggesting that you are good enough (the way MS does), aim to be correct. Instead of championing the uneducated hacker mentality, do a LITTLE research. You don't need a Ph.D, but you can read 5-10 articles on the system design by academics before you design your system, can't you? Invest 10-50 hours in research and do things RIGHT, instead of wrong.
If your persist in doing things wrong, then continue comparing yourself to Microsoft. Microsoft and some of the OSS stuff follow the same mantra: get it done, mostly working, and who cares if it is correct.
This MAY produce large gains in the marketplace, but it guarantees that we will join Microsoft in holding back the computer industry.
Alex
Luckykaa wrote:
"Most people upgrade based on the assumption that any 0.0.01 improvement must be a huge difference.
I still use a 2.2.9 kernel because I can't quite stop feeling that kernel 2.2.15 should come halfway between 2.2.1 and 2.2.2"
I respond No!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Don't give into the Microsoft numbering scheme. They screwed EVERYTHING up!
They numbered updates to Dos 6.2 as 6.21 and 6.22. That is INCORRECT. The correct numbering scheme is 6.2.1 or 6.2.2. Why? Because 21 is 2 + 19, not 2+1. 2 + less than one would be 2.x, like 2.1, 2.2, etc.
That is how a decimal system works. Microsoft choose the other because it "looks right"
However, by that logic, the upgade path allows Major and Minor X.Y and upgrades off that are tricky... X.YZZZZ However, that means that you can ONLY have 10 minor upgrades per major upgrade, and only 10 patches off that.
That is CLEARLY a bad design. Especially because the correct idea:
Major.Minor.Minor-Minor.Minor-Minor-Minor etc., etc.
Allows infinite numbers of fixes. Within a single major release (Linux 2) you can have as many minor releases (2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, and so on, BEYOND 2.9.) Also, it means taht you can have updates on the minor ones.
Your warped numbered scheme means that you CANNOT go beyond 2.2.9. I mean, 2.2.15 is the 15th revision of the 2.2 Major/Minor combo. Each portion between the decimal points is an integer, not the decimal part.
Alex
As a reminder, the GPL explicitly states that you can use the software freely WITHOUT agreeing to the license. However, if you would like to distribute it, you must agree to the license, or you may not.
This is obvious, because copyright law DOES NOT give you the right to prevent people from using your works, only from distributing them. If I write a book, I can put a license that say only people with a name beginning with a vowel may read this book, but I would NOT be able to legally enforce this. I could refuse to sell it to them, and refuse to allow anyone else to sell it to them, and make everyone agree to keep it from them. However, if someone gets it, I can't do ANYTHING to them, however, I can sue the person who provided it to them for copyright infringement.
Why is this? Copyright means that nobody can copy or distribute something other than me. I can sell my copyright (someone else can then have those rights), I can also license it out. A license is an agreement to do something. The GPL is a license that allows you to distribute the copyrighted work and derivatives under certain circumstances.
As a USER, I can certainly combine any amounts of software however I want. Indeed, if my friend buys software that I can't buy and gives it to me, there is NOTHING that anybody can do to me. They can go after my friend if he agreed to not give it to me, but otherwise, they can do nothing.
The KDE/QPL thing is quite silly. KDE developers are free to develop their stuff however they want. Additionally, they can distribute it however they want. The only issue became whether you could distribute the combined issue. KDE clearly wants you to be able to, Trolls clearly wants you to be able to. What is the problem? If you are distributing the combination and are concerned, I suggest writing a letter to both organizations requesting permission. I'm certain that you will get it, and then you can distribute.
There was a statement somewhere in this mess claiming that they don't buy the "you can have it on your disk without permission" arguement... well, you can. You have the right to use this software. If you have questions regarding your right to distribute, contact the copyright owners requesting it. Request the ability to include their permission with your copies for everyone who receives it through you to have that explicit permission.
If you would like your version of KDE under the FSF's suggested version of the GPL (which is the GPL's code with a statement giving permission to distribute with QT or other QPL'd software), I bet that the KDE people would license your version under that agreement. In that scenario, that you would have a completely legal license to distribute it. In that scenario, offer Debian a copy of your licensed KDE, which is perfectly legal with no question.
Alex
It seems like most people are looking as to if this could be used to store, illegally, copyrighted data.
This is for SCIENTIFIC journals. While the journal does have copyright protection, they run articles written by researchers at various universities (and in industry).
The desire of more researchers to be published has resulted in additional journals being formed. Because publishing a journal on the web is dirt cheap, it makes sense that with the Internet available, more of these journals will appear.
The problem is, you need an archive of it. This system is a system to guarantee that we do not lose knowledge. It doesn't even have to be available. They could cut a deal with the publishers of the journals that they will maintain the archive, but that if the company goes out of business or stops providing old articles, the archive can show them.
This would be voluntary, but the publishers would jump at it. Why? Because this system gives them more credibility than a web page alone. The guarantee against the future loss is the best protection for their journal, which makes it more likely to get high quality entries.
While Freenet or other groups may use similar technology, this is a COMPLETELY different project. This isn't about letting people submit data and protect it, this is about preserving the body of scientific knowledge so we don't lose it when a company goes bankrupt. Digital versions are easier to duplicate than paper equivalents, but our system of copyrights is trying to discourage that. E-books, E-journals, E-magazines have a significant risk. A copy of an article in a manilla folder can be lost or destoryed, but is otherwise perfect. A bookmark to a website can disappear at the whim of a publisher, and there are legal AND technical attempts to prevent you from properly saving an article...
It's a very strange situation, and projects like this are VERY important to prevent us from losing knowledge.
I know this sounds elitist, because I'm worrying about the body of knowledge of scientists but not other people. Here is the thing, the information age has allowed more people to publish their ideas and beliefs. However, because we have all jumped onto this technology, we didn't take adequate safeguards to ensure that we don't LOSE anything in this transistion.
If we archived everything that was traditionally published, we'd have the old status quo. If we archive everything traditionally published and let others publish non-archived, we have a better system than the status quo. An environment where we publish everything, maintain nothing is questionable. In some ways it is better than the status quo, more liberal publishing, and in other ways worse, more data loss.
The idea is to come up with a STRICTLY better system, where NOTHING is lost and we gain some advantages. Normally, there are tradeoffs. The goal is to avoid tradeoffs, and just make things better.
Alex
I forget the licensing fee for happy birthday is, but it exists.
It is indeed copyrighted, and whenever it is sung at official/public functions, the copyright owners are paid for the use of their song.
Alex
In my Industrial Organization class, we went over the renting vs. selling monopoly model, and it is kinda interesting.
If you have a good, Widget, that will depreciate over time, you want to rent it, not sell it. The simple model is a two term model, where the good is worthless at that time.
You can calculate the rental price in both terms (S and D) easily. However, the sale price is interesting, because in term 2, the sale price is the rental price in term 1. The price in the first term is less than the price of renting for two terms.
Why? Well, in the rental scenario, the company produces Q* (where Q* = Q1 + (Q2 - Q1)) and rents Q1 of them in term 1, and Q2 in term 2.
In the buying scenario, the company produces Q1 units in term one, but in term 2, the old ones are "for sale" because the same people can keep them or resell them).
What is the point of all this? The CoS has a STRONG desire to eliminate the secondary market. Yes, anybody can buy them from them, but E-bay for the first time creates a secondary market. As it stands, because of the CoS's alledged behavior, former members probably hide as much as possible. As a result, I doubt that the old stuff is sold if people leave.
However, with E-bay, there is a valid secondary market. As the CoS doesn't seem to be growing (if it is, it isn't very fast, or the CoS would be a major religion by now), the number of E-meters needed by CoS people would be pretty constant. I mean, if the # auditors increases by 3% each year (I'm assuming the CoS keeps up roughly with the population, no more) than the market for new E-meters is VERY small. However, if you keep the already sold E-meters off the market, and see all the new ones, the market is larger and the prices are higher. That is why the CoS wants to stop this.
There probably are copyright issues... they probably own the images in use, have the name Trademarked, etc... As a result, they probably are legally at least somewhat on target. While they would probably lose, they can make it too costly.
Now, the CoS can write a letter (at most, a few hundred dollars in legal fees) and keep the secondary market closed, while each individual would have to fight the CoS in a large lawsuit to create the secondary market. Without a class action suit, there is no way to fight the lawsuit, as no individual involved has the incentive to fight, and the CoS WOULD fight. I mean, if they back down it is more profitable, but the credibility to legally fight is important to maintain. That way, they keep the secondary market closed.
Alex
Clearly, the electronic device is sold to users and can be resold. Even if it is licensed, arguing non-transferability would probably fail. Software non-transferability makes sense in some cases (Partition Magic... I mean, just not being able to use two copies at once is meaningless) but I think that trying to apply it to hardware would fail. I mean, copyright prevents copying, but that would be an interesting lawsuit.
The Church of Scientology no doubt has multiple copyrights on images, terms (well, trademarks), statements, etc. If the pictures were taken by the owner but intentionally designed to looks like official photos, that may also be a copyright violation.
Now, the Church clearly doesn't have a legal leg to stand on to prevent sales (and if they sell it anyway, why would they, I mean, the resale market through E-bay won't really effect their bottom line to the extent legal fees will), but they can probably protect certain terms.
Especially if the listings are critical of the church. I mean, isn't in a copyright owner's privalige to not allow their copyrighted work to be used to disparage them? IANAL, but they should have SOME right to prevent the distribution of copyrighted images and terms, and trademarked names.
Now, the DCMA's loophole, designed to protect copyright owners, is clearly being exploited. The Church of Scientology is well known for alledgedly filing motions that won't be upheld merely to by time or harass the victim. Indeed, this is standard legal manuevering.
I would like to see more of this with specifics as to the auctions, before we just bash on the Church of Scientology. If this is using a loophole for harassment, time for a letter writing campaign, getting the law fixed would be easy in that case. The government officials are not terribly thrilled with the CoS, and if it is being used to harass law abiding citizens, it will no doubt be fixed.
Now, I have as low an opinion of the CoS as the rest of the people here. HOWEVER, that does not make them guilty in this case. Indeed, I am willing to grant them significant breadth of actions as a religious organization, so I want to see facts before I attack them.
Alex
How'd you pull this off? I've been looking into this, and I can't figure out how to build it for less than a thousand... What did you do about the case? Where did you find that Mobo? What OS's does it support?
I just bought the LCD w/ Keypad interface for mine, that will take a while to put together, your idea sounds like it would save me a few hundred bucks...
Alex
Alex
This is a nice idea... If your court system is overloaded, put the most common 100 or 200 things in a simple database. You hit a few buttons, the software figures out what specific violation it is (if you say, have 10 levels of reckless driving, etc), and prints out a reasonable judgement.
As long as the appeals process is unchanged, this is helpful. Instead of needing the judge to lookup the difference between the different laws and write up a whole judgement, a simple mail-merge type deal prints out a judgement.
This won't be used on major crimes, but it a good way to determine what should happen with traffic type crimes.
Many people here are criticizing the "OSS diehards" for being critical of closed source Linux drivers. They talk about how this is good for Linux, and therefore it is good. They like to be able to use Linux in this was or that, etc., etc.
Quite frankly, you miss the point. Proprietary software companies charge for their software to be used in a restrictive manner, and either you decide you like the tool or you don't.
People the write free software decided that they wanted to make a system that respects the user's right to copy and and do whatever they want with the software.
Using a loophole and interpretation, people have been allowed to release drivers that violate these rights.
These people wrote software, said that anybody could use it on the condition that modifications and derived works ALSO respected people's freedoms.
This company is NOT doing so. Those of you that use Linux and these drivers are NOT being fair to the developers of this system.
They provided it for free with the SIMPLE condition that derived works be made with the same freedom. This driver VIOLATES that principle, because nVidia is standing on the shoulders of giants without giving back.
You are ALSO doing so. You have no problems using the work of people's hard labor without respecting their intentions. Instead of charging you money, licensing, etc., they chose a simple requirement. Instead, they are being cheated.
The workstation market? Some of this Linux exploitation is disgusting. To take the labor of thousands of programmers, use it for free, and find ways to AVOID contributing back to this effort is disgusting. The home market and workstation market of people not planning to write code but use Linux is okay, the authors allow this. What they DO NOT allow is the use of these work with people riding on their efforts for free.
nVidia did not write GNU and Linux. The people claiming that source doesn't matter did NOT write GNU and Linux.
As they are NOT paying for the right to use the software, they should respect the MUCH simpler restrictions placed upon it.
Those of you that claim that OSS doesn't matter, you are leeches on the system. You take Linux because it is better, but not only do you not contribute back, you encourage OTHERS to leech off the system. That is DISGUSTING. You take GNU and Linux as though they were your right. They are a gift, and the requirement of that gift is that you respect the writes of others.
nVidia IS spitting in the communities face, but more importantly they are spitting in the face of rms and the other programmers that wrote the code you use.
This is the MOST disrespectful I have ever seen.
They ask you to follow a license, but they do whatever they can to NOT follow that license... and definitely not the spirit of the license.
Alex
Lessig is one of the nations's greatest scholars on Constitutional law, particularly with regards to computers. I had the pleasure of taking a class with him joint between MIT and Harvard Law, and his lectures were incredible. The connections that he makes are quite impressive, and he sees many aspects to a legal regime that we fail to look at.
While most of us have a guy instinct towards the Libertarian ideal of no government, he makes a very compelling arguement as to why it is absurd.
One arguement that I found compelling, is that regulation comes in a few forms, legal regulations, social regulations, physical/code regulations, and another that I forget. I don't recall if this was from one of his papers or one of the papers that was background to read some of his other works...
The arguement is that while the state can pass a law, social rules have as much influence as the law. Additionally, there are fundamental laws as well. For example, there is no need for a legal regime preventing you from breaking the speed of light... physics does so. In the computer world, different rules apply.
In other words, if Microsoft controlled the browser market and required that HTML be formatted in a certain way, that would have as much power as a legal regime. True you could switch browsers and systems, but you can also break the law.
There is a VERY compelling arguement that the libertarian view, while beautiful in a Jeffersonian agrarian society, the realities of a connected world make regulation an important if less significant role. For example, in Jefferson's era, the government played a much bigger role in the people's lives if it chose to (despots were a real threat to a free society), in our era and in regards to an electronic world, the people writing the standards, software, and hardware designs have much more influence than the government. They essentially write the physicals of our virtual universe.
Alex
This is absurd... We have had HOW MANY Cyber Patrol stories? This is a discussion site, right? Nobody in the Slashdot community is going to come out in support of them. Even if some did, they get marked down as trolls.
As a result, this is another story to karma whore by walking the party line.
I love slashdot, but this is ABSURD.
When there is a real technical topic, I love this forum as it is the only place that I know of with REAL discussions on very meaty subjects.
When there is a Linux topic, sometimes there is interested subjects, although the Linux is G-d's OS crowd as moderators try to kill it by only allowing one view to show.
But this is rediculous. I mean, if there was a bill banning technical debates online, it would warrant a story, as it would effect us. But if you ran it constantly, it is dumb, because there is NO room for discussion.
We ALL know everybody's view of censorware, can we stop reporting EVERYTHING that can result in 300 censorware sucks posts?
Alex
I am an undergrad at MIT in CSE, and several of my friends are currently in your class. More than one is interested in working for your company, and it is widely known through Course 6 (the EECS department) that someone doing well in your class will be automatically made an offer if they apply for a job at your company.
As a student, I have been widely critical of MIT's undergrad education for being intentionally non-practical, although things like 6.170 (Software Engineering Lab) switching from Clu to Java is an improvement.
As a result, I should be thrilled with a course like yours being available, as it takes computer science ideas and uses a real world application.
However, the fact that your class is also a recruiting ground has me worried. By training people that will work for you and competitors, you seem to remove some of that concern, as you are training all the people interested in this field. However, I can't help but consider their to be an ethical question of teaching a class as a recruitment in. Things that I have heard include the completition of the first three problem sets satisfactorily being an in for a job, and/or the completion of the course with a B or better doing so has me worried.
I wonder, how do you separate your academic ethics from your business decisions? Do you see an ethical problem of teaching at MIT and recruiting your own students?
Alex
The problem was NOT that Microsoft had a monopoly in operating systems. Not only is having a monopoly legal, but operating systems are a natural monopoly. Because of the single API, it is more efficient to have one OS than 10, therefore, one OS dominates the general market and the rest handle niches were specialization trump the efficiency.
The charge that Microsoft faces is using one Monopoly to try to establish another (forcing you to get IE if you get Windows... and as Windows is a monopoly...) and anti-competitive practices to maintain their monopoly. Netscape offered the use of a web browser to replace operating systems. Microsoft, in a competitive world, would make their operating system a better idea than the web browser, i.e. some sort of network software distribution model... like RDP and Multi-Win that they bought from Citrix. Instead, Microsoft used its cash reserves to run Netscape out of business. IE was created for ONE purpose, the destruction of Netscape and the protection of the Windows monopoly.
By separating Windows and Office, the monopolies could not enforce each other. Microsoft Windows is a monopoly, by rigging Windows to support Office best (releasing the Win95 version of the Win32 APIs to the Office development team before competitors), they use this monopoly to get and keep the Office Suite monopoly... In face, this monopoly first existed in Office 95, which they gave an unfair advantage to. As a result, Microsoft Office is a monopoly. Well, they refuse to port this to another OS (the Apple port is half assed, intentionally), which reinforced Windows as the only OS to run Microsoft Office.
If the OS and Application divisions were separate companies, it would be in MS-OS's interests to get as many office suites running best on Windows, because otherwise, they'll lose to other OSes. It is in MS-Apps interests to support every OS, because they want to dominate the Applications market, not lose it to cross platform competition.
Some conduct remedies are required to prevent collusion (because obviously Monopoly rents are too nice, and they know each other...), but in the long run, this would work.
Alex
No, the zealots usually aren't coders. They are users who don't right code, don't understand the concept of Free Software (or the less philosophical open source), and don't care.
/. gives Karma for championing Linux at all costs, and post accordingly. Also, many of them are young (high school), and therefore have not been exposed to industrial equipment.
They decided that Linux was cool, and that they are better people for using it. They realized that
Like the sig, most slashdot readers think that the entire Internet could run on beige x86s, these people approach computing from a very narrow view.
They assume that because Linux is more stable than Win98, it is the most stable system on the planet. Also, because they don't crash it, they assume that it doesn't crash. They don't appreciate the value of real time OSes, and other things in the field. While people are working and hacking away at a real time Linux, the zealots don't care and champion Linux for real time work anyways. They compare a Beowulf cluster to an actual supercomputer (while it is a cheap way to get LOTS of processing, it isn't a supercomputer... it doesn't do what supercomputers do...), assume that Linux can replace S/390s, etc., etc.
Linux is getting hurt by the zealots, because they turn off potential users that are interested and could become interested in free software by criticizing all that disagree.
Further, just to alienate some people, I'm going to disagree with Linux being where it is because the zealots hacked code. Linux is where it is by an even MORE amazing set of circumstances than those that led Microsoft to it's position. Linux is here because RMS and company were finishing up the GNU tools around the time that Linus's kernel started to function. The combination formed an OS, and as the kernel got polished, the tools became useful. A few other projects worked, and Linux gained in popularity because of the GNU System and other free software.
Linux did NOT get anywhere by obnoxious teenagers insulting others for running another OS.
Alex
Explicitly protected rights in the Constitution are granted the strictest protection. For the state to curb them, they must demonstrate:
1) A compelling state interest
2) The law is the least restrictive approach
The state can show that preventing minors from accessing porn is in the state's interest. This is TRUE, if for no other reason than certain parents, fearing their children's exposure to pornography, will prevent their children from accessing new technology. This will prevent those children from having the same opportunities as others.
Regardless of whether you think that exposure to porn is detrimental, it is believed that it is, and there are genuine harms from not having a solution.
However, site owners have a Constitutional right to this protected speach. Adults have the legal right to access this speach. However, the state has the right to try to protect children from this speach.
The ACLU's argument is that there is a less restrictive means, censorware. Requiring adults to register to receive persecuted speach would be horrific. This is speach that many Americans want to silence, therefore, requiring adults to admit to partaking would be effective censorship. As a method for protecting children, this is NOT the least restrictive means, as the censoring products can accomplish the goals without restricting the rights of others.
Now, the censorware has problems. In general, these problems are not the availability of porn, but rather the other stuff blocked. As a result, children behind this wall are having their rights to access protected speach violated. Therefore, the state cannot impose it on something like a library.
Clearly these views ARE consistent. Filtering software CAN be used by parents to protect children, so a restrictive law is not needed. Mandatory filtering prevents minors from accessing protected speech, so are also bad.
Alex
Actually, that's not true. The company faces a lawsuit in a foreign country. They either defend the lawsuit, or refuse to acknowledge another country's legal system. If they refuse, the plaintiff will likely win given that they face no opposition, and they can get a court order to freeze the company's assets...
You can legislate in the world economy, you need to obey the laws in every country that you do business...
Alex
To quote someone, you have to cite them. To quote someone and make them "not identifiable" which is what Hemos said, you aren't quoted, but rather your Intellectual Property stolen. They could quote you by name, Handle, whatever, but they can't invent names to quote people... to do that they would IMO, need a release signed....
IANAL, but I think that fair use to use someone's work for profit DEFINITELY requires them to give credit to the copyright owner... and everything is automatically copyrighted...
Alex
One of our projects in my Systems class was to design a computer system for the library of Congress. The observation made was that there was too much data to simply make backups, so you'd need a real-time mirroring solution. Also, if a Fire, earthquake, meteor etc., hits one of the computer installations, you don't want to lose all of the information. I bet that most of the really good LoC stuff is far beneath the ground, in case of nuclear war.
The solution was to have 5 or more sites, and effectively replicate new data as entered throughout the system, etc. It was a surprisingly hairy problem.
I am certain that people in Congress are deciding how to digitize the LoC, and then they will send the LoC it's orders, who is then responsible for insuring massive cost overruns to beef up their budget. That's how this government works.
I mean, if the LoC picks a good format, they can ask publishers to submit it to them electronically for archival purposes. They can probably get the past 5-8 years (when did computers replace typesetting in publishing?), but we are talking what, 200+ years of stuff that isn't available in digital form? That's a pretty big deal.
There needs to be a format, ASCII text won't necessarily cut it, although the bulk of the data is simply.
Don't forget the copyright details. Copyrights owned by a person last what, 50 years after their death with corporate copyrights lasting 75 years? I would suggest that the majority (where majority => >51%) of their collection is still protected by copyright. You can borrow a copy of their book, but can you borrow their digital copy? We're still working this out in the courts and state and federal legislatures, so it is a little early for the LoC to weigh in...
One of the big things Open Source advocates have been asking companies to do is BSD or GPL applications that they plan to drop support for. If they no longer plan to profit off them, why not allow the users to keep, maintain, and improve them. The real answer is the upgrade treadmill, but no need to discuss that.
I am not terribly familiar with this product, but obviously this is a good thing, you can learn something from any sample of code.
What I wonder, is when companies release their source code like this, how much do users pick it up, redistribute, etc.? I mean, Darwin and Mozilla looked dead for a while, but then they picked open some help (I know Mozilla did, did Darwin?). Mozilla and Darwin were HUGE projects, it makes sense that users took a while to jump in there. On the otherhand, will a project like this be picked up and improved by proponents of open source, or will we just say, "finally, they get it" take their software and run?
I mean, the idea is, according to RMS, we have a fundamental right to copy digital data, and that licenses that prohibit this are fundamentally immoral, so he'll write a free OS that we can copy.
The Linux community says, we'll work with corporate interests, because they can sell support. We'll help improve the product, and you can sell support for it and make lots of money.
Now, is the latter true? Are we helping the companies that are releasing their source code with the promise that we will help, or are we grabbing their code and adding the useful bits into our pet GPL projects?
Alex
I'll agree that it isn't the most useful set of benchmarks, but I disagree with your server only comment.
The Xeon has been marketted as a Workstation/Server chip, and has seen it's way into the SGI NT workstations, etc. With 256KB RAM, this is clearly intended for the Workstation Market. The wider cache bus and the new motherboard are nice additions for the workstation market, but I think that the server market would give up some MHz for the larger caches of the "old" Xeons or get the "new" Xeon in the 512KB, 1M, or 2M (if available?) versions. I mean, 256KB of L2 cache is going to be useless in a large database server, as you'll never make a cache hit, while a larger cache is useful if most of the accesses are within a general range.
However, I agree that this was mostly a stupid review. Testing it against obviously inferior hardware wasn't interesting. I mean, testing it against dual 800 MHz P3s or 1GHz P3s would give an understanding as to what the new cache system does. Testing it against processors from the same family at 2/3s the speed and shouting, wow, it's fast, is kinda silly.
Alex
One area that you have been clear on is that to be incorporated into the GNU System, is that fixes must have copyright assigned to the FSF. I understand that this is important to allow the FSF to defend the GPL in regards to GNU software.
However, much of the "open source community" has taken the "code is code" mentality. When the GNU project is "complete" and we have a fully functional free system made available by the FSF, will the Linux "open source" group join us to create a truly free system or will we settle for almost completely free.
I make this distinction, because if I understand copyright law and your structure, then GPL'd software isn't enough. Unless all the code is copyrighted by the same person (fictional or real), then the license would be difficult to enforce.
Also, how do we get other hackers to do so. I mean, you were an MIT professor, many of the programmers in the "open source community" are in high school or college. While I'm not implying that education = intelligence, I am implying the education makes you more likely to have read up on these topics. The average hacker GPLing code doesn't. How do we get copyright assignments made so that the GNU system can include all the wonderful contributions that have been made.
Alex M. Hochberger