The gamegear was expensive to buy, and expensive to operate. At the time of the GG, you had the choice between disposable alkaline batteries, or rechargable nickel cadmium batteries. Unfortunately, NiCads were typically underpowered, provided poor battery life and needed to be replaced quite frequently. The result was you had to pay a lot just to play the darn thing.
The PSP has entered a slightly different environment. The proliferation of cellular phones, PDAs, laptops, and digital cameras has forced the costs of producing nickel metal hydride and lithium ion batteries down. For $20-$30, you can pick up a set of NiMH batteries and a charger. The price of keeping the device powered becomes far less of a problem this time around.
On the other hand, the PSP could easily fail because it has a pretty lousy line-up of games available, and, of course, because it's expensive. I think battery consumption problem is pretty minor these days.
Qmail is a fine MTA that is really beginning to show it's age, and was written by a control freak. If you want to run a Qmail system, you're basically forced to maintain your very own patch repository because the base package is almost completely inadequate these days. You cannot do spam filtering, virus scanning, SMTP authentication, TLS, or anything djb didn't believe was important.
I switched from qmail to postfix, not because qmail was defective in any way, but rather because postfix is maintained. Since I use this mail server as a front-end for MS Exchange, I can finally reject invalid recipients without sending a bounce message. The anti-virus and anti-spam systems integrate into the system in ways that make sense. Plus, I have a more conventional system since I no longer have executables in/var, an alien service management system running (daemontools), and a single purpose tcpwrappers (ucspi-tcp) installed. I know that I could rebuild my Postfix system with just the config files -- I couldn't say the same about qmail.
Besides, qmail's license doesn't qualify as OSS or Free software under either OSI or DFSG guidelines. You are not permitted to distribute modified versions of the software, which is pretty high on the list of DFSG/OSI requirements.
Postfix may not be as secure as qmail (it has certainly had more security vulnerabilities), but I'm a heck of a lot happier with it.
The "Network" portion can be divided a number of different ways, depending on the physical network. If you're using PPP over dial-up, or PPPoA/PPPoE over DSL, you may have many slices. But they all remain the "Network". The Application layer could similarily be stacked onto. You can run SOAP over HTTP, but both are still in the Application layer.
In general you can think of the DARPA layers as completely pragmatic and somewhat modular. You can swap in different network modules, so long as it provides a packet based network to the internetwork layer. You can swap IPv4 with IPv6 (or even IPX. yuck) without breaking TCP and UDP (you may however break plenty of applications that run on them and make incorrect assumptions). Transport is also a block that can be replaced with compatible substitutes, but since there is very little use of anything but TCP or UDP, it's not terribly likely to happen.
With OSI/ISO on the other hand, physical and data link are heavily linked. If you want to replace the physical layer with a modem instead of ethernet, you also need to change the data link from CSMA/CD + Ethernet II framing to V.22bis (or hopefully better) + PPP. The Data Link layer is also over-populated because you almost always need more than one protocol in there (for example, with ethernet, you need both CSMA/CD signalling and Ethernet II framing to make it work). You often need to have two or more protocols in that layer in order to make it fit. On the other hand, the Session and Presentation layers are often completely unused by many protocols (like Telnet, etc), and perhaps shouldn't even exist since they're largely redundant.
The OSI protocols were highly overengineered, somewhat terrifying. A few bits of the OSI protocols still exist in internet protocols. ASN.1 is probably the most notable, since it's used in SNMP, LDAP and most anything that uses certificates with public key encryption. It's fared much better than the X.400 standard which spawned it.
Even if you didn't have to decrypt the files to open them, there's a good chance a directly opened file from a compressed volume might make it to the pagefile unencrypted (or to temporary files in %TEMP%). Depends on what risks you're willing to take. If you're just transporting files between trusted machines through untrusted areas, this may be perfectly fine (e.g. USB flash drive on a keychain). If you expect your files to be secure just because they're in an encrypted state on the disk, you might be disappointed.
FreeOTFE runs in Windows and is compatible with Linux losetup/dm-crypt volumes. The only Win/Mac cross encryption program I've found is ccrypt which is unfortunately just a simple file encryption program.
Did you even read what he wrote? 20% of the time is dedicated to projects of the employee's chosing, but the results of that paid time belong to the company. This isn't paid time to goof off. It benefits the company tremendously. The company gets new ideas of products and services that may not have been developed otherwise, and the employee gets a sense of improving the company for which he works.
Now, I have no idea what the actual employment contract looks like. Perhaps google says they own all your ideas developed off the job, too, perhaps not. You'd have to ask someone who works there. To be honest, though, unless you're working for a company on a contract-only basis (and then, only if you're a good negotiator), you rarely get to keep the rights to the "ideas" you develop for them. Work-for-hire is the default mode.
As for the "Summer of Code" program, it looks more like an elaborate employment exam and PR tactic.
1) They seek to make their own "Get the Facts" campaign appear more legitimate by having OSDL create a similar one. Right now, a lot of people assume that Microsoft isn't telling the whole truth in their advertising, but if Red Hat or some other Linux company started doing the same, then some people might start believing it. By not fighting back, they actually make Microsoft seem almost desperate.
2) They want OSDL to do market research for them from their "customer base" so Microsoft can take that research to improve Windows in these areas. If Microsoft can absorb the features that people value most about Linux into Windows, the theory goes that they can then crush Linux.
Not to mention this rather large PC server from HP has dual redundant PSUs that each provide 1150W (1440W consumed). And this thing takes up to 4 CPUs, 64GB of RAM, and 8 Ultra320 SCSI drives. If you need more drives, you just hook up one of these to attach another 14 drives, which will consume up to another 537W of power. Unfortunately, you need to run this server off 200-240V power for the redundancy to work. IBM and Dell each have similar sets of products to accomplish the same things.
Of course, this Enermax PSU won't fit into any of these devices. I can't even imagine how you could build a desktop system that would ever need much more than 1/2 that PSU's possible output. Quad CPU boards are a little difficult to come by, and they won't run off completely standard PSUs anyway (although the label on the PSU says it's EPS 12V, so it might have the 24 pin power + 8 pin processor power connectors). However, this isn't really the market for whitebox manufacturers, and what meager money you might save would most likely be outweighed by the next-day shipping of replacement parts that name brand vendors can offer you.
Besides, I don't even want to contemplate needing a dedicated 15A breaker just for my system. My little 350W PSU is working just fine for me.
A pure software-based DRM is foolish, open source or not. Add a little bit of hardware for providing encryption/decryption keys, and suddenly the DRM is a lot more difficult to break. In the case of the hardware, having or not having the source code doesn't help you any. The chip will require OS support, and will verify that the executable matches before permitting access.
We might be approaching the age of PC "mod-chips".:-(
The big guys may not have to worry about being completely cut off, but the game publisher could always encounter 'difficulties' sending the game to them in time for them to review before publication. IGN, UGO and Gamespot don't want to be the last to review any particular game, especially a potentially important or popular one. So long as there's more than one entity that reviews these games, these bullshit games can and will happen.
It seems highly unusual for reviewers to give a game less than 70% these days. The so-called "All-time Worst 20" games on that site range from 23% to 41%. The best 20 on the other hand only range from 98% to 94%. It appears that reviewers are hesitant to give low marks in fear of being cut off from future review prereleases. Add to this the "promotional events" that game companies invite reviewers to, and many feel obligated to give the game a decent score.
The only mention I see of this is in the Ars Technica article which is rather sparse on details. Ars only mentions this prior dispute in one paragraph, and is devoid of any links to the full story. Here's what little Ars had to say about this:
Mambo originated from an Australian company known as Miro who decided to open source their code by putting it up on SourceForge and licensing it under the GPL. The open source community got a nice CMS and Miro had the open source community patching and improving its CMS. Everything went swimmingly for a while until Miro decided that it was taking back "their" code. Access to the code was shut off and the community vociferously objected. Fortunately because the code was GPL'd, the open source community was eventually able to pressure Miro to fork the code. And thus Mambo was born.
Either way, the last time Miro acted unilaterally in regards to Mambo, the developers objected, why did they think it would be different this time?
I sure hope that RAID set up protects your data if your laptop gets stolen....
If it's important, you back it up. No exceptions. If you didn't back it up, and you lost it (because of theft, or malfunction), it mustn't have been important.
Sometimes it's just good to simply acknowledge that you have more work than you can handle. Often the best tactic for handling stress is avoiding unnecessary stress, and if you have so many projects on the go that you need a complex project management system to manage your tasks only, then you probably have a lot of unnecessary stress. Chances are, you're doing this to yourself.
The same Sony that removed the hard drive bay from the new slim PS2s? Frankly, unless you were playing FFXI, the PS2 hard drive was practically useless. The only people who ever really made use of a hard drive in their PS2 were people using HDLoader/HDAdvance to load PS2 games onto it and run them off there.
Microsoft did threaten the author of VirtualDub (GPL, Win32) over his inclusion of ASF decoding. Microsoft said they had a patent on the ASF format, so the virtualdub author removed support for that format. Of course, that doesn't count because Microsoft didnt' actually sue, right?
SpamAssassin still works fine for backup MX delivered mail, provided you set the trusted hosts up correctly in the configuration file. What really breaks with this is RBL spam filtering that tests based on the incoming IP, or greylisting. SA's spam tests are performed on the headers, so the actual originating host is less important.
Another problem with using backup MXs is the extra traffic generated by bounces for invalid recipients. Some poorly implemented RBL services have been known to blacklist you for bouncing spam or viruses.
What's more is that Unixware machines are typically not internet facing. They're most often used as servers for some proprietary vertical application the particular company needs. I've seen a couple companies use for for e-mail, but that's about it. I mean, even SCO uses Linux on their website.
Frankly, SCO is doomed, no matter what they do. They can't compete with Linux, or Windows, or even Solaris (since the x86 version will survive because of OpenSolaris). I imagine that all the developers of those apps are working at porting their software to one of those three platforms, or already have a port of their software. Either Windows because it's popular and widespread, or Linux because it's easy and cheap. Some may target Solaris, but because Solaris doesn't appear to be well suited for low end machines (and that's what nearly all SCO UNIX machines are), I doubt many are.
I think it's the walmart effect. No one is willing to pay $20 for a durable part when they can get something that does the job for $19 (even if it won't last half as long). Durability and workmanship is far secondary to cost these days, except perhaps on luxury items.
As long as this one-upmanship doesn't spill over to some kind of arms race. I don't think we need any new and improved civilization destroying weapons at this point.
What is seemingly lacking is the ability of that religion to be able to curb or remove religous leaders who are unfit for that position.
Sadly, this is common to every religion, as far as I can tell (e.g. Jerry Falwell). You can usually tell those who are merely using their religion for justification for their actions versus the ones that truely believe by one thing. The people using it to justify themselves will quote their religious texts extensively. The believers rarely need to.
Ok, color me confused. I thought the Bushites said that the Geneva Convention didn't apply to those prisoners? I thought I understood their position that all international treaties were not applicable to them, and then they go and pull this one. Next thing you know they'll say they can't do something because of the Kyoto Protocol.
Typically, yes, this is true, but it would give these crusaders one less thing to complain about. I've heard people like them use children's summer jobs, etc as excuses for why they don't know what their children are playing, so closing off that excuse would probably be a good thing.
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The PSP has entered a slightly different environment. The proliferation of cellular phones, PDAs, laptops, and digital cameras has forced the costs of producing nickel metal hydride and lithium ion batteries down. For $20-$30, you can pick up a set of NiMH batteries and a charger. The price of keeping the device powered becomes far less of a problem this time around.
On the other hand, the PSP could easily fail because it has a pretty lousy line-up of games available, and, of course, because it's expensive. I think battery consumption problem is pretty minor these days.
I switched from qmail to postfix, not because qmail was defective in any way, but rather because postfix is maintained. Since I use this mail server as a front-end for MS Exchange, I can finally reject invalid recipients without sending a bounce message. The anti-virus and anti-spam systems integrate into the system in ways that make sense. Plus, I have a more conventional system since I no longer have executables in /var, an alien service management system running (daemontools), and a single purpose tcpwrappers (ucspi-tcp) installed. I know that I could rebuild my Postfix system with just the config files -- I couldn't say the same about qmail.
Besides, qmail's license doesn't qualify as OSS or Free software under either OSI or DFSG guidelines. You are not permitted to distribute modified versions of the software, which is pretty high on the list of DFSG/OSI requirements.
Postfix may not be as secure as qmail (it has certainly had more security vulnerabilities), but I'm a heck of a lot happier with it.
In general you can think of the DARPA layers as completely pragmatic and somewhat modular. You can swap in different network modules, so long as it provides a packet based network to the internetwork layer. You can swap IPv4 with IPv6 (or even IPX. yuck) without breaking TCP and UDP (you may however break plenty of applications that run on them and make incorrect assumptions). Transport is also a block that can be replaced with compatible substitutes, but since there is very little use of anything but TCP or UDP, it's not terribly likely to happen.
With OSI/ISO on the other hand, physical and data link are heavily linked. If you want to replace the physical layer with a modem instead of ethernet, you also need to change the data link from CSMA/CD + Ethernet II framing to V.22bis (or hopefully better) + PPP. The Data Link layer is also over-populated because you almost always need more than one protocol in there (for example, with ethernet, you need both CSMA/CD signalling and Ethernet II framing to make it work). You often need to have two or more protocols in that layer in order to make it fit. On the other hand, the Session and Presentation layers are often completely unused by many protocols (like Telnet, etc), and perhaps shouldn't even exist since they're largely redundant.
The OSI protocols were highly overengineered, somewhat terrifying. A few bits of the OSI protocols still exist in internet protocols. ASN.1 is probably the most notable, since it's used in SNMP, LDAP and most anything that uses certificates with public key encryption. It's fared much better than the X.400 standard which spawned it.
Even if you didn't have to decrypt the files to open them, there's a good chance a directly opened file from a compressed volume might make it to the pagefile unencrypted (or to temporary files in %TEMP%). Depends on what risks you're willing to take. If you're just transporting files between trusted machines through untrusted areas, this may be perfectly fine (e.g. USB flash drive on a keychain). If you expect your files to be secure just because they're in an encrypted state on the disk, you might be disappointed.
FreeOTFE runs in Windows and is compatible with Linux losetup/dm-crypt volumes. The only Win/Mac cross encryption program I've found is ccrypt which is unfortunately just a simple file encryption program.
Depends on your ZIP utilty. Winzip's AES encryption != pkzip's AES encryption, and I don't think Linux unzip supports either one yet.
Now, I have no idea what the actual employment contract looks like. Perhaps google says they own all your ideas developed off the job, too, perhaps not. You'd have to ask someone who works there. To be honest, though, unless you're working for a company on a contract-only basis (and then, only if you're a good negotiator), you rarely get to keep the rights to the "ideas" you develop for them. Work-for-hire is the default mode.
As for the "Summer of Code" program, it looks more like an elaborate employment exam and PR tactic.
1) They seek to make their own "Get the Facts" campaign appear more legitimate by having OSDL create a similar one. Right now, a lot of people assume that Microsoft isn't telling the whole truth in their advertising, but if Red Hat or some other Linux company started doing the same, then some people might start believing it. By not fighting back, they actually make Microsoft seem almost desperate.
2) They want OSDL to do market research for them from their "customer base" so Microsoft can take that research to improve Windows in these areas. If Microsoft can absorb the features that people value most about Linux into Windows, the theory goes that they can then crush Linux.
Of course, this Enermax PSU won't fit into any of these devices. I can't even imagine how you could build a desktop system that would ever need much more than 1/2 that PSU's possible output. Quad CPU boards are a little difficult to come by, and they won't run off completely standard PSUs anyway (although the label on the PSU says it's EPS 12V, so it might have the 24 pin power + 8 pin processor power connectors). However, this isn't really the market for whitebox manufacturers, and what meager money you might save would most likely be outweighed by the next-day shipping of replacement parts that name brand vendors can offer you.
Besides, I don't even want to contemplate needing a dedicated 15A breaker just for my system. My little 350W PSU is working just fine for me.
We might be approaching the age of PC "mod-chips". :-(
The big guys may not have to worry about being completely cut off, but the game publisher could always encounter 'difficulties' sending the game to them in time for them to review before publication. IGN, UGO and Gamespot don't want to be the last to review any particular game, especially a potentially important or popular one. So long as there's more than one entity that reviews these games, these bullshit games can and will happen.
It seems highly unusual for reviewers to give a game less than 70% these days. The so-called "All-time Worst 20" games on that site range from 23% to 41%. The best 20 on the other hand only range from 98% to 94%. It appears that reviewers are hesitant to give low marks in fear of being cut off from future review prereleases. Add to this the "promotional events" that game companies invite reviewers to, and many feel obligated to give the game a decent score.
If it's important, you back it up. No exceptions. If you didn't back it up, and you lost it (because of theft, or malfunction), it mustn't have been important.
Sometimes it's just good to simply acknowledge that you have more work than you can handle. Often the best tactic for handling stress is avoiding unnecessary stress, and if you have so many projects on the go that you need a complex project management system to manage your tasks only, then you probably have a lot of unnecessary stress. Chances are, you're doing this to yourself.
The same Sony that removed the hard drive bay from the new slim PS2s? Frankly, unless you were playing FFXI, the PS2 hard drive was practically useless. The only people who ever really made use of a hard drive in their PS2 were people using HDLoader/HDAdvance to load PS2 games onto it and run them off there.
Microsoft did threaten the author of VirtualDub (GPL, Win32) over his inclusion of ASF decoding. Microsoft said they had a patent on the ASF format, so the virtualdub author removed support for that format. Of course, that doesn't count because Microsoft didnt' actually sue, right?
Another problem with using backup MXs is the extra traffic generated by bounces for invalid recipients. Some poorly implemented RBL services have been known to blacklist you for bouncing spam or viruses.
Frankly, SCO is doomed, no matter what they do. They can't compete with Linux, or Windows, or even Solaris (since the x86 version will survive because of OpenSolaris). I imagine that all the developers of those apps are working at porting their software to one of those three platforms, or already have a port of their software. Either Windows because it's popular and widespread, or Linux because it's easy and cheap. Some may target Solaris, but because Solaris doesn't appear to be well suited for low end machines (and that's what nearly all SCO UNIX machines are), I doubt many are.
I think it's the walmart effect. No one is willing to pay $20 for a durable part when they can get something that does the job for $19 (even if it won't last half as long). Durability and workmanship is far secondary to cost these days, except perhaps on luxury items.
As long as this one-upmanship doesn't spill over to some kind of arms race. I don't think we need any new and improved civilization destroying weapons at this point.
Ok, color me confused. I thought the Bushites said that the Geneva Convention didn't apply to those prisoners? I thought I understood their position that all international treaties were not applicable to them, and then they go and pull this one. Next thing you know they'll say they can't do something because of the Kyoto Protocol.
Typically, yes, this is true, but it would give these crusaders one less thing to complain about. I've heard people like them use children's summer jobs, etc as excuses for why they don't know what their children are playing, so closing off that excuse would probably be a good thing.
Not for him, just for everyone who has the misfortune of being within earshot of him.