Busting skulls is illegal. Nowhere in any of my posts have I supported any such behavior. Those who engage in such behavior, and those who hire others to engage in such behavior, deserve to go to jail. There is no need to address the issue of unions at all to deal with such behavior. Statements that the system is corrupt are arguments to root out the corruption; they aren't arguments to corrupt the system even further in order to even things out.
Quoting from the article you linked to:
In March 2001, Bush told 10,000 workers of Northwest Airlines that they could not strike for 80 days. The President also told United Airlines strikers that unless they agreed to further concessions the administration would refuse the $1.8 billion that the airline needed to avoid bankruptcy. After 9-11, Bush invoked the Taft-Hartley Act forcing workers of the Pacific Maritime Association to return to work.
This is hardly the free market in action. You're correct in pointing out that the government is guilty of playing both sides when they should simply stay out of the game.
On the other hand, here's another quote:
As was reported in the mainstream press, the Bush administration has announced plans to accelerate the process of contracting out federal work to private companies, putting the jobs of nearly 850,000 federal employees at risk. This invites anti-union, low-wage contractors to compete for what are now, in most cases, decent-paying, union jobs with good benefits.
You get no sympathy from me here. If the contracters can do the job cheaper than the union employees, then the union employees have just priced themselves out of a job. A job is worth whatever the market is willing to pay for it. Just because someone has had a nice, cushy government job does not create an entitlement to that job forever, especially not to an inflated salary that my taxes are paying for.
One more quote:
It is hard to overstate the importance of this story. The near loss of the right to organize has the potential to affect every single worker in the country, though it most drastically affects poor and working-class people. As the right to organize disappears, so, too, do other rights: the right to health care, livable wages, and leisure time.
Nothing in the article supports a claim that the right to organize is being lost. The right to organize doesn't imply that the government must come in and force anyone to pay attention to your organization. You can organize as you please, but the organization has only the aggregate power of the individuals involved. It doesn't magically create the ability to compel the employer to listen to your demands.
And you do not have a right to health care, livable wages or leisure time. You have never had one, and you never will. If you have a right to health care, then someone has an obligation to provide it to you. However, your rights can not impose an obligation on anyone else. The right to free speech does not obligate me to listen. Freedom of religion does not obligate me to bow my head when you pray. In other words, rights are things that you can not be restricted from doing. They are not things that others must do to or for you.
I'm well aware of what SCO is and isn't doing. However, I'm not a purchase manager for a corporation either. You can call it a boogeyman or whatever you want but smart companies satisfy the needs of their customers, even if those needs are indemnification from low level threats.
Even if this decisions is upheld, it doesn't necessarily mean that a constitutional amendment is required. The ruling says that the FTC overstepped their bounds. Legislation passed by Congress might be perfectly acceptable.
Also, there's no reason to believe that the database will be available to the telemarketers. If shouldn't go active until the decision of its legality is made, and if it's not legal it should be destroyed.
The argument doesn't hold water - the actions of the DDOS mastermind and the blacklister are not equivalent.
The blacklister provides information to various people who choose, on their own, to say "I do not like what you are doing, Mr. Spammer, and I will not allow you to use MY system to do it."
The DDOSer says "I don't like what you're doing, and I will not allow you to use YOUR system to do it."
The higher your education, the more skilled you are.
So skill is simply a synonym for education? We do indeed have different definitions of skill. While you can certainly argue that taking tests and writing research papers is a skill, it's debatable on how useful a skill it is outside of academic circles.
skill: a learned power ofdoingsomething competently
Doing, not knowing. A PhD implies knowledge, certainly, though it contains no guarantee that the knowledge is particularly useful. There is an absolute glut of skillful people with little or no education. There's an only slightly smaller mass of people with extensive educations who are incapable of buttering their own bread.
What I am talking about is more a matter of supply than demand. As I said in a previous post, supply and skill are genrally negatively correlated. The more skill a job requires, the fewer people there are who possess the desired ability, and thus the job brings higher wages. There is, however, no guarantee that a particular skill is valuable, no matter how rare it is.
I'm a customer considering Linux. I say to HP "I'm not so sure about this. I heard SCO is suing people for using Linux. I don't need to buy more headaches." How should HP respond? What's wrong with a response of "SCO's claims are baseless. In fact, we're so sure that they're BS that we'll guarantee it for you - if SCO sues you, we'll pay for the defense and, if we should happen to lose, we'll pay the fee." Personally, I think IBM and every other Linux seller out there should make the same promise.
A PhD is no guarantee of skill. It's certainly arguable that some competent bus drivers are more skilled than, say, some Political Science PhDs.
In a free market, both prices and wages are set by the law of supply and demand. Pure unions do nothing more than consolidate the power that each of their members already have. It's the same principle as a buyers club, where customers pool their purchasing power to get lower prices. So long as all parties involved are operating freely, it's still a free market.
Hardly the case that the "tigers" have no teeth or claws or that the "hunters" still have guns. It costs money to replace workers, even relatively unskilled ones. People can still form voluntary unions, and unions still have some power. However, they only have the power that is inherent in their collective group as employees, not power granted them at the bang of a judge's gavel or the tip of a politicians pen.
Given a group of employees who are earning x as salary and who are striking for a salary of y, the business must decide whether y - x is sufficient savings to pay for the training of replacement employees and the loss of productivity while the new employees learn their job. Unions were originally formed because of the horrible conditions employees were facing. They were pure unions - voluntary groups of employees who got together and pooled their collective power. And despite the fact that they did not have Washington in their back pocket, they were effective in bringing about change. This was a Good Thing. Removing the politically motivated spiderweb of regulations that empowere unions today does not mean that they will be powerless.
I've never heard "equal pay" used in that sense. Perhaps its a Canadian thing, or perhaps my US-centric bias is showing.
Unions, so long as they aren't coddled by laws and regulations which give them much more power than they should have, are certainly a part of the free market. In a sane world, where unions have no power to compel membership or membership dues and employers have the ability to fire striking workers, the free market will not allow unions to jack up salaries. Nor, in a free market, will the government be involved in ranking jobs. It works if you let it. The problem is that people insist on mucking with the system in order to fix what they percieve as flaws, and nearly ruin the whole thing in the process.
Also, "supply and demand" and "skill and performance" are two sides of the same coin. Part of the problem is an issue of definition. How do you quantify "skill?" Is a brain surgeon more skilled than a wide receiver? How does a basket weaver compare to a computer programmer? A large part of that, I'd say, is how rare the skill is. There are literally millions of people who, if they choose to put the time and effort into it, could learn to be a brain surgeon. There are far fewer who can succeed at the position of wide receiver in either the US or Canadian professional football organizations, regardless of how much time and effort they put into it. So certainly the supply of wide receivers is less than that of brain surgeons. But I'd also say that makes a compelling argument that the wide receiver is more skillful. In other words, skill and supply are negatively correlated. And that's exactly why the free market does a reasonable (though not perfect) job of rewarding skill in terms of pay.
Mariah's contract had nothing to do with politics. Mariah had demonstrated an ability to sell CDs in the past. The record company gambled that the exclusive right to sell her music was worth a certain amount. It was a bad decision, and the record company cut their losses by buying out the remainder of her contract. Companies make bad decisions. It's part of the free market. If they make enough of them, they go out of business.
"Equal pay for equal work" means that people performing the same job should receive the same pay. It's often used when pay is reduced due to discrimination of some sort, such as when women in a particular field earn less than men.
Pay is never based on the amount of work per se. Pay is generally based on the supply of the work. Digging ditches is much more work than writing a hit song, but there are many more ditch diggers available than there are hit song writers.
The free market does do a reasonably good job of basing pay on skill and performance. Where it doesn't, its usually because of outside interferences (such as federal regulations or requirements.)
Besides, why should artists and their descendants profit from work done decades ago? If we, humble mortals, want to retire some day, we must build up some kind of retirement fund. We are not allowed to keep receiving salaries from the work we did long ago. Why should artists?
Sorry, but this simply doesn't hold water. If you design a shock absorber, someone holds the rights to that design. If I want to use that shock absorber, I have to purchase it from someone. You, as the designer, may not continue to earn money but neither do artists who perform works for hire and no longer own the copyright on their works. But someone is earning money on that design every time it's sold.
Now, with a shock absorber, a large part of the cost is the charge for the physical implementation - the cost of material and manufacturing. But some part of the cost is the design. With shock absorbers, it's a small cost because designing a shock absorber is relatively simple. For other objects, such as CPUs and prescription drugs, design costs are a much larger fraction of the price. (And even shock absorbers depends on what type of shock absorber you're referring to. Take a look at the cost of a set of RockShocks or Marzocchi mountain bike forks.)
Also, why should artists be millionaires? If an engineer does some good work, that's used by millions of people, he may be reasonably well-off. For instance, if I design a vacuum cleaner or a shock absorber, I might get a bonus, but I will never be treated like a super-star. Why should artists? What's the difference between designing a shock absorber that's used in ten million cars and singing a song that's listened by ten million people?
Should isn't part of the equation. Nothing says that artists should be millionaires, and the vast majority of them aren't. Artists who do become millionaires do so because they provide works that are popular enough to earn millions of dollars, just as inventors who invent something on their own which is a high seller become wealthy as well. People who perform works for hire almost never become wealthy from their efforts because someone else owns the rights to their works. This is true whether you're an engineer designing a shock absorber or someone writing jingles for television commercials.
Well, yes. That's exactly the point. An SUV isn't a useless machine. For certain circumstances, it's the perfect vehicle. But it isn't the perfect vehicle for running back and forth to the corner store, and Java isn't the ideal language for scripting web pages. The whole point of camparing Java to an SUV is that both are powerful pieces of equipment all too often used for trivial tasks.
And you can't say the same thing about C++ because, at least last time I checked, there weren't very many web pages being written in C++.
The moment that Linux becomes a real threat to the software environment of an E15k, I have to believe that Sun will do whatever is necessary to protect this segment.
OK, maybe I'm a little dense here but you'll have to explain this one to me. Exactly how would releasing Solaris under the GPL benefit Sun? So you have people using free Solaris instead of free Linux. So what? It's still free; Sun isn't making any money off of it. Sun might be able to charge for support but if Solaris is GPL, so can a number of other companines, and probably quite a bit cheaper.
It certainly isn't a universal solution but it's definitely a solution for some problems.
For example, if this is utilized by a company or an ISP, your email never hits the 'net unencrypted. Certainly, there are people who still have access to the email in its unencrypted form. I wouldn't use a system like this to transmit the names of the Colonels eleven herbs and spices. But it does bring email a bit closer to snail mail.
How much security does an envelope provide? Anyone who gets their hands on it can easily open it. But it's certainly more comfortable than sending a postcard.
Unless you are trying to say that commercial UNIX systems are losing ground to Linux
That's exactly what's being said. There will still be computers running various flavors of Unix for quite some time, just as there are still computers running DOS and OS/2 and BeOS. But the number of companies selling UNIX variants will decrease until none are left. Coding resources focused on adding new features will shrivel up and die. Bug fixes and maintenance coding will continue for awhile but it, too, will go away as companies stop supporting older versions. Eventually, if you want to purchase a modern *nix OS, you'll be bying some variant of Linux.
Well, there are a number of issues to consider with that approach.
First, you'd be talking about a SEVERE speed hit. You'd have to compile both trees, since compiler options, compiler verions and a great many other things would affect the assembler output.
Second, part of the utility of this program is that you can distribute the hashes of a source tree without revealing anything about the source itself. While the standard NDA forbids revealing source code, I'd wager that very few of them forbid revealing hashes of the soruce. This means that IBM could probably release the hash of SCO's source without being in violation of their agreement. It might be posible to generate hashes of the assembler tokens which would have similar properties, but that leads us to the third point.
I can't say for sure without some testing, but I'd guess that the chances of false positives would be much higher with assembler tokens than with source code. There are a great many utility functions that are relatively simple and straightforward. A modern optimizing compiler may very well come up with very similar assembler code for indepdently written functions that aren't particularly similar in source code.
A fourth issue is that assembler code is also much more succinct than source code. Any assembler code is going to contain a great many PUSH AX; POP CX; CMP AL,0; MOV BH, 0; etc. that could easily generate false positives.
Fifth, opposed to the third and fourth point, there's also the possibility of false negatives. An optimizing compiler may very well generate different assembler code for the same source if the surrounding code is different. A function liberated from one tree and inserted into a different one may be very different at the assembler level.
Finally, using the assembler tokes would completely ignore comments and some if not all variable names. SCO is correct in that these are key indicators of a common source for two different pieces of code. (What they miss is that they may indicated a common ancestor for the two, not that one is necessarily a copy of the other.)
This isn't to say that the idea doesn't have merit. But it introduces a great deal more complexity into the situation. I'd say such a program would be more of a complementary tool for RMS's shred program than an alternative or a replacement.
RTFA. The code is split into overlapping "shreds" of three lines. For example, 7 lines of code would generate five hashes, consisting of the following lines:
1,2,3 2,3,4 3,4,5 4,5,6 5,6,7
Two source trees are shredded, then unique hashes are discarded. Anywhere there are three lines of code that are the same ANYWHERE in the source tree, it'll be spotted.
Now, it's trivial to defeat this if you're specifically aiming to do so. However, for existing source trees (such as nearly countless variations of *nix) that already exist and are duplicated in numerous places, it works nicely. It's impossible to go back and modify the tree because too many copies exist.
You've already made up your mind, which is fine. It would be a boring world if everyone liked or was interested in the same thing. However, for those out there who might like a toy or tool like the Zaurus, you can run VNC on your computer and access the Zaurus. This allows you to use your regular keyboard for doing complicated stuff that involves a lot of keying.
If you're a hacker and like to tinker, there isn't a better machine out there. If you just want a PDA, there might be better options although the Zaurus is perfectly functional at that as well. This is especially true if you pick up a few of the apps from the Kompany. I use mine for not only a PDA but an Ogg player, game machine and etc.
Another fact that few people are aware of is that the diamond engagement ring is entirely a product of the diamond industry (read DeBeers) advertising. While betrothal rings have a long history, the idea that proposal equals diamond ring is an invention purely to sell more overpriced diamonds.
There is a difference in a statement of fact and an expression of opinion. If Acme Autos advertises that it's Super Spiffy model will do 0 to 60 in under 5 seconds, it had better do it. However, if they claim that the Super Spiffy model will make you super cool, that isn't an objective statement of fact. Ad companies are extremely careful to ensure that all statements of fact are accurate. They'll imply and insinuate all sorts of things, many of which are of dubious truth value. But statements of fact must be true or the manufacturer is liable.
The same should be true of software. AOL can say that their software helps protect your children from inappropriate content, but they should not be able to say that it prevents your children form viewing inappropriate content. Such subtleties are everything in a court of law.
If something like this were encoded in law, the GPL would have to comply or those parts which did not, at least, would be unenforceable.
However, I don't see much here that impacts free software authors. The issue here is sellers. From the article: "...the Court said that the contract for sale is formed when the customer agrees to pay and the seller agrees to deliver the product..." If there is no sale, then there is no contract and there is no issue of customer's rights.
Of course, this raises the issue of companies such as Red Hat. What exactly are you purchasing when you buy a copy of Red Hat Linux? Does Red Hat sell you software if the same software is available for free download? Do they merely sell you a support package and/or documentation, and thus would not be bound by these requirements? Or is one of the things you're purchasing a guarantee that the software works as promised, and thus they would be bound by these requirements? I'm not sure which way I'd go on this issue and, of course , IANAL.
There can only be a market for "the real thing" if it's distinguishable from the "artificial" one. In the case of diamonds, the only distinction is that the artificial diamonds are too perfect. However, as someone already pointed out, it's quite likely that impurities can be added to the artificial diamonds in such a way that the two are indistinguishable. You can go to your corner jeweler, and he can swear that it's a natural diamond, but if there's absolutely no way to tell for sure, how will you know? Are you willing to pay several orders of magnitude more for his word? If you can buy your fiance a rock the size of a robin's egg for $10, and be absolutely sure that she'll never be able to tell the difference, are you going to spend several thousand instead on a stone you need a magnifying glass to appreciate? Is your fiance going to proudly show off her tiny, natural diamond to all her friends who are wearing huge hunks of rock and swear that they're natural too?
Slashdot Mirror
Ethernet jack built into wall
I like the 8-port hub in each office. Unless, of course, you're going to put a wireless hub in each office.
Busting skulls is illegal. Nowhere in any of my posts have I supported any such behavior. Those who engage in such behavior, and those who hire others to engage in such behavior, deserve to go to jail. There is no need to address the issue of unions at all to deal with such behavior. Statements that the system is corrupt are arguments to root out the corruption; they aren't arguments to corrupt the system even further in order to even things out.
Quoting from the article you linked to:
In March 2001, Bush told 10,000 workers of Northwest Airlines that they could not strike for 80 days. The President also told United Airlines strikers that unless they agreed to further concessions the administration would refuse the $1.8 billion that the airline needed to avoid bankruptcy. After 9-11, Bush invoked the Taft-Hartley Act forcing workers of the Pacific Maritime Association to return to work.
This is hardly the free market in action. You're correct in pointing out that the government is guilty of playing both sides when they should simply stay out of the game.
On the other hand, here's another quote:
As was reported in the mainstream press, the Bush administration has announced plans to accelerate the process of contracting out federal work to private companies, putting the jobs of nearly 850,000 federal employees at risk. This invites anti-union, low-wage contractors to compete for what are now, in most cases, decent-paying, union jobs with good benefits.
You get no sympathy from me here. If the contracters can do the job cheaper than the union employees, then the union employees have just priced themselves out of a job. A job is worth whatever the market is willing to pay for it. Just because someone has had a nice, cushy government job does not create an entitlement to that job forever, especially not to an inflated salary that my taxes are paying for.
One more quote:
It is hard to overstate the importance of this story. The near loss of the right to organize has the potential to affect every single worker in the country, though it most drastically affects poor and working-class people. As the right to organize disappears, so, too, do other rights: the right to health care, livable wages, and leisure time.
Nothing in the article supports a claim that the right to organize is being lost. The right to organize doesn't imply that the government must come in and force anyone to pay attention to your organization. You can organize as you please, but the organization has only the aggregate power of the individuals involved. It doesn't magically create the ability to compel the employer to listen to your demands.
And you do not have a right to health care, livable wages or leisure time. You have never had one, and you never will. If you have a right to health care, then someone has an obligation to provide it to you. However, your rights can not impose an obligation on anyone else. The right to free speech does not obligate me to listen. Freedom of religion does not obligate me to bow my head when you pray. In other words, rights are things that you can not be restricted from doing. They are not things that others must do to or for you.
My guess is they had the press release written with a blank where the company name would go, and were just waiting for someone to make the offer.
I'm well aware of what SCO is and isn't doing. However, I'm not a purchase manager for a corporation either. You can call it a boogeyman or whatever you want but smart companies satisfy the needs of their customers, even if those needs are indemnification from low level threats.
Even if this decisions is upheld, it doesn't necessarily mean that a constitutional amendment is required. The ruling says that the FTC overstepped their bounds. Legislation passed by Congress might be perfectly acceptable.
Also, there's no reason to believe that the database will be available to the telemarketers. If shouldn't go active until the decision of its legality is made, and if it's not legal it should be destroyed.
The argument doesn't hold water - the actions of the DDOS mastermind and the blacklister are not equivalent.
The blacklister provides information to various people who choose, on their own, to say "I do not like what you are doing, Mr. Spammer, and I will not allow you to use MY system to do it."
The DDOSer says "I don't like what you're doing, and I will not allow you to use YOUR system to do it."
The higher your education, the more skilled you are.
So skill is simply a synonym for education? We do indeed have different definitions of skill. While you can certainly argue that taking tests and writing research papers is a skill, it's debatable on how useful a skill it is outside of academic circles.
skill: a learned power of doing something competently
Doing, not knowing. A PhD implies knowledge, certainly, though it contains no guarantee that the knowledge is particularly useful. There is an absolute glut of skillful people with little or no education. There's an only slightly smaller mass of people with extensive educations who are incapable of buttering their own bread.
What I am talking about is more a matter of supply than demand. As I said in a previous post, supply and skill are genrally negatively correlated. The more skill a job requires, the fewer people there are who possess the desired ability, and thus the job brings higher wages. There is, however, no guarantee that a particular skill is valuable, no matter how rare it is.
I'm a customer considering Linux. I say to HP "I'm not so sure about this. I heard SCO is suing people for using Linux. I don't need to buy more headaches." How should HP respond? What's wrong with a response of "SCO's claims are baseless. In fact, we're so sure that they're BS that we'll guarantee it for you - if SCO sues you, we'll pay for the defense and, if we should happen to lose, we'll pay the fee." Personally, I think IBM and every other Linux seller out there should make the same promise.
A PhD is no guarantee of skill. It's certainly arguable that some competent bus drivers are more skilled than, say, some Political Science PhDs.
In a free market, both prices and wages are set by the law of supply and demand. Pure unions do nothing more than consolidate the power that each of their members already have. It's the same principle as a buyers club, where customers pool their purchasing power to get lower prices. So long as all parties involved are operating freely, it's still a free market.
Hardly the case that the "tigers" have no teeth or claws or that the "hunters" still have guns. It costs money to replace workers, even relatively unskilled ones. People can still form voluntary unions, and unions still have some power. However, they only have the power that is inherent in their collective group as employees, not power granted them at the bang of a judge's gavel or the tip of a politicians pen.
Given a group of employees who are earning x as salary and who are striking for a salary of y, the business must decide whether y - x is sufficient savings to pay for the training of replacement employees and the loss of productivity while the new employees learn their job. Unions were originally formed because of the horrible conditions employees were facing. They were pure unions - voluntary groups of employees who got together and pooled their collective power. And despite the fact that they did not have Washington in their back pocket, they were effective in bringing about change. This was a Good Thing. Removing the politically motivated spiderweb of regulations that empowere unions today does not mean that they will be powerless.
I've never heard "equal pay" used in that sense. Perhaps its a Canadian thing, or perhaps my US-centric bias is showing.
Unions, so long as they aren't coddled by laws and regulations which give them much more power than they should have, are certainly a part of the free market. In a sane world, where unions have no power to compel membership or membership dues and employers have the ability to fire striking workers, the free market will not allow unions to jack up salaries. Nor, in a free market, will the government be involved in ranking jobs. It works if you let it. The problem is that people insist on mucking with the system in order to fix what they percieve as flaws, and nearly ruin the whole thing in the process.
Also, "supply and demand" and "skill and performance" are two sides of the same coin. Part of the problem is an issue of definition. How do you quantify "skill?" Is a brain surgeon more skilled than a wide receiver? How does a basket weaver compare to a computer programmer? A large part of that, I'd say, is how rare the skill is. There are literally millions of people who, if they choose to put the time and effort into it, could learn to be a brain surgeon. There are far fewer who can succeed at the position of wide receiver in either the US or Canadian professional football organizations, regardless of how much time and effort they put into it. So certainly the supply of wide receivers is less than that of brain surgeons. But I'd also say that makes a compelling argument that the wide receiver is more skillful. In other words, skill and supply are negatively correlated. And that's exactly why the free market does a reasonable (though not perfect) job of rewarding skill in terms of pay.
Mariah's contract had nothing to do with politics. Mariah had demonstrated an ability to sell CDs in the past. The record company gambled that the exclusive right to sell her music was worth a certain amount. It was a bad decision, and the record company cut their losses by buying out the remainder of her contract. Companies make bad decisions. It's part of the free market. If they make enough of them, they go out of business.
"Equal pay for equal work" means that people performing the same job should receive the same pay. It's often used when pay is reduced due to discrimination of some sort, such as when women in a particular field earn less than men.
Pay is never based on the amount of work per se. Pay is generally based on the supply of the work. Digging ditches is much more work than writing a hit song, but there are many more ditch diggers available than there are hit song writers.
The free market does do a reasonably good job of basing pay on skill and performance. Where it doesn't, its usually because of outside interferences (such as federal regulations or requirements.)
Besides, why should artists and their descendants profit from work done decades ago? If we, humble mortals, want to retire some day, we must build up some kind of retirement fund. We are not allowed to keep receiving salaries from the work we did long ago. Why should artists?
Sorry, but this simply doesn't hold water. If you design a shock absorber, someone holds the rights to that design. If I want to use that shock absorber, I have to purchase it from someone. You, as the designer, may not continue to earn money but neither do artists who perform works for hire and no longer own the copyright on their works. But someone is earning money on that design every time it's sold.
Now, with a shock absorber, a large part of the cost is the charge for the physical implementation - the cost of material and manufacturing. But some part of the cost is the design. With shock absorbers, it's a small cost because designing a shock absorber is relatively simple. For other objects, such as CPUs and prescription drugs, design costs are a much larger fraction of the price. (And even shock absorbers depends on what type of shock absorber you're referring to. Take a look at the cost of a set of RockShocks or Marzocchi mountain bike forks.)
Also, why should artists be millionaires? If an engineer does some good work, that's used by millions of people, he may be reasonably well-off. For instance, if I design a vacuum cleaner or a shock absorber, I might get a bonus, but I will never be treated like a super-star. Why should artists? What's the difference between designing a shock absorber that's used in ten million cars and singing a song that's listened by ten million people?
Should isn't part of the equation. Nothing says that artists should be millionaires, and the vast majority of them aren't. Artists who do become millionaires do so because they provide works that are popular enough to earn millions of dollars, just as inventors who invent something on their own which is a high seller become wealthy as well. People who perform works for hire almost never become wealthy from their efforts because someone else owns the rights to their works. This is true whether you're an engineer designing a shock absorber or someone writing jingles for television commercials.
Well, yes. That's exactly the point. An SUV isn't a useless machine. For certain circumstances, it's the perfect vehicle. But it isn't the perfect vehicle for running back and forth to the corner store, and Java isn't the ideal language for scripting web pages. The whole point of camparing Java to an SUV is that both are powerful pieces of equipment all too often used for trivial tasks.
And you can't say the same thing about C++ because, at least last time I checked, there weren't very many web pages being written in C++.
The moment that Linux becomes a real threat to the software environment of an E15k, I have to believe that Sun will do whatever is necessary to protect this segment.
OK, maybe I'm a little dense here but you'll have to explain this one to me. Exactly how would releasing Solaris under the GPL benefit Sun? So you have people using free Solaris instead of free Linux. So what? It's still free; Sun isn't making any money off of it. Sun might be able to charge for support but if Solaris is GPL, so can a number of other companines, and probably quite a bit cheaper.
It certainly isn't a universal solution but it's definitely a solution for some problems.
For example, if this is utilized by a company or an ISP, your email never hits the 'net unencrypted. Certainly, there are people who still have access to the email in its unencrypted form. I wouldn't use a system like this to transmit the names of the Colonels eleven herbs and spices. But it does bring email a bit closer to snail mail.
How much security does an envelope provide? Anyone who gets their hands on it can easily open it. But it's certainly more comfortable than sending a postcard.
Unless you are trying to say that commercial UNIX systems are losing ground to Linux
That's exactly what's being said. There will still be computers running various flavors of Unix for quite some time, just as there are still computers running DOS and OS/2 and BeOS. But the number of companies selling UNIX variants will decrease until none are left. Coding resources focused on adding new features will shrivel up and die. Bug fixes and maintenance coding will continue for awhile but it, too, will go away as companies stop supporting older versions. Eventually, if you want to purchase a modern *nix OS, you'll be bying some variant of Linux.
Well, there are a number of issues to consider with that approach.
First, you'd be talking about a SEVERE speed hit. You'd have to compile both trees, since compiler options, compiler verions and a great many other things would affect the assembler output.
Second, part of the utility of this program is that you can distribute the hashes of a source tree without revealing anything about the source itself. While the standard NDA forbids revealing source code, I'd wager that very few of them forbid revealing hashes of the soruce. This means that IBM could probably release the hash of SCO's source without being in violation of their agreement. It might be posible to generate hashes of the assembler tokens which would have similar properties, but that leads us to the third point.
I can't say for sure without some testing, but I'd guess that the chances of false positives would be much higher with assembler tokens than with source code. There are a great many utility functions that are relatively simple and straightforward. A modern optimizing compiler may very well come up with very similar assembler code for indepdently written functions that aren't particularly similar in source code.
A fourth issue is that assembler code is also much more succinct than source code. Any assembler code is going to contain a great many PUSH AX; POP CX; CMP AL,0; MOV BH, 0; etc. that could easily generate false positives.
Fifth, opposed to the third and fourth point, there's also the possibility of false negatives. An optimizing compiler may very well generate different assembler code for the same source if the surrounding code is different. A function liberated from one tree and inserted into a different one may be very different at the assembler level.
Finally, using the assembler tokes would completely ignore comments and some if not all variable names. SCO is correct in that these are key indicators of a common source for two different pieces of code. (What they miss is that they may indicated a common ancestor for the two, not that one is necessarily a copy of the other.)
This isn't to say that the idea doesn't have merit. But it introduces a great deal more complexity into the situation. I'd say such a program would be more of a complementary tool for RMS's shred program than an alternative or a replacement.
RTFA. The code is split into overlapping "shreds" of three lines. For example, 7 lines of code would generate five hashes, consisting of the following lines:
1,2,3
2,3,4
3,4,5
4,5,6
5,6,7
Two source trees are shredded, then unique hashes are discarded. Anywhere there are three lines of code that are the same ANYWHERE in the source tree, it'll be spotted.
Now, it's trivial to defeat this if you're specifically aiming to do so. However, for existing source trees (such as nearly countless variations of *nix) that already exist and are duplicated in numerous places, it works nicely. It's impossible to go back and modify the tree because too many copies exist.
You've already made up your mind, which is fine. It would be a boring world if everyone liked or was interested in the same thing. However, for those out there who might like a toy or tool like the Zaurus, you can run VNC on your computer and access the Zaurus. This allows you to use your regular keyboard for doing complicated stuff that involves a lot of keying.
If you're a hacker and like to tinker, there isn't a better machine out there. If you just want a PDA, there might be better options although the Zaurus is perfectly functional at that as well. This is especially true if you pick up a few of the apps from the Kompany. I use mine for not only a PDA but an Ogg player, game machine and etc.
Thanks for the clarification on the purity issue.
Another fact that few people are aware of is that the diamond engagement ring is entirely a product of the diamond industry (read DeBeers) advertising. While betrothal rings have a long history, the idea that proposal equals diamond ring is an invention purely to sell more overpriced diamonds.
There is a difference in a statement of fact and an expression of opinion. If Acme Autos advertises that it's Super Spiffy model will do 0 to 60 in under 5 seconds, it had better do it. However, if they claim that the Super Spiffy model will make you super cool, that isn't an objective statement of fact. Ad companies are extremely careful to ensure that all statements of fact are accurate. They'll imply and insinuate all sorts of things, many of which are of dubious truth value. But statements of fact must be true or the manufacturer is liable.
The same should be true of software. AOL can say that their software helps protect your children from inappropriate content, but they should not be able to say that it prevents your children form viewing inappropriate content. Such subtleties are everything in a court of law.
If something like this were encoded in law, the GPL would have to comply or those parts which did not, at least, would be unenforceable.
However, I don't see much here that impacts free software authors. The issue here is sellers. From the article: "...the Court said that the contract for sale is formed when the customer agrees to pay and the seller agrees to deliver the product..." If there is no sale, then there is no contract and there is no issue of customer's rights.
Of course, this raises the issue of companies such as Red Hat. What exactly are you purchasing when you buy a copy of Red Hat Linux? Does Red Hat sell you software if the same software is available for free download? Do they merely sell you a support package and/or documentation, and thus would not be bound by these requirements? Or is one of the things you're purchasing a guarantee that the software works as promised, and thus they would be bound by these requirements? I'm not sure which way I'd go on this issue and, of course , IANAL.
There can only be a market for "the real thing" if it's distinguishable from the "artificial" one. In the case of diamonds, the only distinction is that the artificial diamonds are too perfect. However, as someone already pointed out, it's quite likely that impurities can be added to the artificial diamonds in such a way that the two are indistinguishable. You can go to your corner jeweler, and he can swear that it's a natural diamond, but if there's absolutely no way to tell for sure, how will you know? Are you willing to pay several orders of magnitude more for his word? If you can buy your fiance a rock the size of a robin's egg for $10, and be absolutely sure that she'll never be able to tell the difference, are you going to spend several thousand instead on a stone you need a magnifying glass to appreciate? Is your fiance going to proudly show off her tiny, natural diamond to all her friends who are wearing huge hunks of rock and swear that they're natural too?