Just to add a little more offbeat humor to the Al Gore Internet pioneer debacle...
In a recent interview with Time Magazine (June 26 2000), Intel's Gordon Moore, the guy who came up with the famous law himself took a witty potshot at Gore himself. In fact, it's my sig now. = )
TIME Are you proud of prediction?
MOORE...I simply saw they [no. of transistors] were doubling every year and blindly said they would keep doubling. If Al Gore "invented" the Internet, I "invented" the exponential.
That no apparent reason is called meta-moderation. It only applies though if you choose to moderate the comments of others. Which in turn, subjects you to Meta-moderation. For each moderation meta-moderators deem you to made as being unfair, then you lose one karma point. To take a look how the system works, visit here.
However if you want to join this same system, then log in and then visit here.
It's rather unfortunate that unlike moderation itself, Meta-moderation does not seem to have any checks and balances to prevent abuses. Hopefully someone will reform it.
What if everyone believed that law-abiding citizens should use postcards for their mail? If a nonconformist tried to assert his privacy by using an envelope for his mail, it would draw suspicion. Perhaps the authorities would open his mail to see what he's hiding. Fortunately, we don't live in that kind of world, because everyone protects most of their mail with envelopes. So no one draws suspicion by asserting their privacy with an envelope. There's safety in numbers. Analogously, it would be nice if everyone routinely used encryption for all their email, innocent or not, so that no one drew suspicion by asserting their email privacy with encryption. Think of it as a form of solidarity.
---From "An Introduction to Cryptography" by Phil Zimmermann, the programmer of PGP himself.
This is an analogy I remind myself each time one of my friends at high school ridicules me for being a paranoid "conspiracy nut". It concerns me greatly that most of the general public of my country, Australia seems to take a laissez-faire approach to their online Internet rights. For example, Australians have already lost their right to unmonitored and uncensored (but not yet implemented) Internet usage and our intelligence agency, ASIO now has the legal right to actually crack our computers and monitor communications without a warrant all for the sake of so-called "national security".
What is just as worrying is that the general population accepts the face value of our politicians. The government in power, the conservative Liberals claim that they are acting in the best national security and moral interests of the silent majority, but to me, it would seem like they acting to silence the majority. The general public needs to be made aware of how insecure the Internet really is, and how governments are seeking to gain a legal right to infringe upon their basic human rights to freedom of expression and press. There seems to be an accepted dogma by the public here that the online world is different and that their human rights are automatically guaranteed by the nation's law instead of being restricted in reality.
Even my own high school, Sydney Technical High was planning student email access; a proposal to ban students using encryption to circumvent monitoring was considered. The majority of the student seemed unconcerned with this, except for a few others and myself as we saw this as a blatant attempt to impose the school's authority upon us while they were claiming legal responsibility over our moral wellbeing! The school told me that this email service was to be a "privilege and not a right" and thus if I was upset, I should use my own email. I was mainly concerned with those without access to encryption outside of school having their civil liberties breached. Luckily the school abandoned this scheme altogether after discovering free email services provided by services such as Hotmail. However, the mere fact that the school was willing to impose such draconian measures upon its students is a sad reflection of Australia's stance towards online civil liberties.
I am dismayed when my friends exclaim that the CIA will never read my email, because I am not important, nor have I done anything wrong or have something to hide. I wish that they could see that if they we don't start fighting for our rights online now, such as the right to uncensored access, encryption, and online self-security then a time will come when it will be too late for everyone to start voicing their opinions without fear from those seeking to impose their wills upon us.
You'll need to do a little soldering, but if you reduce the speed of the fan, you'll do miracles for noise.
To make the most of the reduced speed in your fan, it would be advisable to apply a smear of thermal heat transfer compound to the exposed metallic top of your PCGGA x86 (most notably Celeron II and Pentium III) processor. The normal adhesive heat interface tape attached to the fan provided by Intel is too think to provide proper heat dissipation so you should scrap it off with a blunt instrument. This should increase the efficiency of you current fan by heaps. Only a small amount (ie. a fingertip's worth) of this silicon-based metal oxide grease is needed
The problem I think most often about the loud fans is that the rotor is not properly lubricated. I'm not too sure about what grease can be used, but I've heard that fans with ball-bearings are a lot quieter, efficient and of higher quality.
I'm treating your post as seriously here, and I'd like to raise the point that instead of sites competing for your attention in terms of banner click-throughs and hits, wouldn't the general Internet population become flooded with banners asking for it's viewers to be generous instead. Quite a paradox, isn't it? Advertising is inescapable.
Guilt and generosity is a powerful weapon the first time it employed in any medium, but with the shortness of modern society's fuse, I'm afraid apathy will crush this "online idea" within less than a year. Society is not as generous as it used to be. MP3s and a lot of open source programs are downloaded without second thought. Have you ever bought a full album after "sampling" a MP3 or ever made a donation to a Linux distribution? (Disclosure: I've donated to Debian before.) Buskers, or street performers can make quick change, but they have to move place-to-place, therefore seeming fresh. Website's can't.
Viewers will tip perhaps the first time they visit a site, but how long can tips alone sustain a website? Some will point out that open source software is an example of a system being successfully sustained by donations, but the truth is, open source is a community movement? How many "Slashdot's" are out there on the net can endow one with a sense of belonging to a community and thus invite generosity?
The lesson here is, I'm afraid is that the information age in hand with a capitalistic society has created a paradox where a majority of non-profitable or communal Internet sites (i.e. sites not selling products or services) must have funding via advertising to survive. Yet at the same time, this information age has also flooded society with so much information and pleas that apathy to both advertisement and donations are ignored without second thought. It's a wonder this is all still up and running.
If you're one of those who has tried to get involved in a discussion about the varieties of free software licensing, from the GPL to BSD to Artistic Licensing and even the Debian Free Software Guidelines, only to nod your head in agreement because you really have no clue on the basic theory, then this little primer at the Metalab Linux Archives might help you very much.
Enjoy.
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Another recon report from the Troll Patrol.
Thank goodness the neutrality of Space is...
on
Macs In Space!
·
· Score: 3
...protected by International Law and I think, also by several UN resolutions. If the Sealand data haven is ever thwarted by the Royal British Navy, then the project managers could always look towards earth orbiting servers within satellites as internationally neutral havens for sensitive data.
However, this brings up another issue. Can nations on Earth who do have legal jurisdiction over the satellite base stations within their territory, be able to impose sanctions against, or intercept data transfers being made from these satellite servers? Will intelligence agencies (such as the CIA) start manufacturing military satellites that will be able to perform Denial of Service attacks on other satellite servers or perform even more sinister acts such as hacking and EMP attacks?
The possibility of satellite servers will surely usher another new age in the war for and against the lack of national jurisdiction over data on the internet.
...with Mac OS X's BSD core and Aqua interface...the needs of even die-hard geeks are being met. For those in the Open Source movement, Darwin is all they need.
I'm sorry Lalor, but you can't seriously expect the open-source zealots (Stallman and like) out there to embrace Darwin with open-arms.
Apple has not fully embraced the GPL if you've ever read licensing agreements. However, in the brave new world, Apple may give it a go. But I seriously doubt it ever will. You are forgetting though, that Darwin is NOT Unix, let alone as stable/secure as true BSDs and that Apple is like every other corporation out there - it is to make money.
Zealots, I'm afraid for you will still prefer to stick it out with Debian GNU/Linux or HURD. And much Linux and BSD before it, a GPLed (unlikely) Mac OS X will have alternatives spinning off before you can even cry out "First Post", and the world will return to the previous state as before. Big corporation out there trying to make quick bucks and neglecting and users looking for an alternative and willing to make it work even if it is ugly hard work in the beginning. That's just the psychology of the underdog.
And one more thing; despite Apple having a well-deserved reputaion for having the prettest hoods around (both physcially on the Gx/imac and interface wise ie. Aqua), Power users will always worship the engine beneath. I'm afraid POSIX-type terminals will be around longer than yourself.
It's not that I'm discrediting the guys over at Sandia, but the idea of bots that "runs on multiple computers in a network...constantly compare notes to determine if any unusual requests or commands have been received from external or internal sources" is not unique or a first.
There is in fact two noticable examples of distributed network monitoring/Intrusion Detection Tools out there already that sound very similar to Sandia's new tool. They include the HummingBird System and MOM
The Hummer Project led by Dr. Deborah Frincke has been around since early 1998 and their main project, the HummingBird System is now in version 3.4. It is a complex toolkit that gives an administrator the power to distribute security and intrustion detection information between several hosts (including Solaris and NT machines as well as Linux) in which multiple attackers and targets are mixed and matched.
The other example I know of is MOMwhich unfortunately been out of further development for over a year now.
The main similarity between the two's functionality is that they both have:
A main process that runs on a central machine that gathers, sorts, and reports on data received from children on other hosts.
On other hosts, a child client process runs which reports anomalies to the central host and;
On all hosts, agents run that perform various maintenance, diagnostic, and intrusion detection tasks.
So as you can see, distributed anti-cracknig and IDS tools have been around longer than you think and are quite refined. Good luck setting them up, and for those developing them
I'm sorry if I've made an incorrect assumption that Debian has an elected hireachy and insulted others...I'll have to recheck what I hear on the mills in future.
However, my main idea remains the same. Debian is a community, not a corporation. Therefore isn't it most appropriate for the community to decide Debian's course?
I only started to used Debian (after moving from Red Hat) since the start of this year after learning about the socialistic ideology of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution. But one thing I've come to appreciate most about Debian is the community sense and feel about Debian that is rare in other distributions. To see what I mean just log into #Debian (I'm on irc.linux.org.au), and you'll understand what I mean.
I've also learnt that the Debian maintainer hireachy is democratically elected, so wouldn't it be an obvious choice to let the International community of Debian users vote on this issue?
But personally, I see the removal of non-free and contrib as being a setback for the Debian movement in that it could possibly remove an incentive for disillusioned users of other distributions from becoming future Debian users.
IMHO, The separation of the "non-free" and "contrib" trees from "main" is surely a clear distinction for ideologically bound Debian users seeking to fanatically follow the Debian Social Contract. As long as Debian continues to separate non-free and contrib from the main tree, Debian GNU/Linux will always be ideologically superior to moralists, and I will be one of those who'll always recognise that irrefutable fact.
It would be a great shame if Debian does not respect the wishes of it's user base. So please, let the users speak...
...and of course, Debian listening in return
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You shall now notice I'm wearing asbestos underwear. I shall now proudly endure the flames for the Debian cause and what I believe in! = P
IMHO, this new technology is the first step towards the next digital revolution in human society, and possibly evolution: Neural Networks. Once scientists develop a way to fuse human cells (especially brain cells) to electronic circuitry the consequences to human society and revolution will be enormous.
As the saying goes, science fiction will be science fact, but as with any scientific advances, great risks will go hand in hand with great benefits. The technlogy could hold promise of the entire world population being permanently connected to each other's minds 24 hours a day for the rest of their lives! As most people in this discussion have pointed out so far this echos the societies of "Ghost in the Shell", "Cyberpunk" and the fiction works of Gibson, or even the "Borg Collection" *shudder*.
Despite the enormous potential of the braipower within a planet-wide network of digitally interconnected human minds, is humanity ready for the chanllenges that comes with playing God? Will individuality and freedom continue to exist, and what of the devasting potential of hacking and viruses (both physical and digital) have on a Brave New World where body, mind and computers be fused together.
Despite looking promising in economic and industrial terms for the short term, and my own thoughts perhaps being far-fetched, I believe that human society must take great care with this new technology.
The threat of the Internet and its accompanying information revolution is not only that "it is a powerful weapon against [goverments] if they choose to deprive their citizens of freedom" as pointed out by Alarmist.
The anonymity and more importantly the privacy of the Internet denies an essential element to the survival of any goverment: the ability to tax its citizens.
The internet enables people to conduct commerce, both internationally and domestically without a nation's government being able to monitor exchanges, and thus determine who can be taxed what.
It is quite ironic though that if national governments do fall due to being unable to tax, then who is left to maintain the same communication networks that bought governments down in the first place?
Your post reminds me of the Isaac Asmiov series, Foundation where mankind in the future has colonised the galaxy, but it has taken so long that mankind has not only forgotten who pioneered space travel, but also the planet from which he had originated from.
I don't think anyone can even remember the name of the person who invented paper and the first ink-based writing device. Unfortunately, that's how history works.
But it is sad how in today's era of mass commercialism and consumerism, that any advances, especially technological ones, are eventually and pitifully reduced to a tacky marketable product all for the sake of a quick profit. This all but takes away the end-user's appreciation of the history, effort and time put into making the scientific and technological breakthroughs that were needed to overcome what seemed to be previously impassable barriers and limits.
Those of us reading this article can only wonder how many failures and heartbreaks, and moments of near surrender pioneers have to endure just to make a breakthrough which will benefit humanity as a whole only to see it result in a tacky mass produced product that hardly anyone will remember you for. Mainstream society now consists of techno-peasants who only think about the enjoyment they are getting out of using whatever technology before them without bothering or wanting to appreciate how much blood, sweat and tears have gone into them; let alone how they truly work beneath a shiny colourful marketable veneer. All they really think about eagerly is how long before they can purchase the next feature-packed bloated version of their product and chuck out the old without though.
IMHO: Perhaps Slashdot should take up the initiative and begin an Computing Hall of Fame, so that the pioneers of the ever so rapidly changing computer age, both past and present, be remembered in our lifetimes for helping bringing the world much, much closer together by those who truly appreciate them.
D. W. Davies - I salute you. Thank you very, very much for all you've done for us all.
IANAL, but common sense (as learnt from a Dilbert Comic) would dictate that you check your contract first to see if any of your intellectual property created during your employment at your firm will automatically become property of your firm.
However, seeing that your original work was already GPLed, the courts would surely be in your favour.
The best of course of action to work around a lawsuit would be to simply work on your project outside company time (i.e. at home) and then distribute it as far and wide to other companies via open-source before you implement at your own. Hence if your company does move against you, then you can rest assured that others using your software will come to your legal and financial aid and act as a great deterrent because once your firm tries to copyright your work, they will also have to forcibly remove all copies off other firms. Legally and financially, this isn't very feasible and they will probably allow you to keep your software open-source.
Whatever course you decide to take, Rob Kappa, I wish you the best of luck and remember first foremost to stand up for your Open Source Ideals we all believe in!
OOG with his club shall rememdy the situation quite quickly. But in the meantime, if Microsoft wants to sue Slashdot and breach the First Amendment, then let them try. Everyone here and is sick by this attempt to curb criticism and freedom of speech will surely donate to any legal fund established to fight this insanity
Best of luck kicking M$'s ass Slashdot. They've taken one step too far. It's time to fight back.
Just curious, but are there any secret rituals at id software (don't forget these guys are pretty twisted) have when long-time employees leave the company?
Have they ever placed secret levels or easter eggs in their games where they could take out their frustrations and old time rivalries on digitalised versions of their ex and fellow employees?
I wouldn't mind being able to frag John Carrmack!
If I rembember correctly that with some special codes, one of the final bosses of Doom2 was in fact a digitalised floating head of an id employee with his screams being played out in reverse!
Well anyway, best of luck to John Cash at Blizzard and thanks for bringing us some great games in the past. Keep up the good work no matter where you are mate.
Personally I find RMS quite an amazing character. OK, so his GNU song was a bit odd. I mean he isn't God.
Of course Stallman isn't a God. Ask most people and they'll tell you he's a communist, and communists being atheist and everything.
IMHO: He's a socialist in my eyes
In my honest opinion, though, RMS is a legend in his own right. He's the man behind the OpenSource movement and GNU Not Unix. He just had an OS and an ideal without a decent kernel in the beginning (yes, I do know that HURD is aiming to become an alternative to the Linux kernel)
Linus Torvalds came in at the right time with the kernel, and then Alan Cox with the networking, and hey presto! GNU/Linux is born. Robert Young, on the other hand (CEO of Red Hat) just capitalised on the whole thing and gave the movement the support it needed from the commercial sector (RMS may argue against this) for the chance to break into the mainstream.
Just remember, Robert Young is NOT to be the next Bill Gates of the Linux world, otherwise RedHat would not have opensourced RPM or support the RHAD project which gives us GNOME and other great things. Not to say that others don't contribute. Don't forget that a lot of XFree86 drivers have been donated by the great people at SuSE. Please don't crucify Red Hat just because they're more attractive to the commercial sector. Development of Linux is driven by competition, ie. a free market. If you don't like Red Hat or their commercial slant and have come to realise or appreiciate the original ideology of Linux, switch to Debian GNU/Linux. Genuine users of Linux, ie. those who will become dedicated to the cause will switch to other Linuxes once they realise that RedHat is not Linux, but at least they will learn the ropes first with an user-friendly distribution.
Disclosure: Heck I did! And I'm proud to say I'm now a Debian GNU/Linux user dedicated to the OpenSource Software movement.
Commical thought for the day: Will we ever see a site called "Debian is not HURD?"
"Faith that we've evolved too far: it's time to back-up to, say... using bone chips as knives;)"
Httpd can be written in something more primitive than Postscript or shell script, let alone Lisps. All we have to do is get OOG the Caveman to write it up in simple grunts and groans. Throw in a few cave paintings and it'll even have a state of the art GUI!
Then caveman shall once again rule the world. Don't forget to pay him in dead sabre-tooth carcasses and mammoth skins!
Even if someone does jam the GPS signals to stop terrorists from flying in a stolen/hijacked cruise missile into say, the Pentagon, couldn't they manually control it using a Sony PlayStation 2, which is now meant to be powerful enough as weapons control platform and has to be export-regulated by the Japanese government? = P
When was the last time the United States used a nuclear device to force a country into submission or to the negotiating table? The answer is never. The GPS system is not crucial to the launching and flight of ICBMs, as the US Air Force/Space Command had the system working without GPS for decades before its invention. The point I'm trying to make is that GPS, when it comes to bombing, was intended for precise tactical warfare such as the use of Tomahawk Cruise Missles. As witnessed in Bahgdad and in Belgrade, 100m can mean the difference between hitting the intended target and collateral damage as sensitive as a neutral foreign embassy or civilian hospital. Today's warfare is not about Mutal Assured Destruction with nuclear devices, but precision with cruise missles, and this is where even a 10m margin of error as compared to 100m in the Global Positioning System is crucial to military applications.
Isn't Micro$oft promoting that their upcoming console the X-Box as being more powerful than anything else before it? Now that's scary! That is, if they can get the damn thing working. Now Bill can really take over the world. These X-Boxes will be able to crash faster than any machine before bringing chaos and a new world order faster than a IMF meeting can cause a riot!
I can see it now. One OS. One Company. One Furher. Heil Gates! The Supreme Leader of the Masochistic ImperialCapitalist Reich Of Seattle Organization For Totalitarianism.
Fellow anti-Microsofters, this is the time to raise up and say we will not go where they want us to go tomorrow. We will not crash because you cannot program decent bug-free software. We will be counted. We will not go quietly into the dark just because you refuse to release your source code or Office for Linux and BSDs. We will not stand idly by as you trample the underdogs and open-source groups. We shall be counted. The penguins shall inherit the earth!
I am practicing my sniping skills as obtained by playing Rainbox Six and Counter-Strike as you read this for that fateful day when the fate of the world is resting on every Slashdotter's shoulders. = P
I don't want to flame IBM or recieve flames myself. I am not an OS/2 hater, but I've never used it in the first place. However, I can say one thing: OS/2 was admirable for the things it could do that Win3.1x couldn't.
Today's Warpers may wonder what may have been if IBM opensourced OS/2. The question that comes to mind after reading this topic is, can OS/2 be revived from stasis with opensourcing or is it too late?
It is interesting to see how Apple has sought to improve it's operating system, ie. Apple OS X by incoporating a BSD kernel. Can the same be done to OS/2? The corporations that I've seen to be still using OS/2 as their primary platform are the financial and banking sectors. Perhaps they shall be impressed once unix-type support in included in OS/2. I'd have to say that I would to.
But alas, this may just be another dream gone by...
Slashdot Mirror
In a recent interview with Time Magazine (June 26 2000), Intel's Gordon Moore, the guy who came up with the famous law himself took a witty potshot at Gore himself. In fact, it's my sig now. = )
TIME Are you proud of prediction?
MOORE ...I simply saw they [no. of transistors] were doubling every year and blindly said they would keep doubling. If Al Gore "invented" the Internet, I "invented" the exponential.
Poor ol' Al.
However if you want to join this same system, then log in and then visit here.
It's rather unfortunate that unlike moderation itself, Meta-moderation does not seem to have any checks and balances to prevent abuses. Hopefully someone will reform it.
---From "An Introduction to Cryptography" by Phil Zimmermann, the programmer of PGP himself.
This is an analogy I remind myself each time one of my friends at high school ridicules me for being a paranoid "conspiracy nut". It concerns me greatly that most of the general public of my country, Australia seems to take a laissez-faire approach to their online Internet rights. For example, Australians have already lost their right to unmonitored and uncensored (but not yet implemented) Internet usage and our intelligence agency, ASIO now has the legal right to actually crack our computers and monitor communications without a warrant all for the sake of so-called "national security".
What is just as worrying is that the general population accepts the face value of our politicians. The government in power, the conservative Liberals claim that they are acting in the best national security and moral interests of the silent majority, but to me, it would seem like they acting to silence the majority. The general public needs to be made aware of how insecure the Internet really is, and how governments are seeking to gain a legal right to infringe upon their basic human rights to freedom of expression and press. There seems to be an accepted dogma by the public here that the online world is different and that their human rights are automatically guaranteed by the nation's law instead of being restricted in reality.
Even my own high school, Sydney Technical High was planning student email access; a proposal to ban students using encryption to circumvent monitoring was considered. The majority of the student seemed unconcerned with this, except for a few others and myself as we saw this as a blatant attempt to impose the school's authority upon us while they were claiming legal responsibility over our moral wellbeing! The school told me that this email service was to be a "privilege and not a right" and thus if I was upset, I should use my own email. I was mainly concerned with those without access to encryption outside of school having their civil liberties breached. Luckily the school abandoned this scheme altogether after discovering free email services provided by services such as Hotmail. However, the mere fact that the school was willing to impose such draconian measures upon its students is a sad reflection of Australia's stance towards online civil liberties.
I am dismayed when my friends exclaim that the CIA will never read my email, because I am not important, nor have I done anything wrong or have something to hide. I wish that they could see that if they we don't start fighting for our rights online now, such as the right to uncensored access, encryption, and online self-security then a time will come when it will be too late for everyone to start voicing their opinions without fear from those seeking to impose their wills upon us.
To make the most of the reduced speed in your fan, it would be advisable to apply a smear of thermal heat transfer compound to the exposed metallic top of your PCGGA x86 (most notably Celeron II and Pentium III) processor. The normal adhesive heat interface tape attached to the fan provided by Intel is too think to provide proper heat dissipation so you should scrap it off with a blunt instrument. This should increase the efficiency of you current fan by heaps. Only a small amount (ie. a fingertip's worth) of this silicon-based metal oxide grease is needed
The problem I think most often about the loud fans is that the rotor is not properly lubricated. I'm not too sure about what grease can be used, but I've heard that fans with ball-bearings are a lot quieter, efficient and of higher quality.
Guilt and generosity is a powerful weapon the first time it employed in any medium, but with the shortness of modern society's fuse, I'm afraid apathy will crush this "online idea" within less than a year. Society is not as generous as it used to be. MP3s and a lot of open source programs are downloaded without second thought. Have you ever bought a full album after "sampling" a MP3 or ever made a donation to a Linux distribution? (Disclosure: I've donated to Debian before.) Buskers, or street performers can make quick change, but they have to move place-to-place, therefore seeming fresh. Website's can't.
Viewers will tip perhaps the first time they visit a site, but how long can tips alone sustain a website? Some will point out that open source software is an example of a system being successfully sustained by donations, but the truth is, open source is a community movement? How many "Slashdot's" are out there on the net can endow one with a sense of belonging to a community and thus invite generosity?
The lesson here is, I'm afraid is that the information age in hand with a capitalistic society has created a paradox where a majority of non-profitable or communal Internet sites (i.e. sites not selling products or services) must have funding via advertising to survive. Yet at the same time, this information age has also flooded society with so much information and pleas that apathy to both advertisement and donations are ignored without second thought. It's a wonder this is all still up and running.
Much like Intel's partner (you know who) in crime for the dominance of the home desktop...
Enjoy.
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Another recon report from the Troll Patrol.
However, this brings up another issue. Can nations on Earth who do have legal jurisdiction over the satellite base stations within their territory, be able to impose sanctions against, or intercept data transfers being made from these satellite servers? Will intelligence agencies (such as the CIA) start manufacturing military satellites that will be able to perform Denial of Service attacks on other satellite servers or perform even more sinister acts such as hacking and EMP attacks?
The possibility of satellite servers will surely usher another new age in the war for and against the lack of national jurisdiction over data on the internet.
I'm sorry Lalor, but you can't seriously expect the open-source zealots (Stallman and like) out there to embrace Darwin with open-arms.
Apple has not fully embraced the GPL if you've ever read licensing agreements. However, in the brave new world, Apple may give it a go. But I seriously doubt it ever will. You are forgetting though, that Darwin is NOT Unix, let alone as stable/secure as true BSDs and that Apple is like every other corporation out there - it is to make money.
Zealots, I'm afraid for you will still prefer to stick it out with Debian GNU/Linux or HURD. And much Linux and BSD before it, a GPLed (unlikely) Mac OS X will have alternatives spinning off before you can even cry out "First Post", and the world will return to the previous state as before. Big corporation out there trying to make quick bucks and neglecting and users looking for an alternative and willing to make it work even if it is ugly hard work in the beginning. That's just the psychology of the underdog.
And one more thing; despite Apple having a well-deserved reputaion for having the prettest hoods around (both physcially on the Gx/imac and interface wise ie. Aqua), Power users will always worship the engine beneath. I'm afraid POSIX-type terminals will be around longer than yourself.
There is in fact two noticable examples of distributed network monitoring/Intrusion Detection Tools out there already that sound very similar to Sandia's new tool. They include the HummingBird System and MOM
The Hummer Project led by Dr. Deborah Frincke has been around since early 1998 and their main project, the HummingBird System is now in version 3.4. It is a complex toolkit that gives an administrator the power to distribute security and intrustion detection information between several hosts (including Solaris and NT machines as well as Linux) in which multiple attackers and targets are mixed and matched.
The other example I know of is MOM which unfortunately been out of further development for over a year now.
The main similarity between the two's functionality is that they both have:
- A main process that runs on a central machine that gathers, sorts, and reports on data received from children on other hosts.
- On other hosts, a child client process runs which reports anomalies to the central host and;
- On all hosts, agents run that perform various maintenance, diagnostic, and intrusion detection tasks.
So as you can see, distributed anti-cracknig and IDS tools have been around longer than you think and are quite refined. Good luck setting them up, and for those developing themKeep up the great work.
However, my main idea remains the same. Debian is a community, not a corporation. Therefore isn't it most appropriate for the community to decide Debian's course?
I've also learnt that the Debian maintainer hireachy is democratically elected, so wouldn't it be an obvious choice to let the International community of Debian users vote on this issue?
But personally, I see the removal of non-free and contrib as being a setback for the Debian movement in that it could possibly remove an incentive for disillusioned users of other distributions from becoming future Debian users.
IMHO, The separation of the "non-free" and "contrib" trees from "main" is surely a clear distinction for ideologically bound Debian users seeking to fanatically follow the Debian Social Contract. As long as Debian continues to separate non-free and contrib from the main tree, Debian GNU/Linux will always be ideologically superior to moralists, and I will be one of those who'll always recognise that irrefutable fact.
It would be a great shame if Debian does not respect the wishes of it's user base. So please, let the users speak...
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You shall now notice I'm wearing asbestos underwear. I shall now proudly endure the flames for the Debian cause and what I believe in! = P
As the saying goes, science fiction will be science fact, but as with any scientific advances, great risks will go hand in hand with great benefits. The technlogy could hold promise of the entire world population being permanently connected to each other's minds 24 hours a day for the rest of their lives! As most people in this discussion have pointed out so far this echos the societies of "Ghost in the Shell", "Cyberpunk" and the fiction works of Gibson, or even the "Borg Collection" *shudder*.
Despite the enormous potential of the braipower within a planet-wide network of digitally interconnected human minds, is humanity ready for the chanllenges that comes with playing God? Will individuality and freedom continue to exist, and what of the devasting potential of hacking and viruses (both physical and digital) have on a Brave New World where body, mind and computers be fused together.
Despite looking promising in economic and industrial terms for the short term, and my own thoughts perhaps being far-fetched, I believe that human society must take great care with this new technology.
The anonymity and more importantly the privacy of the Internet denies an essential element to the survival of any goverment: the ability to tax its citizens.
The internet enables people to conduct commerce, both internationally and domestically without a nation's government being able to monitor exchanges, and thus determine who can be taxed what.
It is quite ironic though that if national governments do fall due to being unable to tax, then who is left to maintain the same communication networks that bought governments down in the first place?
I don't think anyone can even remember the name of the person who invented paper and the first ink-based writing device. Unfortunately, that's how history works.
But it is sad how in today's era of mass commercialism and consumerism, that any advances, especially technological ones, are eventually and pitifully reduced to a tacky marketable product all for the sake of a quick profit. This all but takes away the end-user's appreciation of the history, effort and time put into making the scientific and technological breakthroughs that were needed to overcome what seemed to be previously impassable barriers and limits.
Those of us reading this article can only wonder how many failures and heartbreaks, and moments of near surrender pioneers have to endure just to make a breakthrough which will benefit humanity as a whole only to see it result in a tacky mass produced product that hardly anyone will remember you for. Mainstream society now consists of techno-peasants who only think about the enjoyment they are getting out of using whatever technology before them without bothering or wanting to appreciate how much blood, sweat and tears have gone into them; let alone how they truly work beneath a shiny colourful marketable veneer. All they really think about eagerly is how long before they can purchase the next feature-packed bloated version of their product and chuck out the old without though.
IMHO: Perhaps Slashdot should take up the initiative and begin an Computing Hall of Fame, so that the pioneers of the ever so rapidly changing computer age, both past and present, be remembered in our lifetimes for helping bringing the world much, much closer together by those who truly appreciate them.
D. W. Davies - I salute you. Thank you very, very much for all you've done for us all.
However, seeing that your original work was already GPLed, the courts would surely be in your favour.
The best of course of action to work around a lawsuit would be to simply work on your project outside company time (i.e. at home) and then distribute it as far and wide to other companies via open-source before you implement at your own. Hence if your company does move against you, then you can rest assured that others using your software will come to your legal and financial aid and act as a great deterrent because once your firm tries to copyright your work, they will also have to forcibly remove all copies off other firms. Legally and financially, this isn't very feasible and they will probably allow you to keep your software open-source.
Whatever course you decide to take, Rob Kappa, I wish you the best of luck and remember first foremost to stand up for your Open Source Ideals we all believe in!
Best of luck kicking M$'s ass Slashdot. They've taken one step too far. It's time to fight back.
Have they ever placed secret levels or easter eggs in their games where they could take out their frustrations and old time rivalries on digitalised versions of their ex and fellow employees?
I wouldn't mind being able to frag John Carrmack!
If I rembember correctly that with some special codes, one of the final bosses of Doom2 was in fact a digitalised floating head of an id employee with his screams being played out in reverse!
Well anyway, best of luck to John Cash at Blizzard and thanks for bringing us some great games in the past. Keep up the good work no matter where you are mate.
Of course Stallman isn't a God. Ask most people and they'll tell you he's a communist, and communists being atheist and everything.
IMHO: He's a socialist in my eyes
In my honest opinion, though, RMS is a legend in his own right. He's the man behind the OpenSource movement and GNU Not Unix. He just had an OS and an ideal without a decent kernel in the beginning (yes, I do know that HURD is aiming to become an alternative to the Linux kernel)
Linus Torvalds came in at the right time with the kernel, and then Alan Cox with the networking, and hey presto! GNU/Linux is born. Robert Young, on the other hand (CEO of Red Hat) just capitalised on the whole thing and gave the movement the support it needed from the commercial sector (RMS may argue against this) for the chance to break into the mainstream.
Just remember, Robert Young is NOT to be the next Bill Gates of the Linux world, otherwise RedHat would not have opensourced RPM or support the RHAD project which gives us GNOME and other great things. Not to say that others don't contribute. Don't forget that a lot of XFree86 drivers have been donated by the great people at SuSE. Please don't crucify Red Hat just because they're more attractive to the commercial sector. Development of Linux is driven by competition, ie. a free market. If you don't like Red Hat or their commercial slant and have come to realise or appreiciate the original ideology of Linux, switch to Debian GNU/Linux. Genuine users of Linux, ie. those who will become dedicated to the cause will switch to other Linuxes once they realise that RedHat is not Linux, but at least they will learn the ropes first with an user-friendly distribution.
Disclosure: Heck I did! And I'm proud to say I'm now a Debian GNU/Linux user dedicated to the OpenSource Software movement.
Commical thought for the day: Will we ever see a site called "Debian is not HURD?"
Httpd can be written in something more primitive than Postscript or shell script, let alone Lisps. All we have to do is get OOG the Caveman to write it up in simple grunts and groans. Throw in a few cave paintings and it'll even have a state of the art GUI!
Then caveman shall once again rule the world. Don't forget to pay him in dead sabre-tooth carcasses and mammoth skins!
Even if someone does jam the GPS signals to stop terrorists from flying in a stolen/hijacked cruise missile into say, the Pentagon, couldn't they manually control it using a Sony PlayStation 2, which is now meant to be powerful enough as weapons control platform and has to be export-regulated by the Japanese government? = P
When was the last time the United States used a nuclear device to force a country into submission or to the negotiating table? The answer is never. The GPS system is not crucial to the launching and flight of ICBMs, as the US Air Force/Space Command had the system working without GPS for decades before its invention. The point I'm trying to make is that GPS, when it comes to bombing, was intended for precise tactical warfare such as the use of Tomahawk Cruise Missles. As witnessed in Bahgdad and in Belgrade, 100m can mean the difference between hitting the intended target and collateral damage as sensitive as a neutral foreign embassy or civilian hospital. Today's warfare is not about Mutal Assured Destruction with nuclear devices, but precision with cruise missles, and this is where even a 10m margin of error as compared to 100m in the Global Positioning System is crucial to military applications.
I can see it now. One OS. One Company. One Furher. Heil Gates! The Supreme Leader of the Masochistic Imperial Capitalist Reich Of Seattle Organization For Totalitarianism.
Fellow anti-Microsofters, this is the time to raise up and say we will not go where they want us to go tomorrow. We will not crash because you cannot program decent bug-free software. We will be counted. We will not go quietly into the dark just because you refuse to release your source code or Office for Linux and BSDs. We will not stand idly by as you trample the underdogs and open-source groups. We shall be counted. The penguins shall inherit the earth!
I am practicing my sniping skills as obtained by playing Rainbox Six and Counter-Strike as you read this for that fateful day when the fate of the world is resting on every Slashdotter's shoulders. = P
Today's Warpers may wonder what may have been if IBM opensourced OS/2. The question that comes to mind after reading this topic is, can OS/2 be revived from stasis with opensourcing or is it too late?
It is interesting to see how Apple has sought to improve it's operating system, ie. Apple OS X by incoporating a BSD kernel. Can the same be done to OS/2? The corporations that I've seen to be still using OS/2 as their primary platform are the financial and banking sectors. Perhaps they shall be impressed once unix-type support in included in OS/2. I'd have to say that I would to.
But alas, this may just be another dream gone by...
Where can I download this Enigma thing?