Let's say a "few" translates to "two," so you're talking about "two hours" vs. "two days."
"Few" in general parlence refers to greater than two, with an ambiguous upper bound. While few could, according to Merriem-Webster, refer to 'two' items (according to other dictionaries it does not), it is virtually never used in the written or spoken language to refer to less than three.
Furthermore, the assumption you make appears grossly intended to exaggerate what was a truthful statement in order to imply it was not.
On my Dual Athlon 2400+ MP it takes between 8 and 10 hours to compile my usual installation. On a Pentium machine I have the same copilation took approximately 5 days, on a PII/333 it took a good 3 and a half days.
Obviously CPU speed isn't the only factor. The Pentiums has a scant 64-128 MB of memory while the Dual Athlon has 1 GB of memory, the Pentiums are single processor machines, while the Athlon is dual processor, and so on. However, the real world use of the machines does in fact support a performance increase of 5-12x, which is significant.
OTOH my dual Athlons vs. my dual PIII 1GHz boxes, both with 1 GB of memory, shows the 2400+ machines compiling code in aboout 8 hours which takes the dual PIII boxes about a day and a half. So even there, I'm seeing a speed increase of 3-4x in real world (non-benchmarked) usage, at least with respect to initial system compilation and installation.
All of this is done with Gentoo 1.4-rc2, using gcc 3.2.x
Most importantly, it keeps shops in the Apple fold. One argument that people could make is that if they have to go with pc/linux servers, then they might as well go with the desktops too, again to simplify maintenance. This way, Apple ensures that people stay 100% Mac and keep the M$/Linux infiltration at bay.
This is a very good point, though really it is to keep Micro$osft at bay. GNU/Linux is really no threat to Apple at all... indeed, once people see beyond their partisan prejudices it becomes rather apparant the Apple, FreeBSD, and GNU/Linux are allies, promoting consumer choice and competition, and all being threatened by an illegal yet government condoned, convicted monpolist.
Apple is first and foremost a hardware company. If people started moving to GNU/Linux or FreeBSD in droves (perhaps because they become aware of the importance of the freedoms free software grants, or simply because they like the $0 cost), Apple still has the option of simply freeing the source code to their own operating system. While this doesn't jibe with Apple's current strategy, it isn't antithetical to their business model the way it would be for a monopolist like Microsoft (withness Microsoft's current "shared source" anti-free software disinformation campaign. Their only hope is to widely decieve the world's decision makers, a possible but increasingly unlikely proposition).
The Apple servers are important because it allows entities more comfortable purchasing proprietary corporate products over free software solutions the ability to do so without having to contend with the deliberate incompatabilities that Microsoft introduces, and will inevitably introduce again, thereby creating pressure to move to the Microsoft desktop as well. A GNU/Linux or FreeBSD server is no threat to Apple in this regard (both work fine together with Apple desktops, and neither introduces deliberate incompatabilities or attempts to coerce its clients into adopting the same system as their desktop), but there are plenty of old school Apple shops that still haven't grocked free software and its advantages, and would ultimately feel more comfortable paying for a shoddy Win2000 server than a free software or open source equivelent. That this is an ignornant or foolish stance for them to take is not at issue (it is clearly silly, but nevertheless remains all too common), that said shops not be lulled into the Microsoft trap is, at least from Apple's perspective.
These servers don't compete with GNU/Linux and FreeBSD servers all that much IMHO... they compete with Win2000 servers, and allow those unable to yet make the leap to free software to at least retain some control of their computing environment, free from the reign and vagaries of a convicted monopolist, and free from the chronic security problems of that same monopolist. This is a smart thing for Apple to do, and something which really shouldn't bother any of the free software or open source advocates all that much.
Why re-invent the wheel? Why not just adopt Apple's guidelines as-is?
Because Apple's 1 button mouse is an affront to humankind.
Seriously, Apple's interface is nice, and they will likely borrow a plethora of good ideas from Apple, but they should not adopt their standard "as is" without question. There are bozo aspects to Apple's interface, the one-button mouse being the most obvious (and before you suggest Apple doesn't need additional mouse buttons, think again. They've had to cobble on the equivelent functionality in a much less intuitive fashion... by requiring users to hold down the apple key while pressing the mouse button for operations that in the UNIX or Windoze world would use the right mouse button).
Finally, they can have my single clock middle-button paste feature I've enjoyed under X all these years when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers. Windows and Apple do not make cutting and pasting text nearly as easy as X... so even the X Window System, which so many love to deride and hate, offers an improvement over Apple and Windoze.
Focus follows mouse is another example of a feature common in X window managers, lacking in Windoze, and certainly not the default (if available at all) under Apple OS.
So, while Apple has much good to offer, they are not the be-all, end-all of GUI interfaces, anymore than Microsoft, KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment, or any other particular entity is. They come to the table with a great deal of experience, and a great deal to offer, but God(tm) they are not.
Is that how many hertz it has? I still have a 333 and it works just fine. Can somebody tell me why I'd need a higher numbers of hertz?
3000+ means its integer and floating point calculations are roughly on par with a 3000 MHz Intel P4. AMD has actually been quite good in being conservative with these numbers... the chips are generally a little faster than the number would indicate. The actual chip probably runs at 2.5 GHz or so (my 2400+ MPs run at 2.0 GHz).
As to why you would want a faster machine, well, that depends. If all you do is surf the net, read email, run gnucash to balance your checkbook, and do a little word processing then you're probably fine with what you have. If you have the misfortune of running Microsoft, you are quite possibly better off not upgrading, given those tasks.
If, on the other hand, you like to render animations using blender, povray, or what have you, or like to capture and convert video footage (cinelerra, kino, dvgrab, and transcode), or enjoy running an optimized, source based distribution such as Source Mage or Gentoo, then being able to compile your entire system, complete with open office, kde, mozilla, and so in in a few hours, rather than a few days, is kinda nice.
All that having been said, my firewall remains a Gentoo box on a k6, so older, slower hardware is by no means worthless with GNU/Linux around, even if the newer, sexier, faster hardware really shines under FreeBSD and Linux.
The crux is, as you point out, the destruction of "the original copy" in the teleportation process. The implicit point in your argument is that the death of one of the copies matters. My question to that point is: To whom? Me-before-the-teleportation doesn't care - I will live on in the copy. The teleported copy is alive, so it doesn't matter to it. "The original copy" is "dead", and didn't mind before it happened.
The crux of the problem is really the SPEED of destruction. IIRC, over the course of seven years or so our bodies flush out and replace every cell in the body. That means that essentially we are composed of entirely different matter than we were seven years ago. Because the process is gradual and slow, we don't consider this to be a personal death and resurrection, we consider ourselves to be the same person we were seven, ten, or twenty years ago, though materially we are not.
Or put another way, if we had perfect organ transplanting technology and could replace bits of ourselves as they wore out, when would we stop being us? After the first new knee-joint? Most would say no. After the first brain graft to replace that failing visual cortex? How about after the 79th brain graft, which replaces the last of the old, decaying material?
Why should replacing this process, whether it be a natural one through the course of eating and shedding old cells or an artificial one through gradual organ replacement and grafts, with an instantaneous one be any different? Surely the mere compression of time doesn't fundamentally alter what is happening.
So we are left with two choices. ONE: we do die over the course of 7 years, and we are not the same people we were 7 years ago, we are merely self-deluded copies, or TWO: we are the same people, in which case the length of time is irrelevant, and a teleported person will be as much the same person they were before, whether or not the atoms that comprise them are the same ones (teleported) or new ones with a quantum signature imposed.
As to which belief one subscribes to, that is more of a religious or philosophical discussion, but whatever belief one chooses, one must apply it consistently to the natural replacement of ourselves, and any forthcoming organ transplant technologies, as much as one would to a hypothetical teleportatioin technology, and accept the implications of said belief.
Personally, I believe I am the same person I was 10 years ago (modulo gradual personality changes), and I would have no problem teleporting myself around the universe at lightspeed if such facilities were available to me. And if I am deluding myself, I'm not deluding myself any more than all of us already are every time we look back on the myth of our own past, so either way it is a wash.
Apologies for flying off the handle. There has been a great deal of nonsense spread about on this thread, and your post (particularly the Gentoo comments) appeared to be more of the same. Your thoughtful response to my reply however indicates that I misjudged your post, your intent, and you. Sorry about that.
(ii) experts in the field disagree on this issue.
Is quite relevant. The Debian clique may have reached a consensus (though it appears even in Debian circiles that consensus is far from uniform), but in the wider arena there is clearly disagreement with their position. The Suse legal team obviously finds the GPLed version of mplayer to be perfectly legal, else they would not include it in their distribution, for example, and their are numerous other qualified opinions at odds with the self-appointed Debian clique as well. Not to say the Debian folks don't do good work... they generally do, and certainly did on the KDE/QT front when it was an issue, but an appeal to their authority is way off base given the preponderance of other qualified opinions which lean the other way. They are quite fallable (as evidenced by numerous instances of excluding one application on a particular basis while including other applications which run afoul of the very same
Appeals to authority are dangerous even when their is no dissent: consider the view of capitalism in the former Soviet block as an example. No expert in that society held that capitalism would work because of politcal dogma... even if the entire planet had been communist (and they had developed a democracy to temper communisms excesses the way the capitalist world has done, such that it could function), the appeal that "all the experts recognize that capitalism cannot work" would have been just as erroneous.
An appeal to authority, even when there is little or no dissent, remains a flawed argument. (Texts other than the one google happened to bring up first expand on this point. A logical argument as to the pros and cons of a point can either be made independently of so-called experts opinions, or it can not be made logically. The link I happened to provide unfortunately obfuscates this important point).
Looking closely at licenses may appear to be anal, and it is a pain in the arse, but it's healthy to do so.
Agreed. And I've done so. Mplayer isolates its code from the codec code via an API. Mplayer is clearly legal... whetner inclunding codec X or codec Y is may be debatable, but the simple solution is to simply compile it (or distribute a binary) without support for the questionable codec. Which the GPL allows for.
As for patents, few countries other than the United States accept or acknowledge software pantents, so the patent issue at most affects only a small subset of the internet, and can be ignored by the wider, more enlightened world. We may not be able to use certain codecs here in the States, but users in China, India, and most of Europe won't have such a limitation, and the GPL will hold there quite well.
Btw, what exactly was I slandering?
The Gentoo comment, while probably not slanderous per se, was certainly off base. They pay very close attention to licenses, and adhere to them rigorously. Which is why when one wants to emerge sun-j2sdk, one must wade through Sun's annoying (though slowly improving) webpage, click on a buch of EULA acceptance buttons, download the tarballs manually, and then run the emerge script (Which of course in turn is why almost no one installs sun's JDK and opts for blackdown or one of the others instead, in which the tarball download is automated, but that is a criticism for another day).
The fact that the mplayer people say that it is fully GPL'ed does not necessarily make it so.
It is the authors' code. The authors wrote it, and have chosen to GPL it. They are in a far stronger position to know whether or not they've chosen to GPL their code than any outside observer, no matter how much authority said observer may have in your uninformed eyes.
As for gentoo - it's good to hear they ignore nonsense like licenses. I'll recommend it to my company next time they are looking for the best way to get sued.
You are obviously a troll, a clueless fuck, or both. If you had bothered to do even a modicum of research (such as reading the mplayer license for yourself, or visiting the gentoo website, you would have found that each package is clearly and distinctly linked to the full text of their license, be it GPL, BSD, artistic, proprietary, or what have you, and the absolutely none of the software they distribute is done so without and thorough look at the licensing, and all of it is distributed in accordance to the terms of said licenses.
This isn't rocket science, but it does require a fifth grade reading level and a willingness to excersize it.
As for looking to get sued, slander seems to be the approach to that end which would complement your expressive talents the most.
a) The debian-legal people have quite a lot of respect from a lot of people, and a lot of credibility.
This is a classic "appeal to authority" and a well documented logical fallacy. I could use the same flawed argument to point out that his credibility is greater than zero (being a [former] developer of a GNU/Linux distribution), while yours (as a bitter voice from the peanut gallary) carries considerably less weight.
But that would be beside the point. Your credibility starts out precisely even with his, and is enhanced (or lost) based upon the arguments you present. In this particular thread, his arguments are more compelling than your ad homonem attack (another logical fallacy... you managed to pack two fallacies into a scant three sentences).
b) As it stands, you have ZERO credibility.
He is rational, concise, and correct in his arguments. MPlayer is GPL software, as can be verified by going to the mplayer site, downloading the software, and looking at the license. The GPL allows for binary redistribution, as does an explicit statement on the website from the developers themselves.
Who is more authoritative on the licensing terms of the software, the authors, or those flaming them? I mean, please.
The flamefest engaged on by the Debian-Legal folks was clearly based on outdated information, which apparently none of these "credible" folks bothered to update before engaging in their little spat and opting to remove an important package from their distribution. This is not the action of a group of thoughtful, intelligent people excersizing their intellectual prowess to determine the legality (or lack thereof) of a project, it is a pissing match resulting in a decision derived from personal animosity and spite... an all to frequent occurance in Debian politics, unfortunately.
As an aside, Gentoo (and the aforementioned Source Mage) both avoid all this nonsense, as they are source based distributions which simply and painlessly compile mplayer (and xine, and any number of other packages) from the most current sources, giving us the best of all possible worlds, sans the politics, flames, and buggy library mismatches. Most folks with a reasonable processor who go to a source based distro never look back.
So does paying your taxes. The Federal Government has broken many more laws than Microsoft has.
The US Government will throw you in jail (or kill you) if you do not pay taxes. Taxes are not voluntary... contributing to a criminal enterprise such as Microsoft is. Doing so of your own free will is vastly different than paying your taxes because uncle sam has a big government gun pointed at your head.
Most companies break laws just like MS does, MS is just the favorite punching bag of the Slashdot trolls.
Your ad homonem against an articulate person with whome you happen to disagree rather clearly identifies you as a troll. Indeed, your last sentance could be easily summed up by three words: Pot. Kettle. Black.
It's rather clear that you are most likely a (quite probably paid) Microsoft astroturfer to be able to type such an absurdity ("Most companies break laws just like MS does") with a straight face, and indeed one with a rather weak moral compass in implying that such a thing, were it true, would imply Microsoft's behavior were acceptable in the least. But worse, your assertion isn't even true at all. Most companies do not break the law...the vast majority of enterprises operate well within the law (if not always ethically... our laws allow for a lot of unethical but legal behavior... but even with such loose ethical restraints Microsoft couldn't keep within legal boundries, and now stands as a convicted monopolist who bought off an unelected administration cheap and managed thereby to escape justice, and likely put the nail in the coffin of any American competativeness in the field of software in the not too terribly distant future. Monopolies, particularly those who consider themselves above the law, do not foster innovation or competetiveness).
In addition, even if most companies did violate the law, that makes it neither right, nor excusable, nor appropriate to support such enterprises. Thankfully the Enrons, WorldComs, and Microsofts of the world, while very large and very corrupt, are not the majority. If that ever changes take a good look around, because you're watching the end of your civilization.
GPL - Free as in herpes
Identifies your stance vis-a-vis free (and certain to remain free) software rather clearly, doesn't it?
2. In terms of Java, Mono could prevent Java from finally attaining a foothold in the Linux world. Microsoft is taking advantage of Sun's failures to support and actively promote Java on Linux.
Sun is doing a fine job of that all on their own. The don't need Mono,.NET, or anyone else to marginalize Java... with the hoops they make one jump through just to install their JVM they are doing it to themselves.
How, you ask? It is their rediculous licensing nonsense. I'm not talking BSD license vs. GPL vs. Sun's "community" license (though there are valid criticisms along those lines), I'm talking about the cumbersome hide and seek one must go through on their website just to find the 'click through' EULA before one can even begin to download, much less install, Sun's Java JDK (or JRE, or documentation). Instead of simply being able to type
'emerge sun-j2sdk'
and have the download, compile, and installation procede automatically (as happens with virtually every other piece of software of any interest), I get an error message saying essentially 'please go to Sun's website, click through the licensing crap, and manually download such and such a tarball (and it is not always obvious that such and such a link links to such and such a tarball, although the site has gotten much better recently), copy said download into/usr/portage/distfiles, and then rerun the emerge command.
Given a choice between jumping through those irritating (and manual) hoops, and installing something else (e.g. blackdown) that doesn't require such nonsense, I'll choose the something else every time.
Does anyone at Sun have a clue how many people such nonsense turn off to the product they are presumably trying to have so widely adopted? It would certainly appear not.
FreeBSD does a great job at this. Gentoo I guess, too.
Yes, Gentoo portage is based on the FreeBSD ports system. Another FreeBSD user called portage "ports the way it should have been." The ports system was one of the truly impressive things about FreeBSD when I used it last, and portage is quite good in its own right... sufficiently so that preference is probably more a question of personal taste than technical merit at this point.
Both make keeping up to date trivially easy (though I do clone my working partition onto a spare set just in case I munge something up... think of it as an instantly accessible backup)
(But you cannot expect Joe Anyone to upgrade an entire system from sources, just think of the time needed)
Two minor points
1) one can install Gentoo from a 'stage 3' (precompiled) tarball, optimized for most common hardware platforms. Then only additional packages need to be compiled (using the extremely simple 'emerge' command, or a GUI frontend thereto).
2) systems can come preinstalled (with compilation done at the factory as part of a 1 or 2 day burn-in).
Frankly, I think a user could be persuaded to install from source, if the install program does all the interactive questioning at the beginning and end, and lets a user walk away from the system for a day while it works. Ideally with an "estimated time left" clock somewhere on the display (as a console screen saver perhaps) letting a quick glance tell them what is left.
In the scripts I've written for where I work, this is how it is done. All of the questions about network addresses and other configuration issues are asked upfront, while messages and final interactive tasks (editing/etc/rc.conf, setting the root password) are done at the very end. I routinely walk away from machines that will be compiling for a day or more, because I prefer not to install from precompiled stage 3 tarballs, but rather from stage 1 tarballs, bootstrapping the system myself and insuring all of the compilation takes place on the target system.
But not everyone is required to be as pedantic about it as I typically am, so the install from binary and maintain via source option is available.
We MUST have easy and quick upgradability, because as we progress further along the exponential curve of technological change, we will be more and more inclined to upgrade more and more frequently, until it becomes a morning ritual, or perhaps at some point even an hourly cron job. Ports under FreeBSD, and portage under Gentoo, are big steps in this direction.
A two year old system is hardly comparable to Windows 3.11 - even when Office 2000 became available.
Actually, it is more comparable than you think. Free software developers and users reside much further along the exponential technological curve than proprietary system vendors and their customers. I can (and have been known to) upgrade my Gentoo system every day if I wish, and get signficantly new and better software each time.
This isn't to say you have to remain completely current to run reasonably current and capable software... running Red Hat 8.0 from a few months ago would have probably sufficed (and been analogous to your Windows 98 example), but he wasn't willing to do that either.
Of course, to those who do keep current (and do so very painlessly if they're running Source Mage or Gentoo) go the rewards of having the most current and capable software. In an environment where progress is so rapid that a week, or even a day, can make a big difference, that is nothing to sneeze at.
A couple of years in the GNU/Linux world is easily similiar to 10 years in the Microsoft world, perhaps even longer. A two year old binary distribution such as Red Hat 7.2 is hopelessly out of date when it comes to running the current crop of demanding video applications, and JWZ should have been competent enough to recognize and deal with that simple fact. Instead he chose to vilify and insult those who had graciously given him their software, with nary a constructive criticism to be found anywhere within the rant. He is an ass, pure and simple (even if I happen to agree with his opinion of theming).
I've said it before, some of the Linux aficionados suffer from severe Versionitis.
Free software developers and users are much farther up the Exponential Technology Curve than proprietary vendors and their customers are.
A two year change in GNU/Linux is roughly equivelent to a 10 year change in Windows, for example, so expecting a two year old distribution with outdated libraries and an outdated kernel to be able to run the most current software, that relies on cutting edge kernel features and support, and newer, less buggy libraries is akin to expecting the current crop of MS software to run on the operating system they were selling ten years ago (Windows 3.11 I believe, though I may be off by a year or two).
Why can't he use 7.2 if it works for him?
Because 7.2 doesn't support the software he wants to run. The versions of the libraries are too old and either lack support completely, or are too rudimentary in their support, to do what he wants, hell, even the very kernel is quite possibly too old to do what he wants.
If you want to keep up with such changes in a reasonably painless manner, run Source Mage or Gentoo and do your updates incrementally once a week or so... or accept that you'll need to upgrade your system every six months or so (in a signficant way), or decide you are going to stick with something tried, true, but staid, and stop complaining when the current state of the art has moved beyond your personal technological horizon. How you leapfrog your technology and your updates is up to you, but insisting on running a hopelessly outdated version of a binary distribution because you don't want to upgrade, and then vilifying the developers because your outdated system won't run the shiny new programs you want to play with defys logic and rationality, not to mention even a semblance of social grace.
I am so SICK and TIRED of people mistaking the point of open source in this way!
You are the only one "mistaking" anything here. Free software is about freedom, freedom of choice, freedom to use (and reuse, modify, etc.) the software that runs and orders much of our lives.
If someone gives you a gift you have four choices, three of which are acceptable and one of which is completely contemptable.
1) accept the gift (graciously or with constructive criticism) 2) return the gift (with or without constructive criticism) 3) accept the gift and modify it to better suit your needs. 4) bitterly lambast the gift giver for their presumption in offering Your Holiness such a shoddy and unworthy gift, do so publicly, loudly, and with few criticisms even remotely applicable to the gift you've received.
JWZ did the latter (4), and deserves the contempt he has so richly earned, both for his lack of insight and comprehension of the very technology he is lambasting, and his lack of manners in doing so.
I am not a developer. I am not a programmer. I do not have the time, skills, or inclination to write a media player from scratch, or even fix one of the many broken ones.
You may not be, but JWZ is (or at least is leveraging his reputation of having once been a competent programmer), and instead of doing something he is perfectly capable of (or at least represents himself of being capable of), and for which free software and open source are specifically designed and intended, he has chosen instead to publicly vilify those who have given him a gift.
He is not only incompetent (staying married to an outdated distro and complaining he can't get current software to run seemlessly with it with no effort, something akin to complaining about the lack of support for MS Office 2000 on his old Windows 3.11 machine), he is rude, obnoxious, and above all wrong in almost all of his assertions, and if he had any honor he would, quite frankly, be very ashamed at having ever put up such a diatribe in a public place (which, in case you missed it, is exactly what a web page, even a personal one, is).
1) What WMs work with what video programs. 2) What libraries are required. 3) What version of gcc you used *G* 4) What flags are set, where to set them, and what's "right" for a wide range of systems, say, a few nVIDIA and ATI systems on AMD and Intel chips, and/or any specific motherboard-related issues. 5) All the other variables I've overlooked, but that you didn't, that make the difference between "It Works" and "It Doesn't".
You don't need to know all of that if you install Gentoo. While Gentoo isn't the only answer, nor is it for everyone, it is in my experience, for those wishing to do serious video work with the current state of the art software (read: most recent bug fixes and features) without comprimising other capabilities (e.g. open office, mozilla support, etc. etc) the easiest approach.
Others will doubtlessly offer or make available online FAQs and recipes for their favorite distributions, but I doubt any of them compare to the simplicity of a single, two word command typed at the command line.
The installation of Gentoo seems daunting to those who like to choose from menus and click 'yes', and it is a very fair criticism that the installation (mostly manual, but with excellent online, step-by-step documentation, and very easy to script up yourself as I have done where I work) lacks the aesthetics and ease of Mandrake, Suse, and Red Hat, but once that is done maintaining currency with the current state of the art is extraordinarilly simple.
Gentoo makes compiling and installing software trivial. In short, the answer to all of your questions above boils down to:
emerge, a portage command, will resolve all of the library and runtime dependencies for you, compile and install them all (and the specific versions you need, if any), and then download the current mplayer sources, compile and install them for you. Once the compile is done, you're ready to start watching movies.
It really doesn't get any simpler than that (attempts at making things like this simpler with other distros has resulted in very unreliable upgrade procedures, and, quite frankly, don't work well. This approach of getting the sources from the horses mouth, so to speak, compiling them as they were intended against the currently installed library base, optimized for the local hardware, is really ideal. Simplifying this procedure to a single two-word command was ingenious.)
I've done this on probably 50 machines, of varying architectures and hardware capabilities, ranging from hand-held, touch screen tablets to laptops, desktops, and servers, with everything from pentium mmx chips to dual athlon 2400+ MP systems (warning: the slower ships will take days to compile everything!) and it has always worked painlessly and flawlessly.
So I say embrace the criticism. Take a deep breath. It can only make Linux stronger and better in the long run.
It would if the criticism were in the least constructive, and in the least relevant to the current state of the art.
It is neither, and speaking as one who both CREATES and WATCHES video on his computer using exclusively free software running under GNU/Linux, I can unequivocably say that whatever respect I had for this individual is gone and unlikely ever to return.
He insists on using an outdated distribution, gets upset when new software hasn't been backported to it, gets upset at the idea he might actually have to (gasp!) compile it himself, gets upset when people quite correctly point out that he needs to use a distrubition newer than the one he has clearly decided to stay married to, etc. etc.
It is like complaining that MS Office 2000 won't run under Windows 3.11... and he deserves all of the derision he is getting, here on slashdot and elsewhere.
Hint to the uninformed: run the current Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake, or what have you, or, if you really want good performance and the ability to painlessly run the current state of the art software, try Gentoo, an excellent source-based distro that automates the process of compiling (and recompiling) so much so that it is not only as easy as installing an RPM, it yields a much better, more optimized, and generally more compatible and useful result.
But do not expect to be running current, state of the art software on two-year old, obsolete binary distrubitions, and do not expect any sympathy, or respect for your rants, if you insist on doing so. Judging the current state of the art based on a dated distro's inability to cope with current code is neither accurate, nor fair, nor deserving of the sort of attention this particularly uninsightful rant posing as a review has gotten.
JWZ should have known better and has, instead, willfully and deliberately, chosen not to. Blaming others and looking gift horses in the mouth for his own stubborn incompetence is extraordinarilly disingenuous and contemptable... which describes my newly formed opinion of the man, at least when he is speaking on this subject, to a T: contempt.
...that introduces accountability into the concept, which is not what p2p-users want when they're trading copyrighted works...
You can have accountability without losing anonymouty. Simply use a double-blind, GPG-signed online alias system. People can verify that SlayMe's files are always of good quality, and that the pending download has been signed by SlayMe, without knowing that SlayMe is actually Snot Nosed Kidd of 123 Baywater St, Baltimore, Maryland.
OTOH everyone will know that SlagHeap's downloads are all crap, and that he probably works for Hiliary Rosen of the RIAA. Unsigned content would likewise probably be ignored, at least until someone trusted signs it with their aliases private key.
No doubt there will be p2p clients that you can configure not to display a file if there are too many hosts for it, if it's only shared by a few users it's less likely to be part of this spoofing attack. Expect several even more creative ways to filter out suspect files/hosts to appea.
Modify the protocol to send the signature first. Each GPG signature signs TWO things:
1) an initial 'signature' plus several bytes scattered more or less randomly throughout the first N MB of the song, and an md5sum of the rest of the song
2) the entire file.
You verify the signature at the beginning, if it is trusted, you download the rest of the song, verifying those 'signed' bytes along the way. If one of them doesn't match, abort the download as suspect immediately. Once the entire song is downloaded, the signature is verified against the result to insure the entire thing is OK.
Even if the thugs cut and paste the signature onto one of their bogus tracks, they won't know which bytes throughout the rest of the track are being checked, and the final result will certainly fail the final signature test.
This would also help protect against worms, viruses, etc.
Most importantly, GPG signatures could be related to anonymous online 'handles' rather than actual persons, thereby maintaining anonymouty while still permitting an effective web of trust to form.
For my work I prefer the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (you can make any derivative works you like so long as they, too, are Free, and you must cite me as the original author). Essentially Public Domain without the ability to take and not give, and with the requirement you do not plagerize.
If the license lasts longer than the patents mentioned then we are pretty much in the clear
Unfortunately, fonts can be COPYRIGHTED!!!
Yes, you too can own a life+70 year (or 90-year corporate) monopoly, compliments of your bought-and-paid for congress critters and a cowardly Supreme Court that chooses quarterly economic expediency over constitutionality. You too can own a government entitlement to a very long-term monopoly on the very shape of the letters of the Roman alphabet.
A friend of mine does computer consultancy for law firms, among them a thug, excuse me, lawyer, who makes his living enforcing a copyright on a particlar font (I don't recall which one). How does this enforcement work? Not through the courts, as one might expect, but more in terms of a protection racket shakedown: "remove your fonts and pay us X for past violations, keep your fonts and pay us X+Y for a license of some specified term, or we'll make your defense cost more than your net worth."
Copyright AND patents are destroying the freedom of information exchange, and will likely obliterate it within our lifetimes unless some serious reform is undertaken, something that does not appear too likely in todays political climate, which has recently come to resemble corporate fascism more than even a semblance of democracy...but that is a discussion for another day.
In other words, the licensing terms and term are important, and if this proves as benevolent as it first appears, this is a very, very good thing for free software.
Is it just me, or did you completely lose the point of my comment?
I think he may have, but I think you have missed something in his reply as well (see below).
Posts are stored on a central server
This is incorrect. Posts are stored on distributed servers, replicated over time. If I use nntp.mynews.com, then my post first resides on nntp.mynews.com and is forwarded to other peers throughout the world, probably over the course of the next day or so. In this sense USENET is distributed.
The heirarchy is in the newsgroup naming conventions and organization, not in the servers themselves (unlike DNS for example, in which the servers themselves are heiarchical). There is no "central" usenet server to disconnect.
User accounts are generally served by identifying a user by his or her email address, and GPG signatures can be used to verify identity beyond that. This IMHO is a huge plus over sites like slashdot.
Anonymouty is served very nicely by double-blind remailing services (cf. cypherpunks et. al.)
Signal to noise ratio issues are addressed quite effectively through kill lists (and hot lists), and can be even more effectively addressed with Spam Assassin type technologies and Beysian filtering.
Your other points are correct however: there are rules for adding forums (except in the alt. heirarchy, which is a free for all), there is no support for collaborative filtering (though it could be tacked on the way GPG/PGP was... with an independent protocol or mechanism), and articles which are not archived by places like groups.google.com are lost over time.
The ADVANTAGE of USENET is that NO ONE can claim copyright and take responsibility (though there are moderated groups, the moderator could in theory be anonymous), making an asinine law such as the one proposed in Finland impossible to enforce, or even interpret sensibly. This IMHO is a very Good Thing, and why you are so very correct in pointing out that web forums such as slashdot and avsforum are such a step backwards.
Not that it isn't wonderful... but security in the OSS world has yet to be proven.
This is only true in the strictest scientific sense, in that nothing is ever "proven", nor can it be. Not evolution (despite a mountain of evidence so high only the foolish with an agenda ignore it), not even gravity itself, something we all count on and take for granted every day. In science, nothing is ever "proven," and always open to question if new evidence arises.
However, in the sense of having a "proven track record", the only context in which a discussion about security makes any sense, you are flat out wrong.
Open source and free software apply the classic scientific method of open publication and wide peer review. Do errors sneak through? You bet, just as they do in science. But, just as in science, they are found at some point and corrected, because they can be reviewed and eventually will be. Contrast the success of chemistry versus old school alchemy, a system based on secret formulas and closed procedures, and you get a very real sense of the advantages of free software and open source versus proprietary software.
Or, simply contrast the security of Microsoft Windows versus OS X (a proprietary system built upon the framework of a an open system, namely FreeBSD), FreeBSD itself, and GNU/Linux. None are perfect, but only one has a dismal and provenly horrible track record (Windows), while the other three have proven and quite strong, though naturally imperfect, track records.
You make a number of reasonable points ("Can you be sure that each and every code change is reviewed by competent individuals trained and experienced in security and with a comprehensive knowledge of the architectural issues with the work product?") and intersperse it with a great deal of FUD (e.g. "following great developmental practices, ones that are only enforceable in a proprietary world...", something which really doesn't exist). One of the features of free software is that it can follow any proprietary design and development practice it wishes (don't like what the current team is doing? Fork the code and develop it in house using whatever proprietary methodology you like. Under the GPL you can even use the result and not share, so long as you keep it in house. Distribute it and you must distribute the code, but that in no way restricts or limits your development, design or implementation methodologies). The entire gamut of proprietary software development methodologies are available to free software, if free software developers wish to use them. However, the corallary doesn't apply: proprietary development methods are largely cut off from many of the proven methods inherent in free software design, not least of which is scientific peer review. Not by a few hand chosen experts, but by anyone with the knowledge and desire to test the results. Science has been conducted very successfully using this method for centuries, while the closed methods (limited or no review, "valuable-secrets" bearing a closer resemblance to old world alchemy than modern science) have been proven again and again to be seriously flawed.
Indeed even your "can you be sure" question is a bit disingenuous... as no one can ever be sure that another has done anything related to the code, indeed, even security certifications don't give you that kind of assurance. One thing we can be certain of, whether we're discussing the notorious and well documented lack of security in Microsoft's proprietary products, or the glacial slowness with which Sun Microsystems would address security holes in Sun OS prior to their being announced in BugTraq, is that, based upon the historical record, open source and free software are vastly more responsive to addressing security concerns when they arise, and that they are, for whatever reason, quite a bit less vulnerable than their proprietary counterparts to attack. Most reasonable people look at these facts (e.g. IIS is cracked much more often, and is vastly more vulnerable to worms, than Apache is, despite Apache's greater popularity and wider deployment on the web), and even when personal knowledge is lacking apply occams razer in attributing the likely cause of free software's superior security to the much wider exposure and perusal its code gets, vs. that of it less secure, proprietary counterparts. There are some, with an agenda to push, who will argue that it is the popularity of the less widely deployed IIS, rather than Apache's superior, open design and implimentation, that is responsible for this disparity, but those looking in from outside generally find such arguments quite laughable, and rightly so.
In any event, whether or not I can be absolutely certain someone competent has audited a particular line of code, I can be very certain that the liklihood of a line of free code having been looked over and even audited at least once, perhaps many times, is much, much greater than the liklihood of a similiar line of proprietary code having been so examined. And in a world where certaintly is inherently impossible, that probability is all we have, and that probability quite dramatically favors open source and free software.
Like I said killed OSS projects are bad, mmmkay? But, a single, united, SUPPORTED p2p network is (maybe) worth it.
You have just expressed a wry gladness that the project was killed, so that your convinience may be better served by having to look in only one place to find a file you are looking for, and with the next breath essentially said "I feel your pain" when you've made it rather clear you do not.
Not only that, but your grand One P2P to Rule Them All and Bind Them will be a propriatary, commercial venture, subject to all the long term instability that implies, such as cut budgests, etc.), inaccessibility (no guarantee it will be compatible with anyone else, limiting your trading to just other mac players, a very small percentage of online file sharers), licensing restrictions (which may or may not be draconian, but either way, where's your choice gone?), possible monitoring capabilities (it is one network, after all, with likely only one approved client), and (seemingly remote at this time, but that will change on a dime if political or economic pressures come to bear) possibly DRM technology built in.
Not to mention it will be a single point of failure. One good lawsuit from the media cartels, a single injunction, and you are out of business with no alternatives to turn to, and your own vendor prohibiting anyone else from offering you one.
Welcome to the world of proprietary software. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Apple is a much nicer Master than Microsoft, and both their equipment and software are superior in every way, but they remain a master, and you a serf subject to their corporate whims. Furthermore, as occasional actions like this have demonstrated time and time again historically, there is absolutely no guarantee that Apple will remain the kinder Master in the future. At some point, these sorts of restrictions make it clear even to the most subserviant that no amount of convinience is worth this kind of tradeoff, and that freedom actually is something worth a modicum of effort to achieve, maintain, and insure.
I find it odd that even though the story has nothing to do with microsoft the company still gets mentioned. Will the linux community ever get over their penis envy of the more successful counterpart? I doubt it.
As do I, and for good reason.
When Microsoft stops trying to take away people's choice as to whether to use their shoddy products, GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, or anything else. Thus far their track record has been to denigrate and lie about Linux and its capabilities, to call it Unamerican to share software freely, to engage in virtually every illegal anticompetative practice known to man to keep it from being preinstalled on hardware for those who wish to purchase it, and now, finally, to leverage their desktop monopoly and the clout it grants them into redesigning the hardware BIOS (c.f trusted computing and Palladium) as a prelude to making it impossible, and under the DMCA possibly illegal, to run any non-Microsoft product on an amd/intel platform, then perhaps I, and others who dislike them, will feel some inclination toward cutting them some slack. But not until then.
Add to that the well documented and appalling shoddiness of their products, which have left naval vessels dead in the water (literally, at sea), led to such a plethora of worms and viruses that the hysterical users of their shoddy products have taken to legislatively labelling computer system crackers as "terrorists", and the quip about not wanting a Microsoft product operating on one's brain is not only humorious, it is highly apropos. Ironically, on the mass level, Microsoft's product, and its astonishingly ineffectual security, has operated on most people's minds... leaving in its wake bad legislation that makes many trivial forms of computer crime now punishable with sentances longer than that a rapist or murderer can expect and wearing the hysteria-insighting label of "terrorism."
Until Microsoft ceases and desists in such behavior (anti-competative, thuggish and dishonest practices... I think it is too much to expect them to stop producing shoddy products, though if there were any real human beings working there they would at least acknowledge responsibility for their incompetence and try to repair some small amount of the damage they've wrought) they will continue to get the disrespect, ire, and mockery they deserve, from Macintosh, FreeBSD, and GNU/Linux enthusiasts alike. And rightly so.
The only requirement is that the server implements the Liberty Aliance protocol standards. I _think_ one can make an open source server that implements those standards as well.
If Sun were really smart, that is exactly what they do: impliment a free software/open source reference of the protocol.
In fact, they would be well advised to GPL such an implimentation? Why?
The GPL would prevent competitors *cough* Microsoft *cough* from incorporating Sun's code into their proprietary products without first negotiating and obtaining a separate license under whatever terms Sun wishes to impose (they get all the negotiating power with proprietary vendors that they have now).
The GPL would allow its inclusion in any free software products. Perhaps, under FreeBSD and Apache as a separate module, to avoid licensing collisions. This would give the free software community a decentralized authentication framework, and would mean widespread adoption by anyone and everyone not firmly in the MS IIS camp (most reasonably savvy people).
While I do not believe anyone is entitled to obtaining privately funded and written software for free, I do think a move like this by Sun would be strategicly brilliant in getting their standard quickly and widely adopted, quickly and widely enough to prevent Microsoft from owning online authentication. I suspect if Sun doesn't do this (or spin off a well funded group to do this), their liberty alliance will fade much like java has... where many java websites fail to work with anything other than Internet Explorer under Windows because the java they run relies on Microsoft's jvm, and Sun's jvm isn't really any less of a hassle for developers and surfers to obtain.
(As an aside: based on Sun's treatment of Java, I doubt they are that smart. Having to click through license agreements to download and install a jvm, vs. simply having to type 'emerge somejdk' for everyone elses jvm, means most people install someone else's jdk if at all possible due to the hassle factor alone. Not good when you're trying for widespread adoption.)
Slashdot Mirror
Let's say a "few" translates to "two," so you're talking about "two hours" vs. "two days."
"Few" in general parlence refers to greater than two, with an ambiguous upper bound. While few could, according to Merriem-Webster, refer to 'two' items (according to other dictionaries it does not), it is virtually never used in the written or spoken language to refer to less than three.
Furthermore, the assumption you make appears grossly intended to exaggerate what was a truthful statement in order to imply it was not.
On my Dual Athlon 2400+ MP it takes between 8 and 10 hours to compile my usual installation. On a Pentium machine I have the same copilation took approximately 5 days, on a PII/333 it took a good 3 and a half days.
Obviously CPU speed isn't the only factor. The Pentiums has a scant 64-128 MB of memory while the Dual Athlon has 1 GB of memory, the Pentiums are single processor machines, while the Athlon is dual processor, and so on. However, the real world use of the machines does in fact support a performance increase of 5-12x, which is significant.
OTOH my dual Athlons vs. my dual PIII 1GHz boxes, both with 1 GB of memory, shows the 2400+ machines compiling code in aboout 8 hours which takes the dual PIII boxes about a day and a half. So even there, I'm seeing a speed increase of 3-4x in real world (non-benchmarked) usage, at least with respect to initial system compilation and installation.
All of this is done with Gentoo 1.4-rc2, using gcc 3.2.x
Most importantly, it keeps shops in the Apple fold. One argument that people could make is that if they have to go with pc/linux servers, then they might as well go with the desktops too, again to simplify maintenance. This way, Apple ensures that people stay 100% Mac and keep the M$/Linux infiltration at bay.
... indeed, once people see beyond their partisan prejudices it becomes rather apparant the Apple, FreeBSD, and GNU/Linux are allies, promoting consumer choice and competition, and all being threatened by an illegal yet government condoned, convicted monpolist.
... they compete with Win2000 servers, and allow those unable to yet make the leap to free software to at least retain some control of their computing environment, free from the reign and vagaries of a convicted monopolist, and free from the chronic security problems of that same monopolist. This is a smart thing for Apple to do, and something which really shouldn't bother any of the free software or open source advocates all that much.
This is a very good point, though really it is to keep Micro$osft at bay. GNU/Linux is really no threat to Apple at all
Apple is first and foremost a hardware company. If people started moving to GNU/Linux or FreeBSD in droves (perhaps because they become aware of the importance of the freedoms free software grants, or simply because they like the $0 cost), Apple still has the option of simply freeing the source code to their own operating system. While this doesn't jibe with Apple's current strategy, it isn't antithetical to their business model the way it would be for a monopolist like Microsoft (withness Microsoft's current "shared source" anti-free software disinformation campaign. Their only hope is to widely decieve the world's decision makers, a possible but increasingly unlikely proposition).
The Apple servers are important because it allows entities more comfortable purchasing proprietary corporate products over free software solutions the ability to do so without having to contend with the deliberate incompatabilities that Microsoft introduces, and will inevitably introduce again, thereby creating pressure to move to the Microsoft desktop as well. A GNU/Linux or FreeBSD server is no threat to Apple in this regard (both work fine together with Apple desktops, and neither introduces deliberate incompatabilities or attempts to coerce its clients into adopting the same system as their desktop), but there are plenty of old school Apple shops that still haven't grocked free software and its advantages, and would ultimately feel more comfortable paying for a shoddy Win2000 server than a free software or open source equivelent. That this is an ignornant or foolish stance for them to take is not at issue (it is clearly silly, but nevertheless remains all too common), that said shops not be lulled into the Microsoft trap is, at least from Apple's perspective.
These servers don't compete with GNU/Linux and FreeBSD servers all that much IMHO
Why re-invent the wheel? Why not just adopt Apple's guidelines as-is?
... by requiring users to hold down the apple key while pressing the mouse button for operations that in the UNIX or Windoze world would use the right mouse button).
... so even the X Window System, which so many love to deride and hate, offers an improvement over Apple and Windoze.
Because Apple's 1 button mouse is an affront to humankind.
Seriously, Apple's interface is nice, and they will likely borrow a plethora of good ideas from Apple, but they should not adopt their standard "as is" without question. There are bozo aspects to Apple's interface, the one-button mouse being the most obvious (and before you suggest Apple doesn't need additional mouse buttons, think again. They've had to cobble on the equivelent functionality in a much less intuitive fashion
Finally, they can have my single clock middle-button paste feature I've enjoyed under X all these years when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers. Windows and Apple do not make cutting and pasting text nearly as easy as X
Focus follows mouse is another example of a feature common in X window managers, lacking in Windoze, and certainly not the default (if available at all) under Apple OS.
So, while Apple has much good to offer, they are not the be-all, end-all of GUI interfaces, anymore than Microsoft, KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment, or any other particular entity is. They come to the table with a great deal of experience, and a great deal to offer, but God(tm) they are not.
Is that how many hertz it has? I still have a 333 and it works just fine. Can somebody tell me why I'd need a higher numbers of hertz?
... the chips are generally a little faster than the number would indicate. The actual chip probably runs at 2.5 GHz or so (my 2400+ MPs run at 2.0 GHz).
3000+ means its integer and floating point calculations are roughly on par with a 3000 MHz Intel P4. AMD has actually been quite good in being conservative with these numbers
As to why you would want a faster machine, well, that depends. If all you do is surf the net, read email, run gnucash to balance your checkbook, and do a little word processing then you're probably fine with what you have. If you have the misfortune of running Microsoft, you are quite possibly better off not upgrading, given those tasks.
If, on the other hand, you like to render animations using blender, povray, or what have you, or like to capture and convert video footage (cinelerra, kino, dvgrab, and transcode), or enjoy running an optimized, source based distribution such as Source Mage or Gentoo, then being able to compile your entire system, complete with open office, kde, mozilla, and so in in a few hours, rather than a few days, is kinda nice.
All that having been said, my firewall remains a Gentoo box on a k6, so older, slower hardware is by no means worthless with GNU/Linux around, even if the newer, sexier, faster hardware really shines under FreeBSD and Linux.
The crux is, as you point out, the destruction of "the original copy" in the teleportation process. The implicit point in your argument is that the death of one of the copies matters. My question to that point is: To whom? Me-before-the-teleportation doesn't care - I will live on in the copy. The teleported copy is alive, so it doesn't matter to it. "The original copy" is "dead", and didn't mind before it happened.
The crux of the problem is really the SPEED of destruction. IIRC, over the course of seven years or so our bodies flush out and replace every cell in the body. That means that essentially we are composed of entirely different matter than we were seven years ago. Because the process is gradual and slow, we don't consider this to be a personal death and resurrection, we consider ourselves to be the same person we were seven, ten, or twenty years ago, though materially we are not.
Or put another way, if we had perfect organ transplanting technology and could replace bits of ourselves as they wore out, when would we stop being us? After the first new knee-joint? Most would say no. After the first brain graft to replace that failing visual cortex? How about after the 79th brain graft, which replaces the last of the old, decaying material?
Why should replacing this process, whether it be a natural one through the course of eating and shedding old cells or an artificial one through gradual organ replacement and grafts, with an instantaneous one be any different? Surely the mere compression of time doesn't fundamentally alter what is happening.
So we are left with two choices. ONE: we do die over the course of 7 years, and we are not the same people we were 7 years ago, we are merely self-deluded copies, or TWO: we are the same people, in which case the length of time is irrelevant, and a teleported person will be as much the same person they were before, whether or not the atoms that comprise them are the same ones (teleported) or new ones with a quantum signature imposed.
As to which belief one subscribes to, that is more of a religious or philosophical discussion, but whatever belief one chooses, one must apply it consistently to the natural replacement of ourselves, and any forthcoming organ transplant technologies, as much as one would to a hypothetical teleportatioin technology, and accept the implications of said belief.
Personally, I believe I am the same person I was 10 years ago (modulo gradual personality changes), and I would have no problem teleporting myself around the universe at lightspeed if such facilities were available to me. And if I am deluding myself, I'm not deluding myself any more than all of us already are every time we look back on the myth of our own past, so either way it is a wash.
Apologies for flying off the handle. There has been a great deal of nonsense spread about on this thread, and your post (particularly the Gentoo comments) appeared to be more of the same. Your thoughtful response to my reply however indicates that I misjudged your post, your intent, and you. Sorry about that.
... they generally do, and certainly did on the KDE/QT front when it was an issue, but an appeal to their authority is way off base given the preponderance of other qualified opinions which lean the other way. They are quite fallable (as evidenced by numerous instances of excluding one application on a particular basis while including other applications which run afoul of the very same
... even if the entire planet had been communist (and they had developed a democracy to temper communisms excesses the way the capitalist world has done, such that it could function), the appeal that "all the experts recognize that capitalism cannot work" would have been just as erroneous.
... whetner inclunding codec X or codec Y is may be debatable, but the simple solution is to simply compile it (or distribute a binary) without support for the questionable codec. Which the GPL allows for.
(ii) experts in the field disagree on this issue.
Is quite relevant. The Debian clique may have reached a consensus (though it appears even in Debian circiles that consensus is far from uniform), but in the wider arena there is clearly disagreement with their position. The Suse legal team obviously finds the GPLed version of mplayer to be perfectly legal, else they would not include it in their distribution, for example, and their are numerous other qualified opinions at odds with the self-appointed Debian clique as well. Not to say the Debian folks don't do good work
Appeals to authority are dangerous even when their is no dissent: consider the view of capitalism in the former Soviet block as an example. No expert in that society held that capitalism would work because of politcal dogma
An appeal to authority, even when there is little or no dissent, remains a flawed argument. (Texts other than the one google happened to bring up first expand on this point. A logical argument as to the pros and cons of a point can either be made independently of so-called experts opinions, or it can not be made logically. The link I happened to provide unfortunately obfuscates this important point).
Looking closely at licenses may appear to be anal, and it is a pain in the arse, but it's healthy to do so.
Agreed. And I've done so. Mplayer isolates its code from the codec code via an API. Mplayer is clearly legal
As for patents, few countries other than the United States accept or acknowledge software pantents, so the patent issue at most affects only a small subset of the internet, and can be ignored by the wider, more enlightened world. We may not be able to use certain codecs here in the States, but users in China, India, and most of Europe won't have such a limitation, and the GPL will hold there quite well.
Btw, what exactly was I slandering?
The Gentoo comment, while probably not slanderous per se, was certainly off base. They pay very close attention to licenses, and adhere to them rigorously. Which is why when one wants to emerge sun-j2sdk, one must wade through Sun's annoying (though slowly improving) webpage, click on a buch of EULA acceptance buttons, download the tarballs manually, and then run the emerge script (Which of course in turn is why almost no one installs sun's JDK and opts for blackdown or one of the others instead, in which the tarball download is automated, but that is a criticism for another day).
I fail to see why "appeal to authority" is a flawed argument.
You obviously have no clue with respect to logic, so allow me to elucidate:
argumentum ad verecundiam (appeal to authority)
The fact that the mplayer people say that it is fully GPL'ed does not necessarily make it so.
It is the authors' code. The authors wrote it, and have chosen to GPL it. They are in a far stronger position to know whether or not they've chosen to GPL their code than any outside observer, no matter how much authority said observer may have in your uninformed eyes.
As for gentoo - it's good to hear they ignore nonsense like licenses. I'll recommend it to my company next time they are looking for the best way to get sued.
You are obviously a troll, a clueless fuck, or both. If you had bothered to do even a modicum of research (such as reading the mplayer license for yourself, or visiting the gentoo website, you would have found that each package is clearly and distinctly linked to the full text of their license, be it GPL, BSD, artistic, proprietary, or what have you, and the absolutely none of the software they distribute is done so without and thorough look at the licensing, and all of it is distributed in accordance to the terms of said licenses.
This isn't rocket science, but it does require a fifth grade reading level and a willingness to excersize it.
As for looking to get sued, slander seems to be the approach to that end which would complement your expressive talents the most.
I think it's more of:
... you managed to pack two fallacies into a scant three sentences).
... an all to frequent occurance in Debian politics, unfortunately.
a) The debian-legal people have quite a lot of respect from a lot of people, and a lot of credibility.
This is a classic "appeal to authority" and a well documented logical fallacy. I could use the same flawed argument to point out that his credibility is greater than zero (being a [former] developer of a GNU/Linux distribution), while yours (as a bitter voice from the peanut gallary) carries considerably less weight.
But that would be beside the point. Your credibility starts out precisely even with his, and is enhanced (or lost) based upon the arguments you present. In this particular thread, his arguments are more compelling than your ad homonem attack (another logical fallacy
b) As it stands, you have ZERO credibility.
He is rational, concise, and correct in his arguments. MPlayer is GPL software, as can be verified by going to the mplayer site, downloading the software, and looking at the license. The GPL allows for binary redistribution, as does an explicit statement on the website from the developers themselves.
Who is more authoritative on the licensing terms of the software, the authors, or those flaming them? I mean, please.
The flamefest engaged on by the Debian-Legal folks was clearly based on outdated information, which apparently none of these "credible" folks bothered to update before engaging in their little spat and opting to remove an important package from their distribution. This is not the action of a group of thoughtful, intelligent people excersizing their intellectual prowess to determine the legality (or lack thereof) of a project, it is a pissing match resulting in a decision derived from personal animosity and spite
As an aside, Gentoo (and the aforementioned Source Mage) both avoid all this nonsense, as they are source based distributions which simply and painlessly compile mplayer (and xine, and any number of other packages) from the most current sources, giving us the best of all possible worlds, sans the politics, flames, and buggy library mismatches. Most folks with a reasonable processor who go to a source based distro never look back.
It's benefits a criminal organization.
... contributing to a criminal enterprise such as Microsoft is. Doing so of your own free will is vastly different than paying your taxes because uncle sam has a big government gun pointed at your head.
... our laws allow for a lot of unethical but legal behavior ... but even with such loose ethical restraints Microsoft couldn't keep within legal boundries, and now stands as a convicted monopolist who bought off an unelected administration cheap and managed thereby to escape justice, and likely put the nail in the coffin of any American competativeness in the field of software in the not too terribly distant future. Monopolies, particularly those who consider themselves above the law, do not foster innovation or competetiveness).
So does paying your taxes. The Federal Government has broken many more laws than Microsoft has.
The US Government will throw you in jail (or kill you) if you do not pay taxes. Taxes are not voluntary
Most companies break laws just like MS does, MS is just the favorite punching bag of the Slashdot trolls.
Your ad homonem against an articulate person with whome you happen to disagree rather clearly identifies you as a troll. Indeed, your last sentance could be easily summed up by three words: Pot. Kettle. Black.
It's rather clear that you are most likely a (quite probably paid) Microsoft astroturfer to be able to type such an absurdity ("Most companies break laws just like MS does") with a straight face, and indeed one with a rather weak moral compass in implying that such a thing, were it true, would imply Microsoft's behavior were acceptable in the least. But worse, your assertion isn't even true at all. Most companies do not break the law...the vast majority of enterprises operate well within the law (if not always ethically
In addition, even if most companies did violate the law, that makes it neither right, nor excusable, nor appropriate to support such enterprises. Thankfully the Enrons, WorldComs, and Microsofts of the world, while very large and very corrupt, are not the majority. If that ever changes take a good look around, because you're watching the end of your civilization.
GPL - Free as in herpes
Identifies your stance vis-a-vis free (and certain to remain free) software rather clearly, doesn't it?
2. In terms of Java, Mono could prevent Java from finally attaining a foothold in the Linux world. Microsoft is taking advantage of Sun's failures to support and actively promote Java on Linux.
.NET, or anyone else to marginalize Java ... with the hoops they make one jump through just to install their JVM they are doing it to themselves.
/usr/portage/distfiles, and then rerun the emerge command.
Sun is doing a fine job of that all on their own. The don't need Mono,
How, you ask? It is their rediculous licensing nonsense. I'm not talking BSD license vs. GPL vs. Sun's "community" license (though there are valid criticisms along those lines), I'm talking about the cumbersome hide and seek one must go through on their website just to find the 'click through' EULA before one can even begin to download, much less install, Sun's Java JDK (or JRE, or documentation). Instead of simply being able to type
'emerge sun-j2sdk'
and have the download, compile, and installation procede automatically (as happens with virtually every other piece of software of any interest), I get an error message saying essentially 'please go to Sun's website, click through the licensing crap, and manually download such and such a tarball (and it is not always obvious that such and such a link links to such and such a tarball, although the site has gotten much better recently), copy said download into
Given a choice between jumping through those irritating (and manual) hoops, and installing something else (e.g. blackdown) that doesn't require such nonsense, I'll choose the something else every time.
Does anyone at Sun have a clue how many people such nonsense turn off to the product they are presumably trying to have so widely adopted? It would certainly appear not.
FreeBSD does a great job at this. Gentoo I guess, too.
... sufficiently so that preference is probably more a question of personal taste than technical merit at this point.
... think of it as an instantly accessible backup)
/etc/rc.conf, setting the root password) are done at the very end. I routinely walk away from machines that will be compiling for a day or more, because I prefer not to install from precompiled stage 3 tarballs, but rather from stage 1 tarballs, bootstrapping the system myself and insuring all of the compilation takes place on the target system.
Yes, Gentoo portage is based on the FreeBSD ports system. Another FreeBSD user called portage "ports the way it should have been." The ports system was one of the truly impressive things about FreeBSD when I used it last, and portage is quite good in its own right
Both make keeping up to date trivially easy (though I do clone my working partition onto a spare set just in case I munge something up
(But you cannot expect Joe Anyone to upgrade an entire system from sources, just think of the time needed)
Two minor points
1) one can install Gentoo from a 'stage 3' (precompiled) tarball, optimized for most common hardware platforms. Then only additional packages need to be compiled (using the extremely simple 'emerge' command, or a GUI frontend thereto).
2) systems can come preinstalled (with compilation done at the factory as part of a 1 or 2 day burn-in).
Frankly, I think a user could be persuaded to install from source, if the install program does all the interactive questioning at the beginning and end, and lets a user walk away from the system for a day while it works. Ideally with an "estimated time left" clock somewhere on the display (as a console screen saver perhaps) letting a quick glance tell them what is left.
In the scripts I've written for where I work, this is how it is done. All of the questions about network addresses and other configuration issues are asked upfront, while messages and final interactive tasks (editing
But not everyone is required to be as pedantic about it as I typically am, so the install from binary and maintain via source option is available.
We MUST have easy and quick upgradability, because as we progress further along the exponential curve of technological change, we will be more and more inclined to upgrade more and more frequently, until it becomes a morning ritual, or perhaps at some point even an hourly cron job. Ports under FreeBSD, and portage under Gentoo, are big steps in this direction.
A two year old system is hardly comparable to Windows 3.11 - even when Office 2000 became available.
... running Red Hat 8.0 from a few months ago would have probably sufficed (and been analogous to your Windows 98 example), but he wasn't willing to do that either.
Actually, it is more comparable than you think. Free software developers and users reside much further along the exponential technological curve than proprietary system vendors and their customers. I can (and have been known to) upgrade my Gentoo system every day if I wish, and get signficantly new and better software each time.
This isn't to say you have to remain completely current to run reasonably current and capable software
Of course, to those who do keep current (and do so very painlessly if they're running Source Mage or Gentoo) go the rewards of having the most current and capable software. In an environment where progress is so rapid that a week, or even a day, can make a big difference, that is nothing to sneeze at.
A couple of years in the GNU/Linux world is easily similiar to 10 years in the Microsoft world, perhaps even longer. A two year old binary distribution such as Red Hat 7.2 is hopelessly out of date when it comes to running the current crop of demanding video applications, and JWZ should have been competent enough to recognize and deal with that simple fact. Instead he chose to vilify and insult those who had graciously given him their software, with nary a constructive criticism to be found anywhere within the rant. He is an ass, pure and simple (even if I happen to agree with his opinion of theming).
I've said it before, some of the Linux aficionados suffer from severe Versionitis.
... or accept that you'll need to upgrade your system every six months or so (in a signficant way), or decide you are going to stick with something tried, true, but staid, and stop complaining when the current state of the art has moved beyond your personal technological horizon. How you leapfrog your technology and your updates is up to you, but insisting on running a hopelessly outdated version of a binary distribution because you don't want to upgrade, and then vilifying the developers because your outdated system won't run the shiny new programs you want to play with defys logic and rationality, not to mention even a semblance of social grace.
Free software developers and users are much farther up the Exponential Technology Curve than proprietary vendors and their customers are.
A two year change in GNU/Linux is roughly equivelent to a 10 year change in Windows, for example, so expecting a two year old distribution with outdated libraries and an outdated kernel to be able to run the most current software, that relies on cutting edge kernel features and support, and newer, less buggy libraries is akin to expecting the current crop of MS software to run on the operating system they were selling ten years ago (Windows 3.11 I believe, though I may be off by a year or two).
Why can't he use 7.2 if it works for him?
Because 7.2 doesn't support the software he wants to run. The versions of the libraries are too old and either lack support completely, or are too rudimentary in their support, to do what he wants, hell, even the very kernel is quite possibly too old to do what he wants.
If you want to keep up with such changes in a reasonably painless manner, run Source Mage or Gentoo and do your updates incrementally once a week or so
I am so SICK and TIRED of people mistaking the point of open source in this way!
You are the only one "mistaking" anything here. Free software is about freedom, freedom of choice, freedom to use (and reuse, modify, etc.) the software that runs and orders much of our lives.
If someone gives you a gift you have four choices, three of which are acceptable and one of which is completely contemptable.
1) accept the gift (graciously or with constructive criticism)
2) return the gift (with or without constructive criticism)
3) accept the gift and modify it to better suit your needs.
4) bitterly lambast the gift giver for their presumption in offering Your Holiness such a shoddy and unworthy gift, do so publicly, loudly, and with few criticisms even remotely applicable to the gift you've received.
JWZ did the latter (4), and deserves the contempt he has so richly earned, both for his lack of insight and comprehension of the very technology he is lambasting, and his lack of manners in doing so.
I am not a developer. I am not a programmer. I do not have the time, skills, or inclination to write a media player from scratch, or even fix one of the many broken ones.
You may not be, but JWZ is (or at least is leveraging his reputation of having once been a competent programmer), and instead of doing something he is perfectly capable of (or at least represents himself of being capable of), and for which free software and open source are specifically designed and intended, he has chosen instead to publicly vilify those who have given him a gift.
He is not only incompetent (staying married to an outdated distro and complaining he can't get current software to run seemlessly with it with no effort, something akin to complaining about the lack of support for MS Office 2000 on his old Windows 3.11 machine), he is rude, obnoxious, and above all wrong in almost all of his assertions, and if he had any honor he would, quite frankly, be very ashamed at having ever put up such a diatribe in a public place (which, in case you missed it, is exactly what a web page, even a personal one, is).
Congratulations.
So write up an FAQ. Tell us:
1) What WMs work with what video programs.
2) What libraries are required.
3) What version of gcc you used *G*
4) What flags are set, where to set them, and what's "right" for a wide range of systems, say, a few nVIDIA and ATI systems on AMD and Intel chips, and/or any specific motherboard-related issues.
5) All the other variables I've overlooked, but that you didn't, that make the difference between "It Works" and "It Doesn't".
You don't need to know all of that if you install Gentoo. While Gentoo isn't the only answer, nor is it for everyone, it is in my experience, for those wishing to do serious video work with the current state of the art software (read: most recent bug fixes and features) without comprimising other capabilities (e.g. open office, mozilla support, etc. etc) the easiest approach.
Others will doubtlessly offer or make available online FAQs and recipes for their favorite distributions, but I doubt any of them compare to the simplicity of a single, two word command typed at the command line.
The installation of Gentoo seems daunting to those who like to choose from menus and click 'yes', and it is a very fair criticism that the installation (mostly manual, but with excellent online, step-by-step documentation, and very easy to script up yourself as I have done where I work) lacks the aesthetics and ease of Mandrake, Suse, and Red Hat, but once that is done maintaining currency with the current state of the art is extraordinarilly simple.
Gentoo makes compiling and installing software trivial. In short, the answer to all of your questions above boils down to:
1) Install Gentoo
2) type, at the command line:
emerge mplayer
emerge, a portage command, will resolve all of the library and runtime dependencies for you, compile and install them all (and the specific versions you need, if any), and then download the current mplayer sources, compile and install them for you. Once the compile is done, you're ready to start watching movies.
It really doesn't get any simpler than that (attempts at making things like this simpler with other distros has resulted in very unreliable upgrade procedures, and, quite frankly, don't work well. This approach of getting the sources from the horses mouth, so to speak, compiling them as they were intended against the currently installed library base, optimized for the local hardware, is really ideal. Simplifying this procedure to a single two-word command was ingenious.)
I've done this on probably 50 machines, of varying architectures and hardware capabilities, ranging from hand-held, touch screen tablets to laptops, desktops, and servers, with everything from pentium mmx chips to dual athlon 2400+ MP systems (warning: the slower ships will take days to compile everything!) and it has always worked painlessly and flawlessly.
So I say embrace the criticism. Take a deep breath. It can only make Linux stronger and better in the long run.
... and he deserves all of the derision he is getting, here on slashdot and elsewhere.
... which describes my newly formed opinion of the man, at least when he is speaking on this subject, to a T: contempt.
It would if the criticism were in the least constructive, and in the least relevant to the current state of the art.
It is neither, and speaking as one who both CREATES and WATCHES video on his computer using exclusively free software running under GNU/Linux, I can unequivocably say that whatever respect I had for this individual is gone and unlikely ever to return.
He insists on using an outdated distribution, gets upset when new software hasn't been backported to it, gets upset at the idea he might actually have to (gasp!) compile it himself, gets upset when people quite correctly point out that he needs to use a distrubition newer than the one he has clearly decided to stay married to, etc. etc.
It is like complaining that MS Office 2000 won't run under Windows 3.11
Hint to the uninformed: run the current Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake, or what have you, or, if you really want good performance and the ability to painlessly run the current state of the art software, try Gentoo, an excellent source-based distro that automates the process of compiling (and recompiling) so much so that it is not only as easy as installing an RPM, it yields a much better, more optimized, and generally more compatible and useful result.
But do not expect to be running current, state of the art software on two-year old, obsolete binary distrubitions, and do not expect any sympathy, or respect for your rants, if you insist on doing so. Judging the current state of the art based on a dated distro's inability to cope with current code is neither accurate, nor fair, nor deserving of the sort of attention this particularly uninsightful rant posing as a review has gotten.
JWZ should have known better and has, instead, willfully and deliberately, chosen not to. Blaming others and looking gift horses in the mouth for his own stubborn incompetence is extraordinarilly disingenuous and contemptable
...that introduces accountability into the concept, which is not what p2p-users want when they're trading copyrighted works...
You can have accountability without losing anonymouty. Simply use a double-blind, GPG-signed online alias system. People can verify that SlayMe's files are always of good quality, and that the pending download has been signed by SlayMe, without knowing that SlayMe is actually Snot Nosed Kidd of 123 Baywater St, Baltimore, Maryland.
OTOH everyone will know that SlagHeap's downloads are all crap, and that he probably works for Hiliary Rosen of the RIAA. Unsigned content would likewise probably be ignored, at least until someone trusted signs it with their aliases private key.
No doubt there will be p2p clients that you can configure not to display a file if there are too many hosts for it, if it's only shared by a few users it's less likely to be part of this spoofing attack. Expect several even more creative ways to filter out suspect files/hosts to appea.
Modify the protocol to send the signature first. Each GPG signature signs TWO things:
1) an initial 'signature' plus several bytes scattered more or less randomly throughout the first N MB of the song, and an md5sum of the rest of the song
2) the entire file.
You verify the signature at the beginning, if it is trusted, you download the rest of the song, verifying those 'signed' bytes along the way. If one of them doesn't match, abort the download as suspect immediately. Once the entire song is downloaded, the signature is verified against the result to insure the entire thing is OK.
Even if the thugs cut and paste the signature onto one of their bogus tracks, they won't know which bytes throughout the rest of the track are being checked, and the final result will certainly fail the final signature test.
This would also help protect against worms, viruses, etc.
Most importantly, GPG signatures could be related to anonymous online 'handles' rather than actual persons, thereby maintaining anonymouty while still permitting an effective web of trust to form.
For my work I prefer the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (you can make any derivative works you like so long as they, too, are Free, and you must cite me as the original author). Essentially Public Domain without the ability to take and not give, and with the requirement you do not plagerize.
If the license lasts longer than the patents mentioned then we are pretty much in the clear
Unfortunately, fonts can be COPYRIGHTED!!!
Yes, you too can own a life+70 year (or 90-year corporate) monopoly, compliments of your bought-and-paid for congress critters and a cowardly Supreme Court that chooses quarterly economic expediency over constitutionality. You too can own a government entitlement to a very long-term monopoly on the very shape of the letters of the Roman alphabet.
A friend of mine does computer consultancy for law firms, among them a thug, excuse me, lawyer, who makes his living enforcing a copyright on a particlar font (I don't recall which one). How does this enforcement work? Not through the courts, as one might expect, but more in terms of a protection racket shakedown: "remove your fonts and pay us X for past violations, keep your fonts and pay us X+Y for a license of some specified term, or we'll make your defense cost more than your net worth."
Copyright AND patents are destroying the freedom of information exchange, and will likely obliterate it within our lifetimes unless some serious reform is undertaken, something that does not appear too likely in todays political climate, which has recently come to resemble corporate fascism more than even a semblance of democracy...but that is a discussion for another day.
In other words, the licensing terms and term are important, and if this proves as benevolent as it first appears, this is a very, very good thing for free software.
Is it just me, or did you completely lose the point of my comment?
... with an independent protocol or mechanism), and articles which are not archived by places like groups.google.com are lost over time.
I think he may have, but I think you have missed something in his reply as well (see below).
Posts are stored on a central server
This is incorrect. Posts are stored on distributed servers, replicated over time. If I use nntp.mynews.com, then my post first resides on nntp.mynews.com and is forwarded to other peers throughout the world, probably over the course of the next day or so. In this sense USENET is distributed.
The heirarchy is in the newsgroup naming conventions and organization, not in the servers themselves (unlike DNS for example, in which the servers themselves are heiarchical). There is no "central" usenet server to disconnect.
User accounts are generally served by identifying a user by his or her email address, and GPG signatures can be used to verify identity beyond that. This IMHO is a huge plus over sites like slashdot.
Anonymouty is served very nicely by double-blind remailing services (cf. cypherpunks et. al.)
Signal to noise ratio issues are addressed quite effectively through kill lists (and hot lists), and can be even more effectively addressed with Spam Assassin type technologies and Beysian filtering.
Your other points are correct however: there are rules for adding forums (except in the alt. heirarchy, which is a free for all), there is no support for collaborative filtering (though it could be tacked on the way GPG/PGP was
The ADVANTAGE of USENET is that NO ONE can claim copyright and take responsibility (though there are moderated groups, the moderator could in theory be anonymous), making an asinine law such as the one proposed in Finland impossible to enforce, or even interpret sensibly. This IMHO is a very Good Thing, and why you are so very correct in pointing out that web forums such as slashdot and avsforum are such a step backwards.
Not that it isn't wonderful ... but security in the OSS world has yet to be proven.
... as no one can ever be sure that another has done anything related to the code, indeed, even security certifications don't give you that kind of assurance. One thing we can be certain of, whether we're discussing the notorious and well documented lack of security in Microsoft's proprietary products, or the glacial slowness with which Sun Microsystems would address security holes in Sun OS prior to their being announced in BugTraq, is that, based upon the historical record, open source and free software are vastly more responsive to addressing security concerns when they arise, and that they are, for whatever reason, quite a bit less vulnerable than their proprietary counterparts to attack. Most reasonable people look at these facts (e.g. IIS is cracked much more often, and is vastly more vulnerable to worms, than Apache is, despite Apache's greater popularity and wider deployment on the web), and even when personal knowledge is lacking apply occams razer in attributing the likely cause of free software's superior security to the much wider exposure and perusal its code gets, vs. that of it less secure, proprietary counterparts. There are some, with an agenda to push, who will argue that it is the popularity of the less widely deployed IIS, rather than Apache's superior, open design and implimentation, that is responsible for this disparity, but those looking in from outside generally find such arguments quite laughable, and rightly so.
This is only true in the strictest scientific sense, in that nothing is ever "proven", nor can it be. Not evolution (despite a mountain of evidence so high only the foolish with an agenda ignore it), not even gravity itself, something we all count on and take for granted every day. In science, nothing is ever "proven," and always open to question if new evidence arises.
However, in the sense of having a "proven track record", the only context in which a discussion about security makes any sense, you are flat out wrong.
Open source and free software apply the classic scientific method of open publication and wide peer review. Do errors sneak through? You bet, just as they do in science. But, just as in science, they are found at some point and corrected, because they can be reviewed and eventually will be. Contrast the success of chemistry versus old school alchemy, a system based on secret formulas and closed procedures, and you get a very real sense of the advantages of free software and open source versus proprietary software.
Or, simply contrast the security of Microsoft Windows versus OS X (a proprietary system built upon the framework of a an open system, namely FreeBSD), FreeBSD itself, and GNU/Linux. None are perfect, but only one has a dismal and provenly horrible track record (Windows), while the other three have proven and quite strong, though naturally imperfect, track records.
You make a number of reasonable points ("Can you be sure that each and every code change is reviewed by competent individuals trained and experienced in security and with a comprehensive knowledge of the architectural issues with the work product?") and intersperse it with a great deal of FUD (e.g. "following great developmental practices, ones that are only enforceable in a proprietary world...", something which really doesn't exist). One of the features of free software is that it can follow any proprietary design and development practice it wishes (don't like what the current team is doing? Fork the code and develop it in house using whatever proprietary methodology you like. Under the GPL you can even use the result and not share, so long as you keep it in house. Distribute it and you must distribute the code, but that in no way restricts or limits your development, design or implementation methodologies). The entire gamut of proprietary software development methodologies are available to free software, if free software developers wish to use them. However, the corallary doesn't apply: proprietary development methods are largely cut off from many of the proven methods inherent in free software design, not least of which is scientific peer review. Not by a few hand chosen experts, but by anyone with the knowledge and desire to test the results. Science has been conducted very successfully using this method for centuries, while the closed methods (limited or no review, "valuable-secrets" bearing a closer resemblance to old world alchemy than modern science) have been proven again and again to be seriously flawed.
Indeed even your "can you be sure" question is a bit disingenuous
In any event, whether or not I can be absolutely certain someone competent has audited a particular line of code, I can be very certain that the liklihood of a line of free code having been looked over and even audited at least once, perhaps many times, is much, much greater than the liklihood of a similiar line of proprietary code having been so examined. And in a world where certaintly is inherently impossible, that probability is all we have, and that probability quite dramatically favors open source and free software.
Like I said killed OSS projects are bad, mmmkay? But, a single, united, SUPPORTED p2p network is (maybe) worth it.
You have just expressed a wry gladness that the project was killed, so that your convinience may be better served by having to look in only one place to find a file you are looking for, and with the next breath essentially said "I feel your pain" when you've made it rather clear you do not.
Not only that, but your grand One P2P to Rule Them All and Bind Them will be a propriatary, commercial venture, subject to all the long term instability that implies, such as cut budgests, etc.), inaccessibility (no guarantee it will be compatible with anyone else, limiting your trading to just other mac players, a very small percentage of online file sharers), licensing restrictions (which may or may not be draconian, but either way, where's your choice gone?), possible monitoring capabilities (it is one network, after all, with likely only one approved client), and (seemingly remote at this time, but that will change on a dime if political or economic pressures come to bear) possibly DRM technology built in.
Not to mention it will be a single point of failure. One good lawsuit from the media cartels, a single injunction, and you are out of business with no alternatives to turn to, and your own vendor prohibiting anyone else from offering you one.
Welcome to the world of proprietary software. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Apple is a much nicer Master than Microsoft, and both their equipment and software are superior in every way, but they remain a master, and you a serf subject to their corporate whims. Furthermore, as occasional actions like this have demonstrated time and time again historically, there is absolutely no guarantee that Apple will remain the kinder Master in the future. At some point, these sorts of restrictions make it clear even to the most subserviant that no amount of convinience is worth this kind of tradeoff, and that freedom actually is something worth a modicum of effort to achieve, maintain, and insure.
I find it odd that even though the story has nothing to do with microsoft the company still gets mentioned. Will the linux community ever get over their penis envy of the more successful counterpart? I doubt it.
... leaving in its wake bad legislation that makes many trivial forms of computer crime now punishable with sentances longer than that a rapist or murderer can expect and wearing the hysteria-insighting label of "terrorism."
... I think it is too much to expect them to stop producing shoddy products, though if there were any real human beings working there they would at least acknowledge responsibility for their incompetence and try to repair some small amount of the damage they've wrought) they will continue to get the disrespect, ire, and mockery they deserve, from Macintosh, FreeBSD, and GNU/Linux enthusiasts alike. And rightly so.
As do I, and for good reason.
When Microsoft stops trying to take away people's choice as to whether to use their shoddy products, GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, or anything else. Thus far their track record has been to denigrate and lie about Linux and its capabilities, to call it Unamerican to share software freely, to engage in virtually every illegal anticompetative practice known to man to keep it from being preinstalled on hardware for those who wish to purchase it, and now, finally, to leverage their desktop monopoly and the clout it grants them into redesigning the hardware BIOS (c.f trusted computing and Palladium) as a prelude to making it impossible, and under the DMCA possibly illegal, to run any non-Microsoft product on an amd/intel platform, then perhaps I, and others who dislike them, will feel some inclination toward cutting them some slack. But not until then.
Add to that the well documented and appalling shoddiness of their products, which have left naval vessels dead in the water (literally, at sea), led to such a plethora of worms and viruses that the hysterical users of their shoddy products have taken to legislatively labelling computer system crackers as "terrorists", and the quip about not wanting a Microsoft product operating on one's brain is not only humorious, it is highly apropos. Ironically, on the mass level, Microsoft's product, and its astonishingly ineffectual security, has operated on most people's minds
Until Microsoft ceases and desists in such behavior (anti-competative, thuggish and dishonest practices
The only requirement is that the server implements the Liberty Aliance protocol standards. I _think_ one can make an open source server that implements those standards as well.
... where many java websites fail to work with anything other than Internet Explorer under Windows because the java they run relies on Microsoft's jvm, and Sun's jvm isn't really any less of a hassle for developers and surfers to obtain.
If Sun were really smart, that is exactly what they do: impliment a free software/open source reference of the protocol.
In fact, they would be well advised to GPL such an implimentation? Why?
The GPL would prevent competitors *cough* Microsoft *cough* from incorporating Sun's code into their proprietary products without first negotiating and obtaining a separate license under whatever terms Sun wishes to impose (they get all the negotiating power with proprietary vendors that they have now).
The GPL would allow its inclusion in any free software products. Perhaps, under FreeBSD and Apache as a separate module, to avoid licensing collisions. This would give the free software community a decentralized authentication framework, and would mean widespread adoption by anyone and everyone not firmly in the MS IIS camp (most reasonably savvy people).
While I do not believe anyone is entitled to obtaining privately funded and written software for free, I do think a move like this by Sun would be strategicly brilliant in getting their standard quickly and widely adopted, quickly and widely enough to prevent Microsoft from owning online authentication. I suspect if Sun doesn't do this (or spin off a well funded group to do this), their liberty alliance will fade much like java has
(As an aside: based on Sun's treatment of Java, I doubt they are that smart. Having to click through license agreements to download and install a jvm, vs. simply having to type 'emerge somejdk' for everyone elses jvm, means most people install someone else's jdk if at all possible due to the hassle factor alone. Not good when you're trying for widespread adoption.)