Companies that sell products they've spent countless hours developing get to see the open source community "innovate" by cloning their software and giving it away?!? There seems to be an alterior motive there that is not completely stable. It's one thing to give away software using code that you've entirely developed, but if you clone someone else's GUI's or someone else's file formats... Are you violating their copyright? They can't use your stuff in their source code without releasing all of their source code, but you can reverse engineer or clone their stuff and openly distribute it?1?!
You seem to be a bit confused. Both sides are perfectly free to reverse engineer or clone the other's stuff but neither side is allowed to use the other's source code without agreeing to the terms of its license. There is a very big difference between using somebody else's code for something and writing code to do that same thing yourself. I suggest you ponder this distinction.
The problem is that most sites are designed for graphical browsers. Even simple, proper w3c html can be a pain to navigate through in text mode. For instance, a table of links (such as Everything2 softlinks) takes time to reach the link you want, because you have to pass through every visible link in their html order. It's much faster with a mouse.
I agree that many sites are designed without any thought being given to text based browsers, but don't Links and w3m allow you to follow links with the mouse when in X?
Not quite. This is a commercial system. You have to balance security against cost to deploy.
Excellent point. It is certainly a balance of several things but I think you got the big one. Adding true security can be quite costly, and this is probably the biggest reason why a lot of companies choose the "absorb the cost of fraud" route.
The worldwide credit card system is pretty much the same. Right now, it's convenient, easy to use, and cheap, and when fraud or error happens, it all gets sorted out properly. Additional security would not improve the system in any meaningful way.
Don't be so sure of that. When fraud happens, someone has to pay for it and this cost eventually trickles down to everyone else. You just don't notice it because it is so subtle.
Additional security is good but you need to balance it with ease-of-use. If you can add security, without hurting ease-of-use, then you're golden.
If we have the hypothetical star trek replicators, would the new slogan be "Objects want to be Free!"? Would it be legitmate to make copies of company physicall products and pass them around?
Well, why shouldn't it be? If these objects are so easy to reproduce, why shouldn't we just distribute them to everyone? If you look at the bigger picture, this really would be a wonderful thing. Sure, some companies/people wouldn't be able to make money the way they currently do, but so what? They will just have to adapt to the changing times and find other ways to make money. Of course, if we could replicate any object easily, there really wouldn't even be a need for money anymore. Everyone would just get everything they need and want.
Actually, the fact that AIDS kills so slowly is exactly what makes it so bad. People may get it and not even know they have it for years, allowing them to spread it to others during that time. It's pretty scary stuff. I even hear that some countries have near 50% of their population infected now.
One of the great things about this system is that it is extremely easy to rate software. Just count the exploits that are possible in the default settings and assign a letter. A college graduate could do it on his fingers.:)
I'm afraid there is a major flaw in such a system. You can't simply count the number of vulnerabilities because they can have different levels of severity. For example, a DoS in psyBNC should not be given the same weight as a remote root vulnerability in WU-FTPD. It just isn't as simple as you make it out to be.
It is known that temperature of the brain can increase up to 1 degree, if doing long calls. Maybe you experienced yourself, I did when using a wobile langer than 1 hour, you'll feel you ear warming up.
Maybe you weren't aware, but your body does generate its own heat. If you hold ANYTHING to your ear for an hour it will warm up.
Ever wonder how your blankets keep you warm at night without being plugged in?:-)
It's nice to see that not everyone around here has completely lost their minds. I still consider a Pentium II 400 to be blazingly fast. Even running windows *gasp*. Hell, even my Pentium 166 laptop is overkill for what most people do with their computers.
Of course, with Microsoft dominating the market, this trend of making hardware obsolete before its time is sure to continue. I guess that just means people like you and I will be able to find great hardware for next to nothing.
Anyone remember that little amazon.com fiasco a while back? A particular hardware company (I don't recall the name) that sells their products through amazon.com made an error in their pricing. Of course, a multitude of people discovered this and word quickly spread over IRC and other mediums. People immediately began purchasing large amounts of hardware at extremely low prices (we're talking a gig of RAM for $30 or so). I was fortunate enough to become aware of this error during the time period when it was going on and just happened to have a bit of money in my bank account. So I thought to myself "What the heck, this is a great opportunity to possibly get some really cheap hardware." and went ahead and placed an order for 2 256mb DIMMs of PC133 RAM for only $20. A few minutes after placing my order I received the standard email confirmation including the quoted price. At this point I was fairly sure that something good would come of this, though I was worried about how many other people had placed similar (and far more ridiculous) orders. A few days later I received another email including an apology from the hardware manufacturer that had made the error, as well as a $15 certificate (paid for by that manufacturer) good for anything on amazon.com. While I was a bit bummed that I didn't get the RAM, I was pretty happy with this since I really didn't expect to get my order, as it would have surely put the company out of business to honor all of them. Instead I ended up with a very good Albert Einstein book (Ideas and Opinions - I highly recommend it), which I ordered around midnight on the day my certificate was set to expire;).
Naturally, not everyone who placed orders during this little event got gift certificates. The reason, of course, is that quite a few people placed orders that were just outrageous, while the order I placed seemed very legit. A word of advice to anyone who comes across something like this: Make your order believable!
National ID cards and credit cards?
on
CFP 2002 Wrapup
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Does this scare anyone else?
Proponents argue that digitizing the nation's social security card system to resemble a credit card system, and creating one national information database, are needed to protect against terrorism. Critics argue that such a tracking and/or monitoring system would violate the core freedoms of the nation's citizens and that what is needed is better procedures among agencies and standardization of data entry.
Our current system for credit cards is horribly insecure. A 12-15 year old child has no problem acquirring and using stolen credit cards. I know, because I used to be one of those children. Credit card fraud is remarkably easy. Combine this with the dangers of having an international database containing all this sensitive information and we have a serious threat on our hands. The risks involved here are astounding.
Some of you may find this amusing. I discovered it at the bottom of the CFP 2002 notes. My personal favorite is John Ashcroft for Worst Public Official.
In other news, the Department of Redundancy Department has found Roger Clarke guilty of abusing title tags.
My basic point is that this guy is getting free advertising by releasing the book for free, which is resulting in some more sales than he would have gotten if nobody had ever heard of him...But the situation is much different when you're talking about an established very well-known author..And the same goes for music. MP3s given away for free by small bands may increase their market..But does anyone hear Britney Spears for the first time on MP3 and think wow, that's great..lets go buy the album? Of course not..And the the RIAA/other publish associations know this, and will quickly discount this guy's story.
While you do have a very good point that things change depending how established the artist is already, I don't think the Britney Spears example you gave fits what you're saying. There can be, and are, other reasons for the poor album sales. Maybe people don't go out and buy the latest Britney Spears album after hearing an mp3 or two because it just isn't any good. When the recording industry stops pumping out crap that was produced for a specific face, purely to cheat consumers out of their money, maybe they'll see more sales. Bands/artists like N'Sync, the Backstreet Boys, and Britney Spears exist to make money. They're not out there making music because they love and it flows through every vein in their body. They're out there making music because some fat recording company executive thought they could make a buck.
True musicians are those that make/compose music because that's what's inside them. They do it because they love it. They stay up all night playing or writing songs because they have to. Just like I might stay up all night writing code because I have some great idea I want to realize.
I just hope that someday the majority people who make it big are the same people that would be doing what they're doing regardless of how much money or fame they get from it.
You're absolutely right about the hardware aspect of things. This is one of the main reasons (if not The main reason) I prefer x86. Just the other night I got a new (old) p120 and ripping it open to swap out various hardware was great fun. Kept me up until 4am, though.:-)
Regarding MacOS X, well... I'm just happy to see an operating system for the masses that isn't based on total junk.
According to their page it seems to only support WMA, MP3, and WAV formats.
I'm aware that Ogg Vorbis hasn't reached 1.0 yet, but still, you'd think they could include support for it pretty easily. Anyone know if you can upgrade the software on these things? Their site doesn't mention anything about it.
Software makers will simply flock to Apple because now MacOS has the larger consumer market. Goodbye cheap generic hardware. Goodbye Linux. We now all use MacOS X.
I'm not the biggest Apple fan, but I'd much rather be living under an Apple/MacOS X monopoly than an MS/Windows monopoly.
I also don't understand how you can say "Goodbye Linux". Development of Linux/*BSD isn't just going to stop. There may not be a big demand for such operating systems on the desktop, but there certainly is a demand for them in the server market. This is exactly where they excel anyway, and there are still plenty of geeks out there who will continue to work on these systems for a wide variety of reasons.
Not to mention that regardless of what happens in the future, I've got plenty of old hardware, and plenty of Linux/FreeBSD/OpenBSD/etc. CDs already. I'm perfectly happy with the current state of these operating systems and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
I just love it how they have little ads dispersed throughout the article. Granted, they are from Aardvark and aren't terribly intrusive, but funny just the same.
Oh, and am I the only one that wouldn't mind the following...
Suddenly your PC's screen clears and the image of a naked woman in a seductive pose appears. Oh no, more porno-hacks. Maybe you should have downloaded those latest security patches after all.
"It's not a big breakthrough.... It's a step in the field where there's a lot of things going on," said Alivisatos, who directs the Molecular Foundry, a newly created center for nanoscience at the Berkeley National lab.
...
It could take a decade or more for hybrid solar cells to make it from the laboratory to someone's rooftop system, and much could go wrong along the way, said Robert McConnell, who oversees federal funding of cutting-edge solar research for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
It's always nice to hear of advances in technology like this, but it seems we're still pretty far away from practical use. Just imagine if most of the electricity using world was running on solar power. I hope I live to see the day.
Would your boss let you sit there and read the newest John Grisham novel when you should be working?
Key words: when you should be working
What about the times when you're sitting at work with nothing to do, but still have to be there just in case something goes wrong? Or maybe you're waiting for a large build or test to finish and can't leave work until it does. In such situations it is certainly better to allow the employee(s) to amuse themselves a little and keep their morale high. I certainly would have quit my last job if I had been forced to sit and stare at a wall whenever I didn't have something to do.
If your company is NICE enough to let you use resources for personal use then fine but you do NOT have a right to do anything with something that isn't yours.
I do agree with you here, though. The company has every right to prevent you from using their resources for personal stuff. They're paying for the bandwidth, hardware, software, and even your time. Still, I feel that in most cases it is in everyone's best interests to allow employees a little room. I know that I work a lot better when I'm allowed a little time to relax. Don't you?
Re:Because online polls are completely meaningless
on
IBM 120GXP Revisited
·
· Score: 1
It kind of sucks, given that IBM as a company is a really cool place and helps out Linux quite a bit, but I'd have to say -- don't buyIBM hard drives.
I would just like to say that I have been more than happy with every IBM hard drive I have _ever_ owned. They are reasonably fast/quiet, and have been nothing but reliable. The machine I'm typing this on now happens to have two IBM drives stacked right on top of each other with very poor ventilation (yes, I need a new case) and is on 24/7. Even my laptop has an IBM drive (I don't recall the exact model) that has been going strong for over 6 years. There was even a time that the laptop was on 24/7 for several months. In short, I trust nothing else with my important data.
ad4: 43979MB [IBM-DTLA-307045] [89355/16/63] at ata2-master UDMA100 ad6: 58644MB [IC35L060AVER07-0] [119150/16/63] at ata3-master UDMA100
Slashdot Mirror
Companies that sell products they've spent countless hours developing get to see the open source community "innovate" by cloning their software and giving it away?!? There seems to be an alterior motive there that is not completely stable. It's one thing to give away software using code that you've entirely developed, but if you clone someone else's GUI's or someone else's file formats... Are you violating their copyright? They can't use your stuff in their source code without releasing all of their source code, but you can reverse engineer or clone their stuff and openly distribute it?1?!
You seem to be a bit confused. Both sides are perfectly free to reverse engineer or clone the other's stuff but neither side is allowed to use the other's source code without agreeing to the terms of its license. There is a very big difference between using somebody else's code for something and writing code to do that same thing yourself. I suggest you ponder this distinction.
The problem is that most sites are designed for graphical browsers. Even simple, proper w3c html can be a pain to navigate through in text mode. For instance, a table of links (such as Everything2 softlinks) takes time to reach the link you want, because you have to pass through every visible link in their html order. It's much faster with a mouse.
I agree that many sites are designed without any thought being given to text based browsers, but don't Links and w3m allow you to follow links with the mouse when in X?
Not quite. This is a commercial system. You have to balance security against cost to deploy.
Excellent point. It is certainly a balance of several things but I think you got the big one. Adding true security can be quite costly, and this is probably the biggest reason why a lot of companies choose the "absorb the cost of fraud" route.
The worldwide credit card system is pretty much the same. Right now, it's convenient, easy to use, and cheap, and when fraud or error happens, it all gets sorted out properly. Additional security would not improve the system in any meaningful way.
Don't be so sure of that. When fraud happens, someone has to pay for it and this cost eventually trickles down to everyone else. You just don't notice it because it is so subtle.
Additional security is good but you need to balance it with ease-of-use. If you can add security, without hurting ease-of-use, then you're golden.
If we have the hypothetical star trek replicators, would the new slogan be "Objects want to be Free!"? Would it be legitmate to make copies of company physicall products and pass them around?
Well, why shouldn't it be? If these objects are so easy to reproduce, why shouldn't we just distribute them to everyone? If you look at the bigger picture, this really would be a wonderful thing. Sure, some companies/people wouldn't be able to make money the way they currently do, but so what? They will just have to adapt to the changing times and find other ways to make money. Of course, if we could replicate any object easily, there really wouldn't even be a need for money anymore. Everyone would just get everything they need and want.
Actually, the fact that AIDS kills so slowly is exactly what makes it so bad. People may get it and not even know they have it for years, allowing them to spread it to others during that time. It's pretty scary stuff. I even hear that some countries have near 50% of their population infected now.
One of the great things about this system is that it is extremely easy to rate software. Just count the exploits that are possible in the default settings and assign a letter. A college graduate could do it on his fingers. :)
I'm afraid there is a major flaw in such a system. You can't simply count the number of vulnerabilities because they can have different levels of severity. For example, a DoS in psyBNC should not be given the same weight as a remote root vulnerability in WU-FTPD. It just isn't as simple as you make it out to be.
It is known that temperature of the brain can increase up to 1 degree, if doing long calls. Maybe you experienced yourself, I did when using a wobile langer than 1 hour, you'll feel you ear warming up.
:-)
Maybe you weren't aware, but your body does generate its own heat. If you hold ANYTHING to your ear for an hour it will warm up.
Ever wonder how your blankets keep you warm at night without being plugged in?
It's nice to see that not everyone around here has completely lost their minds. I still consider a Pentium II 400 to be blazingly fast. Even running windows *gasp*. Hell, even my Pentium 166 laptop is overkill for what most people do with their computers.
Of course, with Microsoft dominating the market, this trend of making hardware obsolete before its time is sure to continue. I guess that just means people like you and I will be able to find great hardware for next to nothing.
Many of their employees get a significant amount of their compensation in stock options.
I wonder how many of those employees have read this.
Anyone remember that little amazon.com fiasco a while back? A particular hardware company (I don't recall the name) that sells their products through amazon.com made an error in their pricing. Of course, a multitude of people discovered this and word quickly spread over IRC and other mediums. People immediately began purchasing large amounts of hardware at extremely low prices (we're talking a gig of RAM for $30 or so). I was fortunate enough to become aware of this error during the time period when it was going on and just happened to have a bit of money in my bank account. So I thought to myself "What the heck, this is a great opportunity to possibly get some really cheap hardware." and went ahead and placed an order for 2 256mb DIMMs of PC133 RAM for only $20. A few minutes after placing my order I received the standard email confirmation including the quoted price. At this point I was fairly sure that something good would come of this, though I was worried about how many other people had placed similar (and far more ridiculous) orders. A few days later I received another email including an apology from the hardware manufacturer that had made the error, as well as a $15 certificate (paid for by that manufacturer) good for anything on amazon.com. While I was a bit bummed that I didn't get the RAM, I was pretty happy with this since I really didn't expect to get my order, as it would have surely put the company out of business to honor all of them. Instead I ended up with a very good Albert Einstein book (Ideas and Opinions - I highly recommend it), which I ordered around midnight on the day my certificate was set to expire ;).
Naturally, not everyone who placed orders during this little event got gift certificates. The reason, of course, is that quite a few people placed orders that were just outrageous, while the order I placed seemed very legit. A word of advice to anyone who comes across something like this: Make your order believable!
Does this scare anyone else?
Proponents argue that digitizing the nation's social security card system to resemble a credit card system, and creating one national information database, are needed to protect against terrorism. Critics argue that such a tracking and/or monitoring system would violate the core freedoms of the nation's citizens and that what is needed is better procedures among agencies and standardization of data entry.
Our current system for credit cards is horribly insecure. A 12-15 year old child has no problem acquirring and using stolen credit cards. I know, because I used to be one of those children. Credit card fraud is remarkably easy. Combine this with the dangers of having an international database containing all this sensitive information and we have a serious threat on our hands. The risks involved here are astounding.
Some of you may find this amusing. I discovered it at the bottom of the CFP 2002 notes. My personal favorite is John Ashcroft for Worst Public Official.
In other news, the Department of Redundancy Department has found Roger Clarke guilty of abusing title tags.
My basic point is that this guy is getting free advertising by releasing the book for free, which is resulting in some more sales than he would have gotten if nobody had ever heard of him...But the situation is much different when you're talking about an established very well-known author..And the same goes for music. MP3s given away for free by small bands may increase their market..But does anyone hear Britney Spears for the first time on MP3 and think wow, that's great..lets go buy the album? Of course not..And the the RIAA/other publish associations know this, and will quickly discount this guy's story.
While you do have a very good point that things change depending how established the artist is already, I don't think the Britney Spears example you gave fits what you're saying. There can be, and are, other reasons for the poor album sales. Maybe people don't go out and buy the latest Britney Spears album after hearing an mp3 or two because it just isn't any good. When the recording industry stops pumping out crap that was produced for a specific face, purely to cheat consumers out of their money, maybe they'll see more sales. Bands/artists like N'Sync, the Backstreet Boys, and Britney Spears exist to make money. They're not out there making music because they love and it flows through every vein in their body. They're out there making music because some fat recording company executive thought they could make a buck.
True musicians are those that make/compose music because that's what's inside them. They do it because they love it. They stay up all night playing or writing songs because they have to. Just like I might stay up all night writing code because I have some great idea I want to realize.
I just hope that someday the majority people who make it big are the same people that would be doing what they're doing regardless of how much money or fame they get from it.
You're absolutely right about the hardware aspect of things. This is one of the main reasons (if not The main reason) I prefer x86. Just the other night I got a new (old) p120 and ripping it open to swap out various hardware was great fun. Kept me up until 4am, though. :-)
Regarding MacOS X, well... I'm just happy to see an operating system for the masses that isn't based on total junk.
According to their page it seems to only support WMA, MP3, and WAV formats.
I'm aware that Ogg Vorbis hasn't reached 1.0 yet, but still, you'd think they could include support for it pretty easily. Anyone know if you can upgrade the software on these things? Their site doesn't mention anything about it.
You do have some very good points, but...
Software makers will simply flock to Apple because now MacOS has the larger consumer market. Goodbye cheap generic hardware. Goodbye Linux. We now all use MacOS X.
I'm not the biggest Apple fan, but I'd much rather be living under an Apple/MacOS X monopoly than an MS/Windows monopoly.
I also don't understand how you can say "Goodbye Linux". Development of Linux/*BSD isn't just going to stop. There may not be a big demand for such operating systems on the desktop, but there certainly is a demand for them in the server market. This is exactly where they excel anyway, and there are still plenty of geeks out there who will continue to work on these systems for a wide variety of reasons.
Not to mention that regardless of what happens in the future, I've got plenty of old hardware, and plenty of Linux/FreeBSD/OpenBSD/etc. CDs already. I'm perfectly happy with the current state of these operating systems and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
I just love it how they have little ads dispersed throughout the article. Granted, they are from Aardvark and aren't terribly intrusive, but funny just the same.
Oh, and am I the only one that wouldn't mind the following...
Suddenly your PC's screen clears and the image of a naked woman in a seductive pose appears. Oh no, more porno-hacks. Maybe you should have downloaded those latest security patches after all.
Wow! No work involved at all, 2004 here I come!
This sort of stuff would only work on roads if...
1. Vehicles could still get enough traction.
and
2. It can withstand the normal wear and tear that roads are subjected to.
If it would work, it would indeed be very cool.
If something catastrophic was to block out the sun, wouldn't we be doomed anyway?
"All this computer hacking is making me thirsty, think I'll order a TAB. Oops, no time for that now."
"It's not a big breakthrough.
...
It could take a decade or more for hybrid solar cells to make it from the laboratory to someone's rooftop system, and much could go wrong along the way, said Robert McConnell, who oversees federal funding of cutting-edge solar research for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
It's always nice to hear of advances in technology like this, but it seems we're still pretty far away from practical use. Just imagine if most of the electricity using world was running on solar power. I hope I live to see the day.
and i daresay that the average MS "coder" has more lines of code running on more machines than you ever will.
Since when is this a good thing? In general, the fewer lines of code you can get something done in, the better.
Would your boss let you sit there and read the newest John Grisham novel when you should be working?
Key words: when you should be working
What about the times when you're sitting at work with nothing to do, but still have to be there just in case something goes wrong? Or maybe you're waiting for a large build or test to finish and can't leave work until it does. In such situations it is certainly better to allow the employee(s) to amuse themselves a little and keep their morale high. I certainly would have quit my last job if I had been forced to sit and stare at a wall whenever I didn't have something to do.
If your company is NICE enough to let you use resources for personal use then fine but you do NOT have a right to do anything with something that isn't yours.
I do agree with you here, though. The company has every right to prevent you from using their resources for personal stuff. They're paying for the bandwidth, hardware, software, and even your time. Still, I feel that in most cases it is in everyone's best interests to allow employees a little room. I know that I work a lot better when I'm allowed a little time to relax. Don't you?
It kind of sucks, given that IBM as a company is a really cool place and helps out Linux quite a bit, but I'd have to say -- don't buyIBM hard drives.
I would just like to say that I have been more than happy with every IBM hard drive I have _ever_ owned. They are reasonably fast/quiet, and have been nothing but reliable. The machine I'm typing this on now happens to have two IBM drives stacked right on top of each other with very poor ventilation (yes, I need a new case) and is on 24/7. Even my laptop has an IBM drive (I don't recall the exact model) that has been going strong for over 6 years. There was even a time that the laptop was on 24/7 for several months. In short, I trust nothing else with my important data.
ad4: 43979MB [IBM-DTLA-307045] [89355/16/63] at ata2-master UDMA100
ad6: 58644MB [IC35L060AVER07-0] [119150/16/63] at ata3-master UDMA100
That's five words.
Are you telling me that Steve Ballmer can't count?! Preposterous.