In the Mindcraft tests, both the NT and Linux boxes were run quadruple-barreled with four ethernet cards. NT has a way to bind a CPU to a particular NIC, so on a 4-CPU machine, one CPU can be tasked exclusively to each NIC. I believe the ZD tests repeated this configuration.
I think this feature explains, at least in part, NT's superiority in multiple-CPU raw service.
A side note to flamers: please, PLEASE don't treat these results as suspect or corrupt. I don't think they are. Don't think of them as a defeat, think of them, like ZD said, as a roadmap to show where Linux needs improvement.
From the research I've done, you only need a Windows configurator if you use one of the Symphony special devices, like their cordless modem or wireless-wired bridge.
I've found that I can get the Symphony ISA card in a computer with a wired ethercard for only a little more than what you'd pay for the bridge, and get a lot more functionality (SSH tunneling to get around the fact that Symphony transmits in the clear, for one thing, interests me).
The Symphony is cheap, and as such is limited in range (they advertise 150 feet indoors, 300 feet outdoors) and speed (A good speed over a solid link seems to be about 60 kilobytes/sec). The driver is also not fully open-source; there's a binary-only library file that it links against. Fortunately, sufficient source is available that upgrading your kernel doesn't break the driver.
Someone please tell me if I'm way off the mark here.
Authors of Star Wars books, when they do any development that materially affects the Star Wars universe, must clear it with Lucas's company, so as to keep all the Star Wars material part of the same coherent whole.
This is so strictly enforced that nit-picking details, such as the fact that lightsabers do not function underwater, are cleared through Lucas.
Be sure that such a major character development probably went to The Man Himself.
My dad got one of the first DSS systems, and you're right - the guide is badly implemented, slow, and clunky. The graphics processor in the box seems to be terribly underpowered.
I had the opportunity to play with a newer box the other day, and the guide interface is much cleaner and faster.
Unfortunately, the Open Source service mark needs to belong to a specific organization. That's the point of the mark - enforcement. "Free software," unfortunately, is used by many commercial software companies to mean "software that can be acquired for no money." The GNU definition is ignored.
The "Open Source" term was registered as a service mark to bring a little sanity to the advertisement of free software. If a company advertises a product as "Open Source," those viewing the advertisement can be confident (theoretically) that the program's license allows free redistribution and modification. If it doesn't, then the owner of the "Open Source" mark can bring legal action against the offender; therefore, the mark is a clear sign that you're getting free software.
Unfortunately, there's a deadly flaw waiting in the wings. Since the ownership of the mark is in dispute, if either organization ( OSI or SPI) takes legal action, the offending software company will argue that the mark belongs to the other organization.
This will have the effect of playing the two organizations off each other, and ultimately destroying the effectiveness and purity of the "Open Source" term. That would be a blow to our movement, since "Open Source" has become, in the past few months, the term under which many of us identify it.
The ownership of the mark must be resolved, soon, before it has to come before a court. I personally don't care which of the two feuding organizations ends up with it; I trust both to use their best judgement to administer the mark. But it has to belong to only one of them.
Eric, Bruce: one of you must display maturity and selflessness and give up your claim on the mark, before you pull it apart like two children in a tug-of-war that ultimately breaks the toy in dispute.
As I understand it, the professionals damaged the statue when they reset it. (From a soon-to-be Rice freshman, so I better know this stuff...:)
Re:Comercial linux software....
on
BSD vs GPL
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· Score: 1
The COPYING file in the kernel source tree has a short sentence by Linus, explicitly freeing software that calls kernel services in the normal way from falling under the GPL.
A few months ago, my father bought a Microsoft Phone. It's an excellent, well-engineered telephone - it even feels right in your hands, which is not something you usually see from a cordless phone. The range is great and the charger is separated from the transmitter, allowing you to put the phone away from your computer.
Unfortunately for my dad, the phone's interaction with the computer died. The hardware is still going perfectly strong, but something in the software that communicates with the phone has gone haywire; my dad can no longer check his e-mail via the telephone or keep his call waiting lists on his computer, because, due to a software fault, the phone and computer are no longer on speaking terms.
There's an instructive lesson here about Microsoft's strengths and weaknesses.
Those earbud phones are ghastly, but they're loud enough. I bought a set of Sony MDR-CD160 phones (excellent, $30 and not really noticeably worse than $100 phones). They don't work well with the Rio, because the Rio can't be turned up enough to power them - even at max volume, in a somewhat noisy environment like a car, the music isn't acceptably loud.
Gore's had a reputation for randomly spraying tech buzzwords for some time. Check out what the entire graduating class at MIT did to him in 1996 in retribution:)
"Free beer" as a required aspect of free software is one heck of a trap. Requiring as a condition of the license that no one may make money by selling the software entirely inhibits the type of business model enjoyed by Red Hat and other commercial free software distributors.
Due to the freedom to redistribute software without restriction, economic forces will tend to drive the monetary price of free software dramatically downward. Therefore, free speech will eventually lead to free beer, but forced free beer will tend to stifle the free speech part by limiting distribution only to those who can distribute without fee.
Actually, you can do that anyway - it would be parody, which is an exception to the copyright laws. Last campaign someone made a hilariously funny parody of Dole's site, using his design and graphics.
Red Hat 5.2 includes "server" and "workstation" auto-installs, which wipe the disk clean and automatically configure some sane partitioning scheme, as well as a "custom" installation that lets you have control over the sizing and mounting of partitions. I used custom, because I was setting up a dual-boot config. People who want to have control over their partitions can do just that; people that are willing to trust Red Hat's idea of a good partitioning scheme can skip the partition configuration step of the installation.
Communism and open source are two entirely different economic models. Communism deals with the centrally-mandated production and distribution of scarce goods. It's centralized, which means there is one hierarchical institution controlling production and distribution. Within this institution is a potential for its human elements to manipulate their power to their own personal ends. The goods produced and distributed are scarce; that is, if one person recieves a good, then another person cannot receive that good.
Open source software is critically different in both aspects. There is no governing body. Each project is an institution unto itself; each developer is free to keep his talents where he feels best about using them. The OSI, SPI, FSF, and so forth do not represent governing bodies, since they cannot control the actions of developers. Therefore, their ability to leverage the labor of the community for selfish ends (not that any of them are doing that, nor that I foresee them attempting to). The other major difference is that of scarcity - or the lack thereof. With open source software, the primary labor is in the initial production. It costs nearly as much to make a software product that will be distributed to ten people as a similar product which will be distributed to millions. As the H2O article pointed out, conventional theories of economics are simply inadequate to deal with the realities of free software.
It's an unfair and highly artificial comparison between communistic economies and free software. Don't confuse them; capitalism has more in common with communism than does open source.
Nobody knew the bug was there. It's a rare case, and one that requires a malicious exploit to cause any harm (when was the last time you saw a naturally-occuring zero-length fragment?) The bug was discovered and fixed before word about it hit the net. I was running 2.2.4 (the relase that fixed the hole) when I read the first advisory. The bug was, therefore, fixed as soon as possible after it became general knowledge. That's not foot-dragging, that's speedy coding, and it's to be congratulated.
Yes, you do have the right to create such output. Reread my previous comments about software licenses being restrictive only. Since there's no negative "You cannot use the program in this manner," (except that manner which creates a copy of the program, again, see my previous post) you have the right to use the program in whatever manner the law would allow for a program you personally own. You don't need an affirmative "you have the right to use this program in any manner allowed by law," the license inherently grants you this right by not taking it away.
The second clause causes output from the program which is somehow derived from the program to fall under the GPL. This solves the problem of someone, for instance, patching a GPL program to output its own source or binary code and then falling back upon the "output is not covered" point in the GPL to allow them to distribute under non-free terms.
What this does protect is output created by the program's user with the aid of the program, as opposed to derived from the program. If I make an image in Gimp, the image does not fall under the GPL; if I compile a program with gcc, that program is not necessarily GPLed.
The conflict you see is that at one point the GPL says that usage is not restricted, then goes on to describe a case in which usage (or the output thereof) is covered by the license.
I'd hold that this case - the case in which someone uses a GPL program to output information derived from the program itself, rather than created or processed from non-GPL sources, such as system status or user input - falls under "copying" much more so than "usage." The user is using the program to copy itself, or a part of itself, and so the new copy falls under the GPL. It's the same thing, essentially, as if I use GNU cp to copy a GPL-covered source file - the new file still falls under the GPL, despite being the output of a GPLed program.
The issue now is whether 'falling outside the scope' of the license is the same as 'not restricted.' I'd have to say that it is. All software licenses are restrictive in nature, designed to take rights away from the do-anything-you-feel-like body of rights enjoyed by users of truly public domain software. The GPL is no exception; it takes away your freedom to take away the freedom of others. It restricts your right to proprietarize the software. The whole scope of a software license is restrictive, not liberating. The point of copyleft is to take the restrictive nature of a software license and create something that will be forever liberated.
So, if something is not restricted by a license, then it follows that that act falls outside the scope of the license. If the license says "not restricted" to some act, then it is in fact placing that act outside its restrictive scope.
I see no conflicts here, and I'd be interested to learn the reasoning behind a policy that would ban installations of GNU GPL-covered software.
Your car dealer does not have you sign a document that says "You may use this car's radio in the following ways...[snip]...if you do not agree to this, don't sign this document; talk to us and you can give the radio back for a refund." Copies of Windows do carry this notice:
If you do not agree to the terms of this EULA, Manufacturer and Microsoft Licensing, Inc. ("MS") are unwilling to license the SOFTWARE PRODUCT to you. In such event, you may not use or copy the SOFTWARE PRODUCT, and you should promptly contact Manufacturer for instructions on return of the unused product(s) for a refund.
"Product" here clearly refers to the "SOFTWARE PRODUCT," i.e., Windows. This is not a loophole. This says in plain English that if you reject the terms that your hardware manufacturer has licensed Windows to you (and it is your hardware manufacturer; they're reselling Windows) then you have a recourse: you can contact your hardware manufacturer and return the Windows license. Your hardware manufactuer has made a statement in this license that it will accept Windows for a refund. If it does not, it's probably committing fraud. The excuse that "Microsoft won't pay us back" doesn't cut it. The hardware manufacturer, through the publication of this license, has placed itself under a legal obligation to follow it, no matter what the financial cost to it is.
The protest against Microsoft is right-minded in spirit - it's a protest against the pressure tactics Microsoft uses to prevent hardware makers from honoring this clause in the license. Microsoft, though, doesn't have to provide refunds, since they didn't license the software to the demonstrators. Microsoft is correct that someone wanting a Windows refund should contact his OEM. If the OEM refuses to pay, then the only recourse for the consumer is legal action to try to force it to pay.
My Rio never skips, unless you use the equalizer button (annoying, but I just don't use it while playing music.) I've played all manner of 128kbps mp3s and none have given me problems.
...add in a buffer. You can do this by passing -b to mpg123. I've found that one meg works well, or if you're memory-squeezed, 512K is great too. A buffer acts like ESP on a Discman, decoding the audio into one end and playing it out the other. If there's a short spike in system activity the player doesn't skip.
gqmpeg has an option to do this; since the new x11amp uses mpg123, it should too.
I'll take the culturo-centric (is that a word?) view and talk about America for right now. Flames from you Un-American people welcome.:)
Here in America, only about half of households own a computer. Just about everybody has a Discman. I'd hazard that 80% of young adults do. Discmen don't wear out that easily. The fact that so many standard CD players exist means a sustained demand for old-style CDs, a demand that won't go away for a long time.
Not everyone has a computer, and not everyone with a computer is anxious to jump on the latest digital-music bandwagon. While the CD standard dominates the mainstream market, unfettered, open mp3 will continue to cement itself as the standard in online music distribution.
Why? Because the mp3 model works. There's no Big Brother hidden tags in it, no nagging "you have to buy this song for another week to play it again" messages. Consumers like this; it makes life simple for them.
The competing models don't work. Each of them, regardless of the technique used, starts off with the assumption that the consumer is a criminal, poised to pirate every song he or she downloads. Consumers don't like this; they prefer their business relationships to be based on trust. Nobody will buy into a system that doesn't trust him.
The mp3 market, despite the format's ability to be copied over, will succeed. Artists who lose potential revenue from the songs they distribute online will gain it back manyfold from the exposure they get. Artists will want this, consumers will want this. Guess what happens when there's a supply and a demand?
When it's time to put away the old Discman because there are no more CDs available for it, mp3, or some open and trust-based standard, will be there.
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I think this feature explains, at least in part, NT's superiority in multiple-CPU raw service.
A side note to flamers: please, PLEASE don't treat these results as suspect or corrupt. I don't think they are. Don't think of them as a defeat, think of them, like ZD said, as a roadmap to show where Linux needs improvement.
I've found that I can get the Symphony ISA card in a computer with a wired ethercard for only a little more than what you'd pay for the bridge, and get a lot more functionality (SSH tunneling to get around the fact that Symphony transmits in the clear, for one thing, interests me).
The Symphony is cheap, and as such is limited in range (they advertise 150 feet indoors, 300 feet outdoors) and speed (A good speed over a solid link seems to be about 60 kilobytes/sec). The driver is also not fully open-source; there's a binary-only library file that it links against. Fortunately, sufficient source is available that upgrading your kernel doesn't break the driver.
Someone please tell me if I'm way off the mark here.
There is a female Jedi on the Council; she appears in a few frames of the scene.
This is so strictly enforced that nit-picking details, such as the fact that lightsabers do not function underwater, are cleared through Lucas.
Be sure that such a major character development probably went to The Man Himself.
I had the opportunity to play with a newer box the other day, and the guide interface is much cleaner and faster.
That's right; I forgot you'd stepped down from SPI. I apologize for implicating you in my rant :)
The "Open Source" term was registered as a service mark to bring a little sanity to the advertisement of free software. If a company advertises a product as "Open Source," those viewing the advertisement can be confident (theoretically) that the program's license allows free redistribution and modification. If it doesn't, then the owner of the "Open Source" mark can bring legal action against the offender; therefore, the mark is a clear sign that you're getting free software.
Unfortunately, there's a deadly flaw waiting in the wings. Since the ownership of the mark is in dispute, if either organization ( OSI or SPI) takes legal action, the offending software company will argue that the mark belongs to the other organization.
This will have the effect of playing the two organizations off each other, and ultimately destroying the effectiveness and purity of the "Open Source" term. That would be a blow to our movement, since "Open Source" has become, in the past few months, the term under which many of us identify it.
The ownership of the mark must be resolved, soon, before it has to come before a court. I personally don't care which of the two feuding organizations ends up with it; I trust both to use their best judgement to administer the mark. But it has to belong to only one of them.
Eric, Bruce: one of you must display maturity and selflessness and give up your claim on the mark, before you pull it apart like two children in a tug-of-war that ultimately breaks the toy in dispute.
As I understand it, the professionals damaged the statue when they reset it. (From a soon-to-be Rice freshman, so I better know this stuff... :)
The COPYING file in the kernel source tree has a short sentence by Linus, explicitly freeing software that calls kernel services in the normal way from falling under the GPL.
Unfortunately for my dad, the phone's interaction with the computer died. The hardware is still going perfectly strong, but something in the software that communicates with the phone has gone haywire; my dad can no longer check his e-mail via the telephone or keep his call waiting lists on his computer, because, due to a software fault, the phone and computer are no longer on speaking terms.
There's an instructive lesson here about Microsoft's strengths and weaknesses.
Those earbud phones are ghastly, but they're loud enough. I bought a set of Sony MDR-CD160 phones (excellent, $30 and not really noticeably worse than $100 phones). They don't work well with the Rio, because the Rio can't be turned up enough to power them - even at max volume, in a somewhat noisy environment like a car, the music isn't acceptably loud.
Gore's had a reputation for randomly spraying tech buzzwords for some time. Check out what the entire graduating class at MIT did to him in 1996 in retribution :)
Due to the freedom to redistribute software without restriction, economic forces will tend to drive the monetary price of free software dramatically downward. Therefore, free speech will eventually lead to free beer, but forced free beer will tend to stifle the free speech part by limiting distribution only to those who can distribute without fee.
Actually, you can do that anyway - it would be parody, which is an exception to the copyright laws. Last campaign someone made a hilariously funny parody of Dole's site, using his design and graphics.
Red Hat 5.2 includes "server" and "workstation" auto-installs, which wipe the disk clean and automatically configure some sane partitioning scheme, as well as a "custom" installation that lets you have control over the sizing and mounting of partitions. I used custom, because I was setting up a dual-boot config. People who want to have control over their partitions can do just that; people that are willing to trust Red Hat's idea of a good partitioning scheme can skip the partition configuration step of the installation.
Stick an "is minimal" after "...for selfish ends."
Open source software is critically different in both aspects. There is no governing body. Each project is an institution unto itself; each developer is free to keep his talents where he feels best about using them. The OSI, SPI, FSF, and so forth do not represent governing bodies, since they cannot control the actions of developers. Therefore, their ability to leverage the labor of the community for selfish ends (not that any of them are doing that, nor that I foresee them attempting to). The other major difference is that of scarcity - or the lack thereof. With open source software, the primary labor is in the initial production. It costs nearly as much to make a software product that will be distributed to ten people as a similar product which will be distributed to millions. As the H2O article pointed out, conventional theories of economics are simply inadequate to deal with the realities of free software.
It's an unfair and highly artificial comparison between communistic economies and free software. Don't confuse them; capitalism has more in common with communism than does open source.
Nobody knew the bug was there. It's a rare case, and one that requires a malicious exploit to cause any harm (when was the last time you saw a naturally-occuring zero-length fragment?) The bug was discovered and fixed before word about it hit the net. I was running 2.2.4 (the relase that fixed the hole) when I read the first advisory. The bug was, therefore, fixed as soon as possible after it became general knowledge. That's not foot-dragging, that's speedy coding, and it's to be congratulated.
Yes, you do have the right to create such output. Reread my previous comments about software licenses being restrictive only. Since there's no negative "You cannot use the program in this manner," (except that manner which creates a copy of the program, again, see my previous post) you have the right to use the program in whatever manner the law would allow for a program you personally own. You don't need an affirmative "you have the right to use this program in any manner allowed by law," the license inherently grants you this right by not taking it away.
What this does protect is output created by the program's user with the aid of the program, as opposed to derived from the program. If I make an image in Gimp, the image does not fall under the GPL; if I compile a program with gcc, that program is not necessarily GPLed.
The conflict you see is that at one point the GPL says that usage is not restricted, then goes on to describe a case in which usage (or the output thereof) is covered by the license.
I'd hold that this case - the case in which someone uses a GPL program to output information derived from the program itself, rather than created or processed from non-GPL sources, such as system status or user input - falls under "copying" much more so than "usage." The user is using the program to copy itself, or a part of itself, and so the new copy falls under the GPL. It's the same thing, essentially, as if I use GNU cp to copy a GPL-covered source file - the new file still falls under the GPL, despite being the output of a GPLed program.
The issue now is whether 'falling outside the scope' of the license is the same as 'not restricted.' I'd have to say that it is. All software licenses are restrictive in nature, designed to take rights away from the do-anything-you-feel-like body of rights enjoyed by users of truly public domain software. The GPL is no exception; it takes away your freedom to take away the freedom of others. It restricts your right to proprietarize the software. The whole scope of a software license is restrictive, not liberating. The point of copyleft is to take the restrictive nature of a software license and create something that will be forever liberated.
So, if something is not restricted by a license, then it follows that that act falls outside the scope of the license. If the license says "not restricted" to some act, then it is in fact placing that act outside its restrictive scope.
I see no conflicts here, and I'd be interested to learn the reasoning behind a policy that would ban installations of GNU GPL-covered software.
If you do not agree to the terms of this EULA, Manufacturer and Microsoft Licensing, Inc. ("MS") are unwilling to license the SOFTWARE PRODUCT to you. In such event, you may not use or copy the SOFTWARE PRODUCT, and you should promptly contact Manufacturer for instructions on return of the unused product(s) for a refund.
"Product" here clearly refers to the "SOFTWARE PRODUCT," i.e., Windows. This is not a loophole. This says in plain English that if you reject the terms that your hardware manufacturer has licensed Windows to you (and it is your hardware manufacturer; they're reselling Windows) then you have a recourse: you can contact your hardware manufacturer and return the Windows license. Your hardware manufactuer has made a statement in this license that it will accept Windows for a refund. If it does not, it's probably committing fraud. The excuse that "Microsoft won't pay us back" doesn't cut it. The hardware manufacturer, through the publication of this license, has placed itself under a legal obligation to follow it, no matter what the financial cost to it is.
The protest against Microsoft is right-minded in spirit - it's a protest against the pressure tactics Microsoft uses to prevent hardware makers from honoring this clause in the license. Microsoft, though, doesn't have to provide refunds, since they didn't license the software to the demonstrators. Microsoft is correct that someone wanting a Windows refund should contact his OEM. If the OEM refuses to pay, then the only recourse for the consumer is legal action to try to force it to pay.
My Rio never skips, unless you use the equalizer button (annoying, but I just don't use it while playing music.) I've played all manner of 128kbps mp3s and none have given me problems.
...add in a buffer. You can do this by passing -b to mpg123. I've found that one meg works well, or if you're memory-squeezed, 512K is great too. A buffer acts like ESP on a Discman, decoding the audio into one end and playing it out the other. If there's a short spike in system activity the player doesn't skip.
gqmpeg has an option to do this; since the new x11amp uses mpg123, it should too.
I'll take the culturo-centric (is that a word?) view and talk about America for right now. Flames from you Un-American people welcome. :)
Here in America, only about half of households own a computer. Just about everybody has a Discman. I'd hazard that 80% of young adults do. Discmen don't wear out that easily. The fact that so many standard CD players exist means a sustained demand for old-style CDs, a demand that won't go away for a long time.
Not everyone has a computer, and not everyone with a computer is anxious to jump on the latest digital-music bandwagon. While the CD standard dominates the mainstream market, unfettered, open mp3 will continue to cement itself as the standard in online music distribution.
Why? Because the mp3 model works. There's no Big Brother hidden tags in it, no nagging "you have to buy this song for another week to play it again" messages. Consumers like this; it makes life simple for them.
The competing models don't work. Each of them, regardless of the technique used, starts off with the assumption that the consumer is a criminal, poised to pirate every song he or she downloads. Consumers don't like this; they prefer their business relationships to be based on trust. Nobody will buy into a system that doesn't trust him.
The mp3 market, despite the format's ability to be copied over, will succeed. Artists who lose potential revenue from the songs they distribute online will gain it back manyfold from the exposure they get. Artists will want this, consumers will want this. Guess what happens when there's a supply and a demand?
When it's time to put away the old Discman because there are no more CDs available for it, mp3, or some open and trust-based standard, will be there.
"Borrow a thousand dollars and the bank owns you; borrow a million dollars and you own the bank."