Email has totally removed our need for physical mail
You wish. Most users are totally uneqipped to pass anything but plain text over email. And on top of this, email is highly forgeable and no established and recognized standard of protection exists.
The web has totally supplanted the old-fashioned print industry
You wish again. Sadly but true, current web has no established practices, standards and tools for mass-production, like print does. HTML/XML/CSS is only getting standartized, and pages are still bearing "Internet explorer only" signs. Imagine printed booklet which reads "for wearers of Cartier glasses only". WWW is technology in it's teenage years, and it has to mature. It will happen, eventually, but to say it's already happened is to ignore the reality.
Also, WWW as it is is highly volatile media, and only widely used way to really preserve it is to print it out on paper. Observing modern company functioning, the paper amount has not become less - though it uis surely less than it would for the same function without electronic means. I.e., function expanded, while paper amount preserved - meaning, function/paper ratio increased - but it'not right to say that the paper gave it's way. It just has less market share now, but it didn't disappear in no way.
And on top of this - I have yet to see solution that would come close to the plain old printed book in usability and price. There is just no such technology on the market.
Patent would suit you better, I think. Copyright olny governs distribution, while patent can prohibit use. So you better patent the American (R)(TM) Way (R)(TM), or some British or French will steal it from you.
Why do you care so much about what internet access you have at school? Get yourself decent unrestricted internet access at home and say the school censors to kiss your ass.
Personally, I think SSH has long become "common name", just as people call personal computer "a PC", even though there was real IBM PC, and some call general copying machine "a xerox" or general napkin "a cleenex", etc. Nobody really cares if this is Ylonen's product or not anymore, when they are saying "we are allowing access by SSH". This is just as they'd say "we are allowing access by FTP". That's the back side of popularity - the name becomes commodized...
Seems like SSH team feels that OpenSSH is eating their profits, since SSH has no added value but is not free. So they are trying to hurt OpenSSH project in the hope that this will bring their profits back. I guess it won't.
Delta-based updating? Isn't it like... well... rsync? Not that patent office lawyers or Symantec programmers ever heard of existense of Unix and rsync, but at least one person in Symantec (janitor? son of the HR manager?) should know people are doing this for years?
A reference implementation is meant to be easily understood
What the use of the reference implementation which nobody (outside RMS camp) can look at, let alone base on, without risk of being sued by FSF?
wide heterogeneity is the next best thing to homogeneity to ensure interoperability
Did you ever try to port something between Unix systems? If you did, you probably know that heterogenity is not so good if you have to support them all. It would be good if everybody would agree on most aspects, but in the reality it happens that everybody disagrees on most aspects, making porter's life a living hell.
Users of GPL'd code have more (and more secure) freedom
You know, users of the high-security prison cell have "more secure freedom" too. Until they want to get out. If you want to be out of the GPL cell, tough luck. You might never want - it's pretty comfortable one. But claiming it's freedom means not telling the full truth.
A system which offers the right to deny others their rights is contradictory
Why would it be? That seems to be just a slogan. I never saw any proof of this being contradictory. Even RMS doesn't claim this - it claims it to be morally wrong. Which means our moral differs, but that's OK - everybody has his own moral anyway.
And, BTW, not all proprietary s/w is crap. A lot of it is - but a lot of free s/w is too. There are pretty good for-money products (I'm writing some of them, surely:)
Sysadmin that asks himself "why I just don't switch my server to something else" should be thrown out from his work immediately. He obviously has too much time in his hands. Server OS should never be switched because "some other OS is cooler". Only because the present installation has some hard problems.
If RedHat could just ship RH X with an Aqua-like theme, it would hurt Apple's sales.
That's bull. Nobody buys an OS because the buttons are blue. That's not a carpet. That's not even a car. Maybe in 20 years OS buying decisions would be like that, but certainly not now and not with RedHat.
Now, it is possible that RH shipping Aqua themes would have additional benefit (probably also monetary), and thus Apple has right for some claims, but certainly not because it hurts Apple sales.
Now, if I was Apple, I would actually allow everyone to use these themes and say "You see how good we are? Everyone tries to copy us, but if you want to get the _real_ thing, come to us. Others are just a copycats". Maybe Apple lawyers just so smarter than me that they actually see the reason to scare people off. I do not.
Oh, sure, making cube-shaped computer took them a lot of R&D. Years of it. Especially after there's Cobalt Cube and a number of other cube-shaped ones.
So, do I understand right that no one now has right to make cube-shaped computers? Then God bless us Apple does not make midi-towers - or we'd have to have all PC's look like Dali picture item, because all normal shapes would be taken by Apple. You know, one or two Dali-shaped computers would be nice, but I'd prefer to reserve good old midi-tower for myself too.
In fact, all these attempts by Apple only hurt them and hurt their market share.
BTW, if I now go home and paint a pigeon just like Picasso's - should I be sued too? Does it mean that if we have two artworks that are similiar one of the artists should sue other? Don't you see how stupid the thing gets?
Here in Israel one of the large ISPs (Internet Gold) is using ":-)" emoticon as his logo, so it's probably trademarked too. Though they use it as black symbol on yellow backgound only, very unusual for comptuer screen. And I'm always using:) anyway...
You don't need Microsoft to do anything for you. All.NET interfaces are documented extensively. Including bytecode formats. Just go to MSDN, take the docs and start coding. You have better things to do? Then why Microsoft should make your world better for their own cost?
As soon as anybody writes C# bytecode interpreter for Linux and good system classes library for Linux, it would work. At least when programmed right.
Don't foget how much time it took to Sun to recognize there's Linux and there should be Java for Linux. Years. And.NET is not even released.
With new C-Sharp/.NET bytecodes, which, btw, are all as open as commercial company can do it, and all documented - Microsoft wants Java dead as soon as possible. They really don't need Java for anything now - they can claim platform-independence, class reuse from various languages, ease of OO programming, existing infrastructure for support of distributed applications etc., etc. - all of Java strong points. So surely they don't want Java anymore - they just developed their own Java.
By "using library" I mean programming something with this library. Library by itself is a pile of dead zeroes and ones, unless there are programs that use its capabilities (meaning link to it). FSF means to restrict linking to GPL libraries to GPL code only. Which basically means only GPL programmers can use (not distribute in the source! use!) GPLed library. That's what I said.
Now that talk about "making money" really pisses me off. You know perfectly that GPL is incompatible with BSD, for example, and while no BSD developers are really "making money on other's efforts" (routinely, others are making money on BSD developers' efforts), they have to reimplement all GPLed code. So you know perfectly it's not about money, it's about FSF politics.
And "free as in speech" also doesn't prevent me to distribute words of others. BSD is copyrighted free speech - like a play. You can quote it, but you should say "I'm quoting Bill Shakespeare now". GPL is more like software patents - you can use it, but only if you pay FSF by making your software GPL. For some, it's much more than you would pay for any library. Especially if that's non-essential capability - like readline. OK, so my users won't be able to edit their inputs. Too bad for them. Thanks to FSF. I would not be making any product GPL just to be able to edit inputs, unless that's the only thing the product does. I can make some of my software GPL just because I like it, but compatibility with library that gives 1% of optional functionality wil certainly be the last thing I'd consider.
You could probably argue on that with SuSE lawyers, if they sue you. But I doubt they will do it before May 31, anyway, even if they know about your existance - legal procedures are pretty slow - so it's not that relevant in this case;))
I guess they did it mosty to prevent RH itself from taking their work and use it without contributing. Which is rather understandable.
You are right, of course. Your code is yours and nobody's else. But: if you are accepting this position, like "I give my code to whom I want, and only to those", why calling it "free software" and brag about how much code reuse and public good GPL libraries bring? Say "this library is GPL-proprietary software, only members of FSF political circle may use it", and be good. But calling "free software" something that anybody who slightly disagrees with FSF cannot even touch - that's a gross exaggeration if I ever have seen one.
If you will be using such a trick to go over GPL, and it would be obvious you are using such a trick - expect yourself to be under attack from FSF and GPL zealots once you become enough famous to justify such an attack. Legally, you might be unvulnerable (GPL is never gone in court anyway), but PR-wise, you'll be taking serious beating on that.
I'm not sure that opening company that does the same fall under non-disclosure. You don't really disclose it to anyone, you just use confidential information for your own benefit - which you are not supposed to do. That's noncompete.
These people wasn't on crack when they signed their contracts, right? They knowingly did this, so what's the problem?
Imagine you run some company, and hire a bunch of developers. Then you take some project for R&D and give them to implement. And then they see that this project is probably worth a lot of $$, so they turn around, take the half-baked project with them (including a lot of investment that was put in it before it got to them) and make a startup to sell someone else's ideas just because they think they are too smart to play by the rules. I guess you'd be pretty pissed off on such scenario?
The fact that on side of the deal is Microsoft doesn't give the other side right to breach contracts and try to sucker its partner.
The people knew they are going to work for Microsoft and what signing non-compete with Microsoft means. So why they are crying now? They should start crying *before* signing, then it would make sense, not after working, getting money from MS and then deciding they are better off.
The problem here is that person with the proper training to understand ISP logs probably is just a qualified system administrator. Why would such a person work in the police? Sysadminning would pay much more. That's the basic problem for police - they are expected to be experts in every field, but the real expert would never go work as a cop.
In fact, they just have to hire a couple of highly qualified programmers/sysadmins as the part of their criminal research labs - as they have people who match fingerprints, determine that the month-old body was dead from suffocation, etc. That's the only, even if costy, solution - traning cops won't do you good, you cannot make cop to be an university professor - if he was, he'd work in university anyway. Cops should know criminal law and due legal procedures (warrants, etc.), and technical points should go to the exerts.
That's an utter bull..NET has much more inside that just a DCOM/RPC. First of all, common binary platform (bytecode) for some 20 languages, including C++, C#, Eiffel, Perl and what not. Second, open (and I mean that - everything is documented) COM protocol, based on open SOAP standard. Third, class library that can be used via the above by programmer on any language (and any platform as soon as someone writes.NET interface for that platform - which is certainly not Microsoft's fault if someone does not). Fourth, real programmable COM classes, not the aboimination they had before with 200 definitions and methods before you have a thing working. Last, but not least - common IDE for all the above with extensibility potential (you have your own language? write bytecode compiler and a copule of hooks and you're in).
This is not really a "technology" - more a toolkit. And though I'm not a great fan of Microsoft, I must accept it being pretty worthy toolkit. They seem to have learned on all their mistakes with COM/OLE (closed protocols, one-platformness, royal pain in the ass to program) and improved seriously.
And to add insult to injury, there's no way to disable flash palyer in most browsers. If you have netscape, you can go to plugins directory and remove flash plugin from there, but for MSIE you would probably not even know where it is located, and it probably would insist on re-installing the plugin every time you come to page with flash. That's a really annoying situation.
Well, I don't know about platform independent and stuff, but first thig I saw trying to run it was:
(**) SVGA: 24bpp not supported for this chipset
*** A configured device found, but display modes could not be resolved.***
Fatal server error:
no screens found
Seems to be a long way to go until we reach at least particular-hardware-dependency problem. Then we might start talking about kernel-dependency and stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
Email has totally removed our need for physical mail
You wish. Most users are totally uneqipped to pass anything but plain text over email. And on top of this, email is highly forgeable and no established and recognized standard of protection exists.
The web has totally supplanted the old-fashioned print industry
You wish again. Sadly but true, current web has no established practices, standards and tools for mass-production, like print does. HTML/XML/CSS is only getting standartized, and pages are still bearing "Internet explorer only" signs. Imagine printed booklet which reads "for wearers of Cartier glasses only". WWW is technology in it's teenage years, and it has to mature. It will happen, eventually, but to say it's already happened is to ignore the reality.
Also, WWW as it is is highly volatile media, and only widely used way to really preserve it is to print it out on paper. Observing modern company functioning, the paper amount has not become less - though it uis surely less than it would for the same function without electronic means. I.e., function expanded, while paper amount preserved - meaning, function/paper ratio increased - but it'not right to say that the paper gave it's way. It just has less market share now, but it didn't disappear in no way.
And on top of this - I have yet to see solution that would come close to the plain old printed book in usability and price. There is just no such technology on the market.
Patent would suit you better, I think. Copyright olny governs distribution, while patent can prohibit use. So you better patent the American (R)(TM) Way (R)(TM), or some British or French will steal it from you.
Why do you care so much about what internet access you have at school? Get yourself decent unrestricted internet access at home and say the school censors to kiss your ass.
Personally, I think SSH has long become "common name", just as people call personal computer "a PC", even though there was real IBM PC, and some call general copying machine "a xerox" or general napkin "a cleenex", etc. Nobody really cares if this is Ylonen's product or not anymore, when they are saying "we are allowing access by SSH". This is just as they'd say "we are allowing access by FTP". That's the back side of popularity - the name becomes commodized...
Seems like SSH team feels that OpenSSH is eating their profits, since SSH has no added value but is not free. So they are trying to hurt OpenSSH project in the hope that this will bring their profits back. I guess it won't.
Delta-based updating? Isn't it like... well... rsync? Not that patent office lawyers or Symantec programmers ever heard of existense of Unix and rsync, but at least one person in Symantec (janitor? son of the HR manager?) should know people are doing this for years?
A reference implementation is meant to be easily understood
:)
What the use of the reference implementation which nobody (outside RMS camp) can look at, let alone base on, without risk of being sued by FSF?
wide heterogeneity is the next best thing to homogeneity to ensure interoperability
Did you ever try to port something between Unix systems? If you did, you probably know that heterogenity is not so good if you have to support them all. It would be good if everybody would agree on most aspects, but in the reality it happens that everybody disagrees on most aspects, making porter's life a living hell.
Users of GPL'd code have more (and more secure) freedom
You know, users of the high-security prison cell have "more secure freedom" too. Until they want to get out. If you want to be out of the GPL cell, tough luck. You might never want - it's pretty comfortable one. But claiming it's freedom means not telling the full truth.
A system which offers the right to deny others their rights is contradictory
Why would it be? That seems to be just a slogan. I never saw any proof of this being contradictory. Even RMS doesn't claim this - it claims it to be morally wrong. Which means our moral differs, but that's OK - everybody has his own moral anyway.
And, BTW, not all proprietary s/w is crap. A lot of it is - but a lot of free s/w is too. There are pretty good for-money products (I'm writing some of them, surely
Sysadmin that asks himself "why I just don't switch my server to something else" should be thrown out from his work immediately. He obviously has too much time in his hands. Server OS should never be switched because "some other OS is cooler". Only because the present installation has some hard problems.
You cannot license reference implementation under GPL, as far as I understand, since GPL is not a free license.
If RedHat could just ship RH X with an Aqua-like theme, it would hurt Apple's sales.
That's bull. Nobody buys an OS because the buttons are blue. That's not a carpet. That's not even a car. Maybe in 20 years OS buying decisions would be like that, but certainly not now and not with RedHat.
Now, it is possible that RH shipping Aqua themes would have additional benefit (probably also monetary), and thus Apple has right for some claims, but certainly not because it hurts Apple sales.
Now, if I was Apple, I would actually allow everyone to use these themes and say "You see how good we are? Everyone tries to copy us, but if you want to get the _real_ thing, come to us. Others are just a copycats". Maybe Apple lawyers just so smarter than me that they actually see the reason to scare people off. I do not.
Oh, sure, making cube-shaped computer took them a lot of R&D. Years of it. Especially after there's Cobalt Cube and a number of other cube-shaped ones.
So, do I understand right that no one now has right to make cube-shaped computers? Then God bless us Apple does not make midi-towers - or we'd have to have all PC's look like Dali picture item, because all normal shapes would be taken by Apple. You know, one or two Dali-shaped computers would be nice, but I'd prefer to reserve good old midi-tower for myself too.
In fact, all these attempts by Apple only hurt them and hurt their market share.
BTW, if I now go home and paint a pigeon just like Picasso's - should I be sued too? Does it mean that if we have two artworks that are similiar one of the artists should sue other? Don't you see how stupid the thing gets?
Here in Israel one of the large ISPs (Internet Gold) is using ":-)" emoticon as his logo, so it's probably trademarked too. Though they use it as black symbol on yellow backgound only, very unusual for comptuer screen. And I'm always using :) anyway...
You don't need Microsoft to do anything for you. All .NET interfaces are documented extensively. Including bytecode formats. Just go to MSDN, take the docs and start coding. You have better things to do? Then why Microsoft should make your world better for their own cost?
As soon as anybody writes C# bytecode interpreter for Linux and good system classes library for Linux, it would work. At least when programmed right. .NET is not even released.
Don't foget how much time it took to Sun to recognize there's Linux and there should be Java for Linux. Years. And
With new C-Sharp/.NET bytecodes, which, btw, are all as open as commercial company can do it, and all documented - Microsoft wants Java dead as soon as possible. They really don't need Java for anything now - they can claim platform-independence, class reuse from various languages, ease of OO programming, existing infrastructure for support of distributed applications etc., etc. - all of Java strong points. So surely they don't want Java anymore - they just developed their own Java.
By "using library" I mean programming something with this library. Library by itself is a pile of dead zeroes and ones, unless there are programs that use its capabilities (meaning link to it). FSF means to restrict linking to GPL libraries to GPL code only. Which basically means only GPL programmers can use (not distribute in the source! use!) GPLed library. That's what I said.
Now that talk about "making money" really pisses me off. You know perfectly that GPL is incompatible with BSD, for example, and while no BSD developers are really "making money on other's efforts" (routinely, others are making money on BSD developers' efforts), they have to reimplement all GPLed code. So you know perfectly it's not about money, it's about FSF politics.
And "free as in speech" also doesn't prevent me to distribute words of others. BSD is copyrighted free speech - like a play. You can quote it, but you should say "I'm quoting Bill Shakespeare now". GPL is more like software patents - you can use it, but only if you pay FSF by making your software GPL. For some, it's much more than you would pay for any library. Especially if that's non-essential capability - like readline. OK, so my users won't be able to edit their inputs. Too bad for them. Thanks to FSF. I would not be making any product GPL just to be able to edit inputs, unless that's the only thing the product does. I can make some of my software GPL just because I like it, but compatibility with library that gives 1% of optional functionality wil certainly be the last thing I'd consider.
You could probably argue on that with SuSE lawyers, if they sue you. But I doubt they will do it before May 31, anyway, even if they know about your existance - legal procedures are pretty slow - so it's not that relevant in this case ;))
I guess they did it mosty to prevent RH itself from taking their work and use it without contributing. Which is rather understandable.
You are right, of course. Your code is yours and nobody's else. But: if you are accepting this position, like "I give my code to whom I want, and only to those", why calling it "free software" and brag about how much code reuse and public good GPL libraries bring? Say "this library is GPL-proprietary software, only members of FSF political circle may use it", and be good. But calling "free software" something that anybody who slightly disagrees with FSF cannot even touch - that's a gross exaggeration if I ever have seen one.
If you will be using such a trick to go over GPL, and it would be obvious you are using such a trick - expect yourself to be under attack from FSF and GPL zealots once you become enough famous to justify such an attack. Legally, you might be unvulnerable (GPL is never gone in court anyway), but PR-wise, you'll be taking serious beating on that.
I'm not sure that opening company that does the same fall under non-disclosure. You don't really disclose it to anyone, you just use confidential information for your own benefit - which you are not supposed to do. That's noncompete.
These people wasn't on crack when they signed their contracts, right? They knowingly did this, so what's the problem?
Imagine you run some company, and hire a bunch of developers. Then you take some project for R&D and give them to implement. And then they see that this project is probably worth a lot of $$, so they turn around, take the half-baked project with them (including a lot of investment that was put in it before it got to them) and make a startup to sell someone else's ideas just because they think they are too smart to play by the rules. I guess you'd be pretty pissed off on such scenario?
The fact that on side of the deal is Microsoft doesn't give the other side right to breach contracts and try to sucker its partner.
The people knew they are going to work for Microsoft and what signing non-compete with Microsoft means. So why they are crying now? They should start crying *before* signing, then it would make sense, not after working, getting money from MS and then deciding they are better off.
The problem here is that person with the proper training to understand ISP logs probably is just a qualified system administrator. Why would such a person work in the police? Sysadminning would pay much more. That's the basic problem for police - they are expected to be experts in every field, but the real expert would never go work as a cop.
In fact, they just have to hire a couple of highly qualified programmers/sysadmins as the part of their criminal research labs - as they have people who match fingerprints, determine that the month-old body was dead from suffocation, etc. That's the only, even if costy, solution - traning cops won't do you good, you cannot make cop to be an university professor - if he was, he'd work in university anyway. Cops should know criminal law and due legal procedures (warrants, etc.), and technical points should go to the exerts.
That's an utter bull. .NET has much more inside that just a DCOM/RPC. First of all, common binary platform (bytecode) for some 20 languages, including C++, C#, Eiffel, Perl and what not. Second, open (and I mean that - everything is documented) COM protocol, based on open SOAP standard. Third, class library that can be used via the above by programmer on any language (and any platform as soon as someone writes .NET interface for that platform - which is certainly not Microsoft's fault if someone does not). Fourth, real programmable COM classes, not the aboimination they had before with 200 definitions and methods before you have a thing working. Last, but not least - common IDE for all the above with extensibility potential (you have your own language? write bytecode compiler and a copule of hooks and you're in).
This is not really a "technology" - more a toolkit. And though I'm not a great fan of Microsoft, I must accept it being pretty worthy toolkit. They seem to have learned on all their mistakes with COM/OLE (closed protocols, one-platformness, royal pain in the ass to program) and improved seriously.
And to add insult to injury, there's no way to disable flash palyer in most browsers. If you have netscape, you can go to plugins directory and remove flash plugin from there, but for MSIE you would probably not even know where it is located, and it probably would insist on re-installing the plugin every time you come to page with flash. That's a really annoying situation.
Well, I don't know about platform independent and stuff, but first thig I saw trying to run it was:
(**) SVGA: 24bpp not supported for this chipset
*** A configured device found, but display modes could not be resolved.***
Fatal server error:
no screens found
Seems to be a long way to go until we reach at least particular-hardware-dependency problem. Then we might start talking about kernel-dependency and stuff.