Most of the flames (at least the ones worth reading) against rms are from people who believe that rms is -wrong- about something, and they (including me;)) have as much right to say what they believe as rms does.
That said, I think rms is full of it in this latest post -- I don't believe that the copyright statutes (and I have read them) give anything remotely -like- the power to revoke 'forever' the rights given by a statement of copyright, no matter how convoluted that statement (ie, the GPL) may be. Even if it did, nowhere in the GPL does it say anything like, 'If you violate the GPL you lose your rights under the GPL forever'.
It -does- say your rights under the license are 'terminated' if you break the license, but it seems to me that since the license is offered when receiving GPLed software, that a person can 're-accept' the license by receiving a new copy of the software and then -not- breaking the license. (ie, with freely available free software... they can download the 'Program' that their 'Work based on the Program' is derived from and then be good.)
rms has the right to believe what he wants, and say what he wants, but rms' rights to say and believe what he wants do not terminate my right to say and believe what I want - and I believe that rms is zealous beyond reason about everything involved in 'Free Software.' His -claim- that the GPL does this or does that is no more meaningful than anybody else's claim if he doesn't back it up with citations of particular clauses.
Anyway. I -do- appreciate rms... I am deeply grateful for GCC, glibc, emacs, and other software, much written by rms directly, or with other members of the gnu project... however, personally, I'd be just as happy to have them under a BSD style license, and I do not appreciate rms for his zealotry.
-- there's no such thing as "Defend it or lose it" under IP law. If 200 people rip off MS Windows and MS prosecutes 2 of them, there's no such defense as "Well, your honor, MS didn't prosecute the other 198 people..." This is a MASSIVE LIE made up by companies who want to shift responsibility. ANYTIME you see a company say "We had to... or lose it" they're lying.
There's no such thing as 'defend it or lose it' under copyright law. It is true under trademark law (dilution of trademarks), but, while they don't identify just what IP has been 'violated', it seems like trademarks are unlikely to have anything to do with it, so you're right enough in this case.
--Parity
I used to advocate this kind of thing, but then a closer reading of the law made me realize something: Prior art must occur 1 year -before- the patent is -filed- for. Am I misunderstanding something, or would companies be able to rifle through the antipatent database and file for patents on all the new ideas and then say 'yes, but that's less than a year before we filed' (for software and business method patents you can surely cobble together a prototype in less than 11 months... )
Yes, this is obviously a 'bad' thing for them to do, and against the -spirit- of the law, but isn't it within the letter?
(IANAL... any Ls out there?)
Just because something is published on the web does -not- make it public domain, any more than a billboard ad being published in plain view makes the advertisement public domain. It's clear to me that, legally, this is easily copyright violation. (If you don't explicitly give out rights, all-rights-reserved is assumed by the law since sometime in the 80's when they stopped requiring explicit copyright stamped all over everything.)
So, from my PoV, legally he shouldn't have done it, and ethically, linux.com should have a copyright permitting non-profit reuse/derivative works of the site and he certainly -should- have given credit.
No, it's not, and because doing security auditing
is a boring, tedious task; it doesn't scratch anybody's itch except Theo and his team and thye're already fixated on BSD.
One or more of the commercial distributions probably ought to pay people to do the tedious auditing tasks, but a.t.m. they're all focused on front-end/user-friendliness issues, making Linux 'ready for the desktop' not making ready for Enterprise and Gov't applications. (Or, since Linux is really already doing both, I mean a broader range of enterprises and gov't applications, just to pre-empt any flames.)
First of all, I think anybody that actually does -any- work whatsoever on a computer appreciates the desire to avoid crashes. The agony of losing a 20 page term paper that you worked on until 2AM is enough to convert any college student.
The rest of your argument - well, points-by-example, I can see pretty well. If you want an entertainment machine (ie, web, e-mail, vidgames) Linux is not there. However -
Mozilla is cranking right along towards release and will be 'released' with in the year.
X4 is cranking right along and will support 3D and DRI and all that great stuff to make games go.
Wine is cranking right along, and can actually -run- things. Wow.
And, of course, Corel and others have slapped some really good installation-and-support stuff on top of the nuts-and-bolts. (And Debian has made the BEST packaging system ever for Corel to build on! No, I don't really want to start a flame war, I'm just a Debian user, it was mandatory to spout that.;))
My point is, I've always said, 'Well, -someday- Linux will be good for the ordinary user.' Now, I'd say, 'within 1-2 years, Linux will be good for the ordinary user'; for some definitions of ordinary, anyway.
I estimate that 1 year from now we should start seeing distributions with a stable X4, stable Mozilla (or, more likely, derivative web browser that spins off from the beta Mozillas, 'cause people are getting impatient and Mozilla is getting stable enough to spin projects off of without having to duplicate effort), a Beta Wine that is pretty much as stable as Windows itself (not saying much, but hey), and with any luck, a stable ALSA.
Now, if Corel/Caldera/RedHat/etc keep up the 'friendly-front-end' progress, all this core functionality should be easy to use.
Passwords at the console aren't necessary if people don't want them - though the code isn't in place, it is perfectly technologically feasible to permit login at the console without a password, and require password only for remote access (if the home user even bothers running a telnet or sshd in the first place).
Logging in as root to install things isn't necessary - just make real ('human') users part of the 'installers' group and the installer program -rwsr-x--- root installers -- all behind the scenes of course, so the ordinary user doesn't have to know how to operate 'install'. (install should, of course, only work for people at the console - the more advanced permissions structure of 2.4 might help with this, or not, I'm still on 2.2).
Any-way. Ordinary users -do- want some of what linux can offer them... namely -
remote access to their machine (mostly to check e-mail)
stability (though they don't want to pay an ease-of-use price for it)
ip-masquerading. No. Really. I meant it. Every windows user I know wishes they had ipmasq. Of course, they don't want to deal with the IPMASQ howto, or even the WinGate install program, they want it to just work, so they can end their fights over who gets the modem line now.
If the end-user-distributions can get Ethernet/IPMasq setup cleanly automated, that'll be a big step forward towards grabbing the web-and-e-mail sorts of 'ordinary users'. (And a minor-+ for game users that like networked games, though what they really want is a stable and automatic X4-with-DRI + ALSA + Joystick, and they want it all without having to know any technical terms.;o)
Interoperability with MS-Office is still, and will continue to be, I'm sure, a big stumbling block with the 'productive' sorts of 'ordinary users'. (Funny how many categories of 'ordinary' there are, isn't it?). Any-way, between the opening staroffice, the Corel-WPOffice, and KOffice, there are options for those who don't need -perfect- interoperability, and if even a few percent go to other office suites, it will discourage MS-core-users from shipping MS-only documents. (ie,... they might send the easily converted Word5.0 format instead of the brand-new-nobody-knows-what-was-added Word-2001 format.)
Any-way, if you want to give your family Linux right now, expect to spend days, nay, -weeks-, configuring, optimizing, installing KDE, removing KDE and installing Gnome, switching back, setting up sudo so they can do root tasks transparently and then setting up ipchains and tcp_wrappers so the Evil Crackers don't then exploit the weakened security, etc, etc, until it's a smooth ride, 'cause frankly, I don't think out-of-the-box linux -does- have much ease-of-use, but I know that tweaked-until-it-begs-for-mercy linux sure does.
To reach the flashpoint of alcohol, whatever it is, you'd have to heat the alcohol by about 120degrees-F more than usual (assuming alcohol is
normally at around 50-70dF, this stuff was at minus 65dF, at -least- (that was the inside-the-bag atmosphere temp wasn't it?); making it, then, much harder to catch on fire.
Of course, if it -did- catch on fire, it'd be just as dangerous as any other alcohol fire, so, well, it wasn't exactly 'safe as houses' as it were.
You can try it with -your- system if you want, but, as I recall from high school chemistry, alcohol absorbs water from the air. The -alcohol- is okay, but the real-world liquid isn't pure alcohol, it's alcohol/water mix.
(In other words, it's like water being 'theoretically' non conductive - it's okay on paper, but in practice you can't get pure alcohol, or pure water, right up against the motherboard.)
Also witness that dampening the bottom of the motherboard with the alcohol, as described in the article, did, in fact, short it out.
A 'strawman' is a type of argument where you elaborate on what another person said and then criticize your interpretation. (Say, for example, that arguing gun control, someone for absolute gun control says someone against any further gun control, 'So, you think people should be able to use deadly force with impunity all the time? That would cause the health costs to skyrocket not to mention the moral questions... ' Putting up the strawman is the first sentance, and knocking it down is the arguing against it.)
In common usage, a 'straw man' is a man made by taking clothing stuffing it with dried grass, or taking bundles of dried grass and tying them off in a man-shape, sometimes used as a scarecrow but in this day and age usually only as an autumn decoration.
Parity, who does not have any critical thinking or debate books in possession at the moment, so there may be some errors here.
Programs like this is just what Linux needs. The lack of graphic programs for linux is what's keeping win 98 still on one of the particians of my computer...With this and Maya Linux is looking better and better to completely switching over.
Did you even -look- at the article?! This is a 5-digit price-range professional animation package and it doesn't even -dream- of running on Windows98. It runs on Irix, NT, and now Linux. I do -not- think you're going to install this for fooling around at home, or that whether it is ported to Linux will make one bit of difference in either direction as to whether you kill the Win98 partition.
Draft Text of the LSB The document cited in this article is -not- the LSB, and the reason all those things are already in most distributions is because they analyzed the distributions to see what they had in common! The LDPS is saying 'if you distribute a binary, compile it with this, because that's what people have' and 'if you maintain a distribution, make sure you have at -least- this, because that's the basics'. --Parity
This spec talks about how to get -distribution independence- of a -binary- package. You're not going to have an architecture independent binary package (ignoring Java, etc, for the moment.)
In any case, the recommendations in this specification look like they are compatible with a cross-platform application coding approach, though, naturally, there's more than just what's in the distribution-independence spec involved in cross-platform compatability.
In other words - I think you're criticizing this spec for not meeting a set of goals that have nothing to do with the purpose or intention of this spec.
Personally, I've never been 'reviled' by my peers for being a vegetarian; of course, I'm not terribly picky about what I eat (other than not eating meat). Granted, I dislike going to McDs or Burger King since there's nothing for a vegetarian to eat there but french fries and side-salads. (I've heard animal fats are used in the fruit pie things, not sure it's true.) Just about anything else is fine though; I eat pizza, pasta, salad, potatoes, etc, that is, things you can find at any mainstream restaurant. In short, nobody but you has, in my experiences, compared my decision not to eat meat with some drastic social faux pas.
2. Biology/Economy This is a red herring argument. First of all, I've known plenty of vegetarians who were both overweight and underweight, and I myself hit smack in the middle of the 'recommended' weight for my height/build. Perhaps vegetarians are, on average, lighter than non-vegatarians, but then, -most- Americans are overweight, so... so what? Nor do I, or other vegetarians I know, take a lot of dietary supplements. (I do take a B-complex 'stress formula', but that's because of my caffeine intake and my stress levels, not my vegetarian diet). Secondly, the limiting factor in agriculture is not how much usable nutrition can be crammed into a cubic foot of product, but how much usable nutrition can be derived from an acre of ground. If you want human-edible food, grow potatoes, soy, corn, or wheat. Further, cattle are generally fed on grain, in pens - free-ranging, grass-eating cattle are used only for extremely expensive cuts of luxury meats, so, you are turning human-edible food into other human edible food, -and- you are doing so at a 16:1 loss of usable calories (IIRC, 'Diet for a Small Planet', 1980 edition).
3. Ethically
I -utterly- disagree with this. I think that to breed a population of animals to be kept in pens, force-fed, and brutally murdered, in an essentially joyless life is -far- less ethical than going into the wild and ending prematurely the life of a creature who has at least -had- a life; if you make a point of only hunting lamed and elderly animals, that's even better. And, of course, deer are in constant danger of overpopulation so something will kill them - starvation or hunting. (Of course, the -reason- they're overpopulating is because humans killed all the wolves south of Alaska, so, this only applies in the north end of the US and the south end of Canada, really, and is the situation itself is the result of unethical behaviour.)
I will note that I'm not a vegan, and have no particular objection to the use of wool, dairy, and unfertilized eggs for various purposes, as long as the source animals are well-treated. I'll also note that I don't go around trying to 'convert' people to vegetarianism, but I do respond to blanket attacks on vegetarianism, -especially- attacks that try to portray vegetarians as being somehow 'worse people' than meat eaters. I would thank you to do your research before debating the merits of vegetarianism and meat-eating, and to keep bigotted personal comments out of the debate in the future.
Moderators: You should be browsing at -1, Newest First, Nested, not +2, Highest Scores First, Threaded
Moderators should browse -Oldest- First... otherwise, they will mark the -earlier- post as the redundant one, or promote to high scores posts that are redundant with much earlier posts, etc. Other than that, I agree. (And they can switch to newest first after browsing the comments through once to see what's coming in, of course.)
They could construct it--but why? People "outside of cities" by definition have low population densities. "Mass" transit requires high populations.
This is simple overgeneralization; there are -many- places with the population density to support mass transit that don't have it - namely, just about every suburb. Presumably you'd run the busses infrequently and down only the major roads, but it'd be -something-.
Before you say it can't be done, consider the Sili Valley - despite the complaints about the efficiency or lack thereof and whether light rail is a waste of time, etc, there -is- a mass transit that runs all up and down and through the suburbs and shows no sign of vanishing. You can take the bus, the light rail, or the cal-train to various destinations, and at the other end take something else.
By contrast, in the Boston area, and most cities east of the rockies, -only- the metro region has mass transit, and the suburbs are left to hang. Or, (using the Boston area as an example) you have transit into the city with peripheral parking lots but no transit -out- of the city. In case nobody noticed, the high tech industry (and others that can manage it) are slipping out of the cities and building up along the highways that run out of them. I live -in- the city and work -outside- it, and the reverse commute is really only doable by car... it doesn't do me any good to be left in a 'commuter parking lot' with a residents-only sticker-required no-overnight-parking lot. I could, conceivably, even leave my car in the parking lot overnight and do -most- of my commute by transit and the transit-less leg by car, but the policies are set up to discourage it.
Anyway, the real reason there's no mass transit in the suburbs is because people in the suburbs don't want those icky 'city people' (read, minorities) coming out to shop in their nice isolated suburban shopping districts. Which, admittedly, they would probably do, but so what? Seeing a black face or hearing a conversation in portuguese isn't going to kill even the most whitebread of the suburb dwellers. (If you think I'm just trolling/flamebaiting, check out the zoning laws & transit-related votes in a suburb near you...)
First, I just want to observe that people on both sides are -way- oversimplifying the case. On the one hand, it is a simple variant of a toy trademark on a site that is going to be about a game. On the other hand, Barbie -is- (or was, upon a time) a nickname for Barbara and saying you can't name any character 'Barbie' anymore is a little extreme - -and- it is a non-profit site. So. Whatever. Both sides have points, and this is nowhere near as obvious a case as etoy/eToys. As a non-lawyer I won't even speculate who has the better chance (though I'm inclined to side with the 'thebarbies' guy.)
Beyond my idle observations, my actual constructive suggestion is that a general appeal to slashdotters that a faq would be nice is all very well, but creating some sort of advice center on this topic seems extremely well suited to the recently formed OpenLAW group, if they can spare time away from the DVD issue (or if those not interested in the DVD issue wanted to work in parallel on a different subject... volunteerism is about interest not allocating 'workers' as we are reminded in every 'is this the best use of programmers?' thread on the various open-source-software topics).
Of course, it would be foolish to ignore the already existing efforts at ajax.org, and then there's my favorite organization, the EFF; but all in all, I think OpenLAW (maybe working with ajax.org's domanin name advocacy group) is the way to go on this particular issue, if anyone with OpenLAW is motivated by this case or ones like it.
The article that I read said nothing of the kind, but rather, said, 'Open-source advocates tend to assume that open-source code has been thoroughly reviewed for security by the many-eyes theory, but this isn't necessarilly true.'
The alternative of closed-source was mentioned, and dismissed as not being any better.
This article was, in short, saying 'this is a shortcoming of open-source' but it was -not- rehashing the security-by-obscurity argument from the closed-source camp, but discussing the fact that those many eyes may not be looking as close as we assume.
Your response makes -no- sense at all, and has -nothing- to do with this article. It's an answer to the -usual- security debate around open-source but has nothing whatsoever to do with -this- article.
I've used speak freely and been very happy with it. I only used the command line client, wrote myself a little script 'sfanswer' to respond to incoming connections, installed ALSA so that I could have full-duplex communication (speak and listen at the same time) and generally had a great geeky time with it. Sound was quite decent, better than PCS phones, actually, even on a 33.6 modem, though network traffic makes that a little inconsistent.
Meanwhile, my non-geek friend at the other end installed the precompiled Windows95 binary, played with menus and generally did the dumb-end-user thing and got it running with no problems...
So, for decent sound quality, interoperability with the non-geek world, pretty good reliability, a variety of compression options, - oh, and an echo-server to test your setup against - speak freely is pretty good.
Since I was happy with speak freely, I can't say how it compares to the others.
Well, names like MS and Lotus might refuse to disclose source to paying customers, but it used to be possible to get a 'source code license'... and the source code, of course... along with commercial Unices and Unix products. You still can get source code licenses for commercial Unices, at least; not sure how many apps will do that, though. (Not that this changes -current- widespread practice, just saying it isn't entirely universal and could shift if corporations see the value.) --Parity
The last time I did taxes, taking a 'tax break' on donations meant you deduct the donation from your income. Book sells. Andover adds income to total, donates income to charity, deducts donation from taxes, pays taxes as if they hadn't published the book at all. Where in this Andover makes money, I don't see. --Parity
Um... Novell, SCO, Digital... ? Never mind the scores of 'unix-like' embedded RTOSes? And I know at least one vendor (my former employer, VenturCom (at vci.com)) had an embeddable version of Novell's UnixWare. Unix and Unix-influenced OSes have always been out there in every market. The Unix-dieback was a dieback of the workstation and a little bit in the lightweight server area.
Doesn't bother me a bit, because after all, if you're 'starting' somewhere, that somewhere should not be with development kernels. Besides that, there are plenty of references to kernel.org here and elsewhere, so it's not like anyone is actually hiding anything, Rob was just quipping and making a change of phrasing. (He usually says something like 'you can get it from the usual places' with usual places being a link to somewhere, or whatever.) So... chill. Or read linux.com instead. --Parity
FYI, NPR is National Public Radio. I'm saying that according to an interview with a representative of the company, it was exposure to the atmosphere. I'm not saying anything about any web article. Which source you choose to believe is not my problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Most of the flames (at least the ones worth reading) against rms are from people who believe that rms is -wrong- about something, and they (including me ;)) have as much right to say what they believe as rms does.
... I am deeply grateful for GCC, glibc, emacs, and other software, much written by rms directly, or with other members of the gnu project ... however, personally, I'd be just as happy to have them under a BSD style license, and I do not appreciate rms for his zealotry.
That said, I think rms is full of it in this latest post -- I don't believe that the copyright statutes (and I have read them) give anything remotely -like- the power to revoke 'forever' the rights given by a statement of copyright, no matter how convoluted that statement (ie, the GPL) may be. Even if it did, nowhere in the GPL does it say anything like, 'If you violate the GPL you lose your rights under the GPL forever'.
bash$ grep -i "in perpetuity" GPL
bash$ grep -i "forever" GPL
bash$ grep -i "ever again" GPL
bash$
It -does- say your rights under the license are 'terminated' if you break the license, but it seems to me that since the license is offered when receiving GPLed software, that a person can 're-accept' the license by receiving a new copy of the software and then -not- breaking the license. (ie, with freely available free software... they can download the 'Program' that their 'Work based on the Program' is derived from and then be good.)
rms has the right to believe what he wants, and say what he wants, but rms' rights to say and believe what he wants do not terminate my right to say and believe what I want - and I believe that rms is zealous beyond reason about everything involved in 'Free Software.' His -claim- that the GPL does this or does that is no more meaningful than anybody else's claim if he doesn't back it up with citations of particular clauses.
Anyway. I -do- appreciate rms
--Parity
Ahhhhh. Thank you for that answer, that helps a lot.
--Parity
-- there's no such thing as "Defend it or lose it" under IP law. If 200 people rip off MS Windows and MS prosecutes 2 of them, there's no such defense as "Well, your honor, MS didn't prosecute the other 198 people..." This is a MASSIVE LIE made up by companies who want to shift responsibility. ANYTIME you see a company say "We had to ... or lose it" they're lying.
There's no such thing as 'defend it or lose it' under copyright law. It is true under trademark law (dilution of trademarks), but, while they don't identify just what IP has been 'violated', it seems like trademarks are unlikely to have anything to do with it, so you're right enough in this case.
--Parity
I used to advocate this kind of thing, but then a closer reading of the law made me realize something: Prior art must occur 1 year -before- the patent is -filed- for. Am I misunderstanding something, or would companies be able to rifle through the antipatent database and file for patents on all the new ideas and then say 'yes, but that's less than a year before we filed' (for software and business method patents you can surely cobble together a prototype in less than 11 months... )
Yes, this is obviously a 'bad' thing for them to do, and against the -spirit- of the law, but isn't it within the letter?
(IANAL... any Ls out there?)
--Parity
Just because something is published on the web does -not- make it public domain, any more than a billboard ad being published in plain view makes the advertisement public domain. It's clear to me that, legally, this is easily copyright violation. (If you don't explicitly give out rights, all-rights-reserved is assumed by the law since sometime in the 80's when they stopped requiring explicit copyright stamped all over everything.)
;)
OTOH, ethically, I think non-profit sites should publish on an ok-to-copy-for-non-profit use basis. I know my copyright page on my home page reads 'you can use it for non-profit purposes if you give credit, for-profit purposes require explicit permission' and I put a little hyperlinked © Copyright YYYY at the bottom of every page. Of course, everyone has the right to do with their copyrightable works what they will, but I have the right to make fun of them if they do things that I think are bad.
So, from my PoV, legally he shouldn't have done it, and ethically, linux.com should have a copyright permitting non-profit reuse/derivative works of the site and he certainly -should- have given credit.
--Parity
They'll be able to run Windows; there's a 'PC Beta' section on the support page for VitalBook.
--Parity
No, it's not, and because doing security auditing
is a boring, tedious task; it doesn't scratch anybody's itch except Theo and his team and thye're already fixated on BSD.
One or more of the commercial distributions probably ought to pay people to do the tedious auditing tasks, but a.t.m. they're all focused on front-end/user-friendliness issues, making Linux 'ready for the desktop' not making ready for Enterprise and Gov't applications. (Or, since Linux is really already doing both, I mean a broader range of enterprises and gov't applications, just to pre-empt any flames.)
--Parity
First of all, I think anybody that actually does -any- work whatsoever on a computer appreciates the desire to avoid crashes. The agony of losing a 20 page term paper that you worked on until 2AM is enough to convert any college student.
;))
;o)
... they might send the easily converted Word5.0 format instead of the brand-new-nobody-knows-what-was-added Word-2001 format.)
;)
The rest of your argument - well, points-by-example, I can see pretty well. If you want an entertainment machine (ie, web, e-mail, vidgames) Linux is not there. However -
Mozilla is cranking right along towards release and will be 'released' with in the year.
X4 is cranking right along and will support 3D and DRI and all that great stuff to make games go.
Wine is cranking right along, and can actually -run- things. Wow.
And, of course, Corel and others have slapped some really good installation-and-support stuff on top of the nuts-and-bolts. (And Debian has made the BEST packaging system ever for Corel to build on! No, I don't really want to start a flame war, I'm just a Debian user, it was mandatory to spout that.
My point is, I've always said, 'Well, -someday- Linux will be good for the ordinary user.' Now, I'd say, 'within 1-2 years, Linux will be good for the ordinary user'; for some definitions of ordinary, anyway.
I estimate that 1 year from now we should start seeing distributions with a stable X4, stable Mozilla (or, more likely, derivative web browser that spins off from the beta Mozillas, 'cause people are getting impatient and Mozilla is getting stable enough to spin projects off of without having to duplicate effort), a Beta Wine that is pretty much as stable as Windows itself (not saying much, but hey), and with any luck, a stable ALSA.
Now, if Corel/Caldera/RedHat/etc keep up the 'friendly-front-end' progress, all this core functionality should be easy to use.
Passwords at the console aren't necessary if people don't want them - though the code isn't in place, it is perfectly technologically feasible to permit login at the console without a password, and require password only for remote access (if the home user even bothers running a telnet or sshd in the first place).
Logging in as root to install things isn't necessary - just make real ('human') users part of the 'installers' group and the installer program -rwsr-x--- root installers -- all behind the scenes of course, so the ordinary user doesn't have to know how to operate 'install'. (install should, of course, only work for people at the console - the more advanced permissions structure of 2.4 might help with this, or not, I'm still on 2.2).
Any-way. Ordinary users -do- want some of what linux can offer them... namely -
remote access to their machine (mostly to check e-mail)
stability (though they don't want to pay an ease-of-use price for it)
ip-masquerading. No. Really. I meant it. Every windows user I know wishes they had ipmasq. Of course, they don't want to deal with the IPMASQ howto, or even the WinGate install program, they want it to just work, so they can end their fights over who gets the modem line now.
If the end-user-distributions can get Ethernet/IPMasq setup cleanly automated, that'll be a big step forward towards grabbing the web-and-e-mail sorts of 'ordinary users'. (And a minor-+ for game users that like networked games, though what they really want is a stable and automatic X4-with-DRI + ALSA + Joystick, and they want it all without having to know any technical terms.
Interoperability with MS-Office is still, and will continue to be, I'm sure, a big stumbling block with the 'productive' sorts of 'ordinary users'. (Funny how many categories of 'ordinary' there are, isn't it?). Any-way, between the opening staroffice, the Corel-WPOffice, and KOffice, there are options for those who don't need -perfect- interoperability, and if even a few percent go to other office suites, it will discourage MS-core-users from shipping MS-only documents. (ie,
Any-way, if you want to give your family Linux right now, expect to spend days, nay, -weeks-, configuring, optimizing, installing KDE, removing KDE and installing Gnome, switching back, setting up sudo so they can do root tasks transparently and then setting up ipchains and tcp_wrappers so the Evil Crackers don't then exploit the weakened security, etc, etc, until it's a smooth ride, 'cause frankly, I don't think out-of-the-box linux -does- have much ease-of-use, but I know that tweaked-until-it-begs-for-mercy linux sure does.
Anyway. Are we offtopic yet?
--Parity
Try starting a fire in midwinter sometime... ;)
To reach the flashpoint of alcohol, whatever it is, you'd have to heat the alcohol by about 120degrees-F more than usual (assuming alcohol is
normally at around 50-70dF, this stuff was at minus 65dF, at -least- (that was the inside-the-bag atmosphere temp wasn't it?); making it, then, much harder to catch on fire.
Of course, if it -did- catch on fire, it'd be just as dangerous as any other alcohol fire, so, well, it wasn't exactly 'safe as houses' as it were.
--Parity
You can try it with -your- system if you want, but, as I recall from high school chemistry, alcohol absorbs water from the air. The -alcohol- is okay, but the real-world liquid isn't pure alcohol, it's alcohol/water mix.
(In other words, it's like water being 'theoretically' non conductive - it's okay on paper, but in practice you can't get pure alcohol, or pure water, right up against the motherboard.)
Also witness that dampening the bottom of the motherboard with the alcohol, as described in the article, did, in fact, short it out.
--Parity
A 'strawman' is a type of argument where you elaborate on what another person said and then criticize your interpretation. (Say, for example, that arguing gun control, someone for absolute gun control says someone against any further gun control, 'So, you think people should be able to use deadly force with impunity all the time? That would cause the health costs to skyrocket not to mention the moral questions... ' Putting up the strawman is the first sentance, and knocking it down is the arguing against it.)
In common usage, a 'straw man' is a man made by taking clothing stuffing it with dried grass, or taking bundles of dried grass and tying them off in a man-shape, sometimes used as a scarecrow but in this day and age usually only as an autumn decoration.
Parity, who does not have any critical thinking or debate books in possession at the moment, so there may be some errors here.
--Parity
Programs like this is just what Linux needs. The lack of graphic programs for linux is what's keeping win 98 still on one of the particians of my computer...With this and Maya Linux is looking better and better to completely switching over.
Did you even -look- at the article?! This is a 5-digit price-range professional animation package and it doesn't even -dream- of running on Windows98. It runs on Irix, NT, and now Linux. I do -not- think you're going to install this for fooling around at home, or that whether it is ported to Linux will make one bit of difference in either direction as to whether you kill the Win98 partition.
--Parity
Draft Text of the LSB
The document cited in this article is -not- the LSB, and the reason all those things are already in most distributions is because they analyzed the distributions to see what they had in common! The LDPS is saying 'if you distribute a binary, compile it with this, because that's what people have' and 'if you maintain a distribution, make sure you have at -least- this, because that's the basics'.
--Parity
This spec talks about how to get -distribution independence- of a -binary- package. You're not going to have an architecture independent binary package (ignoring Java, etc, for the moment.)
In any case, the recommendations in this specification look like they are compatible with a cross-platform application coding approach, though, naturally, there's more than just what's in the distribution-independence spec involved in cross-platform compatability.
In other words - I think you're criticizing this spec for not meeting a set of goals that have nothing to do with the purpose or intention of this spec.
--Parity
1. Social Acceptance.
Personally, I've never been 'reviled' by my peers for being a vegetarian; of course, I'm not terribly picky about what I eat (other than not eating meat). Granted, I dislike going to McDs or Burger King since there's nothing for a vegetarian to eat there but french fries and side-salads. (I've heard animal fats are used in the fruit pie things, not sure it's true.) Just about anything else is fine though; I eat pizza, pasta, salad, potatoes, etc, that is, things you can find at any mainstream restaurant. In short, nobody but you has, in my experiences, compared my decision not to eat meat with some drastic social faux pas.
2. Biology/Economy
This is a red herring argument. First of all, I've known plenty of vegetarians who were both overweight and underweight, and I myself hit smack in the middle of the 'recommended' weight for my height/build. Perhaps vegetarians are, on average, lighter than non-vegatarians, but then, -most- Americans are overweight, so... so what? Nor do I, or other vegetarians I know, take a lot of dietary supplements. (I do take a B-complex 'stress formula', but that's because of my caffeine intake and my stress levels, not my vegetarian diet).
Secondly, the limiting factor in agriculture is not how much usable nutrition can be crammed into a cubic foot of product, but how much usable nutrition can be derived from an acre of ground. If you want human-edible food, grow potatoes, soy, corn, or wheat. Further, cattle are generally fed on grain, in pens - free-ranging, grass-eating cattle are used only for extremely expensive cuts of luxury meats, so, you are turning human-edible food into other human edible food, -and- you are doing so at a 16:1 loss of usable calories (IIRC, 'Diet for a Small Planet', 1980 edition).
3. Ethically
I -utterly- disagree with this. I think that to breed a population of animals to be kept in pens, force-fed, and brutally murdered, in an essentially joyless life is -far- less ethical than going into the wild and ending prematurely the life of a creature who has at least -had- a life; if you make a point of only hunting lamed and elderly animals, that's even better. And, of course, deer are in constant danger of overpopulation so something will kill them - starvation or hunting. (Of course, the -reason- they're overpopulating is because humans killed all the wolves south of Alaska, so, this only applies in the north end of the US and the south end of Canada, really, and is the situation itself is the result of unethical behaviour.)
I will note that I'm not a vegan, and have no particular objection to the use of wool, dairy, and unfertilized eggs for various purposes, as long as the source animals are well-treated. I'll also note that I don't go around trying to 'convert' people to vegetarianism, but I do respond to blanket attacks on vegetarianism, -especially- attacks that try to portray vegetarians as being somehow 'worse people' than meat eaters. I would thank you to do your research before debating the merits of vegetarianism and meat-eating, and to keep bigotted personal comments out of the debate in the future.
--Parity
I have to disagree with the claim in your sig:
Moderators: You should be browsing at -1, Newest First, Nested, not +2, Highest Scores First, Threaded
Moderators should browse -Oldest- First... otherwise, they will mark the -earlier- post as the redundant one, or promote to high scores posts that are redundant with much earlier posts, etc.
Other than that, I agree. (And they can switch to newest first after browsing the comments through once to see what's coming in, of course.)
--Parity
They could construct it--but why? People "outside of cities" by definition have low population densities. "Mass" transit requires high populations.
This is simple overgeneralization; there are -many- places with the population density to support mass transit that don't have it - namely, just about every suburb. Presumably you'd run the busses infrequently and down only the major roads, but it'd be -something-.
Before you say it can't be done, consider the Sili Valley - despite the complaints about the efficiency or lack thereof and whether light rail is a waste of time, etc, there -is- a mass transit that runs all up and down and through the suburbs and shows no sign of vanishing. You can take the bus, the light rail, or the cal-train to various destinations, and at the other end take something else.
By contrast, in the Boston area, and most cities east of the rockies, -only- the metro region has mass transit, and the suburbs are left to hang. Or, (using the Boston area as an example) you have transit into the city with peripheral parking lots but no transit -out- of the city. In case nobody noticed, the high tech industry (and others that can manage it) are slipping out of the cities and building up along the highways that run out of them. I live -in- the city and work -outside- it, and the reverse commute is really only doable by car... it doesn't do me any good to be left in a 'commuter parking lot' with a residents-only sticker-required no-overnight-parking lot. I could, conceivably, even leave my car in the parking lot overnight and do -most- of my commute by transit and the transit-less leg by car, but the policies are set up to discourage it.
Anyway, the real reason there's no mass transit in the suburbs is because people in the suburbs don't want those icky 'city people' (read, minorities) coming out to shop in their nice isolated suburban shopping districts. Which, admittedly, they would probably do, but so what? Seeing a black face or hearing a conversation in portuguese isn't going to kill even the most whitebread of the suburb dwellers. (If you think I'm just trolling/flamebaiting, check out the zoning laws & transit-related votes in a suburb near you...)
Parity None
--Parity
First, I just want to observe that people on both sides are -way- oversimplifying the case. On the one hand, it is a simple variant of a toy trademark on a site that is going to be about a game. On the other hand, Barbie -is- (or was, upon a time) a nickname for Barbara and saying you can't name any character 'Barbie' anymore is a little extreme - -and- it is a non-profit site. So. Whatever. Both sides have points, and this is nowhere near as obvious a case as etoy/eToys. As a non-lawyer I won't even speculate who has the better chance (though I'm inclined to side with the 'thebarbies' guy.)
Beyond my idle observations, my actual constructive suggestion is that a general appeal to slashdotters that a faq would be nice is all very well, but creating some sort of advice center on this topic seems extremely well suited to the recently formed OpenLAW group, if they can spare time away from the DVD issue (or if those not interested in the DVD issue wanted to work in parallel on a different subject... volunteerism is about interest not allocating 'workers' as we are reminded in every 'is this the best use of programmers?' thread on the various open-source-software topics).
Of course, it would be foolish to ignore the already existing efforts at ajax.org, and then there's my favorite organization, the EFF; but all in all, I think OpenLAW (maybe working with ajax.org's domanin name advocacy group) is the way to go on this particular issue, if anyone with OpenLAW is motivated by this case or ones like it.
--Parity
The article that I read said nothing of the kind, but rather, said, 'Open-source advocates tend to assume that open-source code has been thoroughly reviewed for security by the many-eyes theory, but this isn't necessarilly true.'
The alternative of closed-source was mentioned, and dismissed as not being any better.
This article was, in short, saying 'this is a shortcoming of open-source' but it was -not- rehashing the security-by-obscurity argument from the closed-source camp, but discussing the fact that those many eyes may not be looking as close as we assume.
Your response makes -no- sense at all, and has -nothing- to do with this article. It's an answer to the -usual- security debate around open-source but has nothing whatsoever to do with -this- article.
--Parity
I've used speak freely and been very happy with it. I only used the command line client, wrote myself a little script 'sfanswer' to respond to incoming connections, installed ALSA so that I could have full-duplex communication (speak and listen at the same time) and generally had a great geeky time with it. Sound was quite decent, better than PCS phones, actually, even on a 33.6 modem, though network traffic makes that a little inconsistent.
Meanwhile, my non-geek friend at the other end installed the precompiled Windows95 binary, played with menus and generally did the dumb-end-user thing and got it running with no problems...
So, for decent sound quality, interoperability with the non-geek world, pretty good reliability, a variety of compression options, - oh, and an echo-server to test your setup against - speak freely is pretty good.
Since I was happy with speak freely, I can't say how it compares to the others.
--Parity
Well, names like MS and Lotus might refuse to disclose source to paying customers, but it used to be possible to get a 'source code license' ... and the source code, of course ... along with commercial Unices and Unix products. You still can get source code licenses for commercial Unices, at least; not sure how many apps will do that, though.
(Not that this changes -current- widespread practice, just saying it isn't entirely universal and could shift if corporations see the value.)
--Parity
The last time I did taxes, taking a 'tax break' on
donations meant you deduct the donation from your
income.
Book sells. Andover adds income to total, donates
income to charity, deducts donation from taxes,
pays taxes as if they hadn't published the book
at all.
Where in this Andover makes money, I don't see.
--Parity
Um... Novell, SCO, Digital... ?
Never mind the scores of 'unix-like' embedded RTOSes?
And I know at least one vendor (my former employer, VenturCom (at vci.com)) had an embeddable version of Novell's UnixWare.
Unix and Unix-influenced OSes have always been out there in every market. The Unix-dieback was a dieback of the workstation and a little bit in the lightweight server area.
--Parity
Doesn't bother me a bit, because after all, if
you're 'starting' somewhere, that somewhere should
not be with development kernels. Besides that,
there are plenty of references to kernel.org here
and elsewhere, so it's not like anyone is actually
hiding anything, Rob was just quipping and making
a change of phrasing. (He usually says something
like 'you can get it from the usual places' with
usual places being a link to somewhere, or
whatever.) So... chill. Or read linux.com instead.
--Parity
FYI, NPR is National Public Radio. I'm saying that according to an interview with a representative of the company, it was exposure to the atmosphere. I'm not saying anything about any web article. Which source you choose to believe is not my problem.
--Parity