There are errors in the bz2 images on ftp.kernel.org. They do not pass the gpg verification, and are basically corrupted images. the gz images work.
With bzip2, you should always decompress and compare byte-for-byte against the original data before trusting the compressed data, especially for large files.
Yes, it's a hassle, but it's necessary. I've seen this byte-for-byte verification fail a number of times, usually megabytes into the original data. I find it alarming that a "lossless" algorithm (or a buggy implementation) allows this to happen, when people are known to be trusting data to this program. I have never seen gzip fail like this, nor have I heard of such failures. However, I've witnessed it repeatedly with bzip2, so I won't trust it blindly.
It would be good if a version of bzip2 would automatically feeds the compressed data and a copy of the uncompressed data to an independent piece of decompression code (which sees only the compressed data, not the data structures of the compressor) and have this byte-for-byte check happen on-the-fly during compression. Whether the bug lies in the algorithm itself or the code for the compressor or decompressor isn't important; the important thing is that this "lossless" algorithm isn't 100% reliable, and 99.9999% reliable just isn't good enough.
(And what's with the brilliant idea of requiring ".bz2" as the extension?!? Would it have been so difficult to put the version number in the header of the file like gzip does??)
Well, thanks to Slashdot, an unhappy customer has told thousands of potential customers to stay away from this drive. A little more responsiveness to this customer's problem would have prevented that.
I've typically bought Maxtor drives in the past, and haven't had any trouble with them (knock on wood). At one point I was interested in getting a 75 Gig IBM 75GXP drive, but not anymore. After hearing about the widespread quality problems with these drives and especially the abysmal customer service, at this point I intend to never purchase an IBM hard drive, and I will warn many others to avoid it as well.
I don't care if it's a 75GXP or another line. I don't care if it's made in Hungary or the United States. With all these RMA's (especially with repeat RMA's), there's no plausible way that IBM could have been ignorant of the quality problems of these drives. They should have issued a recall and addressed the problem properly, but they didn't.
IBM obviously don't consider it important to take care of the customer's needs. And I know of no better way to drive customers to your competitors. Making a defective product is bad enough, but a good company can turn that around and make a loyal customer if they have good customer service (as in your Seagate example). But a company that makes defective products and provides lousy service deserves to lose their customers, and probably will.
Nice going, IBM. I'll never buy a hard drive from you now, and I'll have to think carefully before considering any of your other products either...
Re:There already is such an organization
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Supporting the EFF is a good thing. However, there is a need for true grassroots lobbying efforts for the causes we're always fighting for -- sending money to the EFF may help them pay lawyers to fight the DMCA and other atrocities, but taking the time to let your congressperson know how you felt might have helped to keep the DMCA from being passed in the first place.
The EFF is important, but there seems to be a void on the grassroots lobbying side...
If all the people who take the time to complain on here would just take the time to phone and/or write their congressperson, it would probably make a big difference. The other side is organized; why aren't we?
[I wrote this back on March 31, 1999, but it's just as true today as it was then...]
Why "GNU/Linux" is a Misnomer
There is no GNU/Linux distribution.
The only appropriate use of the term "GNU/Linux" would be for a Linux distribution released under the auspices of the GNU project. Since no such distribution actually exists, the term "GNU/Linux" is a complete misnomer.
Sorry, an FTP archive does not a distribution make. If it did, no distribution maker would get any attention, since everyone would go to the FTP archives and get everything from the source. In real life, nobody wants to do that to create a complete system, and most people lack the skills and determination to bootstrap a system entirely from scratch this way. (And for those who do, their systems might be most accurately described as "custom Unix-like systems", although they would more likely be described as "custom Linux systems" now.)
The avowed goal of the GNU project is to create a complete system which is like Unix, but not proprietary. The packaging of a distribution is an essential part of creating a complete system. Without a distribution, you don't have a complete system; it is just as important as the kernel itself. A complete system must form a cohesive whole. To point at a jumble of diverse components and describe them as a "complete system" is delusional at best. All of Stallman's prevarications aside, the kernel was not the "last piece" missing from "the GNU system". (If this were true, why didn't the GNU project release "GNU/Linux" immediately when the Linux kernel became available?)
The GNU project has yet to produce a complete system. If and when the GNU project releases a distribution of the GNU operating system based on the Linux kernel, it will be fully appropriate to call that distribution "GNU/Linux". Similarly, a GNU distribution based on the Hurd kernel would be appropriate to name "GNU/Hurd".
The GNU project has no right to dictate the choice of names for distributions made by others. Given how obsessed RMS is with issues of freedom, it is quite ironic that he doesn't afford distribution makers the freedom to name their distributions, or the marketplace the freedom to choose generic names.
Linux distribution makers have chosen to use the term "Linux" in all their distribution names for name recognition reasons. This was not done to unfairly bestow credit on the Linux kernel out of proportion to its contribution to the entire system, as RMS appears to believe. Rather, this is entirely an issue of marketing for the complete distribution.
Whether RMS likes it or not, "Linux" is a more marketable name than "GNU" is. This is partly because RMS cares more about adherence to his ideals than appeasing the market. (This is not necessarily a bad thing.) This is partly because the recursive nature of the "GNU's Not Unix" acronym isn't very appealing to the general public, being both confusing and rather "cutesy" at the same time.
Mostly,"Linux" wins from a marketing perspective simply because it is very reminiscent of "Unix", itself a bizarre name that nonetheless carries considerable name recognition in the marketplace, due to the distinguished record acquired by Unix systems of all flavors over the years. Since Linux is "Unix-like", this is a good and appropriate connotation, as well as being marketable. Marketing is about perception, not fairness.
It is disingenuous in the extreme for RMS to insist that all Linux distributions should be referred to as "GNU/Linux". By doing so, RMS manages to present himself as childish and petulant, eroding much of the credibility he had built up through years of dedication and hard work. It reinforces the image of an inflexible zealot, which encourages people to discount his contributions rather than acknowledging them.
Yes, the GNU tools form an essential piece of a typical Linux distribution. The Linux kernel itself is essential. The X Windows system is essential. BSD-derived code is essential. The packaging of the distribution itself is essential. Many components of the system are essential, and none of that matters when it comes to the name.
The name of a distribution is the exclusive perogative of its creator. Just as Linus Torvalds has the perogative of naming the Linux kernel despite his admission that most of the lines of code come from contributions, so does Red Hat have the perogative of naming their distribution "Red Hat Linux", regardless of where the greatest contribution may lie.
RMS has no cause to complain. X Windows is not credited in the GNU name because it has been "adopted" by the GNU project, and is therefore considered to be implicitly credited. In fact, the GNU project "adopted" as many components as possible, and only rewrote what was necessary to fill in the gaps.
What RMS has willfully ignored is that most Linux distributions have "adopted" many GNU components to fill in the gaps to create a complete system, exactly as the GNU project "adopted" what was already available. By the same logic, the GNU project is implicitly credited, as is X Windows. The choice of a name for the overall distribution remains strictly a marketing decision, not a recognition of credit due or most significant contributor.
The upshot of all this? The term Linux distribution (or simply Linux) is entirely appropriate to refer to generic distributions based on Linux. Not because of the relative importance of the kernel to the overall system, but because "Linux" is the only term common in the names of all Linux distributions. Therefore, it is the most appropriate generic designation, and "GNU/Linux" is the misnomer that should be suppressed.
Copyright 1999 by Deven T. Corzine. <deven@ties.org>
Hmm, perhaps Linux should cater more towards hardware vendors... Developing a standard by which binary drivers can be easily utilized.
Hmm. A standard for binary drivers? Um, you mean like Project UDI? Oh yes, I forgot -- RMS had a petulant rant about it, so I guess we can't support a worthwhile effort that is the best chance for marginalized OS's to move into the mainstream. Nevermind!
You can't handle a driver failure. By definition a driver is part of the kernel, and if the kernel screws up, you're toast.
This is an unsupported proposition. While it may be typical for a driver to be implemented in kernel mode, it's not "by definition" a requirement. Take a look at Project UDI for a device driver API that could be implemented in user-mode. This would allow the system to be equally protected against untrusted drivers as it can be from untrusted applications. Now, I'm not saying that the Reference Implementation or any other UDI implementation actually supports user-mode drivers today. However, the API standard is written in such a way as to allow for that possibility.
Of course, user-mode drivers would execute more slowly than kernel-mode drivers, but if an OS supported both types, paying the performance price for stability on untrusted drivers would be a worthwhile tradeoff...
No. I'm pretty sure that if you poll everyone with a PVR, you will find out that the vast majority do not watch ANY ads. I surely don't wait at a commercial break and see if the ad is funny. And since TiVo only has FF, and no "30-second skip," there's no way in hell I'm stopping for any along the way. I hit FF, wait a second or so after I see the show come back, and hit play. No commercials at all.
Maybe that's just you. On my TiVo, I use 3xFF to scan through commercials at 60x and try to start back into the program as closely as possible also. However, if a commercial catches my attention, I will rewind and watch it. In fact, I do this regularly. I still skip about 95% of all commercials, but I often do watch the good ones. I'd rather not have a 30-second skip button -- not all commercials are 30 seconds, and it makes it too easy to miss the good commercials.
Even the ones I ignore probably make an impression, since I'm watching the screen closely for the program to start again. If the advertiser can get their message across while scanning at high speed, good for them. I just don't want to spend the time being a captive audience. If I had forced commercials from HDTV, I'd pick up a book. Viewers will ignore commercials that don't interest them, no matter what interlocks they design into the system.
Advertisers need to learn that the solution is not to try harder and harder to force viewers to see their ads, but to make their ads interesting and entertaining enough that they want to see them. People will sit down any watch "The best commercials you've never seen (and some you have)" because those commercials are good. People who hate football record the Super Bowl just to see the commercials. People will watch good commercials, but they'll ignore bad ones, no matter how much you try to force them to watch...
talking on a cell phone while driving *should* be illegal.
Really? I read recently that TEN TIMES as many accidents are caused by drivers being distracted by adjusting the RADIO than are caused by drivers distracted by cell phones. Shouldn't we ban car radios first, then?
Of course, even MORE people people were distracted by "something outside of the car" than the radio. Face it, distracted drivers are dangerous, no matter what the distraction. But don't single out cell phones to blame when they're only implicated in about 1% of accidents. Just because you can see the cell phone in the driver's hand doesn't mean you know he's distracted. One could easily be more distracted by a conversation with a passenger. Shall we ban passengers in all cars as well?
Unix systems have the concept of a version -- you change the API, you rev the major version of the library. The old one's still there if you need it, but apps will get (dynamically) linked against the version of the library they were originally linked against.
Sure, it works great in theory -- until you realize that many of these shared-library authors haven't bothered to CHANGE that major version number when the API changes! And this has even happened with libc!!!
Then buy a DirecTivo and get lifetime TiVo service for $249. It'll run you $650 or so, but it's not such a bad deal for (effectively) two DirecTV receivers and two VCR's in one box... (No, you can't use the second tuner yet, but it will be enabled this summer.)
Don't buy UltimateTV; they don't have a lifetime service option and you'll be paying monthly fees to them forever.
Microsoft's "UltimateTV" does NOT use the TiVo service; it is a competing service.
UltimateTV is ONLY available (at this time) integrated with a DirecTV receiver.
"DirecTV Receivers with TiVo" (aka "DirecTivo" or "combo" boxes) compete in the same market as UltimateTV.
TiVo also sells "standalone" units which work with any video source (including cable, satellite, broadcast, etc.) -- these units contain an MPEG encoder and have tunable quality settings to choose from.
There is no UltimateTV product for the standalone market; DirecTV is required.
UltimateTV and DirecTivo boxes BOTH lack MPEG encoder hardware; they can only store the MPEG signal coming from DirecTV's satellite.
Because the MPEG signal comes from the satellite, the recordings are essentially PERFECT recording quality; the playback from a recorded program will be IDENTICAL to the quality of the live DirecTV signal. (Standalone TiVo units suffer variable degradation based on the quality settings and program material.)
Because the MPEG signal was compressed by DirecTV before being sent to the satellite, there are no encoder quality settings to choose from, BUT the compression should be better than consumer-grade hardware can hope to achieve at the same bitrates.
UTV has two physical DirecTV satellite tuners, which allows recording two shows at once or watching one show while recording another. This works today.
DirecTivo combo boxes ALSO have two physical DirecTV satellite tuners, but only one can be used at the present time.
All existing DirecTivo units will receive a free software upgrade ("sometime this summer") to enable the second tuner already present in the box. Until that time, UTV has a temporary dual-tuner advantage.
For any dual-tuner system, two cable runs from a dual-LNB satellite dish for technical reasons; you cannot split a single cable to operate two satellite receivers.
You can, however, "split" a PAIR of satellite cables using a "multiswitch" to connect more than two receivers/tuners to one dual-LNB satellite dish. (Two physical cable runs back to the dish will ALWAYS be required.)
Since standalone TiVo units don't have dual tuners or dual MPEG encoders, they can only record one program at a time.
Even with a single tuner, any TiVo or UTV box will allow you to record one program while watching a different program previously recorded. (This is somewhat like having two VCR's and no hassles with videotapes.)
UltimateTV is based on the "Microsoft TV" platform, which uses Windows CE as the underlying operating system.
TiVo is based on Linux as the underlying operating system. (Don't get your hopes up, the PVR functionality runs in a proprietary application on top of the Linux operating system.)
Some TiVo users have been known to hack their systems, usually to add hard drives for additional storage capacity. (e.g. adding an 80GB drive to turn a "14-hour" unit into a "105-hour" unit) TiVo has been very gracious and accepting of this hacking, though of course it voids the warranty.
UltimateTV has Internet access features (much like WebTV) that TiVo does not offer. However, many people question the importance/value of this.
UltimateTV also has PIP (picture-in-picture) functionality, which is very important to some people and inconsequential to others.
TiVo units do not have hardware support for PIP, and software support isn't likely -- none of the current models will ever have PIP capability.
It doesn't help if your TV has PIP, unless you want to watch a different video source; current models only have one MPEG decoder so independent outputs aren't currently possible.
TiVo is acknowledged as having the most advanced PVR software and has more sophisticated management features than UTV has.
TiVo now has 200,000 subscribers, up from about 150,000 around the start of this year.
TiVo has reduced their operating costs and revenue increased 48% (from $2.2M to $3.2M) between 2000 Q4 and 2001 Q1.
TiVo remains in a negative cashflow situation. Although they expect to burn about $50M the rest of this year, they won't need outside funding until early next year. Positive cashflow is predicted to occur sometime next year.
Microsoft, of course, has mountains of cash at their disposal.
Despite this, UTV's impact on DirecTivo sales is "imperceptible" -- much of their advertising serves to sell people on the idea of a PVR, not necessarily their implementation. (And of course, UltimateTV probably helps standalone TiVo sales.)
After dual-tuner support is released for the DirecTivo's, TiVo will have a clear overall advantage -- UTV will only be compelling to those who truly care about unique features like Internet access or PIP.
There may be a few hundred thousand PVR's out there now, but a few hundred million TV's & VCR's. The potential market is enormous, but it's still in the early-adopter phase, probably for another year or two.
Does that clarify a few things?:-)
Re:Meanwhile, on the Debian front...
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This sort of thing is precisely why I'm now planning to replace Debian on the machine I've been trying it on. While "apt-get" is nice (once you discover it exists), "dselect" is arcane, and I don't want a distribution that's so obsessive about stability and crypto stuff that you have to go looking to alternate sources to find reasonably current packages. If I have to do that, I might as well roll my own distribution.
I guess it's time to give Red Hat 7.1 a try. At least when you have to search out alternate sources, they're often in RPM format...
Let's be a little more precise here. The National Science Foundation ran the NSFnet, which was the primary backbone network for the Internet for years. NSF's acceptable use policies restricted commercial use of NSFnet, and this effectively translated to no commercial use of the Internet at large, simply because it was generally difficult to tell if the traffic might cross NSFnet. In many cases, it did.
In theory, there was nothing to stop systems on the Internet from sending commercial traffic, as long as it didn't cross NSFnet or other providers with similar policies. In practice, I seem to recall UUNet offering a commercial-oriented service that could (1) connect you to the Internet and (2) allow you to send commercial traffic to similarly-connected UUNet customers. Of course, I might be misremembering. (Does anyone know for sure?)
Eventually, NSF relaxed the rules about the same time as other backbone providers started to come to the forefront. NSF later got out of the business of providing a backbone network for the Internet, but they had been marginalized by the emergence of other commercial providers by that time anyhow...
However, I can tell you that every work of art, published or not, created after 1978 is copyrighted by someone.
I'm not a lawyer either. But if you're heading toward becoming a lawyer, it might behoove you to get in the habit of speaking more carefully and precisely about legal matters, for the time when you are a lawyer. I know your point was about copyright existing with or without registration, but you neglected another possibility.
Your blanket statement above is incorrect, because there are some works created after 1978 to which nobody holds a copyright. Of course, those works started out as copyrighted, but the authors relinquished the copyrights by explicitly placing those works in the public domain. Yes, the vast majority of works created after 1978 are still under copyright, but not every work. While I'm sure you were aware of it, and this wasn't legal advice, you might want to be more careful when the time comes that you are dispensing legal advice. If I'm not mistaken, that's when you can incur liability for any mistakes you make. (That's right, isn't it?)
(For the benefit of those who haven't studied the law, I do know this much: "public domain" is a very specific legal term meaning "not copyrighted"; those who call any freely-redistributable software "public domain" are misusing a specific legal term.)
But hey, I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not studying to become one either. Feel free to ignore my opinion. Maybe an actual lawyer could weigh in with a more relevant opinion here...
Apart from this nitpicking, I thought your post was very interesting.:-)
It's called Two Kernel Monte. It's a module that loads a new kernel into memory, does a little do-si-do dance to get it where it needs to be in the mode it needs to be in, then simply jumps to it.
Two Kernel Monte is a cool trick, but it's not really "upgrading your kernel without rebooting" -- it's "rebooting without BIOS reinitialization". It's a Linux equivalent to the LOADLIN program under DOS, allowing Linux to load and run a new OS, handing over control of the entire machine.
This is a good and useful trick, but it's a far cry from upgrading the kernel without rebooting. Since the old OS is entirely defunct and the new one has to initialize itself from scratch, this remains a reboot, albeit a faster one...
No it isn't. It's much closer to a "If you're not for us, your against us" tactic.
That too. Of course, the GPL even punishes kindred spirits. (Witness the number of open-source licenses that are incompatible with the GPL.)
It says, "you can use our stuff, and make more stuff out of our stuff, but only if you lisence any resulting stuff the same".
The GPL is very much of a "my way or the highway" approach to "cooperation". Microsoft isn't much different either. You can use Microsoft's stuff, and make more stuff out of their stuff, but only if you use Microsoft's platform. How is this so different?
Embrace and extend is like "we'll get our stuff to support your features and play nice with your system, but then well add more features to ours that you can't use", thus meaning that if you want to use the fancy new stuff you gotta use the extended and the extended ain't shared with the original authors.
Are you trying to deny that GPL'd software tries to do exactly this? Try reading the GNU web page, Why you shouldn't use the Library GPL for your next library: "However, when a library provides a significant unique capability, like GNU Readline, that's a horse of a different color. The Readline library implements input editing and history for interactive programs, and that's a facility not generally available elsewhere. Releasing it under the GPL and limiting its use to free programs gives our community a real boost. At least one application program is free software today specifically because that was necessary for using Readline."
How is that different? "You can use our fancy new features -- but only if you play the game our way." The same statement could be used about the GPL (our way == use the GPL for your code), or for Microsoft API's (our way == use a Microsoft platform for your code).
So like I said, it's quite different.
It's not at all different. You're hung up on the fact the one side wants to share with you and the other side doesn't. Both sides want to force you into a path of doing things their way, because that furthers their objectives. Sure, the objectives differ, but the approach doesn't.
Huh?? Given that GPL code is necessarily open (if distributed), anyone can determine the protocols it uses, write new code "clean-room" code using those protocols, and produce proprietary code that is compatible with GPL code.
Certainly it's possible. And it's easier to write specs from source code than from object code. But you still need clean-room techniques. And if there is any way that RMS can claim that your reverse-engineered code is derived from the GPL'd code and therefore subject to GPL licensing, do you doubt he'll try? RMS is no less zealous in propagating the GPL than Microsoft is in protecting its monopoly profits...
Yes, the ends justify the means because they reach different goals. And the implimentation is entirely different. I think that calling the GPL an "embrace and extend" strategy is pointless because - for embrace and extend to work in a neferious way you have to have a trade secret behind it.
This is simply not the case with the GPL, so yes, the ends justify the means and the means aren't as neferious as you suggest...
There is simply no comparisson. There is no lock-in with GPL'ed products. You're free to use the code as reference but not to redistribute under another license. There's a big difference here.
I never said the goals of the GPL were nefarious. On the contrary, I said they "may be noble and selfless". Nevertheless, there is lock-in with GPL'd products -- you're locked into using the GPL! The technique is different (trade secrets vs. licensing terms) but the effect is much the same, is it not?
Show me where the definition says it increses freedom.
Patents increase freedom _eventually_ when they expire and fall into the public domain, as the RSA algorithm recently did. In theory, the alternative is that the invention is never revealed and never benefits society, thus justifying the temporary monopoly for the long-term benefit of making the invention public.
Unfortunately, when patents are granted on the obvious (which is patently illegal, if you don't mind the pun), this doesn't provide any long-term benefit (it would have been invented regardless) and the cost of the temporary monopoly is imposed for no benefit. This is why the law requires that patents be non-obvious to an average practitioner in the relevant field. If they're obvious, they don't deserve patent protection because there's no need to provide an incentive to reveal the obvious.
The problem is that the USPTO keep granting patents on the obvious. This is illegal, and patent examiners should have some accountability for their irresponsible behavior. Good luck getting that to happen in this lifetime.
Interesting. It never occurred to me before that the GPL is also an "embrace and extend" strategy. While RMS and Bill Gates seem to be polar opposites, they both play the game the same way -- Microsoft prefers that Microsoft code only play nice with other Microsoft code and RMS prefers that GPL code only play nice with other GPL code. Both hope to eventually conquer the entire software industry through network effects. The GPL uses viral licensing while Microsoft uses proprietary secrets, but it remains the same game, and Microsoft has been more successful at the game.
Does this make RMS hypocritical for criticizing Microsoft's "embrace and extend" practices while essentially playing the same game? His goals may be noble and selfless, but do the ends justify the means?
Hey, cut them some slack, okay? They've got the best web search engine out there, and I'm sure they'll have the best Usenet search engine in due time. But give them some time to get it rolling!
I am very happy to hear this. In fact, on December 14, I sent email to Google suggesting that they get into the Usenet News searching business -- maybe even acquire Deja.com! They were obviously already thinking along the same lines since at least August 2000 when they started archiving Usenet themselves...
Google is awesome, and this only makes them better. I even believe they have the sense to avoid the portal path that AltaVista and Deja took to their detriment...
Slashdot Mirror
There are errors in the bz2 images on ftp.kernel.org. They do not pass the gpg verification, and are basically corrupted images. the gz images work.
With bzip2, you should always decompress and compare byte-for-byte against the original data before trusting the compressed data, especially for large files.
Yes, it's a hassle, but it's necessary. I've seen this byte-for-byte verification fail a number of times, usually megabytes into the original data. I find it alarming that a "lossless" algorithm (or a buggy implementation) allows this to happen, when people are known to be trusting data to this program. I have never seen gzip fail like this, nor have I heard of such failures. However, I've witnessed it repeatedly with bzip2, so I won't trust it blindly.
It would be good if a version of bzip2 would automatically feeds the compressed data and a copy of the uncompressed data to an independent piece of decompression code (which sees only the compressed data, not the data structures of the compressor) and have this byte-for-byte check happen on-the-fly during compression. Whether the bug lies in the algorithm itself or the code for the compressor or decompressor isn't important; the important thing is that this "lossless" algorithm isn't 100% reliable, and 99.9999% reliable just isn't good enough.
(And what's with the brilliant idea of requiring ".bz2" as the extension?!? Would it have been so difficult to put the version number in the header of the file like gzip does??)
Well, thanks to Slashdot, an unhappy customer has told thousands of potential customers to stay away from this drive. A little more responsiveness to this customer's problem would have prevented that.
I've typically bought Maxtor drives in the past, and haven't had any trouble with them (knock on wood). At one point I was interested in getting a 75 Gig IBM 75GXP drive, but not anymore. After hearing about the widespread quality problems with these drives and especially the abysmal customer service, at this point I intend to never purchase an IBM hard drive, and I will warn many others to avoid it as well.
I don't care if it's a 75GXP or another line. I don't care if it's made in Hungary or the United States. With all these RMA's (especially with repeat RMA's), there's no plausible way that IBM could have been ignorant of the quality problems of these drives. They should have issued a recall and addressed the problem properly, but they didn't.
IBM obviously don't consider it important to take care of the customer's needs. And I know of no better way to drive customers to your competitors. Making a defective product is bad enough, but a good company can turn that around and make a loyal customer if they have good customer service (as in your Seagate example). But a company that makes defective products and provides lousy service deserves to lose their customers, and probably will.
Nice going, IBM. I'll never buy a hard drive from you now, and I'll have to think carefully before considering any of your other products either...
Supporting the EFF is a good thing. However, there is a need for true grassroots lobbying efforts for the causes we're always fighting for -- sending money to the EFF may help them pay lawyers to fight the DMCA and other atrocities, but taking the time to let your congressperson know how you felt might have helped to keep the DMCA from being passed in the first place.
The EFF is important, but there seems to be a void on the grassroots lobbying side...
If all the people who take the time to complain on here would just take the time to phone and/or write their congressperson, it would probably make a big difference. The other side is organized; why aren't we?
[I wrote this back on March 31, 1999, but it's just as true today as it was then...]
Why "GNU/Linux" is a Misnomer
There is no GNU/Linux distribution.
The only appropriate use of the term "GNU/Linux" would be for a Linux distribution released under the auspices of the GNU project. Since no such distribution actually exists, the term "GNU/Linux" is a complete misnomer.
Sorry, an FTP archive does not a distribution make. If it did, no distribution maker would get any attention, since everyone would go to the FTP archives and get everything from the source. In real life, nobody wants to do that to create a complete system, and most people lack the skills and determination to bootstrap a system entirely from scratch this way. (And for those who do, their systems might be most accurately described as "custom Unix-like systems", although they would more likely be described as "custom Linux systems" now.)
The avowed goal of the GNU project is to create a complete system which is like Unix, but not proprietary. The packaging of a distribution is an essential part of creating a complete system. Without a distribution, you don't have a complete system; it is just as important as the kernel itself. A complete system must form a cohesive whole. To point at a jumble of diverse components and describe them as a "complete system" is delusional at best. All of Stallman's prevarications aside, the kernel was not the "last piece" missing from "the GNU system". (If this were true, why didn't the GNU project release "GNU/Linux" immediately when the Linux kernel became available?)
The GNU project has yet to produce a complete system. If and when the GNU project releases a distribution of the GNU operating system based on the Linux kernel, it will be fully appropriate to call that distribution "GNU/Linux". Similarly, a GNU distribution based on the Hurd kernel would be appropriate to name "GNU/Hurd".
The GNU project has no right to dictate the choice of names for distributions made by others. Given how obsessed RMS is with issues of freedom, it is quite ironic that he doesn't afford distribution makers the freedom to name their distributions, or the marketplace the freedom to choose generic names.
Linux distribution makers have chosen to use the term "Linux" in all their distribution names for name recognition reasons. This was not done to unfairly bestow credit on the Linux kernel out of proportion to its contribution to the entire system, as RMS appears to believe. Rather, this is entirely an issue of marketing for the complete distribution.
Whether RMS likes it or not, "Linux" is a more marketable name than "GNU" is. This is partly because RMS cares more about adherence to his ideals than appeasing the market. (This is not necessarily a bad thing.) This is partly because the recursive nature of the "GNU's Not Unix" acronym isn't very appealing to the general public, being both confusing and rather "cutesy" at the same time.
Mostly,"Linux" wins from a marketing perspective simply because it is very reminiscent of "Unix", itself a bizarre name that nonetheless carries considerable name recognition in the marketplace, due to the distinguished record acquired by Unix systems of all flavors over the years. Since Linux is "Unix-like", this is a good and appropriate connotation, as well as being marketable. Marketing is about perception, not fairness.
It is disingenuous in the extreme for RMS to insist that all Linux distributions should be referred to as "GNU/Linux". By doing so, RMS manages to present himself as childish and petulant, eroding much of the credibility he had built up through years of dedication and hard work. It reinforces the image of an inflexible zealot, which encourages people to discount his contributions rather than acknowledging them.
Yes, the GNU tools form an essential piece of a typical Linux distribution. The Linux kernel itself is essential. The X Windows system is essential. BSD-derived code is essential. The packaging of the distribution itself is essential. Many components of the system are essential, and none of that matters when it comes to the name.
The name of a distribution is the exclusive perogative of its creator. Just as Linus Torvalds has the perogative of naming the Linux kernel despite his admission that most of the lines of code come from contributions, so does Red Hat have the perogative of naming their distribution "Red Hat Linux", regardless of where the greatest contribution may lie.
RMS has no cause to complain. X Windows is not credited in the GNU name because it has been "adopted" by the GNU project, and is therefore considered to be implicitly credited. In fact, the GNU project "adopted" as many components as possible, and only rewrote what was necessary to fill in the gaps.
What RMS has willfully ignored is that most Linux distributions have "adopted" many GNU components to fill in the gaps to create a complete system, exactly as the GNU project "adopted" what was already available. By the same logic, the GNU project is implicitly credited, as is X Windows. The choice of a name for the overall distribution remains strictly a marketing decision, not a recognition of credit due or most significant contributor.
The upshot of all this? The term Linux distribution (or simply Linux) is entirely appropriate to refer to generic distributions based on Linux. Not because of the relative importance of the kernel to the overall system, but because "Linux" is the only term common in the names of all Linux distributions. Therefore, it is the most appropriate generic designation, and "GNU/Linux" is the misnomer that should be suppressed.
Copyright 1999 by Deven T. Corzine. <deven@ties.org>
Damn typos! Try this link instead...
Hmm, perhaps Linux should cater more towards hardware vendors... Developing a standard by which binary drivers can be easily utilized.
Hmm. A standard for binary drivers? Um, you mean like Project UDI? Oh yes, I forgot -- RMS had a petulant rant about it, so I guess we can't support a worthwhile effort that is the best chance for marginalized OS's to move into the mainstream. Nevermind!
Can you say "chilling effect", boys and girls? I knew you could...
You can't handle a driver failure. By definition a driver is part of the kernel, and if the kernel screws up, you're toast.
This is an unsupported proposition. While it may be typical for a driver to be implemented in kernel mode, it's not "by definition" a requirement. Take a look at Project UDI for a device driver API that could be implemented in user-mode. This would allow the system to be equally protected against untrusted drivers as it can be from untrusted applications. Now, I'm not saying that the Reference Implementation or any other UDI implementation actually supports user-mode drivers today. However, the API standard is written in such a way as to allow for that possibility.
Of course, user-mode drivers would execute more slowly than kernel-mode drivers, but if an OS supported both types, paying the performance price for stability on untrusted drivers would be a worthwhile tradeoff...
No. I'm pretty sure that if you poll everyone with a PVR, you will find out that the vast majority do not watch ANY ads. I surely don't wait at a commercial break and see if the ad is funny. And since TiVo only has FF, and no "30-second skip," there's no way in hell I'm stopping for any along the way. I hit FF, wait a second or so after I see the show come back, and hit play. No commercials at all.
Maybe that's just you. On my TiVo, I use 3xFF to scan through commercials at 60x and try to start back into the program as closely as possible also. However, if a commercial catches my attention, I will rewind and watch it. In fact, I do this regularly. I still skip about 95% of all commercials, but I often do watch the good ones. I'd rather not have a 30-second skip button -- not all commercials are 30 seconds, and it makes it too easy to miss the good commercials.
Even the ones I ignore probably make an impression, since I'm watching the screen closely for the program to start again. If the advertiser can get their message across while scanning at high speed, good for them. I just don't want to spend the time being a captive audience. If I had forced commercials from HDTV, I'd pick up a book. Viewers will ignore commercials that don't interest them, no matter what interlocks they design into the system.
Advertisers need to learn that the solution is not to try harder and harder to force viewers to see their ads, but to make their ads interesting and entertaining enough that they want to see them. People will sit down any watch "The best commercials you've never seen (and some you have)" because those commercials are good. People who hate football record the Super Bowl just to see the commercials. People will watch good commercials, but they'll ignore bad ones, no matter how much you try to force them to watch...
talking on a cell phone while driving *should* be illegal.
Really? I read recently that TEN TIMES as many accidents are caused by drivers being distracted by adjusting the RADIO than are caused by drivers distracted by cell phones. Shouldn't we ban car radios first, then?
Of course, even MORE people people were distracted by "something outside of the car" than the radio. Face it, distracted drivers are dangerous, no matter what the distraction. But don't single out cell phones to blame when they're only implicated in about 1% of accidents. Just because you can see the cell phone in the driver's hand doesn't mean you know he's distracted. One could easily be more distracted by a conversation with a passenger. Shall we ban passengers in all cars as well?
This is ridiculous.
Sure, it works great in theory -- until you realize that many of these shared-library authors haven't bothered to CHANGE that major version number when the API changes! And this has even happened with libc!!!
Then buy a DirecTivo and get lifetime TiVo service for $249. It'll run you $650 or so, but it's not such a bad deal for (effectively) two DirecTV receivers and two VCR's in one box... (No, you can't use the second tuner yet, but it will be enabled this summer.)
Don't buy UltimateTV; they don't have a lifetime service option and you'll be paying monthly fees to them forever.
- Microsoft's "UltimateTV" does NOT use the TiVo service; it is a competing service.
- UltimateTV is ONLY available (at this time) integrated with a DirecTV receiver.
- "DirecTV Receivers with TiVo" (aka "DirecTivo" or "combo" boxes) compete in the same market as UltimateTV.
- TiVo also sells "standalone" units which work with any video source (including cable, satellite, broadcast, etc.) -- these units contain an MPEG encoder and have tunable quality settings to choose from.
- There is no UltimateTV product for the standalone market; DirecTV is required.
- UltimateTV and DirecTivo boxes BOTH lack MPEG encoder hardware; they can only store the MPEG signal coming from DirecTV's satellite.
- Because the MPEG signal comes from the satellite, the recordings are essentially PERFECT recording quality; the playback from a recorded program will be IDENTICAL to the quality of the live DirecTV signal. (Standalone TiVo units suffer variable degradation based on the quality settings and program material.)
- Because the MPEG signal was compressed by DirecTV before being sent to the satellite, there are no encoder quality settings to choose from, BUT the compression should be better than consumer-grade hardware can hope to achieve at the same bitrates.
- UTV has two physical DirecTV satellite tuners, which allows recording two shows at once or watching one show while recording another. This works today.
- DirecTivo combo boxes ALSO have two physical DirecTV satellite tuners, but only one can be used at the present time.
- All existing DirecTivo units will receive a free software upgrade ("sometime this summer") to enable the second tuner already present in the box. Until that time, UTV has a temporary dual-tuner advantage.
- For any dual-tuner system, two cable runs from a dual-LNB satellite dish for technical reasons; you cannot split a single cable to operate two satellite receivers.
- You can, however, "split" a PAIR of satellite cables using a "multiswitch" to connect more than two receivers/tuners to one dual-LNB satellite dish. (Two physical cable runs back to the dish will ALWAYS be required.)
- Since standalone TiVo units don't have dual tuners or dual MPEG encoders, they can only record one program at a time.
- Even with a single tuner, any TiVo or UTV box will allow you to record one program while watching a different program previously recorded. (This is somewhat like having two VCR's and no hassles with videotapes.)
- UltimateTV is based on the "Microsoft TV" platform, which uses Windows CE as the underlying operating system.
- TiVo is based on Linux as the underlying operating system. (Don't get your hopes up, the PVR functionality runs in a proprietary application on top of the Linux operating system.)
- Some TiVo users have been known to hack their systems, usually to add hard drives for additional storage capacity. (e.g. adding an 80GB drive to turn a "14-hour" unit into a "105-hour" unit) TiVo has been very gracious and accepting of this hacking, though of course it voids the warranty.
- UltimateTV has Internet access features (much like WebTV) that TiVo does not offer. However, many people question the importance/value of this.
- UltimateTV also has PIP (picture-in-picture) functionality, which is very important to some people and inconsequential to others.
- TiVo units do not have hardware support for PIP, and software support isn't likely -- none of the current models will ever have PIP capability.
- It doesn't help if your TV has PIP, unless you want to watch a different video source; current models only have one MPEG decoder so independent outputs aren't currently possible.
- TiVo is acknowledged as having the most advanced PVR software and has more sophisticated management features than UTV has.
- TiVo now has 200,000 subscribers, up from about 150,000 around the start of this year.
- TiVo has reduced their operating costs and revenue increased 48% (from $2.2M to $3.2M) between 2000 Q4 and 2001 Q1.
- TiVo remains in a negative cashflow situation. Although they expect to burn about $50M the rest of this year, they won't need outside funding until early next year. Positive cashflow is predicted to occur sometime next year.
- Microsoft, of course, has mountains of cash at their disposal.
- Despite this, UTV's impact on DirecTivo sales is "imperceptible" -- much of their advertising serves to sell people on the idea of a PVR, not necessarily their implementation. (And of course, UltimateTV probably helps standalone TiVo sales.)
- After dual-tuner support is released for the DirecTivo's, TiVo will have a clear overall advantage -- UTV will only be compelling to those who truly care about unique features like Internet access or PIP.
- There may be a few hundred thousand PVR's out there now, but a few hundred million TV's & VCR's. The potential market is enormous, but it's still in the early-adopter phase, probably for another year or two.
Does that clarify a few things?This sort of thing is precisely why I'm now planning to replace Debian on the machine I've been trying it on. While "apt-get" is nice (once you discover it exists), "dselect" is arcane, and I don't want a distribution that's so obsessive about stability and crypto stuff that you have to go looking to alternate sources to find reasonably current packages. If I have to do that, I might as well roll my own distribution.
I guess it's time to give Red Hat 7.1 a try. At least when you have to search out alternate sources, they're often in RPM format...
Let's be a little more precise here. The National Science Foundation ran the NSFnet, which was the primary backbone network for the Internet for years. NSF's acceptable use policies restricted commercial use of NSFnet, and this effectively translated to no commercial use of the Internet at large, simply because it was generally difficult to tell if the traffic might cross NSFnet. In many cases, it did.
In theory, there was nothing to stop systems on the Internet from sending commercial traffic, as long as it didn't cross NSFnet or other providers with similar policies. In practice, I seem to recall UUNet offering a commercial-oriented service that could (1) connect you to the Internet and (2) allow you to send commercial traffic to similarly-connected UUNet customers. Of course, I might be misremembering. (Does anyone know for sure?)
Eventually, NSF relaxed the rules about the same time as other backbone providers started to come to the forefront. NSF later got out of the business of providing a backbone network for the Internet, but they had been marginalized by the emergence of other commercial providers by that time anyhow...
IANAL for another few months yet.
:-)
However, I can tell you that every work of art, published or not, created after 1978 is copyrighted by someone.
I'm not a lawyer either. But if you're heading toward becoming a lawyer, it might behoove you to get in the habit of speaking more carefully and precisely about legal matters, for the time when you are a lawyer. I know your point was about copyright existing with or without registration, but you neglected another possibility.
Your blanket statement above is incorrect, because there are some works created after 1978 to which nobody holds a copyright. Of course, those works started out as copyrighted, but the authors relinquished the copyrights by explicitly placing those works in the public domain. Yes, the vast majority of works created after 1978 are still under copyright, but not every work. While I'm sure you were aware of it, and this wasn't legal advice, you might want to be more careful when the time comes that you are dispensing legal advice. If I'm not mistaken, that's when you can incur liability for any mistakes you make. (That's right, isn't it?)
(For the benefit of those who haven't studied the law, I do know this much: "public domain" is a very specific legal term meaning "not copyrighted"; those who call any freely-redistributable software "public domain" are misusing a specific legal term.)
But hey, I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not studying to become one either. Feel free to ignore my opinion. Maybe an actual lawyer could weigh in with a more relevant opinion here...
Apart from this nitpicking, I thought your post was very interesting.
http://www.scyld.com/products/beowulf/software/mo
It's called Two Kernel Monte. It's a module that loads a new kernel into memory, does a little do-si-do dance to get it where it needs to be in the mode it needs to be in, then simply jumps to it.
Two Kernel Monte is a cool trick, but it's not really "upgrading your kernel without rebooting" -- it's "rebooting without BIOS reinitialization". It's a Linux equivalent to the LOADLIN program under DOS, allowing Linux to load and run a new OS, handing over control of the entire machine.
This is a good and useful trick, but it's a far cry from upgrading the kernel without rebooting. Since the old OS is entirely defunct and the new one has to initialize itself from scratch, this remains a reboot, albeit a faster one...
No it isn't. It's much closer to a "If you're not for us, your against us" tactic.
That too. Of course, the GPL even punishes kindred spirits. (Witness the number of open-source licenses that are incompatible with the GPL.)
It says, "you can use our stuff, and make more stuff out of our stuff, but only if you lisence any resulting stuff the same".
The GPL is very much of a "my way or the highway" approach to "cooperation". Microsoft isn't much different either. You can use Microsoft's stuff, and make more stuff out of their stuff, but only if you use Microsoft's platform. How is this so different?
Embrace and extend is like "we'll get our stuff to support your features and play nice with your system, but then well add more features to ours that you can't use", thus meaning that if you want to use the fancy new stuff you gotta use the extended and the extended ain't shared with the original authors.
Are you trying to deny that GPL'd software tries to do exactly this? Try reading the GNU web page, Why you shouldn't use the Library GPL for your next library: "However, when a library provides a significant unique capability, like GNU Readline, that's a horse of a different color. The Readline library implements input editing and history for interactive programs, and that's a facility not generally available elsewhere. Releasing it under the GPL and limiting its use to free programs gives our community a real boost. At least one application program is free software today specifically because that was necessary for using Readline."
How is that different? "You can use our fancy new features -- but only if you play the game our way." The same statement could be used about the GPL (our way == use the GPL for your code), or for Microsoft API's (our way == use a Microsoft platform for your code).
So like I said, it's quite different.
It's not at all different. You're hung up on the fact the one side wants to share with you and the other side doesn't. Both sides want to force you into a path of doing things their way, because that furthers their objectives. Sure, the objectives differ, but the approach doesn't.
Huh?? Given that GPL code is necessarily open (if distributed), anyone can determine the protocols it uses, write new code "clean-room" code using those protocols, and produce proprietary code that is compatible with GPL code.
Certainly it's possible. And it's easier to write specs from source code than from object code. But you still need clean-room techniques. And if there is any way that RMS can claim that your reverse-engineered code is derived from the GPL'd code and therefore subject to GPL licensing, do you doubt he'll try? RMS is no less zealous in propagating the GPL than Microsoft is in protecting its monopoly profits...
Yes, the ends justify the means because they reach different goals. And the implimentation is entirely different. I think that calling the GPL an "embrace and extend" strategy is pointless because - for embrace and extend to work in a neferious way you have to have a trade secret behind it.
This is simply not the case with the GPL, so yes, the ends justify the means and the means aren't as neferious as you suggest...
There is simply no comparisson. There is no lock-in with GPL'ed products. You're free to use the code as reference but not to redistribute under another license. There's a big difference here.
I never said the goals of the GPL were nefarious. On the contrary, I said they "may be noble and selfless". Nevertheless, there is lock-in with GPL'd products -- you're locked into using the GPL! The technique is different (trade secrets vs. licensing terms) but the effect is much the same, is it not?
Show me where the definition says it increses freedom.
Patents increase freedom _eventually_ when they expire and fall into the public domain, as the RSA algorithm recently did. In theory, the alternative is that the invention is never revealed and never benefits society, thus justifying the temporary monopoly for the long-term benefit of making the invention public.
Unfortunately, when patents are granted on the obvious (which is patently illegal, if you don't mind the pun), this doesn't provide any long-term benefit (it would have been invented regardless) and the cost of the temporary monopoly is imposed for no benefit. This is why the law requires that patents be non-obvious to an average practitioner in the relevant field. If they're obvious, they don't deserve patent protection because there's no need to provide an incentive to reveal the obvious.
The problem is that the USPTO keep granting patents on the obvious. This is illegal, and patent examiners should have some accountability for their irresponsible behavior. Good luck getting that to happen in this lifetime.
Interesting. It never occurred to me before that the GPL is also an "embrace and extend" strategy. While RMS and Bill Gates seem to be polar opposites, they both play the game the same way -- Microsoft prefers that Microsoft code only play nice with other Microsoft code and RMS prefers that GPL code only play nice with other GPL code. Both hope to eventually conquer the entire software industry through network effects. The GPL uses viral licensing while Microsoft uses proprietary secrets, but it remains the same game, and Microsoft has been more successful at the game.
Does this make RMS hypocritical for criticizing Microsoft's "embrace and extend" practices while essentially playing the same game? His goals may be noble and selfless, but do the ends justify the means?
Hey, cut them some slack, okay? They've got the best web search engine out there, and I'm sure they'll have the best Usenet search engine in due time. But give them some time to get it rolling!
I am very happy to hear this. In fact, on December 14, I sent email to Google suggesting that they get into the Usenet News searching business -- maybe even acquire Deja.com! They were obviously already thinking along the same lines since at least August 2000 when they started archiving Usenet themselves...
Google is awesome, and this only makes them better. I even believe they have the sense to avoid the portal path that AltaVista and Deja took to their detriment...