> I wouldn't mind a 10 year perpetually renewable.
Nope, that falls into the trap of believing in "Intellectual Property". Copyright is strictly a bargain between society and creators, we give you a TEMPORARY monopoly in exchange for you releasing the work (and originally you had to deposit a copy at the Library of Congress, ensuring that when the limit expired a known good copy would exist) because we believe it results in a greater good. A permanent monopoly must, almost by definition, be a net negative for society. Beyond a fairly short duration the argument that continuing the monopoly grant generates more net benefit in new creations than it costs in the inability for anyone else to make use of the material gets very weak. The current century limit is already way over the cost/benefit line in my humble opinion.
The key point being that Copyright MUST encourage new creation or it should be eliminated. Especially here in the US the only authority for it is in the phrase "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" That means if it doesn't promote progress it shouldn't be granted. And nothing in that implies that the author or inventor 'owns' it.
> Commodity pricing is based on the idea that supplies are limited.
Exactly. Which is why comparisons to a stock market, supply and demand, etc are all daft. Listen up people, copyright is all about providing the producer of a work an explicit MONOPOLY on reproducing (and public performance, not at issue here) the work. So anything other than seeking the absolute maximum return by picking a pricepoint to generate maximum profits is doomed longterm.
That IS the market functioning correctly as it is currently designed. Of course when one realizes the negative implication of this for society in general it leads to the notion that, just perhaps, we are granting a little too much in the social contract called copyright and that we might need to rethink it. Specifically I'd propose a drastic reduction in the time to ten years renewable with a non-trivial fee for a second ten year term and am open to discussing mandatory licensing of recordings as in done for composers now.
That is called reality. If you won't submit to a security check yourself you can't expect the others on your server to do so. And the cold hard reality is that almost every one of the refusniks will be cheating script kiddie scum and not high minded civil libertarians. It is the other side of Trusted Computing.
I don't think anybody who reads/posts here objects to using Trusted Computing concepts to allow YOU to trust your own machine. (i.e. using it sign your binaries and make sure the machine will only run those) Most here object (myself included) when it is shifted to THEM trusting OUR machine to be faithful to THEM over our objection. But THEM is also US. The problem with online gaming is just one of the first examples of it to be hammered home. You can't play an online game without trust. Current tech often rules out making the server the only entity with privledged information and that means we have to be able to trust the clients. It is a very tricky problem to get all of the competing Rights and Interests balanced. But because the task is difficult is no reason to surrender, either to the zero tolerance for any DRM camp or to the TCPA Hell Apple/Microsoft and the MPAA/RIAA want for us.
Yes, I'd be willing to see McCain in the veep spot. There he could be constrained to only have infleunce in the spheres where is is actually a Republican. And 2016 he would be far beyond the age where he could try to move up to the #1 spot. And it would be worth it to watch Hillary's boosters in the MSM assail a Rice/McCain ticket as a a pair of stupid bigots, after all EVERY Republican ticket gets that label.:)
> The alarming thing, though, I guess, is that this is considered "strong language" in diplomatic circles.
Well consider it in context. Jack Straw is a friend of the US, as is the UK, even though it was intended to be circulated (officially or not) to other less friendly states. Still, I liked the clear statement of our position, something indeed rare in a diplomatic communication. And if Condi actually understands that this is big fight over control of a text file then that just raises her a notch in my estimations.
Her positions are still unclear on too many issues for me to endorse her, but unless somebody else on the Republican side breaks out of the pack soon she is likely to be the leading contender for the 08 nomination whether she wants it or not.
I know I'd have to take her, unknowns and all, against the known RINOs currently being promoted by the chattering classes.
> No: monopolies are not "created" by governments, not in cases like this. Companies become monopolies by vicious > competition, OR a natural monopoly is created by, say, one company deciding to lay cable lines to all the houses > in the neighborhood while other companies decide it wouldn't be profitable to do the same.
What planet did you grow up on? AT&T was granted a monopoly on all telephone service (except some very rural areas where they refused the monopoly) back in the dawn (when for technical reasons it made a sort of sense) of the telephone age and held it for decades. When AT&T was broken up the Baby Bells retained the exact same monopoly on the lines and local service and hold it to this day. For a brief moment CLECs were regulated into existance and almost as quickly they have been regulated right back out, mostly due to the influence of former Louisiana congresscritter, wholly owned creature of BellSouth Inc., and chair of the telecommunications committee, Billy Tauzin.
Cable companies operate under a monopoly grant of the city/town they are installed into.
> Goverments regulate monopolies because raw capitalism can't. Left to their own devices, AT&T (get used to the name, > as SBC will be brought in soon) will gut the market and drive prices even higher -- and start acting like feudal > overlords in the bargain.
God, what do they teach you kids these days! Capitalism is our only hope of a way out of this mess, the government doesn't give a crap about anything except expanding its own influence. The speed with which the "smaller government" conservatives turned into big spenders once in power should have proven that beyond argument.
> Thus we have Microsoft declared monopoly (tho the Bush admin does not believe in monopoly regulation, so it is a > dead letter until they are removed), thus AT&T WAS DISMANTLED in '84 for precisely what they are doing now: abusing > their monopoly position. Sigh.
Give the Bush hating a break dude. The Microsoft case was dead the instant Microsoft got under Judge Jackson's skin enough for him to commit a reversable infraction and that was before shrubbie got sworn in. Ashcroft just stuck a fork in it and stopped wasting money on a lost case. And remember, 1984 had the biggest hero of conservatism yet in office and the AT&T case was still settled fairly well. Even Milton Friedman opposes monopolies because capitalism can't survive em. Of course we conservatives believe most monopolies to be problems with an origin in government meddling in the first place so we see no problem with the government fixing its problems. AT&T certainly qualified, BellSouth does as well.
And to a great extent Microsoft does. Of course the government could fix the Microsoft problem very simply. Declare that as a convicted predatory monopoly they no longer have the right to sell to the Federal Government. Problem solved, whatever solution ends up scaling to serve an entity as large as the FedGov would demand compatibility with it from Microsoft and most of industry. Make sure said solution is based entirely on documented file formats and data interchange protocols and we could never have another Microsoft problem.
> If you imagine that the LinkSys firmware code is the ONLY software that is embedded in > that router,
Yes, I know there is a small stub loader that isn't replaced by openwrt. However since it is licensed in from Broadcom and IS supplied in the GPL download tarball at linksys.com I'd say it is redistributable. And since it isn't in the least modified by replacing the firmware it would be pretty safe to assume the first sale doctrine applies to reselling that seperate and distinct software as it would to reselling the entire Linksys router unmodified, something also permitted by law.
> the Stots Corporation sells a woodworking jig called the TemplateMaster under a license > agreement that significantly restricts the ways in which you are permitted to use the tool.
While not a lawyer, I have actually heard of that one. It can be used to make almost exact copies of itself, and naturally they consider that copyrightable. Not sure on this point, been a while, but I do believe they protect themselves with a real contract instead of a EULA that isn't worth the paper it is printed on in most states.
> So long as the license/EULA is considered to be part of the sales contract, there is > practically no right that you cannot waive (excluding, say, statutory warranties and tort > liability) when you buy a product.
With a contract you are correct. But EULAs are only valid in one state and partially in one other.
> The question I've had for a while is whether or not I can as a distributor legaly hack a > linksys router and drop our own distro on it, and give those out to customers.
Depends on which hack you install. Hyperwrt is a modified copy of the Linksys code. While the linux binaries and a lot of the other stuff is licensed under the GPL, you might want to make sure it ALL is. Openwrt on the other hand is plain old linux. No licensing problems there at all.
As for the other reply about a EULA, ignore that guy. You are buying hardware. Hardware IS sold and not licensed. Yes there is software embedded in it, but you are planning on blanking that out before you resell it so that is a moot point. The day a judge says a piece of hardware sold over the counter at Walmart is bound by an unsigned EULA is the day I declare the Revolution to have begun and load up my 'sporting goods'.
> Or how about if Yahoo has more hops than Google? There are so many factors that affect > Internet traffic that for an ISP to fully control them would be quite difficult.
BellSouth is a top dog in the Internet game, you can bet they are fully peered in every NAP, at least in the US. So are most of the first victims they are going after. If they want the packets to flow they will flow like greased lightning and if they don't that is also totally within their control.
> 1. The same price as BT's services division, and > 2. A price that the regulator deems fair.
That only works so long as #2 can't be influenced by the telco, and here in Lousiana USA that ain't ever going to be so. We have the best pols money can buy, have for over a century and probably still will a century from now.
You see, BellSouth already must allow 'equal access' at the same price they charge their bellsouth.net division. But they set that price at insane levels so that bellsouth.net (the supposedly independent non-regulated division that sells Internet access) doesn't show much profit while bellsouth.com (the regulated monopoly that happens to own bellsouth.net) shows all the profits.
Listen up BellSouth, I AM YOUR CUSTOMER, not Yahoo! or Google. If you can't give me good access to the sites I am interested in visiting then I switch to Cox's cable modem. And if they can't show me the speed I crave then I look for other options.
This is exactly what happens when governments grant monopolies. BellSouth has been taking their customers for granted since they spun away from the AT&T motnership, which also took us for granted. After all, where can we really go? Like most regions of the US with broadband, we have government monopoly A (BellSouth) or government monopoly B (Cox) and while they can be played off one another just a little, they co-own the Louisiana Public Service Commission that makes the rules and aren't above conspiring together to keep their cost down and the users downtrodden.
The baby bells must be broken again. They can keep the monpoly on the copper or fiber but must NOT be permitted to own or operate any of the higher level protocols or have any business entanglements with anyone who does. I'm serious, we need a seperate company that JUST owns and maintains the physical plant and leases space on a totally non-discrimnatory basis in the CO to as many companies that want to install voice switches, DSLAMS, etc. as can fit into the building.... and have rules so a carrier can even pay to make the building bigger.
Listen up gang, the morons at ZDNet will always be publishing a "Linux will fail because....." article. Trolling is all they are good for anymore. Evolution even comes with a FREE connector to talk to Microsoft Exchange and they still post trolls trying to divert development effort into unproductive pursuits.
No, if you care about Linux on the desktop we need exactly two things.
1. An open replacement for Microsoft Exchange, so Evolution's connector isn't forever chasing Exchange's taillights and so more shops can get the Exchange monkey off their back. In the same vein as OpenDocument, establish an open standard for the scheduling and calendaring features of Ecchange PHBs love so and ram them hard enough Exchange and Outlook must fully implement them.
2. Pushing a wee bit harder for OpenDocument. Break MS Office's stranglehold on the world's data files and what OS is under your Office productivity app isn't nearly as important.
This isn't hard, Microsoft understood it perfectly when they stated the key to victory was to decommoditize the protocols. So long as they succeed in that they keep winning. And just as obviously if we can commoditize everything important in IT, mail, calendaring, directory services, file sharing, etc, we win.
> So one MUST be "left" if they don't asbcribe to religious faith? That seems to be your assumption here.
No, one is almost certainly of the 'left' if they exhibit the sort of intolerance and bigotry the original poster was spewing. There certainly exist a few non-religious folk on the right, even some who can rightfully call themselves a conservative. And there are most certainly Libertarians who are as opposed to organized religion as Ms. Rand herself. But for the most part, the trademark combination of disdain and hatred blended with a smug sense of self rightousness and superiority belongs almost exclusively to the moonbats. Not just regarding religion, but on ANY issue the moonbat disagrees. They are right and everyone else is stupid, evil (but probably both) for not having the good sense to recognize when Homo Superior is pronouncing Truth.
> > After all it was RAH who said "One man's religion is another man's belly laugh."
> That's a good one; I'll have to remember it.
Read RAH, Shakespeare and the Bible and you will have pretty much skimmed through all the collected Wisdom of Western Civilization. None are 100% 'right' but it is all in there somewhere. Of course the problem comes when different people pick different bits as being the 'right' ones. For example, I think the pacifistic bent of the New Testament is a load of fetid dingos kidneys, but that's just me.
> I've always found the argument that "science is itself a religion" to be non-sensical.
Depends. Used strictly as a tool science isn't a religion. The second you try using it as the basis for answering Life, The Universe and Everything it becomes one. Because science can no more provide 'final' answers to those questions than any of the other religions and it is the blind irrational FAITH that it can that is religious.
Truth is, we just don't really know yet. It is probably safe to rule out 'turtles all the way down' because we do know enough to say with a fair amount of certainty we ain't living on Discworld, but that is about the limit.
> Faith is a thing deserving not praise and respect, but pity and scorn.
Ah, the legendary inclusiveness and tolerance the left is famous for is again on display for all to behold. NOT.
Listen up moron, boiled down to the basics every 'religion' is just an attempt to understand the universe. Science is just one of the many religious belief systems practiced on this world so why don't you just learn a little tolerance for those with differing beliefs.
After all it was RAH who said "One man's religion is another man's belly laugh." The Christians, Mormons, Budists[sp], Catholics, Wiccans, etc are probably having as much fun laughing at your religion as you seem to have hate and venom for theirs. Rather agnostic myself, but I know I'd much rather hang with the more enlightened folk in any of the religious belief systems (including of course the many tolerant athiests out there) than small minded bigots such as yourself.
And yes, science IS a religion, although of it's own admission an incomplete one. You see science, as practiced by non politicized scientists, has a problem. Religions try to answer the big questions of Life, The Universe and Everything. But while science does a very good job answering a great many smaller questions, the big ones are defined to be outside the scope of the area science is capable of giving useful answers.
Science stops at the Big Bang. Science cannot provide any answers to questions a femtosecond before the Bang. And a lot of the really big questions go there. Why is the Universe? What is the Universe? Even "Where are we going?" may be unanswerable without answers about things outside science's scope.
And lets not even speak of Quantum Mechanics, if anything needs to be taken as a matter of blind faith, find better examples than some of the spookier bits of that. No, science can no more provide a unified view of the universe than any of the other major religions.... yet.
That is the one great strength of science, it builds relentlessly on the work of previous generations. Perhaps in a few thousand years, but then it would be a bit arrogant to believe we mere humans could work out the Truth in the, at best, a thousand or so years we haev been working on the problem. It may very well eventually answer the Great Questions, but it hasn't done it yet and anyone who exhibits a blind faith in it today is just as guilty of "Faith" as any Quaker ever was.
> Which would seem to indicate that such voting machines have no place at all in any > country that claims to have free and open elections.
Not at all, it those requirements that are defective. Requiring source in escrow is perfectly sane, requiring a list of every person who touched the codebase is impossible for any non-trivial project.
And I'm sure they could have even supplied a source tree for Windows under suitable non-disclosure, so that isn't the problem. The problem is that requirement for listing everyone involved.
> This is why Microsoft Windows is not a good choice for embedded systems. System designers > should choose an unecumbered system such as Linux or BSD, particularly if any kind of > security is required, like for voting or banking.
Guess you didn't even read the slashot summary. Linux or BSD would be just as non-compliant. Unless YOU have a list of every developer that could stand up in court. Considering how Diebold is on the moveon.org shitlist they KNOW they will be sued and if they miss dotting a single i or crossing a single t a suitable political judge can be found to make them suffer more losses than the contract is worth.
No, were I making the decision at Diebold I'd pull out and then make sure whoever does win the contract gets the same lawsuit problem and gets burned. Because I seriously douby anybody is going to perfectly match those requirements, they would require a ground up coding effort that wouldn't be profitable for anybody.
1. Slashdot is ran by a bunch of college dropout.bomb wealthy pinkos? The sort who kinda like Howard Dean but wish he would have the guts to REALLY speak truth to power.
2. Are savvy businessmen who understand the nature of their readers. They know that a political thread gets almost as frenzied as a PC vs Mac flamefest, and every reader and poster is generating pageviews, which helps Cmdr Taco save up for his next Powerbook.
> I can only hope that, as a/. reader, you're aware that Vista *is* Longhorn:-)
Not exactly. Longhorn was the codename for a very different product. It was an all singing, all dancing wonder product that would very likely have caused world peace! (Everyone would have been too busy Oohing and Ahhhing to strap bombs to themselves, etc.) Vista is the name of an actual product that might ship next year, after having most of the cool new stuff which Longhorn was rumored to have had removed and replaced with technology within the skillset of Microsoft's code monkeys.
> But these are legitimate problems we HAVE to deal with. These aren't issues really in the > Microsoft world; but they are in the Linux world. This study brings it to light.
Oh really. Most of the problems came from an artificial and highly contrived requirement that an unspecified 3rd party binary only package be run on Suse 8 instead of Suse 9, which it was designed for. So are you saying that any Windows software will run on any version of Windows? Well then I guess that pretty much wraps it up for Shorthorn since nobody needs to upgrade to it!
Get a grip here people. If you buy a package and the box says "Requires Windows Server 2003" you don't expect the IT peeps to pull a rabbit out of a hat and make it run on the XP servers you standardized on a couple of years ago. Same thing here. When the unspecified third party binary said it needed services only available on Suse 9 a decision needed to be made. A) get with the vendor and get a version built and supported on Suse 8, B) Upgrade the server it is to run on to Suse 9 or C) pick a different vendor.
It is pretty obvious Microsoft designed the test as a no-win scenario.
Good point, but I'm sure that wouldn't have made quite as interesting a media splash. "If Linux installations continue the defective practices they learned with proprietary platforms they won't realize much, if any, cost reduction." Nope, that isn't what Microsoft was paying for when they funded the study.
Thanks for giving those details. The study makes sense now. Basically it was a rigged demo.
Given the requirements the answer was a given. Lets count off the big ones:
1. A required OS upgrade after only one year in service? What? On a production system? No, you upgrade the OS when you add something that requires a newer version of something that is only available on a newer version of the OS or the deployed version is about to hit end of errata. And I'm sure you didn't budget a Windows upgrade, seeing as there wasn't one released in the timeframe specified. Now try again when Shorthorn ships and watch the MCSE kids clock up massive overtime.
2. Carefully cherrypicking 3rd party apps that were a nightmare to install on the selected version of Suse. The correct response would of course be to pick an OS from the vendor's recomendations. Then everything would 'just work.' What was done, on the other hand, would be as daft as trying to install an app designed for Windows Server 2003 on XP. Sure, if you are leet enough you might pull it off, but it would be crazy to put into production.
3. Then there was this beaut: "recommended best practice like not introducing out-of-distribution components." Wrong. You don't REPLACE a component in your distribution but without the third party repos (Dag for RH based distros comes instantly to mind) you are screwed.
4. A general mindset of trying to apply Microsoft/Sun server management theory to an Open Source platform.
I thought so too for a year or so. But then the bastard popped up on Al-Jazera speaking of current events. So that pretty much proved he survived Afganistan. Why he hasn't been seen since that one appearance is troubling.
But at any rate I don't make the mistake of conflating the man with the movement. If UBL does go to Hell it won't really change things, others will take up his unfinished work. To win we must defeat not the man, but the Idea he represents.
You see, the battle is one of substance over ideas. Specifically it is a referendum on Western Civilization. Are the ideas it embodies worth emulating or should they be rejected. Ideas like representive governments, womens sufferage, religious and racial tolerance, secular government, free speech and a free press. We believe in these things. They believe them to be perversions.
Once side with prevail. But our side is at a disadvantage, because we are currently divided into two warring camps. Socialists and Conservatives, and because the Socialists are frightened, that because a Conservative (and especially since they HATE Bush with such a blinding rage) is currently in power should they close ranks and fight this fight that it would end up leaving Conservatives politically advantaged when the dust settled, they pick the side of primitive howling barbarian madness over Civilization. Because in the end, Socialists believe that if THEY are not to be given supreme power then the world can burn for all they care.
> First off, if I had to choose between the Christian Fundamentalists, or the Islamic Fundamentalists, > I'd rather go with the latter.
At least you have the guts to admit which side you are rooting for. Gotta give you that much. Brave, honest and totally fucking insane.
First off, if you think the USA is tottering on the virge of becoming some sort of theocracy and launching a fresh Inquisition or something, then you are totally divorced from objective reality.
Second, even IF we are/become a 'Christian fundamentalist' nation to believe that would be worse than dhimitude under Islamic rule (and yes my Athestic friend, Dhimitude would be the best fate you could hope for, some interpretations of the Koran put you lower than Christians and Jews) shows, at best, a shocking ignorance and at worst self destructive tendencies. The views of a person like Jerry Falwell would be an average Christian cleric a hundred years ago, there was almost no public debate as to whether this was a 'Christian nation' because it was an accepted reality. But there was little religious persecution of rival Christian sects or of differing religions. (Ok, the Klan down here in the Old South hates Jews almost as much as they hate blacks, then and now. Notable for the exception to the prevailing rule though) Jewish temples and some (just not many followers of Islam in the US a hundred years ago) Mosques operated openly and without any real fear. Compare and contrast to any country with a majority Islamic population, now, a hundred years ago or at any other point on the timeline of history.
Of course if I had to guess I'd say that what this is really all about is that you hate Bush so hard it has distorted you sense of reality. Nothing else matters, if Bush came out for National Health Care you would oppose it just because HE was now for it. To admit radical Islam is THE threat to the Western World would be to admit Bush was right and you guys just can't do it, preferring to risk destruction of our whole civilization.
> Mostly because it's so cold the terrorists are few and far between. Who the fuck would bomb an office in -20C weather?:-)
Right, because there aren't any terrorists in the cold mountains along the Afganistan/Pakistan border.
No, it is mostly because Canada isn't seen as capable of resistance. I.e. when Europe (note I say when, not if) falls to Islamic fundamentalism the US will be the last line. If we fall even UBL knows Canada won't lift a finger to help us (they will in fact continue acting as a third column) and should we fall they will meekly (having no other option) accept their place in the resurrected caliphate.
The only hope the world had of beating back the hordes of darkness without another major World War was a successful conclusion in Iraq, a big enough success to set an example for the others. That is no longer possible, the example having already been set. Follow Iraq towards Freedom and you will see your country bombed and the terrorists cheered by all the 'right thinking people' in the elite media and academia, i.e you will face unspeakable evil and face it alone. Because you can forget help, the US is going to be in a post Vietnam style navel gazing exercise for a decade now. I'd just like to ask Ted Kennedy, was it worth launching a World War just to get a chance at putting a Democrat in the white house? If a camera were present he would of course bloviate, but in private I suspect he would say "Yes."
Much like WWII could have been avoided had the West been strong enough to deal with the growing threat when it was still on the horizon, we appear hellbent on allowing UBL and his gang of like minded idiots to sieze and unify the entire Middle East, restablish the caliphate, make their preparations for war and THEN suddenly wake up and shout "Oh my God, they intend to exterminate us, we have to defend ourselves!" Then we shall have War, with Iran and Pakistan (They won't stay on our side once the caliphate reappears) at a minimum with nukes. And it will be bloody.
But 'yall just be smug in your pacisfism while it lasts.
> Now though I find I like to save some time buy going to an ala cart shop like Monarch > Computer.
Impressive. They have a pretty wide selection of components available. However they were about two hundred above what I recently ordered the parts for and build in an hour or so. If I had to build a hundred boxes on a one time basis I'd consider them. More than that or if I were likely to do it repeatedly I'd hire a couple of college students.
The problem is like every other similar vendor, their selection is very limited and their level of customization choices is small. For example, for my comparison I had to manually factor in the third HDD my build had. I wanted a basic PATA drive to boot from and a SATA RAID1 for the important data, they only allow two drives and charge extra for calling it a RAID1 even if you have it shipped sans OS. Another minor nit, they force you to buy a Windows DVD player program if you pick an OEM drive, even if you pick no OS.
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> I wouldn't mind a 10 year perpetually renewable.
Nope, that falls into the trap of believing in "Intellectual Property". Copyright is strictly a bargain between society and creators, we give you a TEMPORARY monopoly in exchange for you releasing the work (and originally you had to deposit a copy at the Library of Congress, ensuring that when the limit expired a known good copy would exist) because we believe it results in a greater good. A permanent monopoly must, almost by definition, be a net negative for society. Beyond a fairly short duration the argument that continuing the monopoly grant generates more net benefit in new creations than it costs in the inability for anyone else to make use of the material gets very weak. The current century limit is already way over the cost/benefit line in my humble opinion.
The key point being that Copyright MUST encourage new creation or it should be eliminated. Especially here in the US the only authority for it is in the phrase "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" That means if it doesn't promote progress it shouldn't be granted. And nothing in that implies that the author or inventor 'owns' it.
> Commodity pricing is based on the idea that supplies are limited.
Exactly. Which is why comparisons to a stock market, supply and demand, etc are all daft. Listen up people, copyright is all about providing the producer of a work an explicit MONOPOLY on reproducing (and public performance, not at issue here) the work. So anything other than seeking the absolute maximum return by picking a pricepoint to generate maximum profits is doomed longterm.
That IS the market functioning correctly as it is currently designed. Of course when one realizes the negative implication of this for society in general it leads to the notion that, just perhaps, we are granting a little too much in the social contract called copyright and that we might need to rethink it. Specifically I'd propose a drastic reduction in the time to ten years renewable with a non-trivial fee for a second ten year term and am open to discussing mandatory licensing of recordings as in done for composers now.
> That's not really a choice,
That is called reality. If you won't submit to a security check yourself you can't expect the others on your server to do so. And the cold hard reality is that almost every one of the refusniks will be cheating script kiddie scum and not high minded civil libertarians. It is the other side of Trusted Computing.
I don't think anybody who reads/posts here objects to using Trusted Computing concepts to allow YOU to trust your own machine. (i.e. using it sign your binaries and make sure the machine will only run those) Most here object (myself included) when it is shifted to THEM trusting OUR machine to be faithful to THEM over our objection. But THEM is also US. The problem with online gaming is just one of the first examples of it to be hammered home. You can't play an online game without trust. Current tech often rules out making the server the only entity with privledged information and that means we have to be able to trust the clients. It is a very tricky problem to get all of the competing Rights and Interests balanced. But because the task is difficult is no reason to surrender, either to the zero tolerance for any DRM camp or to the TCPA Hell Apple/Microsoft and the MPAA/RIAA want for us.
Yes, I'd be willing to see McCain in the veep spot. There he could be constrained to only have infleunce in the spheres where is is actually a Republican. And 2016 he would be far beyond the age where he could try to move up to the #1 spot. And it would be worth it to watch Hillary's boosters in the MSM assail a Rice/McCain ticket as a a pair of stupid bigots, after all EVERY Republican ticket gets that label. :)
> The alarming thing, though, I guess, is that this is considered "strong language" in diplomatic circles.
Well consider it in context. Jack Straw is a friend of the US, as is the UK, even though it was intended to be circulated (officially or not) to other less friendly states. Still, I liked the clear statement of our position, something indeed rare in a diplomatic communication. And if Condi actually understands that this is big fight over control of a text file then that just raises her a notch in my estimations.
Her positions are still unclear on too many issues for me to endorse her, but unless somebody else on the Republican side breaks out of the pack soon she is likely to be the leading contender for the 08 nomination whether she wants it or not.
I know I'd have to take her, unknowns and all, against the known RINOs currently being promoted by the chattering classes.
> No: monopolies are not "created" by governments, not in cases like this. Companies become monopolies by vicious
> competition, OR a natural monopoly is created by, say, one company deciding to lay cable lines to all the houses
> in the neighborhood while other companies decide it wouldn't be profitable to do the same.
What planet did you grow up on? AT&T was granted a monopoly on all telephone service (except some very rural areas where they refused the monopoly) back in the dawn (when for technical reasons it made a sort of sense) of the telephone age and held it for decades. When AT&T was broken up the Baby Bells retained the exact same monopoly on the lines and local service and hold it to this day. For a brief moment CLECs were regulated into existance and almost as quickly they have been regulated right back out, mostly due to the influence of former Louisiana congresscritter, wholly owned creature of BellSouth Inc., and chair of the telecommunications committee, Billy Tauzin.
Cable companies operate under a monopoly grant of the city/town they are installed into.
> Goverments regulate monopolies because raw capitalism can't. Left to their own devices, AT&T (get used to the name,
> as SBC will be brought in soon) will gut the market and drive prices even higher -- and start acting like feudal
> overlords in the bargain.
God, what do they teach you kids these days! Capitalism is our only hope of a way out of this mess, the government doesn't give a crap about anything except expanding its own influence. The speed with which the "smaller government" conservatives turned into big spenders once in power should have proven that beyond argument.
> Thus we have Microsoft declared monopoly (tho the Bush admin does not believe in monopoly regulation, so it is a
> dead letter until they are removed), thus AT&T WAS DISMANTLED in '84 for precisely what they are doing now: abusing
> their monopoly position. Sigh.
Give the Bush hating a break dude. The Microsoft case was dead the instant Microsoft got under Judge Jackson's skin enough for him to commit a reversable infraction and that was before shrubbie got sworn in. Ashcroft just stuck a fork in it and stopped wasting money on a lost case. And remember, 1984 had the biggest hero of conservatism yet in office and the AT&T case was still settled fairly well. Even Milton Friedman opposes monopolies because capitalism can't survive em. Of course we conservatives believe most monopolies to be problems with an origin in government meddling in the first place so we see no problem with the government fixing its problems. AT&T certainly qualified, BellSouth does as well.
And to a great extent Microsoft does. Of course the government could fix the Microsoft problem very simply. Declare that as a convicted predatory monopoly they no longer have the right to sell to the Federal Government. Problem solved, whatever solution ends up scaling to serve an entity as large as the FedGov would demand compatibility with it from Microsoft and most of industry. Make sure said solution is based entirely on documented file formats and data interchange protocols and we could never have another Microsoft problem.
> If you imagine that the LinkSys firmware code is the ONLY software that is embedded in
> that router,
Yes, I know there is a small stub loader that isn't replaced by openwrt. However since it is licensed in from Broadcom and IS supplied in the GPL download tarball at linksys.com I'd say it is redistributable. And since it isn't in the least modified by replacing the firmware it would be pretty safe to assume the first sale doctrine applies to reselling that seperate and distinct software as it would to reselling the entire Linksys router unmodified, something also permitted by law.
> the Stots Corporation sells a woodworking jig called the TemplateMaster under a license
> agreement that significantly restricts the ways in which you are permitted to use the tool.
While not a lawyer, I have actually heard of that one. It can be used to make almost exact copies of itself, and naturally they consider that copyrightable. Not sure on this point, been a while, but I do believe they protect themselves with a real contract instead of a EULA that isn't worth the paper it is printed on in most states.
> So long as the license/EULA is considered to be part of the sales contract, there is
> practically no right that you cannot waive (excluding, say, statutory warranties and tort
> liability) when you buy a product.
With a contract you are correct. But EULAs are only valid in one state and partially in one other.
> The question I've had for a while is whether or not I can as a distributor legaly hack a
> linksys router and drop our own distro on it, and give those out to customers.
Depends on which hack you install. Hyperwrt is a modified copy of the Linksys code. While the linux binaries and a lot of the other stuff is licensed under the GPL, you might want to make sure it ALL is. Openwrt on the other hand is plain old linux. No licensing problems there at all.
As for the other reply about a EULA, ignore that guy. You are buying hardware. Hardware IS sold and not licensed. Yes there is software embedded in it, but you are planning on blanking that out before you resell it so that is a moot point. The day a judge says a piece of hardware sold over the counter at Walmart is bound by an unsigned EULA is the day I declare the Revolution to have begun and load up my 'sporting goods'.
> Or how about if Yahoo has more hops than Google? There are so many factors that affect
> Internet traffic that for an ISP to fully control them would be quite difficult.
BellSouth is a top dog in the Internet game, you can bet they are fully peered in every NAP, at least in the US. So are most of the first victims they are going after. If they want the packets to flow they will flow like greased lightning and if they don't that is also totally within their control.
> 1. The same price as BT's services division, and
> 2. A price that the regulator deems fair.
That only works so long as #2 can't be influenced by the telco, and here in Lousiana USA that ain't ever going to be so. We have the best pols money can buy, have for over a century and probably still will a century from now.
You see, BellSouth already must allow 'equal access' at the same price they charge their bellsouth.net division. But they set that price at insane levels so that bellsouth.net (the supposedly independent non-regulated division that sells Internet access) doesn't show much profit while bellsouth.com (the regulated monopoly that happens to own bellsouth.net) shows all the profits.
Listen up BellSouth, I AM YOUR CUSTOMER, not Yahoo! or Google. If you can't give me good access to the sites I am interested in visiting then I switch to Cox's cable modem. And if they can't show me the speed I crave then I look for other options.
This is exactly what happens when governments grant monopolies. BellSouth has been taking their customers for granted since they spun away from the AT&T motnership, which also took us for granted. After all, where can we really go? Like most regions of the US with broadband, we have government monopoly A (BellSouth) or government monopoly B (Cox) and while they can be played off one another just a little, they co-own the Louisiana Public Service Commission that makes the rules and aren't above conspiring together to keep their cost down and the users downtrodden.
The baby bells must be broken again. They can keep the monpoly on the copper or fiber but must NOT be permitted to own or operate any of the higher level protocols or have any business entanglements with anyone who does. I'm serious, we need a seperate company that JUST owns and maintains the physical plant and leases space on a totally non-discrimnatory basis in the CO to as many companies that want to install voice switches, DSLAMS, etc. as can fit into the building.... and have rules so a carrier can even pay to make the building bigger.
Listen up gang, the morons at ZDNet will always be publishing a "Linux will fail because....." article. Trolling is all they are good for anymore. Evolution even comes with a FREE connector to talk to Microsoft Exchange and they still post trolls trying to divert development effort into unproductive pursuits.
No, if you care about Linux on the desktop we need exactly two things.
1. An open replacement for Microsoft Exchange, so Evolution's connector isn't forever chasing Exchange's taillights and so more shops can get the Exchange monkey off their back. In the same vein as OpenDocument, establish an open standard for the scheduling and calendaring features of Ecchange PHBs love so and ram them hard enough Exchange and Outlook must fully implement them.
2. Pushing a wee bit harder for OpenDocument. Break MS Office's stranglehold on the world's data files and what OS is under your Office productivity app isn't nearly as important.
This isn't hard, Microsoft understood it perfectly when they stated the key to victory was to decommoditize the protocols. So long as they succeed in that they keep winning. And just as obviously if we can commoditize everything important in IT, mail, calendaring, directory services, file sharing, etc, we win.
> So one MUST be "left" if they don't asbcribe to religious faith? That seems to be your assumption here.
No, one is almost certainly of the 'left' if they exhibit the sort of intolerance and bigotry the original poster was spewing. There certainly exist a few non-religious folk on the right, even some who can rightfully call themselves a conservative. And there are most certainly Libertarians who are as opposed to organized religion as Ms. Rand herself. But for the most part, the trademark combination of disdain and hatred blended with a smug sense of self rightousness and superiority belongs almost exclusively to the moonbats. Not just regarding religion, but on ANY issue the moonbat disagrees. They are right and everyone else is stupid, evil (but probably both) for not having the good sense to recognize when Homo Superior is pronouncing Truth.
> > After all it was RAH who said "One man's religion is another man's belly laugh."
> That's a good one; I'll have to remember it.
Read RAH, Shakespeare and the Bible and you will have pretty much skimmed through all the collected Wisdom of Western Civilization. None are 100% 'right' but it is all in there somewhere. Of course the problem comes when different people pick different bits as being the 'right' ones. For example, I think the pacifistic bent of the New Testament is a load of fetid dingos kidneys, but that's just me.
> I've always found the argument that "science is itself a religion" to be non-sensical.
Depends. Used strictly as a tool science isn't a religion. The second you try using it as the basis for answering Life, The Universe and Everything it becomes one. Because science can no more provide 'final' answers to those questions than any of the other religions and it is the blind irrational FAITH that it can that is religious.
Truth is, we just don't really know yet. It is probably safe to rule out 'turtles all the way down' because we do know enough to say with a fair amount of certainty we ain't living on Discworld, but that is about the limit.
> Faith is a thing deserving not praise and respect, but pity and scorn.
Ah, the legendary inclusiveness and tolerance the left is famous for is again on display for all to behold. NOT.
Listen up moron, boiled down to the basics every 'religion' is just an attempt to understand the universe. Science is just one of the many religious belief systems practiced on this world so why don't you just learn a little tolerance for those with differing beliefs.
After all it was RAH who said "One man's religion is another man's belly laugh." The Christians, Mormons, Budists[sp], Catholics, Wiccans, etc are probably having as much fun laughing at your religion as you seem to have hate and venom for theirs. Rather agnostic myself, but I know I'd much rather hang with the more enlightened folk in any of the religious belief systems (including of course the many tolerant athiests out there) than small minded bigots such as yourself.
And yes, science IS a religion, although of it's own admission an incomplete one. You see science, as practiced by non politicized scientists, has a problem. Religions try to answer the big questions of Life, The Universe and Everything. But while science does a very good job answering a great many smaller questions, the big ones are defined to be outside the scope of the area science is capable of giving useful answers.
Science stops at the Big Bang. Science cannot provide any answers to questions a femtosecond before the Bang. And a lot of the really big questions go there. Why is the Universe? What is the Universe? Even "Where are we going?" may be unanswerable without answers about things outside science's scope.
And lets not even speak of Quantum Mechanics, if anything needs to be taken as a matter of blind faith, find better examples than some of the spookier bits of that. No, science can no more provide a unified view of the universe than any of the other major religions.... yet.
That is the one great strength of science, it builds relentlessly on the work of previous generations. Perhaps in a few thousand years, but then it would be a bit arrogant to believe we mere humans could work out the Truth in the, at best, a thousand or so years we haev been working on the problem. It may very well eventually answer the Great Questions, but it hasn't done it yet and anyone who exhibits a blind faith in it today is just as guilty of "Faith" as any Quaker ever was.
> Which would seem to indicate that such voting machines have no place at all in any
> country that claims to have free and open elections.
Not at all, it those requirements that are defective. Requiring source in escrow is perfectly sane, requiring a list of every person who touched the codebase is impossible for any non-trivial project.
And I'm sure they could have even supplied a source tree for Windows under suitable non-disclosure, so that isn't the problem. The problem is that requirement for listing everyone involved.
> This is why Microsoft Windows is not a good choice for embedded systems. System designers
> should choose an unecumbered system such as Linux or BSD, particularly if any kind of
> security is required, like for voting or banking.
Guess you didn't even read the slashot summary. Linux or BSD would be just as non-compliant. Unless YOU have a list of every developer that could stand up in court. Considering how Diebold is on the moveon.org shitlist they KNOW they will be sued and if they miss dotting a single i or crossing a single t a suitable political judge can be found to make them suffer more losses than the contract is worth.
No, were I making the decision at Diebold I'd pull out and then make sure whoever does win the contract gets the same lawsuit problem and gets burned. Because I seriously douby anybody is going to perfectly match those requirements, they would require a ground up coding effort that wouldn't be profitable for anybody.
Why do they do it? Could it be:
.bomb wealthy pinkos? The sort who kinda like Howard Dean but wish he would have the guts to REALLY speak truth to power.
1. Slashdot is ran by a bunch of college dropout
2. Are savvy businessmen who understand the nature of their readers. They know that a political thread gets almost as frenzied as a PC vs Mac flamefest, and every reader and poster is generating pageviews, which helps Cmdr Taco save up for his next Powerbook.
3. Both of the above.
> I can only hope that, as a /. reader, you're aware that Vista *is* Longhorn :-)
Not exactly. Longhorn was the codename for a very different product. It was an all singing, all dancing wonder product that would very likely have caused world peace! (Everyone would have been too busy Oohing and Ahhhing to strap bombs to themselves, etc.) Vista is the name of an actual product that might ship next year, after having most of the cool new stuff which Longhorn was rumored to have had removed and replaced with technology within the skillset of Microsoft's code monkeys.
> But these are legitimate problems we HAVE to deal with. These aren't issues really in the
> Microsoft world; but they are in the Linux world. This study brings it to light.
Oh really. Most of the problems came from an artificial and highly contrived requirement that an unspecified 3rd party binary only package be run on Suse 8 instead of Suse 9, which it was designed for. So are you saying that any Windows software will run on any version of Windows? Well then I guess that pretty much wraps it up for Shorthorn since nobody needs to upgrade to it!
Get a grip here people. If you buy a package and the box says "Requires Windows Server 2003" you don't expect the IT peeps to pull a rabbit out of a hat and make it run on the XP servers you standardized on a couple of years ago. Same thing here. When the unspecified third party binary said it needed services only available on Suse 9 a decision needed to be made. A) get with the vendor and get a version built and supported on Suse 8, B) Upgrade the server it is to run on to Suse 9 or C) pick a different vendor.
It is pretty obvious Microsoft designed the test as a no-win scenario.
> But... in fairness, that's what companies do.
Good point, but I'm sure that wouldn't have made quite as interesting a media splash. "If Linux installations continue the defective practices they learned with proprietary platforms they won't realize much, if any, cost reduction." Nope, that isn't what Microsoft was paying for when they funded the study.
Thanks for giving those details. The study makes sense now. Basically it was a rigged demo.
Given the requirements the answer was a given. Lets count off the big ones:
1. A required OS upgrade after only one year in service? What? On a production system? No, you upgrade the OS when you add something that requires a newer version of something that is only available on a newer version of the OS or the deployed version is about to hit end of errata. And I'm sure you didn't budget a Windows upgrade, seeing as there wasn't one released in the timeframe specified. Now try again when Shorthorn ships and watch the MCSE kids clock up massive overtime.
2. Carefully cherrypicking 3rd party apps that were a nightmare to install on the selected version of Suse. The correct response would of course be to pick an OS from the vendor's recomendations. Then everything would 'just work.' What was done, on the other hand, would be as daft as trying to install an app designed for Windows Server 2003 on XP. Sure, if you are leet enough you might pull it off, but it would be crazy to put into production.
3. Then there was this beaut: "recommended best practice like not introducing out-of-distribution components." Wrong. You don't REPLACE a component in your distribution but without the third party repos (Dag for RH based distros comes instantly to mind) you are screwed.
4. A general mindset of trying to apply Microsoft/Sun server management theory to an Open Source platform.
> Osama bin Laden died quite a while ago.
I thought so too for a year or so. But then the bastard popped up on Al-Jazera speaking of current events. So that pretty much proved he survived Afganistan. Why he hasn't been seen since that one appearance is troubling.
But at any rate I don't make the mistake of conflating the man with the movement. If UBL does go to Hell it won't really change things, others will take up his unfinished work. To win we must defeat not the man, but the Idea he represents.
You see, the battle is one of substance over ideas. Specifically it is a referendum on Western Civilization. Are the ideas it embodies worth emulating or should they be rejected. Ideas like representive governments, womens sufferage, religious and racial tolerance, secular government, free speech and a free press. We believe in these things. They believe them to be perversions.
Once side with prevail. But our side is at a disadvantage, because we are currently divided into two warring camps. Socialists and Conservatives, and because the Socialists are frightened, that because a Conservative (and especially since they HATE Bush with such a blinding rage) is currently in power should they close ranks and fight this fight that it would end up leaving Conservatives politically advantaged when the dust settled, they pick the side of primitive howling barbarian madness over Civilization. Because in the end, Socialists believe that if THEY are not to be given supreme power then the world can burn for all they care.
> First off, if I had to choose between the Christian Fundamentalists, or the Islamic Fundamentalists,
> I'd rather go with the latter.
At least you have the guts to admit which side you are rooting for. Gotta give you that much. Brave, honest and totally fucking insane.
First off, if you think the USA is tottering on the virge of becoming some sort of theocracy and launching a fresh Inquisition or something, then you are totally divorced from objective reality.
Second, even IF we are/become a 'Christian fundamentalist' nation to believe that would be worse than dhimitude under Islamic rule (and yes my Athestic friend, Dhimitude would be the best fate you could hope for, some interpretations of the Koran put you lower than Christians and Jews) shows, at best, a shocking ignorance and at worst self destructive tendencies. The views of a person like Jerry Falwell would be an average Christian cleric a hundred years ago, there was almost no public debate as to whether this was a 'Christian nation' because it was an accepted reality. But there was little religious persecution of rival Christian sects or of differing religions. (Ok, the Klan down here in the Old South hates Jews almost as much as they hate blacks, then and now. Notable for the exception to the prevailing rule though) Jewish temples and some (just not many followers of Islam in the US a hundred years ago) Mosques operated openly and without any real fear. Compare and contrast to any country with a majority Islamic population, now, a hundred years ago or at any other point on the timeline of history.
Of course if I had to guess I'd say that what this is really all about is that you hate Bush so hard it has distorted you sense of reality. Nothing else matters, if Bush came out for National Health Care you would oppose it just because HE was now for it. To admit radical Islam is THE threat to the Western World would be to admit Bush was right and you guys just can't do it, preferring to risk destruction of our whole civilization.
> Mostly because it's so cold the terrorists are few and far between. Who the fuck would bomb an office in -20C weather? :-)
Right, because there aren't any terrorists in the cold mountains along the Afganistan/Pakistan border.
No, it is mostly because Canada isn't seen as capable of resistance. I.e. when Europe (note I say when, not if) falls to Islamic fundamentalism the US will be the last line. If we fall even UBL knows Canada won't lift a finger to help us (they will in fact continue acting as a third column) and should we fall they will meekly (having no other option) accept their place in the resurrected caliphate.
The only hope the world had of beating back the hordes of darkness without another major World War was a successful conclusion in Iraq, a big enough success to set an example for the others. That is no longer possible, the example having already been set. Follow Iraq towards Freedom and you will see your country bombed and the terrorists cheered by all the 'right thinking people' in the elite media and academia, i.e you will face unspeakable evil and face it alone. Because you can forget help, the US is going to be in a post Vietnam style navel gazing exercise for a decade now. I'd just like to ask Ted Kennedy, was it worth launching a World War just to get a chance at putting a Democrat in the white house? If a camera were present he would of course bloviate, but in private I suspect he would say "Yes."
Much like WWII could have been avoided had the West been strong enough to deal with the growing threat when it was still on the horizon, we appear hellbent on allowing UBL and his gang of like minded idiots to sieze and unify the entire Middle East, restablish the caliphate, make their preparations for war and THEN suddenly wake up and shout "Oh my God, they intend to exterminate us, we have to defend ourselves!" Then we shall have War, with Iran and Pakistan (They won't stay on our side once the caliphate reappears) at a minimum with nukes. And it will be bloody.
But 'yall just be smug in your pacisfism while it lasts.
> Now though I find I like to save some time buy going to an ala cart shop like Monarch
> Computer.
Impressive. They have a pretty wide selection of components available. However they were about two hundred above what I recently ordered the parts for and build in an hour or so. If I had to build a hundred boxes on a one time basis I'd consider them. More than that or if I were likely to do it repeatedly I'd hire a couple of college students.
The problem is like every other similar vendor, their selection is very limited and their level of customization choices is small. For example, for my comparison I had to manually factor in the third HDD my build had. I wanted a basic PATA drive to boot from and a SATA RAID1 for the important data, they only allow two drives and charge extra for calling it a RAID1 even if you have it shipped sans OS. Another minor nit, they force you to buy a Windows DVD player program if you pick an OEM drive, even if you pick no OS.