I don't know about anyone else, but the comment from sys.c was my favorite:
/* * This needs some heave [sic] checking... * I just haven't get the stomach for it. I also don't fully * understand sessions/pgrp etc. Let somebody who does explain it. */
For some reason, as I was reading that comment, I saw the "I haven't got the stomach for it" part first, then I saw the "heave" checking line. In that context...
Linus, 3 AM: Whew, that's done. I'll check it in the morning, I'm going to bed. Linus, 10 AM: Ugh, where's my coffee? Linus, 11 AM: Ahh, that's better. Now let's take a look at what I wrote last night. Yikes, that's ugly. Shouldn't have looked at that on an empty stomach... I think I'm going to be sick... Linus runs to the bathroom to do a little "heave" checking.. Linus, 11:15 AM: Better write a comment to remind myself not to do that again...
Well, that's how I pictured it anyway.:-) ----- The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
Slashdot: The Truth is out there. But it's an AC post, nobody's moderated it up yet, and it's being buried in First Posts and petrified grits... ----- The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
So unfortunately the cow had to be killed and butchered inside the dorm and brought down in pieces. Oh well, most of the other pranks worked much better.
I don't know, seems to me that one worked just about as well as it is possible to get a prank to work...:-) ----- The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
You know, Mr. Silverstein, I thoroughly understand your reasons for being ticked off at Mattel, but that question seemed like a non-sequitur to me. The A.C. you responded to seemed to me to be using CPHack as yet another example, not his main point. I don't think he's a "Mattel shill" at all; he seemed to me to be just someone who hasn't yet understood how dangerous the DMCA is.
Not everyone who disagrees with you is your enemy, or even on the side of your enemy. ----- The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
Hasn't NASA heard of that elementary law of engineering / programming? "Fast. Cheap. Good. Choose two." You just can't get all three, and they ought to know that by know.
Actually, I suspect that they do know it, they're just not telling Congress because they know that Congress, not being made up of engineers, want all three and will cut funding if someone points out the facts of life to them. I suspect that NASA's motto really is:
<LOUD> "FASTER, CHEAPER, BETTER." </LOUD> <mutter> "choose two..." </mutter> ----- The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
(Of course, I can't think of a single product that they [Microsoft] invented - everything's ripped off or bought from someone else)
I forget whose site it was, but one of the "Boycott Microsoft"-type sites out there had a long-standing challenge to the Microsoft supporters who visited the site: name any Microsoft product that was truly innovated by Microsoft and not either bought from someone else or blatantly based on a ripped-off idea. Many products were advanced for consideration and rejected. Finally, someone advanced one suggestion that nobody could refute. Yes indeed, folks, it seems that Microsoft does innovate. The name of this wonderful sparkling gem of good-for-consumers innovation?
Microsoft Bob. The precursor to the Office paperclip "assistant".
I don't think any more arguments need to be stated. Microsoft should clearly be banned from innovating any more, lest millions of computer users worldwide suffer permanent sanity loss. ----- The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
Unless I'm very much mistaken, what's suggested here is impossible. I don't read German well enough to actually read the real article, so I would appreciate it if a German-speaking person corrected me here. But as I understand this, they are suggesting blocking URL's at the router level since the routers "are already manipulating the packets".
If I've got this right, this shows an abysmal lack of understanding of how routing actually works. See, IP packets have an "envelope" and a payload (the content). The envelope contains the source and destination addresses and ports ("From: 123.45.678.90:12345, To: 234.87.53.309:80"). It also contains some information destined to be used at the other end, such as whether the packet was fragmented along the way and which fragment # this one contains so that the original information can be reconstructed at the receiving end.
The "payload" of the packet is the content; what's inside the envelope. This is where all the data is put, including the HTTP "GET" requests. When you fetch a web page, your browser sends something like the following inside an IP packet:
HTTP/1.1 GET http://slashdot.org/
(There's more to it; read RFC 2616 to learn all about the HTTP/1.1 protocol). The point is that this is *inside* the packet. How are you going to tell which packets contain HTTP GET requests, huh? Look inside every packet? Sorry, buddy, not gonna do it. That would slow down ping times by at least a factor of ten: instead of 100-200ms, you'd have ping times of one or two seconds. For every communication.
Or maybe you just look inside packets with a destination port of 80? Yeah, that'd work, right? Nope -- web servers can run on any port. You'd immediately see lots of web servers hanging off port 8080, 8088, or even weird port numbers, serving up MP3's with unfiltered impunity.
There are a lot more reasons (which I won't go into) as to why this thing won't work as suggested. Thought exercise: where are the blocking lists going to live? And how will they be updated? Turn in a 500-1000 word essay to my desk by Monday for extra credit.:-)
Not to say that SOME kind of required-filtering law may be passed in Germany, but this isn't going to be it. If this gets passed, it will either (a) be utterly useless, or (b) slow down ALL Internet usage in Germany so much that the law would get repealed in record time as the German legislation realizes that it just cut its entire country off from the Internet.
I'm sure there are some factual errors in the above, as I whipped it out with virtually no research whatsoever. But the technical details of how routing works are pretty much as described. For the full story about IP and how it works, read RFC 791. For more about HTTP version 1.1, see the link several paragraphs above. ----- The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
Extremely Reliable Operating System
on
The End of Unix?
·
· Score: 4
One potential successor to Unix is EROS, the Extremely Reliable Operating System. It's at a "hackers only" stage right now, as there is a marked shortage of drivers. BUT if you "long for the early days of [Linux], when men were men and wrote their own device drivers":-), well, here's your chance. Start another operating system going!
EROS is hard to describe. It's capability-based and has orthogonal persistence -- and if that doesn't mean anything to you, I'm not going to be able to explain it much better. Check out the EROS project site and read the documentation. One thing this means that I can explain, though, is this: "snapshots" are taken of the current state of the system every five minutes. If the power goes out, the system is later restored to the last good snapshot. So you could have a text editor window open, never save your file, PULL THE PLUG on your computer and then plug it back it. Within 30 seconds (or however long your BIOS POST takes to complete), your text editor window is back on the screen, and you've lost no more than five minutes of work.
EROS is cool. I think it has potential to be the Next Big Thing. Check it out, download it (it's GPL'ed), play with it. Have fun. ----- The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
IANAL, but I did defend myself in a civil suit once against a Real Lawyer. The judge dismissed the case with prejudice.
Cool, can you give us any details? Such as why your opponent didn't have a valid case? And/or what I'm more interested in: how did you go about researching how to defend yourself? What with my interest in cryptography research plus the various lawsuits that have been brought against people doing various crypto-related stuff (Phil Zimmerman, Dan Bernstein, and Jon Johanssen come to mind...), this may be of direct personal interest to me someday. Of course, it might not, and I hope it never is...
P.S. If I misspelled anybody's name in this post (especially Jon Johanssen, as he's the one who I'm least certain about how to spell his name), please correct me. ----- The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, but as of 16:25 CDT (GMT-0500) March 2, 2000, Microsoft's website is down. Despite their (much-publicized) redundant servers, www.microsoft.com was taken down by the Slashdot effect! Probably having TWO Microsoft-related stories on the main/. page had something to do with it...
Of course, there are other explanations for this as well; the most probable one is that someone's managed a DNS attack on www.microsoft.com, as the error message I get is "Non-existant host/domain" and nslookup fails to return an IP for www.microsoft.com. But still -- this proves that nobody's invulnerable; even the biggest of giants with an image to protect can still fall victim to well-known problems...
There's a lesson here. Don't be arrogant or overconfident with regard to security. There are more attackers out there than you know about, and they have far more time on their hands than you do. Just patch holes as quickly as you can, and don't try to cover up problems; deal with them, be honest about them, and move on.
I'm rambling. I'll shut up now. ----- The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
SSH for Teraterm: TTSSH
on
SSH v. SRP
·
· Score: 3
There's an SSH module available for Tera Term someplace.
You're thinking of TTSSH. When I have to use a random Windows box and I need SSH, this is what I download and use. ----- The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
Press Release: Microsoft releases Linux version of Office
For Immediate Release
Today, Microsoft (MSFT) announced the release of MS Office 2007 for the popular Linux operating system.
"Linux has proven to be a very stable operating system, much more so than Windows NT," said Albert Hobrach, Microsoft representative. "We we able to reduce our development time by about 75% because we weren't constantly having to work around bugs in the OS. Expect to see more Microsoft products for Linux in the near future."
When asked to comment, Linus Torvalds said, "Microsoft? Who's that?" He then went back to working on Transmeta's latest secret project, code-named Friday. It is rumored to be an add-on to the Crusoe chip, but nobody knows any more. Torvalds would not comment on the Friday project.
Since the spectacular failure of Windows 2000, when computers world-wide exploded due to a programming mistake that later came to be known as the "W2K bug", Microsoft has been struggling to reestablish itself as a major player in the computer market. This announcement is projected to increase Microsoft sales of software by 100%. When asked to comment on this figure, programmer Andrew Welch said, "Twice nothin' is nothin'!"
In related news, farmers are concerned by increasing reports of winged pigs terrorizing the countryside. "Ya know how sometimes ya'll look up and a bird'll shit right in yer eye?", said agricultural worker Matthew Jones. "Well, ya don't want ta see what a pig'll do to ya. At least we should be grateful the cows ain't flyin' yet." Also, temperatures have been dropping rapidly in the infernal regions, and a major blizzard is expected sometime tonight. When asked to comment, Satan said only, "What the hell?" Reporter Dante Alighieri is on the scene.
Disclaimer: This is a work of parody for humorous purposes. Any resemblance to actual people or companies is entirely intentional. ----- The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
I'm still in college and single, so I don't have a family that I have to spend time with. But if / when I do, they are definitely going to be my #1 priority. My parents spent a lot of time with me and my sister when we were growing up, and I thank God daily for them. I never suffered all those insecurities of adolescence because I knew for a fact that my parents loved me no matter what. And I knew it because they made time to be with me. And if I ever have kids (and I hope to, someday), I will make sure I do the same for them.
Pfhreakaz0id, I congratulate you on having your priorities right. May more people follow your example. ----- The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
Folks, this may be a first... Jon Katz has written an article that contains no first-person pronouns! Instead, he's actually writing about something that's relevant to those of us who aren't columnists!
Wait a minute... What? He didn't use the word "geek" either? Hang on. Who are you, and what have you done with the real Jon Katz?:-)
Sorry about the dig there, Jon, but seriously, I was impressed by how relevant this article was. I think one of the main reasons you've been criticized in the past has been the perception that you're mainly writing about yourself or some nebulous, ill-defined social group that you call "geeks" that you're hoping we will identify with. This article, on the other hand, clearly identifies the groups involved and doesn't waste space (well, not too much, anyway) with useless verbiage. Furthermore, it doesn't appear self-centered and narcissistic (which some of your columns have drifted dangerously close to, IMNSHO).
Briefly: Congratulations, Jon, this is exactly the kind of article that I come to/. to read. Keep up this kind of thing. ----- The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
If you're reading this, then you probably already know that letting big corporations take too much power is a Bad Thing (TM). But you probably also have friends who don't... If, like me, you're getting tired of explaining things time and time again, feeling like you're getting nowhere in getting others to understand the danger, here's a book that you can recommend to them.
The Cold Cash War, by Robert Asprin. (Same guy who edited Thieves' World and wrote the Myth series of fantasy-humor novels, BTW).
The plot starts out as a nice, easy-reading story: wargames, a little bit of intrigue... Corporations doing financial battle with each other, in both legal and "gray area" ways. Then they decide that the governments (of various countries) are getting in the way of their little games. The logical solution, of course, is to get rid of the power of said governments. That's when it starts to get interesting (and more than a little scary).
Now if you're already concerned about corporate abuse of power, you'll be thinking ahead as you read the book and it won't catch you completely off-guard. But just recommend it to someone else, then casually mention (after they've read it and been shocked by the ending) "Hey, did you know the corporations are already trying to take over the power of the government?" Then when they answer, "No way, I'd have heard something about that," you can explain about the RIAA, the MPAA, Northwest, that quote by that lawyer about "Business speech isn't protected like political speech. You have the right to bad-mouth the government, but you don't have the right to bad-mouth a corporation." I mangled the quote, I'm sure, but that was the gist of it. Be sure to quote that one, then if they don't believe anyone ever said that, pull out the source and show them!
As has been pointed out time and time again, there are several key components to keeping your rights, and one of them is mindshare. Corporate PR tricks would be much less effective if more people saw through them. Educate your friends! ----- The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
It would be the same thing if, for example, to check if You've Got Mail you had to simultaneously right-click while pressing the z-key: pretty hard to do if you only have one arm, and thus a (potential) violation of the ADA.
Nah, that's easy. I can tell you're right-handed: you're assuming the mouse is on the right side of the keyboard...:-) ----- The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
In the software world, "I have X" means "I have X, and I'd love to share it with you".
In the legal world, "I have X" means "Let's make a deal".
In the legal world, "Let's make a deal" means "I have information that you might need".
In the legal world, "I have information that you might need" means "I do believe I am in a position to screw you".
In the legal world, "I do believe I am in a position to screw you" means "Give me a lot of fucken money, now, you putz".
And that's why I'm in the Free Software world, not the legal world. I'd much rather live in a world of cooperation and mutual respect than in one where the fundamental driving force is hostility and greed. I like associating with people who don't let money rule their lives!
And, Mr. Montoya -- if you're looking for someone to offer you money to share that information, Slashdot is the wrong place to be posting about it. Try getting in touch with the FSF (http://www.fsf.org/); there you might be able to talk to people who could offer you a deal.
Of course, they're likely to turn you down, and I would do the same if I was in their shoes. See, this is our ballpark, and we play by our own rules. Those rules happen to include sharing and playing nice, not trying to hoard all the toys so the other children can't have them. If someone comes along who refuses to play nice, we just ignore them.
So good luck trying to make a deal, but I just don't think it's going to happen. ----- The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
And to answer your question, I'm a 27 yr old software engineer who makes a good living working on/with Free Software... do you feel stupid now?
And I'm a 20 year old computer science student who wants to make a good living working on/with Free Software. Can you give me, and others like me, any advice? ----- The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
Woohoo! I successfully avoided watching the Superbowl this year! Not only that, but it's now 10:30 PM CST, the game's been over for at least two hours as far as I know, and I still have no idea who played, let alone who won, what the score was, etc.
And I don't want to know, so don't tell me.
/me covers ears with hands, singing, "Lalala, I'm not lis-ten-iiiiing, lalalala...":-)
Seriously, though, did anyone else deliberately not watch the game? For me, this was a protest against television, commercials and hype. What about you? ----- The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
And for more text-adventure madness, check out the newsgroups rec.games.int-fiction (for discussion of playing text adventures, or "interactive fiction" as they're currently called), and rec.arts.int-fiction (for discussion of writing text adventures). Yes, people still write text adventures -- in fact the genre is thriving, with a yearly contest that attracts more and more entries each year -- and the winners of the contest are stunning.
Highly recommended FREE games to play: Jigsaw and Curses, both by Graham Nelson. The guy's a genius: not only did he write the Inform programming language, for creating text-adventures compatible with Infocom's format, but he also wrote two of the best text adventures out there. You must experience Curses for yourself! And no, it has nothing to do with the UNIX cursor-manipulation programming library. ----- The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
But lawful behavior... can never be made unlawful, by any amount of legislation. It can only be declared illegal.
I don't understand what you mean here. To me, "unlawful" and "illegal" mean more or less the same thing. Could you explain what you mean by these terms? ----- The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
Slashdot Mirror
* This needs some heave [sic] checking
* I just haven't get the stomach for it. I also don't fully
* understand sessions/pgrp etc. Let somebody who does explain it.
*/
For some reason, as I was reading that comment, I saw the "I haven't got the stomach for it" part first, then I saw the "heave" checking line. In that context...
Linus, 3 AM: Whew, that's done. I'll check it in the morning, I'm going to bed.
Linus, 10 AM: Ugh, where's my coffee?
Linus, 11 AM: Ahh, that's better. Now let's take a look at what I wrote last night. Yikes, that's ugly. Shouldn't have looked at that on an empty stomach... I think I'm going to be sick...
Linus runs to the bathroom to do a little "heave" checking..
Linus, 11:15 AM: Better write a comment to remind myself not to do that again...
Well, that's how I pictured it anyway. :-)
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
That's right. This is /.
Slashdot: The Truth is out there. But it's an AC post, nobody's moderated it up yet, and it's being buried in First Posts and petrified grits...
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
Oh. Wait. That's what we've got already and are trying to get rid of. My bad.
So why hasn't anyone suggested tossing them into Mount Doom? :-)
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
I don't know, seems to me that one worked just about as well as it is possible to get a prank to work... :-)
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
You know, Mr. Silverstein, I thoroughly understand your reasons for being ticked off at Mattel, but that question seemed like a non-sequitur to me. The A.C. you responded to seemed to me to be using CPHack as yet another example, not his main point. I don't think he's a "Mattel shill" at all; he seemed to me to be just someone who hasn't yet understood how dangerous the DMCA is.
Not everyone who disagrees with you is your enemy, or even on the side of your enemy.
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
Actually, I suspect that they do know it, they're just not telling Congress because they know that Congress, not being made up of engineers, want all three and will cut funding if someone points out the facts of life to them. I suspect that NASA's motto really is:
<LOUD> "FASTER, CHEAPER, BETTER." </LOUD> <mutter> "choose two..." </mutter>
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
I forget whose site it was, but one of the "Boycott Microsoft"-type sites out there had a long-standing challenge to the Microsoft supporters who visited the site: name any Microsoft product that was truly innovated by Microsoft and not either bought from someone else or blatantly based on a ripped-off idea. Many products were advanced for consideration and rejected. Finally, someone advanced one suggestion that nobody could refute. Yes indeed, folks, it seems that Microsoft does innovate. The name of this wonderful sparkling gem of good-for-consumers innovation?
Microsoft Bob. The precursor to the Office paperclip "assistant".
I don't think any more arguments need to be stated. Microsoft should clearly be banned from innovating any more, lest millions of computer users worldwide suffer permanent sanity loss.
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
If I've got this right, this shows an abysmal lack of understanding of how routing actually works. See, IP packets have an "envelope" and a payload (the content). The envelope contains the source and destination addresses and ports ("From: 123.45.678.90:12345, To: 234.87.53.309:80"). It also contains some information destined to be used at the other end, such as whether the packet was fragmented along the way and which fragment # this one contains so that the original information can be reconstructed at the receiving end.
The "payload" of the packet is the content; what's inside the envelope. This is where all the data is put, including the HTTP "GET" requests. When you fetch a web page, your browser sends something like the following inside an IP packet:
HTTP/1.1 GET http://slashdot.org/
(There's more to it; read RFC 2616 to learn all about the HTTP/1.1 protocol). The point is that this is *inside* the packet. How are you going to tell which packets contain HTTP GET requests, huh? Look inside every packet? Sorry, buddy, not gonna do it. That would slow down ping times by at least a factor of ten: instead of 100-200ms, you'd have ping times of one or two seconds. For every communication.
Or maybe you just look inside packets with a destination port of 80? Yeah, that'd work, right? Nope -- web servers can run on any port. You'd immediately see lots of web servers hanging off port 8080, 8088, or even weird port numbers, serving up MP3's with unfiltered impunity.
There are a lot more reasons (which I won't go into) as to why this thing won't work as suggested. Thought exercise: where are the blocking lists going to live? And how will they be updated? Turn in a 500-1000 word essay to my desk by Monday for extra credit. :-)
Not to say that SOME kind of required-filtering law may be passed in Germany, but this isn't going to be it. If this gets passed, it will either (a) be utterly useless, or (b) slow down ALL Internet usage in Germany so much that the law would get repealed in record time as the German legislation realizes that it just cut its entire country off from the Internet.
I'm sure there are some factual errors in the above, as I whipped it out with virtually no research whatsoever. But the technical details of how routing works are pretty much as described. For the full story about IP and how it works, read RFC 791. For more about HTTP version 1.1, see the link several paragraphs above.
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
EROS is hard to describe. It's capability-based and has orthogonal persistence -- and if that doesn't mean anything to you, I'm not going to be able to explain it much better. Check out the EROS project site and read the documentation. One thing this means that I can explain, though, is this: "snapshots" are taken of the current state of the system every five minutes. If the power goes out, the system is later restored to the last good snapshot. So you could have a text editor window open, never save your file, PULL THE PLUG on your computer and then plug it back it. Within 30 seconds (or however long your BIOS POST takes to complete), your text editor window is back on the screen, and you've lost no more than five minutes of work.
EROS is cool. I think it has potential to be the Next Big Thing. Check it out, download it (it's GPL'ed), play with it. Have fun.
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
Cool, can you give us any details? Such as why your opponent didn't have a valid case? And/or what I'm more interested in: how did you go about researching how to defend yourself? What with my interest in cryptography research plus the various lawsuits that have been brought against people doing various crypto-related stuff (Phil Zimmerman, Dan Bernstein, and Jon Johanssen come to mind...), this may be of direct personal interest to me someday. Of course, it might not, and I hope it never is...
P.S. If I misspelled anybody's name in this post (especially Jon Johanssen, as he's the one who I'm least certain about how to spell his name), please correct me.
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
No matter how many times I read this, I can't make it make sense. Did you mean "If you've never..." or what?
Of course, maybe my inexperience with soldering is showing...
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
Of course, there are other explanations for this as well; the most probable one is that someone's managed a DNS attack on www.microsoft.com, as the error message I get is "Non-existant host/domain" and nslookup fails to return an IP for www.microsoft.com. But still -- this proves that nobody's invulnerable; even the biggest of giants with an image to protect can still fall victim to well-known problems...
There's a lesson here. Don't be arrogant or overconfident with regard to security. There are more attackers out there than you know about, and they have far more time on their hands than you do. Just patch holes as quickly as you can, and don't try to cover up problems; deal with them, be honest about them, and move on.
I'm rambling. I'll shut up now.
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
You're thinking of TTSSH. When I have to use a random Windows box and I need SSH, this is what I download and use.
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
For Immediate Release
Today, Microsoft (MSFT) announced the release of MS Office 2007 for the popular Linux operating system.
"Linux has proven to be a very stable operating system, much more so than Windows NT," said Albert Hobrach, Microsoft representative. "We we able to reduce our development time by about 75% because we weren't constantly having to work around bugs in the OS. Expect to see more Microsoft products for Linux in the near future."
When asked to comment, Linus Torvalds said, "Microsoft? Who's that?" He then went back to working on Transmeta's latest secret project, code-named Friday. It is rumored to be an add-on to the Crusoe chip, but nobody knows any more. Torvalds would not comment on the Friday project.
Since the spectacular failure of Windows 2000, when computers world-wide exploded due to a programming mistake that later came to be known as the "W2K bug", Microsoft has been struggling to reestablish itself as a major player in the computer market. This announcement is projected to increase Microsoft sales of software by 100%. When asked to comment on this figure, programmer Andrew Welch said, "Twice nothin' is nothin'!"
In related news, farmers are concerned by increasing reports of winged pigs terrorizing the countryside. "Ya know how sometimes ya'll look up and a bird'll shit right in yer eye?", said agricultural worker Matthew Jones. "Well, ya don't want ta see what a pig'll do to ya. At least we should be grateful the cows ain't flyin' yet." Also, temperatures have been dropping rapidly in the infernal regions, and a major blizzard is expected sometime tonight. When asked to comment, Satan said only, "What the hell?" Reporter Dante Alighieri is on the scene.
Disclaimer: This is a work of parody for humorous purposes. Any resemblance to actual people or companies is entirely intentional.
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
Why are you reading this?
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
Ayyyy-men! Preach it, brother!
</FX>
I'm still in college and single, so I don't have a family that I have to spend time with. But if / when I do, they are definitely going to be my #1 priority. My parents spent a lot of time with me and my sister when we were growing up, and I thank God daily for them. I never suffered all those insecurities of adolescence because I knew for a fact that my parents loved me no matter what. And I knew it because they made time to be with me. And if I ever have kids (and I hope to, someday), I will make sure I do the same for them.
Pfhreakaz0id, I congratulate you on having your priorities right. May more people follow your example.
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
Wait a minute... What? He didn't use the word "geek" either? Hang on. Who are you, and what have you done with the real Jon Katz? :-)
Sorry about the dig there, Jon, but seriously, I was impressed by how relevant this article was. I think one of the main reasons you've been criticized in the past has been the perception that you're mainly writing about yourself or some nebulous, ill-defined social group that you call "geeks" that you're hoping we will identify with. This article, on the other hand, clearly identifies the groups involved and doesn't waste space (well, not too much, anyway) with useless verbiage. Furthermore, it doesn't appear self-centered and narcissistic (which some of your columns have drifted dangerously close to, IMNSHO).
Briefly: Congratulations, Jon, this is exactly the kind of article that I come to /. to read. Keep up this kind of thing.
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
The Cold Cash War, by Robert Asprin. (Same guy who edited Thieves' World and wrote the Myth series of fantasy-humor novels, BTW).
The plot starts out as a nice, easy-reading story: wargames, a little bit of intrigue... Corporations doing financial battle with each other, in both legal and "gray area" ways. Then they decide that the governments (of various countries) are getting in the way of their little games. The logical solution, of course, is to get rid of the power of said governments. That's when it starts to get interesting (and more than a little scary).
Now if you're already concerned about corporate abuse of power, you'll be thinking ahead as you read the book and it won't catch you completely off-guard. But just recommend it to someone else, then casually mention (after they've read it and been shocked by the ending) "Hey, did you know the corporations are already trying to take over the power of the government?" Then when they answer, "No way, I'd have heard something about that," you can explain about the RIAA, the MPAA, Northwest, that quote by that lawyer about "Business speech isn't protected like political speech. You have the right to bad-mouth the government, but you don't have the right to bad-mouth a corporation." I mangled the quote, I'm sure, but that was the gist of it. Be sure to quote that one, then if they don't believe anyone ever said that, pull out the source and show them!
As has been pointed out time and time again, there are several key components to keeping your rights, and one of them is mindshare. Corporate PR tricks would be much less effective if more people saw through them. Educate your friends!
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The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
Nah, that's easy. I can tell you're right-handed: you're assuming the mouse is on the right side of the keyboard... :-)
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The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
In the legal world, "I have X" means "Let's make a deal".
In the legal world, "Let's make a deal" means "I have information that you might need".
In the legal world, "I have information that you might need" means "I do believe I am in a position to screw you".
In the legal world, "I do believe I am in a position to screw you" means "Give me a lot of fucken money, now, you putz".
And that's why I'm in the Free Software world, not the legal world. I'd much rather live in a world of cooperation and mutual respect than in one where the fundamental driving force is hostility and greed. I like associating with people who don't let money rule their lives!
And, Mr. Montoya -- if you're looking for someone to offer you money to share that information, Slashdot is the wrong place to be posting about it. Try getting in touch with the FSF (http://www.fsf.org/); there you might be able to talk to people who could offer you a deal.
Of course, they're likely to turn you down, and I would do the same if I was in their shoes. See, this is our ballpark, and we play by our own rules. Those rules happen to include sharing and playing nice, not trying to hoard all the toys so the other children can't have them. If someone comes along who refuses to play nice, we just ignore them.
So good luck trying to make a deal, but I just don't think it's going to happen.
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The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
And I'm a 20 year old computer science student who wants to make a good living working on/with Free Software. Can you give me, and others like me, any advice?
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The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
And I don't want to know, so don't tell me.
Seriously, though, did anyone else deliberately not watch the game? For me, this was a protest against television, commercials and hype. What about you?
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The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
Also check out the Interactive Fiction Archive at gmd.de -- but if you're in North America, use the U.S. Mirror instead.
Highly recommended FREE games to play: Jigsaw and Curses, both by Graham Nelson. The guy's a genius: not only did he write the Inform programming language, for creating text-adventures compatible with Infocom's format, but he also wrote two of the best text adventures out there. You must experience Curses for yourself! And no, it has nothing to do with the UNIX cursor-manipulation programming library.
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The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
I don't understand what you mean here. To me, "unlawful" and "illegal" mean more or less the same thing. Could you explain what you mean by these terms?
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The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
And might I also suggest posting the URLs here? :-)
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The real meaning of the GNU GPL: