Space buffs amongst you will note that NASA's Voyager used a B&W CCD with three colour filters. The three images would be beamed back to earth and recombined with a supercomputer. A clever way to beat limits of CCD and communications technology in the day.
--
"Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be
guillotined." - Anon.
Metcalf's Law was that the value of a network rises in proportion to the square of the number of nodes. Sun's decision to use GNOME will raise the number of nodes using GNOME technologies - hence, GNOME will be more valuable than KDE.
Thanks to the GNOME foundation, I think that it's fair to say that GNOME is approaching "critical mass" on the *u*x* desktop front. I myself use and prefer to use KDE2, but GNOME looks like it will just have the numbers.
If this is the case, we can expect to see a steady marginalisation, RedHat-style, of non-GNOME desktop systems. Eventually GNOME will be the target platform for commercial systems relying on object frameworks (bonobo, named for promiscuous monkeys) versus KDE (KParts/DCOP).
KDE's ace-in-the-hole is Kylix, which may yet keep it breathing in the face of a growing GNOME juggernaut. I still think that it is a tragic shame that neither Red Hat or VA Linux bought up TrollTech and GPL'd Qt when they had the cash to do so. It would have resolved the license issue much sooner.
We'll see.
--
"Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be
guillotined." - Anon.
Alston proposed the legislation ages ago: but it took a three-way deal of Senators to pull it off. In particular, we had Senator Brown (aptly enough, Green Party) and Senator Harradine (ex-ALP moral gasbag) in on it. Their votes were necessary to tip it over the line.
Remember: Alston is merely a nasty twat, not an idiot. He knows exactly what he's doing. It's got nothing to do with you and me, it's all about votes in the senate and legislative support. It is, as Rousseau pointed out, an elected aristocracy.
--
"Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be
guillotined." - Anon.
Those of you who read the comments closely will notice that the links embedded in highly-modded posts often pop up as stories soon thereafter.
If I were a Troll Brigadier, I might seriously think about posting stories straight into comments, and then having them "voted on" by moderators. Hence (once again!) you've hijacked Slashdot.
Will Taco flame me on IRC for this? Damn, I hope so! Think of the Dark Side Geek Aura!
be well;
JC.
--
"Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be
guillotined." - Anon.
I bought a Micro-ATX Cyrix MediaGX mobo a while back... And it plays 'The Road Warrior' just fine!
I note here that the MediaGX chip is not just "yer average CPU", it's a CPU+media operations. It's designed in a similar but broad vein than MMX and SSE. The idea is to allow one chip to be the heart of a el-cheapo media box, such as the mythical "set top box" that will make some hungry MBA a jazillionaire.
Cyrix created this chip to try and pre-empt-slash-cash in on the "set top" market. The idea was to allow you to use the MediaGX by itself (one chip, cheaper to build and easier to design) versus a "standard" CPU + media copros. Hence the MediaGX has a whole bunch of instructions tuned for sound and video processing.
When you add the fact that DirectX has native support for MediaGX instructions, you find that it's quite feasible for it to handle a DVD decoding load. I'm not sure that the same could be said, however, of a vanilla Pentium of the same era (without MMX).
be well;
JC.
--
"Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be
guillotined." - Anon.
Yesterday I got moderator privelages: today I have moderated. Now I will revoke that moderation in order to post.
Debian is something of a bedrock amongst the free software and opensource camps. It is the most consciously, self-aware and organised project of its kind, anywhere. It exists solely for what it perceives as the greater good. Money is not the aim - the aim is to uphold principles.
Much like the roman Res Publica of old, the Debian project enjoys a sophisticated governmental structure. In a sense, Debian is the wise old head of distributions, moving at a stately pace across both technological and ideological landscapes. It brings a strength and enduring quality that other projects could well lack. Quite simply, Debian will not die because of commercial whim nor lack of interest.
I think that we, the wider programming and user community, should look on this tolerantly. For Debian, this proposal is quite radical: an amendment to the Social Contract on which stands all of the actions. This is like a US statesman proposing an amendment to the Bill of Rights in nature, a fundamental reform or change to a very important document.
But, ultimately, Debian will decide. I do not think it is our place to judge them, whichever way they may turn. The fact is that Debian examplifies a non-anarchic model in a community where benevolent dictatorial anarchy (if you can use such a term!) is revered. It has long been run by wiser hackers than the most of us, and will be run by wiser hackers long after the frothing mob of Slashdot has passed.
Consider also the outcomes.
Debian Rejects the Resolution. What signal does this send to the Free Software movement? What signal does this send to the Open Source movement? What signal does it send to commercial distros? What signal does it send to people who don't care about Debian's agenda?
Debian will probably come under a lot of fire if it choses this path, by some fire-branding types in the same mould as the person proposing the Resolution. It would hurt the "image" of Debian as the most free of the free. On the other hand, I do not believe that Debian, taken as a whole, would care what people think of it. Nor will pragmatists who admire Debian for its technical excellence.
Internally it will cause continuing friction between camps. Certainly, a rejection at this stage would make later proposals even more bitterly contested ("We've rejected this already!"). In the most extreme circumstance, the pro-camp may fork Debian. I do not expect this to happen, however.
Debian Accepts the Resolution. Again, what signal does this send? It's less ambiguous, IMO. If Debian says "yes", they are reaffirming and strengthening their pro-freedom stance. This Proposal is more ideological in nature than pragmatic: the rationale given discounts pragmatic arguments and forwards largely ideological reasons for the amendment.
Debian will come under some fire for this path, but not so much. The pragmatists in the hacker world seem to be less voiciferous than the ideologists. Linus will rise above it all in his usual zen-like serenity.
Internally, I expect pressures will be less intense than the "no" option. It is far harder to undo such a thing than it is to do it, hence the pressure to undo will be less than the pressure would have been to do. And, obviously, the matter won't come up again in that "to do" form.
Whatever happens, I'll be watching with interest. For while this is a Debian matter, Debian is one of the strongest corps of the Freedomware community. What happens to them will have spill-over consequences for others.
be well;
JC.
-- "Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be guillotined." - Anon.
Standards, such as they are in software, cannot really be "enforced".
Standards generally boil down to two kinds. The first kind is usually a legal minimum of quality imposed on manufacturers for civic purposes. Thus we have standards for toys, car safety and food. The second kind of standard is when everyone agrees to work to the same specs. It is this kind of standard that dominates the software industry.
The IETF is perhaps the most influential "bazaar" group of them all. Before Linux, before GNU, there was a bunch of guys who believed in "rough consensus and running code". The IETF makes the standards of how the Internet runs. Basically if it's IETF-approved, it's in.
The irony is that the IETF is as non-enforcing as groups come. It is, in fact, quite anarchic in nature. Anyone may join. Anyone may attend any meetings and generally propose anything they like. If it's good, it will garner consensus. If you have code to show, you're way ahead on points.
The enforcement of IETF standards is not coercive, as you are looking for: it is social. Individual developers, tool companies, software companies, publishers, and software buyers - all of these derive advantage from standards-based software. For any company to break these standards there must be substantial reason - and even then, they will cop a lot of flack.
So if you are looking for a "method" to derive, derive this: Discussion, Design and Disclosure makes a Standard. Discuss the standard widely, give it a solid grounding of design, and disclose your code and detailed designs to everyone.
Just some quick observations to catch the 25-post moderator's theshold:)
be well;
JC.
-- "Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be guillotined." - Anon.
It will come as no surprise to me if the whole concept of an "internet appliance" is picked to bits here. And why not? They're annoying little buggers - underpowered and not useful for anything really. Except internet access. Oops! We already have that.
The case "for" is simple enough: make it cheap and idiot-proof. If anyone has a background in working on making the internet cheap and idiot-proof, it's AOL. You may not like their style, but you must concede their relentless drive to AOLize the internet. A foray in hardware is about diminishing returns to scale in software.
Consider, you are AOL. Your program right now is fairly simple for first-time users. But it still sits atop a legacy system that is in itself not so intuitive. Solution? Ditch the legacy.
AOL is actually big enough to somewhat pull this off. Especially now: the Wintel establishment has been wounded on two fronts. AMD has challenged the Intel hegemony, and the DOJ and Linux have undermined Microsoft's aura of unassailability. Suddenly, all the other sharks can smell blood, and are circling for some action.
Let us also note that minicomputer makers - and there were dozens, in their heyday - scoffed at the underpowered clunkers made by IBM. "Peecee". As if there should be a computer *per person*. Puh-lease!
Evolutionary pressure is an amazing thing. PCs evolved out of pretty much nothing into the bedrock of an entire industry. They did not wholly supplant what came before (mainframes and minis), rather, they marginalised them and extended their range of usefulness. A mainframe is no longer a standalone giant in a pen; it is a viable "force extender" for a corporate network of PCs. Mainframes are marginalised by PCs, but also sustained by synergistic adaptation to the new reality.
It may be this way with the general-purpose PC and function-oriented computers. This Brave New World has been the source of much speculation by futurists over the years, so I shall skip past it.
My own outlook is that IAs will eventually evolve to become PCs as we understand them now. People will want to write letters on their IA, and won't really understand why they need to buy a seperate machine to do that. So IAs will emerge with the power to do so. Before long they will have HDDs and user-fsckable GUIs. That is, they will be PCs by another name.
This market is seething and will continue to seethe. Expect either a big player (like AOL) to "make it happen", or for something much more interesting to emerge from nowhere and sweep the whole thing away.
be well;
JC.
-- "Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be guillotined." - Anon.
"The jury in a murder trial in Melbourne was dismissed because the details about a previous trial of the accused is available on CrimeNet (www.crimenet.com.au). There was no evidence that any of the jurors had seen the information and the information is publically available in newspaper archives. Here is a link to the story." This sets an odd precedent, to say the least. Perhaps criminals would benefit by describing their crimes in excruciating detail as soon as they're apprehended. What do y'all think down under?
Timothy - I don't think it's an odd precedent at all. I think the judge has acted in the spirit of the law. Due process necessitates that you will have a fair and unbiased jury. While there will always be bias, while jurors are human, we are still better off in trying to consciously overcome our own shortcomings.
Secondly, you seem to be under the impression that CrimeNet is police-operated. The fact is that CrimeNet gathers its material from publically available sources - newspapers, what information police will provide, and so forth.
Thirdly, the criminal's decision to describe his crime would - should other evidence support the case - likely have him found guilty by trial.
I believe that there are two critical items here:
CrimeNet is Very Easy - it's very, very easy to obtain information on people through CrimeNet. They're getting the closest thing to a slashdot effect the general public can create.
CrimeNet is not Infallible - and this is the bigger worry. As the article points out, a search for a name may either turn up information that is simply wrong (so surprising, considering it is sourced from newspapers), or indeed the profile of another person with the same name.
Taken together, these mean that there is a real chance that jurors will hold pre-judgement - prejudice, in other words. And there is stacks of research that shows you that prejudices have tangible affects on trial outcomes.
The judge has set a good precedent here. Let's not tear him down for it.
be well;
JC.
ps - Timothy: some of us may find "y'all down under" just a teensie bit patronising. Not all. Some.
-- "Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be guillotined." - Anon.
An article of this sort generally falls into the category of "punditry". The gentleman in question probably had a deadline and was a few hundred words short of a real article.
The solution in these cases is to put on one's pundit hat and literally pull a story out of one's [CENSORED]. Symptoms of such stories include:
Lack of Substance - Such stories have no real point - or - what point they do have is unoriginal and no new or compelling evidence or arguments are presented.
Lack of Depth - I think we can see that here. The fixation on Mozilla to the exclusion of other (highly successful) projects means that either he did not know about, or would not acknowledge such successes.
Lack of Supporting Evidence - no links, no quotes, no references to "authorities" (usually ESR), no statistics, no research. Just pure spout.
What should be your reaction, O Gentle Reader? Ignore it. As others have pointed out, ZDNet will soon learn that anti-OSS/Freedomware stories =/. effect = page impressions = dollars.
People who receive attention tend to repeat the attention-getting action. It's just one of those things:)
be well.
-- "Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be guillotined." - Anon.
[begin] > I hate to be seen as a troll, but... > > I know that the KDE Project and the GNOME > Project have co-operated in the past where > interoperability has been important. > > Will this be true for office suites? Has > anyone from GNOME Office contacted this > list? Has anyone from this list contacted > GNOME Office? Should we? > > I think the real issue is interchangable > file-formats, or at least seamless filters. > > Anyone? >
Filters can't be interchangable because their filter library is not LGPL. For file formats they are reinventing an entire filesystem, which at least to me seems not quite sane. [end]
So will there be "official" cooperation on the file-formats, or will we be left swinging?
That network - bequeathed to Telstra for free - was paid for by the Australian taxpayer, an investment of billions.
Hang on a minute, you can't sell something twice. At present (AIUI) Telestra is a government-owned telco. The government hasn't given away the infrastructure, its just packaged up a bit of itself and called that package Telestra. Telestra will then be sold, and at that point the government gets the money.
What I'm saying is this: Telstra owns the network. Telstra is being sold. Hence, control of the network will fall out of public hands into the hands of a private monopoly.
What I meant by "giving away" is this: Telstra could not afford that network on its own. Australia is an enormous, enormous continent; our fiber backbone is world-class but cost hideous dollars to lay. Nobody, bar nobody could have justified such an investment in a purely commercial sense. There just aren't enough users to make it profitable to spend billions of dollars to link the capital cities with fiber.
The bill for this network was not footed by Telstra. It was footed by the Commonwealth of Australia - ie, the taxpayers. Telstra is inheriting it from the old Telecom monopoly as-is, for nothing.
How do you maintain the network? More tax dollars?
As I understand it, Telstra is fully self-sufficient and profitable. Being half-owned by the government, it happens to be a source of positive revenue.
You would logically pump cash from your bandwidth bonds back into the network in a maintainence function. I never said this would be free, I just said that leaving the network in the hands of a private monopoly was a little risky.
Right now, Telstra, through their customer-gouging prices (I've friends who've dealt with Bigpond $0.25 per-megabyte bandwidth charges, for instance) manages to keep the infrastructure running and up-to-date.
Telstra's eye-gouging prices have nothing to do with costs, and everything to do with profits. Telstra could run a 30c flat-rate long distance scheme tomorrow, at no loss. They won't, of course. Nobody else in the market can beat the monopoly at their own game - if you look into it you will find that some of Telstra's prices are already set by the government.
Besides, Telstra is quite flush with cash. They announced a record profit only recently - I think it was 2 or 4 billion Australian dollars. To put this in perspective, 4 billion dollars is 1% of the Australian GDP. And that's profit - revenue after costs.
Putting it back in the hands of the government means you've got to stretch your tax dollar even more.
Telstra is still majority-owned by the government. And, as I pointed out, it turns a profit. There is no tax-stretching to be done.
To bring you yankees, poms, euros and others up to speed, the Australian federal government is hell-bent on selling Telstra in order to help pay off some of the national debt.
This has already led to a great deal of controversy. Telstra has been accused of reducing services to remote areas, and of predatory, monopolistic practices. The solution offered is a system of regulations, laws, and fines. IMO, this is stupid. There is a much simpler and more elegant solution.
One: Keep the hardware. Two: Sell the rest.
The Network is the source of Telstra's monopoly power. It owns the Australian phone network, top to bottom. Competition in Australian telcos roughly boils down to who can pay Telstra more.
That network - bequeathed to Telstra for free - was paid for by the Australian taxpayer, an investment of billions. Telstra could not afford to pay to build that network itself. Nor could any company on an "expected returns" basis. But because the network has already been paid for (by us), Telstra gets it "for free".
I say that we keep the network and sell the rest of Telstra. Sell its customers, support centres, business ventures and staff; but keep the part *we* paid for.
So how do we manage this network, if we keep it?
We turn to the market to handle it.
We have, say, x Gigabits of data capacity inherent in the network. I note that the Australian system, once you hit an exchange, is fully digital. Voice and data are all the same thing.
We issue - quarterly, say - "bandwidth bonds". A bandwidth bond entitles the holder to a certain percentage of network carrying capacity over a certain time period.
To prevent speculatory activity, you'll need a rudimentary registration to enter the market. After that, anyone may buy, sell or trade units amongst themselves. This means that Telcos need not buy bandwidth from Telstra at inflated prices in rigid blocks, they buy exactly as they need. They need more? Buy some off the market. Bought too much? Sell back your excess capacity.
This also means that firms can buy their own capacity directly. ISPs, businesses with large phone and data networks... hell, even a street of people could get together and form an access co-operative. All possible with a working bandwidth market.
The sale of Telstra is going to create more and more of these legalistic, top-heavy solutions. This is why we need to take away Telstra's monopoly basis.
This article was interesting enough. I'm sure it would blow quite a few PHB and biz-book-of-the-month types away.
But what did the author actually say that matters? Here's my breakdown of the article. Consider it the Cliff's Notes (tm) version:
Hackers Kick Butt. Gee, those hacker kids shure are smart. They can use computers, surf the web, and generate sound-bites more or less on demand. I guess that we all know that something approaching a geek renaissance is underway.
Treat Your Hackers Nicely. I think this much is given. But then the old "my workers are my capital" is cliched. I think the idea worth handing to your boss is this: Make the place hard to get into (ie: so many people want to join that...) and easy to leave. Take a page from the Book of Source on this one.
The Net Stings. This is already true. 100,000 Slasherati are bad enough. But when the net becomes the forum for liking and hating companies, things speed up. Companies beware: it takes just one indisgression to ruin your image. The net has a long memory for being slighted.
That's my take on it. Now, if I may add my own observations:
Hackers Know Hackers. This was discussed in relation to the "getting an opensource job" story. If you are a suit you will look for suitish qualities: speaking skills, a desire for progression, and so on. But these things are not the traditional purview of Hackers. So bring your alphageek or uberhacker to the interview and get them to vet your applicant. You'll be glad for it later.
Kick The Bozos. Look, if you really must fire someone, fire the guy who never pulls his weight. This guy might either be the guy who's really great fun, really funny, but never codes. Or he might be the psycho who never lets anyone touch his code.
Know Thy Hackers. Above all, know your hackers. Understand that to their eyes, you will have an alarmingly low Clue Factor Index (CFI). It is your job - repeat - your job to try and lower this CFI by asking genuine, searching questions, after doing some background reading. So who is this RMS guy? What does opensource mean? And so on.
Some final thoughts: marketing does not equal product. Hackers do not equal time wasted. Managers are not hackers. Garfield is not Odie. And so on.
> The original poster does ask, "What do you > think of this commentary?". I feel the above > was an important thing to leave out. Moreso > because the article itself mentions that > gaining "root" access can be integral to the >virus attack.
And - as others have pointed out - why bother with a virus when you can get root access? JC.
My question is this: would it be reasonable to assert that the kernel might act as a general-purpose virus checker? If anything it gets loaded before everything else.
I note peripherally however - and others have pointed this out before - that programs like Tripwire can already do "delta checks" for you. Simson points out that the techniques used to gain root access are the same ones a cracker would use. Presumably, the answer is then the same: practice good security.
Slashdot Mirror
Will more Koreans get first post, before even your hastily scribed ditty?
Like a lot of "market failures", this one has arisen because of boundary issues between private and public spheres of ownership and control.
This article from the Von Mises Institute explains it far better than I ever could.
Hmm ... that would be like using someone elses slashdot account because they didnt log out on a public computer ...
... but nah...
and his desc says he likes masquarading as a hacker too...
hmm I could use the +1
Wonder if he will be more careful next time...
Space buffs amongst you will note that NASA's Voyager used a B&W CCD with three colour filters. The three images would be beamed back to earth and recombined with a supercomputer. A clever way to beat limits of CCD and communications technology in the day.
--
"Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be guillotined." - Anon.
PreWordArray is array of strings
P HB,Engineer,Guru,Wizard)a ngout,Project,Foundation,Association)
MainWordArray is array of strings
PostWordArray is array of strings
PreWordArray = (GNU,g,k,Linux,OSS,Open Source,Free Software)
MainWordArray =(Developer,Development,Programmer,Designer,User,
PostWordArray = (Lab,Site,Homepage,.com,.net,.org,Builder,Shack,H
ProjectName is string
ProjectName = PreWordArray.getRandom + MainWordArray.getRandom + PostWordArray.getRandom
print ProjectName
--
"Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be guillotined." - Anon.
Thanks to the GNOME foundation, I think that it's fair to say that GNOME is approaching "critical mass" on the *u*x* desktop front. I myself use and prefer to use KDE2, but GNOME looks like it will just have the numbers.
If this is the case, we can expect to see a steady marginalisation, RedHat-style, of non-GNOME desktop systems. Eventually GNOME will be the target platform for commercial systems relying on object frameworks (bonobo, named for promiscuous monkeys) versus KDE (KParts/DCOP).
KDE's ace-in-the-hole is Kylix, which may yet keep it breathing in the face of a growing GNOME juggernaut. I still think that it is a tragic shame that neither Red Hat or VA Linux bought up TrollTech and GPL'd Qt when they had the cash to do so. It would have resolved the license issue much sooner.
We'll see.
--
"Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be guillotined." - Anon.
Remember: Alston is merely a nasty twat, not an idiot. He knows exactly what he's doing. It's got nothing to do with you and me, it's all about votes in the senate and legislative support. It is, as Rousseau pointed out, an elected aristocracy.
--
"Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be guillotined." - Anon.
If I were a Troll Brigadier, I might seriously think about posting stories straight into comments, and then having them "voted on" by moderators. Hence (once again!) you've hijacked Slashdot.
Will Taco flame me on IRC for this? Damn, I hope so! Think of the Dark Side Geek Aura!
be well;
JC.
--
"Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be guillotined." - Anon.
I note here that the MediaGX chip is not just "yer average CPU", it's a CPU+media operations. It's designed in a similar but broad vein than MMX and SSE. The idea is to allow one chip to be the heart of a el-cheapo media box, such as the mythical "set top box" that will make some hungry MBA a jazillionaire.
Cyrix created this chip to try and pre-empt-slash-cash in on the "set top" market. The idea was to allow you to use the MediaGX by itself (one chip, cheaper to build and easier to design) versus a "standard" CPU + media copros. Hence the MediaGX has a whole bunch of instructions tuned for sound and video processing.
When you add the fact that DirectX has native support for MediaGX instructions, you find that it's quite feasible for it to handle a DVD decoding load. I'm not sure that the same could be said, however, of a vanilla Pentium of the same era (without MMX).
be well;
JC.
--
"Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be guillotined." - Anon.
Which is why - of course! - Hemos's editorial comment is the shortest all day.
--
"Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be guillotined." - Anon.
"Undocumented systems are like the New York subway without a map."
[pause]
"You just don't go there!"
This is a joke, right?
be well;
JC.
--
"Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be guillotined." - Anon.
I'm curious :)
be well;
JC.
--
"Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be guillotined." - Anon.
Yesterday I got moderator privelages: today I have moderated. Now I will revoke that moderation in order to post.
Debian is something of a bedrock amongst the free software and opensource camps. It is the most consciously, self-aware and organised project of its kind, anywhere. It exists solely for what it perceives as the greater good. Money is not the aim - the aim is to uphold principles.
Much like the roman Res Publica of old, the Debian project enjoys a sophisticated governmental structure. In a sense, Debian is the wise old head of distributions, moving at a stately pace across both technological and ideological landscapes. It brings a strength and enduring quality that other projects could well lack. Quite simply, Debian will not die because of commercial whim nor lack of interest.
I think that we, the wider programming and user community, should look on this tolerantly. For Debian, this proposal is quite radical: an amendment to the Social Contract on which stands all of the actions. This is like a US statesman proposing an amendment to the Bill of Rights in nature, a fundamental reform or change to a very important document.
But, ultimately, Debian will decide. I do not think it is our place to judge them, whichever way they may turn. The fact is that Debian examplifies a non-anarchic model in a community where benevolent dictatorial anarchy (if you can use such a term!) is revered. It has long been run by wiser hackers than the most of us, and will be run by wiser hackers long after the frothing mob of Slashdot has passed.
Consider also the outcomes.
Debian will probably come under a lot of fire if it choses this path, by some fire-branding types in the same mould as the person proposing the Resolution. It would hurt the "image" of Debian as the most free of the free. On the other hand, I do not believe that Debian, taken as a whole, would care what people think of it. Nor will pragmatists who admire Debian for its technical excellence.
Internally it will cause continuing friction between camps. Certainly, a rejection at this stage would make later proposals even more bitterly contested ("We've rejected this already!"). In the most extreme circumstance, the pro-camp may fork Debian. I do not expect this to happen, however.
Debian will come under some fire for this path, but not so much. The pragmatists in the hacker world seem to be less voiciferous than the ideologists. Linus will rise above it all in his usual zen-like serenity.
Internally, I expect pressures will be less intense than the "no" option. It is far harder to undo such a thing than it is to do it, hence the pressure to undo will be less than the pressure would have been to do. And, obviously, the matter won't come up again in that "to do" form.
Whatever happens, I'll be watching with interest. For while this is a Debian matter, Debian is one of the strongest corps of the Freedomware community. What happens to them will have spill-over consequences for others.
be well;
JC.
--
"Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be guillotined." - Anon.
Standards generally boil down to two kinds. The first kind is usually a legal minimum of quality imposed on manufacturers for civic purposes. Thus we have standards for toys, car safety and food. The second kind of standard is when everyone agrees to work to the same specs. It is this kind of standard that dominates the software industry.
The IETF is perhaps the most influential "bazaar" group of them all. Before Linux, before GNU, there was a bunch of guys who believed in "rough consensus and running code". The IETF makes the standards of how the Internet runs. Basically if it's IETF-approved, it's in.
The irony is that the IETF is as non-enforcing as groups come. It is, in fact, quite anarchic in nature. Anyone may join. Anyone may attend any meetings and generally propose anything they like. If it's good, it will garner consensus. If you have code to show, you're way ahead on points.
The enforcement of IETF standards is not coercive, as you are looking for: it is social. Individual developers, tool companies, software companies, publishers, and software buyers - all of these derive advantage from standards-based software. For any company to break these standards there must be substantial reason - and even then, they will cop a lot of flack.
So if you are looking for a "method" to derive, derive this: Discussion, Design and Disclosure makes a Standard. Discuss the standard widely, give it a solid grounding of design, and disclose your code and detailed designs to everyone.
Just some quick observations to catch the 25-post moderator's theshold :)
be well;
JC.
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"Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be guillotined." - Anon.
The case "for" is simple enough: make it cheap and idiot-proof. If anyone has a background in working on making the internet cheap and idiot-proof, it's AOL. You may not like their style, but you must concede their relentless drive to AOLize the internet. A foray in hardware is about diminishing returns to scale in software.
Consider, you are AOL. Your program right now is fairly simple for first-time users. But it still sits atop a legacy system that is in itself not so intuitive. Solution? Ditch the legacy.
AOL is actually big enough to somewhat pull this off. Especially now: the Wintel establishment has been wounded on two fronts. AMD has challenged the Intel hegemony, and the DOJ and Linux have undermined Microsoft's aura of unassailability. Suddenly, all the other sharks can smell blood, and are circling for some action.
Let us also note that minicomputer makers - and there were dozens, in their heyday - scoffed at the underpowered clunkers made by IBM. "Peecee". As if there should be a computer *per person*. Puh-lease!
Evolutionary pressure is an amazing thing. PCs evolved out of pretty much nothing into the bedrock of an entire industry. They did not wholly supplant what came before (mainframes and minis), rather, they marginalised them and extended their range of usefulness. A mainframe is no longer a standalone giant in a pen; it is a viable "force extender" for a corporate network of PCs. Mainframes are marginalised by PCs, but also sustained by synergistic adaptation to the new reality.
It may be this way with the general-purpose PC and function-oriented computers. This Brave New World has been the source of much speculation by futurists over the years, so I shall skip past it.
My own outlook is that IAs will eventually evolve to become PCs as we understand them now. People will want to write letters on their IA, and won't really understand why they need to buy a seperate machine to do that. So IAs will emerge with the power to do so. Before long they will have HDDs and user-fsckable GUIs. That is, they will be PCs by another name.
This market is seething and will continue to seethe. Expect either a big player (like AOL) to "make it happen", or for something much more interesting to emerge from nowhere and sweep the whole thing away.
be well;
JC.
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"Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be guillotined." - Anon.
Timothy - I don't think it's an odd precedent at all. I think the judge has acted in the spirit of the law. Due process necessitates that you will have a fair and unbiased jury. While there will always be bias, while jurors are human, we are still better off in trying to consciously overcome our own shortcomings.
Secondly, you seem to be under the impression that CrimeNet is police-operated. The fact is that CrimeNet gathers its material from publically available sources - newspapers, what information police will provide, and so forth.
Thirdly, the criminal's decision to describe his crime would - should other evidence support the case - likely have him found guilty by trial.
I believe that there are two critical items here:
Taken together, these mean that there is a real chance that jurors will hold pre-judgement - prejudice, in other words. And there is stacks of research that shows you that prejudices have tangible affects on trial outcomes.
The judge has set a good precedent here. Let's not tear him down for it.
be well;
JC.
ps - Timothy: some of us may find "y'all down under" just a teensie bit patronising. Not all. Some.
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"Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be guillotined." - Anon.
An article of this sort generally falls into the category of "punditry". The gentleman in question probably had a deadline and was a few hundred words short of a real article.
The solution in these cases is to put on one's pundit hat and literally pull a story out of one's [CENSORED]. Symptoms of such stories include:
What should be your reaction, O Gentle Reader? Ignore it. As others have pointed out, ZDNet will soon learn that anti-OSS/Freedomware stories = /. effect = page impressions = dollars.
People who receive attention tend to repeat the attention-getting action. It's just one of those things :)
be well.
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"Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be guillotined." - Anon.
This, from the KOffice mailing list:
...
[begin]
> I hate to be seen as a troll, but
>
> I know that the KDE Project and the GNOME
> Project have co-operated in the past where
> interoperability has been important.
>
> Will this be true for office suites? Has
> anyone from GNOME Office contacted this
> list? Has anyone from this list contacted
> GNOME Office? Should we?
>
> I think the real issue is interchangable
> file-formats, or at least seamless filters.
>
> Anyone?
>
Filters can't be interchangable because their filter library is not
LGPL. For file formats they are reinventing an entire filesystem, which
at least to me seems not quite sane.
[end]
So will there be "official" cooperation on the file-formats, or will we be left swinging?
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Hang on a minute, you can't sell something twice. At present (AIUI) Telestra is a government-owned telco. The government hasn't given away the infrastructure, its just packaged up a bit of itself and called that package Telestra. Telestra will then be sold, and at that point the government gets the money.
What I'm saying is this: Telstra owns the network. Telstra is being sold. Hence, control of the network will fall out of public hands into the hands of a private monopoly.
What I meant by "giving away" is this: Telstra could not afford that network on its own. Australia is an enormous, enormous continent; our fiber backbone is world-class but cost hideous dollars to lay. Nobody, bar nobody could have justified such an investment in a purely commercial sense. There just aren't enough users to make it profitable to spend billions of dollars to link the capital cities with fiber.
The bill for this network was not footed by Telstra. It was footed by the Commonwealth of Australia - ie, the taxpayers. Telstra is inheriting it from the old Telecom monopoly as-is, for nothing.
be well;
JC
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As I understand it, Telstra is fully self-sufficient and profitable. Being half-owned by the government, it happens to be a source of positive revenue.
You would logically pump cash from your bandwidth bonds back into the network in a maintainence function. I never said this would be free, I just said that leaving the network in the hands of a private monopoly was a little risky.
Right now, Telstra, through their customer-gouging prices (I've friends who've dealt with Bigpond $0.25 per-megabyte bandwidth charges, for instance) manages to keep the infrastructure running and up-to-date.
Telstra's eye-gouging prices have nothing to do with costs, and everything to do with profits. Telstra could run a 30c flat-rate long distance scheme tomorrow, at no loss. They won't, of course. Nobody else in the market can beat the monopoly at their own game - if you look into it you will find that some of Telstra's prices are already set by the government.
Besides, Telstra is quite flush with cash. They announced a record profit only recently - I think it was 2 or 4 billion Australian dollars. To put this in perspective, 4 billion dollars is 1% of the Australian GDP. And that's profit - revenue after costs.
Putting it back in the hands of the government means you've got to stretch your tax dollar even more.
Telstra is still majority-owned by the government. And, as I pointed out, it turns a profit. There is no tax-stretching to be done.
be well;
JC.
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This has already led to a great deal of controversy. Telstra has been accused of reducing services to remote areas, and of predatory, monopolistic practices. The solution offered is a system of regulations, laws, and fines. IMO, this is stupid. There is a much simpler and more elegant solution.
One: Keep the hardware.
Two: Sell the rest.
The Network is the source of Telstra's monopoly power. It owns the Australian phone network, top to bottom. Competition in Australian telcos roughly boils down to who can pay Telstra more.
That network - bequeathed to Telstra for free - was paid for by the Australian taxpayer, an investment of billions. Telstra could not afford to pay to build that network itself. Nor could any company on an "expected returns" basis. But because the network has already been paid for (by us), Telstra gets it "for free".
I say that we keep the network and sell the rest of Telstra. Sell its customers, support centres, business ventures and staff; but keep the part *we* paid for.
So how do we manage this network, if we keep it?
We turn to the market to handle it.
We have, say, x Gigabits of data capacity inherent in the network. I note that the Australian system, once you hit an exchange, is fully digital. Voice and data are all the same thing.
We issue - quarterly, say - "bandwidth bonds". A bandwidth bond entitles the holder to a certain percentage of network carrying capacity over a certain time period.
To prevent speculatory activity, you'll need a rudimentary registration to enter the market. After that, anyone may buy, sell or trade units amongst themselves. This means that Telcos need not buy bandwidth from Telstra at inflated prices in rigid blocks, they buy exactly as they need. They need more? Buy some off the market. Bought too much? Sell back your excess capacity.
This also means that firms can buy their own capacity directly. ISPs, businesses with large phone and data networks ... hell, even a street of people could get together and form an access co-operative. All possible with a working bandwidth market.
The sale of Telstra is going to create more and more of these legalistic, top-heavy solutions. This is why we need to take away Telstra's monopoly basis.
Well, that's my two Australian cents, anyhow :)
be well;
JC. (note that USYD is a .edu)
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I'm fine with that. It allows the very american voice of Slashdot to be balanced by those of us in other countries (for a change!). be well.
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But what did the author actually say that matters? Here's my breakdown of the article. Consider it the Cliff's Notes (tm) version:
That's my take on it. Now, if I may add my own observations:
Some final thoughts: marketing does not equal product. Hackers do not equal time wasted. Managers are not hackers. Garfield is not Odie. And so on.
Good luck. YMMV, as ever.
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> think of this commentary?". I feel the above
> was an important thing to leave out. Moreso
> because the article itself mentions that
> gaining "root" access can be integral to the
>virus attack.
And - as others have pointed out - why bother with a virus when you can get root access? JC.
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I note peripherally however - and others have pointed this out before - that programs like Tripwire can already do "delta checks" for you. Simson points out that the techniques used to gain root access are the same ones a cracker would use. Presumably, the answer is then the same: practice good security.
be well;
JC.
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