I'm one of the SpamAssassin (SA) developers and I asked Bruce to send me a copy of the newsletter after hearing about his note of warning a few days ago.
Aside from the spot-on comments that people have made regarding adding a whitelist entry Crypto-Gram (an obvious candidate for whitelisting if there ever was one, given that it frequently discusses spam, scams, and probably even includes text straight out of some spams), here is my initial analysis and response to him.
Oh, first one other comment: SpamAssassin does not block content. SpamAssassin only flags probable spam. What the site or user does with that flag is their own business. Some mail administrators misuse SpamAssassin to block email, but we do not recommend blocking email. Really.
------
[...]
One false positive (or a related set of false positives) is not
really a statistically useful sample size. To get to a high rate of
filtering, most filters do have some false positives. You can get fewer
false positives with customization of one form or another (personalized
Bayes training, whitelists, rules, automatic learning algorithms). Our
goal (everyone's goal, I think) is to get the best ratio of false
positives to false negatives. It's a difficult balance sometimes and
some legitimate content has a harder time.
On to the data:
I checked your newsletter with two versions of SpamAssassin: the current
stable version (2.44) and the very-soon-to-be-released development
version (2.50).
A score of 5.0 is the default threshold to be flagged as spam.
In SA 2.44, your mail receives a score of 3.20 (2.40 as I received it,
but I believe the score would be about 3.20 for most people). That's on
the high side, but has bit to go before being flagged as spam. The
score is the same with network tests (DNS blacklist tests and Razor).
In SA 2.50, your message would probably receive a score of 1.90 without
network tests and 1.00 with network tests. Note that the test scores
may change a bit before the final release of 2.50, but those are better
scores, more what we like to see for non-spam content. They would be
even lower when using Bayes (part of SA 2.50). Those lower scores are
not unexpected because... well, 2.50 is better.:-)
Based on these results, it's not clear to me why yesterday's newsletter
was flagged as spam. Some possibilities:
your newsletter is routed through blacklisted hosts for some people
some people are using a old or misconfigured versions of SpamAssassin
(extra rules, additional blacklists, many possibilities here)
the newsletter as received by some subscribers is substantially
different than what you sent me
something else?
Can you give me more information about the false positive that you
experienced or was reported to you?
Thanks.
Dan
------
If I find out more of interest before the thread is closed to comments, I'll try to post a follow-up to my post.
Have you ever received a telemarketer call or postal junk mail from a foreign country? Probably not. Why? Because it's expensive.
Have you ever received spam from a foreign country?
Probably. Why? Because it's no more expensive
than domestic spam.
This idea will not get rid of spam coming from
foreign countries. And note, I'm not talking about foreign language spam. I mean spam originating from a source outside your country.
The people who are coming up with these dumb ideas
about how to combat spam obviously have no practical knowledge actually trying to deal with spam. But, wait! It get's better. Even if this
manages to deal with domestic spam, what's to stop
someone from (illegally) selling the list to a foreign spammer outside the jurisdiction of the US?
If you're a foreign spammer, I bet this sounds like a great idea... Now, the well-meaning, but let's face it... stupid... US government will be collecting valid and up-to-date email addresses for you. Even if they don't publish the entire list, there will have to be some way to check if an address is in the list and spammers could use that to verify that addresses are valid without needing to connect to millions of SMTP servers.
Any way you slice it, this idea does not seem workable to me. (e-mail does not equal telephone.)
Time Warner is gouging us...for basic cable and internet I pay 84 bucks
That sounds like a good deal to me, actually, if
you have some sort of broadband connection.
Also, in many markets, even if you only have one
cable company (like in my area), you still have the
option of going to DirecTV or another satellite TV provider. I decided to completely
avoid my cable company, I get both TiVo and
satellite for $45 a month. My DSL line costs me
about $50 a month. I'm actually paying more than
you, although I suspect I have more channels, more features (see below), etc. (No HBO, though.) I believe I can also get some sort of cable internet now, but I'm more likely to switch DSL providers to get a better deal there.
Anyway, my point is that there is some competition, even though there might be somewhat more competition in some places. "Gouging" seems like an excessive characterization considering what you are paying.
I should also note that I can record two channels at once and watch recorded material at the same time with "DirecTiVo" and I get local channels too, but that's fairly old news. I doubt I'd even be interested in a second cable company unless they could match those features.
And the other six justices that agreed with
Justice Thomas? He didn't even write this
opinion, but Thomas is a favorite target of the
left. It's not surprising that this was a big
news item to sfgate. They probably have a
conniption fit whenever Thomas does anything.
I disagree with the ruling, but let's face it, we
were basically hoping to do an end-run-around the
representatives that we keep electing. 7 to 2 is
basically a slam dunk. Depressing...
Hmm... held under guard in a foreign country and not allowed to go home until you make a video tape that incriminates you and/or your friends... nope, I can't think of any reason the testimony might be faulty. Of course, when folks in "the axis of evil" do things like that, our freedom-loving leaders tend to call it "hostage taking" and "terrorism".
You left out that bit about terrorists killing
innocent people and prisoners being tortured.
I don't know how you can compare the arrest and
trial of someone (under what we agree is a bad law) with how countries in the "axis of evil"
have treated hostages and prisoners. Did they force Sklyarov to lie? The story does not say anything about that.
On the other hand, I don't seem to remember the
North Koreans treating POWs very well during
the Korean War. I do remember Iran holding
US hostages for 444 days without cause. I also
remember Iraq torturing downed pilots during
the Persian Gulf war.
Let's not leave out the Iraqi system of justice
where you are killed if you are perceived to be
a threat. No judge, no jury, no lawyers.
Just do a little experiment: during a full week, do your shopping as usual, and pay attention to all plastic stuff you trash immediately after purchase. Figure you really needed how much of all that plastic ?
Yes. Almost all of it is needed. Without the
plastic, a lot more of the even more expensive
stuff the plastic was covering would be wasted
by spoiling, being damaged during shipping, etc.
Even more importantly, plastic can be recycled.
It's effectively impossible to recycle paper used
to wrap food because it is hard to disinfect
without ruining the material. You also have to
use really toxic chemicals, specifically bleach. Plastic is relatively easy and cheap to recycle.
The other thing that gets me about this stuff is
biodegradeability. Do you think stuff really
degrades in a landfill? Landfills are locked
out of the water system and stuff doesn't
degrade like it does sitting in your compost heap. It doesn't really matter whether it's made out of corn or oil. It's still going to be there in 100 years. I think the most interesting aspect of
food-based plastics is that they could become
more economical or allow plastic to be used in
new situations where biodegradeability really
matters.
Finally, I just wanted to say that I love styrofoam. Ever see how much plastic actually
goes into a styrofoam cup? They're almost all air.
(Of course, I still prefer paper cups since my
hot coffee will cool off faster so I'm less apt
to burn myself.)
Yeah --- the guy they voted for got to be President.
Yes, this is "funny" here in the United States and
people can crack jokes about the U.S. needing a
"regime change" and such, but the truth is this:
We change our regime every 4 years.
If you didn't vote and vote for Saddam, you may be tortured or killed. Why else would the
man get 100% of the vote. As an extreme example, I really doubt the Kurds in Iraq wanted to vote for the guy who used chemical weapons on them.
We can complain about our government without
being killed or tortured. I'd like to see the
people who protested against the Bush administration (in Washington D.C. with the free press watching over police and protesters alike) go to
Iraq and do the same thing about Saddam. And if
you're an Iraqi and the CNN cameras are away (they will be, since the media's movements are controlled in Iraq), good luck with your protest!
Anyway, joke ha ha. Try laughing about Iraqi
election rights if you live in Iraq. Democracy
means that you can vote for someone who is not
guaranteed to win. Yes, that means that Al Gore didn't get picked and that the guy you didn't like
did win. Enjoy it.
There must be a Linux company somewhere willing
to help you obtain legal help or maybe even an IP
lawyer willing to provide Pro Bono help.
Do it yourself and you could end up making matters
worse for yourself (read: willful infringement) or
making a mistake.
Here is a brief overview of patent infringement lawsuits. If this does not make you want to seek
legal help, then I wish you luck.
we all know what a disaster Freon was... try again
on
Microsoft Freon
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
When Freon was introduced, it replaced very dangerous/poisonous/explosive chemicals (such as ammonia) which caused a number of fatal accidents.
I remember an anecdote about a du Pont employee demonstrating the safety
of the chemical by inhaling a good breath of Freon and
blowing it out to extinguish a candle, demonstrating that it was both non-toxic and
not explosive. Try that with ammonia!
Even if it may have had an impact on the ozone layer, there's more than just the safety component
of the refrigerant chemical to consider.
Where would food safety and preservation be without refrigeration? Without refrigeration, say hello to E. Coli and friends. Get used to salt-curing, preservatives, and freeze drying (yum). And then say goodbye to fresh seafood, out-of-season produce, frozen pizza, and a lot of the food that we eat.
Here's an article about the history of Freon and another about the history of the refrigerator. (Oops, it wasn't just a du Pont employee who did the demo, it was the actual inventor... sounds like a lot of technology demos.)
I realize it's probably too late for this comment to get a meaningful score, but you are so wrong.
The potential ability for this company to collect a lot of data on "typical" viewing habits is a bit scaryYeah, if someone knew I watched a lot of Junkyard Wars, Iron Chef, and Enterprise, why they could... er, they could, um...
What if someone wanted to know you were watching a political party convention on CPAN? Or perhaps a [insert political viewpoint] news commentary show?
Or, let's forget political stuff. Perhaps more likely around here... maybe you were watching adult movies. I bet you'd love to get junk mail solicitations based on that.
The RPM database is binary and fragile. Once it is corrupted, the data describing what belongs to what goes out the window. RPM-packages have to be trusted not to clobber existing files or make changes to configuration files that one wants left alone. The alternative is per-application directories and symlinks (or a long PATH variable); there are tools which automate this, such as stow. The advantage is that the file system is - or at least should be - the most stable thing in the system. One can just examine a symbolic link to see what package it belongs to. This makes removing and updating applications very easy, and also makes it easy to see if there are any links left around from older installations. Removing an application is typically as simple as removing the corresponding application directory.
This is an implementation issue. If the RPM database is unstable, it can be fixed. Debian can install RPM packages using alien and it does not use a binary database. Debian uses, for the most part, plain text files. Symbolic link "farms" aren't really necessary (and may not work for directories, devices, and some special files due to security reasons), it works just as well to have a text file listing the files included (like/var/lib/dpkg/info/<package>.list) with far fewer inodes wasted.
After reading some of the comments on the audience and the judge's reaction to the open source movement, I can only say:
If you want to support someone at any future GPL
related hearing, please stay home (unless you're going to act like a grownup).
All we need to do to convince a judge that we're
a bunch of kooks is dress like we're silicon
valley engineers (or worse), play Quake on our laptops,
and snicker when the judge makes technical mistakes. I learned not to be a snot to the authority figure (think: professor) back when I was in college, but apparently, some people never learn.
There is a massive (indeed, worldwide) conspiracy of scientists, suppressing their real knowledge, intent only on scare mongering to preserve their funding
You claim to be a scientist, but the first thing you do is present an either-or fallacy? There are countless other possibilities. Just a few:
Lomborg has made some minor mistakes which are exploited by his critics, but is generally correct. (I mean, I can't write several pages
of code without making errors, why is statistics different, especially such a long and comprehensive work?)
There is no conspiracy, but most environmental scientists are left-leaning so they all tend to be wrong in the same direction. After all, they generally are supported by the government, advocacy groups, etc. and not private enterprise.
The Chinese nation will sort themselves out over a long time, and probably peacefully, too - that's the Chinese way, to take the long, nonconfrontational view.
The Great Leap Forward
The Cultural Revolution
1989 Student Movement and Tiananmen Square
"The Afghan Mujahedin are the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers of America." Ronald Reagan, March 2000
Do you have an attribution for that quotation?
March 2000 was well-after Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and the primary source for your quotation seems to be this web site.
Reagan revealed he had Alzheimer's in 1994 and no longer appeared in public after that point. According to PBS, Reagan was unable to recognize anyone except Nancy on February 4, 2000.
Your objection (that we don't want private corporations in charge of space research) stems directly from the monopoly power granted by the government via the patent system.
So, in your scenario, the government is still in charge.
AOL is totally cool (some corrections)
on
AOL And The GPL
·
· Score: 5
Disclaimer: I am not speaking as an official spokesperson of Transmeta.
As one of the Midori developers, I feel the need to say something here.
1. AOL has a pointer to Transmeta's Midori Linux site in the "About" box of their client (which is the primary GUI application on the box).
2. All of the source code changes to GPL code made by AOL have already been rolled back into Midori.
(In fact, AOL regularly sent us diffs of their tree.) The source code is at midori.transmeta.com
3. No partitions are encrypted. It's just a different partitioning format to allow sub-partition upgrades of cramfs. (It's all part of "packcramfs" which is part of Midori Linux.)
I should also add that we have enjoyed working with AOL.
If the ReiserFS patch is self-contained and doesn't affect the stability of other areas of the kernel, then how does it violate the submission policy? If you don't include ReiserFS in your kernel, then you shouldn't be affected.
If, on the other hand, ReiserFS significantly changed the VM subsystem or the VFS layer, you would be right, but you didn't bother to actually look at the ReiserFS patch, did you?
ReiserFS only adds a one-line function to fs/buffer.c (only used by ReiserFS) and four lines to fs/inode.c (a special case for ReiserFS). There are a few other minor changes to fs.h as well. So, it's a really small patch as far as the existing code base is concerned.
Up until this point, the LSB and Li18nux were operating as unincorporated organizations, which is bad for a number of reasons: legal liability, the inability to accept and distribute funding for development and other expenses, no entity to hold copyrights for the group, anti-trust issues (you need to be careful when you have competitors meeting in the same room), and more. We needed to incorporate (as a non-profit, of course).
As far as the Li18nux and the LSB are concerned, they will more or less continue as before, although we'll be able to put more resources on each project so things will speed up. We'll be working closer together and referring to each other's specification, but the LSB and Li18nux specifications will probably be separate standards for some time.
Why incorporate together? It makes sense and it's less overhead. We didn't need separate legal entities for these open-source standardization efforts.
Some LSB specifics:
Will the LSB be multi-architecture? Yes, although x86 is the main target, we are trying to draft the specification to apply for multiple architectures. Recompile the sample implementation and test suite and everything should work fine for other architectures. (The reality is that most third party software is released for Linux on x86.)
Another thing: the whole "LSB stifles development" argument is very misleading. You can ship development libraries along with stable LSB versions if you want both environments. (It will be up to the distribution and system administrators.) Kernel developers like Alan Cox, Ted Ts'o, and H. Peter Anvin have been participating in the LSB for a long time - I don't think that would happen if we were going to stifle forward progress.
Will having more members slow us down? Quite the opposite, actually. The main thing slowing us down is the amount of work to be done, not slow decision-making or the lack of consensus.
Finally, recall that the word "base" is part of the Linux Standard Base name. Distributions will still have the same amount of room to add value, innovate, and distinguish themselves. We like the fact that there are different Linux distributions, each with something unique to offer. We just disagree about requiring commercial and non-commercial providers of software to port and test their software for five or ten different Linux distributions.
Slashdot Mirror
Aside from the spot-on comments that people have made regarding adding a whitelist entry Crypto-Gram (an obvious candidate for whitelisting if there ever was one, given that it frequently discusses spam, scams, and probably even includes text straight out of some spams), here is my initial analysis and response to him.
Oh, first one other comment: SpamAssassin does not block content. SpamAssassin only flags probable spam. What the site or user does with that flag is their own business. Some mail administrators misuse SpamAssassin to block email, but we do not recommend blocking email. Really.
------
[...] One false positive (or a related set of false positives) is not really a statistically useful sample size. To get to a high rate of filtering, most filters do have some false positives. You can get fewer false positives with customization of one form or another (personalized Bayes training, whitelists, rules, automatic learning algorithms). Our goal (everyone's goal, I think) is to get the best ratio of false positives to false negatives. It's a difficult balance sometimes and some legitimate content has a harder time.
On to the data:
I checked your newsletter with two versions of SpamAssassin: the current stable version (2.44) and the very-soon-to-be-released development version (2.50).
A score of 5.0 is the default threshold to be flagged as spam.
In SA 2.44, your mail receives a score of 3.20 (2.40 as I received it, but I believe the score would be about 3.20 for most people). That's on the high side, but has bit to go before being flagged as spam. The score is the same with network tests (DNS blacklist tests and Razor).
In SA 2.50, your message would probably receive a score of 1.90 without network tests and 1.00 with network tests. Note that the test scores may change a bit before the final release of 2.50, but those are better scores, more what we like to see for non-spam content. They would be even lower when using Bayes (part of SA 2.50). Those lower scores are not unexpected because... well, 2.50 is better. :-)
Based on these results, it's not clear to me why yesterday's newsletter was flagged as spam. Some possibilities:
Can you give me more information about the false positive that you experienced or was reported to you?
Thanks.
Dan
------
If I find out more of interest before the thread is closed to comments, I'll try to post a follow-up to my post.
Have you ever received spam from a foreign country? Probably. Why? Because it's no more expensive than domestic spam.
This idea will not get rid of spam coming from foreign countries. And note, I'm not talking about foreign language spam. I mean spam originating from a source outside your country. The people who are coming up with these dumb ideas about how to combat spam obviously have no practical knowledge actually trying to deal with spam. But, wait! It get's better. Even if this manages to deal with domestic spam, what's to stop someone from (illegally) selling the list to a foreign spammer outside the jurisdiction of the US?
If you're a foreign spammer, I bet this sounds like a great idea... Now, the well-meaning, but let's face it ... stupid ... US government will be collecting valid and up-to-date email addresses for you. Even if they don't publish the entire list, there will have to be some way to check if an address is in the list and spammers could use that to verify that addresses are valid without needing to connect to millions of SMTP servers.
Any way you slice it, this idea does not seem workable to me. (e-mail does not equal telephone.)
That sounds like a good deal to me, actually, if you have some sort of broadband connection.
Also, in many markets, even if you only have one cable company (like in my area), you still have the option of going to DirecTV or another satellite TV provider. I decided to completely avoid my cable company, I get both TiVo and satellite for $45 a month. My DSL line costs me about $50 a month. I'm actually paying more than you, although I suspect I have more channels, more features (see below), etc. (No HBO, though.) I believe I can also get some sort of cable internet now, but I'm more likely to switch DSL providers to get a better deal there.
Anyway, my point is that there is some competition, even though there might be somewhat more competition in some places. "Gouging" seems like an excessive characterization considering what you are paying.
I should also note that I can record two channels at once and watch recorded material at the same time with "DirecTiVo" and I get local channels too, but that's fairly old news. I doubt I'd even be interested in a second cable company unless they could match those features.
I disagree with the ruling, but let's face it, we were basically hoping to do an end-run-around the representatives that we keep electing. 7 to 2 is basically a slam dunk. Depressing...
Hmm... held under guard in a foreign country and not allowed to go home until you make a video tape that incriminates you and/or your friends... nope, I can't think of any reason the testimony might be faulty. Of course, when folks in "the axis of evil" do things like that, our freedom-loving leaders tend to call it "hostage taking" and "terrorism".
You left out that bit about terrorists killing innocent people and prisoners being tortured. I don't know how you can compare the arrest and trial of someone (under what we agree is a bad law) with how countries in the "axis of evil" have treated hostages and prisoners. Did they force Sklyarov to lie? The story does not say anything about that.
On the other hand, I don't seem to remember the North Koreans treating POWs very well during the Korean War. I do remember Iran holding US hostages for 444 days without cause. I also remember Iraq torturing downed pilots during the Persian Gulf war.
Let's not leave out the Iraqi system of justice where you are killed if you are perceived to be a threat. No judge, no jury, no lawyers.
Just do a little experiment: during a full week, do your shopping as usual, and pay attention to all plastic stuff you trash immediately after purchase. Figure you really needed how much of all that plastic ?
Yes. Almost all of it is needed. Without the plastic, a lot more of the even more expensive stuff the plastic was covering would be wasted by spoiling, being damaged during shipping, etc.
Even more importantly, plastic can be recycled. It's effectively impossible to recycle paper used to wrap food because it is hard to disinfect without ruining the material. You also have to use really toxic chemicals, specifically bleach. Plastic is relatively easy and cheap to recycle.
The other thing that gets me about this stuff is biodegradeability. Do you think stuff really degrades in a landfill? Landfills are locked out of the water system and stuff doesn't degrade like it does sitting in your compost heap. It doesn't really matter whether it's made out of corn or oil. It's still going to be there in 100 years. I think the most interesting aspect of food-based plastics is that they could become more economical or allow plastic to be used in new situations where biodegradeability really matters.
Finally, I just wanted to say that I love styrofoam. Ever see how much plastic actually goes into a styrofoam cup? They're almost all air. (Of course, I still prefer paper cups since my hot coffee will cool off faster so I'm less apt to burn myself.)
Yes, this is "funny" here in the United States and people can crack jokes about the U.S. needing a "regime change" and such, but the truth is this:
- We change our regime every 4 years.
- If you didn't vote and vote for Saddam, you may be tortured or killed. Why else would the
man get 100% of the vote. As an extreme example, I really doubt the Kurds in Iraq wanted to vote for the guy who used chemical weapons on them.
- We can complain about our government without
being killed or tortured. I'd like to see the
people who protested against the Bush administration (in Washington D.C. with the free press watching over police and protesters alike) go to
Iraq and do the same thing about Saddam. And if
you're an Iraqi and the CNN cameras are away (they will be, since the media's movements are controlled in Iraq), good luck with your protest!
Anyway, joke ha ha. Try laughing about Iraqi election rights if you live in Iraq. Democracy means that you can vote for someone who is not guaranteed to win. Yes, that means that Al Gore didn't get picked and that the guy you didn't like did win. Enjoy it.Le Tour de France
However, I would not be surprised if the patent problem extended to Linux iptables.
Do it yourself and you could end up making matters worse for yourself (read: willful infringement) or making a mistake.
Here is a brief overview of patent infringement lawsuits. If this does not make you want to seek legal help, then I wish you luck.
I remember an anecdote about a du Pont employee demonstrating the safety of the chemical by inhaling a good breath of Freon and blowing it out to extinguish a candle, demonstrating that it was both non-toxic and not explosive. Try that with ammonia!
Even if it may have had an impact on the ozone layer, there's more than just the safety component of the refrigerant chemical to consider. Where would food safety and preservation be without refrigeration? Without refrigeration, say hello to E. Coli and friends. Get used to salt-curing, preservatives, and freeze drying (yum). And then say goodbye to fresh seafood, out-of-season produce, frozen pizza, and a lot of the food that we eat.
Here's an article about the history of Freon and another about the history of the refrigerator. (Oops, it wasn't just a du Pont employee who did the demo, it was the actual inventor... sounds like a lot of technology demos.)
The potential ability for this company to collect a lot of data on "typical" viewing habits is a bit scary Yeah, if someone knew I watched a lot of Junkyard Wars, Iron Chef, and Enterprise, why they could... er, they could, um... What if someone wanted to know you were watching a political party convention on CPAN? Or perhaps a [insert political viewpoint] news commentary show?
Or, let's forget political stuff. Perhaps more likely around here... maybe you were watching adult movies. I bet you'd love to get junk mail solicitations based on that.
This is an implementation issue. If the RPM database is unstable, it can be fixed. Debian can install RPM packages using alien and it does not use a binary database. Debian uses, for the most part, plain text files. Symbolic link "farms" aren't really necessary (and may not work for directories, devices, and some special files due to security reasons), it works just as well to have a text file listing the files included (like /var/lib/dpkg/info/<package>.list) with far fewer inodes wasted.
Dan
If you want to support someone at any future GPL related hearing, please stay home (unless you're going to act like a grownup).
All we need to do to convince a judge that we're a bunch of kooks is dress like we're silicon valley engineers (or worse), play Quake on our laptops, and snicker when the judge makes technical mistakes. I learned not to be a snot to the authority figure (think: professor) back when I was in college, but apparently, some people never learn.
- Lomborg is wrong
- There is a massive (indeed, worldwide) conspiracy of scientists, suppressing their real knowledge, intent only on scare mongering to preserve their funding
You claim to be a scientist, but the first thing you do is present an either-or fallacy? There are countless other possibilities. Just a few:The Chinese nation will sort themselves out over a long time, and probably peacefully, too - that's the Chinese way, to take the long, nonconfrontational view.
The Great Leap Forward
The Cultural Revolution
1989 Student Movement and Tiananmen Square
I guess this is what you do with all of that extra inventory. Clusters coming from Gateway and Dell next.
Do you have an attribution for that quotation? March 2000 was well-after Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and the primary source for your quotation seems to be this web site.
Reagan revealed he had Alzheimer's in 1994 and no longer appeared in public after that point. According to PBS, Reagan was unable to recognize anyone except Nancy on February 4, 2000.
So, in your scenario, the government is still in charge.
As one of the Midori developers, I feel the need to say something here.
1. AOL has a pointer to Transmeta's Midori Linux site in the "About" box of their client (which is the primary GUI application on the box).
2. All of the source code changes to GPL code made by AOL have already been rolled back into Midori. (In fact, AOL regularly sent us diffs of their tree.) The source code is at midori.transmeta.com
3. No partitions are encrypted. It's just a different partitioning format to allow sub-partition upgrades of cramfs. (It's all part of "packcramfs" which is part of Midori Linux.)
I should also add that we have enjoyed working with AOL.
Dan
Red Hat 6.2 is known to be a conforming platform, so it is listed.
If, on the other hand, ReiserFS significantly changed the VM subsystem or the VFS layer, you would be right, but you didn't bother to actually look at the ReiserFS patch, did you?
ReiserFS only adds a one-line function to fs/buffer.c (only used by ReiserFS) and four lines to fs/inode.c (a special case for ReiserFS). There are a few other minor changes to fs.h as well. So, it's a really small patch as far as the existing code base is concerned.
Up until this point, the LSB and Li18nux were operating as unincorporated organizations, which is bad for a number of reasons: legal liability, the inability to accept and distribute funding for development and other expenses, no entity to hold copyrights for the group, anti-trust issues (you need to be careful when you have competitors meeting in the same room), and more. We needed to incorporate (as a non-profit, of course).
As far as the Li18nux and the LSB are concerned, they will more or less continue as before, although we'll be able to put more resources on each project so things will speed up. We'll be working closer together and referring to each other's specification, but the LSB and Li18nux specifications will probably be separate standards for some time.
Why incorporate together? It makes sense and it's less overhead. We didn't need separate legal entities for these open-source standardization efforts.
Some LSB specifics:
Will the LSB be multi-architecture? Yes, although x86 is the main target, we are trying to draft the specification to apply for multiple architectures. Recompile the sample implementation and test suite and everything should work fine for other architectures. (The reality is that most third party software is released for Linux on x86.)
Another thing: the whole "LSB stifles development" argument is very misleading. You can ship development libraries along with stable LSB versions if you want both environments. (It will be up to the distribution and system administrators.) Kernel developers like Alan Cox, Ted Ts'o, and H. Peter Anvin have been participating in the LSB for a long time - I don't think that would happen if we were going to stifle forward progress.
Will having more members slow us down? Quite the opposite, actually. The main thing slowing us down is the amount of work to be done, not slow decision-making or the lack of consensus.
Finally, recall that the word "base" is part of the Linux Standard Base name. Distributions will still have the same amount of room to add value, innovate, and distinguish themselves. We like the fact that there are different Linux distributions, each with something unique to offer. We just disagree about requiring commercial and non-commercial providers of software to port and test their software for five or ten different Linux distributions.