before we all brand them as cowards, and question their motives and ethics, and say how if it were us against the man, we'd fight to the death...
You have to acknowledge they've risked alot by doing everything they've done, and they've started a real dialogue on the subject, and opened the eyes of alot of folks, not just technical folks either. But, when it's your ass on the line, it's not as easy to throw up that middle finger in defiance. The ACLU lawyer and me and you and all the armchair quarterbacks who've got something to say have just about dick to lose here. These guys futures are actually at risk. They fought a good fight, and frankly, what's there to win? the source is out, and can't be brought back in, just like DeCSS. They can't possible gain anything by trying to fight US law since they're in another country. If you are so gung ho about putting up a fight, be in the US, mirror the code, tell Mattel, and fight 'em in court. I'm sure the ACLU will back you too, and then you can see what it's like.
Speaking of RR, I've been having lots of problems with my roadrunner lately. I'm on cox cable and running off redhat 6.1 the problem that I'm having is that the box dosen't get a new address when the old one expires. They used to let me keep the same address for weeks, but now it will only stay up for a few days at a time. Did you have to do anything special to get yours working properly? I think there's problems with the dhcp server I get my address from, because after the lease expires, it takes at least a day for me to be able to get a new address. I've tried all kinds of reboots, commandline options, about everything i can think of. I was using pump before, but I've switched to dhcpcd instead since its been more usable for me. as a side question, is there a linux rr page that might have some info for me? -earl
don't forget... the athlon bus is a *switched* processor bus that is engineered to run from 200Mhz-800Mhz. I don't know the details of Wiliamette bus, but knowing intel.... 400Mhz shared bus is quite likely. Consider what the difference will mean in 2 years when 2 and 4 cpu systems become quite common. Folks are already buying dual cpu boxen(boards at least) by the tens of thousands. If MS ever makes NT/2000 the consumer windows OS, system builders will start selling dual 600Mhz systems instead of pushing expensive 1Ghz monsters. Margins will suck either way, and they can get better volume on the chaper boxes. -earl
Well, I can't say I disagree with you there. But with the kind of attacks (distributed network) popping up lately, the OS you use is irrelevant. The attack is primarily one that exhausts your bandwith, not your OS's ability to respond. Here's the scenario:
You're sitting a T3 with 64 dual PIII-450's in a cluster. The attacker remote controls hundreds of compromised hosts on the internet, and floods your network with ~45Mbits data from those hosts. What could you possibly do to your cluster to fend off this attack?? even if you configure your systems to ignore this traffic, it still saturates your internet connection.
The answer is: nothing. This type of problem would have to be addressed at your ISP, or your border router. Other options are doing things like distributing your servers among the big (tier 1) ISP's to make sure the bandwidth bottleneck is at the client end, and not at your end. But with enough clients, the attacker may be able to effect you even with that much bandwidth. I imagine it took a buttload of clients to saturate yahoo's pipe. Unfortunately dealing with these type of problems is a part of being on this global network. Several weeks ago, a big discussion of this phenomenon raged on bugtraq. Unfortunately, I never read through the whole thing, and I couldn't comment on possible solutions discussed there. This might possibly have to be addressed with unfriendly solutions like ISPs refusing to route traffic from "hostile" networks where this traffic is known to originate from. I can't think of too many other ways an ISP could protect a big customer (like yahoo) from these potentially devestating attacks. -earl
well it's fairly simple to argue that banner-ad clearing houses like double click make the cost of individual banner ads cheaper for the advertiser. Hence the advertiser may buy more ad space on more web sites. Even Taco will tell you that without ad revenue, slashdot would have gone bankrupt long ago. Advertising is not an inherently bad thing. At it's most basic level, it allows producers to educate consumers about their product offerings in a relatively non-intrusive way. Consider commercials versus tele-marketers. I'd prefer that the companies calling about all their crap would do commercials/banner-ads instead of calling me. That way I won't feel so violated when they pitch their products. When you call me day and night about some crap, even something I might want to buy, I can't just say "I don't wanna hear it, so I won't answer the phone." I pay for my phone, and I do expect that friends and family wanting to talk to me will call me from time to time. With commercials/banner-ads, I can choose to watch the ad, switch the channel, scroll the page, etc if I dont't want to hear your pitch. What I find happens often with both commercials and banner ads, is that since I only see them on the channels/sites where I have an interest,(as opposed to just being displayed on my screen from time to time the aol or geocities way) they are far more likely to be an ad for something I'm interested in. So I'm more likely to listen, read, inquire + buy. In essence what I'm saying is that yes, we do get something back from advertising in the form of:
information about new products and services
financial support for sites/channels/shows that otherwise would not exist, or would have to charge for access
increased competition from content providers to attract and hold our attention (to help bring in the ad revenue of course)
sometimes entertaining ads
so you see, banner ads, or even cookies, are not the problem. The problem with the double-click thing is that the web surfer is being covertly tracked and logged in their travels around the web. Filtering out _all_ ads/cookies wil not simply subvert doubleclicks attempts at tracking you, but it could stifle the means by which many a web site makes the $$$ to keep serving up that porn^H^H^H^Hcontent, yeah content, that's the ticket. Of course, you are free to chose whether you, or the network you manage, will participate in the whole banner ad/cookies thing. I would be cautious however in choosing to replace banner-ads with banners of your own making. You could be opening a can of worms in regards to redistributing or modifying the copyrighted content of a particular web site. Several web sites have won lawsuits claiming that by altering their content, or putting it in a frame, you are violating their copyright on the content. It's the notion that ISPs have "common carrier" status that grants them some immunity from this kind of suit. However, if you start selectively modifying the ads that come through, you may be crossing that line from ISP for your students, to being a content provider. I would simply allow or deny all ads to keep that line clear. Otherwise, you could simply sell the (cached) banner ad space to advertisers who want to reach your students. Again, an extremely risky proposition. -earl
That's my first thought, it's already free. Buy thrn I thought about it. Most folks probably wouldn't know that. So RedHat "announces" that it's now free for UK schools to get some PR. Then people get interested in how they can get it free too. On the surface, it make no sense, but when you look at it from a marketing perspective, it's a brilliant idea. There;s nthing better than free advertising.
What these state governments don't understand is that by taxing internet transactions, they're crippling their state's ability to participate in internet commerce. The state will benefit pleny without eh taxes though, because if the purchaser is in/from that state, they've got the income tax already, plus the state economy benefits from the taxes drawn from the telco/isp/computer purchases required to make the purchase in the first place. If the seller is i that state, then the state still benefits from telco/isp/computer purchases, but in addition gets payroll/corporate income taxes as well. Nevermind that most government activities could easily be done at half the cost and twice as effectively if they weren't so burecratic and corrupted. well, just my $0.02... -earl
I see this as sort of like the various linux distros selling CD's that contain publicly available software. In the linux case though, they don't even own it. From a taxpayer protection standpoint, it makes sense to sell the cd's. If they were free, every dickead with a telephone would order a copy, and the usps would pay a fortune to distribute it. If they charge a reasonable fee, only those who _really_ want it will get it. As long as the price is within the means of that average citizen, then I'd consider it a public service. It's similar to the "charging a reasonable fee for distributing free software" concept. When RedHat was charging $35 for a CD, I said hey that's a good deal, I'll go for that. Now that they've got prices in the $60-90 range, I get my CD's from cheapbytes. RedHat's prices are no longer reasonable. (Even $35 was up there) So I vote with my wallet. If the USPS makes their database searchable from the web site, great, everybody on the net can use it. If they start charging too much for (convenient) CD's, companies like cheapbytes will start reselling this "publicly available" information at a far lower price, thats how a free market economy works. -earl
"a tiny violation of your privacy" that's kinda like saying "I just raped her a little"
The problem is not that Id has learned any particular thing about you. The real issue is that Id is using your computer without your consent, and that they are using it to find out these things without your permission. It may not be malicious, or intentionally "secret", but it is certainly unacceptable. Id should not attempt to explain or argue their way out of it. Thy should simply apologize, and release a patch (with source) that will permanently disable this part of the program. The reason I say with source is not out of political support for "open source" or "free software", but simply as a gesture of openness. They've violated the trust between them and their customers, and they need to show that they have genuinely fixed the problem. there are companies that would release a "patch" that just adds a new data collector, and act like everything was a-ok. I don't believe Id is one of those companies, but it's certainly a gesture that would go a long way towards repairing the damage. BTW, Is there a site out there yet that tracks these problems? Maybe if someone inspects and reports on software for privacy issues, consumers will at least be educated about what is going on. With so many people going online, and so many software companies putting internet features into their software, there's bound to be many uncovered instances of software gathering and reporting info in a clandestine way. I know of Microsoft, Real Networks and Id, but there's got to be others that have been caught. -earl
so there's a billion people (and change, something like 1.2) in china right? And linux is this fabulous(sp) multiasking multiuser, lean mean OS right? So why would you need a billion computers for a billion people? you can support hundreds of (non-simultaneous) users on a 486. So even if they just set up terminals in marketplaces and schools and army bases and universities, that's probably a couple hundred million folks. IIRC the last linux counter said around 10 million users so far. A couple hundred million might as well be a billion as far as I'm concerned. It's boatloads more than exist today. Even if the counters are way off, and we've got 50-60 million users right now. Another 250 million totally outnumbers the current user population. I can imagine in a country of a billon+ people e-mail would savea shitload of money over say, conventional mail. Set up all those pesants with elm or pine, and save a few trillion trees. -earl
I think this whole thread exposes alot of the prejudices we have about china, and chinese people. Why do we assume that what's bad for the US gov't is bad for linux, and by implication that the US gov't is good for linux. Why then when we hear the chinese gov't is endorsing linux that we cringe and start preparing for their attempts to turn the kernel into a trojan eavesdropper? Pardon me, but if I remember correctly it's the US gov't that runs echelon. Think about it. The community should be cautious about any code. Usually subversives are just that, *sub* versive, under the surface, sneaky, unexpected. They won't announce their participation, they won't have a press release, they won't have a kernel 2.4 release party. At leastI woulldn't if I were a subversive. And just becauseI'm ont having a kernel 2.4 release party dosen't mean I'm a subversive!!
I think there's good and bad elements of this, and that we should all reserve judgement until we can see what affect this _actually_ has. Sound fair to you??? Stop the anit China FUD. It accomplishes nothing except to make us all look silly. -earl
I agree 100% A B, i said a B(illion) linux users will have _no_, I repeat zero affect on Linux develoment. I mean those little chinamen couldn't even finish building that wall. How the hell can they be expected to write code??
For the sarcasm impaired, I totally disagree. I think this can only have positive effects on linux, and the chinese population as a whole. The Chinese gov't can't endorse linux without distributing it, right? (or at least encourage it's distribution.) And they can't distribute it without source. So now the people (who the republic is named after) have a new medium of commnication. Linux source as free speech?? Who'd a thunk it? What I think is more likely to happen though, is that more internationalization will be done, and we'll have a big influx of new ideas. Since China isn't known for it's computer power, it's also more likely to generate small, tight code that can run on the 486's that the common man can get his hands on. I'm all for that.I can't say I've seen a whole lot of bloat in unix code, but more optimization can't hurt a bit. I welcome the endorsement. It looks like Linux is becoming the lingua fraca of OS's around the world. China, Finland, Japan, Mexico, USA, India, Russa et al. Welcome!!! -earl
I didn't say anything about software maint. But since you brought it up, I think it's ok. What bothers me about it is when they want you to pay for maintenance to get stuff like security patches and bug fixes. Maintenance for version upgrades(new/refined features) is good though.
I was in a "checkpoint partners" meeting a month or so ago, and they said "shhh, don't ell anybody, but you can expect to hear some announcements re: fw-1 on linux in January." (ps, this is because they're dropping fw-1 on solaris86) I guess the work is going smoother than expected. This will have a huge affect for fw-1 resellers because until they release it, you're always getting hit with a OS license, in addition to hardware for the firewall. In the case of NT, you even have to pay for bigger hardware to acheive the same performance. With a linux version, the price of a 50 user firewall will drop down at least 10-20%.
My big question is this: I'm pretty sure they're gonna have the firewall be a kernel module. What kind of license can they apply to it? I'm not sure that you can distribute kernel modules without some kind of GPL. -earl
the legal action is to be expected. A reverse engineering job this significant was all but guaranteed to draw fire from the lawyers. I think the appropriate course of action is to fall behind a group with legal experience like the FSF or EFF. Then the real victims here can be defended appropriately. I think that any financial support should be routed through these types of organiations, at least so that the authors don't incurr any income-tax burden. -earl
The issue is not that they want to have/use this kind of personal information. What is concerning is that they distribute this program, and it *secretly* collects this information and sends it to them. Without your consent, and without warning. That they give this program away free is a misnomer, All the Real programs that I've seen lately are chock full of ads. Granted I'm a linuxhead, and rarely use windows software, but that's just my observation. I've tried Realplayer for linux and its horrible, ( ever get error 1? ) but that's another issue. I think of this as another argument for open sourceware. If the source for real* was open, we could have seen the offending code/behavior BEFORE using the program. I'm sure that Real is not the only company who does these kinds of things. They are just one of the more obvious ones. Sooner or later, some sw company will collect more sensitive info, and encrypt its trasmission so even if we notice it, we can't figure out what it was. That's what I'm woried about. Not just secretly collected, but intentionally made unreadable. -earl
it's really depressing. They've done so well for the last couple years. Articulating a clear product strategy, desiging good products that work, and delivering a simple but complete product line. Now it seems like Apple's old style of doing business is rearing it's ugly head. Granted it's an odd situation, almost an entirely new product line (ibook, G4, new imacs) with extremely strong demand, and serious inventory problems, mostly due to global shortages resulting from the taiwaneese earthquake. However, the problems with Motorola and the G4 are serious for Apple and they're probably scrambling to figure out how to avoid crippling themselves with a high-end machine that they can't deliver until January. They should have just taken the hit and said the 500Mhz G4's will be avail in January, and ship the 450 and 400 as expected. If they could deliver the ibooks, new imacs and G4's for christmas, then at least they'd stay profitable for the quarter. Now it looks like they've generated so much bad press and customer discontent that they may not be able to maintain the sales volume that they've enjoyed with the imac and the G3's. So it looks like shorting aapl through christmas is the move. They're stock has already lost plenty of value though, so who knows how it will move now. -earl
it's not often that you hear about somebody's house burning down. Sorry hemos, nate. If you're looking for a place, there's a real nice apartment building here in VA next to mae-east. I figure you can put on your ninja clothes, and run some fibre in the dark of night. At least gigabit inernet will make you feel better. -earl
hello??? it was a joke. Offtopic? flamebait? I don't think so. At least one sensible moderator read this. You would think the "OTOH" part would have clued in the "sarcasticly challenged" -earl
hemos, you dirty sonofabitch!!!! This story is old. You dirty son of a motherles goat. I will kill you.... until you are dead. You have no clue. I will not stand for this incompetence. By the power of grayskull, may Hemos and all his decendents all rot in a festering, inferno called hell for eternity. I swear, on the souls of my grandchildren, that I will avenge the death of timely journalism!!! OTOH, maybe it's not such a big deal after all. I mean, there might be some./ers who haven't hear tis story before. But then again...... Hemos will die by my hand!!! -clueless
I'm not disagreeing with your main point here, but your most dramatic point about nuclear subs sounds persuasive, but we can't forget that a submarine is by definition, water cooled. I'm not saying that keeping a nuclear reactor cool in a sub isn't a challenging task, but when you're hundreds, maybe thousands of feet under and ~30 degree water is rushing by a 20-30 knots, keeping warm is probably more of a concern than keeping cool.
But the issue here is the new imacs and temperature. Since the new imacs will be using copper processors, and in addition, the powerpc's run much cooler than x86 processors, you're much cooler to begin with. Top if off with the fact that Apple has had a year to see the real world effects of heat in the original imac case, and that they actually design cases instead of just putting a pc in a metal box, you can expect airflow to be better than your standard pc.
those who really know what's going on, probably don't have the time/desire to talk with the media to make sure they know whats accurate. Those who have the skill to do nothing else but talk with the media about any/everything are labeled as "leading analysts" and get quoted all the time. It's like when the OJ trial became this big media event, lawyers with some skill made money lay\wyering, and those without skill, made money as "legal experts" analyzing every detail of the trial. Their motto is : If you can't do it, talk about it. -earl
I saw a commercial during south park tonight that advertised downloadable music online that has "mp3's of all your favorite music..." looks like mp3 has gained enough momentum to steamroll the competing formats. The only remaining obstacle to squish is MS. I hope they lose their case with DOJ, or you'll soon see even more problems playing non-MS audio on your win* pc. Look at what a pain in the ass it was to get decent java and quicktime on windows. If the average joe can play windows audio, but not mp3, guess which format the commercial sites will use to sell music? -earl
Slashdot Mirror
You have to acknowledge they've risked alot by doing everything they've done, and they've started a real dialogue on the subject, and opened the eyes of alot of folks, not just technical folks either.
But, when it's your ass on the line, it's not as easy to throw up that middle finger in defiance.
The ACLU lawyer and me and you and all the armchair quarterbacks who've got something to say have just about dick to lose here. These guys futures are actually at risk. They fought a good fight, and frankly, what's there to win? the source is out, and can't be brought back in, just like DeCSS. They can't possible gain anything by trying to fight US law since they're in another country. If you are so gung ho about putting up a fight, be in the US, mirror the code, tell Mattel, and fight 'em in court. I'm sure the ACLU will back you too, and then you can see what it's like.
'nuff said.
Speaking of RR, I've been having lots of problems with my roadrunner lately. I'm on cox cable and running off redhat 6.1
the problem that I'm having is that the box dosen't get a new address when the old one expires. They used to let me keep the same address for weeks, but now it will only stay up for a few days at a time. Did you have to do anything special to get yours working properly? I think there's problems with the dhcp server I get my address from, because after the lease expires, it takes at least a day for me to be able to get a new address. I've tried all kinds of reboots, commandline options, about everything i can think of. I was using pump before, but I've switched to dhcpcd instead since its been more usable for me.
as a side question, is there a linux rr page that might have some info for me?
-earl
don't forget...
the athlon bus is a *switched* processor bus that is engineered to run from 200Mhz-800Mhz. I don't know the details of Wiliamette bus, but knowing intel.... 400Mhz shared bus is quite likely.
Consider what the difference will mean in 2 years when 2 and 4 cpu systems become quite common. Folks are already buying dual cpu boxen(boards at least) by the tens of thousands. If MS ever makes NT/2000 the consumer windows OS, system builders will start selling dual 600Mhz systems instead of pushing expensive 1Ghz monsters. Margins will suck either way, and they can get better volume on the chaper boxes.
-earl
You're sitting a T3 with 64 dual PIII-450's in a cluster. The attacker remote controls hundreds of compromised hosts on the internet, and floods your network with ~45Mbits data from those hosts. What could you possibly do to your cluster to fend off this attack?? even if you configure your systems to ignore this traffic, it still saturates your internet connection.
The answer is: nothing. This type of problem would have to be addressed at your ISP, or your border router. Other options are doing things like distributing your servers among the big (tier 1) ISP's to make sure the bandwidth bottleneck is at the client end, and not at your end. But with enough clients, the attacker may be able to effect you even with that much bandwidth. I imagine it took a buttload of clients to saturate yahoo's pipe. Unfortunately dealing with these type of problems is a part of being on this global network.
Several weeks ago, a big discussion of this phenomenon raged on bugtraq. Unfortunately, I never read through the whole thing, and I couldn't comment on possible solutions discussed there. This might possibly have to be addressed with unfriendly solutions like ISPs refusing to route traffic from "hostile" networks where this traffic is known to originate from. I can't think of too many other ways an ISP could protect a big customer (like yahoo) from these potentially devestating attacks.
-earl
Consider commercials versus tele-marketers. I'd prefer that the companies calling about all their crap would do commercials/banner-ads instead of calling me. That way I won't feel so violated when they pitch their products. When you call me day and night about some crap, even something I might want to buy, I can't just say "I don't wanna hear it, so I won't answer the phone." I pay for my phone, and I do expect that friends and family wanting to talk to me will call me from time to time. With commercials/banner-ads, I can choose to watch the ad, switch the channel, scroll the page, etc if I dont't want to hear your pitch. What I find happens often with both commercials and banner ads, is that since I only see them on the channels/sites where I have an interest,(as opposed to just being displayed on my screen from time to time the aol or geocities way) they are far more likely to be an ad for something I'm interested in. So I'm more likely to listen, read, inquire + buy.
In essence what I'm saying is that yes, we do get something back from advertising in the form of:
- information about new products and services
- financial support for sites/channels/shows that otherwise would not exist, or would have to charge for access
- increased competition from content providers to attract and hold our attention (to help bring in the ad revenue of course)
- sometimes entertaining ads
so you see, banner ads, or even cookies, are not the problem. The problem with the double-click thing is that the web surfer is being covertly tracked and logged in their travels around the web. Filtering out _all_ ads/cookies wil not simply subvert doubleclicks attempts at tracking you, but it could stifle the means by which many a web site makes the $$$ to keep serving up that porn^H^H^H^Hcontent, yeah content, that's the ticket.Of course, you are free to chose whether you, or the network you manage, will participate in the whole banner ad/cookies thing. I would be cautious however in choosing to replace banner-ads with banners of your own making. You could be opening a can of worms in regards to redistributing or modifying the copyrighted content of a particular web site. Several web sites have won lawsuits claiming that by altering their content, or putting it in a frame, you are violating their copyright on the content. It's the notion that ISPs have "common carrier" status that grants them some immunity from this kind of suit. However, if you start selectively modifying the ads that come through, you may be crossing that line from ISP for your students, to being a content provider. I would simply allow or deny all ads to keep that line clear. Otherwise, you could simply sell the (cached) banner ad space to advertisers who want to reach your students. Again, an extremely risky proposition.
-earl
I love this country!
-earl
That's my first thought, it's already free. Buy thrn I thought about it. Most folks probably wouldn't know that. So RedHat "announces" that it's now free for UK schools to get some PR. Then people get interested in how they can get it free too. On the surface, it make no sense, but when you look at it from a marketing perspective, it's a brilliant idea. There;s nthing better than free advertising.
What these state governments don't understand is that by taxing internet transactions, they're crippling their state's ability to participate in internet commerce. The state will benefit pleny without eh taxes though, because if the purchaser is in/from that state, they've got the income tax already, plus the state economy benefits from the taxes drawn from the telco/isp/computer purchases required to make the purchase in the first place. If the seller is i that state, then the state still benefits from telco/isp/computer purchases, but in addition gets payroll/corporate income taxes as well. Nevermind that most government activities could easily be done at half the cost and twice as effectively if they weren't so burecratic and corrupted. well, just my $0.02...
-earl
If the USPS makes their database searchable from the web site, great, everybody on the net can use it. If they start charging too much for (convenient) CD's, companies like cheapbytes will start reselling this "publicly available" information at a far lower price, thats how a free market economy works.
-earl
that's kinda like saying "I just raped her a little"
The problem is not that Id has learned any particular thing about you. The real issue is that Id is using your computer without your consent, and that they are using it to find out these things without your permission. It may not be malicious, or intentionally "secret", but it is certainly unacceptable. Id should not attempt to explain or argue their way out of it. Thy should simply apologize, and release a patch (with source) that will permanently disable this part of the program.
The reason I say with source is not out of political support for "open source" or "free software", but simply as a gesture of openness. They've violated the trust between them and their customers, and they need to show that they have genuinely fixed the problem. there are companies that would release a "patch" that just adds a new data collector, and act like everything was a-ok. I don't believe Id is one of those companies, but it's certainly a gesture that would go a long way towards repairing the damage.
BTW, Is there a site out there yet that tracks these problems? Maybe if someone inspects and reports on software for privacy issues, consumers will at least be educated about what is going on. With so many people going online, and so many software companies putting internet features into their software, there's bound to be many uncovered instances of software gathering and reporting info in a clandestine way. I know of Microsoft, Real Networks and Id, but there's got to be others that have been caught.
-earl
so there's a billion people (and change, something like 1.2) in china right? And linux is this fabulous(sp) multiasking multiuser, lean mean OS right? So why would you need a billion computers for a billion people? you can support hundreds of (non-simultaneous) users on a 486. So even if they just set up terminals in marketplaces and schools and army bases and universities, that's probably a couple hundred million folks. IIRC the last linux counter said around 10 million users so far. A couple hundred million might as well be a billion as far as I'm concerned. It's boatloads more than exist today. Even if the counters are way off, and we've got 50-60 million users right now. Another 250 million totally outnumbers the current user population. I can imagine in a country of a billon+ people e-mail would savea shitload of money over say, conventional mail. Set up all those pesants with elm or pine, and save a few trillion trees.
-earl
The community should be cautious about any code. Usually subversives are just that, *sub* versive, under the surface, sneaky, unexpected. They won't announce their participation, they won't have a press release, they won't have a kernel 2.4 release party. At leastI woulldn't if I were a subversive. And just becauseI'm ont having a kernel 2.4 release party dosen't mean I'm a subversive!!
I think there's good and bad elements of this, and that we should all reserve judgement until we can see what affect this _actually_ has. Sound fair to you??? Stop the anit China FUD. It accomplishes nothing except to make us all look silly.
-earl
A B, i said a B(illion) linux users will have _no_, I repeat zero affect on Linux develoment. I mean those little chinamen couldn't even finish building that wall. How the hell can they be expected to write code??
For the sarcasm impaired, I totally disagree. I think this can only have positive effects on linux, and the chinese population as a whole. The Chinese gov't can't endorse linux without distributing it, right? (or at least encourage it's distribution.) And they can't distribute it without source. So now the people (who the republic is named after) have a new medium of commnication. Linux source as free speech?? Who'd a thunk it?
What I think is more likely to happen though, is that more internationalization will be done, and we'll have a big influx of new ideas. Since China isn't known for it's computer power, it's also more likely to generate small, tight code that can run on the 486's that the common man can get his hands on. I'm all for that.I can't say I've seen a whole lot of bloat in unix code, but more optimization can't hurt a bit. I welcome the endorsement. It looks like Linux is becoming the lingua fraca of OS's around the world. China, Finland, Japan, Mexico, USA, India, Russa et al. Welcome!!!
-earl
I didn't say anything about software maint. But since you brought it up, I think it's ok. What bothers me about it is when they want you to pay for maintenance to get stuff like security patches and bug fixes. Maintenance for version upgrades(new/refined features) is good though.
My big question is this:
I'm pretty sure they're gonna have the firewall be a kernel module. What kind of license can they apply to it? I'm not sure that you can distribute kernel modules without some kind of GPL.
-earl
the legal action is to be expected. A reverse engineering job this significant was all but guaranteed to draw fire from the lawyers. I think the appropriate course of action is to fall behind a group with legal experience like the FSF or EFF. Then the real victims here can be defended appropriately.
I think that any financial support should be routed through these types of organiations, at least so that the authors don't incurr any income-tax burden. -earl
The issue is not that they want to have/use this kind of personal information. What is concerning is that they distribute this program, and it *secretly* collects this information and sends it to them. Without your consent, and without warning. That they give this program away free is a misnomer, All the Real programs that I've seen lately are chock full of ads. Granted I'm a linuxhead, and rarely use windows software, but that's just my observation. I've tried Realplayer for linux and its horrible, ( ever get error 1? ) but that's another issue.
I think of this as another argument for open sourceware. If the source for real* was open, we could have seen the offending code/behavior BEFORE using the program. I'm sure that Real is not the only company who does these kinds of things. They are just one of the more obvious ones. Sooner or later, some sw company will collect more sensitive info, and encrypt its trasmission so even if we notice it, we can't figure out what it was. That's what I'm woried about. Not just secretly collected, but intentionally made unreadable.
-earl
it's really depressing. They've done so well for the last couple years. Articulating a clear product strategy, desiging good products that work, and delivering a simple but complete product line. Now it seems like Apple's old style of doing business is rearing it's ugly head. Granted it's an odd situation, almost an entirely new product line (ibook, G4, new imacs) with extremely strong demand, and serious inventory problems, mostly due to global shortages resulting from the taiwaneese earthquake. However, the problems with Motorola and the G4 are serious for Apple and they're probably scrambling to figure out how to avoid crippling themselves with a high-end machine that they can't deliver until January.
They should have just taken the hit and said the 500Mhz G4's will be avail in January, and ship the 450 and 400 as expected. If they could deliver the ibooks, new imacs and G4's for christmas, then at least they'd stay profitable for the quarter. Now it looks like they've generated so much bad press and customer discontent that they may not be able to maintain the sales volume that they've enjoyed with the imac and the G3's.
So it looks like shorting aapl through christmas is the move. They're stock has already lost plenty of value though, so who knows how it will move now.
-earl
it's not often that you hear about somebody's house burning down. Sorry hemos, nate. If you're looking for a place, there's a real nice apartment building here in VA next to mae-east. I figure you can put on your ninja clothes, and run some fibre in the dark of night. At least gigabit inernet will make you feel better.
-earl
hello??? it was a joke. Offtopic? flamebait? I don't think so. At least one sensible moderator read this. You would think the "OTOH" part would have clued in the "sarcasticly challenged"
-earl
hemos, you dirty sonofabitch!!!! This story is old. You dirty son of a motherles goat. I will kill you .... until you are dead. You have no clue. I will not stand for this incompetence. By the power of grayskull, may Hemos and all his decendents all rot in a festering, inferno called hell for eternity. I swear, on the souls of my grandchildren, that I will avenge the death of timely journalism!!! ./ers who haven't hear tis story before. But then again...... Hemos will die by my hand!!!
OTOH, maybe it's not such a big deal after all. I mean, there might be some
-clueless
I'm not disagreeing with your main point here, but your most dramatic point about nuclear subs sounds persuasive, but we can't forget that a submarine is by definition, water cooled. I'm not saying that keeping a nuclear reactor cool in a sub isn't a challenging task, but when you're hundreds, maybe thousands of feet under and ~30 degree water is rushing by a 20-30 knots, keeping warm is probably more of a concern than keeping cool.
But the issue here is the new imacs and temperature. Since the new imacs will be using copper processors, and in addition, the powerpc's run much cooler than x86 processors, you're much cooler to begin with. Top if off with the fact that Apple has had a year to see the real world effects of heat in the original imac case, and that they actually design cases instead of just putting a pc in a metal box, you can expect airflow to be better than your standard pc.
those who really know what's going on, probably don't have the time/desire to talk with the media to make sure they know whats accurate. Those who have the skill to do nothing else but talk with the media about any/everything are labeled as "leading analysts" and get quoted all the time. It's like when the OJ trial became this big media event, lawyers with some skill made money lay\wyering, and those without skill, made money as "legal experts" analyzing every detail of the trial. Their motto is : If you can't do it, talk about it.
-earl
it's me, and i typed un my username:pass, and it showed up in the preview, but not in the post!! Who knows why? Damn perl jockeys!!
-earl
I saw a commercial during south park tonight that advertised downloadable music online that has "mp3's of all your favorite music ..."
looks like mp3 has gained enough momentum to steamroll the competing formats. The only remaining obstacle to squish is MS. I hope they lose their case with DOJ, or you'll soon see even more problems playing non-MS audio on your win* pc. Look at what a pain in the ass it was to get decent java and quicktime on windows. If the average joe can play windows audio, but not mp3, guess which format the commercial sites will use to sell music?
-earl