I do not think a lot of the developers are going to take the time to answer a RFP in the depth that most software vendors or VARS would.
If someone wants to pay me to solve a problem of theirs - for which the solution involves providing the customer a computer program - it matters not how I solve the problem, whether it's because I write a software package, I buy a software package (perhaps by purchasing a CD of a distribution in a store) or I download a package off the Internet. The only question to be answered is: Did I scratch their itch, e.g. did I solve their problem? If someone isn't even able enough to know this they're not likely to go into consulting and thus wouldn't be bidding on contracts anyway.
Open source people are not going to be paid for a "sale" were as the normal software vendors are competing for some money if they can make a sale.
A very famous scientist was once hired to determine where to drill for something, I forget what. He walks out to the site, looks around, for about one minute, then marks an "X" in chalk where to drill, and sure enough, they hit what they are looking for.
He sends them a large bill - $15,000 - for his services, and someone in the Accounts Payable department says the bill is too expensive for what he did, and needs to be itemized. So he itemized his charges:
Making chalk mark, $1.
Knowing where to put mark, $14,999.
Having itemized it, apparently they paid him. But were they really paying for the chalk mark? What they wanted was the location to drill. The chalk mark was merely a means to solve the problem. I think the same idea applies here.
One can sell one's expertise in selecting software as much as one can sell one's expertise in creating it. Or one can sell other things. We sometimes miss this in our industry because it is extremely rare for someone other than the manufacturer of a software product to provide maintenance and support of it. But because a product is open source, a purchaser can find anyone who is capable of doing so to provide maintenance.
In about 50 miles I need to change the oil again in my 1998 Dodge Intrepid because it's been another 3,000 miles. I can do the work myself and perhaps save money, I can pay a third-party perhaps $12 to do it, or I can pay a little more, take it to a dealer of the car to do it. It's a commodity operation and I can get anyone I feel qualified to perform it.
With non-open-source you only have the last option when you need something done (if they even will do it; consider calling up Microsoft and asking for a customized change to Outlook. Better be prepared to either be a huge customer, pay a huge fee, or suck air). With open-source you can get your hands as dirty as you want or you can pay someone else if you don't feel competent (or your organization doesn't have the direct ability) to make the changes. You have choices.
An RFP has some type of reward (sale) possible to the winner for them to spend time on responding to it.
If someone submits a proposal for the providing of a computer system that fits certain qualifications, and I bid on the contract, and provide them with a system which I went down to a computer store and bought, which fits their requirements, I have fulfilled the terms of the contract and can be paid for it - including whatever I charge for the work I did - even if all the "work" I did was to go to the store and buy it.
A RFP is a request for proposal - A proposal for what? A proposal is a first step toward a contract. A contract with who? Who will get paid? I do not think a RFP process will get you very far.
I would respectfully disagree. One can say they want a solution to do something, and someone can say they will offer a solution and the customer pays upon acceptance. Whether the solution is to simply find the software and install it, or the solution is to write the sofware is irrelevant. The only question is whether the customer will pay for what is being done. Perhaps the party who fills the RFP will also be responsible for providing maintenance and upgrades as the customer requests them. There are so many ways you can slice and dice a support contract that whole books have been written about it.
For an open source product the cost of the software will be zero.
So? Just because the 'cost' of the bits are zero doesn't mean that there isn't money to be made supplying it.
What is the cost of water these days? I can get it for free from a water fountain, perhaps pay almost nothing for a quart of water out of the tap, perhaps pay $20 for a filter every couple of months if I don't like the taste of tap water, or perhaps pay anywhere from 50c to $3 for a bottle of it in a store. That does not ignore the fact that the original price of the water was probably in the neighborhood of 1/10 of 1c per gallon from a public utility or a municipal water district. For all intents and purposes the original price of the water might as well be considered 'free' yet that doesn't stop companies from making money 'selling' water that cost them next to nothing to obtain.
Perhaps the customer pays for having the supplier provide and deliver 20,000 CDs of the software to sites so everyone has a copy instead of clogging network usage downloading it from servers. Or pays for a customized installer where the original product didn't have one or it's too complicated. Or pays for special services to go with it, like paying not only for the software but having someone write documentation. Or train people in how to use it. Or train their technical staff in how to support it. Or doing the support themselves. Or that the customer pays the supplier for finding the precise package that best fits their needs because the supplier knows what products are better for their particular circumstances.
Support and maintenance I guess would be in-house.
Maybe, maybe not. It's possible that the particular software might be purchased as a package deal in which the supplier also does contract maintenance on it because perhaps their inhouse staff is too busy, or doesn't have the expertise in handling it.
Let's say the Sixth National Bank wants to stop paying for Microsoft Exchange as their mail server and client licenses for Microsoft Outlook. I offer to provide them with an equivalent functionality using a Linux box running QMail (let's say that they want a highly reliable e-mail system so that eliminates use of Sendmail) and include for the client end some Windows port of an open-source client or group of clients that originally ran on KDE or GNOME, for less money than it would cost to have one person at the bank to maintain it because the maintenance I can offer on an as-needed basis to several companies.
The bank has people who could do the work inhouse but they are better suited handling the stuff that is the bank's core expertise (handling checking accounts and the billing of outrageous fees on those checking accounts), and the bank can pay me to provide them with updates and added functionality without having to have people doing work that isn't part of their core competency, BUT with the additional advantage that since the product is open source if I decide to quit, they can find someone else to do it or they could do it themselves if they choose to do so.
What's left then is comparison of different capabilities. This becomes a request for comments now (RFC).
Not necessarily, given what I have stated above. Remember, the customer is buying a solution to a problem where the solution includes computer software. The Software is not what the customer is 'buying'; what the customer is buying is the solution to their problem.
A suggestion change here. Maybe send a RFP to consulting firms on helping you with project(s). A selected firm could help in gathering requirements, research products, help in the installation and maintenance... If you trying to spend money anyways.:)
Just because the software is 'free' doesn't mean there isn't money to be made. Remember, in the shape of the whole picture, nobody buys software anyway. They buy a solution to a problem for which the means in this particular case is a software package.
I do not see how he is confused. He wants to find out how to have someone provide a particular software system to solve a problem, e.g. to scratch his itch. He wants the solution to be open sourced, i.e. under a license similar to GPL or one of the other similar ones. The solution to his problem may imply finding an existing package and using it as is or having the successful respondent to the RFP modify it, or perhaps they will be involved in creating a new application from scratch if nothing is available for his particular need. He wants to know how to go about doing this. What is confusing about this question?
The open community cannot respond to a serious RFP.
This is true. Communities do not respond to RFPs. Individuals do. And there is no reason an individual can't simply respond to any request they feel the desire to do so.
Sure, they could write a proposal (so long as there wasnt a deadline:) But the moment they start to do work for money there could follow a slew of legal issues.
Unless you are either writing code for a competitor of your employer or you have some contractual obligation not to do work outside of regular hours I see no issue here. Personally, I have never had any restrictions by anyone I've ever worked for against doing work for someone else as long as it didn't interfere with my employer's business.
Most of these people probably work for IT companies - working for an open source project is fine if you arent being paid, but once you start accepting money you run the risk of conflict-of-interest.
I think it's not that difficult to tell when there is one. And just because you are not accepting money doesn't mean there can't still be a conflict of interest. If I work for a company that produces accounting software I could very easily have a conflict-of-interest if I was doing unpaid work on an open-source accounting package.
Also, you can't make a contract with the open community. They aren't a business and have no license to operate as such.
I could answer it again by saying one doesn't make contracts with communities, one makes them with individuals. Further, I do not see where any licensing issues come into play. If I am doing writing for someone - whether I am writing articles for a publisher of encyclopedias, writing opion columns for a newspaper, writing unpaid responses to items in Slashdot, or writing code for computer programs - that writing represents an action fully protected by the First Amendment (at least in the United States) and as such the government cannot require someone to be licensed to do so.
If it is even necessary to have a business license - which may not be likely for work done in the privacy of one's home since there are no 'visitors' to a site when the item to be produced is delivered electronically and thus no issue to trigger the need for a business license - we are probably talking about $100 a year or less, which can be incorporated into the negotiated price of the contract if necessary.
Furthermore; are you asking for a proposal for work you don't intend to pay for?
This is a non-sequitur for the reasons stated above. You have not shown that they are not going to pay for the work they want done.
How is that different than the current open source model? Except that now you want to impose a tight schedule on the developers? That's not going to work. Open source development is generally if and when work -- especially if the developers aren't being paid.
Again, you seem to have jumped to some unreasonable conclusions which I have answered in exhaustive detail above so I won't bore people by repeating them.
If you want to incorporate open source software development into your project, you must find a legitimate contracting firm to do the work (there are thousands).
So presumably if one is not a contracting firm the work they do isn't legitimate? I find it a little hard to accept that it is unreasonable to ask individuals to do small projects which might only require part-time work of one or a few people and pay them accordingly, in the same way and manner that magazines and newspapers have been hiring free-lance writers for centuries.
Why is this time-honored practice of hiring people to do writing remotely somehow perfectly reasonable when the writing is a book, an article or a press release, but somehow it becomes less 'legitimate' when the writing is a software package instead of, say, a professional textbook or an article requiring specialized research?
When will the American public (especially the/. crowd) realize the rights guarenteed by the government are guarentees regarding government behavior. Any company can do WHATEVER it wants to limit "free speech" or so forth except what is limited by law. This is an extension of freedom, not a limit of it. You, personally, can choose not to abuse private property, etc.
In case you have forgotten, he said he works for the National Institutes of Health, which is a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, which is, in fact, a government agency and thus IS subject to being required to follow the Fourth Amendment. The question is whether, in view of the conditions that now exist, whether a 100% bag check violates the "reasonable searches" clause. While a private employer is usually not subject to the 4th Amendment, a government employer certainly is.
apparent h4x0ring of phone lines in and around Las Vegas. It seems that a certain escort service (prostitution is legal there) would stop receiving phone calls [deleted] authorities came to investigate, the phones miraculously started working again.
Contrary to popular belief, prostitution is not legal in Las Vegas, Nevada. It is just as illegal as Chicago or Los Angeles. The rule is that rural Nevada counties (population under 50,000 I think) may permit it if they choose to do so; Nye County is one such place, about 80 miles from Lost Wages... Even if they wanted it in Las Vegas, the county is too large to have local option on this and so it's always been illegal there.
Regardless, the telco infrastructure is hopelessly inadequate.
That statement was probably just as true 20 years ago and it's probably gotten even worse since then.
Turns out there was a problem in that much of the network switching was in one building [deleted] lots of pondering about the vulnerability of the network, even when it is distributed across many physical locations. [deleted] estimate is for five years' work before there could be redundant paths [deleted] with no plans to spend the money to do it.
Ever since the Hindsdale, Illinois fire in a telephone switch room, it has been or should be known that telephone companies routinely under-build and over-load equipment and only add it when they absolutely have to (or are possibly forced to by regulators once in a blue moon), and then complain that they need to raise rates to pay for it, as if they are supposed to be able to operate without equipment and that's not supposed to be part of the cost of service.
If this equipment is that important - and we know it is from the cost to replace it - why isn't it even worth the cost of one clerk at minimum wage around the clock to be able to check on things there? Someone once pointed out that Illinois Bell Telephone ended up spending millions because of the fire, hundreds of times more than it would have cost to have have had a single person present on each of 3 shifts, to provide a 24/7 presence in that building for the next 100 years.
Someone who claims that telephone service is distributed should look again; I've never found a telephone company that operated more than one central office for an area and in some cases trying to combine them in larger and ever larger buildings until the central office for an area might be 40 miles away, yet still continuing the previous rate structure - which may have been created 30, 40, or 50 years ago or more - so that a call to another phone connected to a different switch in the same building is a toll call because it's in a different rate center.
If all the mergers and acquisitions of telephone companies by each other was supposed to benefit the consumer, why is phone service more expensive than ever?
actually, from the looks of the brief, there are a few ways to circumvent their device. To me, it appears the key (no pun intended) to thwarting this lies in that the logger is only active while the modem is active, meaning you have to be online in order to be have your keys logged.
Actually, you have it backwards; supposedly, the affiant claims in the brief that the keylogging system did not record anything sent to or from the modem.
But, even better, [deleted] Just open up a web page, select the a few char of the password, and paste it to a temp file. [deleted] Anything that is recording your input stream from the keyboard is just going to see you just web surfing a doing a lot of copy and paste.
Or (if the guy in the FBI affidavit is telling the truth), you don't even have to go that far because their keylogger specifically did NOT capture keystrokes when the user was on line) is to be on line at a web site and it wouldn't be recording. But I agree that cut and paste - or use of something that would avoid sending keystrokes such as a pop-up entry pad which changes randomly - is probably the way smart people will go for entering a passphrase or secret key in the future to avoid keystroke logging.
The next time it might not be a government agency legitimately monitoring a suspected criminal; it might be some smart crook monitoring someone with something valuable to steal. Or worse, some government spying on and/or attempting to harass or intimidate dissidents. (And with the stepped-up efforts to destroy civil rights protections and evicerate the constitution, it might not even be a different governemt doing so.)
They've been wanting to do this for years
on
GOVNET In the Works
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I remember several years ago - which was so far back that the word 'intranet' hadn't even been invented - that there was a proposal to move certain government operations off the public Internet and move them to a private one. (I think it was someone wanting to completely block all military sites from the public.) It was to be so tight that you wouldn't even be able to e-mail to or from their network, you would have to send e-mail through a gateway on the.int domain, and persons on that system would have to use a gateway to send mail back. (The ease then of scanning and monitoring all messages as opposed to trying to capture all public Internet traffic from all sites is a matter left to the reader.)
Maybe that is an appropriate action given that people in the military lose some civil rights when they enlist (whether they should or not is an issue I won't raise right now), and it might be necessary to prevent disclosure of some military secrets, but if you're going that route, be honest and say so instead of trying to hide what you're doing; otherwise those who know how these things work will point out two things: first, if you're supposed to know technology as part of your job, you're incompetent, and second, that you're lying. I think either the Web at that time was of minor importance or hadn't been invented or people would have realized how ridiculous the idea was.
I said then that I thought the idea was stupid and it's even stupider now. The whole point of having access to the Internet is to provide significant resources to people for their use as it relates to what they are doing (or in this case, whatever they are working on.)
For some reason this reminds me of the blocking systems imposed by the Church of Scientology to keep their members from reading anti-church material on-line. I don't know why, but for some reason I have this suspicion that the real purpose is more to keep those on the private network away from us and our thoughts rather than to supposedly protect government networks from disruption.
Assume DRM caught on in a big way a year ago, in early 2000. Ten years from now, when the then-current iteration of DRM is all but forgotten/outdated, how will I be able to view my WTC attack footage?
Consider the thought of what would have been the result if a major DRM operator was in the WTC during the attack. If you have a large enough provider becoming almost instantaneously nonexistent, due to terrorism or bankruptcy or misconduct, all of the material that has been encoded with "Digital Ripoff Mandatory" is now worthless.
What about a window manager that starts off as a 'twm' clone with a plug-in architecture?
This kind of idea or something similar is probably the direction we (as people who design interfaces) need to go toward.
Plug-ins could include support for all the "neat stuff" that the performance computing geeks don't want: 1. Fullscreen MPEG screensavers 2. Resized MPEG desktop object animation...
Nice idea but while it sounds simple, it's probably rather difficult and that's where the rubber meets the road; the ability to get difficult things implemented.
(You close a window and it turns into grains of sand being blown off the dekstop, or it folds into an envlope and zips off the screen with motion lines behind it.)
I Like that idea! (I wish I'd thought of it.)
3. Desktop wallpaper that is pulled from an FTP site on a scheduled basis.
This wouldn't be that hard to implement, even now, if something like 'cron' (a program that runs tasks on a virtual terminal in the background) was used to cycle desktops. But the program would have to know how the desktop wallpapers are installed and how to replace them. The problem we have at the moment is a lot of things that are being done either are only done internally by the window manager, e.g. there is no means to allow an external program to do them, or there's no documentation on how, or each one is different (or all of these)
4. Non-rectangular window objects. (How about a circular window?)
Someone had better damn well get busy on this one; I can do this right now in Visual Basic on Windows 9X/NT/2000; if you can't do it on X - and in a simple manner for a programmer to implement - you're in very big trouble.
5. Zoom in/out desktop objects. (Instead of minimizing to a task bar, you literally minimize to a miniturized version of your app in the background. Possibly make it translucent as well.)
I can't quite get the idea of what you're referring to but I like the idea.
We need to make use of the Z-axis.
That, we definitely need to do and have been extremely poor in doing anything to implement it. All the window managers I've seen for X support 4 or more desktops; yet I don't see them being managed effectively or in anything other than providing a button to switch them. We've got the real estate but we are failing to use it.
Remember, Mac users never thought we needed more than one mouse button... 6. What about multiple desktops on a grid that are hosted on other machines using X's network transparence? Just slide to the next X desktop.
I think we'd need a redesign of X and perhaps a whole new system to implement network-based task switching. But it's something that should be done / developed; we are getting to the point that if we don't need it now, we will. And once we have it we will wonder how we ever got along without it.
7. Maybe a built-in GUI based X desktop browser. Just search your local net for an X desktop to connect to by looking at thumbnails of all the X desktops on your net.
Excellent suggestion.
8. How about a network "Stick" for a window. You select, "Stick - terminator:1" and your app's display is routed to the host "Terminator" as a sticky window. If you unstick it on terminator, it closes on the original host and continues to run on Terminator.
If the security considerations can be worked out - and I don't think it's that difficult - this might be an excellent idea.
9. What about a session recorder? Record all mouse movements and object displays to an MPEG for later viewing. It would be a great way to train people or spy on someone.
If you're talking about something like a combined mouse event / keystroke event recorder, I've seen this done on Windows a while ago but apparently not lately (probably because finding out how to be able to do it was too difficult due to the lack of access to APIs and/or source for 32-bit Windows). I think I've seen it done on the Macintosh. With X being open source, it shouldn't be that complicated to insert something in between the part that accepts mouse actions and the keyboard to tie them together. Problem is you need to know when the events from the application are occurring so that you don't end up being whipsawed because the network responds slower (or faster) than it did when the session was recorded.
Now if you're talking about capturing the screen as it is being drawn that would take a lot of computing power because of saving the screen image on every change - and trying to only capture the part that changes might be a problem due to the comparisons - but there's probably a way to do it if someone thinks about how screens are drawn.
10. Even something as simple as the ability to use custom designed mouse pointer would be nice. The basic "X" or arrow are a little long in the tooth even though they are perfectly functional. Wouldn't it be great if you could design your own mouse points to go with your desktop environment?
Since Windows already has it, and I think has had it since 3.0, this should already have been implemented in X by now. I'm surprised it hasn't.
11. Gestures could be added as well for those who like that kind of thing. I know that there are lots of you out there that will say, "why" or bring up a host of "security" issues. But, my argument is why not? If we have most of the other stuff working well, why shouldn't we add the bells and whistles?
I agree. Some of these suggestions may be very difficult but many of them are or have already been accomplished in one form or another.
I know I want them. And there sure are others who do. If I could program, I would try to do it myself. However, programmers tend to not be interested in these kinds of projects. (I've had ideas like this turned down before)
Often if a change looks too hard it will be rejected because there are other things which appear to be more fun and less drudgery than some suggestions. Since the people doing the changes are all (unpaid) volunteers, it's kinda hard to get them to do something which might not be much fun to accomplish.
Just think about how much cooler our window managers and desktop envirnements could be if we had even a few of these features. That's how you get users to come to your side, give them cool stuff.
And if you really want to do something to make X-based systems a desirable choice over Windows those who can develop things for it should start thinking about these and other ideas because we have the technology available to us, because the sources are open; something that can't be said about Windows.
I don't know that development of window managers is slowing so much as I suspect the "low hanging fruit" has already been picked; probably most of the fun / easy to do / standardization features have already been done and as such anything else to be worked on would be the stuff people usually don't do unless paid to do it or they have to: documentation, writing APIs, writing and explaining specifications for the design of new features so it can be decided if they should be implemented.
As a professional programmer for the last 22-years, let me state that I don't think most programmers are the extremely industrious kind that want to do things for the sake of doing them unless either they are being paid for it or it's a real fun thing to do or something they really want to do. Thus we can characterize programmers as somewhat "lazy" (in a non-perjorative way) in that they're not going to redo tons of work already done by someone else. (In fact, if done consistently this is a good trait in programmers; it means they tend to use predesigned libraries for various features instead of rewriting code to do the same thing).
Let us also remember, as it has probably been said here (and in other forums) many times, creating a window manager is a big undertaking; it is the sort of thing that is a severe "scratch the itch" development on the level of writing a good-sized language compiler or perhaps developing an operating system. It's a hell of a lot of work, and it gets done because the developer is
extremely irritated and/or disappointed by what is currently available
doesn't like any of them currently existing
does not know of or cannot find any at all that even close to fits their particular need ("none of them can scratch his itch") and
none of those currently existing can be tweaked into something close to what they want without major rework
and so he (nothing to criticize women, most programmers are still male) decides to create his own in order to "scratch his itch" (or itches), e.g. to give him the features / reduced bloat / increased capability / skinnability / factor 'x' that the current window managers do not provide him.
I use Windows 2000 for what I get paid to do. On Linux I have used both KDE and GNOME and I would honestly say that there isn't more than a dime's bit of difference between the three of them as far as a user running applications is concerned. I haven't tried many of the alternative ones but I'm sure they all pretty much do the job of providing a means to log onto the system and start applications to do things on the system. And beyond that it's a matter of extra features which may or may not be important to have in a window manager (applications like Calendar, skinnability, type of activator buttons, means for adding new applications, what icons do etc.) depending on how enthusiastic / spaced out on caffeine / loud the people who program the features into and/or use the particular WM scream / beg / offer bribes for it.
I would say it's pretty hard to find a window manager that won't provide perhaps 80% of what you need and as such for most people it's "good enough" to get by without writing one of your own or of taking one that is "good enough" and doing some tweaks to make it so. Since most window managers are pretty "tweakable" just from the window manager's management console or via configuration files, I believe the need to write code to provide something that isn't there has been substantially reduced from what would otherwise be necessary.
Whether this article represents a "commercial" for his company or not, I do believe the question was a relevant, valid one to propose to this community as a/. article: is there sufficient market share to offer a non-open-source or partially non-open source C compiler, or at least one that people would in some way pay for, which would compete against the free (as in GPL) or open source ones? And the correct answer is "that depends".:)
Your compiler is going to have to exceeed the capability and/or performance of the free/open compilers by a substantial margin for people to even consider paying for yours (30% or better). The exception might be if you have the kind of budget for advertising that you can confuse the public. But then if that was the case you'd be doing what companies that do have that kind of budget do. Or perhaps I should say 'company' since there's probably only one - we all know who it is - that has that kind of money, and it is already selling a C compiler. And it has a well-known disparaging opinion of the GPL.
I think some of the ideas on here were good ones (some of these may be mine and some are a summary of what I've seen posted here):
Offer the compiler free for GPLed applications (since most of those projects probably wouldn't have any money for paying for a compiler when there already is a fairly good (not excellent) free one [GCC])
Include the source code as part of the commercial distribution with the ability to make private (non-distributed) changes without release for those who purchase the product; this gives you a revenue stream from those who also want to develop non-open source applications since they could give away what they are doing if they want, or they can purchase the program, get support and not have to give away what they are doing (this ties into the above comment)
A commercially supported compiler with a real help desk and a phone number someone can call to solve a problem with it is a strong selling point over a free source compiler where the fixes are being made by unpaid volunteers who may not be as receptive to the needs of a commercial installation using the product
Bundle the Linux version free with the Windows Version to encourage programmers to get their bosses to buy it for Windows development and they can then play with it for Linux
Make it clear what advantages are available with your compiler over GCC, e.g. update your benchmarks to include it
Make sure it is compatible with the most popular current standard libraries used on Linux now (glibc 2.2) and possibly some of the others as an option if this is important
Provide the option of its own library if that provides better performance; this gives people the option of perhaps sacrificing a little performance for compatibility or using a non-compatible library where you really need to squeeze out the last ounce
I think the hardest part of coding in C is the amount of "grunt work" people have to do; in the "commercial" version provide more assistance to develop code such as wizards, sample application frameworks, etc., these NOT being available if it is also offered in an open source version, e.g. provide in the licensed version more material which is of a higher value to professional programmers
Know your audience: who is going to buy this product for use on Linux? This is who you need to target
The net is just a big TCP/IP system. If I wanted to pass secret messages I'd write my own socket based system and use some encryption scheme. Why would I hide messages in some public forum?
The above presumes you know whom the recipient is. In some cases you might not know whom they are or might not want to know. In many organizations they divide into "cells" and each cell will only be able to contact certain others; not every cell knows about the other and most do not know each other. It's the low tech version of the Internet: where one part is damaged or compromised the organization can route around it.
This does not have to be terrorist or violent in nature. Let's give a hypothetical example. Say I'm running a non-violent protest organization that does not believe in war. I do not want to see Americans coming home in body bags and I want to express this opinion in ways that are disapproved by the authorities but I have to make them spectacular or the news won't cover it.
I want to send a message to a certain group in an associate organization to start an act of civil disobedience in some city; let's say I want them to dump body bags full of ketchup in front of some company that makes military ordnance. I don't want to mail anything or call anyone directly because I might be watched or I don't want to be known to be connected with whomever is going to do the demonstration; by setting up my communications correctly I can make it impossible to prove I was responsible for anything.
I may not even know who the members of that cell are, all I need to know is where to send a message. So if they monitor a public newsgroup all I have to do is post a message to it, or have someone post a message to that group. There would be a keyword in the title that they would watch for, and if the message contained the trigger keys such as discussion of a certain topic, they would know it was for them.
Thus it is possible for me to send a message to someone without knowing who they are or where they are; all I need to know is where to put the message. If they want to communicate with me, all they need to know is where to place a message going to me.
You can use technology: the message can be posted on a newsgroup or a weblog like this forum (which makes it impossible to know who has read it and the reader can be anywhere in the world that has computer access), an e-mail mailing list (which the recipient might be able to be discovered but they might or might not be able to prove a connection) or using non-technological means such as posting a note on a bulletin board at a supermarket or an ad in a newspaper we both read (results being the same as posting on a Usenet newsgroup, there's no way to connect us)
I doubt they would miss the connection between quartering soldiers and/or quartering escrowed keys
Congress will just claim the "time of war" excpetion in the Third Amendment.
The 3rd has nothing to do with the 4th, which is where the protection would be: having a system which allows people to be "secure in their papers and effects" would clearly qualify as absolutely protected by the 4th. There is no "war exception" in the 4th amendment either. This doesn't necessarily mean that they won't violate it if it became inconvenient.
On the other hand, maybe it should have had one. Of the 10 Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, only the 3rd Amendment has apparently never had a violation sued over in a court. (Probably coincidence.) I just hope - futile probably - that the courts would recognize when the constitution is violated - such as would be the case in mandatory key escrow - and refuse to allow the runaway train to continue to railroad people.
-- "If justice is only meted out when it is 'easy' or 'convenient' to do so, then the [constitution] isn't worth the parchment it's printed on..."
- Justin Foote in Robert A. Heinlein's
Metheuselah's Children
One of the songs on the Clear Channel's "banned" list is Neil Diamond's America
This makes no sense at all. If anything, this song is probably one of the greatest ones to speak of this country. I would honestly say it is an extremely patriotic song. Excluding this song doesn't make any sense. Unless Clear Channel wants to exclude any reference at all to anyone riding a plane or coming to this country. In any case, if anything, excluding this song is counterproductive.
I think we are underestimating the education system by limiting them to `ultra user friendly' computer platforms.
Underestimating educational systems is very hard to do since most don't do much to begin with. Beyond which, if the teachers in the school were really good, they would probably not be willing to take a 50% or more cut in salary over what they could make as technical people.
People can learn too. Sandboxing a computer so that a complete idiot can use it isn't fair to the idiot, isn't fair to the admin that has to come clean up after them, and it isn't fair for the computer.
Most educational systems want nothing but compleat idiots - or mindless drones - who won't rock the boat, will do what they are told and pop out as cookie-cutter duplicates of everyone else. Go to school for 4 years, sleep through most classes and ditch the rest, and they'll give you a diploma as thanks for not burning down the place. Admin at most schools is only interested in protecting its turf from incursion. Students are the irritating interruption to their day.
Computers are complex devices, and should demand some initiative to use.
Schools generally tend to try to drain the initiative out of students. Not sure if it's intentional or not but it's damned strange.
I'm not saying that everyone should have to take 8 years of college courses to learn about solid-state electronics, mathematics in forms other than base-10 numbers, multiple programming languages, etc etc, but not everything should be handed to you on a platter, either. Yes computers can be intimidating to the uninitiated, but some basic knowledge can disspell that.
Basic knowledge is not something educational instutions are known for providing. The purpose of a school system is (1) to protect the school board; (2) to protect the teachers union; and (3) keep the parents locked into the system and prevent change. Anything else happening is purely coincidental.
I've been there. There was once a time when Windows 95 scared the bejesus out of me. It was nothing like my beloved Commodore Plus/4 that I outgrew a few years before. But i devoted a little time to studying and learning, and i got over it. The same followed suit with *nix. Now that I understand a bit more about what goes on behind the `pretty curtain' on the desktop, using a computer is much more rewarding, more efficient, and most of all, if i get myself into a bind, i can get out of it myself, instead of having to ask someone else to clean up my mess for me. I can't see anyone not wanting that....
Still uncorrected is the fascination of this guy for the term "public domain".
upstarts such as de Icaza's Ximian Inc., as well as some of Microsoft's biggest rivals, are releasing free products into the public domain with increasing frequency.
That model holds that if you use open-source code, you have to put your enhancements in the public domain[...]
While technically the products are not precisely in the Public Domain, the effect of the licenses give the users who use it the functional equivalent of a public domain program released with source. Technically it is not, but it's "close enough".
The real effect of open source licensing is more upon developers who want to change things in a particular program - and have the ability to do so - than upon the users who just want to use it.
Because it clogs our e-mail box with messages we don't want and aren't interested in.
Do you send emails to the hosts of every spam message you recieve?
In many cases, doing that will simply cause them to know that you are a valid e-mail address and send even more.
Do you sit down and write letters to the company of every piece of junk mail you get?
No, because sending responses to junk mail through the postal service costs money.
HIT THE BLOODY DELETE BUTTON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You are probably unaware that some people have to pay money for their incoming e-mail, per message and/or per packet. Even if they don't it takes time to determine which is garbage and which is important and most of it is the former.
According to the affidavid filled by the plantiff, they were not involved in sending unsolicited email, and thus not violating any terms of use. If
you possibly opted in through some other company then maybe it isn't technically spam? (according to the TOS)
I would also agree with this point. If you opt-in - even if you don't realize it - it's not spam. I don't like it that way but if they put up say, a check box like the one below this message when I typed it in that says "Post Anonymously" I should not be able to complain when it shows my e-mail address.
While I think most spammers deserve at least Summary Execution or even more severe punishment (as soon as I figure out what kind of punishment would be more severe) what it sounds like, is that this company was buying addresses from others where people probably opted in and didn't realize it, then some complained when they got mails and didn't realize they had inadvertantly opted in to something.
It might also include some where the party they bought the E-mail addresses from were in fact spamming and Monster Hut was unaware of it (or claims that they were unaware). But what seems odd to me is that this company apparently was - if the claims are true - using valid return addresses and was clearly identifying whom they were. Two practices that real spammers never do.
The point I'm trying to make is I can understand why the court wants to show some restraint before allowing an ISP to cut a firm's internet access. What would be the consequences if they cut the pipes and then sorted it out? Monster Hut could be deprived alot of revenue!
I agree as well. It seems like the ISP was going to institute a "shut them down first and ask questions later" scenario. That is probably quite valid if someone really is spamming. However the contract they signed - if the trial documents are correct - indicates they knew the company was in the business of sending commercial e-mail where the person agreed to get it. If true, then, it would imply a little more investigation would be needed because there are going to be people who forgot that they joined some of these e-mail opt-in things and then complain about it.
I'm not trying to defend Monster Hut as they could very well be guilty. I just think that we should be pleased with the Judge's injunction until this gets litigated.
I agree as well. In this case, the injunction preserves the status quo, since the court could if it's shown that Monster Hut really was spamming, rule in favor of the ISP. Also, if their customer is really spamming the injunction protects the ISP against retaliation because their upstream providers can't cut their feed due to the practices of the customer because the ISP can say it has no choice because it's under a court order (and if the supplier does something to interfere with that then they can get an order as well or the other provider might conceivably be in contempt of court), and if Monster Hut really was spamming, it's certainly not going to do so now, and if it did, it would be easy enough to check. Also, a trial would certainly provide considerable evidence if they were up to something unsavory.
Reading the court transcript tells me two things that were lacking in this case: make sure you write your contracts carefully and if you have to enforce the contract, get lawyers who know something about how people send messages through the Internet; it looks like the lawyers - on both sides - were about as clueless as a 15-year-old Script Kiddie.
For an Australian Court to rule that a message posted upon a website operated in the United States, by an American company, and directed at readers almost exclusively in the U.S., is, merely because it can be read by someone in Australia, now subject to the jurisdiction of Australian Courts, the start of a dangerous precedent.
If someone imports a copy from the U.S. of the Wall Street Journal into Australia, does that make the publisher liable in Australia for alleged libel on a story in the newspaper?
Perhaps there are assets of Dow Jones & Company somewhere in Australia which the plaintiff in this particular case can attach, but, if not, they would have to come to someplace - most likely the U.S. - and then they'd have to convince an American Court (or whatever country they think they can find assets to attach) to accept the judgement as valid, not necessarily all that easy if the defendant fights it claiming that the courts in Australia have overstepped their jurisdiction.
The issue is even stronger if it was someone who had no presence outside the U.S., who decided not to try and defend what to them was a ridiculous lawsuit and the other party were trying to enforce a default judgement where the website operator didn't show up. The party suing might even be held liable for damages if the suit is considered frivolous or unreasonable.
It is this sort of relatively stupid attempt at an overly Draconian long-arm statute law that will eventually destroy respect for the judiciary and could conceivably backfire.
If the Australian Courts can impose in personam jurisdiction upon someone outside of the country merely because they put something up on a website outside of the country but can be read in their country, then those who publish elsewhere could do the same thing to impose in personam jurisdiction upon someone outside of the country who attempts to sue or respond to their content.
The website publisher could include language in their right to use clause of their website, perhaps with a click-thru agreement in order to get to it, possibly even via a law similar to UCITA and using that to require someone who has a complaint to use arbitration in a specific city of their choosing, or to sue them only in a specific court, perhaps tossing it back on them and requiring anyone using the site to submit to in personam jurisdiction in their area and agreeing to accept service by mail, and requiring they not sue the website operator in any other place or agreeing to automatic liquidated damages of three times the amount of the judgement and agreeing to allow the website operator to submit the automatic judgement to the local court in the city where the publisher operates and allow it to be collected anywhere in the world without trial, and, waiving any defenses and any other requirements which might be available elsewhere.
Imposing 'long arm' jurisdiction over the Internet for communications or use where the other party has no physical presence is conceivably a two-edged sword and it cuts both ways.
They must have fired there top managers if they raise $40 billion by laying of only 1000 people that means that each now if we could only get other company's to follow suite
This is an additional approximately 1,000 layoffs on top of what was cut at Netscape, among others.
>>IMHO, if he had anything written down they could have taken it when they searched Only if the warrant listed such things. When you go to get a search warrant, you must specifically state which items are being searched for. Any other items you come across during the search are inadmissable as evidence.
Not true. Let's say the police have a warrant to search your house for a stolen piano. They may reasonably search any place (within the area specified by the warrant) where the piano might be.
If one of the cops opens a desk drawer and finds crack cocaine or child pornography, that's inadmissible because it is not reasonable to find a piano in a desk drawer.
If they open a coat closet and find a dead body of someone you had butchered and were eating, same thing - it's not reasonable to expect to find a piano in a coat closet - and that's inadmissible too (unless it's arguable that it is reasonable to presume the door being opened was of a size large enough for a piano to fit in there; a closet in the middle of the house that just looks like another door is probably valid as a place to search but not the closet next to the entrance). Also if the door is too narrow to allow the piano to fit through it would be unreasonable to search that area.
Now, if they find the crack or kiddie porn (or the dead body) inside the stolen piano, that's valid evidence that can be used against you. Same if the contraband is lying in plain sight in the living room of your house, it's legal to use that against you too.
If the warrant says the alleged piano is at 1423 Main Street Apartment A, and the piano is actually in 1425 Main Street Apartment A, the police can't go to that building unless they get a new warrant (unless they saw (or possibly had reason to believe) the piano being moved while the search was in progress in which case they might be able to do so; it's at that point is where the lawyers make their money arguing legal issues.
A few years ago, back before Windows became so popular, the FBI put out a Request For Proposals (RFP), specifically for someone to write them a program to run under MSDOS which would freeze a computer's operating system from writing to a disk, even in the non operating system areas of the drive. The idea being that then the evidence taken from the drive could be considered reliable because it was write protected in such a manner that not even the FBI technicians could change the contents. I read the RFP they put out and while it was quite comprehensive, even covering such things as portable drives and ones that use something like disk manager to boot with, I could think of a couple of ways that no software could protect against. I decided not to relieve them of their ignorance, I wasn't being paid to do so. But they do try.
There is no First Amendment right to spam other people. You may not violate other people's rights in order to exercise yours. You have the right to picket something or to make a statement. But you do not have the right to force others to hear it or to make someone else carry your message at their expense. As the saying goes, your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose.
Under the First Amendment, you have every right to leave information on my doorstep or hang a flyer on my doorknob; doing so does not prevent me from getting into my house and I can always throw away your item or I might read it. You do not have the right to plug something into my wall socket and use my electricity to run your printing press. Nor do you have the right to make me provide the labor for free to bag your circulars. Nor do you have the right to dump your circulars as garbage on my doorstep.
This is where the issue ends: those who send spam(bulk unsolicited messages in enormous quantities) to people are using the valuable property of others without their consent in a manner that also deprives those owners of the use of their own property, e.g. their e-mail boxes.
If someone writes a message in a newsgroup or some place and I disagree with him, a single letter or two from me related to that is part and parcel of what represents freedom of speech and is not unreasonable. But he is under no obligation to read what I have to say, and in any case, it can be implied by his posting the message in a public place that he is willing to accept comments about it.
But if I harvest his address in order to send him a message about something unrelated to what he wrote, I am violating his right to be left alone under other circumstances. The First Amendment gives people the right not to be prevented by the Goverment from speaking out. It does not give me the right to force private parties to listen to me, and certainly not in a matter that deprives them of their right to use of their property.
If I picket a store in a mall, and don't stop people from using it, and don't harass other people there, I am not preventing them from transacting business in the mall and I'm not preventing the store I'm picketing from doing the same. Therefore the First Amendment overrides what would otherwise be trespassing claims.
But a First Amendment right to picket a store in a mall does not allow me to beat up people who cross my picket line and doesn't allow me to prevent the company I'm picketing from continuing to operate.
There is a fine line between what is allowed as far as what can be done where private parties are concerned and ability to communicate; the issue goes on all the time between those who would try to prevent others from saying things they don't agree with on their property (like shopping center owners) by claiming trespass, and those who disagree with their tenants (such as a store in the same mall that sells non-dolphin-safe tuna, for example) by claiming the right to use the First Amendment to picket peacefully.
It is not a very fine line between someone using someone else's property such as their corridors or front space, in order to picket or to complain of their actions, and acting in a manner that prevents them from enjoying their rights too.
If spammers were operating honorably, they wouldn't need to hide behind fake e-mails and other schemes to hide their identities in order to keep from having their accounts closed due to overloading other people's mail systems with unwanted material.
Slashdot Mirror
He sends them a large bill - $15,000 - for his services, and someone in the Accounts Payable department says the bill is too expensive for what he did, and needs to be itemized. So he itemized his charges:
- Making chalk mark, $1.
- Knowing where to put mark, $14,999.
Having itemized it, apparently they paid him. But were they really paying for the chalk mark? What they wanted was the location to drill. The chalk mark was merely a means to solve the problem. I think the same idea applies here.One can sell one's expertise in selecting software as much as one can sell one's expertise in creating it. Or one can sell other things. We sometimes miss this in our industry because it is extremely rare for someone other than the manufacturer of a software product to provide maintenance and support of it. But because a product is open source, a purchaser can find anyone who is capable of doing so to provide maintenance.
In about 50 miles I need to change the oil again in my 1998 Dodge Intrepid because it's been another 3,000 miles. I can do the work myself and perhaps save money, I can pay a third-party perhaps $12 to do it, or I can pay a little more, take it to a dealer of the car to do it. It's a commodity operation and I can get anyone I feel qualified to perform it.
With non-open-source you only have the last option when you need something done (if they even will do it; consider calling up Microsoft and asking for a customized change to Outlook. Better be prepared to either be a huge customer, pay a huge fee, or suck air). With open-source you can get your hands as dirty as you want or you can pay someone else if you don't feel competent (or your organization doesn't have the direct ability) to make the changes. You have choices.
If someone submits a proposal for the providing of a computer system that fits certain qualifications, and I bid on the contract, and provide them with a system which I went down to a computer store and bought, which fits their requirements, I have fulfilled the terms of the contract and can be paid for it - including whatever I charge for the work I did - even if all the "work" I did was to go to the store and buy it. I would respectfully disagree. One can say they want a solution to do something, and someone can say they will offer a solution and the customer pays upon acceptance. Whether the solution is to simply find the software and install it, or the solution is to write the sofware is irrelevant. The only question is whether the customer will pay for what is being done. Perhaps the party who fills the RFP will also be responsible for providing maintenance and upgrades as the customer requests them. There are so many ways you can slice and dice a support contract that whole books have been written about it. So? Just because the 'cost' of the bits are zero doesn't mean that there isn't money to be made supplying it.What is the cost of water these days? I can get it for free from a water fountain, perhaps pay almost nothing for a quart of water out of the tap, perhaps pay $20 for a filter every couple of months if I don't like the taste of tap water, or perhaps pay anywhere from 50c to $3 for a bottle of it in a store. That does not ignore the fact that the original price of the water was probably in the neighborhood of 1/10 of 1c per gallon from a public utility or a municipal water district. For all intents and purposes the original price of the water might as well be considered 'free' yet that doesn't stop companies from making money 'selling' water that cost them next to nothing to obtain.
Perhaps the customer pays for having the supplier provide and deliver 20,000 CDs of the software to sites so everyone has a copy instead of clogging network usage downloading it from servers. Or pays for a customized installer where the original product didn't have one or it's too complicated. Or pays for special services to go with it, like paying not only for the software but having someone write documentation. Or train people in how to use it. Or train their technical staff in how to support it. Or doing the support themselves. Or that the customer pays the supplier for finding the precise package that best fits their needs because the supplier knows what products are better for their particular circumstances.
Maybe, maybe not. It's possible that the particular software might be purchased as a package deal in which the supplier also does contract maintenance on it because perhaps their inhouse staff is too busy, or doesn't have the expertise in handling it.Let's say the Sixth National Bank wants to stop paying for Microsoft Exchange as their mail server and client licenses for Microsoft Outlook. I offer to provide them with an equivalent functionality using a Linux box running QMail (let's say that they want a highly reliable e-mail system so that eliminates use of Sendmail) and include for the client end some Windows port of an open-source client or group of clients that originally ran on KDE or GNOME, for less money than it would cost to have one person at the bank to maintain it because the maintenance I can offer on an as-needed basis to several companies.
The bank has people who could do the work inhouse but they are better suited handling the stuff that is the bank's core expertise (handling checking accounts and the billing of outrageous fees on those checking accounts), and the bank can pay me to provide them with updates and added functionality without having to have people doing work that isn't part of their core competency, BUT with the additional advantage that since the product is open source if I decide to quit, they can find someone else to do it or they could do it themselves if they choose to do so.
Not necessarily, given what I have stated above. Remember, the customer is buying a solution to a problem where the solution includes computer software. The Software is not what the customer is 'buying'; what the customer is buying is the solution to their problem. Just because the software is 'free' doesn't mean there isn't money to be made. Remember, in the shape of the whole picture, nobody buys software anyway. They buy a solution to a problem for which the means in this particular case is a software package.Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
If it is even necessary to have a business license - which may not be likely for work done in the privacy of one's home since there are no 'visitors' to a site when the item to be produced is delivered electronically and thus no issue to trigger the need for a business license - we are probably talking about $100 a year or less, which can be incorporated into the negotiated price of the contract if necessary.
This is a non-sequitur for the reasons stated above. You have not shown that they are not going to pay for the work they want done. Again, you seem to have jumped to some unreasonable conclusions which I have answered in exhaustive detail above so I won't bore people by repeating them. So presumably if one is not a contracting firm the work they do isn't legitimate? I find it a little hard to accept that it is unreasonable to ask individuals to do small projects which might only require part-time work of one or a few people and pay them accordingly, in the same way and manner that magazines and newspapers have been hiring free-lance writers for centuries.Why is this time-honored practice of hiring people to do writing remotely somehow perfectly reasonable when the writing is a book, an article or a press release, but somehow it becomes less 'legitimate' when the writing is a software package instead of, say, a professional textbook or an article requiring specialized research?
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
I can get to msn.com using Netscape 6.
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
If this equipment is that important - and we know it is from the cost to replace it - why isn't it even worth the cost of one clerk at minimum wage around the clock to be able to check on things there? Someone once pointed out that Illinois Bell Telephone ended up spending millions because of the fire, hundreds of times more than it would have cost to have have had a single person present on each of 3 shifts, to provide a 24/7 presence in that building for the next 100 years.
Someone who claims that telephone service is distributed should look again; I've never found a telephone company that operated more than one central office for an area and in some cases trying to combine them in larger and ever larger buildings until the central office for an area might be 40 miles away, yet still continuing the previous rate structure - which may have been created 30, 40, or 50 years ago or more - so that a call to another phone connected to a different switch in the same building is a toll call because it's in a different rate center.
If all the mergers and acquisitions of telephone companies by each other was supposed to benefit the consumer, why is phone service more expensive than ever?
Paul Robinson < Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us
Actually, you have it backwards; supposedly, the affiant claims in the brief that the keylogging system did not record anything sent to or from the modem.
Paul Robinson <postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
The next time it might not be a government agency legitimately monitoring a suspected criminal; it might be some smart crook monitoring someone with something valuable to steal. Or worse, some government spying on and/or attempting to harass or intimidate dissidents. (And with the stepped-up efforts to destroy civil rights protections and evicerate the constitution, it might not even be a different governemt doing so.)
Paul Robinson <postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
Maybe that is an appropriate action given that people in the military lose some civil rights when they enlist (whether they should or not is an issue I won't raise right now), and it might be necessary to prevent disclosure of some military secrets, but if you're going that route, be honest and say so instead of trying to hide what you're doing; otherwise those who know how these things work will point out two things: first, if you're supposed to know technology as part of your job, you're incompetent, and second, that you're lying. I think either the Web at that time was of minor importance or hadn't been invented or people would have realized how ridiculous the idea was.
I said then that I thought the idea was stupid and it's even stupider now. The whole point of having access to the Internet is to provide significant resources to people for their use as it relates to what they are doing (or in this case, whatever they are working on.)
For some reason this reminds me of the blocking systems imposed by the Church of Scientology to keep their members from reading anti-church material on-line. I don't know why, but for some reason I have this suspicion that the real purpose is more to keep those on the private network away from us and our thoughts rather than to supposedly protect government networks from disruption.
Paul Robinson < postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
Now if you're talking about capturing the screen as it is being drawn that would take a lot of computing power because of saving the screen image on every change - and trying to only capture the part that changes might be a problem due to the comparisons - but there's probably a way to do it if someone thinks about how screens are drawn.
Since Windows already has it, and I think has had it since 3.0, this should already have been implemented in X by now. I'm surprised it hasn't. I agree. Some of these suggestions may be very difficult but many of them are or have already been accomplished in one form or another. Often if a change looks too hard it will be rejected because there are other things which appear to be more fun and less drudgery than some suggestions. Since the people doing the changes are all (unpaid) volunteers, it's kinda hard to get them to do something which might not be much fun to accomplish. And if you really want to do something to make X-based systems a desirable choice over Windows those who can develop things for it should start thinking about these and other ideas because we have the technology available to us, because the sources are open; something that can't be said about Windows.Paul Robinson Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us
As a professional programmer for the last 22-years, let me state that I don't think most programmers are the extremely industrious kind that want to do things for the sake of doing them unless either they are being paid for it or it's a real fun thing to do or something they really want to do. Thus we can characterize programmers as somewhat "lazy" (in a non-perjorative way) in that they're not going to redo tons of work already done by someone else. (In fact, if done consistently this is a good trait in programmers; it means they tend to use predesigned libraries for various features instead of rewriting code to do the same thing).
Let us also remember, as it has probably been said here (and in other forums) many times, creating a window manager is a big undertaking; it is the sort of thing that is a severe "scratch the itch" development on the level of writing a good-sized language compiler or perhaps developing an operating system. It's a hell of a lot of work, and it gets done because the developer is
- extremely irritated and/or disappointed by what is currently available
- doesn't like any of them currently existing
- does not know of or cannot find any at all that even close to fits their particular need ("none of them can scratch his itch") and
- none of those currently existing can be tweaked into something close to what they want without major rework
and so he (nothing to criticize women, most programmers are still male) decides to create his own in order to "scratch his itch" (or itches), e.g. to give him the features / reduced bloat / increased capability / skinnability / factor 'x' that the current window managers do not provide him.I use Windows 2000 for what I get paid to do. On Linux I have used both KDE and GNOME and I would honestly say that there isn't more than a dime's bit of difference between the three of them as far as a user running applications is concerned. I haven't tried many of the alternative ones but I'm sure they all pretty much do the job of providing a means to log onto the system and start applications to do things on the system. And beyond that it's a matter of extra features which may or may not be important to have in a window manager (applications like Calendar, skinnability, type of activator buttons, means for adding new applications, what icons do etc.) depending on how enthusiastic / spaced out on caffeine / loud the people who program the features into and/or use the particular WM scream / beg / offer bribes for it.
I would say it's pretty hard to find a window manager that won't provide perhaps 80% of what you need and as such for most people it's "good enough" to get by without writing one of your own or of taking one that is "good enough" and doing some tweaks to make it so. Since most window managers are pretty "tweakable" just from the window manager's management console or via configuration files, I believe the need to write code to provide something that isn't there has been substantially reduced from what would otherwise be necessary.
Paul Robinson postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us
Your compiler is going to have to exceeed the capability and/or performance of the free/open compilers by a substantial margin for people to even consider paying for yours (30% or better). The exception might be if you have the kind of budget for advertising that you can confuse the public. But then if that was the case you'd be doing what companies that do have that kind of budget do. Or perhaps I should say 'company' since there's probably only one - we all know who it is - that has that kind of money, and it is already selling a C compiler. And it has a well-known disparaging opinion of the GPL.
I think some of the ideas on here were good ones (some of these may be mine and some are a summary of what I've seen posted here):
- Offer the compiler free for GPLed applications (since most of those projects probably wouldn't have any money for paying for a compiler when there already is a fairly good (not excellent) free one [GCC])
- Include the source code as part of the commercial distribution with the ability to make private (non-distributed) changes without release for those who purchase the product; this gives you a revenue stream from those who also want to develop non-open source applications since they could give away what they are doing if they want, or they can purchase the program, get support and not have to give away what they are doing (this ties into the above comment)
- A commercially supported compiler with a real help desk and a phone number someone can call to solve a problem with it is a strong selling point over a free source compiler where the fixes are being made by unpaid volunteers who may not be as receptive to the needs of a commercial installation using the product
- Bundle the Linux version free with the Windows Version to encourage programmers to get their bosses to buy it for Windows development and they can then play with it for Linux
- Make it clear what advantages are available with your compiler over GCC, e.g. update your benchmarks to include it
- Make sure it is compatible with the most popular current standard libraries used on Linux now (glibc 2.2) and possibly some of the others as an option if this is important
- Provide the option of its own library if that provides better performance; this gives people the option of perhaps sacrificing a little performance for compatibility or using a non-compatible library where you really need to squeeze out the last ounce
- I think the hardest part of coding in C is the amount of "grunt work" people have to do; in the "commercial" version provide more assistance to develop code such as wizards, sample application frameworks, etc., these NOT being available if it is also offered in an open source version, e.g. provide in the licensed version more material which is of a higher value to professional programmers
- Know your audience: who is going to buy this product for use on Linux? This is who you need to target
Paul Robinson <postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>This does not have to be terrorist or violent in nature. Let's give a hypothetical example. Say I'm running a non-violent protest organization that does not believe in war. I do not want to see Americans coming home in body bags and I want to express this opinion in ways that are disapproved by the authorities but I have to make them spectacular or the news won't cover it.
I want to send a message to a certain group in an associate organization to start an act of civil disobedience in some city; let's say I want them to dump body bags full of ketchup in front of some company that makes military ordnance. I don't want to mail anything or call anyone directly because I might be watched or I don't want to be known to be connected with whomever is going to do the demonstration; by setting up my communications correctly I can make it impossible to prove I was responsible for anything.
I may not even know who the members of that cell are, all I need to know is where to send a message. So if they monitor a public newsgroup all I have to do is post a message to it, or have someone post a message to that group. There would be a keyword in the title that they would watch for, and if the message contained the trigger keys such as discussion of a certain topic, they would know it was for them.
Thus it is possible for me to send a message to someone without knowing who they are or where they are; all I need to know is where to put the message. If they want to communicate with me, all they need to know is where to place a message going to me.
You can use technology: the message can be posted on a newsgroup or a weblog like this forum (which makes it impossible to know who has read it and the reader can be anywhere in the world that has computer access), an e-mail mailing list (which the recipient might be able to be discovered but they might or might not be able to prove a connection) or using non-technological means such as posting a note on a bulletin board at a supermarket or an ad in a newspaper we both read (results being the same as posting on a Usenet newsgroup, there's no way to connect us)
On the other hand, maybe it should have had one. Of the 10 Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, only the 3rd Amendment has apparently never had a violation sued over in a court. (Probably coincidence.)
I just hope - futile probably - that the courts would recognize when the constitution is violated - such as would be the case in mandatory key escrow - and refuse to allow the runaway train to continue to railroad people.
--
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>"If justice is only meted out when it is 'easy' or 'convenient' to do so, then the [constitution] isn't worth the parchment it's printed on..."
One of the songs on the Clear Channel's "banned" list is Neil Diamond's America
This makes no sense at all. If anything, this song is probably one of the greatest ones to speak of this country. I would honestly say it is an extremely patriotic song. Excluding this song doesn't make any sense. Unless Clear Channel wants to exclude any reference at all to anyone riding a plane or coming to this country. In any case, if anything, excluding this song is counterproductive.
While technically the products are not precisely in the Public Domain, the effect of the licenses give the users who use it the functional equivalent of a public domain program released with source. Technically it is not, but it's "close enough".
The real effect of open source licensing is more upon developers who want to change things in a particular program - and have the ability to do so - than upon the users who just want to use it.
FaxiS writes:
Why does everyone hate spam?
Because it clogs our e-mail box with messages we don't want and aren't interested in.
Do you send emails to the hosts of every spam message you recieve?
In many cases, doing that will simply cause them to know that you are a valid e-mail address and send even more.
Do you sit down and write letters to the company of every piece of junk mail you get?
No, because sending responses to junk mail through the postal service costs money.
HIT THE BLOODY DELETE BUTTON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You are probably unaware that some people have to pay money for their incoming e-mail, per message and/or per packet. Even if they don't it takes time to determine which is garbage and which is important and most of it is the former.
While I think most spammers deserve at least Summary Execution or even more severe punishment (as soon as I figure out what kind of punishment would be more severe) what it sounds like, is that this company was buying addresses from others where people probably opted in and didn't realize it, then some complained when they got mails and didn't realize they had inadvertantly opted in to something.
It might also include some where the party they bought the E-mail addresses from were in fact spamming and Monster Hut was unaware of it (or claims that they were unaware). But what seems odd to me is that this company apparently was - if the claims are true - using valid return addresses and was clearly identifying whom they were. Two practices that real spammers never do. I agree as well. It seems like the ISP was going to institute a "shut them down first and ask questions later" scenario. That is probably quite valid if someone really is spamming. However the contract they signed - if the trial documents are correct - indicates they knew the company was in the business of sending commercial e-mail where the person agreed to get it. If true, then, it would imply a little more investigation would be needed because there are going to be people who forgot that they joined some of these e-mail opt-in things and then complain about it. I agree as well. In this case, the injunction preserves the status quo, since the court could if it's shown that Monster Hut really was spamming, rule in favor of the ISP. Also, if their customer is really spamming the injunction protects the ISP against retaliation because their upstream providers can't cut their feed due to the practices of the customer because the ISP can say it has no choice because it's under a court order (and if the supplier does something to interfere with that then they can get an order as well or the other provider might conceivably be in contempt of court), and if Monster Hut really was spamming, it's certainly not going to do so now, and if it did, it would be easy enough to check. Also, a trial would certainly provide considerable evidence if they were up to something unsavory.
Reading the court transcript tells me two things that were lacking in this case: make sure you write your contracts carefully and if you have to enforce the contract, get lawyers who know something about how people send messages through the Internet; it looks like the lawyers - on both sides - were about as clueless as a 15-year-old Script Kiddie.
For an Australian Court to rule that a message posted upon a website operated in the United States, by an American company, and directed at readers almost exclusively in the U.S., is, merely because it can be read by someone in Australia, now subject to the jurisdiction of Australian Courts, the start of a dangerous precedent.
If someone imports a copy from the U.S. of the Wall Street Journal into Australia, does that make the publisher liable in Australia for alleged libel on a story in the newspaper?
Perhaps there are assets of Dow Jones & Company somewhere in Australia which the plaintiff in this particular case can attach, but, if not, they would have to come to someplace - most likely the U.S. - and then they'd have to convince an American Court (or whatever country they think they can find assets to attach) to accept the judgement as valid, not necessarily all that easy if the defendant fights it claiming that the courts in Australia have overstepped their jurisdiction.
The issue is even stronger if it was someone who had no presence outside the U.S., who decided not to try and defend what to them was a ridiculous lawsuit and the other party were trying to enforce a default judgement where the website operator didn't show up. The party suing might even be held liable for damages if the suit is considered frivolous or unreasonable.
It is this sort of relatively stupid attempt at an overly Draconian long-arm statute law that will eventually destroy respect for the judiciary and could conceivably backfire.
If the Australian Courts can impose in personam jurisdiction upon someone outside of the country merely because they put something up on a website outside of the country but can be read in their country, then those who publish elsewhere could do the same thing to impose in personam jurisdiction upon someone outside of the country who attempts to sue or respond to their content.
The website publisher could include language in their right to use clause of their website, perhaps with a click-thru agreement in order to get to it, possibly even via a law similar to UCITA and using that to require someone who has a complaint to use arbitration in a specific city of their choosing, or to sue them only in a specific court, perhaps tossing it back on them and requiring anyone using the site to submit to in personam jurisdiction in their area and agreeing to accept service by mail, and requiring they not sue the website operator in any other place or agreeing to automatic liquidated damages of three times the amount of the judgement and agreeing to allow the website operator to submit the automatic judgement to the local court in the city where the publisher operates and allow it to be collected anywhere in the world without trial, and, waiving any defenses and any other requirements which might be available elsewhere.
Imposing 'long arm' jurisdiction over the Internet for communications or use where the other party has no physical presence is conceivably a two-edged sword and it cuts both ways.
Not true. Let's say the police have a warrant to search your house for a stolen piano. They may reasonably search any place (within the area specified by the warrant) where the piano might be.
If one of the cops opens a desk drawer and finds crack cocaine or child pornography, that's inadmissible because it is not reasonable to find a piano in a desk drawer.
If they open a coat closet and find a dead body of someone you had butchered and were eating, same thing - it's not reasonable to expect to find a piano in a coat closet - and that's inadmissible too (unless it's arguable that it is reasonable to presume the door being opened was of a size large enough for a piano to fit in there; a closet in the middle of the house that just looks like another door is probably valid as a place to search but not the closet next to the entrance). Also if the door is too narrow to allow the piano to fit through it would be unreasonable to search that area.
Now, if they find the crack or kiddie porn (or the dead body) inside the stolen piano, that's valid evidence that can be used against you. Same if the contraband is lying in plain sight in the living room of your house, it's legal to use that against you too.
If the warrant says the alleged piano is at 1423 Main Street Apartment A, and the piano is actually in 1425 Main Street Apartment A, the police can't go to that building unless they get a new warrant (unless they saw (or possibly had reason to believe) the piano being moved while the search was in progress in which case they might be able to do so; it's at that point is where the lawyers make their money arguing legal issues.
A few years ago, back before Windows became so popular, the FBI put out a Request For Proposals (RFP), specifically for someone to write them a program to run under MSDOS which would freeze a computer's operating system from writing to a disk, even in the non operating system areas of the drive. The idea being that then the evidence taken from the drive could be considered reliable because it was write protected in such a manner that not even the FBI technicians could change the contents. I read the RFP they put out and while it was quite comprehensive, even covering such things as portable drives and ones that use something like disk manager to boot with, I could think of a couple of ways that no software could protect against. I decided not to relieve them of their ignorance, I wasn't being paid to do so. But they do try.
Under the First Amendment, you have every right to leave information on my doorstep or hang a flyer on my doorknob; doing so does not prevent me from getting into my house and I can always throw away your item or I might read it. You do not have the right to plug something into my wall socket and use my electricity to run your printing press. Nor do you have the right to make me provide the labor for free to bag your circulars. Nor do you have the right to dump your circulars as garbage on my doorstep.
This is where the issue ends: those who send spam(bulk unsolicited messages in enormous quantities) to people are using the valuable property of others without their consent in a manner that also deprives those owners of the use of their own property, e.g. their e-mail boxes.
If someone writes a message in a newsgroup or some place and I disagree with him, a single letter or two from me related to that is part and parcel of what represents freedom of speech and is not unreasonable. But he is under no obligation to read what I have to say, and in any case, it can be implied by his posting the message in a public place that he is willing to accept comments about it.
But if I harvest his address in order to send him a message about something unrelated to what he wrote, I am violating his right to be left alone under other circumstances. The First Amendment gives people the right not to be prevented by the Goverment from speaking out. It does not give me the right to force private parties to listen to me, and certainly not in a matter that deprives them of their right to use of their property.
If I picket a store in a mall, and don't stop people from using it, and don't harass other people there, I am not preventing them from transacting business in the mall and I'm not preventing the store I'm picketing from doing the same. Therefore the First Amendment overrides what would otherwise be trespassing claims.
But a First Amendment right to picket a store in a mall does not allow me to beat up people who cross my picket line and doesn't allow me to prevent the company I'm picketing from continuing to operate.
There is a fine line between what is allowed as far as what can be done where private parties are concerned and ability to communicate; the issue goes on all the time between those who would try to prevent others from saying things they don't agree with on their property (like shopping center owners) by claiming trespass, and those who disagree with their tenants (such as a store in the same mall that sells non-dolphin-safe tuna, for example) by claiming the right to use the First Amendment to picket peacefully.
It is not a very fine line between someone using someone else's property such as their corridors or front space, in order to picket or to complain of their actions, and acting in a manner that prevents them from enjoying their rights too.
If spammers were operating honorably, they wouldn't need to hide behind fake e-mails and other schemes to hide their identities in order to keep from having their accounts closed due to overloading other people's mail systems with unwanted material.