I have to agree that there is an awful lot of complaining around here when people want to get paid for what they do. However, I've been exposed to a really nasty individual with the mindset that people who only use free software are freeloaders and thieves, even if the individual in question is distributing a GPLed program.
The problem is moderation, a large number of very vocal people on both sides of the commercial software "debate" are loud enough to drown out the moderate ones that actually believe both methods have a purpose.
If someone wants to release something for free, great. If someone wants to make money from it, great. If someone wants to come up with a combination of both, even better. But people who go absolutely nuts with righteousness on both sides lose track of the real goal - creating a good product.
Okay, I know this is going to sound a little weird and off-beat, but as I was letting my mind wind down from the sleep-deprived state of quasi-clarity it finds itself in at 3AM the other night, I wondered something to myself.
What is the legal status of source code used in publications where nothing is stated as a license, such as tutorials or instructional snippets?
I would assume the answer to this to largely depend on the medium. Is it copyrighted as part of the book or website it's published on, and is it something that can be incorporated directly into other code? I humbly (and lamely) propose a simple little trick.
Perhaps this might be a case for a new form of GPL, one designed to indicate that code is completely free for use even without keeping a license note in it. I kept thinking of calling it the EGPL for Educational GPL.
The main thing that made me think about this is the unwieldiness of including the full GPL with software if you're only looking at a 1-2K program on a webpage or a page of a book. Perhaps a statement such as...
##This code is released under the EGPL (Insert short URL to license here)
...pointed to a site where the full text (probably less than a paragraph stating that you can do whatever the hell you want, and not even need to redistribute what you do, or include the above statement) is available for perusal. This way you save the distribution hassles of a license that's a formality at any rate.
But of course, it could just be a pointless idea. Like I said, I was tired.:)
It's a pretty good ad, and I hadn't noticed the lack of an IE icon until someone pointed it out. I suspect that may have something to do with Apple/Netscape goodwill rather than ill will toward Microsoft, especially considering that Microsoft Office v.X is so well promoted by the image. Recently Apple switched it's start page default over to a Netscape server, so there's obviously some sort of arrangement between the two of them.
The X icon is definitely a nice touch to push the BSD/Darwin underpinnings. I compiled and ran several X programs for my iBook a while ago, and with a rootless X server and the right windowmanager, it's a really nice combination.
I was hoping this might be an Apple thread that'd stay away from the lame "It's too expensive for me, hmph!" whining people with no sense of TCO seem to cry out, that gets debunked every single time.
There are several ways you can look at this whole debate.
First, you can look at it as a challenge to creative freedom, which the cnet author and several posters have done.
Second, you can look at it as a case of property owners in a highly recognizable situation wanting to protect their unique identity.
Third, you can look at it as advertisers paying for high-profile space, just to see it snared away in a big-budget promotion by direct competition.
I look at it as a combination of the last two. The owners of the property in question were paid a lot of money by the advertisers to slather thier ad crap all over the buildings. They were able to charge all this money precisely because the area is photographed by individuals and film crews so often. The talk about this being a case against the freedom of filmmakers to use a fictional setting is just bunk, it might as well be asking if Microsoft has the freedom to innovate. Why? Because if the movie wanted to use a fictional setting they could have used something other than times square.
And if Microsoft wanted to innovate, they could stop stealing ideas from Apple and everyone else under the sun first. Same damn deal.
Now, what do I think about this case? I don't know. Don't care too much, either. They're only ads. I just can't stand the annoying rhetoric.
Heck, I'm still waiting for a good program to use with OSX to do WarDriving with 802.11b. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any decent software out there that'll do anything with my AirPort card.
Honestly, I can't stand USB mice. I do like my USB keyboard, but every time I use the USB mouse under high load, my pointer gets laggy. To heck with that. I'd vastly prefer legacy for at least that -one- peripheral where the responsiveness of an interrupt driven input device is actually meaningful.
What's really needed are more people learning how to port some of the freeware utilities from Linux and other *nixes over to OSX binaries, using Cocoa. I sure as hell can't do these things, but there're a ton of other developers out there that can.
Mostly what needs to be ported, IMHO, are small things. Network and system monitoring tools that can go in the dock, or other little things like that. Sure, the big stuff would be nice too, but I'm certain there are a ton of little apps that might even only take a few days to port for someone who can get used to Cocoa.
Actually, as a member of the IPCop user mailing list, I'd have to say that any ill-will has been pretty well restrained. The list might occasionally flare with the occasional flame, but the moderators of the list do a pretty good job of keeping it all in check.
IPCop has the goal of planning a large rewrite for the.2 release, and I'm looking forward to seeing where these efforts go. While Smoothwall GPL support seems to have stalled in a few areas (most notably USB Speedtouch modem speeds) IPCop continues with the full effort of the team.
As a potential user of his software, I have the right to be informed about a product I'm going to use - especially if it's something I'll be trusting my network to. As a businessman (which Richard appears to be, far more than a developer), Richard needs to be more in tune with making himself and his product look good.
And I didn't repeatedly ask for a feature, what I said was that the feature in question would suit -my- needs. People seem to think that by saying that, I'm making a demand. That's -really- inaccurate. Also, understand that I did not know that dustmite was in any way related to Smoothwall. He was not listed on the website's list of team members and IRC regulars, so I assumed he was just another user. He never identified himself as anyone with anything to do with the company, which is something that didn't become clear until later.
When I get an email like I did from him not once but -twice-, several hours apart, after sending a rather clear and polite letter about my concerns about the IRC conversation, I get the feeling that this person is -trouble-. So yes, after that I fanned the fires just a bit, and did so intentionally. People like Richard need to be exposed for what they are.
You say I didn't include the IRC log, but I can see you didn't read my site all the way through. I mention in the site and my letters back and forth to Richard that I had no way of acquiring that log, or I would have sent it. I was using the Java-based client on the Smoothwall website, and that didn't even have a cut and paste feature if I recall correctly.
I emailed his ISP (Well, tried to) because he was harassing me after a polite request to stop. He wasn't emailing me anything of substance, he was mailing me threats and invectives. Nothing even remotely constructive.
And anyone who says an argument over -anything- online deserves a false accusation of hacking being called into someone's ISP is nobody I'll be speaking with twice.
Actually, I didn't get slapped down. Some people point out flaws in my dealing with the situation - which I'll admit - but I get emails of support and stories about other people having similar (or worse) experiences.
I consider this to be a good way to warn people about an individual who I don't believe is trustworthy, particularly with regards to something this important to the security of a network.
If he'll call the ISPs of his critics and make false accusations, make groundless threats of legal action, and continue sending emails after repeated requests to cease, he simply personifies the worst things about business in general. And this looks very bad for Open Source.
Well, I said all that I had to say about those conceptions in my above post. I wasn't ignoring him, that much I'll add. I just didn't think the answer I got was much of any answer at all.
But again, my problem with Smoothwall isn't that it didn't give me what I mentioned on the IRC chat. IPCop doesn't give me those things either, but I use it now regardless. The problem is Morrell's attitude, and if you do a little poking around Slashdot stories prior to this one, you'll see that there're -dozens- of people he's treated just as poorly, with far less provocation that I admittly gave him.
Yeah, I'll admit that I understand how that could have looked that way. It wasn't that I had issues with the fact Smoothwall doesn't have those features, but the answer I got was quite rude. People being rude like that honestly tends to bring out the worst in me, a situation I've worked to curb since reviewing that log a few times more than I needed to be somewhat humbled.
My concern in some areas with Smoothwall is that a good deal of the security they had in place at the time of my conflict with them, was based on a ''They'll never get to root anyhow'' mentality. My main suggestion, GCC, is something that could only be exploited from a root login. Honestly, once a root login is compromised, your firewall is essentially useless as a security tool. And seeing how root is claimed to be the only login id available on a Smoothwall system, it would stand to reason that any access would be catastrophic.
However, the crux of my entire line of reasoning was that "for my needs" I'd like a system that had those features. Its perfectly understandable, expected, and encouraged that Smoothwall and other projects target whatever userbase they want to. But by giving me the terse response they did, instead of saying "We're not targeting the small home user who wants a web presence, sorry." it just really rubbed me the wrong way. They could even have left out the "sorry".
That's fine, that's cool, I said as much repeatedly in my correspondence. However, I kept being treated with the same lack of respectable treatment that Richard is increasingly known for. For me, right after the IRC conversation, it became a matter of the lack of courtesy with which I was treated feeding the flames. Pun not intended.
I'll admit to my faults in that exchange, but don't expect the same from Richard or his team. And that, to be honest, is where Smoothwall really fails.
Yep, Morrell is definitely someone to watch out for. He threatens, harasses, and insults practically anyone that doesn't tell him Smoothwall's the greatest thing since using the GPL as a way to fork off to a commercial product after getting overenthusiastic community ego boosting.
He's gone so far as to make legal quasi-threats against me and other critics of his treatment of Smoothwall users. He's driven away enough developers that the IPCop project was formed and seems to have done quite a good job at proving themselves to have intentions of being more than just another forked project. IPCop has performed just wonderfully for me since my abandonment of Smoothwall.
For the morbidly curious, I have an archive of my emailing back and forth with Richard on this webpage.
Actually, the way he most likely intended that wasn't as namecalling, but as a way to point out that one of the big differences between Apple and Microsoft is that Apple products have personality. There's just something about an Apple computer that makes you care about it a lot more from the moment you get it into your home.
In November, I got an Apple G3 iBook. I love that machine. It does what I want it to, it does it smoothly, and with OSX it does it in a way that looks kinda cool. However, OSX isn't the fastest speed demon out there on a G3 processor, and I definitely need more RAM. But I haven't really regretted my purchase yet.
On the other hand, I recently settled a nightmare of support with Best Buy in returning an IBM laptop. I hated that thing. It was a total waste of my money. In exchange for it, I brought home a Sony VAIO with a Pentium 4 1.6. I can't respect this machine as hard as I try. I've actually had dreams about returning it and getting something else. Not daydreams, full-on-REM-stage dreams. It was a downer when I got up that morning and realized it'd been over two weeks and I couldn't take it back anyhow.
And this is a Sony, probably the closest thing to a "designer" line in the PC market.
Apple machines have a soul, it's there. But it's next to impossible to find a PC with a Microsoft OS that has one. I've even got two 50Mhz Sparc machines that I keep running for no real reason here at home, but the perfectly good 1Ghz Athlon that the Sony supplanted is powered down, dejected. My machine for several years, if you count it from the oldest component. Yet I find it hard to bother messing with it anymore. My iBook on the other hand... Yeah. I like it a lot. Still.
First off, I just wonder how they're going to make this all enviro-safe, considering that they're talking about a disposable commodity. With all the films and coatings, you have to hope these things can be recycled.
Second, it just doesn't strike me that a disc couldn't simply be 'fixed'. *spritz spritz*, a few blasts of a nice clear heat-resistant coating and you've got a sealed item that'd still fit in the tolerances of a DVD drive. I bet it only takes a few days, if these things actually make it to market, before someone discovers what can of stuff to buy to make instant-preservations.
I've been on the net as a hobbyist and wannabe-geek for over a decade now, which to many people on Slashdot might not seem all that impressive. And in a technical scheme of mind, it isn't. But when I was 16 years old and hiding in my own apartment from the morons inhabiting the real world in my area, the Internet became my primary conduit to any sort of community.
First it was MUDs, then MUSH. As technology advanced, the only things I really valued were managing to have a computer that would let me play some of the latest games and let me run a terminal window to one of the communities I practically grew up on. For years, despite the balkanization of the net brought about by deregulation and the emergence of the national ISPs, I found community in those textual realms. Unfortunately, as time has gone on and the quality of people online has degraded further away from those of us with an innate interest in the concept and technology toward today's "All Aboard" culture. For me, the heart of the net was something I felt innately, but always had a hard time placing when the time came. Was it in the exposure I had to people of other cultures and locations? Was it the close friends I made and maintained to this day? Both. But furthermore, it was a place where I felt like I had something in common with -everyone- else there. We were all on the Internet instead of doing "normal" things.
Now, the "normal" thing to do is AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, email... My mother has an Internet account. I can no longer say that I have something in common with everyone, and in that way the heart of the net has just seemed to slow it's beat. The balkanization has come around to completion, and it just doesn't feel quite right anymore. I seek out other communities, but the spirit just isn't there. I can't tell if it's because I've aged, the Internet has grown, or a combination of both.
I feel like there's a need to create a new community on top of the Internet, some massive VPN of exclusive, open sourced applications and services meant to bring people together without fear of corporate takeover. A sort of Open Internet. Maybe this way we can reclaim something like what existed before the rise of commercialism.
Hey, now that's a pretty cool thought. This nice little Sparc Classic I just got up and running a couple weeks ago... Hmmm... A little neon, a window... One of those biohazard stickers, maybe a marble paint job. Oh yeah, baby. A SMOKIN' 50Mhz Sparc.
I sense a new website coming, someday... somewhere.
Sure, it's great to take the latest and greatest chips out there and boost the heck out of 'em. But what I want to see are some overclocks of things from a while back. Let's see about pumping some juice through a Pentium 100, or even a 6502C in a Commodore 64. Let's REALLY get impatient for actual powerful, stable chips, and take some PowerPC chips to the tank o' coolant.
You also never see anyone talking about overclocking non-x86 architectures. I'd assume this is due to a lack of BIOS with that kind of speed support, and motherboards without jumpers for clock speeds. But why let that stop us, right?
Because, honestly, by that point there was a part of me that -did- want to give him a little more rope to hang himself with. And also, about two mails into it, it ceased to have any relation whatsoever to GCC or even SmoothWall itself, and became a harassment issue. Mea culpa.
However, I'd have to say overall the experience has been positive in what kind of response was given. There've been a few trolls, and even an AC post that I -think- was Dick. I figure, with as much whining as Dick does about SmoothWall and how much money he's dumped into it, with only a shred of donations... well, I figure that I'll outlast him. And that makes me smile.
Well, the problem isn't with me needing to grow some skin, it's with people needing to understand just what sort of person Richard Morrell is. If you're going to consider trusting your security to someone who uses tactics like these, both in a personal manner and in his use of Open Source as an excuse to try and make a fast buck, you should be aware of the situation. His blatant demand for donation before support is a really poor example for the Open Source community to be showing, a true poster child for unpleasantness.
It costs me just a little bit of time to whip up a page like mine, and even less time to respond to comments like this. Richard didn't threaten lawsuits so much as he threatened (and attempted) to have me falsely accused of hacking. He threatened, repeatedly to "make this personal". My only point in bringing up the specter of legal action was to simply get that on record, if nothing else, to show the scorn and rudeness so often displayed in Richard's correspondence. I have seen other erratic behavior from Richard and others at SmoothWall, such as posting to a mailing list by both Richard and one other, saying that the developers of SmoothWall don't read the list(!). Not only this, but Richard and said other team member were -regulars- on the list.
As I've said a number of times, I may have made some mistakes. But nothing deserving of what occurred, and I'm quite pleased that the majority of responses from people who've read the site have been positive and in some cases informative.
Prior to the 14th, I had no knowledge of the SourceForge forked project "IPCop", and am pleased to say that I wish that team well, and hope that other members of the SmoothWall team with less of a temper issue find a more respectable leader.
Re:But this way Microsoft doesn't lose money...
on
X-Box Emulated (Not)
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· Score: 2
Actually, I intended to say that Microsoft loses money in the first sentence of my post, but the fact I'm feeling rather sick today caused a brainfart where I just didn't preview. My bad.
Microsoft does indeed make money on the games, but lose it on the hardware. For that reason, I'll be much more interested in a PC emulator for X-Box than I will be in something the other way around.
After all, for half the cost of a Wal-Mart grade PC from HP, you can get a decently powerful PC with an incredible graphics card that also plays DVDs and some pretty decent video games.
Sigh, yes, that last post was pretty embarassing. I'm going to go soak my head in ice water now.
Slashdot Mirror
Try as I might, I just can't quite parse that...
I have to agree that there is an awful lot of complaining around here when people want to get paid for what they do. However, I've been exposed to a really nasty individual with the mindset that people who only use free software are freeloaders and thieves, even if the individual in question is distributing a GPLed program.
The problem is moderation, a large number of very vocal people on both sides of the commercial software "debate" are loud enough to drown out the moderate ones that actually believe both methods have a purpose.
If someone wants to release something for free, great. If someone wants to make money from it, great. If someone wants to come up with a combination of both, even better. But people who go absolutely nuts with righteousness on both sides lose track of the real goal - creating a good product.
Okay, I know this is going to sound a little weird and off-beat, but as I was letting my mind wind down from the sleep-deprived state of quasi-clarity it finds itself in at 3AM the other night, I wondered something to myself.
:)
What is the legal status of source code used in publications where nothing is stated as a license, such as tutorials or instructional snippets?
I would assume the answer to this to largely depend on the medium. Is it copyrighted as part of the book or website it's published on, and is it something that can be incorporated directly into other code? I humbly (and lamely) propose a simple little trick.
Perhaps this might be a case for a new form of GPL, one designed to indicate that code is completely free for use even without keeping a license note in it. I kept thinking of calling it the EGPL for Educational GPL.
The main thing that made me think about this is the unwieldiness of including the full GPL with software if you're only looking at a 1-2K program on a webpage or a page of a book. Perhaps a statement such as...
##This code is released under the EGPL (Insert short URL to license here)
...pointed to a site where the full text (probably less than a paragraph stating that you can do whatever the hell you want, and not even need to redistribute what you do, or include the above statement) is available for perusal. This way you save the distribution hassles of a license that's a formality at any rate.
But of course, it could just be a pointless idea. Like I said, I was tired.
It's a pretty good ad, and I hadn't noticed the lack of an IE icon until someone pointed it out. I suspect that may have something to do with Apple/Netscape goodwill rather than ill will toward Microsoft, especially considering that Microsoft Office v.X is so well promoted by the image. Recently Apple switched it's start page default over to a Netscape server, so there's obviously some sort of arrangement between the two of them.
The X icon is definitely a nice touch to push the BSD/Darwin underpinnings. I compiled and ran several X programs for my iBook a while ago, and with a rootless X server and the right windowmanager, it's a really nice combination.
I was hoping this might be an Apple thread that'd stay away from the lame "It's too expensive for me, hmph!" whining people with no sense of TCO seem to cry out, that gets debunked every single time.
Can't argue that at all. Like I said, the rhetoric was what bugged me. :)
There are several ways you can look at this whole debate.
First, you can look at it as a challenge to creative freedom, which the cnet author and several posters have done.
Second, you can look at it as a case of property owners in a highly recognizable situation wanting to protect their unique identity.
Third, you can look at it as advertisers paying for high-profile space, just to see it snared away in a big-budget promotion by direct competition.
I look at it as a combination of the last two. The owners of the property in question were paid a lot of money by the advertisers to slather thier ad crap all over the buildings. They were able to charge all this money precisely because the area is photographed by individuals and film crews so often. The talk about this being a case against the freedom of filmmakers to use a fictional setting is just bunk, it might as well be asking if Microsoft has the freedom to innovate. Why? Because if the movie wanted to use a fictional setting they could have used something other than times square.
And if Microsoft wanted to innovate, they could stop stealing ideas from Apple and everyone else under the sun first. Same damn deal.
Now, what do I think about this case? I don't know. Don't care too much, either. They're only ads. I just can't stand the annoying rhetoric.
Heck, I'm still waiting for a good program to use with OSX to do WarDriving with 802.11b. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any decent software out there that'll do anything with my AirPort card.
Honestly, I can't stand USB mice. I do like my USB keyboard, but every time I use the USB mouse under high load, my pointer gets laggy. To heck with that. I'd vastly prefer legacy for at least that -one- peripheral where the responsiveness of an interrupt driven input device is actually meaningful.
What's really needed are more people learning how to port some of the freeware utilities from Linux and other *nixes over to OSX binaries, using Cocoa. I sure as hell can't do these things, but there're a ton of other developers out there that can.
Mostly what needs to be ported, IMHO, are small things. Network and system monitoring tools that can go in the dock, or other little things like that. Sure, the big stuff would be nice too, but I'm certain there are a ton of little apps that might even only take a few days to port for someone who can get used to Cocoa.
Actually, as a member of the IPCop user mailing list, I'd have to say that any ill-will has been pretty well restrained. The list might occasionally flare with the occasional flame, but the moderators of the list do a pretty good job of keeping it all in check.
.2 release, and I'm looking forward to seeing where these efforts go. While Smoothwall GPL support seems to have stalled in a few areas (most notably USB Speedtouch modem speeds) IPCop continues with the full effort of the team.
IPCop has the goal of planning a large rewrite for the
As a potential user of his software, I have the right to be informed about a product I'm going to use - especially if it's something I'll be trusting my network to. As a businessman (which Richard appears to be, far more than a developer), Richard needs to be more in tune with making himself and his product look good.
And I didn't repeatedly ask for a feature, what I said was that the feature in question would suit -my- needs. People seem to think that by saying that, I'm making a demand. That's -really- inaccurate. Also, understand that I did not know that dustmite was in any way related to Smoothwall. He was not listed on the website's list of team members and IRC regulars, so I assumed he was just another user. He never identified himself as anyone with anything to do with the company, which is something that didn't become clear until later.
When I get an email like I did from him not once but -twice-, several hours apart, after sending a rather clear and polite letter about my concerns about the IRC conversation, I get the feeling that this person is -trouble-. So yes, after that I fanned the fires just a bit, and did so intentionally. People like Richard need to be exposed for what they are.
You say I didn't include the IRC log, but I can see you didn't read my site all the way through. I mention in the site and my letters back and forth to Richard that I had no way of acquiring that log, or I would have sent it. I was using the Java-based client on the Smoothwall website, and that didn't even have a cut and paste feature if I recall correctly.
I emailed his ISP (Well, tried to) because he was harassing me after a polite request to stop. He wasn't emailing me anything of substance, he was mailing me threats and invectives. Nothing even remotely constructive.
And anyone who says an argument over -anything- online deserves a false accusation of hacking being called into someone's ISP is nobody I'll be speaking with twice.
Actually, I didn't get slapped down. Some people point out flaws in my dealing with the situation - which I'll admit - but I get emails of support and stories about other people having similar (or worse) experiences.
I consider this to be a good way to warn people about an individual who I don't believe is trustworthy, particularly with regards to something this important to the security of a network.
If he'll call the ISPs of his critics and make false accusations, make groundless threats of legal action, and continue sending emails after repeated requests to cease, he simply personifies the worst things about business in general. And this looks very bad for Open Source.
Well, I said all that I had to say about those conceptions in my above post. I wasn't ignoring him, that much I'll add. I just didn't think the answer I got was much of any answer at all.
But again, my problem with Smoothwall isn't that it didn't give me what I mentioned on the IRC chat. IPCop doesn't give me those things either, but I use it now regardless. The problem is Morrell's attitude, and if you do a little poking around Slashdot stories prior to this one, you'll see that there're -dozens- of people he's treated just as poorly, with far less provocation that I admittly gave him.
Yeah, I'll admit that I understand how that could have looked that way. It wasn't that I had issues with the fact Smoothwall doesn't have those features, but the answer I got was quite rude. People being rude like that honestly tends to bring out the worst in me, a situation I've worked to curb since reviewing that log a few times more than I needed to be somewhat humbled.
My concern in some areas with Smoothwall is that a good deal of the security they had in place at the time of my conflict with them, was based on a ''They'll never get to root anyhow'' mentality. My main suggestion, GCC, is something that could only be exploited from a root login. Honestly, once a root login is compromised, your firewall is essentially useless as a security tool. And seeing how root is claimed to be the only login id available on a Smoothwall system, it would stand to reason that any access would be catastrophic.
However, the crux of my entire line of reasoning was that "for my needs" I'd like a system that had those features. Its perfectly understandable, expected, and encouraged that Smoothwall and other projects target whatever userbase they want to. But by giving me the terse response they did, instead of saying "We're not targeting the small home user who wants a web presence, sorry." it just really rubbed me the wrong way. They could even have left out the "sorry".
That's fine, that's cool, I said as much repeatedly in my correspondence. However, I kept being treated with the same lack of respectable treatment that Richard is increasingly known for. For me, right after the IRC conversation, it became a matter of the lack of courtesy with which I was treated feeding the flames. Pun not intended.
I'll admit to my faults in that exchange, but don't expect the same from Richard or his team. And that, to be honest, is where Smoothwall really fails.
My bad.
Here is the correct link.
Yep, Morrell is definitely someone to watch out for. He threatens, harasses, and insults practically anyone that doesn't tell him Smoothwall's the greatest thing since using the GPL as a way to fork off to a commercial product after getting overenthusiastic community ego boosting.
He's gone so far as to make legal quasi-threats against me and other critics of his treatment of Smoothwall users. He's driven away enough developers that the IPCop project was formed and seems to have done quite a good job at proving themselves to have intentions of being more than just another forked project. IPCop has performed just wonderfully for me since my abandonment of Smoothwall.
For the morbidly curious, I have an archive of my emailing back and forth with Richard on this webpage.
The Miami-Dade Bomb Squad patch actually has that line on it.
If you see us running...
... Catch up!
Actually, the way he most likely intended that wasn't as namecalling, but as a way to point out that one of the big differences between Apple and Microsoft is that Apple products have personality. There's just something about an Apple computer that makes you care about it a lot more from the moment you get it into your home.
In November, I got an Apple G3 iBook. I love that machine. It does what I want it to, it does it smoothly, and with OSX it does it in a way that looks kinda cool. However, OSX isn't the fastest speed demon out there on a G3 processor, and I definitely need more RAM. But I haven't really regretted my purchase yet.
On the other hand, I recently settled a nightmare of support with Best Buy in returning an IBM laptop. I hated that thing. It was a total waste of my money. In exchange for it, I brought home a Sony VAIO with a Pentium 4 1.6. I can't respect this machine as hard as I try. I've actually had dreams about returning it and getting something else. Not daydreams, full-on-REM-stage dreams. It was a downer when I got up that morning and realized it'd been over two weeks and I couldn't take it back anyhow.
And this is a Sony, probably the closest thing to a "designer" line in the PC market.
Apple machines have a soul, it's there. But it's next to impossible to find a PC with a Microsoft OS that has one. I've even got two 50Mhz Sparc machines that I keep running for no real reason here at home, but the perfectly good 1Ghz Athlon that the Sony supplanted is powered down, dejected. My machine for several years, if you count it from the oldest component. Yet I find it hard to bother messing with it anymore. My iBook on the other hand... Yeah. I like it a lot. Still.
First off, I just wonder how they're going to make this all enviro-safe, considering that they're talking about a disposable commodity. With all the films and coatings, you have to hope these things can be recycled.
Second, it just doesn't strike me that a disc couldn't simply be 'fixed'. *spritz spritz*, a few blasts of a nice clear heat-resistant coating and you've got a sealed item that'd still fit in the tolerances of a DVD drive. I bet it only takes a few days, if these things actually make it to market, before someone discovers what can of stuff to buy to make instant-preservations.
I've been on the net as a hobbyist and wannabe-geek for over a decade now, which to many people on Slashdot might not seem all that impressive. And in a technical scheme of mind, it isn't. But when I was 16 years old and hiding in my own apartment from the morons inhabiting the real world in my area, the Internet became my primary conduit to any sort of community.
First it was MUDs, then MUSH. As technology advanced, the only things I really valued were managing to have a computer that would let me play some of the latest games and let me run a terminal window to one of the communities I practically grew up on. For years, despite the balkanization of the net brought about by deregulation and the emergence of the national ISPs, I found community in those textual realms. Unfortunately, as time has gone on and the quality of people online has degraded further away from those of us with an innate interest in the concept and technology toward today's "All Aboard" culture. For me, the heart of the net was something I felt innately, but always had a hard time placing when the time came. Was it in the exposure I had to people of other cultures and locations? Was it the close friends I made and maintained to this day? Both. But furthermore, it was a place where I felt like I had something in common with -everyone- else there. We were all on the Internet instead of doing "normal" things.
Now, the "normal" thing to do is AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, email... My mother has an Internet account. I can no longer say that I have something in common with everyone, and in that way the heart of the net has just seemed to slow it's beat. The balkanization has come around to completion, and it just doesn't feel quite right anymore. I seek out other communities, but the spirit just isn't there. I can't tell if it's because I've aged, the Internet has grown, or a combination of both.
I feel like there's a need to create a new community on top of the Internet, some massive VPN of exclusive, open sourced applications and services meant to bring people together without fear of corporate takeover. A sort of Open Internet. Maybe this way we can reclaim something like what existed before the rise of commercialism.
Hey, now that's a pretty cool thought. This nice little Sparc Classic I just got up and running a couple weeks ago... Hmmm... A little neon, a window... One of those biohazard stickers, maybe a marble paint job. Oh yeah, baby. A SMOKIN' 50Mhz Sparc.
I sense a new website coming, someday... somewhere.
Sure, it's great to take the latest and greatest chips out there and boost the heck out of 'em. But what I want to see are some overclocks of things from a while back. Let's see about pumping some juice through a Pentium 100, or even a 6502C in a Commodore 64. Let's REALLY get impatient for actual powerful, stable chips, and take some PowerPC chips to the tank o' coolant.
You also never see anyone talking about overclocking non-x86 architectures. I'd assume this is due to a lack of BIOS with that kind of speed support, and motherboards without jumpers for clock speeds. But why let that stop us, right?
*insert sarcasm drip here, 50ml hourly*
Because, honestly, by that point there was a part of me that -did- want to give him a little more rope to hang himself with. And also, about two mails into it, it ceased to have any relation whatsoever to GCC or even SmoothWall itself, and became a harassment issue. Mea culpa.
However, I'd have to say overall the experience has been positive in what kind of response was given. There've been a few trolls, and even an AC post that I -think- was Dick. I figure, with as much whining as Dick does about SmoothWall and how much money he's dumped into it, with only a shred of donations... well, I figure that I'll outlast him. And that makes me smile.
Well, the problem isn't with me needing to grow some skin, it's with people needing to understand just what sort of person Richard Morrell is. If you're going to consider trusting your security to someone who uses tactics like these, both in a personal manner and in his use of Open Source as an excuse to try and make a fast buck, you should be aware of the situation. His blatant demand for donation before support is a really poor example for the Open Source community to be showing, a true poster child for unpleasantness.
It costs me just a little bit of time to whip up a page like mine, and even less time to respond to comments like this. Richard didn't threaten lawsuits so much as he threatened (and attempted) to have me falsely accused of hacking. He threatened, repeatedly to "make this personal". My only point in bringing up the specter of legal action was to simply get that on record, if nothing else, to show the scorn and rudeness so often displayed in Richard's correspondence. I have seen other erratic behavior from Richard and others at SmoothWall, such as posting to a mailing list by both Richard and one other, saying that the developers of SmoothWall don't read the list(!). Not only this, but Richard and said other team member were -regulars- on the list.
As I've said a number of times, I may have made some mistakes. But nothing deserving of what occurred, and I'm quite pleased that the majority of responses from people who've read the site have been positive and in some cases informative.
Prior to the 14th, I had no knowledge of the SourceForge forked project "IPCop", and am pleased to say that I wish that team well, and hope that other members of the SmoothWall team with less of a temper issue find a more respectable leader.
Actually, I intended to say that Microsoft loses money in the first sentence of my post, but the fact I'm feeling rather sick today caused a brainfart where I just didn't preview. My bad.
Microsoft does indeed make money on the games, but lose it on the hardware. For that reason, I'll be much more interested in a PC emulator for X-Box than I will be in something the other way around.
After all, for half the cost of a Wal-Mart grade PC from HP, you can get a decently powerful PC with an incredible graphics card that also plays DVDs and some pretty decent video games.
Sigh, yes, that last post was pretty embarassing. I'm going to go soak my head in ice water now.