And your point is? Or are you just trolling? The topic was free software in general, not just Linux.
As long as all standards are kept open, both proprietary and free (beer and otherwise) programs can at least communicate with each other. This way you won't become "locked in" even if you're using a closed source program. People who think open source Linux programs are shitty, can then use more polished commercial programs and still exchange information with Linux users. Closed standards, however, always lock you in. Hence, the real problem is with closed, proprietary standards not programs.
Regarding Linux anarchy, if you read the Linux Kernel mailing-list regularly, you'd soon realize that, as appealing as the idea is, Linux developement can hardly be called an anarchy. Anarchy implies that there is no central authority, which is - obviously - not true in this case.
You'd still have to filter the signal to get rid of 60 Hz line hum and other regular components (fans, hard drive,...).
Go nuclear and fix up a radiation detector to your serial-port! Besides the noise being truly random, the setup is also something that only a true geek would consider building.
Of course, if you want something less exotic, you can use network traffic, video memory, etc. to feed the enthropy pool.
We want Dual PIII boxes for cheap. Intel has listened and responded.
Actually, dual boxes are boring... what I want is an inexpensive 4-way system with a well scaling and fast bus architecture.;)
Anyway, you're right about competition being good for consumer, but for some reason it just hasn't happened here, yet. Ever since Athlon's breakthrough, I've been waiting (in vain) for Intel to announce price-cuts.
I don't quite understand why, as it is obvious that Intel should be cutting their chip prices now. With AMD ramping up its production of chips costing only about 50-75% as compared to Intel processors, Intel is going to lose. They are not going to lose only chunks of the low-end market, but when AMD multiprocessor mobos arrive they are also going to get hurt in the high-end market. And in the long run that's where I think it's going to hurt them the most. Unless, of course, they cut their prices. This recent confusion about PIII SMP-capability and the mess with i820 doesn't do them any good, either.
What's this thing I've heard about having to remove the battery from a GSM phone to completely silence it? Switching it off isn't enough? What is it sending/receiving even after being switched off?
Since I have nothing to hide this does not concern me, and should not concern you unless you have something to hide.
So, if something doesn't bother you it shouldn't bother anyone else either? And if it bothers someone, he/she must be a criminal.
Tell me, is it nice living in such a fantasy world of pure black and white?
You say you don't have things to hide. Well, congratulations. However, most of us do have things we prefer to keep away from prying eyes. Nothing criminal. Just petty, boring details such as our credit card number, sex life, political/religious affiliation, medical history and other things which in the end paint rather a detailed picture of each of us.
And you know what. Just as I am entitled to decide how much and which of my own feelings I show to others, I am also within my rights to keep these other petty details of my life secret. It's not a question of trying to hide something dirty. It's about controlling your own life and not letting other people run it for you. Being able to say "fuck you" to aggressive salesmen/advertisers, politicians or law enforcement agents trying to reach too far into your personal space.
I'm supposed to be writing my PhD thesis at home after work, but for the last few weeks I've wasted most of the available time (=getting home->falling asleep at the terminal) time reading Slashdot and day-dreaming about building my own Beowulf-cluster.
(HOMER VOICE):
Mmmm.... a dozen, black, rack-mounted 2U:s with dual 750 MHz 21264s inside...
but a C&D letter is NOT legal action, it's just a damned letter.
That's right.
I got a C&D letter from MPAA lawyers telling me to remove deCSS from my account. They sent a copy of the letter to our sysadms, too.
Administrators threw their copy straight to the bin ("Ridiculous! We have no intention of doing any of this crap."). I also sent a short to-the-point e-mail to the address I found on C&D letter telling basically that "I do not admit any wrongdoing nor do I recognize your authority. I will not comply."
Today a copy of the MPAA letter is hanging on my cubicle wall like a trophy of some kind - right next to the news of Microsoft being found a monopoly and its practises anti-competetive. Haven't heard from MPAA ever since.
While that particular piece of Microsoft news cheers me up, the MPAA letter is there to remind me of the corporate crap that's now infecting the net. It just never ends. Especially if you don't do anything to anything about it.
So ya thought ya might like to go to the show. To feel the warm thrill of confusion, that special geek glow. got me some bad news for you, Sunshine. Roblimo isn't well, he stayed back at the hotel, And he sent us along as a surrogate hand. We're gonna find out where you fans really stand.
Are there any MCSEs on the slashdot tonight? Get 'em up against the wall. -- 'Gainst the wall! And that one with all the karma, he don't look right to me. Get him up against the wall. -- 'Gainst the wall! And that one is in RIAA, and that one's in MPAA. Who let all this riffraff to have their say? There's one smoking a joint, and another with spots! If I had my way I'd have all of ya shot.
The point is that he has moral high ground and is using it to urge Microsoft to do something that's unnatural to it. If this were a more public and important issue (to general public), Microsoft would have a no-win situation here.
The geek wars.. This just might make it into the bible.
Or better yet make GeekWars into a tv-movie for NBC. You could also it spin off into an open-ended "GeekWars - The Dark Source" serie. Just imagine all the possibilities...
My Nokia 6110 crashes if I receive a new text message at exactly the same time I open the "received messages" folder. The screen goes blank and nothing happens for a while until the phone restarts itself.
Consider what might happen if corporate customers (including the U.S. government!) fully realize that their Unix servers will not be able to interoperate
Microsoft will simply offer to replace these "legacy unix systems" with modern Win2K systems for a nominal fee. Didn't they try that already with the Navy? IIRC the destroyer on which the system was being tested experienced slight problems...
As the previous poster already commented, in contrast to word processors like Word, LaTeX does allow you to think more of the content than the format.
When I was writing my master's thesis, I spent two rather sleepless nights trying to figure out why winword chose not to format the text as specificed in the template. It just kept constantly changing the layout from time to time. Since the department wanted to archive all works in the winword format ("Well, I'm sure you can understand that we need a standard format") I could not switch to using any other system. So, the winword it was because some moron in the administration had decided (after signing to the M$ Campus License program!) that MS was the university standard when it came to exchanging information. Goddamn, I'm still bitter about it.
In the end, I never managed to get the format quite right and that was when I swore I'd never use Microsoft Word to write anything that is over ten pages long if I just could help it.
Right now I'm writing my PhD thesis using LaTeX (I told the supervising professor I would not do it otherwise and he dealt with the morons in the administration) and it's beautiful! Just typing in the text, telling LaTeX how to format it and you get consistently what you want.
If push came to shove, how long would it take to fly/. servers to Russia?
Don't fly them to Russia. Slow lines and pay-for-protection (which you would not get anyway if your favourite corporate entity can pay more than you).
It's becoming painfully obvious now that we need independent, metanational off-shore/in-orbit server platforms. Not one, but many for redundancy. Preferably equipped with enough SAMs, Harpoons and nuclear tipped missiles to deter any Microsoft/RIAA/MPAA sponsored taskforce.
If you can afford it, go with a DEC Alpha....A barebones 21164A should set you back around $500 to $1000, depending on the speed, case, and amount of cache and memory.
I agree. Alpha is a very nice architecture and quite affordable nowadays. The only drawback in running Linux on it was the not-so-optimal code that gcc produced (compilation was somewhat slow, too). But now that you can get Compaq's Alpha math library and compiler for free (IIRC), gcc performance should not be a problem anymore. Even with the suboptimal gcc code it was a number cruncher, all right. Another feature I really liked was the onboard flash-rom. You configured a standard kernel to include all the device drivers you need, compiled MILO (Alpha's LILO) against it and flashed the MILO "kernel" into the flash-rom. After that you basically had miniature Linux as your bootloader.
I'd rather have 4 chips running in parallel at 500mhz
By the way, any ideas when 2- or 4-way Athlon-motherboards are due? AMD's homepage only says that the processor itself supports SMP, but so far no motherboards seem to be available.
With the current Athlon pricing, a 4-way Athlon system would probably be quite an affordable system to put together. Unless, of course, the motherboard itself is ridiculously expensive (like a dual 21264A Alpha motherboard;-).
whiz-bang 'extra functionality' may seem like an attractive target... squeezing an extra 10% of performance out of commodity hardware seems less valuable to me...
I agree.
The main Linux kernel tree should remain general and standards compliant. People who require more specialized features such as real time response or extra security can always build the features on the existing kernel. I mean that's one of the great strengths of the open source, isn't it. Not everyone requires a real time kernel and those who do should know how to patch a kernel. At least I don't see any need to include every niche feature to bloat the main tree (anyone else annoyed at the current size of the kernel source tarballs? 20 MB?!). "Keep It Simple Stupid"-principle is a good principle.
Well, I'm sure it's worth something to someone simply because it's being collected. And sure advertisers can find my home address themselves, but it's much easier for them if I give it to them voluntarily. Why make it any easier?
Personally I like to leave as small a trace of myself as possible in any database; commercial, governmental or other. Just as I don't like loose ends in general (relationships, my research, programs,...), I also loathe loose information. There's nothing you can win by automatically giving your personal information to everyone who asks for it.
What are the main data routes out of Russia, anyway. Is the data being run through landlines of Finland, Norway and Baltic states or somehow else?
This interests me because if the data is being routed via landlines, the ISPs in my country would be the front line of the conflict you just described. And keeping in mind how US gov managed to coerce several small European countries to participate in the Wassenaar agreement, well... good bye fast and reliable access to Russian data havens.
Now that they are still working at it, why don't they put in a charter for "the use of coercive methods in extracting encryption keys from uncooperative suspects" as well...
What worries me the most is the tendency of mainstream media to go along with the idea that the net is the next dangerous place to a war zone and must somehow be censored or controlled. And I am not talking just about the US mainstream media (to which the idea of net censorship would seem to be more than welcome for some reason). The BBC World, for instance, has been running recently a special report on hate sites in the net and tone of the report was that of "the end justifies the means" pro-censorship. Needless to say that I vehemently disagree with the message these hate sites carry, but to my mind it is a lesser evil to tolerate them than to start the vicious cycle of censorship which would eventually bites us back and wouldn't stop their moronic dribble being spread anyway.
Has the traditional media become so accustomed to freedom of the press that they don't realize that should global net censorship become reality their freedom would be on the line as well. Or is it so that the traditional media sees the net as competition and consequently tries to counter it this way?
This reminds me of a special net report in a local paper. The article was highly critical of the net (full of porn, bomb making instructions, etc.) but what the reporter found most threatening was the absence of any authority who would decide what information is "official" and what is not. He felt that people might become confused by false information in the net and some sort of global control mechanism should be built in to guarantee the accuracy of information on line. In essence, he was asking for censorship.
In spite of this being said in a small, local paper, insignificant to the global nature of the subject, it sent shivers down my spine even then. But now large media giants such as BBC, CNN and others that people implicitly trust (it is "official" information, after all...) are beginning to hint that the net is an incredibly dangerous place and should be handled with tougher legislation than normal media, the future does not look good. With backing from media and hyped up public it will be easy for politicians to start drafting draconian legistlation to combat the "evils of net" even on multinational/continental scale.
Slashdot Mirror
As long as all standards are kept open, both proprietary and free (beer and otherwise) programs can at least communicate with each other. This way you won't become "locked in" even if you're using a closed source program. People who think open source Linux programs are shitty, can then use more polished commercial programs and still exchange information with Linux users. Closed standards, however, always lock you in. Hence, the real problem is with closed, proprietary standards not programs.
Regarding Linux anarchy, if you read the Linux Kernel mailing-list regularly, you'd soon realize that, as appealing as the idea is, Linux developement can hardly be called an anarchy. Anarchy implies that there is no central authority, which is - obviously - not true in this case.
The most important thing is that standards are kept open.
Go nuclear and fix up a radiation detector to your serial-port! Besides the noise being truly random, the setup is also something that only a true geek would consider building.
Of course, if you want something less exotic, you can use network traffic, video memory, etc. to feed the enthropy pool.
Actually, dual boxes are boring... what I want is an inexpensive 4-way system with a well scaling and fast bus architecture. ;)
Anyway, you're right about competition being good for consumer, but for some reason it just hasn't happened here, yet. Ever since Athlon's breakthrough, I've been waiting (in vain) for Intel to announce price-cuts.
I don't quite understand why, as it is obvious that Intel should be cutting their chip prices now. With AMD ramping up its production of chips costing only about 50-75% as compared to Intel processors, Intel is going to lose. They are not going to lose only chunks of the low-end market, but when AMD multiprocessor mobos arrive they are also going to get hurt in the high-end market. And in the long run that's where I think it's going to hurt them the most. Unless, of course, they cut their prices. This recent confusion about PIII SMP-capability and the mess with i820 doesn't do them any good, either.
What's this thing I've heard about having to remove the battery from a GSM phone to completely silence it? Switching it off isn't enough? What is it sending/receiving even after being switched off?
So, if something doesn't bother you it shouldn't bother anyone else either? And if it bothers someone, he/she must be a criminal.
Tell me, is it nice living in such a fantasy world of pure black and white?
You say you don't have things to hide. Well, congratulations. However, most of us do have things we prefer to keep away from prying eyes. Nothing criminal. Just petty, boring details such as our credit card number, sex life, political/religious affiliation, medical history and other things which in the end paint rather a detailed picture of each of us.
And you know what. Just as I am entitled to decide how much and which of my own feelings I show to others, I am also within my rights to keep these other petty details of my life secret. It's not a question of trying to hide something dirty. It's about controlling your own life and not letting other people run it for you. Being able to say "fuck you" to aggressive salesmen/advertisers, politicians or law enforcement agents trying to reach too far into your personal space.
I'm supposed to be writing my PhD thesis at home after work, but for the last few weeks I've wasted most of the available time (=getting home->falling asleep at the terminal) time reading Slashdot and day-dreaming about building my own Beowulf-cluster.
(HOMER VOICE):
Mmmm.... a dozen, black, rack-mounted 2U:s with dual 750 MHz 21264s inside...
That's right.
I got a C&D letter from MPAA lawyers telling me to remove deCSS from my account. They sent a copy of the letter to our sysadms, too.
Administrators threw their copy straight to the bin ("Ridiculous! We have no intention of doing any of this crap."). I also sent a short to-the-point e-mail to the address I found on C&D letter telling basically that "I do not admit any wrongdoing nor do I recognize your authority. I will not comply."
Today a copy of the MPAA letter is hanging on my cubicle wall like a trophy of some kind - right next to the news of Microsoft being found a monopoly and its practises anti-competetive. Haven't heard from MPAA ever since.
While that particular piece of Microsoft news cheers me up, the MPAA letter is there to remind me of the corporate crap that's now infecting the net. It just never ends. Especially if you don't do anything to anything about it.
Refuse, resist! Just say no!
Microsoft: embrace, extend. USA: embrace, extend.
So ya thought ya might like to go to the show.
To feel the warm thrill of confusion, that special geek glow.
got me some bad news for you, Sunshine.
Roblimo isn't well, he stayed back at the hotel,
And he sent us along as a surrogate hand.
We're gonna find out where you fans really stand.
Are there any MCSEs on the slashdot tonight?
Get 'em up against the wall. -- 'Gainst the wall!
And that one with all the karma, he don't look right to me.
Get him up against the wall. -- 'Gainst the wall!
And that one is in RIAA, and that one's in MPAA.
Who let all this riffraff to have their say?
There's one smoking a joint, and another with spots!
If I had my way I'd have all of ya shot.
(I guess Pink Floyd's going to sue me now)
The point is that he has moral high ground and is using it to urge Microsoft to do something that's unnatural to it. If this were a more public and important issue (to general public), Microsoft would have a no-win situation here.
In a perfect world that would be true.
Or better yet make GeekWars into a tv-movie for NBC. You could also it spin off into an open-ended "GeekWars - The Dark Source" serie. Just imagine all the possibilities...
My Nokia 6110 crashes if I receive a new text message at exactly the same time I open the "received messages" folder. The screen goes blank and nothing happens for a while until the phone restarts itself.
Microsoft will simply offer to replace these "legacy unix systems" with modern Win2K systems for a nominal fee. Didn't they try that already with the Navy? IIRC the destroyer on which the system was being tested experienced slight problems...
When I was writing my master's thesis, I spent two rather sleepless nights trying to figure out why winword chose not to format the text as specificed in the template. It just kept constantly changing the layout from time to time. Since the department wanted to archive all works in the winword format ("Well, I'm sure you can understand that we need a standard format") I could not switch to using any other system. So, the winword it was because some moron in the administration had decided (after signing to the M$ Campus License program!) that MS was the university standard when it came to exchanging information. Goddamn, I'm still bitter about it.
In the end, I never managed to get the format quite right and that was when I swore I'd never use Microsoft Word to write anything that is over ten pages long if I just could help it.
Right now I'm writing my PhD thesis using LaTeX (I told the supervising professor I would not do it otherwise and he dealt with the morons in the administration) and it's beautiful! Just typing in the text, telling LaTeX how to format it and you get consistently what you want.
Don't fly them to Russia. Slow lines and pay-for-protection (which you would not get anyway if your favourite corporate entity can pay more than you).
It's becoming painfully obvious now that we need independent, metanational off-shore/in-orbit server platforms. Not one, but many for redundancy. Preferably equipped with enough SAMs, Harpoons and nuclear tipped missiles to deter any Microsoft/RIAA/MPAA sponsored taskforce.
I agree. Alpha is a very nice architecture and quite affordable nowadays. The only drawback in running Linux on it was the not-so-optimal code that gcc produced (compilation was somewhat slow, too). But now that you can get Compaq's Alpha math library and compiler for free (IIRC), gcc performance should not be a problem anymore. Even with the suboptimal gcc code it was a number cruncher, all right. Another feature I really liked was the onboard flash-rom. You configured a standard kernel to include all the device drivers you need, compiled MILO (Alpha's LILO) against it and flashed the MILO "kernel" into the flash-rom. After that you basically had miniature Linux as your bootloader.
And you can overclock an Alpha, too...
By the way, any ideas when 2- or 4-way Athlon-motherboards are due? AMD's homepage only says that the processor itself supports SMP, but so far no motherboards seem to be available.
With the current Athlon pricing, a 4-way Athlon system would probably be quite an affordable system to put together. Unless, of course, the motherboard itself is ridiculously expensive (like a dual 21264A Alpha motherboard ;-).
I wasn't aware Intel's employers were leaving... ;-)
I agree.
The main Linux kernel tree should remain general and standards compliant. People who require more specialized features such as real time response or extra security can always build the features on the existing kernel. I mean that's one of the great strengths of the open source, isn't it. Not everyone requires a real time kernel and those who do should know how to patch a kernel. At least I don't see any need to include every niche feature to bloat the main tree (anyone else annoyed at the current size of the kernel source tarballs? 20 MB?!). "Keep It Simple Stupid"-principle is a good principle.
Well, I'm sure it's worth something to someone simply because it's being collected. And sure advertisers can find my home address themselves, but it's much easier for them if I give it to them voluntarily. Why make it any easier?
Personally I like to leave as small a trace of myself as possible in any database; commercial, governmental or other. Just as I don't like loose ends in general (relationships, my research, programs,...), I also loathe loose information. There's nothing you can win by automatically giving your personal information to everyone who asks for it.
This interests me because if the data is being routed via landlines, the ISPs in my country would be the front line of the conflict you just described. And keeping in mind how US gov managed to coerce several small European countries to participate in the Wassenaar agreement, well... good bye fast and reliable access to Russian data havens.
Now that they are still working at it, why don't they put in a charter for "the use of coercive methods in extracting encryption keys from uncooperative suspects" as well...
Has the traditional media become so accustomed to freedom of the press that they don't realize that should global net censorship become reality their freedom would be on the line as well. Or is it so that the traditional media sees the net as competition and consequently tries to counter it this way?
This reminds me of a special net report in a local paper. The article was highly critical of the net (full of porn, bomb making instructions, etc.) but what the reporter found most threatening was the absence of any authority who would decide what information is "official" and what is not. He felt that people might become confused by false information in the net and some sort of global control mechanism should be built in to guarantee the accuracy of information on line. In essence, he was asking for censorship.
In spite of this being said in a small, local paper, insignificant to the global nature of the subject, it sent shivers down my spine even then. But now large media giants such as BBC, CNN and others that people implicitly trust (it is "official" information, after all...) are beginning to hint that the net is an incredibly dangerous place and should be handled with tougher legislation than normal media, the future does not look good. With backing from media and hyped up public it will be easy for politicians to start drafting draconian legistlation to combat the "evils of net" even on multinational/continental scale.