This is one area however, that I am adamantly against the GPL. I believe that publicly funded code should be in the public domain, or released under a BSD-style license.
That way, it could benefit everyone. People could start their own closed-source companies with it, and thereby expand the economy. GPL projects could also arise out of public code, because there is nothing that says you can't take public domain code and start a GPL based project with it.
Most definitely, publicly funded code should remain public thereby keeping control of the code out of the hands of both greedy closed-source developers and of GPL based projects that force developers to release improvements. With public domain or BSD code, both groups could benefit.
BTW... Another bit of info that an informed person would know... Sams and Que and Addison-Wesley and Prentice Hall
Well that's just scary. True, but scary. AW and PH have always had my greatest respect and I hope their new higher ups don't start pushing them to rush out books and skimp on quality to make money.
In my defense, I'm not really a bookseller, I'm a programmer who works in a bookstore. I just went and talked to our computer book buyers and they don't even keep up with who owns who any more, because so many publishers are getting bought out by bigger publishers.
I stand by my assertion though. As far as quality is concerned, Que and Sams aren't in the same league as Prentice Hall or Addison-Wesley, same company or not.
I work in a bookstore so I pretty much get my pick of any computer books I want. For whatever the reason, publishers are amazingly consisisent in the quality of their books. There are exceptions of course, but you can usually tell the quality of a book by nothing more than looking to see who published it. Addison-Wesley is bar none the finest computer book publisher in existence. For serious study of UML you need to look no further.
At the bottom end of the food chain when it comes to computer books are anything from Sams, Que, or IDG. These publishers typically rush books out so the books are on the shelf before anything else, and often before the software is even released. They are full of screenshots and typos and often information that is incomplete, leading you to other books if you are looking for answers. Thats not to say they all are like that - I've seen good authors write for Sams, etc., and they do their best to do a good job. Its just the nature of publishing that if you rush your books to the shelf and are long on screenshots and short on editing, well, that comes out in the quality of the book.
If you need to learn UML(or C++, or Java, or VB or...) in a weekend to survive at your new job, the Teach Yourself The New Technology Flavor of the Week books are fine. If you are more serious, look at Microsoft or O'reilly for good language/technology specific titles, or even better, get real computer science classics from Addison-Wesley or Prentice Hall. These books will still be on your shelf in ten years and you will still be glad you bought them.
All my comments were based on my observations. I watched two people try to move MP3s to another machine and have that other machine tell them it couldn't play their files. I know you can use encoders that will work, it was the fact that this happened at all that raised by eyebrow.
My observation with Office came from watching an Access database get hosed becaused two people were using Office 2000 and one was using Office XP on the same database.
Most people will buy a computer with the OS preloaded and never need to bother with activation. I am not one of those people. I frequently install multiple OS's on separate computers, and I frequently move data off machines so that I can reinstall the OS or install other OS's. Therefore, XP would not be a good fit for me, although I'm sure its great for the people who do use it.
I don't need to use XP to know that its not for me. I have good reasons for not wanting to use it and I stick by them.
Actually I've never used XP. The product activation scheme was just too much for me to take. Incidentally, can you use XP without getting a Passport? My guess is no, but maybe I'm wrong. I have seen people create MP3's, not with MS tools, but with Real Jukebox, and be unable to play them on other PC's.
Are you sure that you can tear your machine down and put it back together again? What if I back up my data, reinstall all the software, then restore my data? I typically do that from time to time.
Any media you create on a Windows box(MP3, movies, etc) will only be playable on that box. Virus hosed your system and you have to reinstall? Say goodbye to all your MP3's.
If you are a hobbyist and like to change hardware frequently, plan on having an intimate relationship with Microsofts activation dept.
If you run Windows at work, better make damn sure you know where your licenses are and make sure the average user can't install applications on any machine(a disgruntled employee can easily install applications and then turn you into the BSA, at a cost of up to $150,000 per unlicensed app)
At some time in the near future(will expire. Microsoft has already dropped support for Windows 95 and will drop support for Windows 98 next year. If you use Office, your software becomes useless as soon as the next version comes out because you will no longer be able to read Office documents created by the latest versions.
I could go on and on. But I better stop, since I'm being "silly" and obviously ungrounded in reality.
If you're going to bash it, bash it on the potential Digital Rights Management that was supposed to be introduced in XP, or on the product activation.
OK! I, for one, like many people here, enjoy tearing down my machines and putting them back together again. That precludes me from using XP, unless I want to activate Windows every time(no, thanks).
Furthermore, you can't take MP3's created on a Windows XP machine and play them on another machine. They did build DRM into it, and its the dumbest thing I've ever seen. I'm sure its easy to get around, but frankly its much easier to just not go there.
I use Windows 2000 primarily on my desktops and as far as I'm concerned, thats the last Microsoft OS I'll ever buy.
Instead of focusing on the demise of IIS
on
Apache 2.0 vs. IIS
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
as this article seemed to do(which is ludicrous, as many comments have already pointed out), why not play up the strengths of Apache?
If Apache 2.0 really works as well under Windows as it does under Unix, that is a really great thing. Apache currently supports almost as many languages as.NET promises to, and furthermore, modules are compiled into the server, rather than being compiled to an intermediate language and served up from a virtual machine like the.NET server will do.
Apache is a winner because it is secure, scalable, fast and reliable. If it is all these things under Windows thats even better. I wish the article could have played up the strengths of Apache rather than serving up the pipe dream that Microsoft is ditching IIS.
Posting from my Commodore in Afghanistan
on
The Drone War
·
· Score: 2
Drone wars only happen when both sides have the drones. Believe me, thats not the case here. There's all sorts of human loss of life and misery.
Even if both sides had the "drones", war wouldn't be effective until they actually took out human beings. Its the human loss of life that makes war so terrible. A an actual drone war could only possibly serve as expensive entertainment, akin to watching Battle Bots. Thats not war.
Its only war when people die. And drones won't accomplish a thing unless they actually kill. Instead of looking at this like the Drone Wars a more accurate analogy would be "we're going to take out the other guys weapons, so we can go in and kill him".
Hmm, I seem to remember a poll asking Slashdot readers whether or not they should keep Jon Katz. A few of the trolls made an argument that this poll was rigged - they showed a screenshot of the poll near the time of its closing that showed the "fire Katz" voters in the lead. However, in the end Katz won with appx a 3:2 "keep Katz" ratio.
What I believe happened is that the trolls themselves padded the poll, but the Slasdot editors later removed the troll votes(without telling anyone).
Needless to say, I stopped putting faith in any kind of net polls a long time ago.
I don't recall reading in the poll that Microsoft employees were not allowed to vote. Shit, they have 40,000 people working for them. Is it not possible that the poll could have been won fair and square with the majority of respondents coming from the microsoft.com domain?
OK, so at least some users cheated and voted more than once. But its doubtful that upper management directed the cheating or would have even condoned it, as obvious cheating would only apply more tarnish to Microsofts reputation.
As far as I'm concerned, unless the poll specified that Microsoft employees were ineligible to vote, its a valid win, even if 95 percent of the respondents came from the microsoft.com domain.
If thats the case, you would pick up the HP in no time. If you understand how stacks work(and you undoubtedly do) you can use an HP.
The really cool thing about HPs is that you can load a bunch of stuff onto the stack - then each time you hit an operator, it 'pops' values off the stack and 'pushes' the result back onto the stack. You can also do things like move values up and down the stack.
Although I must admit, copy and past sounds like it would be nice. But the HPs are also programmable, and you can store things like defined values and formulas that you can call up at any time.
What is it with the RPN bashing today? Ever heard of a stack? Well, thats what RPN is - you load numbers onto the stack. Then, when you press an operator(+-?*, etc) it performs that operation on the number or numbers at the end of the stack, depending on the operation.
This is very natural to the thinking of mathemeticians, engineers, and computer scientists. Furthermore, it allows you to do complex operations without needing to resort to using brackets or moving the cursor. If you need to quickly blow through a bunch of calculations, RPN is much faster than using traditional notation.
I can see not wanting to learn RPN if you aren't majoring in the above named disciplines. But if you are going into math, CS, or engineering, and RPM seems too hard for you, its time to switch majors.
YAMTP(yet another me too! post). I've been a fan of Samba and have used it for 4 years now. I'll never forget the argument I got into with Jeremy Allison where I (mistakenly) claimed that Microsoft had no hidden API's. Of course, he promptly proved me to be wrong.
Come to think of it, I need to add him to my 'fans' list. Good job, guys.
ZDNet was owned by M$ anyway. That would give them some bias.
That's why we come to Slashdot, because we know they're not biased!
Re:Intel's P2P library
on
P2P in 2001
·
· Score: 1
I'm not sure if anything has been done with it, but I've been looking more closely at this and its really cool. It incorporates OpenSSL - so you can have "trusted" peers and use P2P with them without anyone else being able to see whats going on.
This is the first P2P application that I've seen with encryption built into it.
Intel's P2P library
on
P2P in 2001
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I didn't know that Intel had released a P2P library until I read this article. There's no link to the library from the article, so I looked it up. Turns out the library is released under the BSD library and is hosted on Sourceforge.
ArsDigita University is the only one I know of. Its closed down at the moment because it lost its funding. They offered a comprehensive CS degree in one year.
There's no traditional university that does this. In fact, its not possible to do it in a year. You need 130+ credits to get a CS degree. Maybe in 3 years if you are dedicated, and can work
I really wish there was a place where you could take university quality CS classes in a program geared for working adults that didn't require you to take english, history, or whatever. I don't know of one, however.
Although broadcasters will be broadcasting HDTV by 2006, there is a catch. HDTV can be broken up in to several different, lower quality channels. Its much cheaper for networks to do it this way, so what do you think will happen?
The other big problem is that by 2006, the majority of us will still have plain old nonHD-TVs. What incentive will there be for the networks to provide a high-quality signal?
I don't think its realistic to expect networks to broadcast high-quality TV for free when they can split the signal and make more money, especially when the consumer demand is not there. The only hope is to have pay channels like HBO - I think thats the only real HDTV you will see.
I never said I was secure just because I have a firewall. I understand that security is a process rather than a piece of software.
There is nothing accessible to my outside network that doesn't have up to date patches. I don't run exchange for email. I definitely don't have default passwords, anywhere. I don't quite understand why you keep calling me names and insisting my site is insecure. It isn't - and the examples you just gave are totally baseless.
I only have one piece of software that I don't fully trust, and thats IIS(fully patched BTW). But you can't get to credit card info through it, and besides, its getting replaced by Apache very soon.
You'll have to find some other moron to pick on, because I don't do the stupid things you accuse me of.
OpenBSD really has the right idea. I also purchase this.
1 - because it really is worth it, but also
2 - its damn hard to make it work without just buying the CD's. Theo copyrighted the ISO image of OpenBSD, and you can't find ISOs of it online legally. Sure, its a little bit of arm-twisting to get people to buy the CD, but it works! There is no reason other distros couldn't follow suit. GPL means you have to publish the code; it does not mean you have to provide bootable ISOs for everyone to download.
The system would have the key. Public key means that an untrusted system can get a copy of the key. SSH and SSL are examples of public key encryption. A private key is only given out to certain trusted systems. So the only way to read a data file encrypted with private key encryption is to somehow steal the key.
Slashdot Mirror
That way, it could benefit everyone. People could start their own closed-source companies with it, and thereby expand the economy. GPL projects could also arise out of public code, because there is nothing that says you can't take public domain code and start a GPL based project with it.
Most definitely, publicly funded code should remain public thereby keeping control of the code out of the hands of both greedy closed-source developers and of GPL based projects that force developers to release improvements. With public domain or BSD code, both groups could benefit.
Well that's just scary. True, but scary. AW and PH have always had my greatest respect and I hope their new higher ups don't start pushing them to rush out books and skimp on quality to make money.
In my defense, I'm not really a bookseller, I'm a programmer who works in a bookstore. I just went and talked to our computer book buyers and they don't even keep up with who owns who any more, because so many publishers are getting bought out by bigger publishers.
I stand by my assertion though. As far as quality is concerned, Que and Sams aren't in the same league as Prentice Hall or Addison-Wesley, same company or not.
At the bottom end of the food chain when it comes to computer books are anything from Sams, Que, or IDG. These publishers typically rush books out so the books are on the shelf before anything else, and often before the software is even released. They are full of screenshots and typos and often information that is incomplete, leading you to other books if you are looking for answers. Thats not to say they all are like that - I've seen good authors write for Sams, etc., and they do their best to do a good job. Its just the nature of publishing that if you rush your books to the shelf and are long on screenshots and short on editing, well, that comes out in the quality of the book.
If you need to learn UML(or C++, or Java, or VB or
My observation with Office came from watching an Access database get hosed becaused two people were using Office 2000 and one was using Office XP on the same database.
Most people will buy a computer with the OS preloaded and never need to bother with activation. I am not one of those people. I frequently install multiple OS's on separate computers, and I frequently move data off machines so that I can reinstall the OS or install other OS's. Therefore, XP would not be a good fit for me, although I'm sure its great for the people who do use it.
I don't need to use XP to know that its not for me. I have good reasons for not wanting to use it and I stick by them.
Are you sure that you can tear your machine down and put it back together again? What if I back up my data, reinstall all the software, then restore my data? I typically do that from time to time.
If you are a hobbyist and like to change hardware frequently, plan on having an intimate relationship with Microsofts activation dept.
If you run Windows at work, better make damn sure you know where your licenses are and make sure the average user can't install applications on any machine(a disgruntled employee can easily install applications and then turn you into the BSA, at a cost of up to $150,000 per unlicensed app)
At some time in the near future(will expire. Microsoft has already dropped support for Windows 95 and will drop support for Windows 98 next year. If you use Office, your software becomes useless as soon as the next version comes out because you will no longer be able to read Office documents created by the latest versions.
I could go on and on. But I better stop, since I'm being "silly" and obviously ungrounded in reality.
OK! I, for one, like many people here, enjoy tearing down my machines and putting them back together again. That precludes me from using XP, unless I want to activate Windows every time(no, thanks).
Furthermore, you can't take MP3's created on a Windows XP machine and play them on another machine. They did build DRM into it, and its the dumbest thing I've ever seen. I'm sure its easy to get around, but frankly its much easier to just not go there.
I use Windows 2000 primarily on my desktops and as far as I'm concerned, thats the last Microsoft OS I'll ever buy.
If Apache 2.0 really works as well under Windows as it does under Unix, that is a really great thing. Apache currently supports almost as many languages as
Apache is a winner because it is secure, scalable, fast and reliable. If it is all these things under Windows thats even better. I wish the article could have played up the strengths of Apache rather than serving up the pipe dream that Microsoft is ditching IIS.
Even if both sides had the "drones", war wouldn't be effective until they actually took out human beings. Its the human loss of life that makes war so terrible. A an actual drone war could only possibly serve as expensive entertainment, akin to watching Battle Bots. Thats not war.
Its only war when people die. And drones won't accomplish a thing unless they actually kill. Instead of looking at this like the Drone Wars a more accurate analogy would be "we're going to take out the other guys weapons, so we can go in and kill him".
What I believe happened is that the trolls themselves padded the poll, but the Slasdot editors later removed the troll votes(without telling anyone).
Needless to say, I stopped putting faith in any kind of net polls a long time ago.
OK, so at least some users cheated and voted more than once. But its doubtful that upper management directed the cheating or would have even condoned it, as obvious cheating would only apply more tarnish to Microsofts reputation.
As far as I'm concerned, unless the poll specified that Microsoft employees were ineligible to vote, its a valid win, even if 95 percent of the respondents came from the microsoft.com domain.
If thats the case, you would pick up the HP in no time. If you understand how stacks work(and you undoubtedly do) you can use an HP.
The really cool thing about HPs is that you can load a bunch of stuff onto the stack - then each time you hit an operator, it 'pops' values off the stack and 'pushes' the result back onto the stack. You can also do things like move values up and down the stack.
Although I must admit, copy and past sounds like it would be nice. But the HPs are also programmable, and you can store things like defined values and formulas that you can call up at any time.
This is very natural to the thinking of mathemeticians, engineers, and computer scientists. Furthermore, it allows you to do complex operations without needing to resort to using brackets or moving the cursor. If you need to quickly blow through a bunch of calculations, RPN is much faster than using traditional notation.
I can see not wanting to learn RPN if you aren't majoring in the above named disciplines. But if you are going into math, CS, or engineering, and RPM seems too hard for you, its time to switch majors.
Come to think of it, I need to add him to my 'fans' list. Good job, guys.
The author, David Coursey, has been hit and miss with his articles, but when he gets it right, he's pretty good.
Better watch out guys, the Mounties are on their way!
That's why we come to Slashdot, because we know they're not biased!
This is the first P2P application that I've seen with encryption built into it.
I didn't know that Intel had released a P2P library until I read this article. There's no link to the library from the article, so I looked it up. Turns out the library is released under the BSD library and is hosted on Sourceforge.
There's no traditional university that does this. In fact, its not possible to do it in a year. You need 130+ credits to get a CS degree. Maybe in 3 years if you are dedicated, and can work
I really wish there was a place where you could take university quality CS classes in a program geared for working adults that didn't require you to take english, history, or whatever. I don't know of one, however.
The other big problem is that by 2006, the majority of us will still have plain old nonHD-TVs. What incentive will there be for the networks to provide a high-quality signal?
I don't think its realistic to expect networks to broadcast high-quality TV for free when they can split the signal and make more money, especially when the consumer demand is not there. The only hope is to have pay channels like HBO - I think thats the only real HDTV you will see.
There is nothing accessible to my outside network that doesn't have up to date patches. I don't run exchange for email. I definitely don't have default passwords, anywhere. I don't quite understand why you keep calling me names and insisting my site is insecure. It isn't - and the examples you just gave are totally baseless.
I only have one piece of software that I don't fully trust, and thats IIS(fully patched BTW). But you can't get to credit card info through it, and besides, its getting replaced by Apache very soon.
You'll have to find some other moron to pick on, because I don't do the stupid things you accuse me of.
1 - because it really is worth it, but also
2 - its damn hard to make it work without just buying the CD's. Theo copyrighted the ISO image of OpenBSD, and you can't find ISOs of it online legally. Sure, its a little bit of arm-twisting to get people to buy the CD, but it works! There is no reason other distros couldn't follow suit. GPL means you have to publish the code; it does not mean you have to provide bootable ISOs for everyone to download.
The system would have the key. Public key means that an untrusted system can get a copy of the key. SSH and SSL are examples of public key encryption. A private key is only given out to certain trusted systems. So the only way to read a data file encrypted with private key encryption is to somehow steal the key.
So tell me, smart guy, how exactly would you get past two OpenBSD firewalls and Triple-DES?