I'm not from Egypt, but here's what I see: Sand, dictators, unhappy people.
They do have the Aswan High Dam, which was a amazing engineering project. It provides an immense amount of electricity...and it's huge. Many people say Egypt's glory is in the past, but that was pretty remarkable.
So now Alan will have to make snippy comments in his diary about how he can't explain what security holes have been fixed, because British read his site?
I'm just wondering...have you read the whole license through? IANAL, so I don't have a perfect grasp, but some of the things you say suggest you might have skipped over a few of the details.
That's a dangerous thing to do with any license agreement. Who knows what you might have agreed to?
This is easy! It's as if any other piece of software were stolen, you have all the legal recourses. Your copyright on the program is still 100% intact.
The GPL only kicks in if YOU distribute it.
Closed or open source, if someone steals a binary, it's illegal. The person who stole it, furthermore, cannot legally distribute it under the GPL, because unless they stole the source code too, they can't make it available to those they make the binary available to.
So most countries would forbid this and the GPL would not allow it.
How long could it possibly take? No more than three days? 3*2=6... 6+1=7... 7..days..no..WEEKS. Yes. That's the estimate.
Two weeks? No, make that five months!
This is mostly joking, but if you have people changing the specifications while you are writing the code, it can indeed happen.
PHB:"When will it be done?"
Me:"It's been done twice already, but now it's done for the third time. Unless you change the specification again..."
PHB:"Didn't anyone tell you?"
I have had DSL for over a year now. My ISP is Brand X Internet (www.brandx.net) and my telco is GTE.
GTE is always the problem when things go wrong, but things go wrong rarely. Brand X doesn't have very high ISP fees, they offer static addresses and even EXTRA static addresses for a low additional fee. It is great!
The catch is that they provive NO TECH SUPPORT. If something is wrong, you can call them and they will work with you. But if the problem is that you can't figure your system out, you are SOL and need a different ISP. That is how they keep their costs down so they charge less than other ISPs.
Of course, for me, not having to fight through call center tech support when I want to tell someone I've got a real problem is a blessing.
The California Public Utilities Commission has the 'Division of Rate-Payer Advocates' who are supposed to be the voice of the people. Yet for some strange reason, the DRA never really argues with the Commission that pays their salaries...
At least, it COULD be more secure. If there's a 'trick' to this, one traitor could let the trick slip. Then where are you?
If it's a fully reusable effect not involving one-time pads, then observing several messages would probable clue people in on the general nature of the encryption.
Now, if you will accept that fact, then allowing any crypto person in the world scrutinize the method and pass comment could lead to greater strength for the algo...
So in theory, an open development model can help in crypto, past a certain point. Look at various public key encryption systems on the market now: As best as is known from massive scrutiny, they are still impossible to break outside of brute force. Yet their inner workings are hardly a secret...they are strong for reasons other than obscurity.
This is a big conference call/telephone bridge. AT&T, Sprint, AOL, UUNet, Earthlink, Cisco, etc etc etc..
Nothing actually happened in the call of technical import, but the following quotes were pretty funny:
"But we really don't think that's Y2K-related, being as Germany is still in 1999, right?" "Not Germany, Jamaica." "What about that cable problem in Japan?" "No, it's not in JAPAN, it's in JAMAICA."
Comparing my experiences across several ISPs including small local and big national, I find Earthlink to be pretty good. They actually put a lot of effort into blocking it, catching some customer heat for restricting SMTP servers to trusted IP blocks and having a Usenet back-off trick that makes things go inanely slow if you spam.
Oh, yes, once upon a time they were the worst. Just ask them and they'll tell you. But that isn't the case anymore. They still get the hit-and-run people. Buy account, spam a lot, lose account an hour later after sending a load of messages... but the way to avoid that isn't quite clear.
DISCLAIMER: I do work there now, in a capacity where I talk to the network operations people a lot, so I have a much clearer but perhaps emotionally bent view of internal spam-fighting than most.
Don't get me wrong. I like INWO too. It's only people who take things too seriously, I think who have major issues with it. That's why I marked it as 'horrible'. It was a lot of fun. I still have my One With Everything somewhere.
The real question, I suppose, is whether there is a way to tweak the plasticity/efficiency balance. If you could knock that back, even if the brain compensated within weeks or months, you could still learn a great deal and then streamline again for usefulness. Re-education drugs!
The BSD license. An elegant weapon for a more civilized time. And while we all still admire Master Kenobi, mature and at one with the universe, there is still a certain fun in having a younger person grab the lightsaber and run screaming towards some Imperial target.
On a side note, would it be possible to create a Dual Standard license? Essentially, you release the same code under two license options. Any changes that get back to you get issued again under both.
After all, different header comments might even make it different source code. Don't you think? If those changes originate with the author, people who won't use GPL for fear of contamination can use it. Most of them probably will give back changes. Sure, not all...
People who won't use anything not GPL for fear of someone stealing their toys would have the same thing.
The trick would be in ammending a license somewhere to allow the original author of Code A to use changes made to their code under the second, non-GPL license. It's a bit of a special case, but I think it has a lot of potential for growth.
Whether Sun cares about StarOffice for Linux or not, it's nice to have a company who will do things solely to spite Microsoft behind such a useful application. I just hope the development methodology isn't changed too much. No matter what they say now, it's a given changes will occur...
I'm not entirely certain that law was the best course of action, but it is admittedly somewhat more lenient than what they might have come up with. Ultimately, however, if what it implies about copyright law is spread, it could result in some rather disturbing changes.
It all comes down to whether people can be allowed to retain copies in their brains...a storage medium many would prefer could be cleansed after usage...
You should at least let them do something wrong before you begin to criticize. In short, this order simply sends a bunch of people to go figure out this Internet thing they've been hearing so much about as it relates to illegal activities.
Plenty of illegal activities related to the Internet fall under national control. They don't have a single proposed action listed there, merely an imperative to figure out what can be done about net-related crime.
If we want them to realize they can't do anything about most of it, we have to wait for them to start looking for an answer before we try to give them one. It is, sadly, the way government works. I see this as a positive step, since it avoids further creation of laws without even thinking first (for a few minutes) and is better than just sticking their heads in the ground until a political backlash forces more ridiculous laws to be passed. CDA, anyone?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not from Egypt, but here's what I see: Sand, dictators, unhappy people.
They do have the Aswan High Dam, which was a amazing engineering project. It provides an immense amount of electricity...and it's huge. Many people say Egypt's glory is in the past, but that was pretty remarkable.
You did notice he said he graduated in 1988? It wasn't that simple back then.
If you follow the link, you can click to report them as a spammer, posting their link to message boards in an off-topic manner.
This will likely get their account in the game yanked. Which is what they deserve for breaking the rules of the game, right?
So now Alan will have to make snippy comments in his diary about how he can't explain what security holes have been fixed, because British read his site?
I'm just wondering...have you read the whole license through? IANAL, so I don't have a perfect grasp, but some of the things you say suggest you might have skipped over a few of the details.
That's a dangerous thing to do with any license agreement. Who knows what you might have agreed to?
This is easy! It's as if any other piece of software were stolen, you have all the legal recourses. Your copyright on the program is still 100% intact.
The GPL only kicks in if YOU distribute it.
Closed or open source, if someone steals a binary, it's illegal. The person who stole it, furthermore, cannot legally distribute it under the GPL, because unless they stole the source code too, they can't make it available to those they make the binary available to.
So most countries would forbid this and the GPL would not allow it.
Not a problem.
It is my humble opinion that if an author only appeals to male readers or only appeals to female readers they are not a very good.
How long could it possibly take? No more than three days? 3*2=6 ... 6+1=7 ... 7..days..no..WEEKS. Yes. That's the estimate.
Two weeks? No, make that five months!
This is mostly joking, but if you have people changing the specifications while you are writing the code, it can indeed happen.
PHB:"When will it be done?"
Me:"It's been done twice already, but now it's done for the third time. Unless you change the specification again..."
PHB:"Didn't anyone tell you?"
Uh-huh.
Point of fact:
Diablo is always listed, from the first of Diablo I, as the youngest of the Prime Evils.
I have had DSL for over a year now. My ISP is Brand X Internet (www.brandx.net) and my telco is GTE.
GTE is always the problem when things go wrong, but things go wrong rarely. Brand X doesn't have very high ISP fees, they offer static addresses and even EXTRA static addresses for a low additional fee. It is great!
The catch is that they provive NO TECH SUPPORT. If something is wrong, you can call them and they will work with you. But if the problem is that you can't figure your system out, you are SOL and need a different ISP. That is how they keep their costs down so they charge less than other ISPs.
Of course, for me, not having to fight through call center tech support when I want to tell someone I've got a real problem is a blessing.
Look where the various participants on both sides back then are today. At the time, who would have known?
Remember, protestors being oppressed by police causes a kneejerk antipolice reaction no matter who was being protested.
The California Public Utilities Commission has the 'Division of Rate-Payer Advocates' who are supposed to be the voice of the people. Yet for some strange reason, the DRA never really argues with the Commission that pays their salaries...
At least, it COULD be more secure. If there's a 'trick' to this, one traitor could let the trick slip. Then where are you?
If it's a fully reusable effect not involving one-time pads, then observing several messages would probable clue people in on the general nature of the encryption.
Now, if you will accept that fact, then allowing any crypto person in the world scrutinize the method and pass comment could lead to greater strength for the algo...
So in theory, an open development model can help in crypto, past a certain point. Look at various public key encryption systems on the market now: As best as is known from massive scrutiny, they are still impossible to break outside of brute force. Yet their inner workings are hardly a secret...they are strong for reasons other than obscurity.
You did ask...
I think we should have a Slashdot option to view all comments encheferized. That would really improve readability in some cases.
This is a big conference call/telephone bridge. AT&T, Sprint, AOL, UUNet, Earthlink, Cisco, etc etc etc..
Nothing actually happened in the call of technical import, but the following quotes were pretty funny:
"But we really don't think that's Y2K-related, being as Germany is still in 1999, right?"
"Not Germany, Jamaica."
"What about that cable problem in Japan?"
"No, it's not in JAPAN, it's in JAMAICA."
Comparing my experiences across several ISPs including small local and big national, I find Earthlink to be pretty good. They actually put a lot of effort into blocking it, catching some customer heat for restricting SMTP servers to trusted IP blocks and having a Usenet back-off trick that makes things go inanely slow if you spam.
... but the way to avoid that isn't quite clear.
Oh, yes, once upon a time they were the worst. Just ask them and they'll tell you. But that isn't the case anymore. They still get the hit-and-run people. Buy account, spam a lot, lose account an hour later after sending a load of messages
DISCLAIMER: I do work there now, in a capacity where I talk to the network operations people a lot, so I have a much clearer but perhaps emotionally bent view of internal spam-fighting than most.
Don't get me wrong. I like INWO too. It's only people who take things too seriously, I think who have major issues with it. That's why I marked it as 'horrible'. It was a lot of fun. I still have my One With Everything somewhere.
They've used the money from that 'horrible' game to finance this one. The Illuminati 2000 has been in the works for a LONG time.
The real question, I suppose, is whether there is a way to tweak the plasticity/efficiency balance. If you could knock that back, even if the brain compensated within weeks or months, you could still learn a great deal and then streamline again for usefulness. Re-education drugs!
Wait, I'm scaring myself.
The BSD license. An elegant weapon for a more civilized time. And while we all still admire Master Kenobi, mature and at one with the universe, there is still a certain fun in having a younger person grab the lightsaber and run screaming towards some Imperial target.
On a side note, would it be possible to create a Dual Standard license? Essentially, you release the same code under two license options. Any changes that get back to you get issued again under both.
After all, different header comments might even make it different source code. Don't you think?
If those changes originate with the author, people who won't use GPL for fear of contamination can use it. Most of them probably will give back changes. Sure, not all...
People who won't use anything not GPL for fear of someone stealing their toys would have the same thing.
The trick would be in ammending a license somewhere to allow the original author of Code A to use changes made to their code under the second, non-GPL license. It's a bit of a special case, but I think it has a lot of potential for growth.
Whether Sun cares about StarOffice for Linux or not, it's nice to have a company who will do things solely to spite Microsoft behind such a useful application. I just hope the development methodology isn't changed too much. No matter what they say now, it's a given changes will occur...
I'm not entirely certain that law was the best course of action, but it is admittedly somewhat more lenient than what they might have come up with. Ultimately, however, if what it implies about copyright law is spread, it could result in some rather disturbing changes.
It all comes down to whether people can be allowed to retain copies in their brains...a storage medium many would prefer could be cleansed after usage...
You should at least let them do something wrong before you begin to criticize. In short, this order simply sends a bunch of people to go figure out this Internet thing they've been hearing so much about as it relates to illegal activities.
Plenty of illegal activities related to the Internet fall under national control. They don't have a single proposed action listed there, merely an imperative to figure out what can be done about net-related crime.
If we want them to realize they can't do anything about most of it, we have to wait for them to start looking for an answer before we try to give them one. It is, sadly, the way government works. I see this as a positive step, since it avoids further creation of laws without even thinking first (for a few minutes) and is better than just sticking their heads in the ground until a political backlash forces more ridiculous laws to be passed. CDA, anyone?
Uriel
Well, I buy a lot there. Toys are a necessity for any geek. Where else do I get a lightsaber and silly putty and a glowing yoyo?
Not to mention lego, lego and more lego.(tm, tm and more tm).
And I don't think this case has any legal merit.
Hmm. Looks like their server is down. I guess too many people offered their opinion...