I just talked to the guys at Linuxbox and they're open to getting donations. So if you've got the money and want to support what they do, whip out your check book and send some money to:
MassLinux 55 Water Street Shelburne Falls, MA 01370 USA
I just sent them an e-mail to see if they: a) are willing to accept donations b) can accept donations I wasn't sure if there were issues with them just taking money via donation (taxes, etc), but perhaps if they just sell a bunch of e-mail addresses to us at say $5 or $10 a piece, that'd be cool. If I hear anything more, I'll make sure to post back here with the details.
I think the problem with legal action in this sort of situation is that the court system is ridiculously slow and unable to deal with such issues. By the time this is all settled, good or bad (depending on what you think that is), it will probably be totally meaningless. The landscape of the technology will have completely changed.
8 sl-bb10-sea-9-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.6.90) 50.642 ms 51.102 ms 50.993 ms 9 sl-microsoft-4-4-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.192.6) 51.736 ms 52.360 ms 51.980 ms 10 iuscgsrfec7501-a5-00-1.cp.msft.net (207.46.190.38) 52.389 ms 52.129 ms 52.981 ms 11 iuscb11ixc7502-a1-00-1.cp.msft.net (207.46.129.136) 51.672 ms 52.598 ms 53.737 ms 12 iusd27nt5c7201-a1-0-1.cp.msft.net (207.46.168.36) 52.838 ms 52.947 ms 53.267 ms 13 207.46.175.250 (207.46.175.250) 53.226 ms 52.794 ms 52.895 ms 14 * * *
This whole concept seems very pointless to me. Much like the Mindcraft test, how many real-world situations reflect the kind of test we are currently seeing. If you have a box that only runs 2 or 3 services, and serving up static web pages, it isn't that hard to make them secure.
What would make a more interesting test is to have a competition between NT/2K and Linux where they would run a standard set of services (web, mail, maybe directory services). Then you unleash crackers on it and see what gets broken.
Really all this is doing is testing the security of TCP/IP stacks on both OS's, and the security of Apache vs. IIS serving up static pages. It's much more an Apache vs. IIS thing than a Linux vs. Windoze thing.
Let's get realy here. If I am a corrupt, evil crime lord (TM), am I really going to obey laws about distribution of encryption? If I am a terrorist out to infect society with exploding child pornography, do I give a hoot what Janet Reno or the German Government say? Of course not!
It is the law abiding people that they are supposedly trying to protect that are going to pay the price for this.
My suspicion is that maybe that is the government's overall strategy. I think they have a pretty good grasp on the fact that banning encryption altogether is insane. But if they push that direction, then they can come back to key escrow as a way to "accomodate" us.
Key escrow is a joke anyhow. Look to the statistics on wire taps, and you can see how badly this stuff will be abused. Last year there were what, 3 wire taps that were turned down by judges.
I'll be the first on to admit that even as a 24 year old I found some of the stuff in South Park to be just a little too far over the top (the whole Sadaam and Satan scene in particular). But I totally disagree with you (and I'm sure you were expecting that to happen).
Ultimately this all comes down to an issue of whether Government should regulate morality. As you said above you felt that this was "actually worthwhile." The problem though is that if the government is to regulate morality, which morality do they enforce? Do they enforce Christian, Buddhist, or Aethiest views of morality? Who decides?
You complain about the regulation of religion in schools, but really this is another form of moral regulation. If a child desires to pray in school, there is no law in this country that says they can't. What the law says is that the state cannot sponsor religion, or more to the point a particular flavor of religion. If you permit the posting of the Ten Commandments, then you should also be allowed to post messages from other religions as well. Then where do you draw the line? Is posting Buddhist messages okay, but not Wiccan messages? Who decides and what gives them that authority.
Wouldn't you be very upset if you as a Christian found out that the government decided to permit Buddhist writings to be posted in the hallways of the school but not Christian? Wouldn't it bother you to have a class led meditation on our oneness with the Universe rather than a traditional Christian prayer? Religion is a personal matter for each person to practice on their own terms as they see fit. Morality is an extension of religions. It is not something to be dictated by the Government and the school. And if somebody decides one day that it is, I'll be packing my bags for Canada!
The fundamental assumption that age corresponds directly to maturity and the ability to deal with intense (be it violent, sexual, or whatever) subject matter is insane. My parents let me see rated R movies when I was well under 17, and I remember sitting and watching George Carlin on HBO with my dad! Have I turned out a malevolent sociopath? No, I'm probably the most "normal" person I know.
On the other hand there are some children who are too immature to deal with some movies, and it should be up to their parents to invoke that control. I was sitting in Titanic and got treated to some kid sitting behind us doing his best Beavis impression when they had the one nude scene in the entire movie. Boy did that ruin the whole atmosphere of the movie.
Really though when you get down to it, it's not so much the fundamentalists that are the problem, but rather those parents who don't take care of their kids. Parents who rely on television and the public school systems to keep their kids in line. If parents depend on the government to do their jobs for them, the government will do that job (God help us all!). Ultimately I want to be able to raise my kids the way I want, without the interferece of the right wing, or the government.
I think you misunderstand my point. First of all, re: their recourse, I am talking about against pirate distributors. Legitimate distributors aren't going to be touched by SDMI because they can do whatever they want in whatever format. SDMI is mostly aimed at the pirates.
I'm not saying that I think piracy is good and that bands should not get money. What I'm saying is that eventually, with expanding bandwidth, greater storage capacity, and improved compression algorithms, being a pirate is disturbingly easy. Already companies lose huge chunks of money to piracy and the ball is just starting to roll.
My point is that the RIAA's traditional pipeline for money has been strict control of the distribution of their intellectual property. I suggest to them that rather than trying to fight a battle that I suspect they are bound to lose, they should try to figure out a new approach.
That may be true, but if the users are anonymous, how can they trace it. They can watch the traffic go back and forth, but that doesn't mean they knew who the actual sender is.
Granted, MP3 could be replace by SDMI if SDMI offers some actual benefits to consumers. But by the same token, MP4, or whatever is next can come along and do the same thing and possibly not care about copyright, etc.
SDMI is fighting a losing war. Rather than fight a losing fight the RIAA needs to change their approach. Give away the music, but sell the T-shirst, the concerts, the theme parks, etc.
It cracks me up to here music execs talk about SDMI will be the "death knell" for MP3. After SDMI is finalized, they will likely go through and try to kill anybody who is distributing the unblessed MP3 files. So let's assume for the moment that they manage to pull this off. Is MP3 dead??? HAHAHAHA! Not!
What about Usenet? People post MP3's to Usenet, and since there are a number of Usenet servers that don't track who posts to them, how are you going to go after the people.
What about IRC? Does anybody ever log IRC??? So we have yet another distribution mechanism that is untouchable by the RIAA.
If you want to use Java and want to keep the logic seperate, I'd recommend using Java Server Pages. what you can do is build your classes and put your logic in to those. Then you use the JSP's to call the classes and get the information out of them.
Pretty much what I do with most of my time at work is write applications using Java Servlets, Databases, etc. I also do this quite a bit in my spare time (what can I say, I'm a masochist). For my personal stuff I use JServ and Apache to run my apps. I've found it to be pretty good, but I don't know how it compares in performance, etc.
If you aren't stuck on the idea of having an open source product, I've also found that WebSphere is pretty good, although I haven't really given it the once over in Linux yet (just installed the beta yesterday).
We did some speed comparisons a month or so ago comparing various servlet engines under Solaris. Using Netscape's incredibly slow java engine as a baseline, we found that ServletExec, and JRun provided about 3 times the performance and WebSphere gave about 5 times the performance (if I recall correctly). Apache was not a possible webserver choice for this experiment though, so I didn't get to see how JServ would handle the test.
We need not fear the standard Microsoft offensive, because it was never designed to work against OSS. Let's say for a moment that Microsoft manages, through a full force FUD movement, and their usual tactics are able to take say 70 or 80 percent of the webserver market. By similar tactics let us assume that they also take 70 or 80 percent of the browser market. The likelyhood of this is small, but let's assume they manage to do it anyhow.
Now, what does this mean for open source software? Apache, or Linux, or Mozilla isn't going to close up shop for their is no shop to close. Since these products are open source, people can continue to build and extend forever and there's no way that Microsoft can really "win".
Other competitors that Microsoft has faced have had to deal with keeping stock holders happy, remaining profitable, etc. Eventually, they would be forced to cut their losses and run. That's a total non-issue with OSS stuff.
Microsoft may continue to win in the short term, but eventually one of two things will happen:
1) The government will come in and break them up (if they control the majority of OS's, Webservers, and Web browsers, there's no more room to argue that they aren't a monopoly).
2) Microsoft will get tired, make a mistake, and lose the race. OSS has the advantage because as it becomes better, more people use it, as more people use it, it becomes better and so on and so on...
A related problem is how do you apply the law if a resident of North Carolina receives said illegal mail from a sender in California to their e-mail provider in New York? Who's jurisdiction is it under?
I wonder when all of these yahoos are going to get it through their skulls that laws regulating the Internet are only affected if they can be enforced at a global level. Otherwise the laws can simply be worked around by going to another state or country.
I think I figured out what the RIAA is really trying to do with the SDMI standard. They are not depending on the technical merits of SDMI (because there are none), but rather they are depending on future legal merits. My theory is that they will use this standard as a basis for litigation in the future.
If a company manufactures a device that will play pirated music, but the RIAA offers a system that will prevent this, then it is easier to argue that they are contributing to piracy problems through the creation of such devices. Whether this would stand up in court is debatable, but I suspect that's what their plan is.
Now that would be an interesting benchmark. Run the same test, but then just leave it running for a month or two and see how the results varied. I'm sure a few crashes would take the edge off of NT very quickly:)
If that is the case I'd be curious to see how the results varied if you had fluctuating network traffic on different cards. I bet that would throw a big wrench in NT's stats.
Remember that the test being conducted (although not mentioned in the article) was with tuned boxes. The NT guys tweaked their system, and linux was tweaked by some linux uber-geeks. Out of the box, Linux still beats NT.
Microsoft has claimed this round, but I believe that in the coming years Linux will begin to outshine NT/2000 in many respects. Remember that NT has been running an SMP kernel for several years and has gone through several service packs to get to where it is today. Thus it is no great surprise that Linux loses on a beefy SMP box.
It does disturb me somewhat to see that Linux loses on the single proc box, but this seems to come down to the tuning. Out of the box, Linux is the faster (as other benchmarks have illustrated), but when tuned, NT is better.
I think they ought to make this an annual competition and see how they match up every year. I bet next year the results won't be so slanted in MS's favor.
Actually, the ACLU has been making a big point about this issue in general. Property seizure laws in the country are completely out of control. Not only can the FBI take your computer but if they feel like it they can also take all of the cash in your wallet if they feel like it.
My suspicion is that the target media are things like phrack, 2600, and the usual reading materials of hackers/crackers. I'm sure that if the FBI could find a direct connection between any of these and actual criminal activity they'd be very happy.
Slashdot Mirror
MassLinux
55 Water Street
Shelburne Falls, MA 01370
USA
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8 sl-bb10-sea-9-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.6.90) 50.642 ms 51.102 ms 50.993 ms
9 sl-microsoft-4-4-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.192.6) 51.736 ms 52.360 ms 51.980 ms
10 iuscgsrfec7501-a5-00-1.cp.msft.net (207.46.190.38) 52.389 ms 52.129 ms 52.981 ms
11 iuscb11ixc7502-a1-00-1.cp.msft.net (207.46.129.136) 51.672 ms 52.598 ms 53.737 ms
12 iusd27nt5c7201-a1-0-1.cp.msft.net (207.46.168.36) 52.838 ms 52.947 ms 53.267 ms
13 207.46.175.250 (207.46.175.250) 53.226 ms 52.794 ms 52.895 ms
14 * * *
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What would make a more interesting test is to have a competition between NT/2K and Linux where they would run a standard set of services (web, mail, maybe directory services). Then you unleash crackers on it and see what gets broken.
Really all this is doing is testing the security of TCP/IP stacks on both OS's, and the security of Apache vs. IIS serving up static pages. It's much more an Apache vs. IIS thing than a Linux vs. Windoze thing.
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It is the law abiding people that they are supposedly trying to protect that are going to pay the price for this.
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Key escrow is a joke anyhow. Look to the statistics on wire taps, and you can see how badly this stuff will be abused. Last year there were what, 3 wire taps that were turned down by judges.
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Ultimately this all comes down to an issue of whether Government should regulate morality. As you said above you felt that this was "actually worthwhile." The problem though is that if the government is to regulate morality, which morality do they enforce? Do they enforce Christian, Buddhist, or Aethiest views of morality? Who decides?
You complain about the regulation of religion in schools, but really this is another form of moral regulation. If a child desires to pray in school, there is no law in this country that says they can't. What the law says is that the state cannot sponsor religion, or more to the point a particular flavor of religion. If you permit the posting of the Ten Commandments, then you should also be allowed to post messages from other religions as well. Then where do you draw the line? Is posting Buddhist messages okay, but not Wiccan messages? Who decides and what gives them that authority.
Wouldn't you be very upset if you as a Christian found out that the government decided to permit Buddhist writings to be posted in the hallways of the school but not Christian? Wouldn't it bother you to have a class led meditation on our oneness with the Universe rather than a traditional Christian prayer? Religion is a personal matter for each person to practice on their own terms as they see fit. Morality is an extension of religions. It is not something to be dictated by the Government and the school. And if somebody decides one day that it is, I'll be packing my bags for Canada!
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On the other hand there are some children who are too immature to deal with some movies, and it should be up to their parents to invoke that control. I was sitting in Titanic and got treated to some kid sitting behind us doing his best Beavis impression when they had the one nude scene in the entire movie. Boy did that ruin the whole atmosphere of the movie.
Really though when you get down to it, it's not so much the fundamentalists that are the problem, but rather those parents who don't take care of their kids. Parents who rely on television and the public school systems to keep their kids in line. If parents depend on the government to do their jobs for them, the government will do that job (God help us all!). Ultimately I want to be able to raise my kids the way I want, without the interferece of the right wing, or the government.
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I'm not saying that I think piracy is good and that bands should not get money. What I'm saying is that eventually, with expanding bandwidth, greater storage capacity, and improved compression algorithms, being a pirate is disturbingly easy.
Already companies lose huge chunks of money to piracy and the ball is just starting to roll.
My point is that the RIAA's traditional pipeline for money has been strict control of the distribution of their intellectual property. I suggest to them that rather than trying to fight a battle that I suspect they are bound to lose, they should try to figure out a new approach.
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SDMI is fighting a losing war. Rather than fight a losing fight the RIAA needs to change their approach. Give away the music, but sell the T-shirst, the concerts, the theme parks, etc.
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What about Usenet? People post MP3's to Usenet, and since there are a number of Usenet servers that don't track who posts to them, how are you going to go after the people.
What about IRC? Does anybody ever log IRC??? So we have yet another distribution mechanism that is untouchable by the RIAA.
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call the classes and get the information out of them.
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If you aren't stuck on the idea of having an open source product, I've also found that WebSphere is pretty good, although I haven't really given it the once over in Linux yet (just installed the beta yesterday).
We did some speed comparisons a month or so ago comparing various servlet engines under Solaris. Using Netscape's incredibly slow java engine as
a baseline, we found that ServletExec, and JRun
provided about 3 times the performance and WebSphere gave about 5 times the performance (if I recall correctly). Apache was not a possible webserver choice for this experiment though, so I didn't get to see how JServ would handle the test.
Hope that's of some help!
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Now, what does this mean for open source software? Apache, or Linux, or Mozilla isn't going to close up shop for their is no shop to close. Since these products are open source, people can continue to build and extend forever and there's no way that Microsoft can really "win".
Other competitors that Microsoft has faced have had to deal with keeping stock holders happy, remaining profitable, etc. Eventually, they would be forced to cut their losses and run. That's a total non-issue with OSS stuff.
Microsoft may continue to win in the short term, but eventually one of two things will happen:
1) The government will come in and break them up (if they control the majority of OS's, Webservers, and Web browsers, there's no more room to argue that they aren't a monopoly).
2) Microsoft will get tired, make a mistake, and lose the race. OSS has the advantage because as it becomes better, more people use it, as more people use it, it becomes better and so on and so on...
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I wonder when all of these yahoos are going to get it through their skulls that laws regulating the Internet are only affected if they can be enforced at a global level. Otherwise the laws can simply be worked around by going to another state or country.
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If a company manufactures a device that will play pirated music, but the RIAA offers a system that will prevent this, then it is easier to argue that they are contributing to piracy problems through the creation of such devices. Whether this would stand up in court is debatable, but I suspect that's what their plan is.
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It does disturb me somewhat to see that Linux loses on the single proc box, but this seems to come down to the tuning. Out of the box, Linux is the faster (as other benchmarks have illustrated), but when tuned, NT is better.
I think they ought to make this an annual competition and see how they match up every year. I bet next year the results won't be so slanted in MS's favor.
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