I've thought before that someone was sending me a spam at ten minute intervals. It just turned out that fetchmail was choking on the message, yet for some reason still delivering it locally.
Problem is, he wasn't prosecuted under anything related to stealing the email list. He was prosecuted under a clause which describes disrupting services a la worms or viruses. The only service he disrupted was the "bullshit claims of security" service of his former company.
As the article agrees, he acted maliciously and unethically. Generally, however, that's not enough for a 16-month federal prison sentence.
As to "We have the right in this country to say whatever the fuck we want, to whoever we want to say it to", no we don't. We cannot cause undue panic within the populace (yelling "fire" in a theater), which he bordered on doing by e-mailing the customers.
It's only illegal to yell fire in a crowded theatre if there is no fire. Therefore, it would presumably be illegal to send emails about a vulnerability which doesn't exist (thereby inciting unnecessary panic), but protected speech when the vulnerability is actual (or believed to be actual).
Seriously though...when I started reading Slashdot several years ago, all of the cool people were Debian users (including Taco, right?). I was just a straightforward Red Hat guy myself (still am).
But these days, the same voices which always talked about Debian seem to talk about Gentoo, and more to the point...very few people seem to talk about Debian. Apart from turning 10, what's the last major thing it accomplished? I'm sure many people still use it, but the driving force behind it seems to have died. Now it's main distinguishing feature is being the closest-to-official FSF/GNU distro, if you care about stuff like that.
I know apt is great, and Debian's installer, great, whatever, but really...is it still as big as it was?
What do you want? Enterprise-level support without paying for it? Do you think that the support contracts offered by HP, IBM, Sun, or Microsoft will have more value for less money?
This is the Free Software movement, not the Free Support movement. You can still download the software for free, and pay some kids $20 an hour to support it if that's what you want. Quit complaining that the world doesn't give you everything you want for free.
The value of Red Hat for an enterprise is not that the software is free of charge. The value of Red Hat is that the source is free from restrictions. Other than that, they're just like any other enterprise Unix vendor.
Huh? Standard UNIX utilities put the parameters at the end which are most useful to wildcard, e.g. generally INPUT files. Thus you can say "tar -cvf foo.tar foo/*".
You're absolutely right, but I believe there's probably something psychological / linguistic about the trend of PIN, HIV, ATM, UPC (code), etc. It looks to me like people have a hard time using an acronym as a common noun. They would much prefer to use the acronym as an adjective which modifies a normal common noun.
That would imply that if I patent the technique for generating a file of a particular format, I automatically prevent you from writing code which will use that format, because by definition, your code violates my patent.
I'd be willing to bet that for ANY desktop operating system, if installed and used by half a billion clueless lusers for several years, 5% of those installations would end up crashing twice a day. 5% of cars probably stall twice a day.
Windows isn't great, but it all the problem. Users are stupid. And now that computers are mass-marketed, we get a LOT of them. Which means a lot of bad 3rd party software, and a lot of worse 3rd party software, and a lot of self-replicating, drive formatting software.
I forget the title...there was a Larry Niven story about a race of alien traders who land and give us various technologies. In return, they want us to build a giant laser on the moon to power their solar-sail craft to the next star system. Our government doesn't want to do it...but then someone realizes that if we DON'T build the laser, the aliens' Plan B is to cause the sun to go nova, which would also produce the necessary thrust.
My favorite thing about that movie when I was thirteen years old was the triple-breasted whore (a sly reference to Eccentrica Gallumbits?).
My favorite thing about Total Recall now is the fact that the movie never says whether Arnie is still in a vacation or not. He uses Rekall to acquire a vacation where he's a secret agent who saves Mars. He then wakes up, realizes he IS a secret agent, and then goes to save Mars.
Perhaps five minutes after the credits roll, he wakes up, and pays Rekall for his most-excellent 'vacation.'
I suppose I could just go look it up, but did Linus really start working for Transmeta six years ago? I wasn't reading Slashdot six years ago, but I remember Slashdot talking about his move there. It doesn't seem like that long ago...
Of course, the fact that 'six years ago' sounds to me like the Dawn of Time says something about the rate of change in this industry...
OK, to avoid replying to my own post: the author of _Just For Fun_ says that he began working at Transmeta in February of 1997. And I suppose he would know...
There's a lot of complaining about code-freezes for the kernel not being code-freezes. People gripe about major changes being introduced in the last days of the development version.
I think the problem is the standard explanation of 'even kernels are production, odd kernels are development.' Whether he says so or not, it's clear that branching to an even version does not mean that it's a production kernel...branching to an even version begins the code freeze. Up until they call it 2.6, there's going to be large changes to the codebase. Once Linus calls it 2.6, everyone knows they can't put in major changes, but basic bug-fixes only. Therefore, it's never until a few months (or a year) after the even series starts that it's really a production kernel.
Software development managers would hate this...lots of kernel developers hate this...but love him or leave him, that's how Linus works.
Provides the stability of Apache 1.3 (multi-process so if one process crashes, no problem, they just get started right back up) along with a huge speed increase due to the multithreading.
Are you running Apache on Windows?
I'm not aware of any other platforms that gain much from multithreading. Though possibly NPTL on Linux will change that (but surely you aren't running the 2.5 kernel).
Dude, what he said was, 'binary compatibility is often broken under Linux', and you replied, 'No it isn't, just recompile the applications.'
Do you understand what binary compatibility is? It's not FUD to say that Linux doesn't support it very well. The mantra of kernel development is that source compatibility will always be maintained, but ABIs will always change. Everyone makes an effort to minimize the problem, but the rapid advance of Linux is partly due to developers being able to break ABIs.
The Kid Test. I remember when we got PC-Shell installed on our 286 DOS machine. It showed previously hidden files in c:\ like IO.SYS and IBMIO.SYS. I helpfully moved those into another folder.
I'm wondering if there are any kids out there who do similar things with/boot/vmlinuz. Of course, they'd have to have root privileges...
What you might end up with is a RedHat-based distro which does what you want, in the same way that Mandrake was originally just RedHat + KDE. Someone could distribute a RedHat + nVidia + Java OS. It would be legal except for the RedHat graphics. Someone may in fact already do this. This is in fact the single greatest thing about OSS, bar none.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you running fetchmail?
I've thought before that someone was sending me a spam at ten minute intervals. It just turned out that fetchmail was choking on the message, yet for some reason still delivering it locally.
Problem is, he wasn't prosecuted under anything related to stealing the email list. He was prosecuted under a clause which describes disrupting services a la worms or viruses. The only service he disrupted was the "bullshit claims of security" service of his former company.
As the article agrees, he acted maliciously and unethically. Generally, however, that's not enough for a 16-month federal prison sentence.
As to "We have the right in this country to say whatever the fuck we want, to whoever we want to say it to", no we don't. We cannot cause undue panic within the populace (yelling "fire" in a theater), which he bordered on doing by e-mailing the customers.
It's only illegal to yell fire in a crowded theatre if there is no fire. Therefore, it would presumably be illegal to send emails about a vulnerability which doesn't exist (thereby inciting unnecessary panic), but protected speech when the vulnerability is actual (or believed to be actual).
Seriously though...when I started reading Slashdot several years ago, all of the cool people were Debian users (including Taco, right?). I was just a straightforward Red Hat guy myself (still am).
But these days, the same voices which always talked about Debian seem to talk about Gentoo, and more to the point...very few people seem to talk about Debian. Apart from turning 10, what's the last major thing it accomplished? I'm sure many people still use it, but the driving force behind it seems to have died. Now it's main distinguishing feature is being the closest-to-official FSF/GNU distro, if you care about stuff like that.
I know apt is great, and Debian's installer, great, whatever, but really...is it still as big as it was?
What do you want? Enterprise-level support without paying for it? Do you think that the support contracts offered by HP, IBM, Sun, or Microsoft will have more value for less money?
This is the Free Software movement, not the Free Support movement. You can still download the software for free, and pay some kids $20 an hour to support it if that's what you want. Quit complaining that the world doesn't give you everything you want for free.
The value of Red Hat for an enterprise is not that the software is free of charge. The value of Red Hat is that the source is free from restrictions. Other than that, they're just like any other enterprise Unix vendor.
Huh? Standard UNIX utilities put the parameters at the end which are most useful to wildcard, e.g. generally INPUT files. Thus you can say "tar -cvf foo.tar foo/*".
You're absolutely right, but I believe there's probably something psychological / linguistic about the trend of PIN, HIV, ATM, UPC (code), etc. It looks to me like people have a hard time using an acronym as a common noun. They would much prefer to use the acronym as an adjective which modifies a normal common noun.
That would imply that if I patent the technique for generating a file of a particular format, I automatically prevent you from writing code which will use that format, because by definition, your code violates my patent.
Wow, that's scary.
I'd be willing to bet that for ANY desktop operating system, if installed and used by half a billion clueless lusers for several years, 5% of those installations would end up crashing twice a day. 5% of cars probably stall twice a day.
Windows isn't great, but it all the problem. Users are stupid. And now that computers are mass-marketed, we get a LOT of them. Which means a lot of bad 3rd party software, and a lot of worse 3rd party software, and a lot of self-replicating, drive formatting software.
If the Nazis HAD done it with paper and pencil, would you have blamed the American manufacturers of the pencils?
Well, when you go around four corners, you're back where you started. I'm sure there's something meaningful in that.
I belive the ones you linked to are the current screenshots. The author was trying to show us the proposals for future UI changes.
There already was a digital Pearl Harbor...it starred Ben Affleck and it really sucked. Let's not let it happen again, OK?
I forget the title...there was a Larry Niven story about a race of alien traders who land and give us various technologies. In return, they want us to build a giant laser on the moon to power their solar-sail craft to the next star system. Our government doesn't want to do it...but then someone realizes that if we DON'T build the laser, the aliens' Plan B is to cause the sun to go nova, which would also produce the necessary thrust.
I believe it was "The Oldest Profession"?
My favorite thing about that movie when I was thirteen years old was the triple-breasted whore (a sly reference to Eccentrica Gallumbits?).
My favorite thing about Total Recall now is the fact that the movie never says whether Arnie is still in a vacation or not. He uses Rekall to acquire a vacation where he's a secret agent who saves Mars. He then wakes up, realizes he IS a secret agent, and then goes to save Mars.
Perhaps five minutes after the credits roll, he wakes up, and pays Rekall for his most-excellent 'vacation.'
Hah! I knew it! Mac OSX isn't based on Mach or BSD at all! It runs on top of emacs!
Actually, the thing that surprises me is that they managed to trim emacs down so it's only an operating system.
I suppose I could just go look it up, but did Linus really start working for Transmeta six years ago? I wasn't reading Slashdot six years ago, but I remember Slashdot talking about his move there. It doesn't seem like that long ago...
Of course, the fact that 'six years ago' sounds to me like the Dawn of Time says something about the rate of change in this industry...
OK, to avoid replying to my own post: the author of _Just For Fun_ says that he began working at Transmeta in February of 1997. And I suppose he would know...
There's a lot of complaining about code-freezes for the kernel not being code-freezes. People gripe about major changes being introduced in the last days of the development version.
I think the problem is the standard explanation of 'even kernels are production, odd kernels are development.' Whether he says so or not, it's clear that branching to an even version does not mean that it's a production kernel...branching to an even version begins the code freeze. Up until they call it 2.6, there's going to be large changes to the codebase. Once Linus calls it 2.6, everyone knows they can't put in major changes, but basic bug-fixes only. Therefore, it's never until a few months (or a year) after the even series starts that it's really a production kernel.
Software development managers would hate this...lots of kernel developers hate this...but love him or leave him, that's how Linus works.
How do you assign custom functions to WindowsKey-Letter combinations? Is that a WinAmp feature or a standard Windows function?
Provides the stability of Apache 1.3 (multi-process so if one process crashes, no problem, they just get started right back up) along with a huge speed increase due to the multithreading.
Are you running Apache on Windows?
I'm not aware of any other platforms that gain much from multithreading. Though possibly NPTL on Linux will change that (but surely you aren't running the 2.5 kernel).
Well, we have a 32 billion dollar budget decficit, but at least...
at least...
at least we won't vote for a Republican.
Dude, what he said was, 'binary compatibility is often broken under Linux', and you replied, 'No it isn't, just recompile the applications.'
Do you understand what binary compatibility is? It's not FUD to say that Linux doesn't support it very well. The mantra of kernel development is that source compatibility will always be maintained, but ABIs will always change. Everyone makes an effort to minimize the problem, but the rapid advance of Linux is partly due to developers being able to break ABIs.
The Kid Test. I remember when we got PC-Shell installed on our 286 DOS machine. It showed previously hidden files in c:\ like IO.SYS and IBMIO.SYS. I helpfully moved those into another folder.
/boot/vmlinuz. Of course, they'd have to have root privileges...
I'm wondering if there are any kids out there who do similar things with
What you might end up with is a RedHat-based distro which does what you want, in the same way that Mandrake was originally just RedHat + KDE. Someone could distribute a RedHat + nVidia + Java OS. It would be legal except for the RedHat graphics. Someone may in fact already do this. This is in fact the single greatest thing about OSS, bar none.
...and the student was enlightened.
No, its 'What Would the Devil Do?'