I'm sure the fact that the NC approach looked, smelled, walked, and quacked like the 3270 controller/displays that the PC's had just displaced was another reason NC went nowhere at the time.
What has changed since then is that networking is now ubiquitous and cheap AND the hardware cost/performance ratio is so low and getting lower.
That's the theory on the Indiana toll-way, right? You enter the system at a known point in space and time, and exit at another such point, and it is simple math to figure out if you've been speeding. What due process would be necessary?
It's popular with me. My kids know that our firewall keeps logs of everything. They also know that the browsers often keep an embarassing amount of history of what's been visited. Between keeping the computers in a family area (vital!!) and them knowing it is a privilege, not a right to use them, we are getting along quite well.
Similar to the music industry, a movie may cost 10's or 100's of millions of $$ to make, but after release the studios do their damndest to cook the books to show that no money was made, so as to lower any possible payments to artists, actors -- anybody with a percentage in their contracts.
I saw that "Alpha Centauri" was going to be released, but this is two months after my son buys it for $10 from EB, for Windows, natch'. Can't justify another copy for Linux, much as I'd like to.
Would have liked it very much if "Black & White" had a Linux release simultaneously with the Windows release. Not a happening thing.
Would REALLY REALLY like it if an equivalent of Links Golf was available for Linux. Heck, the game originated on an Amiga!
Subject for a Slashdot poll: How many people have "administrator" privileges on their NT accounts? The subject of the follow-on poll is left to the reader....
I also want to patent the method and apparatus of infecting the MS-OS side of a multi-booting computer so that the other OS(s) are affected upon subsequent boots, as well as the process of scanning for such damage. Hear that, McAffee? All your profits am belong to me. Hear that, Virus writers? Don't bother doing that -- it's been thought of, and so is no longer 133t.
Yeah, I believe that is the point. Only individual users can break any copyright law with Aimster, and so only individuals can be persued for infringement.
One of the most unique experiences I've had regarding languages was in the mid-80's, where I saw an Arabic word processor (characters go right-to-left, and the shape of characters change with the [developing] context of the sentence), written by an Egyptian national living in Montreal. The code was in MS Basic with all the comments and variable names in French. Whew!
I would wholly be in agreement if the news was "... has implemented all current standards along with new innovative features." Broken implementation of standards coupled with new features simply is lame, and stupid, given their market position and legal troubles.
>(Of course, who in their right minds would code an OS, for example, in C++?)
Well, uh, Linus wanted to. Also some enterprising lads at Bell Labs. I'm sure there are others.
Correct me if I'm wrong (and I know that/.-ers are never reluctant to do that), but it was the state of g++ in the early 90's that kept c++ from being used in the kernel. The compiler was simply immature from a c++ standpoint at that time. The GNU compiler has come a long way, and the kernel is still stressing its C usage.
The Conspiracy Theorist inside me that hasn't had his tea yet today says, "The Feds have implanted a controlling computer virus in Symantec's software, which will then be distributed world-wide in the mad rush to update virus checkers by every vulnerable user in the world."
Microsoft may have unlimited legal funds, but here they have effectively broken the rule regarding "Never have an argument with somebody who buys ink by the barrel." or however that quotation really went.
The solution IS to create competing code, just as was done with GZIP and BZIP2 for compression in response to the LZW patent problem. Note that I didn't say it would be easy....
Agreed. Looks like real crimes were committed, though I suspect that not *all* the passwords were cracked or they were pretty lame to begin with. In this case, the crack program is nothing more than "a hunting knife with the assailant's fingerprints on it", and Klobuchar et al should drop all mention of l0phtcrack possession in the charges and simply concentrate on proving the crimes.
BTW, Hopkins, MN is a small town (I live there) that happens to be a Minneapolis suburb, in the midst of a couple of million people. We like to call this area the Silicon Prairie or Silicon Snowbank, depending on the season. Hardly a trailer park.
Aside from the number of people in the world surnamed "Lee", there is no larger group around than Slashdotters that own the "Matrix" DVD, right? Let us all write letters asking for RMA numbers to allow us to return it in protest. Write to Warner Home Video, I suppose. CC: your Congresscritter.
Not that we'll get one, but the Slashdot effect over snail mail regarding one of the most popular DVD releases should get some attention.
Two years ago, Intuit's TurboTax wouldn't run under Windows NT4.0 -- you know, the OS that has enough password protection to keep even MY kids out of my records? I can't imagine what UI feature they were trying to make use of that tied them to Win95, or what QA process let it out without the ability to run under NT and import data from Quicken.
So, if it was that messed up (last year was better), I could see it being a problem to port to any other OS or toolkit.
The warranty provision may be the clue, here. It appears that this company intends to provide a warranty on hits hardware product. I believe it would be entirely within their rights to declare the conditions to maintain that warranty. Requesting root access should void the warranty for the customer, in this case.
What GPL software includes a warranty? None! In fact, it is all made available 'as is', on purpose. Here, it is the turn-key system that is being warranted.
Open Source, under GPL, adds value to this system for the customer, as it protects the customer in the case where vendor support disappears or is otherwise lacking in the future, or in any future case where the warranty and such support no longer matters to the customer.
In short, the customer won't need root while the product is working fine and the vendor is supporting him, and having the source won't hurt, and might possibly help at some future date.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure the fact that the NC approach looked, smelled, walked, and quacked like the 3270 controller/displays that the PC's had just displaced was another reason NC went nowhere at the time.
What has changed since then is that networking is now ubiquitous and cheap AND the hardware cost/performance ratio is so low and getting lower.
That's the theory on the Indiana toll-way, right? You enter the system at a known point in space and time, and exit at another such point, and it is simple math to figure out if you've been speeding. What due process would be necessary?
It's popular with me. My kids know that our firewall keeps logs of everything. They also know that the browsers often keep an embarassing amount of history of what's been visited. Between keeping the computers in a family area (vital!!) and them knowing it is a privilege, not a right to use them, we are getting along quite well.
Similar to the music industry, a movie may cost 10's or 100's of millions of $$ to make, but after release the studios do their damndest to cook the books to show that no money was made, so as to lower any possible payments to artists, actors -- anybody with a percentage in their contracts.
Not so funny.
I saw that "Alpha Centauri" was going to be released, but this is two months after my son buys it for $10 from EB, for Windows, natch'. Can't justify another copy for Linux, much as I'd like to.
Would have liked it very much if "Black & White" had a Linux release simultaneously with the Windows release. Not a happening thing.
Would REALLY REALLY like it if an equivalent of Links Golf was available for Linux. Heck, the game originated on an Amiga!
Rant, rant, rant.... Markets, money, grumble.
Subject for a Slashdot poll: How many people have "administrator" privileges on their NT accounts? The subject of the follow-on poll is left to the reader....
I also want to patent the method and apparatus of infecting the MS-OS side of a multi-booting computer so that the other OS(s) are affected upon subsequent boots, as well as the process of scanning for such damage. Hear that, McAffee? All your profits am belong to me. Hear that, Virus writers? Don't bother doing that -- it's been thought of, and so is no longer 133t.
Yeah, I believe that is the point. Only individual users can break any copyright law with Aimster, and so only individuals can be persued for infringement.
I'll support Allchin's Right to Dissemble, as long
as it doesn't infringe on our Right of Assembly to
promote our Right to Assemble.
nah .. CryptoSHell -- csh!
No, wait. I think those are my initials.
And remember, they did have 36-bit words...
One of the most unique experiences I've had regarding languages was in the mid-80's, where I saw an Arabic word processor (characters go right-to-left, and the shape of characters change with the [developing] context of the sentence), written by an Egyptian national living in Montreal. The code was in MS Basic with all the comments and variable names in French. Whew!
I would wholly be in agreement if the news was "... has implemented all current standards along with new innovative features." Broken implementation of standards coupled with new features simply is lame, and stupid, given their market position and legal troubles.
>(Of course, who in their right minds would code an OS, for example, in C++?)
/.-ers are never reluctant to do that), but it was the state of g++ in the early 90's that kept c++ from being used in the kernel. The compiler was simply immature from a c++ standpoint at that time. The GNU compiler has come a long way, and the kernel is still stressing its C usage.
Well, uh, Linus wanted to. Also some enterprising lads at Bell Labs. I'm sure there are others.
Correct me if I'm wrong (and I know that
Er..that was 'unabashed'. Quite different.
My kids won't find it in my library, because Battlefield Earth, the book, was bad sci-fi pulp, as well.
The Conspiracy Theorist inside me that hasn't had
his tea yet today says, "The Feds have implanted
a controlling computer virus in Symantec's software, which will then be distributed world-wide in the mad rush to update virus checkers by every vulnerable user in the world."
Must have tea. Mmmm. Tea.
Microsoft may have unlimited legal funds, but here they have effectively broken the rule regarding "Never have an argument with somebody who buys ink by the barrel." or however that quotation really went.
The solution IS to create competing code, just as was done with GZIP and BZIP2 for compression in response to the LZW patent problem. Note that I didn't say it would be easy....
Woo! Just think of the disk savings on Slashdot if this process was run on it, and all the anti-M$ articles coalesced into one!
Or run it on a M$ FUD server, or a Mindcraft Benchmark Report server....
:-P
Agreed. Looks like real crimes were committed, though I suspect that not *all* the passwords were cracked or they were pretty lame to begin with. In this case, the crack program is nothing more than "a hunting knife with the assailant's fingerprints on it", and Klobuchar et al should drop all mention of l0phtcrack possession in the charges and simply concentrate on proving the crimes.
BTW, Hopkins, MN is a small town (I live there) that happens to be a Minneapolis suburb, in the midst of a couple of million people. We like to call this area the Silicon Prairie or Silicon Snowbank, depending on the season. Hardly a trailer park.
Aside from the number of people in the world surnamed "Lee", there is no larger group around than Slashdotters that own the "Matrix" DVD, right? Let us all write letters asking for RMA numbers to allow us to return it in protest. Write to Warner Home Video, I suppose. CC: your Congresscritter.
Not that we'll get one, but the Slashdot effect over snail mail regarding one of the most popular DVD releases should get some attention.
Similar to Randy Schwarz's case with Intel?
Two years ago, Intuit's TurboTax wouldn't run under Windows NT4.0 -- you know, the OS that has enough password protection to keep even MY kids out of my records? I can't imagine what UI feature they were trying to make use of that tied them to Win95, or what QA process let it out without the ability to run under NT and import data from Quicken.
So, if it was that messed up (last year was better), I could see it being a problem to port to any other OS or toolkit.
The warranty provision may be the clue, here. It appears that this company intends to provide a warranty on hits hardware product. I believe it would be entirely within their rights to declare the conditions to maintain that warranty. Requesting root access should void the warranty for the customer, in this case.
What GPL software includes a warranty? None! In fact, it is all made available 'as is', on purpose. Here, it is the turn-key system that is being warranted.
Open Source, under GPL, adds value to this system for the customer, as it protects the customer in the case where vendor support disappears or is otherwise lacking in the future, or in any future case where the warranty and such support no longer matters to the customer.
In short, the customer won't need root while the product is working fine and the vendor is supporting him, and having the source won't hurt, and might possibly help at some future date.
and say (phonetically spelled): "Eis ta napa!"
in his honor.