Using Windows *is* putting your OS on the internet.
Although Windows has non-privileged user accounts, they are essentially useless. I tried to set up my mother and my daughter with these, and they were just a pain in the neck. So they, along with just about everybody else, run administrator-privilege accounts.
If I'm running as a non-privileged user, the most a javascript hack can do is mess up my account.
So for most Windows machines, any old application program (and Firefox is just any old application) is an open wound.
If Microsoft want to get serious about security, they'll have to change the run-as-administrator culture. To do this they'll have to:
(a) make it easy, and the default, to run
without privilege
(b) make it unpleasant to run with privilege
I won't bet on an attitude adjustment - from Microsoft or from Windows users - any time soon.
If the accesses are really random, caching will do no good. As you'll note, my computations already assume no seek time, so reordering to shorten seeks won't improve it. The only way caching could help is if it were to accumulate adjacent sectors for writing. There won't be many of those unless the cache is nearly as big as the database.
The whole idea behind caching and any other memory hierarchy is that it takes advantage of locality of reference, which is explicitly precluded by the stipulation in the great-grandparent that the accesses are random.
That's not not my recollection from following the case and discussing (non-priveleged) details with a couple of expert witnesses. Of course this is hearsay and just my recollection, so make of it what you will.
Low-frequency sounds form standing waves in a small room. The shape of these waves is heavily influenced by speaker placement. And you may find that the bass is way louder in one part of the room than another. What you can't do is identify (by ear) the source. No contradiction there.
In another response, aliasing was discussed. It is possible that if you flood the room with ultrasonic noise, that it may heterodyne with other noises to form lower frequencies. The principle is similar to that of aliasing, discussed in another response.
But if those ultrasonic sounds were present when the original recording was made, they'd have produced the heterodyne effects at that time, which would have been captured in the bandwidth-limited recording.
An interesting aspect of this is that heterodyning depends on non-linearity (which is also known as distortion) in the transmission process. So it could be that if you faithfully record ultrasonic signals and then reproduce them with distortion, you may hear their artifacts.
Post-hoc reordering won't do it. For a vast database, the probability of accessing adjacent sectors within the lifetime of the cache is vanishingly small.
"Consider the case with a sinusoidal signal of 22kHz. If we sample at 44kHz, it is posible that each sample lands on a zero. We record no sound at 22kHz. If we are slightly off, we get some improvement, but insufficient amplitude to hear."
That's why CD players have a brick-wall filter that suppresses everything above 20kHz.
"For a frequency close to 22kHz, we could end up with a very low frequency sound being detected as the samples effectively move along the wave, getting successively louder and quiter as the phase changes."
This phenomenon is called aliasing. If you record a loud ultrasonic sound, it will appear to be lower frequency. That's why you use a brick-wall filter to eliminate signals above 20kHz before digitizing.
It is possible to implement a brick wall using a digital filter, which may involve sampling at a much higher frequency. Sometimes this is known colloquially as "oversampling."
"This is why if we ignore any hiss and pops from a record (you know, those old black circular things that melt if you leave them in the back of your car in the sun), a record actually sounds better than a CD. High frequency sounds are clearer and sharper than anything a CD is capable of."
You may like vinyl better than CDs but it has nothing to do with ultrasonics. You simply like the coloration. In double-blind tests, subjects are unable to distinguish vinyl records from CD recordings of vinyl records.
The Pepsi challenge is completely unscientific. It isn't double blind, they control the order of testing, there's no purge period, the test isn't repeated, participants are self-selected, Pepsi controls the question ("which do you like," not "which is Coke?") you get a prize if you get the answer they want,...
"Can [the storage backend] handle 2000 random seeks per second?"
The short answer is "no."
A 10,000 RPM disk has a period of 6 mSec. That's 3 mSec latency on average for random access (not counting seek time or the fact that read-modify-write will take at least 3 times this long: read, wait one full rotation, write).
So one disk can do, as a generous upper bound, 333 random accesses per second. I'll spare you the details of the Poisson distribution, but if you managed to spread these updates randomly over a disk farm, you'd need about 2000/333*e = 16 independent spindles.
The trick to high throughput is harnessing, and creating, non-randomness. You can do a much better job of this with a purpose-built solution.
You didn't specify some key parameters. How big are these updates, and how do they get multiplexed? What kind of retrieval do you want to do in the data?
If your data are already arriving on a single socket, just mark up the data and write it out. Then you can retrieve anything you like with linear search. And you can be reasonably certain that you have captured all the data and will never lose it due to having trusted it to some mysterious DB software.
If linear search isn't good enough, you have to specify the sorts of queries you want. All information from a particular sensor? Information from all sensors at a particular time? Does this information have to be available on-line, or can you answer your queries in batch. Sort/merge is really efficient if you don't need real-time queries. You can build indexes in real-time almost as efficiently, if you know what you want to index. The basic technique is the same, but more complicated to set up - batch up the information to be indexed, and do a series of sort-merges to accumulate the indexes.
I didn't mean to acuse you of being an Audiophile [tm]. Sorry. And thanks for the story.
Sounds like you have really good auditory acuity. I have no reason to question that. My first order guess is that many software/hardware processors generate some horrible high-frequency harmonics in the 15kHz range that offend your ear. I suspect the squeal from some CRT monitors drives you crazy, too.
If it is 15kHz that bothers you, the problem will correct itself as you get older.
Yes, but you still don't have enough free vocabulary to relate the opening scene from The Flintstones. As you may recall, Fred puts the tiger out but it re-enters the house, not through the door but through the winspire.
I doubt very much that you can hear anything in the range 22kHz - 24 kHz, which is the only inherent improvement between 44kHz and 48kHz sampling (cf. Nyquist).
As far as I'm aware, there is no scientific evidence that any human can. Members of the Audiophile cult claim they can, but their methods are as credible as astrologers'.
Of course, mp3s (at the level of compression used in file shares) and radio broadcasts sound like crap. We're talking much more serious distortion and bandwidth limitation than this.
It may be that to your ear, for what you listen to, for a particular level of compression, OGG sounds better than mp3. That's be hard to demonstrate in any scientific way. Both methods do substantial transforms on the signal, and if one "sounds better" than the other there's no trivial explanation.
Some of the most effective hacks/espionage come from exploiting "secondary channels" for information.
For example, I know of one hack from the good old days that involved placing a password across a page boundary. The OS compared the password to a plain text version character-by-character, so faulted if the characters up to the page boundary were all correct. Observing the disk access light (or the time to reject the password) provided character-by-character cracking.
Of course, password checking is now more sophisticated, but so is cryptanalysis. I think people that use encryption for real are well aware that there's an exposure in doing so on any time-shared system, or any system that can be observed in any way by a potential cryptanalyst.
I would guess, based on the sparse information presented here, that this is the nature of the attack. If - and that's a big if - you can cause an adversary to be scheduled in just the right way, you may be able to capture part or all of a private key by observing timing artifacts of the hyperthreading implementation.
This may be good security research, but unless I were protecting state secrets, I'd wait and evaluate the risk relative to other security risks that we find acceptable. I would also guess that the exposure is minimal compared to other high-tech and low-tech potential information leaks.
Norm Matloff uses a couple of truths to launch a fantastic voyage of fallacy, innuendo, and untruth in support of his xenophobic agenda.
The truths are:
1. The ACM competition is getting tougher
2. ACM standings alone do not measure "Johnny's"
programming prowess.
The fallacies, inuendo, and untruths are:
1. Fallacy. The implication that tougher
competition means that the U.S. ranking in
the contest has not slipped. Other
countries' teams have stepped up to the
challenge; U.S. teams have not.
2. Innuendo. The implication that, like East
German Olympic teams, Asians and East
Europeans succeed using dirty methods,
leaving those countries who value fair play
and the well being of their competitors in
the dirt.
3. Anecdotal 'evidence' and bogus inference.
"All their time was spent in preparation
except for their class work." ACM
competitors are full-time students. The
above quotation makes it clear that they
use their extra time to practice and
are therefore in no way comparable to
athletes who are paid to develop their
sport to the exclusion of all else.
It is impossible to quantify the colloquial
"all" in the above (out of context)
characterization. Clearly there is some
hyperbole in common use. I suspect their
effort is similar to Waterloo's, the
Russians, and other top-performing teams
which is maybe 200 hours for the season.
A significant time commitment, to be sure,
but not out of line with the amount of time
students might spend on sports, video games,
or other extracurricular activities.
3. Bogus statistics. "A faculty colleague of
mine who is a veteran coach in the ACM
contest estimates that many foreign teams
devote at least 10 times the amount of time
to practice as do American teams. Xu's
statement suggests that the factor is much
greater than 10."
It is possible that some teams spend as
little as 20 hours practicing in a season.
I suggest that these teams are unprepared
and would be surprised to see them perform
well. On the other hand, some U.S. teams
do considerably more.
So what exactly does "many foreign teams
practice 10 times more than American teams"
mean? Than some American teams? Than all
American teams? Than the mean or median
American team? And what's the methodology
used for Matloff's colleague's estimate?
"Xu's statement suggests the factor is much
greater than 10." Really? I assume that
Matloff did not take the statement to mean
that the contestants did not eat, sleep,
groom themselves, or do anything else. There
are 168 hours in each week. Full-time study
easily consumes 60-80 hours. Let's allocate
70 hours - 10 hours per day - for eating,
sleeping, etc. and we have maybe 20 hours
a week left. Anybody who practices
"considerably" less than 2 hours/week would
be ill-prepared for international competiton.
4. Referring to "prestige" as a gold standard.
"universities that are considered far more
prestigious than Jiaoda [sic?] weren't
in even the top 10." Nobody other than the
author claims that assertions of "prestige"
were accurate measures of anything. I should
also note that, as with all competitions,
there is some random component in the
outcome. The decline in U.S. teams cannot
be explained by chance; the order of
finishing of the top 3 Chinese universities
(all of which beat the top American) can.
It is tough to determine the best tactic in your case - if your employer is making your work situation intolerable you may end up having to quit. I would lay a paper trail confirming that you both agreed you would continue to X date. Then enumerate your issues in a letter stating that you consider that his unreasonable actions breach your employment contract (even your verbal agreement to stay until X is a contract) and must be remedied.
Above all else, don't act in anger and always be respectful. Assume everything you say will be recorded forever for posterity. Simply don't say or do anything you won't be proud of later. The best possible outcome would be to restore a level of rapport such that you could finish the agreed-on notice period. If you feel forced to leave you may have legal recourse, but that shouldn't be your primary objective.
What comes around goes around. Even if your even-handed behavior is unrequited at this time, it may be appreciated - by your employer or by a third party - later. Who knows when and in what circumstance you may next cross his path.
The bridge is 40 percent lighter than traditional concrete
he ECC is 37 percent less expensive,
consumes 40 percent less energy,
produces 39 percent less carbon dioxide
findings are based on the assumption that ECC lasts twice as long as regular concrete, a reasonable assumption given the known information, but it must be confirmed through further study.
What exactly does "500 times as flexible" mean? How can a bridge be lighter than concrete?
Read the last point carefully. A self-serving press release based on conjecture. I understand why U. Mich. would write such a thing, but why would physorg.com and/. regurgitate it?
Fantastic picture zooming predates computers. Columbo solved many a murder by zooming in on a crowd scene or a video to disover a tatoo, monogram, birthmark, etc.
Law and Order have simply digitized the technique. One season they were fond of zooming in on the name of the particular model of Ford driven by the suspect/victim/witness.
Much of software engineering is received wisdom. It involves little engineering and even less science.
I draw the analogy to medicine in the 19th century because at that time physicians were finally trying to investigate the causes of disease and developing insight that, more than a century later, would lead to their interventions improving rather than diminishing life expectency.
Nobody knows what "best practice" should be, yet we're codifying a process. The design document is one aspect of this process. Rarely is the purpose of a design document to convey design. Rather, it is a "deliverable" presented to a PHB or client as evidence of progress. To this end, the larger and prettier it is, the better.
It tests the licensing relationship between IBM and SCO, but the result will have no bearing on, say, the author of proftpd and myself for my derivative work. That would require a separate "test".
Any court proceeding in which the GPL is enforced is a test, and establishes precedent. Perhaps not an exhaustive test, but a test nevertheless. Any future litigant would have to explain why this decision was inapplicable to the new situation.
But there is no question on the table as to the validity of the license itself. What clause in the very simple license do you imagine could be called into question?
Do you mean you in the generic sense, or me?. I think the GPL is very clear-cut insofar as it binds those who reproduce GPL-ed code. I think that IBM's counterclaim eight a slam-dunk. Others disagree, or at least purport to disagree.
Some of those who disagree point to the definition of derivative works (e.g. the "linking" provision). Here there may be a grey area, but the boundary is exactly "what is copyrightable?" and the answer is that GPL applies to derivative works insofar as they include copyrightable elements of the GPL-ed work.
Other "licenses" are contracts that impose restrictions beyond those enforceable by copyright. GPL does not.
Slashdot Mirror
Using Windows *is* putting your OS on the internet.
Although Windows has non-privileged user accounts, they are essentially useless. I tried to set up my mother and my daughter with these, and they were just a pain in the neck. So they, along with just about everybody else, run administrator-privilege accounts.
If I'm running as a non-privileged user, the most a javascript hack can do is mess up my account.
So for most Windows machines, any old application program (and Firefox is just any old application) is an open wound.
If Microsoft want to get serious about security, they'll have to change the run-as-administrator culture. To do this they'll have to:
(a) make it easy, and the default, to run
without privilege
(b) make it unpleasant to run with privilege
I won't bet on an attitude adjustment - from Microsoft or from Windows users - any time soon.
If the accesses are really random, caching will do no good. As you'll note, my computations already assume no seek time, so reordering to shorten seeks won't improve it. The only way caching could help is if it were to accumulate adjacent sectors for writing. There won't be many of those unless the cache is nearly as big as the database.
The whole idea behind caching and any other memory hierarchy is that it takes advantage of locality of reference, which is explicitly precluded by the stipulation in the great-grandparent that the accesses are random.
That's the line frequency of a standard television.
That's not not my recollection from following the case and discussing (non-priveleged) details with a couple of expert witnesses. Of course this is hearsay and just my recollection, so make of it what you will.
Low-frequency sounds form standing waves in a small room. The shape of these waves is heavily influenced by speaker placement. And you may find that the bass is way louder in one part of the room than another. What you can't do is identify (by ear) the source. No contradiction there.
In another response, aliasing was discussed. It is possible that if you flood the room with ultrasonic noise, that it may heterodyne with other noises to form lower frequencies. The principle is similar to that of aliasing, discussed in another response.
But if those ultrasonic sounds were present when the original recording was made, they'd have produced the heterodyne effects at that time, which would have been captured in the bandwidth-limited recording.
An interesting aspect of this is that heterodyning depends on non-linearity (which is also known as distortion) in the transmission process. So it could be that if you faithfully record ultrasonic signals and then reproduce them with distortion, you may hear their artifacts.
Post-hoc reordering won't do it. For a vast database, the probability of accessing adjacent sectors within the lifetime of the cache is vanishingly small.
"Consider the case with a sinusoidal signal of 22kHz. If we sample at 44kHz, it is posible that each sample lands on a zero. We record no sound at 22kHz. If we are slightly off, we get some improvement, but insufficient amplitude to hear."
That's why CD players have a brick-wall filter that suppresses everything above 20kHz.
"For a frequency close to 22kHz, we could end up with a very low frequency sound being detected as the samples effectively move along the wave, getting successively louder and quiter as the phase changes."
This phenomenon is called aliasing. If you record a loud ultrasonic sound, it will appear to be lower frequency. That's why you use a brick-wall filter to eliminate signals above 20kHz before digitizing.
It is possible to implement a brick wall using a digital filter, which may involve sampling at a much higher frequency. Sometimes this is known colloquially as "oversampling."
"This is why if we ignore any hiss and pops from a record (you know, those old black circular things that melt if you leave them in the back of your car in the sun), a record actually sounds better than a CD. High frequency sounds are clearer and sharper than anything a CD is capable of."
You may like vinyl better than CDs but it has nothing to do with ultrasonics. You simply like the coloration. In double-blind tests, subjects are unable to distinguish vinyl records from CD recordings of vinyl records.
The Pepsi challenge is completely unscientific. It isn't double blind, they control the order of testing, there's no purge period, the test isn't repeated, participants are self-selected, Pepsi controls the question ("which do you like," not "which is Coke?") you get a prize if you get the answer they want, ...
"If you listen to a sinewave, then a squarewave, both at the same audible frequency, they should sound different because of the shape."
A 15KHz square wave is indistinguishable (by a human) from a 15KHz sine wave. The first harmonic difference is 30KHz, which is inaudible.
"Can [the storage backend] handle 2000 random seeks per second?"
The short answer is "no."
A 10,000 RPM disk has a period of 6 mSec. That's 3 mSec latency on average for random access (not counting seek time or the fact that read-modify-write will take at least 3 times this long: read, wait one full rotation, write).
So one disk can do, as a generous upper bound, 333 random accesses per second. I'll spare you the details of the Poisson distribution, but if you managed to spread these updates randomly over a disk farm, you'd need about 2000/333*e = 16 independent spindles.
The trick to high throughput is harnessing, and creating, non-randomness. You can do a much better job of this with a purpose-built solution.
You didn't specify some key parameters. How big are these updates, and how do they get multiplexed? What kind of retrieval do you want to do in the data?
If your data are already arriving on a single socket, just mark up the data and write it out. Then you can retrieve anything you like with linear search. And you can be reasonably certain that you have captured all the data and will never lose it due to having trusted it to some mysterious DB software.
If linear search isn't good enough, you have to specify the sorts of queries you want. All information from a particular sensor? Information from all sensors at a particular time? Does this information have to be available on-line, or can you answer your queries in batch. Sort/merge is really efficient if you don't need real-time queries. You can build indexes in real-time almost as efficiently, if you know what you want to index. The basic technique is the same, but more complicated to set up - batch up the information to be indexed, and do a series of sort-merges to accumulate the indexes.
I didn't mean to acuse you of being an Audiophile [tm]. Sorry. And thanks for the story.
Sounds like you have really good auditory acuity. I have no reason to question that. My first order guess is that many software/hardware processors generate some horrible high-frequency harmonics in the 15kHz range that offend your ear. I suspect the squeal from some CRT monitors drives you crazy, too.
If it is 15kHz that bothers you, the problem will correct itself as you get older.
Yes, but you still don't have enough free vocabulary to relate the opening scene from The Flintstones. As you may recall, Fred puts the tiger out but it re-enters the house, not through the door but through the winspire.
Stack used a software patent. Patents don't prevent infringment; they offer recourse.
I doubt very much that you can hear anything in the range 22kHz - 24 kHz, which is the only inherent improvement between 44kHz and 48kHz sampling (cf. Nyquist).
As far as I'm aware, there is no scientific evidence that any human can. Members of the Audiophile cult claim they can, but their methods are as credible as astrologers'.
Of course, mp3s (at the level of compression used in file shares) and radio broadcasts sound like crap. We're talking much more serious distortion and bandwidth limitation than this.
It may be that to your ear, for what you listen to, for a particular level of compression, OGG sounds better than mp3. That's be hard to demonstrate in any scientific way. Both methods do substantial transforms on the signal, and if one "sounds better" than the other there's no trivial explanation.
Psycho-acoustics is very complex.
Here's the Letter to Readers by LinuxWorld detailing the standards of journalism that O'Gara contravened.
Among them stereotyping by race, gender, age, religion, ethnicity, geography, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, or social status.
Some of the most effective hacks/espionage come from exploiting "secondary channels" for information.
For example, I know of one hack from the good old days that involved placing a password across a page boundary. The OS compared the password to a plain text version character-by-character, so faulted if the characters up to the page boundary were all correct. Observing the disk access light (or the time to reject the password) provided character-by-character cracking.
Of course, password checking is now more sophisticated, but so is cryptanalysis. I think people that use encryption for real are well aware that there's an exposure in doing so on any time-shared system, or any system that can be observed in any way by a potential cryptanalyst.
I would guess, based on the sparse information presented here, that this is the nature of the attack. If - and that's a big if - you can cause an adversary to be scheduled in just the right way, you may be able to capture part or all of a private key by observing timing artifacts of the hyperthreading implementation.
This may be good security research, but unless I were protecting state secrets, I'd wait and evaluate the risk relative to other security risks that we find acceptable. I would also guess that the exposure is minimal compared to other high-tech and low-tech potential information leaks.
Norm Matloff uses a couple of truths to launch a
fantastic voyage of fallacy, innuendo, and untruth
in support of his xenophobic agenda.
The truths are:
1. The ACM competition is getting tougher
2. ACM standings alone do not measure "Johnny's"
programming prowess.
The fallacies, inuendo, and untruths are:
1. Fallacy. The implication that tougher
competition means that the U.S. ranking in
the contest has not slipped. Other
countries' teams have stepped up to the
challenge; U.S. teams have not.
2. Innuendo. The implication that, like East
German Olympic teams, Asians and East
Europeans succeed using dirty methods,
leaving those countries who value fair play
and the well being of their competitors in
the dirt.
3. Anecdotal 'evidence' and bogus inference.
"All their time was spent in preparation
except for their class work." ACM
competitors are full-time students. The
above quotation makes it clear that they
use their extra time to practice and
are therefore in no way comparable to
athletes who are paid to develop their
sport to the exclusion of all else.
It is impossible to quantify the colloquial
"all" in the above (out of context)
characterization. Clearly there is some
hyperbole in common use. I suspect their
effort is similar to Waterloo's, the
Russians, and other top-performing teams
which is maybe 200 hours for the season.
A significant time commitment, to be sure,
but not out of line with the amount of time
students might spend on sports, video games,
or other extracurricular activities.
3. Bogus statistics. "A faculty colleague of
mine who is a veteran coach in the ACM
contest estimates that many foreign teams
devote at least 10 times the amount of time
to practice as do American teams. Xu's
statement suggests that the factor is much
greater than 10."
It is possible that some teams spend as
little as 20 hours practicing in a season.
I suggest that these teams are unprepared
and would be surprised to see them perform
well. On the other hand, some U.S. teams
do considerably more.
So what exactly does "many foreign teams
practice 10 times more than American teams"
mean? Than some American teams? Than all
American teams? Than the mean or median
American team? And what's the methodology
used for Matloff's colleague's estimate?
"Xu's statement suggests the factor is much
greater than 10." Really? I assume that
Matloff did not take the statement to mean
that the contestants did not eat, sleep,
groom themselves, or do anything else. There
are 168 hours in each week. Full-time study
easily consumes 60-80 hours. Let's allocate
70 hours - 10 hours per day - for eating,
sleeping, etc. and we have maybe 20 hours
a week left. Anybody who practices
"considerably" less than 2 hours/week would
be ill-prepared for international competiton.
4. Referring to "prestige" as a gold standard.
"universities that are considered far more
prestigious than Jiaoda [sic?] weren't
in even the top 10." Nobody other than the
author claims that assertions of "prestige"
were accurate measures of anything. I should
also note that, as with all competitions,
there is some random component in the
outcome. The decline in U.S. teams cannot
be explained by chance; the order of
finishing of the top 3 Chinese universities
(all of which beat the top American) can.
5. Special pleading on grade-school te
It is tough to determine the best tactic in your case - if your employer is making your work situation intolerable you may end up having to quit. I would lay a paper trail confirming that you both agreed you would continue to X date. Then enumerate your issues in a letter stating that you consider that his unreasonable actions breach your employment contract (even your verbal agreement to stay until X is a contract) and must be remedied.
Above all else, don't act in anger and always be respectful. Assume everything you say will be recorded forever for posterity. Simply don't say or do anything you won't be proud of later. The best possible outcome would be to restore a level of rapport such that you could finish the agreed-on notice period. If you feel forced to leave you may have legal recourse, but that shouldn't be your primary objective.
What comes around goes around. Even if your even-handed behavior is unrequited at this time, it may be appreciated - by your employer or by a third party - later. Who knows when and in what circumstance you may next cross his path.
What exactly does "500 times as flexible" mean? How can a bridge be lighter than concrete?
Read the last point carefully. A self-serving press release based on conjecture. I understand why U. Mich. would write such a thing, but why would physorg.com and
Fantastic picture zooming predates computers. Columbo solved many a murder by zooming in on a crowd scene or a video to disover a tatoo, monogram, birthmark, etc.
Law and Order have simply digitized the technique. One season they were fond of zooming in on the name of the particular model of Ford driven by the suspect/victim/witness.
Much of software engineering is received wisdom. It involves little engineering and even less science.
I draw the analogy to medicine in the 19th century because at that time physicians were finally trying to investigate the causes of disease and developing insight that, more than a century later, would lead to their interventions improving rather than diminishing life expectency.
Nobody knows what "best practice" should be, yet we're codifying a process. The design document is one aspect of this process. Rarely is the purpose of a design document to convey design. Rather, it is a "deliverable" presented to a PHB or client as evidence of progress. To this end, the larger and prettier it is, the better.
I'd be particularly interested to see: braking distance, slalom performance, skidpad G's, fuel economy, crashworthiness.
Did anybody see the Simpson's last night? In the future, Homer had a beater flying car. It was hilarious.
It tests the licensing relationship between IBM and SCO, but the result will have no bearing on, say, the author of proftpd and myself for my derivative work. That would require a separate "test".
Any court proceeding in which the GPL is enforced is a test, and establishes precedent. Perhaps not an exhaustive test, but a test nevertheless. Any future litigant would have to explain why this decision was inapplicable to the new situation.
But there is no question on the table as to the validity of the license itself. What clause in the very simple license do you imagine could be called into question?
Do you mean you in the generic sense, or me?. I think the GPL is very clear-cut insofar as it binds those who reproduce GPL-ed code. I think that IBM's counterclaim eight a slam-dunk. Others disagree, or at least purport to disagree.
Some of those who disagree point to the definition of derivative works (e.g. the "linking" provision). Here there may be a grey area, but the boundary is exactly "what is copyrightable?" and the answer is that GPL applies to derivative works insofar as they include copyrightable elements of the GPL-ed work.
Other "licenses" are contracts that impose restrictions beyond those enforceable by copyright. GPL does not.