Well no. The Franklin personal organizers were (if I remember) not programable and did nothing more than hold data (such as credit cards) and was the size of a credit card.
The patent is for the device consept of a credit card sized device that holds credit card data.
In other words you picked the grand prize of prior art that fits the patent description so long as you disguard the fact that this is just one application of a brouder device.
The palm however defys the patent as it's not a credit card sized device but in fact much larger and like it's counterpart it holds a broud range of information not just credit card data.
What should be argued is the patent had to be detailed as a larg number of general function devices already existed before the patent was issued many of those devices were made in the 1980s for example the Rolodex brand organiser designed to hold all matter of data as an electronic rolodex.
Here's one that will do doupt break the brains of many Linux geeks....
The Sharp Zarus. No wait for it I'm not talking about the new Linux PDAs but the older Sharp brand general data organisers who were originally called the Sharp Wizard. I believe it was designed to hold any kind of data including spread sheets.
1. Users will continually update drivers and eventually absorb them into vareous Linux projects taking support off your hands permenently. 2. Free advertsing on Freshmeat as your drivers are announced then again as projects absorb your drivers. 3. Free adveritsing on Slashdot. 4. Slimmer marketshare means greater sales amoung Linux users.
Reasons to NOT provide offical Linux drivers 1. If your suffering on the Windows side a quick throw in to support Linux will not save you.
2. It'll piss off Microsoft.
3. Your website will be slashdotted.
4. There is a lose lose factor on your drivers. If your drivers are too good users may not improve them if they suck to much users won't buy your product.
Your best bet is to always supply unoffical drivers directly into open source projects so that users will always look to the open source projects for support and not you while at the same time the open source projects give you free advertsing and they get slashdotted not you.
I think I know where this came from. A few Slashdot storys ago. I made this post showing how similar the Linux and Ham communitys are.
Pay attention to the rely. The growing populaity of Linux in the ham community is no secret BUT there are people who insist on denying it.
The Ham community is much older than the Linux, open source and free software communitys and knows what to do to crush misinformation before it spreads.
Side comment: Excuse me if I seam abrupt. I've just had a chat with a person who believes an infer red vision camra can't see during the day time and practicly worthless at night. He's dead sereous. Someone else reminds me this guy has some pritty strange ideas as to how the world works.
Actually I'm not saying goodbye to MSN becouse really I never said hello. I said goodbye to ICQ with all the ICQ spam. I said goodbye to IRC with the network splits etc POPnet said goodbye to me and shut down...
I've no problems leaving any given IM.
(*Twitch* Want my ytalk *Twitch*)
Hay it's just the way of things.
Goodbye MSN.... Sucks to be you.
PS. I use Gaim from Windows at work. I'm not home enough to use my computer from home. I log into it from work.
It dosen't work today. Horray. It won't work tomarow. Great. It will not work 10 years from today. Orgasum. But....
20 years ago we couldn't stuff a computer into a camra. Couldn't program a computer to track motion using a camra. Couldn't program a computer to record survalence images into a standard file format.
You could 20 years ago program a computer to record images into non-standard images files but they weren't very useful for much.
Now imagin an image proccesor capable of analising 50 to 500 faces at once in 50 giga pixle survalence camras.
We have at least 20 years to fight this let's not drop the ball.
The aspect of this recall that I find most disgustingly unfair is the influence of money in politics. Californians should find it frightening that a wealthy Republican can buy himself another election.
If she disagrees with the recall election she shouldn't be running herself but helping Gray Davis keep office.
the recall effort required gathering a larg number of signatures and thats no easy effort but given the alternitive of letting Gray Davis continue to screw up California there isn't much choice.
If you disagree with the recall vote for Gray Davis if you agree with the recall don't vote for someone who disagrees with the process.
California is in sereous dept right now this is not the time to implement new technology. A state wide switch over to open source technologys is all we can afford and even then we have to be careful becouse SOME companys will want to sue over that.
Actually you can BUT only if everyone who contributed code agrees. Every peace of code is considered GPLed by it's author so anyone who contributed GPLed code to Simba would have to give permission to do this.
On the flip side SCO is violating the GPL and it shouldn't be hard to get every single contributer to Simba and most of the rest of the GNU/Linux code (Somebody will need to be dedicated to the task) to agree to this.
One penny per-contributer per violation. It'll rack up pritty quickly.
I said if SCO showed the code we'd be able to track down who really wrote it. I said there's a good chance Linus will recognise his own handywork.
and it's not that I'm the amazing Mandrake or anything. It's just so damed obveous it hurts. SCO stold Linux code and they know it and then try to play like we're the crooks.
I hear stories of this sort of thing happening all the time in the public domain world. I didn't know if it was true or myth so I wouldn't say anything but the rummors sure as hell frightend the typical public domain author.
But this is liccensed GPL code, We have a whole community to defend and SCO's over charging for it all.
Linux thrives on it's coders not it's users. (However a good chunk of it's users are coders and realisticly the users are head hunters for more coders)
Yester it was: Hi I'm Timmy age 6 I made a rocket out of used toilet paper rolls. (An impressive feat. The reason kids projects are inferoer to adult projects is available resources.)
Today it's: Hi I'm mike age 3 I fixed 37 bugs in the Linux kernel increased speed 7 times and created a feature critical to making the next generation computers possable.
Tomarow it's: Hi I'm Steve age 2 I've learnned to steal becouse there is less chance of me going to jail for shoplifting than be sued by someone clamming they own the code I wrote. (I was going to correct my grammer but I remembered that Steve is 2... I'll be dammed if a 2 year old has better grammer than I do. A 5 year old yes.. but not a 2 year old)
With all thies attacks from SCO and Darl McBride I'm beginning to have sereous doupts that McBride could have become a CEO by honnest means.
If you accept Darl McBride's assertion that the Linux community could not have made Linux as good as it is today the logical conclusion is that IBM enhanced Linux with IBMs intelectual proterty. Darl McBride has jumpped to the conclusion however that IBM took the code from SCO.
So not only is McBride clamming the Linux community couldn't do it they are also clamming IBM couldn't do it eather and that ONLY SCO is good enough to make something as good as Linux.
Darl McBride has made the conclusion that theft is the only possability. In my experence the people who make such conclusions are usually crooks.
If this worm fixes the problem then it's not worse than the original worm. The original worm is called blaster so for the sake of lazyness and hommage to mad max I'll call the new one master.
So master is more effecent than blaster. Probably more compact and certanly smarter. So it'll get to most of the unsecured machines before blaster dose.
While master may be a bigger nusense than blaster it's also a one time nussence while blaster is in it for the long hall.
So hay what's the big deal if the users don't secure there own systems master will do it for them.
Oh sure Ham's an old technology. Like Unix. Constantly revising the technology by a community connected by the technology. Like open source. Always informmed like Slashdot working together to keep the signal clear.
Many ham ops use Linux and for a good reason the whole Linux community is very much like the Ham packet community.
Today public wifi is a bunch of hacks with repeaters etc but some day a ham will bring out some technology that will make it work on a massive scale.
But people outside the ham community. They don't see it. They look at ham and say "That ugly tower is going to bring down property values" they say "We'll get cancer" they sue and harrass ham ops. They don't believe a group of hobbyists can do any better than paid profesionals.
Open source and free software communitys live in the same boat.
Hay if brodband over IP interfears with ham packets then what will happen to cell phones, wifi, broudcast TV and radio..
We don't need archaic hams and we don't need open source software. But if you think the alternitive isn't ditching the technology all together your mistaken. Good bye open source, good bye Linux, Good bye Internet. Good by Ham, good bye communication inovations, good bye cell phones and yet again good bye Internet.
We can live with out it. Do we want to?
If Ham had a Microsoft there'd be someone saying right now how Ham got lucky.
Look at the kind of movies that are losing money. The movie industry uses spin offs as automatic sellers.
The rule is that spin offs no matter how bad they are suck in the fans. When a movie sucks a fan will show up at a fan club and tell the club members. This loses 30 to 50 viewers for every 1 fan club member. The vast majority of fans don't have the time to join fan clubs. Also the avrage fan club member is there at the movie relase so by the time the club meets all the members have already seen it to late to learn it sucks. The occasional diffrence is fanboys who have learnned this lesson and won't be showing up anyway. (me me me)
But with texting, fan websites, blogs and fan lists the avrage person can be in contact with the fan base. Instead of hearing from maybe 1 or 2 hard headed fans who complain about continuity you have 15 to 1,000 fans complainning about bad acting and bad scripts.
Fans: "Hay isn't super gumo cool?" "No he isn't cool thats why I love the comic so much. He's a super herro goof. I mean he brags about how nothing can sneak up on him while slamming into a brick wall. That is funny." "But I thought cool and moron were one in the same" "Thats what ted would like you to believe" "Yeah... ok point made"
Ok so my example fans are totally mindless zombies. The zombis will see a movie even if it sucks.
Movie hype: "Super Gumo in 3D see your favoret action herror in action. Greatest movie ever say the critics we bribed"
Fan "Ohhh I gotta see it" "I've got a ticket for the 7 pm showing." "I'll be there"
Texting: "Hay I'm held up at work so I'll catch it later" "Thats cool I'm in line now"
After movie texting: "Dude it sucked. Don't waist your movie. Gumo is a goof in the not funny way." "Ok I'll save my money"
Usually spin off movies are devoid of the depth that make the original worth while.
The real reason to watch a movie or a show on a continuing series is to watch the character progression and depth. Spin offs aren't allowed that.
Fans talk now more than ever. This should encurage the movie studios. In the past they had to work hard to get movie goers attention.
But today is diffrent. The future fans base is now in the matrix. There is a great example. The original movie was really good in the FX and the FX fans climbed over each other to see it. Instant fanbase just add good movie.
In the future you should epect the movie industry to eather start making better films or suing fan sites. Maybe both.
It has long been my opinion that anyone who is doing wrong is in some ways nieve. It is my opinion that the statement "ignorence is bliss" is the most evil 3 words ever spoken.
As a security guard by night and a flea marketter by day I've heard some of the most unbeleavable nonsense however most of the time the would be theaf actually believes it was ok.
This extends to spam. Spammers actually believe what they are doing is a valuable service. They think they are protecting themselfs from a rare few people who don't understand how business actually works.
Where would they get such an idea? Maybe becouse such people do exist and actually harrass businesses with some really stupid ideas of how things "should" be.
Example: A business is closed and the boss is trying to leave. A costummer lays is wait for the gates to open. He blazes in nearly running me (the guard) over just so he can get inside. Once there the boss tells him to leave and he breaks out screaming and yelling about how things should be. "People should be nicer".
Then in industrys there are "rules" everyone folows but nobody knows why or even where the rules came from.
Example: Closed source software drivers and no tech specs. The fear is that someone could use that to create a cheap knock off. Sounds like the the kind of thing Microsoft says about open source. "Keep your source code secret and nobody can figure out how your hardware/software works"
Decompilers, Chip specs, port scans, packet sniffing, lab testing, Random throw, bad luck, software being obveous and creative thinking. Need I say more?
In short we think they are just being greedy but it's more than that they actually don't know better and never actually bothered to learn net culture. They learn the technology and figure thats all there is to the Internet.
1. If using this feature to secure a system it might better be served by not installing SU at all becouse a later defect could render this seldom seen feature in effective and the fact could be unknown for months leaving the system exposed to attack.
2. Plenty of systems are now Home Unix boxes and having the password permits login at keyboard so how useful is it to lock your room mate out of su when he can log in as root? The feature invites disaster.
3. Screwball roomate hacks your box and locks down SU against you.
People do tend to misunderstand what is really ment by how the people who are critical of open source icons aren't programmers.
Given a random sample of Linux users you'll find a large number of people who have in fact contributed code. Rob Mulda who has admitted to being not the best programmer let alone one of the smarter Linux users has contributed code. I've contributed code. A lot of people have.
So when a whole group of people in what is admittedly a very programmer orented community in some cases even hostile to non-programmers turns up a whole group of critics who can't code you get to wondering if they are part of the community at all.
The point being made here is that RMSes critics are on the outside they aren't involved and don't know much more than what they are told by individuals who are themselfs quite hostile to Linux. Often the very programmers RMS is critical of.
I'd be simpathetic but I've seen the code they write and I wrote better programms when I was a kid bored at the store with only a Vic20 on demo to keep me entetrained and I'd walk off with my game still running for other kids to play.
You'd be right if programmers were a rare commodity on the Linux community or if only a select few of the open source critics were non-programmers it would not make sense to doupt the critics. But the truth is most of the Linux community are active contributers and the critics aren't. Like the comment "Don't be critical of Microsoft untill you've writen an os". You realise only a tiny handful of people have actually done that? I find it most telling that of those who have writen an operating system I'm probably the most forgiving of Microsoft. (Yes.. I wrote an operating system all on my own and it sucked)
Years before Linux businesses were looking at public domain software as an easy way to cut costs. It just seammed a no-brainner to go to an open sourced operatining system like Linux but somewhere along the way Microsoft convenced the business secter that free software was dangerous and evil full of back doors and bugs and such things could bring a business to a crushing hault. Businesses got the idea that the needed secure and reliable software and the only way to get that was to buy it from Microsoft. I guess it's a zen thing... if it get's crappy enough it'll actually be good.
Slashdot Mirror
Well no. The Franklin personal organizers were (if I remember) not programable and did nothing more than hold data (such as credit cards) and was the size of a credit card.
The patent is for the device consept of a credit card sized device that holds credit card data.
In other words you picked the grand prize of prior art that fits the patent description so long as you disguard the fact that this is just one application of a brouder device.
The palm however defys the patent as it's not a credit card sized device but in fact much larger and like it's counterpart it holds a broud range of information not just credit card data.
What should be argued is the patent had to be detailed as a larg number of general function devices already existed before the patent was issued many of those devices were made in the 1980s for example the Rolodex brand organiser designed to hold all matter of data as an electronic rolodex.
Here's one that will do doupt break the brains of many Linux geeks....
The Sharp Zarus. No wait for it I'm not talking about the new Linux PDAs but the older Sharp brand general data organisers who were originally called the Sharp Wizard. I believe it was designed to hold any kind of data including spread sheets.
1. Users will continually update drivers and eventually absorb them into vareous Linux projects taking support off your hands permenently.
2. Free advertsing on Freshmeat as your drivers are announced then again as projects absorb your drivers.
3. Free adveritsing on Slashdot.
4. Slimmer marketshare means greater sales amoung Linux users.
Reasons to NOT provide offical Linux drivers
1. If your suffering on the Windows side a quick throw in to support Linux will not save you.
2. It'll piss off Microsoft.
3. Your website will be slashdotted.
4. There is a lose lose factor on your drivers. If your drivers are too good users may not improve them if they suck to much users won't buy your product.
Your best bet is to always supply unoffical drivers directly into open source projects so that users will always look to the open source projects for support and not you while at the same time the open source projects give you free advertsing and they get slashdotted not you.
I think I know where this came from.
A few Slashdot storys ago. I made this post showing how similar the Linux and Ham communitys are.
Pay attention to the rely. The growing populaity of Linux in the ham community is no secret BUT there are people who insist on denying it.
The Ham community is much older than the Linux, open source and free software communitys and knows what to do to crush misinformation before it spreads.
Side comment: Excuse me if I seam abrupt. I've just had a chat with a person who believes an infer red vision camra can't see during the day time and practicly worthless at night. He's dead sereous. Someone else reminds me this guy has some pritty strange ideas as to how the world works.
Actually I'm not saying goodbye to MSN becouse really I never said hello.
I said goodbye to ICQ with all the ICQ spam.
I said goodbye to IRC with the network splits etc
POPnet said goodbye to me and shut down...
I've no problems leaving any given IM.
(*Twitch* Want my ytalk *Twitch*)
Hay it's just the way of things.
Goodbye MSN.... Sucks to be you.
PS. I use Gaim from Windows at work.
I'm not home enough to use my computer from home. I log into it from work.
Also Linux coders reverse engenear faster than Windows users update.
I'll quickly say my box could be rooted in 30 seconds by any script kiddy worth his salt.
But I'm perfictly safe from all the viruses and the new worms.
The truth of the matter is you can secure anything and a shop specalising in secure reliable systems has to run Windows to satisfy costummer demands.
Windows can be perfictly secure, Linux can be user friendly. AFTER a considerable amount of work.
But I'm not going to recomend Linux to newbies any time soon.
It dosen't work today. Horray.
It won't work tomarow. Great.
It will not work 10 years from today. Orgasum.
But....
20 years ago we couldn't stuff a computer into a camra. Couldn't program a computer to track motion using a camra. Couldn't program a computer to record survalence images into a standard file format.
You could 20 years ago program a computer to record images into non-standard images files but they weren't very useful for much.
Now imagin an image proccesor capable of analising 50 to 500 faces at once in 50 giga pixle survalence camras.
We have at least 20 years to fight this let's not drop the ball.
I thought they called it a "mouse" becouse users might try to play hocky with it if they called it a 'puck'.
On a graphic digital tablet there is the stylis (the pen) and the puck (the mouse).
I've used it as a cheat. The mouse is cheap the puck is accrate. The "Pen" is cheap the stylis is accurage.
of course I'm cheap my digital tablet has a pen and mouse.
The aspect of this recall that I find most disgustingly unfair is the influence of money in politics. Californians should find it frightening that a wealthy Republican can buy himself another election.
If she disagrees with the recall election she shouldn't be running herself but helping Gray Davis keep office.
the recall effort required gathering a larg number of signatures and thats no easy effort but given the alternitive of letting Gray Davis continue to screw up California there isn't much choice.
If you disagree with the recall vote for Gray Davis if you agree with the recall don't vote for someone who disagrees with the process.
California is in sereous dept right now this is not the time to implement new technology. A state wide switch over to open source technologys is all we can afford and even then we have to be careful becouse SOME companys will want to sue over that.
Actually you can BUT only if everyone who contributed code agrees.
Every peace of code is considered GPLed by it's author so anyone who contributed GPLed code to Simba would have to give permission to do this.
On the flip side SCO is violating the GPL and it shouldn't be hard to get every single contributer to Simba and most of the rest of the GNU/Linux code (Somebody will need to be dedicated to the task) to agree to this.
One penny per-contributer per violation.
It'll rack up pritty quickly.
it's far more offensive than the Goats link.
It's our normally polite and reserved Linus saying exactly what he thinks of all this SCO BS.
I say we Goatse SCO for the effort to make us nakid and petrafied and maybe a bowl of preticularly hot grits down Darls pants.
His brain has already suffered the slashdot effect.
I called it... I called it...
I said if SCO showed the code we'd be able to track down who really wrote it.
I said there's a good chance Linus will recognise his own handywork.
and it's not that I'm the amazing Mandrake or anything. It's just so damed obveous it hurts. SCO stold Linux code and they know it and then try to play like we're the crooks.
I hear stories of this sort of thing happening all the time in the public domain world. I didn't know if it was true or myth so I wouldn't say anything but the rummors sure as hell frightend the typical public domain author.
But this is liccensed GPL code, We have a whole community to defend and SCO's over charging for it all.
Next thing you know they'll be making a time pod and send agents a week into the past to stop things like assasinations.
Wait you signned up?
My old e-mail account got this stuff regularly.
(My old e-mail account however was also targeted by spammers)
That may be the plan....
:
Linux thrives on it's coders not it's users.
(However a good chunk of it's users are coders and realisticly the users are head hunters for more coders)
Yester it was:
Hi I'm Timmy age 6 I made a rocket out of used toilet paper rolls.
(An impressive feat. The reason kids projects are inferoer to adult projects is available resources.)
Today it's
Hi I'm mike age 3 I fixed 37 bugs in the Linux kernel increased speed 7 times and created a feature critical to making the next generation computers possable.
Tomarow it's:
Hi I'm Steve age 2 I've learnned to steal becouse there is less chance of me going to jail for shoplifting than be sued by someone clamming they own the code I wrote.
(I was going to correct my grammer but I remembered that Steve is 2... I'll be dammed if a 2 year old has better grammer than I do.
A 5 year old yes.. but not a 2 year old)
With all thies attacks from SCO and Darl McBride I'm beginning to have sereous doupts that McBride could have become a CEO by honnest means.
If you accept Darl McBride's assertion that the Linux community could not have made Linux as good as it is today the logical conclusion is that IBM enhanced Linux with IBMs intelectual proterty. Darl McBride has jumpped to the conclusion however that IBM took the code from SCO.
So not only is McBride clamming the Linux community couldn't do it they are also clamming IBM couldn't do it eather and that ONLY SCO is good enough to make something as good as Linux.
Darl McBride has made the conclusion that theft is the only possability. In my experence the people who make such conclusions are usually crooks.
If this worm fixes the problem then it's not worse than the original worm.
The original worm is called blaster so for the sake of lazyness and hommage to mad max I'll call the new one master.
So master is more effecent than blaster. Probably more compact and certanly smarter. So it'll get to most of the unsecured machines before blaster dose.
While master may be a bigger nusense than blaster it's also a one time nussence while blaster is in it for the long hall.
So hay what's the big deal if the users don't secure there own systems master will do it for them.
Now that really is a supprise.
Oh sure Ham's an old technology. Like Unix. Constantly revising the technology by a community connected by the technology. Like open source. Always informmed like Slashdot working together to keep the signal clear.
Many ham ops use Linux and for a good reason the whole Linux community is very much like the Ham packet community.
Today public wifi is a bunch of hacks with repeaters etc but some day a ham will bring out some technology that will make it work on a massive scale.
But people outside the ham community. They don't see it. They look at ham and say "That ugly tower is going to bring down property values" they say "We'll get cancer" they sue and harrass ham ops.
They don't believe a group of hobbyists can do any better than paid profesionals.
Open source and free software communitys live in the same boat.
Hay if brodband over IP interfears with ham packets then what will happen to cell phones, wifi, broudcast TV and radio..
We don't need archaic hams and we don't need open source software. But if you think the alternitive isn't ditching the technology all together your mistaken.
Good bye open source, good bye Linux, Good bye Internet.
Good by Ham, good bye communication inovations, good bye cell phones and yet again good bye Internet.
We can live with out it. Do we want to?
If Ham had a Microsoft there'd be someone saying right now how Ham got lucky.
Look at the kind of movies that are losing money. The movie industry uses spin offs as automatic sellers.
The rule is that spin offs no matter how bad they are suck in the fans. When a movie sucks a fan will show up at a fan club and tell the club members. This loses 30 to 50 viewers for every 1 fan club member. The vast majority of fans don't have the time to join fan clubs.
Also the avrage fan club member is there at the movie relase so by the time the club meets all the members have already seen it to late to learn it sucks. The occasional diffrence is fanboys who have learnned this lesson and won't be showing up anyway. (me me me)
But with texting, fan websites, blogs and fan lists the avrage person can be in contact with the fan base.
Instead of hearing from maybe 1 or 2 hard headed fans who complain about continuity you have 15 to 1,000 fans complainning about bad acting and bad scripts.
Fans: "Hay isn't super gumo cool?" "No he isn't cool thats why I love the comic so much. He's a super herro goof. I mean he brags about how nothing can sneak up on him while slamming into a brick wall. That is funny." "But I thought cool and moron were one in the same" "Thats what ted would like you to believe" "Yeah... ok point made"
Ok so my example fans are totally mindless zombies. The zombis will see a movie even if it sucks.
Movie hype: "Super Gumo in 3D see your favoret action herror in action. Greatest movie ever say the critics we bribed"
Fan "Ohhh I gotta see it" "I've got a ticket for the 7 pm showing." "I'll be there"
Texting: "Hay I'm held up at work so I'll catch it later" "Thats cool I'm in line now"
After movie texting: "Dude it sucked. Don't waist your movie. Gumo is a goof in the not funny way." "Ok I'll save my money"
Usually spin off movies are devoid of the depth that make the original worth while.
The real reason to watch a movie or a show on a continuing series is to watch the character progression and depth. Spin offs aren't allowed that.
Fans talk now more than ever. This should encurage the movie studios. In the past they had to work hard to get movie goers attention.
But today is diffrent. The future fans base is now in the matrix. There is a great example. The original movie was really good in the FX and the FX fans climbed over each other to see it. Instant fanbase just add good movie.
In the future you should epect the movie industry to eather start making better films or suing fan sites. Maybe both.
It has long been my opinion that anyone who is doing wrong is in some ways nieve. It is my opinion that the statement "ignorence is bliss" is the most evil 3 words ever spoken.
As a security guard by night and a flea marketter by day I've heard some of the most unbeleavable nonsense however most of the time the would be theaf actually believes it was ok.
This extends to spam. Spammers actually believe what they are doing is a valuable service. They think they are protecting themselfs from a rare few people who don't understand how business actually works.
Where would they get such an idea?
Maybe becouse such people do exist and actually harrass businesses with some really stupid ideas of how things "should" be.
Example: A business is closed and the boss is trying to leave. A costummer lays is wait for the gates to open. He blazes in nearly running me (the guard) over just so he can get inside.
Once there the boss tells him to leave and he breaks out screaming and yelling about how things should be. "People should be nicer".
Then in industrys there are "rules" everyone folows but nobody knows why or even where the rules came from.
Example: Closed source software drivers and no tech specs. The fear is that someone could use that to create a cheap knock off.
Sounds like the the kind of thing Microsoft says about open source.
"Keep your source code secret and nobody can figure out how your hardware/software works"
Decompilers, Chip specs, port scans, packet sniffing, lab testing, Random throw, bad luck, software being obveous and creative thinking. Need I say more?
In short we think they are just being greedy but it's more than that they actually don't know better and never actually bothered to learn net culture.
They learn the technology and figure thats all there is to the Internet.
I can see three reasons to leave SU as is.
1. If using this feature to secure a system it might better be served by not installing SU at all becouse a later defect could render this seldom seen feature in effective and the fact could be unknown for months leaving the system exposed to attack.
2. Plenty of systems are now Home Unix boxes and having the password permits login at keyboard so how useful is it to lock your room mate out of su when he can log in as root? The feature invites disaster.
3. Screwball roomate hacks your box and locks down SU against you.
I'll brute force this one with a portable transporter.
People do tend to misunderstand what is really ment by how the people who are critical of open source icons aren't programmers.
Given a random sample of Linux users you'll find a large number of people who have in fact contributed code. Rob Mulda who has admitted to being not the best programmer let alone one of the smarter Linux users has contributed code.
I've contributed code. A lot of people have.
So when a whole group of people in what is admittedly a very programmer orented community in some cases even hostile to non-programmers turns up a whole group of critics who can't code you get to wondering if they are part of the community at all.
The point being made here is that RMSes critics are on the outside they aren't involved and don't know much more than what they are told by individuals who are themselfs quite hostile to Linux. Often the very programmers RMS is critical of.
I'd be simpathetic but I've seen the code they write and I wrote better programms when I was a kid bored at the store with only a Vic20 on demo to keep me entetrained and I'd walk off with my game still running for other kids to play.
You'd be right if programmers were a rare commodity on the Linux community or if only a select few of the open source critics were non-programmers it would not make sense to doupt the critics. But the truth is most of the Linux community are active contributers and the critics aren't.
Like the comment "Don't be critical of Microsoft untill you've writen an os". You realise only a tiny handful of people have actually done that? I find it most telling that of those who have writen an operating system I'm probably the most forgiving of Microsoft.
(Yes.. I wrote an operating system all on my own and it sucked)
Google apparently turns up a number of unfortunate persons by the very same name.
I feal very sorry for most of the Jay Nelson's of the world. Except for this guy. In fact I almost feal sorry for the eBay scammer. Almost.
However after reading the story of a similar scammer* maybe I should cut the spammer some slack.
*Look at the last "bad trader".
I know spammers can be evil but spammers just don't get this evil.
Years before Linux businesses were looking at public domain software as an easy way to cut costs.
It just seammed a no-brainner to go to an open sourced operatining system like Linux but somewhere along the way Microsoft convenced the business secter that free software was dangerous and evil full of back doors and bugs and such things could bring a business to a crushing hault.
Businesses got the idea that the needed secure and reliable software and the only way to get that was to buy it from Microsoft. I guess it's a zen thing... if it get's crappy enough it'll actually be good.