People are going to learn what they needed to learn. Let them contribute to the material, in someplace where everyone can follow.
The World Wide Web was supposed to be writable; there are (at least) a couple of ways to make it so. One is to set up a Faq-o-matic (see also here); it lets people post questions and their answers. Another is to install a Wiki (link to the definitive book on the subject, proceeds help support the original Wiki). A Wiki is hard to describe; it's kind of a mix between a Web site and a graffiti wall. There are dozens of implementations and hundreds of installations; for example, here is one trying to build a (GFDL-licensed) online encyclopedia (and here is a page describing how to add to or modify the content there).
These aren't complete solutions, but they should provide good supplements.
Anyone who's had to read a 3-page document in a 3"x1" textbox...
Speaking as someone who's had to write text crammed into those boxes, here IMHO is some appropriate verbiage for GPL software:
You need not agree to a license in order to use this software.
The installation should somewhere contain copyright information, warantee disclaimer (which the user is not required to approve), and a link to the GPL. See also How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs.
Software development organizations producing closed-source works... need to prove that no GPL source "leaked" into their code because some programmer saw both some GPL'd utility (or whatever) that they were using and then wrote similar code into the closed-source product
Huh? All that's protected by copyright is the expression of an idea. Writing similar code that does the same thing is not a violation of the copyright. (Slippery slope time: if there's one obvious way to express the idea -- that is, to implement the feature -- then writing the same code would be defensible. You'd need to prove intent as well as obviousness, you'd want a good lawyer, and luck wouldn't hurt.)
There are some interesting issues here. The organization of a book is to some extent protected by copyright: if you write a book, and I write a book with an identical table of contents, I'm violating your copyright. By analogy, I guess mimicing an object hierarchy, for example, would be forbidden.
Anyone know any precedents?
(IANAL, just a programmer who's studied copyright issues more deeply than most.)
Imagine that there was a "duplication device" that could clone whatever you put into it - a watch, a TV, a car, whatever. Imagine it only cost $.20 per use....
Interestingly enough, there was a science-fiction short story published in Analog... exactly along those lines... some alien race dumped a matter duplicater and the plans for it on the human race, with the apparent intent of causing human society to self-destruct. Instead, the humans worked out the obvious solution: since anything could now be duplicated, the only thing that has value is unique originals, and the way to make a living is to design and create unique originals of things.
Ralph W. Slone (writing as "Ralph Williams"), "Business As Usual, During Alterations", Asounding, July, 1958. Great story.
So Microsoft warns schools not to accept PCs without proof of Microsoft ownership (yes, I meant to phrase it that way), and forces them to sign ongoing license agreements or face even more expensive and disruptive audits.
Oh, and to make up for some of their anti-competitive acts, they're going to donate PCs with Microsoft software to schools. I wonder if they'll turn around and threaten the "lucky" schools.
Microsoft may convert more schools to free and open source software than RMS, ESR, BP, and LT put together.
Inspired by the 1980's classic, M.U.L.E.... Original music from Data-Regeneration Project [so, no, *not* the original theme, sigh]... Mature gamers will instantly recognize the similarity between Space HoRSE and the classic PC game M.U.L.E., developed by Ozark Softscape and published by Electronic Arts in 1983.... EA has no intentions of giving up the rights to the brand name M.U.L.E.
It does have the "multi-player on one computer" feature that was so much fun. All in all, though, we'll see. (Maybe Cowboy Neil could review it for us?)
Merger announcement
on
Is MOXI Toast?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
(which is really kind of hard to get to; they hide it behind some Javascript'ed popup):
"The new company's leadership team will be a mix of Digeo and MoxiTM senior management.... Moxi CEO Rita Brogley will become EVP of business development and marketing.... Moxi VP of Engineering Toby Farrand will become CTO.... The new company will maintain dual headquarters in Kirkland and Palo Alto."
There were ten categories. Half of them were won by free/open software: JUnit 3.7, Xerces Java Parser 1.4.4 (from Apache), Apache Ant 1.4.1, JBoss 2.4.4, and Project Jxta. (At least one other, for best IDE, was won by a product with a significant free-as-in-beer version, Forte for Java, Community Edition.) Not bad!
If you think back to how much MS had to push to get themselves pre-installed onto machines back in the 1980s where they were still fighting tooth and nail against competitive offerings.
Now that Windows is effectively regarded as as much of necessary part of the computer as the motherboard, the shoe's on the other foot regarding their relationship with OEMs.
It's legal to establish a monopoly. It's not legal to use monopoly power to maintain a monopoly, or to establish another monopoly.
What is funny is that Microsoft doesn't consider themselves a monopoly. They think they have to fight, tooth and nail, to barely hang on to that 90% market share. That's why they think what they did is right... and that's why they'll continue to do it, illegally abusing their monopoly position, unless forced not to.
(1) Line up a serious alternative ISP. Talk to their sales department; see if they do the same thing.
(2) Talk to your ISP's sales department. Tell them your problem. Tell them you're ready to move. (Perhaps ask what the hit rate of the cache is, that is, if the overhead is worth it for them.) See if they offer any accomodation.
(3) Go with the ISP that does what you want.
If you're using them for DSL, you may not have a lot of choice.
(As others suggested, if host resolution is your issue, you could run a local proxy on your 127.0.0.1 interface that converts host names into addresses.)
I don't put my e-mail in public places where spammers would look to pick it up. As far as I'm concerned if you get spammed, it's your fault.
That's the other cost of spam. If spam makes it impossible to for me to post to Netnews (without forging my From: header) or subscribe to a mailing list or list my e-mail address on Slashdot, that's the harm.
(I've gotten into a few good e-mail discussions via the address I post here. I also get about 20 spam messages a day, between having my address having been here and briefly on one of the Linux mailing lists. Is it worth it? The jury's still out.)
This device reminds me of the display Hiro uses in Neal Stephemson's "Snow Crash." No monitor, per se, but instead, a laser paints his eye with the image of the metaverse.
If I'm reading the book right (about 1/3 through it), in Snow Crash, the lasers painted images on the (transparent? translucent?) goggles Hiro and others wore. Lots safer! (Three lasers for colored images.)
Sony was breaching show rules by letting people play on Sony PlayStation 2 game consoles. Technically, this was right and the Messe was forced to act on the complaint. Sony approached Microsoft to find a compromise and entered into protracted discussions with the Messe for a deal acceptable for all parties, but none could be found. On Sunday morning Sony started packing up its 27 PS2s.
A lot of reactions here imply that Sony had a choice in how to react, and voluntarily withdrew from the show entirely rather than some lesser measure.
But did they "pick up their toys and go home"? If so, how many of their toys?
Note also that Microsoft didn't just snitch; they had some kind of approval/veto power. Microsoft may have had the power to force all the Playstations out of the show.
I look forward to further coverage.
(I found a German article; the Google translation included, "CeBIT nomenclature over contents of the fair in principle neither entertainment electronics nor plays may be pointed. Microsoft presents its play console "Xbox" behind glass." Try searching for "Udo Freialdenhofen," some Sony media relations person.)
It is standard procedure that people keep their tree up-to-date with the cvs tree...
What he said. Run cvs update early and often, to merge others' changes with yours, and to detect conflicts ASAP. Also, fully automate your builds, require a clean build before check in, and make it anathema to "break the build."
The reason people spam is that the cost is low, even in the worst case.
Spammer's worst case just got much worse.
If spamming becomes a risky, possibly very expensive proposition, the big spamhauses could be in trouble. They've got deep enough pockets to be hurt badly by such a suit. Bad news for them; good news for the rest of the Net.
Sadly, it's probably not much of a threat to spammers in China, Russia, etc.
According to studies mentioned in The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers (great book), people remember proper names better than ordinary words. So get yourself a bunch of capitalized words, all the same length so you can stick to the other parts of your naming convention: egrep '^[A-Z][a-z][a-z][a-z]$'/usr/share/lib/dict/words (your dictionary path may vary) and use a selection (such as just place names: Alps, Asia, Bali, Boca, Bonn...) You could use different selections (male names, female names, last names, brand names) for different high level categories.
Yes, associating them with something meaningful will be hard. There are other memory tricks for that. (The book mentioned above spends a little time discussing them, but that's not at all the point of the book.)
AlphaSmart for writing?
on
Low-end Laptops?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
It's not a general purpose laptop (a Z80 likely will never run Linux!), but the AlphaSmart "portable writing tool" (think TRS-80 Model 100 replacement but with a warantee, that looks to your system like a PS/2 keyboard or USB device for file upload/download) is about $200 U.S. and runs forever on AA batteries. A friend's son uses it for notetaking in class, and swears by it.
HY: In a lecture, you mentioned that you didn't use passwords, and had no security for your computer.
RMS: Uh-huh. Security might make sense with banks and military facilities, but in a computer lab, that is a sign of a social breakdown.
HY: (!!!) Social Breakdown?!?!!
RMS: Yes. It's like curing the symptom and worsening the disease. The disease here are the young people who are cut off from warmth and anything really worthwhile, who have nothing on their hands that to rebel and get attention by sneaking into other peoples system. But then the attention that they get from this is one of total hate and hostility. Security sends out that message of hostility, and I don't want to be on either side of it.
HY: So, you still don't have security?
RMS: I regret to say that we had to. There was this one person who repeatedly erased our files and there was no choice. So we made a gateway, a login server. But since I thought that this was such a sad thing, I thought I should suffer more from it so I can't log in on that server.
HY: But on the other hand, FSF supports some encryption scheme, doesn't it?
RMS: Well, that's an interesting point. I don't like people who keeps secret from their neighbors, but you should be able to protect yourself from the government. That's where encryption comes in.
HY: But governments are, in a sense, an expanded form of a neighborhood, aren't they?
RMS: Um, no, I don't think of the United States government in that way. No.
I vaguely remember that at one point, Richard Stallman didn't want to use any Unix machine that didn't support guest accounts (user: "guest"; password: ""), because he thought that was a violation of freedom. For a while, that meant he didn't use any system hooked up to the Internet.
It's not that he didn't understand the security implications; it's that he thought they were less important than what he considered the moral implications.
Slashdot Mirror
People are going to learn what they needed to learn. Let them contribute to the material, in someplace where everyone can follow.
The World Wide Web was supposed to be writable; there are (at least) a couple of ways to make it so. One is to set up a Faq-o-matic (see also here); it lets people post questions and their answers. Another is to install a Wiki (link to the definitive book on the subject, proceeds help support the original Wiki). A Wiki is hard to describe; it's kind of a mix between a Web site and a graffiti wall. There are dozens of implementations and hundreds of installations; for example, here is one trying to build a (GFDL-licensed) online encyclopedia (and here is a page describing how to add to or modify the content there).
These aren't complete solutions, but they should provide good supplements.
You need not agree to a license in order to use this software.
The installation should somewhere contain copyright information, warantee disclaimer (which the user is not required to approve), and a link to the GPL. See also How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs.
There are some interesting issues here. The organization of a book is to some extent protected by copyright: if you write a book, and I write a book with an identical table of contents, I'm violating your copyright. By analogy, I guess mimicing an object hierarchy, for example, would be forbidden.
Anyone know any precedents?
(IANAL, just a programmer who's studied copyright issues more deeply than most.)
So Microsoft warns schools not to accept PCs without proof of Microsoft ownership (yes, I meant to phrase it that way), and forces them to sign ongoing license agreements or face even more expensive and disruptive audits.
Oh, and to make up for some of their anti-competitive acts, they're going to donate PCs with Microsoft software to schools. I wonder if they'll turn around and threaten the "lucky" schools.
Microsoft may convert more schools to free and open source software than RMS, ESR, BP, and LT put together.
(which is really kind of hard to get to; they hide it behind some Javascript'ed popup):
http://www.moxi.com/articles/press_Merge.htm
"The new company's leadership team will be a mix of Digeo and MoxiTM senior management.... Moxi CEO Rita Brogley will become EVP of business development and marketing.... Moxi VP of Engineering Toby Farrand will become CTO.... The new company will maintain dual headquarters in Kirkland and Palo Alto."
There were ten categories. Half of them were won by free/open software: JUnit 3.7, Xerces Java Parser 1.4.4 (from Apache), Apache Ant 1.4.1, JBoss 2.4.4, and Project Jxta. (At least one other, for best IDE, was won by a product with a significant free-as-in-beer version, Forte for Java, Community Edition.) Not bad!
What is funny is that Microsoft doesn't consider themselves a monopoly. They think they have to fight, tooth and nail, to barely hang on to that 90% market share. That's why they think what they did is right
Can the local proxy send the IP address in the GET command but the original host name in the Host: header?
(1) Line up a serious alternative ISP. Talk to their sales department; see if they do the same thing.
(2) Talk to your ISP's sales department. Tell them your problem. Tell them you're ready to move. (Perhaps ask what the hit rate of the cache is, that is, if the overhead is worth it for them.) See if they offer any accomodation.
(3) Go with the ISP that does what you want.
If you're using them for DSL, you may not have a lot of choice.
(As others suggested, if host resolution is your issue, you could run a local proxy on your 127.0.0.1 interface that converts host names into addresses.)
(I've gotten into a few good e-mail discussions via the address I post here. I also get about 20 spam messages a day, between having my address having been here and briefly on one of the Linux mailing lists. Is it worth it? The jury's still out.)
But did they "pick up their toys and go home"? If so, how many of their toys?
They packed up their consoles. I imagine they were forced to (see below). I also imagine they left their other products. "Sony Ericsson['s] stand
Note also that Microsoft didn't just snitch; they had some kind of approval/veto power. Microsoft may have had the power to force all the Playstations out of the show.
I look forward to further coverage.
(I found a German article; the Google translation included, "CeBIT nomenclature over contents of the fair in principle neither entertainment electronics nor plays may be pointed. Microsoft presents its play console "Xbox" behind glass." Try searching for "Udo Freialdenhofen," some Sony media relations person.)
And why might Microsoft be extra offended? Maybe because of this (cached link): "Those of you in Germany can see the [Playstation 2] linux kit in action at CEBIT in Hanover this week, from 13-20th March. We're on the Sony stand in hall 2, C02." They didn't just toss a competing game console; they got a bunch of Linux machines thrown out of the show!
Extreme Programming doesn't solve this problem; it depends on a solution existing.
(The XP crowd came from a Smalltalk background, and mostly relied on Envy Developer, of which they had many good things to say.)
The reason people spam is that the cost is low, even in the worst case.
Spammer's worst case just got much worse.
If spamming becomes a risky, possibly very expensive proposition, the big spamhauses could be in trouble. They've got deep enough pockets to be hurt badly by such a suit. Bad news for them; good news for the rest of the Net.
Sadly, it's probably not much of a threat to spammers in China, Russia, etc.
Amen. I don't know what that cleaning agent is, but it makes my wife nauseous.
Our favorite restaurant at Walt Disney World, Bonfamille's at Port Orleans, suffered the same problem. It closed a couple of years ago.-(
--PSRC (B.S. Physics, HTC, 1978; M.S. Mathematics, 1979)
P.S.: Surf the Hocking!-)
egrep '^[A-Z][a-z][a-z][a-z]$'
(your dictionary path may vary) and use a selection (such as just place names: Alps, Asia, Bali, Boca, Bonn
Yes, associating them with something meaningful will be hard. There are other memory tricks for that. (The book mentioned above spends a little time discussing them, but that's not at all the point of the book.)
It's not a general purpose laptop (a Z80 likely will never run Linux!), but the AlphaSmart "portable writing tool" (think TRS-80 Model 100 replacement but with a warantee, that looks to your system like a PS/2 keyboard or USB device for file upload/download) is about $200 U.S. and runs forever on AA batteries. A friend's son uses it for notetaking in class, and swears by it.
http://www.kde.org/food/rms.html
I vaguely remember that at one point, Richard Stallman didn't want to use any Unix machine that didn't support guest accounts (user: "guest"; password: ""), because he thought that was a violation of freedom. For a while, that meant he didn't use any system hooked up to the Internet.
It's not that he didn't understand the security implications; it's that he thought they were less important than what he considered the moral implications.
Can anyone back this up?