Hello?... 'nerds' are the whole impetus behind the electronics industry. Without nerds wanting to show off with faster processors, cooler video boards or better OS's a few billion dollar industries wouldn't exist today.
Hell, Star Wars would have earned $1.50 at the theater without nerds creating the cult that propells it. Nerds created pong on a friggen mainframe just to goof off and sparked the video game industry, quickly gaining as the most widespread form of mass entertainment on the earth.
Hrmmm, interesting. They can program a module that's self aware, knows when a module connected to it is damaged and is capable of repairing that module. Plus fulfilling it's mission requirements, and all in 1mb of RAM.....
So why does my PC need 128mb just to type a Word document without crashing?
What this experiment MIGHT find out is if Artificial Intelligence is ready to reproduce some of the common sense among humans.
Interesting concept, I'm sure that as soon as some humans can demonstrate they possess common sense, we'll be able to duplicate it in robots in no time.:)
Do you remember Java? More specifically MS's 'enhanced' JVM? They claimed it was still fullfilling the standard.
It only took a few years, several dozen lawyers and umpteen $$$ to prove them wrong. Geez, I can't see where they'd expect to get away with that sort of behavior again......
Linux desktops do not copy the MS desktop, in as much as all desktops follow the same basic pattern. Which is why Apple sued and lost when they complained that MS stole their 'look and feel'.
The biggest problem with.NET is that it is a MS initiative and controlled at its most basic level's by MS. Anyone who thinks they can safely develop a project under it without fear that MS will change the APIs the instant they actually start competing at some level is an idiot.
And therein lies the rub of any development using MS tools. Undocumented, incompatible changes to the underlying APIs at MS's whims for MS's gain.
I think I'd distance myself from GNOME now just because Miguel is a two faced jerk.
The whole reason for GNOME's existence was to fight the 'commercialization' of KDE for using Qt. Now GNOME wants me to buddy up to MS because it's development tools are 'cool'??
Isn't he saying in a round about way that free software is a dead end and can not produce useful tools without the assistance of a multi-billion dollar monopoly?
Why hasn't the GNOME Council, or whatever super hero wannabe tag they gave themselves pitch him on his ass for abandoning their friggen principles?
Considering that most people are happy with 128kb encoding, I really doubt that the average person will notice any degredation in the signal.
The point isn't that audio quality won't be 100% perfect, it's that as long as they have to provide a player with some kind of output and someone else has a recording device, then the songs will be circulated.
Just look at the number of people who trade Grateful Dead concert recordings they made from crap personal tape recorders. The true audiophile will not be happy, but the other 99.5% of the population will be downloading away.
Hell, if mp3's had come along when tape cassette drives were still being used with pc's, I bet people would have been ripping them.
Maybe because Sun and Netscape have yet to show that they want to control every facet of your PC experience to the point of slaughtering any competition in any form?
Maybe because Sun and Netscape don't rig their underlying API's to keep the competition's products running slower?
Hey, due to licensing deals MS has made with all the major PC manufacturers, you will never see a dual boot consumer PC direct from the factory.
Tying the BIOS to a crypto key wouldn't be that far of a stretch especially in the era of DMCA.
Okay, I'm not getting your point. You say that you don't want to pay for the software, because if you did you'd get a commercial product. Guess what? Smoothie is a commercial product.
The fact that it contains GPL'd code doesn't make it any less viable as a commercial product then SuSE/Redhat/Mandrake or any other Linux distro.
You're not paying for the kernel, the drivers, Snort or FreeSWAN. You're paying for the effort they put forth to produce a viable, integrated product and easy to use interface. That's why I said that GPL versions can be a good marketing point for a commercial product.
No one has misinterpreted the GPL either. The GPL does not prevent adding proprietary, pay based code to a GPL'd product, so long as the GPL'd code remains freely available. It doesn't prevent you from charging for the compiled binaries, it doesn't prevent you from charging for the bandwidth you use to download the code, it doesn't prevent you from charging a fee to burn the code to cd and mail it to you.
The GPL also doesn't prevent you from selling books, manuals, add-ons, consultations, etc. concerning your contribution to the world either. Which is also using GPL'd software to spark a business.
RMS and other GPL browbeaters can harp all they want about this beautific ideal world where all the code is free, but that don't feed the kiddies, unless you're being supported by a University or the code you contribute isn't your main source of income.
Yes, the Smoothie team (specifically Richard) could learn to take criticisms and suggestions better. I'll give you that one. Especially as they go into retail. Telling paying customers to RTFM doesn't guarantee resells.
Indeed, when building a firewall it doesn't hurt to be overly paranoid, and they should have shadowed the passwd file.
Still, this is a good product at an amazing price.
"In the end, my questions were answered, privately, by MacGyver, whose answers unfortunaely indicated that features I think are critical in a firewall are only available in the commercial version. To suggest a few:
- No support for multiple IP's on the external interface
- No ability to write filter rules for outbound traffic
- No inherent ability to manage IDS policies used by Snort
- No immediate planned support for a stateful kernel
etc..."
"In conclusion, neither the product's lackluster featureset, nor it's father company's poor customer support practices would have individually discouraged my using it."
I'd like to start out by saying that to me, it sounds like you were more pissed that you'd actually have to pay for all the goodies you wanted then that Smoothwall does or doesn't have security issues. If you don't want to pay someone else to do it for you, feel free to download the source and do it yourself.
It makes perfect business sense to offer the GPL'd version free with reduced funtionality and to expect payment for the gee-whiz gizmos. I will not damn them for actually having the balls to ask to be reimbursed for their work.
Now, on to Richard. Yes, he can be a dick and he likes to prove it. So don't go to his mail list or chat. Start your own and field questions all day from people who'd have an anal probe before they'd give you a dime for your time, but expect you to practically go to their home and set the box up for them. Oh, and can they call you at home too?
Several people commented that the dev team doesn't allow other people to patch/alter smoothwall. Well, can't blame them for that. Would you want someone buying/using your product, breaking it and then trying to sell it under your name? Would you want them telling other people how to do it too? Then have them come asking you for support? I somehow don't think so.
Not to mention the incredible number of idiots who come onto the mailing lists, looking to add SAMBA, MySQL or Sendmail to Smoothwall and expect them to smile, be helpful and promise that it's still just as secure.
As for the demand for donations. When the team first started asking for donations, it started with a pop-up nag screen that was only visible when you went to the admin webpage. The publics response? Some fucker threatened to kill Richards son. Actually called his house and told his kid he was going to kill him, because daddy put a nagware pop-up in Smoothwall. Ain't that some shit?
So you don't want to pay a donation? Fine, download the GPL'd version and do your own tech support, issue solved.
Now, as to there being only one line of defense. I think that's being slightly mis-represented in that:
No services are available on the external IP by default.
It requires internal admin access to turn on those services.
When external services are enabled, you can dictate which IP's will be able to access those services.
Services are run on nonstandard ports.
Could they have shadowed the passwd file? Yeah, don't know why they didn't, but is it the same as leaving a key under your doormat? Yes, the nonstandard port setup isn't exactly secure, but then in 6 months of operation, no one has ever probed the ports in question on my boxes.
Yes, I'm sure you'll never use the text translation abilities of Qt. But then the Chinese guy who tries to port your app over will appreciate it. Linux is not US/English central. It's mulicultural, and it's nice that some people are keeping ease of coding for everyone in mind.
Yes, Sun, HP and others are rushing to dump the CDE (which they developed and mismanaged) to back development of GNOME. I'm not scared that they'll do to GNOME what they did to CDE, are you? So indeed. Why use KDE?:)
The 'Man' has nothing to do with this. If we lived a hundred years ago and a person could live a perfectly fine life without a job, it'd be all good. But untill you figure out a way to trade some chickens you raised off corn you grew for a few megabytes of data, then cash and a job to earn that cash are a necessity.
The previous version of their distribution is freely available for download and testing if you wish. You only have to pay if you want the most current edition. Seems reasonable enough.
Sunsite dba Ibiblio is still there, and they still distribute most Linux distributions. Including the freely downloadable, not current 1.8.* version of Libranet.
I've never seen Ibilio or Linuxiso.org offer the iso images of the various distributions that are for sale unless that iso was available on the distro's website. Seems some people realize that you have to make a buck somewhere.
Exactly! Libranet offers the iso for the previous version of their distribution for free download. So if you don't want to pay for hogging up their bandwidth to download 650mbs, you have every right to use the older version.
They work hard to produce a distro that has some quality software, they have the right to charge for it. If not the physical CD then for the bandwidth necessary to let you make your own CD from their iso.
It's the same as if I printed out all the sourcecode and charged you for my ink and paper. TANSTAAFL Somebody has to pay somewhere.
Maybe I'm stupid, but I thought I was buying music, not the format which contains that music. Unless the format dramatically improves the quality of the music it contains, then I see no need for a format change to begin with.
People will pay for a browser because it's stable. Because it's standards compliant. Because it's fast. Because it's small and takes up few resources. Because it doesn't automatically shove portals and newsreaders, email programs, media suites, channel content or anything else down your throat. Oh, and because it's features aren't being dictated by a uber-corporation that could give a fick what you really want cause their advertisers/investors want you to have some inane crap that leads you to them. Free does not necessitate better.
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Nerd culture is counter productive??
Hello?... 'nerds' are the whole impetus behind the electronics industry. Without nerds wanting to show off with faster processors, cooler video boards or better OS's a few billion dollar industries wouldn't exist today.
Hell, Star Wars would have earned $1.50 at the theater without nerds creating the cult that propells it. Nerds created pong on a friggen mainframe just to goof off and sparked the video game industry, quickly gaining as the most widespread form of mass entertainment on the earth.
I am nerd, hear me calculate!
It takes at least 64mb of RAM to comfortably run X too. Windows doesn't own the market on bloat.
One step closer to virtual computer sex, babyyyy!!!
Hrmmm, interesting. They can program a module that's self aware, knows when a module connected to it is damaged and is capable of repairing that module. Plus fulfilling it's mission requirements, and all in 1mb of RAM.....
So why does my PC need 128mb just to type a Word document without crashing?
Interesting concept, I'm sure that as soon as some humans can demonstrate they possess common sense, we'll be able to duplicate it in robots in no time. :)
It only took a few years, several dozen lawyers and umpteen $$$ to prove them wrong. Geez, I can't see where they'd expect to get away with that sort of behavior again......
The biggest problem with .NET is that it is a MS initiative and controlled at its most basic level's by MS. Anyone who thinks they can safely develop a project under it without fear that MS will change the APIs the instant they actually start competing at some level is an idiot.
And therein lies the rub of any development using MS tools. Undocumented, incompatible changes to the underlying APIs at MS's whims for MS's gain.
The whole reason for GNOME's existence was to fight the 'commercialization' of KDE for using Qt. Now GNOME wants me to buddy up to MS because it's development tools are 'cool'??
Isn't he saying in a round about way that free software is a dead end and can not produce useful tools without the assistance of a multi-billion dollar monopoly?
Why hasn't the GNOME Council, or whatever super hero wannabe tag they gave themselves pitch him on his ass for abandoning their friggen principles?
Considering that most people are happy with 128kb encoding, I really doubt that the average person will notice any degredation in the signal. The point isn't that audio quality won't be 100% perfect, it's that as long as they have to provide a player with some kind of output and someone else has a recording device, then the songs will be circulated. Just look at the number of people who trade Grateful Dead concert recordings they made from crap personal tape recorders. The true audiophile will not be happy, but the other 99.5% of the population will be downloading away. Hell, if mp3's had come along when tape cassette drives were still being used with pc's, I bet people would have been ripping them.
Maybe because Sun and Netscape have yet to show that they want to control every facet of your PC experience to the point of slaughtering any competition in any form? Maybe because Sun and Netscape don't rig their underlying API's to keep the competition's products running slower?
Hey, due to licensing deals MS has made with all the major PC manufacturers, you will never see a dual boot consumer PC direct from the factory. Tying the BIOS to a crypto key wouldn't be that far of a stretch especially in the era of DMCA.
The fact that it contains GPL'd code doesn't make it any less viable as a commercial product then SuSE/Redhat/Mandrake or any other Linux distro.
You're not paying for the kernel, the drivers, Snort or FreeSWAN. You're paying for the effort they put forth to produce a viable, integrated product and easy to use interface. That's why I said that GPL versions can be a good marketing point for a commercial product.
No one has misinterpreted the GPL either. The GPL does not prevent adding proprietary, pay based code to a GPL'd product, so long as the GPL'd code remains freely available. It doesn't prevent you from charging for the compiled binaries, it doesn't prevent you from charging for the bandwidth you use to download the code, it doesn't prevent you from charging a fee to burn the code to cd and mail it to you.
The GPL also doesn't prevent you from selling books, manuals, add-ons, consultations, etc. concerning your contribution to the world either. Which is also using GPL'd software to spark a business.
RMS and other GPL browbeaters can harp all they want about this beautific ideal world where all the code is free, but that don't feed the kiddies, unless you're being supported by a University or the code you contribute isn't your main source of income.
Yes, the Smoothie team (specifically Richard) could learn to take criticisms and suggestions better. I'll give you that one. Especially as they go into retail. Telling paying customers to RTFM doesn't guarantee resells.
Indeed, when building a firewall it doesn't hurt to be overly paranoid, and they should have shadowed the passwd file.
Still, this is a good product at an amazing price.
Odd, I've had a box up for 6 months and it's only using 100megs.
"In conclusion, neither the product's lackluster featureset, nor it's father company's poor customer support practices would have individually discouraged my using it."
I'd like to start out by saying that to me, it sounds like you were more pissed that you'd actually have to pay for all the goodies you wanted then that Smoothwall does or doesn't have security issues. If you don't want to pay someone else to do it for you, feel free to download the source and do it yourself.
It makes perfect business sense to offer the GPL'd version free with reduced funtionality and to expect payment for the gee-whiz gizmos. I will not damn them for actually having the balls to ask to be reimbursed for their work.
Now, on to Richard. Yes, he can be a dick and he likes to prove it. So don't go to his mail list or chat. Start your own and field questions all day from people who'd have an anal probe before they'd give you a dime for your time, but expect you to practically go to their home and set the box up for them. Oh, and can they call you at home too?
Several people commented that the dev team doesn't allow other people to patch/alter smoothwall. Well, can't blame them for that. Would you want someone buying/using your product, breaking it and then trying to sell it under your name? Would you want them telling other people how to do it too? Then have them come asking you for support? I somehow don't think so.
Not to mention the incredible number of idiots who come onto the mailing lists, looking to add SAMBA, MySQL or Sendmail to Smoothwall and expect them to smile, be helpful and promise that it's still just as secure.
As for the demand for donations. When the team first started asking for donations, it started with a pop-up nag screen that was only visible when you went to the admin webpage. The publics response? Some fucker threatened to kill Richards son. Actually called his house and told his kid he was going to kill him, because daddy put a nagware pop-up in Smoothwall. Ain't that some shit?
So you don't want to pay a donation? Fine, download the GPL'd version and do your own tech support, issue solved.
Now, as to there being only one line of defense. I think that's being slightly mis-represented in that:
Could they have shadowed the passwd file? Yeah, don't know why they didn't, but is it the same as leaving a key under your doormat? Yes, the nonstandard port setup isn't exactly secure, but then in 6 months of operation, no one has ever probed the ports in question on my boxes.
You say tits like they're bad or something. I'm a lifelong fan :)
Yes, I'm sure you'll never use the text translation abilities of Qt. But then the Chinese guy who tries to port your app over will appreciate it. Linux is not US/English central. It's mulicultural, and it's nice that some people are keeping ease of coding for everyone in mind.
Yes, Sun, HP and others are rushing to dump the CDE (which they developed and mismanaged) to back development of GNOME. I'm not scared that they'll do to GNOME what they did to CDE, are you? So indeed. Why use KDE? :)
The 'Man' has nothing to do with this. If we lived a hundred years ago and a person could live a perfectly fine life without a job, it'd be all good. But untill you figure out a way to trade some chickens you raised off corn you grew for a few megabytes of data, then cash and a job to earn that cash are a necessity.
The previous version of their distribution is freely available for download and testing if you wish. You only have to pay if you want the most current edition. Seems reasonable enough.
I've never seen Ibilio or Linuxiso.org offer the iso images of the various distributions that are for sale unless that iso was available on the distro's website. Seems some people realize that you have to make a buck somewhere.
Your friend, does he have a job, or does he live off his parents? Cause feeding your family and paying the rent are what it's really all about.
Exactly! Libranet offers the iso for the previous version of their distribution for free download. So if you don't want to pay for hogging up their bandwidth to download 650mbs, you have every right to use the older version. They work hard to produce a distro that has some quality software, they have the right to charge for it. If not the physical CD then for the bandwidth necessary to let you make your own CD from their iso. It's the same as if I printed out all the sourcecode and charged you for my ink and paper. TANSTAAFL Somebody has to pay somewhere.
Actually they have KDE 2.1 and kernel 2.4.2 and are more up to date than SuSE's 7.1 distro which has a 2.4.0 kernel and KDE 2.0.
Maybe I'm stupid, but I thought I was buying music, not the format which contains that music. Unless the format dramatically improves the quality of the music it contains, then I see no need for a format change to begin with.
People will pay for a browser because it's stable. Because it's standards compliant. Because it's fast. Because it's small and takes up few resources. Because it doesn't automatically shove portals and newsreaders, email programs, media suites, channel content or anything else down your throat. Oh, and because it's features aren't being dictated by a uber-corporation that could give a fick what you really want cause their advertisers/investors want you to have some inane crap that leads you to them. Free does not necessitate better.