Being a technical person and having served my 12 months in the Finnish army, I can say that the communications equipment we got to use were pretty interesting.
I mean, after wireless connectivity using 10-pound radios, sending encrypted text messages using 4 pound special devices and other technology that is rugged enough to survive even if the soldier doesn't, you really start to appreciate your 0.2 pound Nokia cellphone.
And usually these top-notch behemots ship in these handy 3x3x3 foot boxes you get to carry around in the forest. And don't get me started on the weather! Now wonder these younger nerds start to miss internet.
And what is more interesting, will some of the code that obviously needs to be developed for this kind of system be released under GPL?
After all, in most cases you'd think that the work would be based on GPL'd stuff like the Linux kernel, and therefore the modifications would need to be licenced under GPL also, bringing a lot of technology available for Linux.
> But it's really common for an industry standard to > contain patented technologies.
And it's also common to try and patent everything you can while the standardization process is under way. As far as I recall, many telecom companies and cellphone manufacturers hold a wide portfolio of GSM-related patents.
And because corporations are doing this, there is a large incentive for others to patent things in the standard, too, so they can swap and not end up paying huge royalties for other companies involved in forging the industry standard.
As far as I can figure from the statement in the article:
"After comparing those data points with the total volume of legitimate messages passing through the service provider's mail system, we are able to arrive at our percentage of 80 per cent",..it seems to me that the article should say 80% of the service provider's mail traffic was generated by zombies. This is completely different from the statement made in the topic.
It's like you'd go to a bar and observe that 80% of women leave with drunken idiots, and thus proclaim that drunken idiots are able to hit 80% of women.
There may be some causality and statistical significance, but it definitely isn't as clear as the article suggests.
I watched Two Towers extras where the fellow who was doing the transportation of iPods to Jackson's hotel told that he was almost robbed by two thugs following him one day.
Thankfully the guy was pretty quick sprinter, so the dailies (and I even seem to recall that they exceptionally had the whole version on iPod that day) narrowly escaped the London underworld.
As a funny sidenote, I don't think any beautiful women offered to plug their earpiece into iPod while waiting traffic lights, too bad for them.:)
the real life analogy would be a guy with a poster on top of his head saying "ask for bootleg DVD's here", and when you give him a name (I'm assuming the site was a search service, as I never visited it) he points you to a guy who has that bootleg.
Also, the people the guy points at are usually less than 1 meter away and don't sell the bootlegs, they give 'em for free, because they have unlimited supply.
Yes it is stupid to be able to sue Google for linking, but it should be possible to take pirate hubs down. It still doesn't make suing everyone right, but linking in web IS different than doing the same in real life.
It would be interesting to see "normal" animations generated with computers, instead of the now-so-common 3D things like Finding Nemo. I would suppose digital equipment would offer lots of possibilities for texturing in general, and cinematic effects such as lense focus, motion blur and a lot of more complex things.
Well, if 3D feature animations sell, then those we shall have, it seems. And I do have to admit that Finding Nemo does have a similar look to it as some "traditional" animation titles, being "less" three-dimensional..
Is it just me, or did anybode else wonder the order of the winners in the story?
I mean, it isn't alphabetical, it isn't ordered by the amount of votes. Mentioning Plone last because it has a comment attached is reasonable, but moving GNOME from the bottom of the list in front of KDE and preserving the order otherwise was odd.
The first thought that occurred to me was "so, the GNOME seems to have beaten KDE", so I was slightly surprised when I read the O'Reilly announcement.
Interesting thought occurred to me - why should we be able to record creations other people have done if they don't want us to? I mean, if some TV channel creates a series, pays the actors and does the scripts, isn't it their decision whether to distribute it or not, and if choose to distribute, to choose whether we allowed to copy it or not?
Here on Slashdot people keep insisting that GPL is in harmony with copyright law, basically saying that you should be able to dictate how people are allowed to redistribute your works. And the next day, same people line up on barricades to stop unnecessary copying/distribution restrictions imposed by the creators of digital broadcast content!
I perfectly understand the worrying of corporate world that if you distribute your shows digitally, the pirates don't even have to bother with DVD Decrypter to spread the movies illegally. Everything interesting on digital television would be all over the net the next day.
What we would need is content producers who _choose_ to distribute their creations without the restricting flag, and people voting with their wallet if the broadcast companies get too draconian with their DRM. Sadly many times what is accepted by the masses isn't enough for the more technologically (anarchistically?-) oriented, but then again, many of those content producers aren't doing their shows for common good anyway.
Personally I think that it's stupid that you're not allowed to record something that is stored inside your brain anyway, but I see that some restrictions would need to be placed so that producing content stays economically reasonable.
And if they do it the SCO way(tm), Microsoft licences the technology and that money is spent on suing Linux companies and threatening to sue individual users for updating their systems using the web! This would also probably quadruple their stock price, if they happen to have one.
But wait, for $699 you will not be sued, even if your Linux system contains infringing code!
Well, actually SCO doesn't have to point out the code IBM contributed - because they are saying that ALL code IBM did to AIX is under their supervision, and adding it to Linux is illegal without their consent.
It's like if you would prosecute someone for selling bits of your software. You don't have to know which bits they sell, if you know that the whole should belong to you. In SCO's case it seems though that they have some kind of weird hallucinations about what actually belongs to them...
Yeah the problem is, that the programs with most users will definitely get most votes. Audio editing is not so common task, and most of the people haven't heard from Eclipse, so even if they were great programs, they won't be faring well in this vote.
Using some kind of grading combined with the amount of votes would perhaps solve this problem, but I guess it's too late now..
It is also interesting that if you suddenly say something really unexpected, the other person will most certainly not "hear" what you just say, probably because the brain was not expecting the thing.
So next time when doing smalltalk, add a line about red tunafish being too small and then continue normally, and see if the other person catches it. Either it will work or you get some really strange looks:)
And they are also doing exceedingly great job in getting Linux a bad reputation.
Even if SCO loses every single legal battle that seems to be ahead, many companies will consider twice if they want to get a system where rabid companies can start suing everyone they can think of.
They're making a really good example of how insecure it is to use an operating system that has code contributed by thousands of individuals, you never know if there's a bomb ticking in there. And there won't be a big monopolistic company protecting your rights (and their income) when one of thoes bombs goes off...
Slashdot Mirror
Being a technical person and having served my 12 months in the Finnish army, I can say that the communications equipment we got to use were pretty interesting.
I mean, after wireless connectivity using 10-pound radios, sending encrypted text messages using 4 pound special devices and other technology that is rugged enough to survive even if the soldier doesn't, you really start to appreciate your 0.2 pound Nokia cellphone.
And usually these top-notch behemots ship in these handy 3x3x3 foot boxes you get to carry around in the forest. And don't get me started on the weather! Now wonder these younger nerds start to miss internet.
And what is more interesting, will some of the code that obviously needs to be developed for this kind of system be released under GPL?
After all, in most cases you'd think that the work would be based on GPL'd stuff like the Linux kernel, and therefore the modifications would need to be licenced under GPL also, bringing a lot of technology available for Linux.
> But it's really common for an industry standard to
> contain patented technologies.
And it's also common to try and patent everything you can while the standardization process is under way. As far as I recall, many telecom companies and cellphone manufacturers hold a wide portfolio of GSM-related patents.
And because corporations are doing this, there is a large incentive for others to patent things in the standard, too, so they can swap and not end up paying huge royalties for other companies involved in forging the industry standard.
Let's look at a typical novice's session with the mighty ed:
l o
:)
golem> ed
?
help
?
?
?
quit
?
exit
?
bye
?
hel
?
?
eat flaming death
?
^C
?
^C
?
^D
?
---
The full mind-blowing reasoning on why to choose ed "Ed is the standard text editor." available from http://gammatron.novarese.net/txt/ed.html
Have fun.
As far as I can figure from the statement in the article:
..it seems to me that the article should say 80% of the service provider's mail traffic was generated by zombies. This is completely different from the statement made in the topic.
"After comparing those data points with the total volume of legitimate messages passing through the service provider's mail system, we are able to arrive at our percentage of 80 per cent",
It's like you'd go to a bar and observe that 80% of women leave with drunken idiots, and thus proclaim that drunken idiots are able to hit 80% of women.
There may be some causality and statistical significance, but it definitely isn't as clear as the article suggests.
What's even easier is to count the digits and the one with little over 7 million is yours!
Oh, wait..
I watched Two Towers extras where the fellow who was doing the transportation of iPods to Jackson's hotel told that he was almost robbed by two thugs following him one day.
:)
Thankfully the guy was pretty quick sprinter, so the dailies (and I even seem to recall that they exceptionally had the whole version on iPod that day) narrowly escaped the London underworld.
As a funny sidenote, I don't think any beautiful women offered to plug their earpiece into iPod while waiting traffic lights, too bad for them.
No,
the real life analogy would be a guy with a poster on top of his head saying "ask for bootleg DVD's here", and when you give him a name (I'm assuming the site was a search service, as I never visited it) he points you to a guy who has that bootleg.
Also, the people the guy points at are usually less than 1 meter away and don't sell the bootlegs, they give 'em for free, because they have unlimited supply.
Yes it is stupid to be able to sue Google for linking, but it should be possible to take pirate hubs down. It still doesn't make suing everyone right, but linking in web IS different than doing the same in real life.
It would be interesting to see "normal" animations generated with computers, instead of the now-so-common 3D things like Finding Nemo.
I would suppose digital equipment would offer lots of possibilities for texturing in general, and cinematic effects such as lense focus, motion
blur and a lot of more complex things.
Well, if 3D feature animations sell, then those we shall have, it seems. And I do have to admit that Finding Nemo does have a similar look to it as some "traditional" animation titles, being "less" three-dimensional..
Is it just me, or did anybode else wonder the order of the winners in the story?
I mean, it isn't alphabetical, it isn't ordered by the amount of votes. Mentioning Plone last because it has a comment attached is reasonable, but moving GNOME from the bottom of the list in front of KDE and preserving the order otherwise was odd.
The first thought that occurred to me was "so, the GNOME seems to have beaten KDE", so I was slightly surprised when I read the O'Reilly announcement.
Interesting thought occurred to me - why should we be able to record creations other people have done if they don't want us to? I mean, if some TV channel creates a series, pays the actors and does the scripts, isn't it their decision whether to distribute it or not, and if choose to distribute, to choose whether we allowed to copy it or not?
Here on Slashdot people keep insisting that GPL is in harmony with copyright law, basically saying that you should be able to dictate how people are allowed to redistribute your works.
And the next day, same people line up on barricades to stop unnecessary copying/distribution restrictions imposed by the creators of digital broadcast content!
I perfectly understand the worrying of corporate world that if you distribute your shows digitally, the pirates don't even have to bother with DVD Decrypter to spread the movies illegally. Everything interesting on digital television would be all over the net the next day.
What we would need is content producers who _choose_ to distribute their creations without the restricting flag, and people voting with their wallet if the broadcast companies get too draconian with their DRM. Sadly many times what is accepted by the masses isn't enough for the more technologically (anarchistically?-) oriented, but then again, many of those content producers aren't doing their shows for common good anyway.
Personally I think that it's stupid that you're not allowed to record something that is stored inside your brain anyway, but I see that some restrictions would need to be placed so that producing content stays economically reasonable.
And if they do it the SCO way(tm), Microsoft licences the technology and that money is spent on suing Linux companies and threatening to sue individual users for updating their systems using the web! This would also probably quadruple their stock price, if they happen to have one.
But wait, for $699 you will not be sued, even if your Linux system contains infringing code!
Well, actually SCO doesn't have to point out the code IBM contributed - because they are saying that ALL code IBM did to AIX is under their supervision, and adding it to Linux is illegal without their consent.
It's like if you would prosecute someone for selling bits of your software. You don't have to know which bits they sell, if you know that the whole should belong to you. In SCO's case it seems though that they have some kind of weird hallucinations about what actually belongs to them...
Are you the same guy who posted two earlier posts with the same text? Last time it was 4AM and the
time before 3AM..
Some creativity would be required when posting these again and again, next time change a few wordings and add more superlatives?-)
Yeah the problem is, that the programs with most users will definitely get most votes. Audio editing is not so common task, and most of the people haven't heard from Eclipse, so even if they were great programs, they won't be faring well in this vote.
Using some kind of grading combined with the amount of votes would perhaps solve this problem, but I guess it's too late now..
You mean the average Australian income is 376 dollars a year? Or am I calculating something wrong ($130 million * 52 / 18 million = 375.6)?
0.09% would sound more correct, but you are right in that it is a awful lot of money spent and probably does affect home prices.
It is also interesting that if you suddenly say something really unexpected, the other person will most certainly not "hear" what you just say, probably because the brain was not expecting the thing.
:)
So next time when doing smalltalk, add a line about red tunafish being too small and then continue normally, and see if the other person catches it. Either it will work or you get some really strange looks
This is just the new SCO business model:
...
1. Profit
2.
n. Litigate
You see, it surely gives you a lot quicker return of investment, the profit thing being first!
(they just have to be careful for step n+1. "bankrupt")
And they are also doing exceedingly great job in getting Linux a bad reputation.
Even if SCO loses every single legal battle that seems to be ahead, many companies will consider twice if they want to get a system where rabid companies can start suing everyone they can think of.
They're making a really good example of how insecure it is to use an operating system that has code contributed by thousands of individuals,
you never know if there's a bomb ticking in there. And there won't be a big monopolistic company protecting your rights (and their income) when one of thoes bombs goes off...