Re:Microsoft has finally been forced to innovate
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He isn't making a mistake, he's working to help fix the problem.
You, on the other hand, are simply helping to purpetuate the problem
if you think about it, he is really the one using non-standard practices.
This reminds me of the people that decide to send their resume to possible employers using a format other than MS-word (or that cannot be read by microsoft word) because they don't believe microsoft is the standard. More than likely they won't get the job.
I guess I shouldn't be complaining, it just means that my work will look better to the customer.
Re:Microsoft has finally been forced to innovate
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IE7 Details Emerge
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· Score: 1
Personally I tend to develop in Firefox then onward-test in IE and Opera. If I run into any of the IE "show stoppers" in CSS I tend to hack around them enough that IE looks acceptable, but if it means IE looking slightly worse than Firefox I'll tend to do it that way. As long as the IE design is acceptable to the client I think it's a much better idea to offer improved browsing experience to people using browsers that aren't broken.
aren't broken? regardless of whether IE follows the standards, it has basically set the standard for internet websites for the last couple of years. I would say IE usage is still around 80%, which means if you are a developer, making it look "just acceptable" in IE will make your clients think that your work is just that.
I am a developer, and out of all my clients, maybe 1 has even heard of firefox.
I think you are making a mistake.
Re:Microsoft has finally been forced to innovate
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IE7 Details Emerge
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· Score: 1
I don't mean to flame you, but customers should not look forward to the next version of IE in six months or so, when they can get virtually the same features today with Firefox.
well, for starters, firefox still doesn't render certain websites properly. If all websites rendered as quickly and as well as IE, I would use firefox exclusively. Until them, I need to use both. Security matters, but to the end user, usability is more important.
1. CherryOS riped of some other guys in order to make money, this is of course a fundamental difference from say some people downloading songs just because they like to listen to music.
I wouldn't really consider it ripping off anyone, when the original source code is not only still there but available for free. Why should money have anything to do with it?
2. The actions of the organisations you mentioned are not only targeted at stoping copyright infrigment, they are also clearly targeted at further and further diminishing consumers rights and privacy rights, something that isn't the case in the PearPC/CherryOS case
The FSF goes after people in court for violating their license and so do the RIAA/MPAA. Rights are violated in both cases.
3. One of the things that makes the idea of free software so appealing to me is that fact that free software better than any other concept reflects one of the basic properties of software (and knowledge in general in the digital age), namely zero marginal costs of distribution. This is in fact one of the greatest advantages and most promising developments of the digital age.
Now the organisations you mentioned are directly involved in denying this basic property of the goods they make their money with, thereby destroying one of the greatest advantages of modern technology. Their actions are aimed at throwing us back to the pre-digital stone ages, so to say.
so because you can't get digital goods for free, you are back in the pre-digital stone age?
The only true free license is the public domain license. It allows all uses for software, commerical or noncommercial and is compatible with all licenses.
With that out of the way, those assholes broke the GPL, let's sue them to kingdom come! And if the PearPC guys need funds for legal action, I'm sure the FOSS community will be more than happy to help them out.
so how would this be any different than what the BSA,MPAA, and RIAA are doing to P2P users?
That's the worst analogy I've ever heard. "Stealing money" does not even potentially have any legitimate 'uses'
hmm, and stealing a car does?
On the contrary. You said blocking a few ports solves your bandwidth problem... I said stealing a car would solve your (hypothetical) money problem... Calling either problem solved with those solution is so incredibly short-sighted as to be stupid.
only to those wanting to use p2p programs, like yourself.
1) If you are advertising a certain ammount of bandwidth, you had better have enough capacity to serve all your users, and not be operating on the margins.
it's a university, so there is no advertising of any bandwidth (or have you forgotten that im not talking about a major ISP).
ISPs do it all the time. They advertise "unlimited bandwidth", but in the fine print it states you are limited to a certain amount and can be charge for going over. Many ISPs also sell T1s to customers when it is actually a fractional T1.
2) Bandwidth is not some commodity that is uncontrollable. You can very easily allocate a certain level of throughput to an address, and then it doesn't matter what services they are using. Your approach leaves you completely open to people using a huge ammount of bandwidth over HTTP/FTP (or just those ports). You are needlessly harming legitimate users of those services (which may be 1% of the p2p bandwidth, but likely 15% of your users).
limiting bandwidth on those ports would solve the problem quite nicely.
First of all, you don't know anything at all about me, so it's pretty moronic of you to start talking about how I would act
I recall you telling me things you seemed to know about me. Who's the moron now?
First of all, you don't know anything at all about me, so it's pretty moronic of you to start talking about how I would act. But... if you were advertising a certain throughput rate (which I presume you don't), and you didn't usually meet it, yeah, I'd complain.
Universities have a limited amount of bandwidth that everyone needs to share. When you allow p2p to be accessed, it will be abused by large amounts of students. This prevents nearly anyone on the network from getting actual work done.
It is also an issue with liability. School's don't want the MPAA,RIAA, or BSA going after them for something the students have done.
I've had enough of talking to a brick wall. Let someone else try to bring your IQ up so you can start to understand the points and analogies I'm making. Unless you stop playing the idiot routine, and post some reasonably intelligent responses, I'm done with this.
You keep talking about how it's wrong to block certain ports. It's not like im talking about a country wide proxy that you are forced to go through. You have the freedom to go somewhere else. I think you would rather just continue bitching about it because you have nothing better to do with your time.
btw, insulting the person you are arguing with does not make you look more intelligent. Especially when it is quite clear that you have not read the fact that I was talking about a university (which I am not the sysadmin of btw). But this was clearly lost in translation somewhere (from english to warez-monkey speak).
That's not true, but it's not at issue anyhow. The question is, why should your opinions be forced upon everyone else, just because you fail to see all the legitimate and legal uses for those programs?
I would like to start stealing money from the bank, but the U.S government is forcing their opinions on what I should and shouldn't do, so I can't. Limiting someone's bandwidth is also forcing and opinion..and so is charging money for high amounts of traffic usage. You have the freedom to leave, so if you do not like it, go.
Next time you want to get a new car, but can't afford it, steal someone else's. Problem = Solved
not sure where this is going, but it has nothing to do with my post.
No, it doesn't work well. It's just that there's no competition for you, and you don't have to live in the real world. Try something similar with any commercial (non-monopolized) service, and see how long you stay in business
if 99% of my customers don't need those ports, a long time. The people using p2p are cheap fuckers that never pay for anything anyway (yes, im generalizing, but when a person would rather download music and software for free rather than paying an artist or programmer, they are cheap).
if all the traffic was soaked up from people using, other services would suffer, and more people would end up leaving.
If you have a problem with the word, remove it, and address what I've said, minus that one word which bothers you oh-so-much.
I find that the only people using the word draconian are kiddies who don't understand the real-world.
It's funny, a person like you would complain that certain ports are blocked and then complain that access was too slow (if they were un-blocked).
I have gone somewhere else, genius. I am not your customer, and am signed-up with one of the numerous ISPs which performs practically no filtering at all.
good. someone who is as much as a pain-in-the-ass as you are deserves to be a customer of my competition. The word high-maintenance comes to mind.
Let's use FTP as an example... FTP is used EXTENSIVELY for illegal activities, and quite likely outstrips the legal uses. So why not ban it too?
FTP is like a knife. It can be used for illegal activity, but most of the time..it isn't...so it shouldn't be banned. FTP also doesn't involve mass amounts of people connecting to you and sucking bandwidth down to nothing. Even if there were tons of people downloading files from an ftp site, it is still taking up far less bandwidth.
p2p is like an automatic machine gun with armor-piercing bullets. It has some legitimate uses, but for the most part, is used for illegal activity.
see the difference?
Can you really not see the problem with deciding that one protocol is used for something you don't like, and therefore should get completely block, cost extra, or be throttled down to uselessness?
I see no legitimate use for emule,DCC, or kazaa.
If you want to SOLVE the problem, rather than just attacking a symptom, the obvious solution is to impose a bandwidth quota on ALL traffic, not just traffic for certain protocols. Maybe you can start slowing down their connections after a certain usage limit has been reached, or perhaps you might just want to charge them extra... Either way, that is the only real solution, and the one fair way to do things.
if you read my post above, I said charging would be an option. You say it won't actually solve the problem, but there hasn't been any issues with bandwidth for at least 2 years now. Problem = Solved.
You really harm the internet as a whole, by making it necessary for all new protocols to pretend to be something else, just to get through completely arbitrary and draconian firewall rules. Pretty soon, bittorrent will just appear to be HTTP traffic on port 80, and Kazaa will look like HTTP traffic on port 80, and SSH will also mascarade as HTTP traffic on port 80. They will be forced to do this, to counter the anti-social kick in the teeth they get from overzelous self-rightous people like yourself, who turn their standard-adherence against them
blah,blah,blah. I see you got your daily use of the word draconian. It's actually people like you that are destroying the internet for the rest of us.
when this happens, firewalls will just start inspecting each packet at the protocol level (which happens already, but it will be in much wider use) rather than just blocking ports based on IP addresses.
If you don't like certain rules that are imposed by sysadmins, go elsewhere and stop bitching.
For a university, only allowing certain protocol works well. For an ISP, standard bandwidth limitations are fine.
I bet blocking SSH traffic would affect less than 1% of your users as well, why don't you block that? In fact, why don't you block every port but HTTP? After all, that makes up the majority of uses from the majority of users.
because those other ports are mostly used for legitimate transfers. Kids at a university shouldn't be wasting the school's bandwidth sharing music and downloading the latest dvd.
Screwing people over is never a good thing, and I've left ISPs just because they blocked a port I didn't actually need. Last time I checked, network users use bandwidth... The fact that 1% use more than most, doesn't mean it's reasonable to block those 1%.
it's not screwing people over. It's making the system usable. I would rather have those extra ports blocked and actually be able to get out on the internet at a reasonable speed. It would actually be better to have a firewall that blocked at a higher level. Maybe inspect each packet and only block p2p/bittorrent/dcc traffic. This way there is no conflict with legitimate use.
some other ideas might be to charge those users extra per month to use those ports/services or limit the bandwith on those services to around 1 or 2K per second.
I don't think you understand this. A system like this would eliminate the "label" entirely. I have many musician firends who are constantly recording albums with their own funds, since that has become astronomically less expensive in recent years. If they were able to sell their songs easily and cheaply, and on a massive scale, they'd be able to make money (if there was the demand). Additionally, I believe piracy would shrink if all music was available for cheap and the consumers felt that the artists were getting their fair share.
piracy will never shrink. As long as it costs some form of money to purchase a song, there will be kiddies pirating it.
and as far as artists getting their fair share? are you kidding me? the consumers that are pirating music don't give a shit about the artists. They are only thinking of themselves.
A buddy of mine is an independent artist without a record label. He started selling some of his new music for 10 cents a song a couple of months ago and got a few sales followed by emails from many different people telling him they can just get it for free on p2p program X. He has since taken his website down.
I think artists need recording labels. Without a label, an artists will only be able to play at small venues and clubs and will not be able to make enough to make a living. This is why there will always be a label (or some form of it).
I would say just the opposite. The people I know that are just being taught how to program use the ansi style format. The veterans who have been coding for awhile use the other non-standard format (for readability..I prefer the non-Ansi format of commenting).
Put differently: "we KNOW that the second we stop filtering BT traffic, people will use our network less".
that's actually a good thing. 99% of users need the standard ports (http,ftp,pop3,smtp..maybe a few more). If you block the 1% of your network's users that are taking up 40% of your bandwidth (the p2p/bittorrent/dcc users), it's better for everybody.
At my school, it's great that the sysadmins have blocked all except the standard ports. When everything was open, the Internet was slower than a 56K modem. I can recall going into the computer lab one time and seeing a kazaa p2p client open with at least 100 transferring downloads..and even more uploads.
Also, if I really want to download something from bittorrent, I remote desktop into my computer at home and get it.
I will admit that I'm surprised that I haven't heard about certain bloggers being visited by the Men in Black for referring to Bush as the living, breathing personification of evil yet...especially when I consider the number of bloggers who do so. Although I suppose it's extremely possible that such visits have taken place, and we simply haven't heard about them. Still, I would have thought sites like this [antiwar.com], would be the target of der neugeboren Fuhrer's jackboots even if no others were.
maybe because most rational people see those blogs for what they really are: rants by a few radical nutcases.
With public domain, the freedom is inherent in the person who has the software. With GPL, the freedom is inherent in the software. Obviously, you grasp the distinction, but fail to appreciate the coolness of the latter situation
The key difference is that im letting the recipient of the of my software choose which path he or she would like to take (use it and keep it closed/use it and keep the changes open).
I think most people are interested in the freedom of usage rather than the freedom of the software itself.
The GPL doesn't have to be this way. If you release source code and I use it in a closed-source application, It doesn't take anything away from you. Your source code is still freely available to all that would like it.
It's mostly about trying to force ideals with source-code as the bait.
True. Also RMS agrees, in saying that: the _side effect_ that software has little or no cost for students or simple citizens is nice; instead in the business world all the services related
Anyway, more than 60% of all the software produced in the world (speaking of commercial sofware) is made ad hoc on a custom basis. In this way, you would be paid for your software, AND also the services related. Any modifications of the software would be paid anyway, and logic says you would be the first one elegible to make those modifications, since the software was written by you in the first place and you already know the code. Note that most of the money that all the small and medium software houses in the world do comes from that. I admit if you're a bad programmer, your customer may be tempted to change horse, and having the source code would made that easier (but, at least in Europe, many custom programs require to be shipped along with it anyway). So that's what most people that support proprietary solutions fear most: meritocracy, due to their ineptitude or Verrian opulence
you made my point quite nicely. Thanks.
Reading your arguments, please stop using the internet now, since it is based on communications between sockets modeled after BSD; and the BSD licenses are more strong and vocal than the GPL about what free software is and what it isn't. Remember, since it is based on free software based on the ideals of freedom (of speech), you can't estabilish a connection between two hosts in any of your business applications. If only Theo De Raadt or Ken Thompson would hear you, they would probably feel the urge to shut their ears. Apple Computers instead will continue to use GCC and other GNU apps without problems whatsoever.
I checked some of your previous comments in your user page here on./, and I must sadly conclude that you speak without being well informed about the subject. Sorry, I hope we'll have the possibility to discuss these themes in the future when you'll get to know them better.
I use and agree with the BSD license. BTW sockets are not under the GNU license. I think you are the one that has trouble understanding the GPL.
I just assume you just lived on another planet in the last fifteen years of the Free Software movement, and when Internet arose
well, the internet only been popular (beyond university usage) for 8 years.
Reading your arguments, please stop using the internet now, since it is based on communications between sockets modeled after BSD; and the BSD licenses are more strong and vocal than the GPL about what free software is and what it isn't. Remember, since it is based on free software based on the ideals of freedom (of speech), you can't estabilish a connection between two hosts in any of your business applications. If only Theo De Raadt or Ken Thompson would hear you, they would probably feel the urge to shut their ears. Apple Computers instead will continue to use GCC and other GNU apps without problems whatsoever.
uh-huh. That's why apple based OSX off of the BSD license.
Perhaps you should read again the main points of Free Software. I never found anywhere something on the lines of "you must die starving", or "you can't sell your product", or worse "you can't make money from your work".
In fact, I think that it is due to many fanatics and zealots, if the true values of Free Software itself are sometimes distorted and ruined. Probably this is one of the reason why OpenSource came to exist in the first place: not to react to a "proprietary" trend, but the bad advocacy of some bad documented, well, boys. You know how it is when you're fourteen and your playin' Mr. Revolutionary.
Although to someone he may seem too radical, I always found RMS explaining his ideas well and thouroughfully, in a very correct way. "MS evil for trying to make money" certainly doesn't belong to him. If you think that, I'm not even sure you read Stallman essays before speaking.
Please also note that most of the hate and critics to MS that I hear, come from Windows users (that have no idea of what OpenSource or FreeSoftware means, let alone "GNU/Linux", "RMS" or even "Apple"). So it's MS fault that came first, to have allowed it to be like this
Here is the problem that I have with RMS and his stance on open source software:
I read in an interview once (with RMS) that free software shouldn't be used because of its technical superiority, but simply because it's free. This isn't going to convince too many people to switch over to it any time soon.
If software isn't technically superior, then why bother using it in the first place?
Also, you say that RMS isn't against making money on software, but in a way, he is. If all the source code is freely given away for a piece of software, not only can someone just compile that source code, but also give away the compiled binaries for free.
To the average user, one of the main benefits of using OSS is the fact that it's free. Not as in speech, but as in beer. Sure, you can make money on services, like all the distro companies, but that's not making money on the software.
In stallman's day, there was no internet. He could still have his "free speech software" and people would still have to pay for the CDS to come through the mail. Now, software can easily be copied to millions of people.
Until his attitudes change, I will not be using in any of my business applications.
RMS is not against making money from software. From what I have read he just wants to be able to use the software he has purchased in any way that he choses.
this is true, but so do I. I would like software that I can get as-is (this means for money, or other-wise). I would like to be able to get the source code for something and not be forced to open source the software that I use it in. If I can't do this, it's not giving me the ability to use it in any way that I choose.
direct your childish tirade at someone who cares, like IBM... oh wait, you're not their market. they sell to businesses, not self-centred teenagers who are clueless about freedom
if the software is under the GNU, it isn't free. you are still forced to release your changes. public domain software is the only true free software IMHO.
I would hope if you were building a server for any OS you would be hand-picking the components to make sure they're decent anyway. Besides, if I'm building a system, Windows or Linux, I pick hardware that I know is stable and well-supported by whatever OS I'm using
ok, let me rephrase. I hand-pick them from a very short list of supported hardware.
Has anyone tried making wireless work on *Windows* lately?
yes....and even the most obscure wireless card that I have tried works..right out of the box..almost every time (and if it didn't, it was mostly because of spyware/viruses..not MS)
Wireless on Linux may be a pain, but at least it's deterministic.
deterministic? you mean you know that it most likely will not work if it's not a well known brand?
Usually if Im going to setup a linux server, I have to hand pick each component with ones I know are supported (and pray that they will work with the particular distro that I am installing). With windows, I know I can choose any brand..and it will work.
I will admit, linux has come a long way since I first started using it in 97, but it still isn't ready for the desktop market until it has better driver support.
to win in the desktop arena, linux needs to have a centralized distribution. This way, only well designed patches and or updates can be added to the OS (maybe a committee can be formed to regulate additions).
End-users will also know which flavor you are talking about when you say: "use linux".
That, for example, he developed the secure login protocol (XDMCP) used by X thin clients on the now-open-source BSD UNIX back when Windows and Mac didn't even do multiprocessing, much less multi-user, not to mention being largely incapable of interoperating with the Internet? That more recently Packard co-developed arguably the most advanced desktop rendering system in the world (Xft/fontconfig/Xrender/Composite/Damage/Cairo)--- way more advanced than Windows and in a lot of ways more than the Mac?
open source seems to always be a step behind its commerical counterpart. I think the community needs to start leading, rather than following.
I used mozilla thunderbird for about a week. Not only was it slow and buggy, but the rules for filtering email did not work properly. I switched back to outlook express and I have been happy ever since.
It's not just thunderbird that I have had issues with. I think it might be because the people that work on OSS aren't working on it because they need to (for money). They are working on it for the sheer joy of working on it. This means that patches and bug fixes are only fixed when someone feels like fixing it or when they have time.
contrary to Richard Stallman's beliefs, just because software is free does not make it better.
At the rate of development in the OSS community (linux has been out for how much longer than windows?), linux will be up to par with windows XP in about 10 years. Microsoft has nothing to worry about.
It's like the difference between P2p and a centralized server. p2p is acceptable, but is much slower than a centralized server.
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He isn't making a mistake, he's working to help fix the problem.
You, on the other hand, are simply helping to purpetuate the problem
if you think about it, he is really the one using non-standard practices.
This reminds me of the people that decide to send their resume to possible employers using a format other than MS-word (or that cannot be read by microsoft word) because they don't believe microsoft is the standard. More than likely they won't get the job.
I guess I shouldn't be complaining, it just means that my work will look better to the customer.
Personally I tend to develop in Firefox then onward-test in IE and Opera. If I run into any of the IE "show stoppers" in CSS I tend to hack around them enough that IE looks acceptable, but if it means IE looking slightly worse than Firefox I'll tend to do it that way. As long as the IE design is acceptable to the client I think it's a much better idea to offer improved browsing experience to people using browsers that aren't broken.
aren't broken? regardless of whether IE follows the standards, it has basically set the standard for internet websites for the last couple of years. I would say IE usage is still around 80%, which means if you are a developer, making it look "just acceptable" in IE will make your clients think that your work is just that.
I am a developer, and out of all my clients, maybe 1 has even heard of firefox.
I think you are making a mistake.
I don't mean to flame you, but customers should not look forward to the next version of IE in six months or so, when they can get virtually the same features today with Firefox.
well, for starters, firefox still doesn't render certain websites properly. If all websites rendered as quickly and as well as IE, I would use firefox exclusively. Until them, I need to use both. Security matters, but to the end user, usability is more important.
1. CherryOS riped of some other guys in order to make money, this is of course a fundamental difference from say some people downloading songs just because they like to listen to music.
I wouldn't really consider it ripping off anyone, when the original source code is not only still there but available for free. Why should money have anything to do with it?
2. The actions of the organisations you mentioned are not only targeted at stoping copyright infrigment, they are also clearly targeted at further and further diminishing consumers rights and privacy rights, something that isn't the case in the PearPC/CherryOS case
The FSF goes after people in court for violating their license and so do the RIAA/MPAA. Rights are violated in both cases.
3. One of the things that makes the idea of free software so appealing to me is that fact that free software better than any other concept reflects one of the basic properties of software (and knowledge in general in the digital age), namely zero marginal costs of distribution. This is in fact one of the greatest advantages and most promising developments of the digital age.
Now the organisations you mentioned are directly involved in denying this basic property of the goods they make their money with, thereby destroying one of the greatest advantages of modern technology. Their actions are aimed at throwing us back to the pre-digital stone ages, so to say.
so because you can't get digital goods for free, you are back in the pre-digital stone age?
The only true free license is the public domain license. It allows all uses for software, commerical or noncommercial and is compatible with all licenses.
With that out of the way, those assholes broke the GPL, let's sue them to kingdom come! And if the PearPC guys need funds for legal action, I'm sure the FOSS community will be more than happy to help them out.
so how would this be any different than what the BSA,MPAA, and RIAA are doing to P2P users?
That's the worst analogy I've ever heard. "Stealing money" does not even potentially have any legitimate 'uses'
hmm, and stealing a car does?
On the contrary. You said blocking a few ports solves your bandwidth problem... I said stealing a car would solve your (hypothetical) money problem... Calling either problem solved with those solution is so incredibly short-sighted as to be stupid.
only to those wanting to use p2p programs, like yourself.
1) If you are advertising a certain ammount of bandwidth, you had better have enough capacity to serve all your users, and not be operating on the margins.
it's a university, so there is no advertising of any bandwidth (or have you forgotten that im not talking about a major ISP).
ISPs do it all the time. They advertise "unlimited bandwidth", but in the fine print it states you are limited to a certain amount and can be charge for going over. Many ISPs also sell T1s to customers when it is actually a fractional T1.
2) Bandwidth is not some commodity that is uncontrollable. You can very easily allocate a certain level of throughput to an address, and then it doesn't matter what services they are using. Your approach leaves you completely open to people using a huge ammount of bandwidth over HTTP/FTP (or just those ports). You are needlessly harming legitimate users of those services (which may be 1% of the p2p bandwidth, but likely 15% of your users).
limiting bandwidth on those ports would solve the problem quite nicely.
First of all, you don't know anything at all about me, so it's pretty moronic of you to start talking about how I would act
I recall you telling me things you seemed to know about me. Who's the moron now?
First of all, you don't know anything at all about me, so it's pretty moronic of you to start talking about how I would act. But... if you were advertising a certain throughput rate (which I presume you don't), and you didn't usually meet it, yeah, I'd complain.
Universities have a limited amount of bandwidth that everyone needs to share. When you allow p2p to be accessed, it will be abused by large amounts of students. This prevents nearly anyone on the network from getting actual work done.
It is also an issue with liability. School's don't want the MPAA,RIAA, or BSA going after them for something the students have done.
I've had enough of talking to a brick wall. Let someone else try to bring your IQ up so you can start to understand the points and analogies I'm making. Unless you stop playing the idiot routine, and post some reasonably intelligent responses, I'm done with this.
You keep talking about how it's wrong to block certain ports. It's not like im talking about a country wide proxy that you are forced to go through. You have the freedom to go somewhere else. I think you would rather just continue bitching about it because you have nothing better to do with your time.
btw, insulting the person you are arguing with does not make you look more intelligent. Especially when it is quite clear that you have not read the fact that I was talking about a university (which I am not the sysadmin of btw). But this was clearly lost in translation somewhere (from english to warez-monkey speak).
That's not true, but it's not at issue anyhow. The question is, why should your opinions be forced upon everyone else, just because you fail to see all the legitimate and legal uses for those programs?
I would like to start stealing money from the bank, but the U.S government is forcing their opinions on what I should and shouldn't do, so I can't. Limiting someone's bandwidth is also forcing and opinion..and so is charging money for high amounts of traffic usage. You have the freedom to leave, so if you do not like it, go.
Next time you want to get a new car, but can't afford it, steal someone else's. Problem = Solved
not sure where this is going, but it has nothing to do with my post.
No, it doesn't work well. It's just that there's no competition for you, and you don't have to live in the real world. Try something similar with any commercial (non-monopolized) service, and see how long you stay in business
if 99% of my customers don't need those ports, a long time. The people using p2p are cheap fuckers that never pay for anything anyway (yes, im generalizing, but when a person would rather download music and software for free rather than paying an artist or programmer, they are cheap).
if all the traffic was soaked up from people using, other services would suffer, and more people would end up leaving.
If you have a problem with the word, remove it, and address what I've said, minus that one word which bothers you oh-so-much.
I find that the only people using the word draconian are kiddies who don't understand the real-world.
It's funny, a person like you would complain that certain ports are blocked and then complain that access was too slow (if they were un-blocked).
I have gone somewhere else, genius. I am not your customer, and am signed-up with one of the numerous ISPs which performs practically no filtering at all.
good. someone who is as much as a pain-in-the-ass as you are deserves to be a customer of my competition. The word high-maintenance comes to mind.
Let's use FTP as an example... FTP is used EXTENSIVELY for illegal activities, and quite likely outstrips the legal uses. So why not ban it too?
FTP is like a knife. It can be used for illegal activity, but most of the time..it isn't...so it shouldn't be banned. FTP also doesn't involve mass amounts of people connecting to you and sucking bandwidth down to nothing. Even if there were tons of people downloading files from an ftp site, it is still taking up far less bandwidth.
p2p is like an automatic machine gun with armor-piercing bullets. It has some legitimate uses, but for the most part, is used for illegal activity.
see the difference?
Can you really not see the problem with deciding that one protocol is used for something you don't like, and therefore should get completely block, cost extra, or be throttled down to uselessness?
I see no legitimate use for emule,DCC, or kazaa.
If you want to SOLVE the problem, rather than just attacking a symptom, the obvious solution is to impose a bandwidth quota on ALL traffic, not just traffic for certain protocols. Maybe you can start slowing down their connections after a certain usage limit has been reached, or perhaps you might just want to charge them extra... Either way, that is the only real solution, and the one fair way to do things.
if you read my post above, I said charging would be an option. You say it won't actually solve the problem, but there hasn't been any issues with bandwidth for at least 2 years now. Problem = Solved.
You really harm the internet as a whole, by making it necessary for all new protocols to pretend to be something else, just to get through completely arbitrary and draconian firewall rules. Pretty soon, bittorrent will just appear to be HTTP traffic on port 80, and Kazaa will look like HTTP traffic on port 80, and SSH will also mascarade as HTTP traffic on port 80. They will be forced to do this, to counter the anti-social kick in the teeth they get from overzelous self-rightous people like yourself, who turn their standard-adherence against them
blah,blah,blah. I see you got your daily use of the word draconian. It's actually people like you that are destroying the internet for the rest of us.
when this happens, firewalls will just start inspecting each packet at the protocol level (which happens already, but it will be in much wider use) rather than just blocking ports based on IP addresses.
If you don't like certain rules that are imposed by sysadmins, go elsewhere and stop bitching.
For a university, only allowing certain protocol works well. For an ISP, standard bandwidth limitations are fine.
I bet blocking SSH traffic would affect less than 1% of your users as well, why don't you block that? In fact, why don't you block every port but HTTP? After all, that makes up the majority of uses from the majority of users.
because those other ports are mostly used for legitimate transfers. Kids at a university shouldn't be wasting the school's bandwidth sharing music and downloading the latest dvd.
Screwing people over is never a good thing, and I've left ISPs just because they blocked a port I didn't actually need. Last time I checked, network users use bandwidth... The fact that 1% use more than most, doesn't mean it's reasonable to block those 1%.
it's not screwing people over. It's making the system usable. I would rather have those extra ports blocked and actually be able to get out on the internet at a reasonable speed. It would actually be better to have a firewall that blocked at a higher level. Maybe inspect each packet and only block p2p/bittorrent/dcc traffic. This way there is no conflict with legitimate use.
some other ideas might be to charge those users extra per month to use those ports/services or limit the bandwith on those services to around 1 or 2K per second.
There's a difference between SHRINK and DISAPPEAR
yes there is. The amount of piracy will never be reduced. In fact (with high-speed internet connections), it only seems to be growing.
I don't think you understand this. A system like this would eliminate the "label" entirely. I have many musician firends who are constantly recording albums with their own funds, since that has become astronomically less expensive in recent years. If they were able to sell their songs easily and cheaply, and on a massive scale, they'd be able to make money (if there was the demand). Additionally, I believe piracy would shrink if all music was available for cheap and the consumers felt that the artists were getting their fair share.
piracy will never shrink. As long as it costs some form of money to purchase a song, there will be kiddies pirating it.
and as far as artists getting their fair share? are you kidding me? the consumers that are pirating music don't give a shit about the artists. They are only thinking of themselves.
A buddy of mine is an independent artist without a record label. He started selling some of his new music for 10 cents a song a couple of months ago and got a few sales followed by emails from many different people telling him they can just get it for free on p2p program X. He has since taken his website down.
I think artists need recording labels. Without a label, an artists will only be able to play at small venues and clubs and will not be able to make enough to make a living. This is why there will always be a label (or some form of it).
You are a newbie.
I would say just the opposite. The people I know that are just being taught how to program use the ansi style format. The veterans who have been coding for awhile use the other non-standard format (for readability..I prefer the non-Ansi format of commenting).
Put differently: "we KNOW that the second we stop filtering BT traffic, people will use our network less".
that's actually a good thing. 99% of users need the standard ports (http,ftp,pop3,smtp..maybe a few more). If you block the 1% of your network's users that are taking up 40% of your bandwidth (the p2p/bittorrent/dcc users), it's better for everybody.
At my school, it's great that the sysadmins have blocked all except the standard ports. When everything was open, the Internet was slower than a 56K modem. I can recall going into the computer lab one time and seeing a kazaa p2p client open with at least 100 transferring downloads..and even more uploads.
Also, if I really want to download something from bittorrent, I remote desktop into my computer at home and get it.
I will admit that I'm surprised that I haven't heard about certain bloggers being visited by the Men in Black for referring to Bush as the living, breathing personification of evil yet...especially when I consider the number of bloggers who do so. Although I suppose it's extremely possible that such visits have taken place, and we simply haven't heard about them. Still, I would have thought sites like this [antiwar.com], would be the target of der neugeboren Fuhrer's jackboots even if no others were.
maybe because most rational people see those blogs for what they really are: rants by a few radical nutcases.
Ive always said corporations are just like mini communist nations, non-elected leader with its circle of generals and its spies
non-elected? the people at the top are the people that either:
1) originally created the corporation or
2) have been voted into the position by the sockholders
unlike a communist nation, you can leave whenever you want, decide not to enter the nation, or even create your own nation.
what I meant in my above post was that apple based OSX off of BSD.
With public domain, the freedom is inherent in the person who has the software. With GPL, the freedom is inherent in the software. Obviously, you grasp the distinction, but fail to appreciate the coolness of the latter situation
The key difference is that im letting the recipient of the of my software choose which path he or she would like to take (use it and keep it closed/use it and keep the changes open).
I think most people are interested in the freedom of usage rather than the freedom of the software itself.
The GPL doesn't have to be this way. If you release source code and I use it in a closed-source application, It doesn't take anything away from you. Your source code is still freely available to all that would like it.
It's mostly about trying to force ideals with source-code as the bait.
True. Also RMS agrees, in saying that: the _side effect_ that software has little or no cost for students or simple citizens is nice; instead in the business world all the services related
./, and I must sadly conclude that you speak without being well informed about the subject. Sorry, I hope we'll have the possibility to discuss these themes in the future when you'll get to know them better.
Anyway, more than 60% of all the software produced in the world (speaking of commercial sofware) is made ad hoc on a custom basis. In this way, you would be paid for your software, AND also the services related. Any modifications of the software would be paid anyway, and logic says you would be the first one elegible to make those modifications, since the software was written by you in the first place and you already know the code. Note that most of the money that all the small and medium software houses in the world do comes from that.
I admit if you're a bad programmer, your customer may be tempted to change horse, and having the source code would made that easier (but, at least in Europe, many custom programs require to be shipped along with it anyway). So that's what most people that support proprietary solutions fear most: meritocracy, due to their ineptitude or Verrian opulence
you made my point quite nicely. Thanks.
Reading your arguments, please stop using the internet now, since it is based on communications between sockets modeled after BSD; and the BSD licenses are more strong and vocal than the GPL about what free software is and what it isn't. Remember, since it is based on free software based on the ideals of freedom (of speech), you can't estabilish a connection between two hosts in any of your business applications.
If only Theo De Raadt or Ken Thompson would hear you, they would probably feel the urge to shut their ears.
Apple Computers instead will continue to use GCC and other GNU apps without problems whatsoever.
I checked some of your previous comments in your user page here on
I use and agree with the BSD license. BTW sockets are not under the GNU license. I think you are the one that has trouble understanding the GPL.
I just assume you just lived on another planet in the last fifteen years of the Free Software movement, and when Internet arose
well, the internet only been popular (beyond university usage) for 8 years.
Reading your arguments, please stop using the internet now, since it is based on communications between sockets modeled after BSD; and the BSD licenses are more strong and vocal than the GPL about what free software is and what it isn't. Remember, since it is based on free software based on the ideals of freedom (of speech), you can't estabilish a connection between two hosts in any of your business applications.
If only Theo De Raadt or Ken Thompson would hear you, they would probably feel the urge to shut their ears.
Apple Computers instead will continue to use GCC and other GNU apps without problems whatsoever.
uh-huh. That's why apple based OSX off of the BSD license.
RMS isn't saying anything like that.
Perhaps you should read again the main points of Free Software. I never found anywhere something on the lines of "you must die starving", or "you can't sell your product", or worse "you can't make money from your work".
In fact, I think that it is due to many fanatics and zealots, if the true values of Free Software itself are sometimes distorted and ruined. Probably this is one of the reason why OpenSource came to exist in the first place: not to react to a "proprietary" trend, but the bad advocacy of some bad documented, well, boys. You know how it is when you're fourteen and your playin' Mr. Revolutionary.
Although to someone he may seem too radical, I always found RMS explaining his ideas well and thouroughfully, in a very correct way. "MS evil for trying to make money" certainly doesn't belong to him. If you think that, I'm not even sure you read Stallman essays before speaking.
Please also note that most of the hate and critics to MS that I hear, come from Windows users (that have no idea of what OpenSource or FreeSoftware means, let alone "GNU/Linux", "RMS" or even "Apple"). So it's MS fault that came first, to have allowed it to be like this
Here is the problem that I have with RMS and his stance on open source software:
I read in an interview once (with RMS) that free software shouldn't be used because of its technical superiority, but simply because it's free. This isn't going to convince too many people to switch over to it any time soon.
If software isn't technically superior, then why bother using it in the first place?
Also, you say that RMS isn't against making money on software, but in a way, he is. If all the source code is freely given away for a piece of software, not only can someone just compile that source code, but also give away the compiled binaries for free.
To the average user, one of the main benefits of using OSS is the fact that it's free. Not as in speech, but as in beer. Sure, you can make money on services, like all the distro companies, but that's not making money on the software.
In stallman's day, there was no internet. He could still have his "free speech software" and people would still have to pay for the CDS to come through the mail. Now, software can easily be copied to millions of people.
Until his attitudes change, I will not be using in any of my business applications.
RMS is not against making money from software. From what I have read he just wants to be able to use the software he has purchased in any way that he choses.
this is true, but so do I. I would like software that I can get as-is (this means for money, or other-wise). I would like to be able to get the source code for something and not be forced to open source the software that I use it in. If I can't do this, it's not giving me the ability to use it in any way that I choose.
direct your childish tirade at someone who cares, like IBM... oh wait, you're not their market. they sell to businesses, not self-centred teenagers who are clueless about freedom
if the software is under the GNU, it isn't free. you are still forced to release your changes. public domain software is the only true free software IMHO.
it's the attitude of the people that modded me down that will keep the linux community under microsoft forever.
I would hope if you were building a server for any OS you would be hand-picking the components to make sure they're decent anyway. Besides, if I'm building a system, Windows or Linux, I pick hardware that I know is stable and well-supported by whatever OS I'm using
ok, let me rephrase. I hand-pick them from a very short list of supported hardware.
Has anyone tried making wireless work on *Windows* lately?
yes....and even the most obscure wireless card that I have tried works..right out of the box..almost every time (and if it didn't, it was mostly because of spyware/viruses..not MS)
Wireless on Linux may be a pain, but at least it's deterministic.
deterministic? you mean you know that it most likely will not work if it's not a well known brand?
Usually if Im going to setup a linux server, I have to hand pick each component with ones I know are supported (and pray that they will work with the particular distro that I am installing). With windows, I know I can choose any brand..and it will work.
I will admit, linux has come a long way since I first started using it in 97, but it still isn't ready for the desktop market until it has better driver support.
to win in the desktop arena, linux needs to have a centralized distribution. This way, only well designed patches and or updates can be added to the OS (maybe a committee can be formed to regulate additions).
End-users will also know which flavor you are talking about when you say: "use linux".
That, for example, he developed the secure login protocol (XDMCP) used by X thin clients on the now-open-source BSD UNIX back when Windows and Mac didn't even do multiprocessing, much less multi-user, not to mention being largely incapable of interoperating with the Internet? That more recently Packard co-developed arguably the most advanced desktop rendering system in the world (Xft/fontconfig/Xrender/Composite/Damage/Cairo)--- way more advanced than Windows and in a lot of ways more than the Mac?
open source seems to always be a step behind its commerical counterpart. I think the community needs to start leading, rather than following.
I used mozilla thunderbird for about a week. Not only was it slow and buggy, but the rules for filtering email did not work properly. I switched back to outlook express and I have been happy ever since.
It's not just thunderbird that I have had issues with. I think it might be because the people that work on OSS aren't working on it because they need to (for money). They are working on it for the sheer joy of working on it. This means that patches and bug fixes are only fixed when someone feels like fixing it or when they have time.
contrary to Richard Stallman's beliefs, just because software is free does not make it better.
At the rate of development in the OSS community (linux has been out for how much longer than windows?), linux will be up to par with windows XP in about 10 years. Microsoft has nothing to worry about.
It's like the difference between P2p and a centralized server. p2p is acceptable, but is much slower than a centralized server.