Of course there's patents, but 'til now there are
(in law) none for software. Actually, you could get
software patented, but only if that's tied directly
to hardware (ex. software controlling your dishwasher)
Several months ago the EUPO started giving
software patents, which is not (yet) covered by law.
Only positive thing: they seem really intend on not
going the way of the US according patents for
totally obvious stuff (like the amazon one-click).
A couple of months ago I attended a conference on EU
IP law as applying to the IT business. The EU Patent
Office director was there himself, plus business
representants and government officials.
Among other points, that EUPO director admitted to
giving out software patents without any legal basis
whatsoever.
Also, these officialls were quite obviously loaded
very pro-patents. Noone questioned the 20 year
duration (hell, thats 3-4 whole generations in IT),
and my question about that was answered in quite a
ridiculous way: "well if that seems too long for
you, you can just drop your patent by not paying
the fees any more...".
These guys also were smart enough to ask how many
people were pro-patents, but not anti-patent -
which of course I had to ask afterwards - the
obvious 50/50 result (these were almost all lawyers
and practically no techies) was then called "well
about 1/3 against only".
Next chance I get to talk to the minister, I'll
sure try to express the Free Software point of
view. But since I'm from the smallest EU member
country, I doubt that will have much weight, even
if I can help to convince the higher-ups...
Sounds like a fun replacement for #$%^& clippy
(for those unlucky guys that still have to deal
with M$ and don't even get to choose _not_ to
have that productivity killer installed)
Except for the Itanium coming from Intel, what's
the point? This is a prototype for a new
architecture (IA64), prototype proven to be
seriously lacking in speed, stability etc. I got
to see a dual Itanium prototype from HP a few
months ago, and all the comments I got about it
were that it essentially sucked.
Really, if you need 64 bit, why not just go and
get yourself some UltraSparc, Alpha etc.? I have
gotten myself a used Ultra 30, will soon get an
used AlphaServer, and I sure don't need to go buy
an expensive, unstable processor that's not even
got decent compiler support yet.
And if it has to be IA64, at the very least wait
for McKinley - HP's engineers are supposed to be
doing a much better job of IA64 than Intel did.
Or even wait for the version after McKinley,
which is supposed to profit from good ol' Alpha.
Yeah, sure, I don't see Red Hat Linux ruling
the desktop. I installed one not so long ago as
a development platform, simply because that's the
standard in that company. But truth is, for the
desktop, it's crap wehen you compare directly to
SuSE. Mandrake is supposedly also excellent on
the desktop, just as some of the other distros.
My SuSE 7.3 rocks for the desktop, and it's way
easier to install than, say, W2K.
Don't go saying Linux is not ready for the
desktop when you just know Red Hat or Debian or
LFS or so. There are distros out there that _are_
ready. Just go and test them.
N.b. I'm not debunking Debian etc - I love
those, but not for the desktop. (Running SuSE,
Debian, Red Hat, have tried Mandrake and others.)
AFAIK this is not SuSE-only, but they are among the
first to have it in their distribution.
I've got a SuSE 7.3 installation with their default
LILO stuff, it really looks nice - during bootup,
while the kernel messages are scrolling in the middle
of the screen, you have graphics around the borders,
part of which is animated (top right corner in this
case). More of the same during shutdown.
It may not be interesting for those chasing uptimes
or using their box as servers, but for workstations
that get switched off for the night (I don't want
to hear that noise all night, and it lets me save
the trees along the way) it's a nice display every
day.
I've also seen reports on how to modify this
display in some german magazine, can't remember
wether it was c't or iX from
Heise, or the
Linux Magazin. It's been after SuSE 7.3 came out,
but it's been a couple of months at least.
I've been using mostly PCs and Sun workstations,
but these new Macs with OS X actually make me
reconsider... the pricetag is ok I guess, the
OS is solid (unix-based), PPC is a clean
architecture, and it could be used by my mom while
I can run all the GNU goodies I want.
Now if they have standard connectors for the
display etc. (unlike some older models), it's
definitely an option. That "superdrive" starts
making DVDs interesting, even though 'til now
I boycott them on principle (region code, CSS) -
CDs are getting a bit limiting in size...
Oh well before I get serious about replacing my
current setup, the G5 will be available...
You know Germany seems to be one of the technological world leaders.
They're certainly no losers, but the general
public's attitude has been rather anti-tech these
past years.
They just decided to phase out all nuclear power in favor of wind power by the year's end and it looks like they'll do it.
Says who? Never heard about that one. Wouldn't
be possible anyway, there's by far not enough
wind power available (or to be made available) to
come even close to replacing nuclear power, and
certainly not by the end of the year. Sure, the
green party hates anything that's got "nuclear"
in it's name, but that's hardly rational. If I'd
got moderator points, I'd have modded you a troll
for this point.
The acceptance of digital signitures is a huge step in helping the internet reach its full potential for changing the way we live our lives. Germany is taking this first step.
Maybe. It's unfortunate, though, that they
chose a system that's already been broken. IIRC
they took quite some heat for it from clued guys,
but they went ahead anyway.
What is the state of Linux use in Germany?
AFAIK, it's one of the highest levels on this
planet. SuSE's from Nuernberg, and AFAIK they
make more money than Red Hat.
I ask all this because I'm looking at an offer for a research position at the Max Planck Institute in Munich (I'm sorry _Munchen_:).
It took at most 2 days with ~1000 $US worth of gear to find the key.
I heard just the other day that a high-school
math prof from Luxembourg (Europe) developed a new
theoretical attack (and implemented it) against DES,
that was able to break DES in a couple of minutes
on a normal Mac - his method is somewhere between
AI and your normal statistics math and truly new,
IIRC.
Unfortunately, I didn't find any link now, but I'll
try to find more info, even if it means finding
the newspaper article and scanning it...
Do these BSA guys realise what they are doing?
Scaring off their customers? Being extremely
arrogant and intrusive? What about that old
adage of your customer being the king?
I guess _this_ is one of the best reasons for
switching away from vendors that are members of the
BSA: None of those license troubles with free
software. None of those expensive audits to do
(is that included in those MS TCO calculations?).
None of those guilt assumptions. No insecurity.
Interesting. Do you have anything to back this up?
This made the (it-) media back then. Just search
google for Gravenreuth, you'll find a lot of links
about him - most of it in german, though. Guess
that'll give babelfish some work to do.
This lawyer v. Gravenreuth is quite well known (and
hated) in Germany. He's done lots of "Abmahnungen".
This means cashing in money for stuff like
usage of the term "FTP Explorer" which supposedly
violates a Trademark of Symicron (sp?). A case of
use of a chipset codename by shops for
advertisement is also well-known.
Of
course, he only evers goes after smaller fish, but
doesn't dare trying the same with bigger companies
(unfortunately, or he'd at last get his nose bloody).
I really wonder which name and company this is all
about. I'd hate to see SuSE hurt for one of
Gravenreuth's usual BS. They definitely need to
spend their money on improving their distro, not
on laywers (saying this as a long-time SuSE user
who is not too convinced of the current 7.3
version).
There are gigs and gigs of both pirate and legitimate divx3 and 4 videos out there to be had on IRC, Usenet, FT, and Gnutella.
The only ones who use WMV are corporate entities who don't have anything good to encode anyway...
I'm quite sure you're absolutely right there.
Problem is, MS still isn't over the DivX;-) guy's
ripping of their codec, and go on ranting about
that "pirated and poorly hacked" codec. Just check
out their newsgroups. They go on saying how DivX is
only used for DVD rips and pr0n, and "real" content
providers wouldn't ever use anything but their own
(better, supported) technology (their terms, not
mine). Problem is, the corporate drones actually
believe this. And as compared to Real Media, WM
actually is very cheap.
Unfortunately, I have to work with WM right now.
And I hate it, on technical grounds. Try to do
anything beyond the most simple A/V streaming
stuff, and you have to wade through monstrous
inconsistencies and bugs, and no help whatsoever
to expect from their newsgroups - I won't have to
mention insufficient and hard to find documentation
from MSDN. Only good thing: end of february,
I'm outta here. And good riddance.
One word: addressing. With those 32 bits,
you can
typically address up to 2 gig files on your
machine - which is a limit easily encountered when
you start working with video, for instance.
It took hacks to get 4 gig of RAM working on x86
with the linux kernel.
Go 64 bit, and that limit vanishes. You keep your
linear addressing, none of those ugly segments like
in the unfamous real-mode of PC-XT times.
I don't see what's really new about it all though,
we've had 64 bit since Alpha, and there's several
64 bit architectures around. It may not be
mainstream yet, but will IA 64 or Hammer really
change that (soon)? Allow me to have doubts.
I can think of one reason: Because they are the people who are hiring and they get to say what they want to accept from applicants?
Maybe so, but if they're too stupid to accept
standard formats and expect something proprietary
instead, I know I don't want to work there.
Good computer scientists are hard to come by, and
if they think they should deliberately narrow their
options, well tough luck for them.
I am looking for another job right now, one of
my conditions is that _I_ get to choose my tools.And yes, _I_ get to set my conditions, because the
market is still tight.
I've had to use crappy tools, deal with lacking
or incorrect documentation, non-working software
for longer than I care for - it's time for sth.
decent.
Re:Referrer tells you who's following the links
on
Emergence
·
· Score: 1
If no one follows a link, there is no way to know that it exists.
Well, there's always google: try a query for
link:your.link.here. It will return a list
of pages that link to your link. It's not inherent
to HTML, but it's a way, and without need for
referers.
How is this different from a nifty compression and
transmitting slightly differently?
To me, this sounds like a mix of compression and
protocol, not necessarily that groundbreaking.
If it works, cool. But I guess it won't be that
efficient on that old 486 Linux router...
Re:where did the MS story go?
on
Athlon MP Reviewed
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
You mean the one titled "DVD player chipsets to support windows media files"? Yes, I'm wondering,
too. Hitting refresh and then getting "Nothing for you to see here. Please move along." is sort of
strange.
Restena is connected to Belgium and France with
155Mbit lines, as you can see in GEANT's poster
(PDF file).
It's not like Restena has the only connections in
Lux., there are some others that have more or less
nice lines. Thinking of P&T, Cegecom,...
I guess for 400k inhabitants that's sufficient.
Oh yes, don't forget that they want to make the
Cours Universitaire into a whole university, then
there's at least 3 academic research centers, the
schools (lycees) etc.
What I'd like to see is forcing mailserver
default installs not ever to be open relay configs.
One of the biggest pains right now is spam, largely
enabled by open relays (besides clueless admins).
Spam is theft of resources, can result in DoS, and
should be outlawed.
Oh yes, force producers of email clients to use
secure default settings. Deny *Script in emails,
automatic opening of attachments even in preview mode
etc. (thinking of Outlook [Express]). This would
massively reduce damages by email worms.
Yet another point: get the ISPs to actually
*do* something about abuse complaints [when
they are reasonable].
Dear John Katz,
can't you please look up your stuff a little bit better? It's Globalisierung. Not that difficult, is it? I guess/. needs not only a spell checker, but a decent translator? Don't tell my your OCR software mistook "ru" for "ni". It's christmas soon, so let's write up something for your wishlist for Santa Claus.
Plus, they're about the only people who are actually in the space business right now.
So I guess all the others out there don't count? What about ESA, Russia, India, China, Israel etc.? ESA with Ariana has sth. like half of the launcher business.
And there are quite some private companies also in the business (Sea Launch...); even in the US (if you don't check beyond your borders) there's more than just NASA. Indeed, some say that NASA has actually stifled private competition (Delta-X, Rotary etc.). Maybe it's even a good thing if NASA tunes down some, provided private companies pick up where NASA left off, and are allowed to actually do business. Leave NASA with the basic scientific research stuff... that's what they're supposed to do anyway.
Your description sounds like what Larry Niven has
in his Barsoom Project and Dream Park books.
Much more "realistic" (maybe someday) than ST-TNG's
Holodec...
I can highly recommend those 2 Larry Niven books.
And all the rest from him, it's a good SciFi/Fantasy
read.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course there's patents, but 'til now there are (in law) none for software. Actually, you could get software patented, but only if that's tied directly to hardware (ex. software controlling your dishwasher)
Several months ago the EUPO started giving software patents, which is not (yet) covered by law.
Only positive thing: they seem really intend on not going the way of the US according patents for totally obvious stuff (like the amazon one-click).
A couple of months ago I attended a conference on EU IP law as applying to the IT business. The EU Patent Office director was there himself, plus business representants and government officials.
Among other points, that EUPO director admitted to giving out software patents without any legal basis whatsoever.
Also, these officialls were quite obviously loaded very pro-patents. Noone questioned the 20 year duration (hell, thats 3-4 whole generations in IT), and my question about that was answered in quite a ridiculous way: "well if that seems too long for you, you can just drop your patent by not paying the fees any more...".
These guys also were smart enough to ask how many people were pro-patents, but not anti-patent - which of course I had to ask afterwards - the obvious 50/50 result (these were almost all lawyers and practically no techies) was then called "well about 1/3 against only".
Next chance I get to talk to the minister, I'll sure try to express the Free Software point of view. But since I'm from the smallest EU member country, I doubt that will have much weight, even if I can help to convince the higher-ups...
Sounds like a fun replacement for #$%^& clippy (for those unlucky guys that still have to deal with M$ and don't even get to choose _not_ to have that productivity killer installed)
Except for the Itanium coming from Intel, what's the point? This is a prototype for a new architecture (IA64), prototype proven to be seriously lacking in speed, stability etc. I got to see a dual Itanium prototype from HP a few months ago, and all the comments I got about it were that it essentially sucked.
Really, if you need 64 bit, why not just go and get yourself some UltraSparc, Alpha etc.? I have gotten myself a used Ultra 30, will soon get an used AlphaServer, and I sure don't need to go buy an expensive, unstable processor that's not even got decent compiler support yet.
And if it has to be IA64, at the very least wait for McKinley - HP's engineers are supposed to be doing a much better job of IA64 than Intel did. Or even wait for the version after McKinley, which is supposed to profit from good ol' Alpha.
Yeah, sure, I don't see Red Hat Linux ruling the desktop. I installed one not so long ago as a development platform, simply because that's the standard in that company. But truth is, for the desktop, it's crap wehen you compare directly to SuSE. Mandrake is supposedly also excellent on the desktop, just as some of the other distros. My SuSE 7.3 rocks for the desktop, and it's way easier to install than, say, W2K.
Don't go saying Linux is not ready for the desktop when you just know Red Hat or Debian or LFS or so. There are distros out there that _are_ ready. Just go and test them.
N.b. I'm not debunking Debian etc - I love those, but not for the desktop. (Running SuSE, Debian, Red Hat, have tried Mandrake and others.)
AFAIK this is not SuSE-only, but they are among the first to have it in their distribution.
I've got a SuSE 7.3 installation with their default LILO stuff, it really looks nice - during bootup, while the kernel messages are scrolling in the middle of the screen, you have graphics around the borders, part of which is animated (top right corner in this case). More of the same during shutdown.
It may not be interesting for those chasing uptimes or using their box as servers, but for workstations that get switched off for the night (I don't want to hear that noise all night, and it lets me save the trees along the way) it's a nice display every day.
I've also seen reports on how to modify this display in some german magazine, can't remember wether it was c't or iX from Heise, or the Linux Magazin. It's been after SuSE 7.3 came out, but it's been a couple of months at least.
I've been using mostly PCs and Sun workstations, but these new Macs with OS X actually make me reconsider... the pricetag is ok I guess, the OS is solid (unix-based), PPC is a clean architecture, and it could be used by my mom while I can run all the GNU goodies I want.
Now if they have standard connectors for the display etc. (unlike some older models), it's definitely an option. That "superdrive" starts making DVDs interesting, even though 'til now I boycott them on principle (region code, CSS) - CDs are getting a bit limiting in size...
Oh well before I get serious about replacing my current setup, the G5 will be available...
You know Germany seems to be one of the technological world leaders.
They're certainly no losers, but the general public's attitude has been rather anti-tech these past years.
They just decided to phase out all nuclear power in favor of wind power by the year's end and it looks like they'll do it.
Says who? Never heard about that one. Wouldn't be possible anyway, there's by far not enough wind power available (or to be made available) to come even close to replacing nuclear power, and certainly not by the end of the year. Sure, the green party hates anything that's got "nuclear" in it's name, but that's hardly rational. If I'd got moderator points, I'd have modded you a troll for this point.
The acceptance of digital signitures is a huge step in helping the internet reach its full potential for changing the way we live our lives. Germany is taking this first step.
Maybe. It's unfortunate, though, that they chose a system that's already been broken. IIRC they took quite some heat for it from clued guys, but they went ahead anyway.
What is the state of Linux use in Germany?
AFAIK, it's one of the highest levels on this planet. SuSE's from Nuernberg, and AFAIK they make more money than Red Hat.
I ask all this because I'm looking at an offer for a research position at the Max Planck Institute in Munich (I'm sorry _Munchen_:).
Good luck there.
It took at most 2 days with ~1000 $US worth of gear to find the key.
I heard just the other day that a high-school math prof from Luxembourg (Europe) developed a new theoretical attack (and implemented it) against DES, that was able to break DES in a couple of minutes on a normal Mac - his method is somewhere between AI and your normal statistics math and truly new, IIRC. Unfortunately, I didn't find any link now, but I'll try to find more info, even if it means finding the newspaper article and scanning it...
Do these BSA guys realise what they are doing? Scaring off their customers? Being extremely arrogant and intrusive? What about that old adage of your customer being the king?
I guess _this_ is one of the best reasons for switching away from vendors that are members of the BSA: None of those license troubles with free software. None of those expensive audits to do (is that included in those MS TCO calculations?). None of those guilt assumptions. No insecurity.
Interesting. Do you have anything to back this up?
This made the (it-) media back then. Just search
google for Gravenreuth, you'll find a lot of links
about him - most of it in german, though. Guess
that'll give babelfish some work to do.
This lawyer v. Gravenreuth is quite well known (and hated) in Germany. He's done lots of "Abmahnungen". This means cashing in money for stuff like usage of the term "FTP Explorer" which supposedly violates a Trademark of Symicron (sp?). A case of use of a chipset codename by shops for advertisement is also well-known.
Of course, he only evers goes after smaller fish, but doesn't dare trying the same with bigger companies (unfortunately, or he'd at last get his nose bloody).
I really wonder which name and company this is all about. I'd hate to see SuSE hurt for one of Gravenreuth's usual BS. They definitely need to spend their money on improving their distro, not on laywers (saying this as a long-time SuSE user who is not too convinced of the current 7.3 version).
There are gigs and gigs of both pirate and legitimate divx3 and 4 videos out there to be had on IRC, Usenet, FT, and Gnutella.
The only ones who use WMV are corporate entities who don't have anything good to encode anyway...
I'm quite sure you're absolutely right there. Problem is, MS still isn't over the DivX ;-) guy's
ripping of their codec, and go on ranting about
that "pirated and poorly hacked" codec. Just check
out their newsgroups. They go on saying how DivX is
only used for DVD rips and pr0n, and "real" content
providers wouldn't ever use anything but their own
(better, supported) technology (their terms, not
mine). Problem is, the corporate drones actually
believe this. And as compared to Real Media, WM
actually is very cheap.
Unfortunately, I have to work with WM right now. And I hate it, on technical grounds. Try to do anything beyond the most simple A/V streaming stuff, and you have to wade through monstrous inconsistencies and bugs, and no help whatsoever to expect from their newsgroups - I won't have to mention insufficient and hard to find documentation from MSDN. Only good thing: end of february, I'm outta here. And good riddance.
One word: addressing. With those 32 bits, you can typically address up to 2 gig files on your machine - which is a limit easily encountered when you start working with video, for instance.
It took hacks to get 4 gig of RAM working on x86 with the linux kernel.
Go 64 bit, and that limit vanishes. You keep your linear addressing, none of those ugly segments like in the unfamous real-mode of PC-XT times.
I don't see what's really new about it all though, we've had 64 bit since Alpha, and there's several 64 bit architectures around. It may not be mainstream yet, but will IA 64 or Hammer really change that (soon)? Allow me to have doubts.
XML is great for content,
Perhaps some type of style-sheets over XML?
You mean something like XSL/XSLT? Why not just get MS to switch to the open file format of OpenOffice?Good luck trying, anyway.
I can think of one reason: Because they are the people who are hiring and they get to say what they want to accept from applicants?
Maybe so, but if they're too stupid to accept standard formats and expect something proprietary instead, I know I don't want to work there.
Good computer scientists are hard to come by, and if they think they should deliberately narrow their options, well tough luck for them.
I am looking for another job right now, one of my conditions is that _I_ get to choose my tools.And yes, _I_ get to set my conditions, because the market is still tight.
I've had to use crappy tools, deal with lacking or incorrect documentation, non-working software for longer than I care for - it's time for sth. decent.
Well, there's always google: try a query for link:your.link.here. It will return a list of pages that link to your link. It's not inherent to HTML, but it's a way, and without need for referers.
How is this different from a nifty compression and transmitting slightly differently?
To me, this sounds like a mix of compression and protocol, not necessarily that groundbreaking.
If it works, cool. But I guess it won't be that efficient on that old 486 Linux router...
You mean the one titled "DVD player chipsets to support windows media files"? Yes, I'm wondering, too. Hitting refresh and then getting "Nothing for you to see here. Please move along." is sort of strange.
Restena is connected to Belgium and France with 155Mbit lines, as you can see in GEANT's poster (PDF file).
It's not like Restena has the only connections in Lux., there are some others that have more or less nice lines. Thinking of P&T, Cegecom, ...
I guess for 400k inhabitants that's sufficient.
Oh yes, don't forget that they want to make the Cours Universitaire into a whole university, then there's at least 3 academic research centers, the schools (lycees) etc.
What I'd like to see is forcing mailserver default installs not ever to be open relay configs. One of the biggest pains right now is spam, largely enabled by open relays (besides clueless admins). Spam is theft of resources, can result in DoS, and should be outlawed.
Oh yes, force producers of email clients to use secure default settings. Deny *Script in emails, automatic opening of attachments even in preview mode etc. (thinking of Outlook [Express]). This would massively reduce damages by email worms.
Yet another point: get the ISPs to actually *do* something about abuse complaints [when they are reasonable].
the Germans say Globalisiening
Dear John Katz, /. needs not only a spell checker, but a decent translator? Don't tell my your OCR software mistook "ru" for "ni". It's christmas soon, so let's write up something for your wishlist for Santa Claus.
can't you please look up your stuff a little bit better? It's Globalisierung. Not that difficult, is it? I guess
So, what can we (EU citizens) actively do?
I've already signed the EuroLinux Petition
Maybe a membership with FSF Europe?
What else? Find politicians that'll listen?
So I guess all the others out there don't count? What about ESA, Russia, India, China, Israel etc.? ESA with Ariana has sth. like half of the launcher business.
And there are quite some private companies also in the business (Sea Launch...); even in the US (if you don't check beyond your borders) there's more than just NASA. Indeed, some say that NASA has actually stifled private competition (Delta-X, Rotary etc.). Maybe it's even a good thing if NASA tunes down some, provided private companies pick up where NASA left off, and are allowed to actually do business. Leave NASA with the basic scientific research stuff... that's what they're supposed to do anyway.
Your description sounds like what Larry Niven has
in his Barsoom Project and Dream Park books.
Much more "realistic" (maybe someday) than ST-TNG's
Holodec...
I can highly recommend those 2 Larry Niven books.
And all the rest from him, it's a good SciFi/Fantasy
read.