oh god, the possibilites: add some funky documentation to the "false" DeCSS together with nice images. Hide the "real" DeCSS (in the images) but don't tell anyone for a while (pretend to not tell anyone). Spread the thing like a wildfire to thousands of sites (removing CSS from a html-page is a must-have, isn't it), mirror it at sunsite. All the people (pretend to) have no idea about the "dangerous" software they really provide (it's just about style sheets as we all know) and wait for the lawers to proof the knowledge of the hidden value. Or let them try to ban a program for removing style sheets. Heck, write perl-modules for cpan, tex-code for ctan with this hidden treasure.
Better yet, do some server tweaking and serve either version under the same link. You could decide truely randomly (perfectly adjusting your chance to get sued because i.e. you serve the real one only every 100th time or every second), you could decide by client (neat, make the laywers using lynx to get their case;-)), operating system, referer, time of the day...
yeah, latin is a much more precise language than english, perhaps they should exclusivly use that too. Seriously, I concede ASF quality is high, but unfortunatly it locks out non-ms users and thats the wrong thing to do for an university, better quality or not.
If I went down to the coffee shop and started asking people "What's your desktop OS?", I really doubt that 1 in 25 would say "I'm using Linux
Ask them: "Did you _buy_ your OS?". Seriously, in the SOHO and especially in the home market I expect linux _sales_ to be relativly high and to raise, just because the following cases can happen, sorted by probability (IMNSHO):
a) People use pirated copies of commercial OSes b) People buy hardware with preinstalled commercial OSes and continue with a) when they change the commercial OS (ie. 95 -> 98, 95 -> NT, 95 -> 2000...). c) People run a free os d) People always pay for their OS.
By the way, is there a way to customize SuSEconfig (which is automatically started by YaST)? It always overwrites manually edited files in the/etc dir with YaST's general settings, and personally I don't need it to always regenerate the HTML help database. Yeah, and it's even documented!;-). Seriously I'm not in linux atm, but look in one of the "master" config files in etc. If my memory serves right, it's rc.config. There's one option "ENABLE_SUSECONFIG=yes", and if you read the comment, you'll figure out. OTOH, you could try an educated guess;->.
All drugs essentially do is to release various forms of artificial chemicals into the body and cause something that is seen as "good" in the brain. Now this is usually a bad thing. When you start messing with the brain you have problems. Hell even things that are supposedly "good" for you are usually not all that good.
By way of illustration, it's worth contemplating one far-fetched scenario. How might an everlasting-happiness drug - a drug which (implausibly!) left someone who tried it once living happily-ever-after - find itself described in the literature?
"Substance x induces severe, irreversible structural damage to neurotransmitter sub-system y. Its sequelae include mood-congruent cognitive delusions, treatment-resistant euphoria, and toxic affective psychosis."
Some spontanous ideas about what threats can come to linux, perhaps some people have some more ideas and what can be done to avoid problems.
Linus, Alan and others could get a nightly vision which tells the to radically change the direction linux heads in a bad way, for instance they really think a gui in the kernel is cool. This is really unlikely, but let's consider it. Well, this could have happened before the big linux hype and is more unlikely today because there are many resources nowadays to fork linux. This is analogous to the famous "what if gets hit by a bus." and therefore doesn't pose a huge threat.
Patent, copyright, trademark, legal dangers, proprietary protocols. This is perhaps the biggest threat, now that there's a lot of money in the business there's the danger of individuals/corporations trying to get a piece of the cake and of rivals in the os-market trying to stop linux' growth into their territory. The big players in the market which depend more or less solely on linux should see their role here. Redhat, SuSE, Caldera, Turbo Linux should look at such events like DeCSS and try to find ways to position themselves as defenders of open source/linux. The same goes for a possible future court case in conjunction with the gpl. I think they should fund a institution whose purpose is to give legal advice and pays lawyers for an open source programmer in legal trouble. But once again it shows that the success of linux gives a real chance to fight against these threats.
Bad Publicity. I don't think someone should force all kernel programmers (and opens source advocates) to see a hair stylist and get a comb;-), but individuals who speak for linux-companies should watch what they say. I know this european redhat manager was cited out of context and that resulted in "2.4 in early spring"-headlines, but it shows that media are trying to use the hype to generate news. And many journalist give a fsck whether their writings make sense or not, as shown above. Another example is "Linux update is behind schedule", huh?
Too much commercial, proprietary softare emerges for linux. Ask yourself, what's better, proprietary applications on a proprietary os or proprietary applications on an open source os where everyone has (theoratically) the same chance of competing because the API's are open for all? After linux has gone it's way in a commercial os world, there's the a bigger chance then ever for open source applications to do the same, because they have more chances to evolve on an open os. If there are types of applications where open source doesn't find it's way in, then open source is not the better alternative there, let the market decide. The important point is, now that linux "is there", there are less artificial hurdles for non-proprietary applications left, for the remaining ones, which are non-technical, see point 2.
The "pirates" So what? There are many suspicious companies in any emerging business, hell there are many pirates in any business. This has happend in software industry (remember this "memory doubler" thingy for win95?), bio-technology, financial businesses and so on. Did the markets suffer? No. This thing is dangerous when there's only one company riding on the hype (amiga anyone?), but doesn't matter w.r.t linux. Or does anyone think that ibm, sgi, redhat, suse will drop linux when linux one might bomb? I personally expect the whole IT-industry stocks to implode, but that is no specific linux problem.
But there should be a "critical mass" situation, where if a large enough percentage of users are using a windows emulator, it will make it harder for Microsoft to change the API.
ms gives a bull about users using windows emulators. BUT they have to look at the users which use _native_ but older windows versions after whose API's those compability layers where built. And there's without doubt a critical mass;-).
Language considerations aside, IMO don't start programming with a luxury ide. Use a simple text editior and write simple command line (i.e. non gui) code. Don't start with visual basic/c.
Speaking about languages, if you really want to go the easy route, I would also recommend pascal. Learn the simple programming structures, then recursion (i.e. towers of hanoi), this clearly helps thinking in algorithms. Then perhaps go with c to reuse the structures you have learned in pascal + more advanced/low level concepts of the memory handling etc. . Only after that I would try C++/Java/Eiffel to learn more "modern" concepts.
Arcserve make me sick. I administrate Unix-servers for a living, have no problems with tar, have learned to work around my way through the windows gui (with many tears), but untill today I'm still too dumb to use ArcServe on NT properly. The documentation is a joke, the program give some error/status codes but I am not able to find a list with their explanation. Everyday I pray that arcserve does what it pretends to do (yes, I tested a backup) instead of make some super clever things rendering my simple backup unusable. They have a new "wizard-like" interface which is even worse then the classic one. If they continue walking in this direction I assume they will not get a big marketshare under "old style" linuxers.
[...] but if I were the MPAA, I'd certainly try tactics like this to protect my business.
Yes, and if I were Bill Gates....
The only difference I can see here is that there is an oligopoly instead of a monopoly, tied together by common interests, trying not to loose their position they owned for a long time. _And_ their actions seem not to fall under a law which forbids that. Ok, so it seems legal what they do. In my opinion this is a hole in the law, caused by the fact the in former times there were "natural" barriers stopping other, smaller companies stepping in markets like movie and music production and distribution. What we have now is that these barriers have fallen, i.e. production techniques have become cheaper and infrastructure matters less. The big players are panicing and seeking nervously ways to gain their oligopoly and my feeling is some cluefull (hmmm) politians should see this and recognize how some interest groups try to prevent the usefull impact of new technologies in their markets, because it would make their biggest sources of income and power redundant and superfluous. In order to do this they use their financial power and their combined market influence. In my eyes there is a big analogy to case like MS's, what's the difference in forcing schemes like CSS into the customers throat and to do the same with proprietary "hooks" in an OS or fileformats in an office suite, which both lock out potential competitors if you have 90% of the market.
Come on, next thing is they will patent the transparency and the color theme. Pleeease, I can undestand sueing for the look of the computer and arguing with customers being misled (Is this thing an imac or not???), but suing for a desktop look is plain silly. Or do you want anyone to own the idea of a "taskbar" or "start button"? The copying of basic design principles happens everytime and everywhere. Remember hifi's, some time (10 years?) ago they all where silver and then someone started to make them black, the buttons changed and this was generally accepted as a more "modern" look. Would you like the idea that the first one who changed this could have sued the others and i.e. sony still today were the only one to deliver the "modern" look? This things happen all the time and it's called fashion...
One thing I remember is the better memory managment/manager, you could have more things loaded about the 640k, freeing memory for games etc.:). I remember exactly I changed to ms-dos 5.0 in order to be able to install windows.
No customer saw that dialog in any shipping copy of windows.
But many customers (like me) couldn't get windows to install on top of dr-dos, strange coincidence... Add to that the fact the windows was the _only_ software incompatible to dr-dos.
They're zero-volume, but so's a moebius strip... ... and any other Manifold with dimension =2 measured with the 3-dimensional Hausdorffmeasure.
The point with a Kleinbottle is that it is a connected non-orientable 2-dimensional manifold and one of the simpler examples of a non-orientable connected surface which are classified in the field of algebraic topologie. Z_2 is a direct summand in their first homology-group (blabla) which means basicaly that you can start at a point x, walk along the surface a certain way and come again to the point x but with your head in opposite direction and if you the go the same way again, you're headed like you started.
One question, though, can someone tell me wether a klein bottle is really embeddable in R^3, i.e. are these really klein bottles?
Aarg, why can't we post pictures here, would make a nice horror cabinet. Or this, who the hell would wear anything with this ugly mcp-logo on it anyway?
Microsoft and Keller Marketing (a division of General Commercial Corp.) have teamed up to provide our Most Valued Partners with a collection of quality premium products to promote your brand. Keller Marketing offers a broad range of advertising items to fit any promotion or event. For items not pictured, please don't hesitate to contact us so that we can meet your needs.
Goto to the clothes section, this is really bad, i.e. a cap and shirts and stuff..., uh and coffee cups and pencils and cases and sport bottles and... everything with "microsoft certified professional" printed on it.
You seem to become the Alan Greespan of the home computer market and one wrong word at the false place can cause big hoopla.
Thanks very much for clarifying this and for your patience with the gamers/open source/slashdot/trolls communities. Oh my, I expected a big flamefest on linux-kernel and linux-net, hope they get the message....
Ok, ok, just apply some fuzzy logik to my wording (me being no native english speaker). I just wanted to add some arguments to explain why there's more behind the industrie's strategy here and that this strategy is in fact aimed to take freedom away, from the artist and the consumer.
Slashdot Mirror
oh god, the possibilites:
add some funky documentation to the "false" DeCSS together with nice images.
Hide the "real" DeCSS (in the images) but don't tell anyone for a while (pretend to not tell anyone). Spread the thing like a wildfire to thousands of sites (removing CSS from a html-page is a must-have, isn't it), mirror it at sunsite.
All the people (pretend to) have no idea about the "dangerous" software they really provide (it's just about style sheets as we all know) and wait for the lawers to proof the knowledge of the hidden value. Or let them try to ban a program for removing style sheets.
Heck, write perl-modules for cpan, tex-code for ctan with this hidden treasure.
Better yet, do some server tweaking and serve either version under the same link. ;-)), operating system, referer, time of the day ...
You could decide truely randomly (perfectly adjusting your chance to get sued because i.e. you serve the real one only every 100th time or every second), you could decide by client (neat, make the laywers using lynx to get their case
Really?
Any links/description?
yeah, latin is a much more precise language than english, perhaps they should exclusivly use that too.
Seriously, I concede ASF quality is high, but unfortunatly it locks out non-ms users and thats the wrong thing to do for an university, better quality or not.
Don't panic, it's pppoe, there's a cool
open source solution for linux at
http://www.davin.ottawa.on.ca/pppoe/.
For other solutions go to freshmeat.
If I went down to the coffee shop and started asking people "What's your desktop OS?", I really doubt that 1 in 25 would say "I'm using Linux
...).
Ask them: "Did you _buy_ your OS?".
Seriously, in the SOHO and especially in the home market I expect linux _sales_ to be relativly high and to raise, just because the following cases can happen, sorted by probability (IMNSHO):
a) People use pirated copies of commercial OSes
b) People buy hardware with preinstalled commercial OSes and continue with a) when they change the commercial OS (ie. 95 -> 98, 95 -> NT, 95 -> 2000
c) People run a free os
d) People always pay for their OS.
By the way, is there a way to customize SuSEconfig (which is automatically started by YaST)? It always overwrites manually edited files in the /etc dir with YaST's general settings, and personally I don't need it to always regenerate the HTML help database. ;-). ;->.
Yeah, and it's even documented!
Seriously I'm not in linux atm, but look in one of the "master" config files in etc.
If my memory serves right, it's rc.config. There's one option "ENABLE_SUSECONFIG=yes",
and if you read the comment, you'll figure out.
OTOH, you could try an educated guess
Incidently there was a real good comment exactly to what you say there:
By way of illustration, it's worth contemplating one far-fetched scenario. How might an everlasting-happiness drug - a drug which (implausibly!) left someone who tried it once living happily-ever-after - find itself described in the literature?
My point is: Drugs aren't bad, bad drugs are bad.
This is really unlikely, but let's consider it.
Well, this could have happened before the big linux hype and is more unlikely today because there are many resources nowadays to fork linux.
This is analogous to the famous "what if gets hit by a bus." and therefore doesn't pose a huge threat.
This is perhaps the biggest threat, now that there's a lot of money in the business there's the danger of individuals/corporations trying to get a piece of the cake and of rivals in the os-market trying to stop linux' growth into their territory.
The big players in the market which depend more or less solely on linux should see their role here.
Redhat, SuSE, Caldera, Turbo Linux should look at such events like DeCSS and try to find ways to position themselves as defenders of open source/linux. The same goes for a possible future court case in conjunction with the gpl. I think they should fund a institution whose purpose is to give legal advice and pays lawyers for an open source programmer in legal trouble.
But once again it shows that the success of linux gives a real chance to fight against these threats.
I don't think someone should force all kernel programmers (and opens source advocates) to see a hair stylist and get a comb
And many journalist give a fsck whether their writings make sense or not, as shown above.
Another example is "Linux update is behind schedule", huh?
Ask yourself, what's better, proprietary applications on a proprietary os or proprietary applications on an open source os where everyone has (theoratically) the same chance of competing because the API's are open for all?
After linux has gone it's way in a commercial os world, there's the a bigger chance then ever for open source applications to do the same, because they have more chances to evolve on an open os.
If there are types of applications where open source doesn't find it's way in, then open source is not the better alternative there, let the market decide.
The important point is, now that linux "is there", there are less artificial hurdles for non-proprietary applications left, for the remaining ones, which are non-technical, see point 2.
So what? There are many suspicious companies in any emerging business, hell there are many pirates in any business. This has happend in software industry (remember this "memory doubler" thingy for win95?), bio-technology, financial businesses and so on.
Did the markets suffer? No.
This thing is dangerous when there's only one company riding on the hype (amiga anyone?), but doesn't matter w.r.t linux. Or does anyone think that ibm, sgi, redhat, suse will drop linux when linux one might bomb?
I personally expect the whole IT-industry stocks to implode, but that is no specific linux problem.
But there should be a "critical mass" situation, where if a large enough percentage of users are using a windows emulator, it will make it harder for Microsoft to change the API.
;-).
ms gives a bull about users using windows emulators. BUT they have to look at the users which use _native_ but older windows versions after whose API's those compability layers where built.
And there's without doubt a critical mass
Language considerations aside, IMO don't start programming with a luxury ide. Use a simple text editior and write simple command line (i.e. non gui) code. Don't start with visual basic/c.
Speaking about languages, if you really want to go the easy route, I would also recommend pascal.
Learn the simple programming structures, then recursion (i.e. towers of hanoi), this clearly helps thinking in algorithms.
Then perhaps go with c to reuse the structures you have learned in pascal + more advanced/low level concepts of the memory handling etc. .
Only after that I would try C++/Java/Eiffel to learn more "modern" concepts.
Arcserve make me sick. I administrate Unix-servers for a living, have no problems with tar, have learned to work around my way through the windows gui (with many tears), but untill today I'm still too dumb to use ArcServe on NT properly.
The documentation is a joke, the program give some error/status codes but I am not able to find a list with their explanation.
Everyday I pray that arcserve does what it pretends to do (yes, I tested a backup) instead of make some super clever things rendering my simple backup unusable.
They have a new "wizard-like" interface which is even worse then the classic one. If they continue walking in this direction I assume they will not get a big marketshare under "old style" linuxers.
"My woody has an uptime of 107 days"
or
"My woody never goes down"
or
"We offer 24/7 support for your woody"
oh well, you asked for it...
[...] but if I were the MPAA, I'd certainly try tactics like this to protect my business.
Yes, and if I were Bill Gates....
The only difference I can see here is that there is an oligopoly instead of a monopoly, tied together by common interests, trying not to loose their position they owned for a long time.
_And_ their actions seem not to fall under a law which forbids that.
Ok, so it seems legal what they do.
In my opinion this is a hole in the law, caused by the fact the in former times there were "natural" barriers stopping other, smaller companies stepping in markets like movie and music production and distribution.
What we have now is that these barriers have fallen, i.e. production techniques have become cheaper and infrastructure matters less.
The big players are panicing and seeking nervously ways to gain their oligopoly and my feeling is some cluefull (hmmm) politians should see this and recognize how some interest groups try to prevent the usefull impact of new technologies in their markets, because it would make their biggest sources of income and power redundant and superfluous.
In order to do this they use their financial power and their combined market influence.
In my eyes there is a big analogy to case like MS's, what's the difference in forcing schemes like CSS into the customers throat and to do the same with proprietary "hooks" in an OS or fileformats in an office suite, which both lock out potential competitors if you have 90% of the market.
Come on, next thing is they will patent the transparency and the color theme.
Pleeease, I can undestand sueing for the look of the computer and arguing with customers being misled (Is this thing an imac or not???), but suing for a desktop look is plain silly.
Or do you want anyone to own the idea of a "taskbar" or "start button"?
The copying of basic design principles happens everytime and everywhere. Remember hifi's, some time (10 years?) ago they all where silver and then someone started to make them black, the buttons changed and this was generally accepted as a more "modern" look.
Would you like the idea that the first one who changed this could have sued the others and i.e. sony still today were the only one to deliver the "modern" look?
This things happen all the time and it's called fashion...
Cleartype!!!
;-))
[...]
(just kidding
I know, I didn't assume they would do that, but it didn't work for me and many others and all changed to ms-dos, honny soit qui mal y pense... .
One thing I remember is the better memory managment/manager, you could have more things loaded about the 640k, freeing memory for games etc. :).
I remember exactly I changed to ms-dos 5.0 in order to be able to install windows.
No customer saw that dialog in any shipping copy of windows.
But many customers (like me) couldn't get windows to install on top of dr-dos, strange coincidence...
Add to that the fact the windows was the _only_ software incompatible to dr-dos.
Uups, sorry, couldn't get to the artice, my question is answered there but seemingly without explanation...
They're zero-volume, but so's a moebius strip...
... and any other Manifold with dimension =2 measured with the 3-dimensional Hausdorffmeasure.
The point with a Kleinbottle is that it is a connected non-orientable 2-dimensional manifold and one of the simpler examples of a non-orientable connected surface which are classified in the field of algebraic topologie.
Z_2 is a direct summand in their first homology-group (blabla) which means basicaly that you can start at a point x, walk along the surface a certain way and come again to the point x but with your head in opposite direction and if you the go the same way again, you're headed like you started.
One question, though, can someone tell me wether a klein bottle is really embeddable in R^3, i.e. are these really klein bottles?
Aarg, why can't we post pictures here, would make a nice horror cabinet.
Or this, who the hell would wear anything with this ugly mcp-logo on it anyway?
From the www.mvpstore.com frontpage:
... everything with "microsoft certified professional" printed on it.
Microsoft and Keller Marketing (a division of General Commercial Corp.) have teamed up to provide our Most Valued Partners with a collection of quality premium products to promote your brand. Keller Marketing offers a broad range of advertising items to fit any promotion or event. For items not pictured, please don't hesitate to contact us so that we can meet your needs.
Goto to the clothes section, this is really bad, i.e. a cap and shirts and stuff..., uh and coffee cups and pencils and cases and sport bottles and
So, sorry, no joke...
Phew, I knew there was something wrong.
You seem to become the Alan Greespan of the home computer market and one wrong word at the false place can cause big hoopla.
Thanks very much for clarifying this and for your patience with the gamers/open source/slashdot/trolls communities.
Oh my, I expected a big flamefest on linux-kernel and linux-net, hope they get the message....
Ok, ok, just apply some fuzzy logik to my wording (me being no native english speaker).
I just wanted to add some arguments to explain why there's more behind the industrie's strategy here and that this strategy is in fact aimed to take freedom away, from the artist and the consumer.