This post already got a better reply from a member of the Samba team, but there's some points I want to add anyway.
"Is this a model for future company involvement in Linux/Open source software?"
It doesn't matter. The assumptions made in the post are actually false (that HP hadn't contributed, etc), but even if they were true (as they are for other companies), it wouldn't matter.
The point of OpenSource/Free Software development is not getting other people to contribute as much as you do. The point is to gain freedom over your tools. It doesn't matter if anyone abuses that freedom. Someone most certainly will. As long as we are allowed to work with each other, it doesn't matter if the rest of the world plays nice. It's their loss because anything they don't contribute we can't build on.
It's just as selfish to demand all the users of free software to contribute back as it is for proprietary softare vendors to keep their software proprietary. Freedom is not about other people's freedom to help you out. It's not freedom from leaching. It's our own freedom to cooperate that matters.
That being said, we must be ever vigilant to maintain that freedom. Whenever any company, group or individual uses free software, they must be held accountable to the licencing of the software in question. Failure to do so undermines the only system we have for protecting those freedoms. Our need to defend our licences comes only from our need to be allowed the freedom to operate under them, not from our need for "payback" from everyone who uses our software.
I don't think "geeks" have been saying everyone has to do full testing of their entire distribution. That would defeat the purpose of having a distribution at all. You might as well run Slack.:)
Distributions are collections of software pre-maintained at a certain level. If you need more than that (for work or whatever) you add it yourself. If you are building a server, and you're paid to do it, you will do this ANYWAY. It wouldn't even have to be a UNIX server. This is the same as testing the brakes on a shipping vehical. You will do it on delivery, before use, and on a regular basis because money and lives other than your own are at stake.
If you care if someone breakes into your car or computer, it is your responsibility to take whatever steps you feel are sufficient to make sure that doing so is difficult enough. It is never impossible to break into anything.
Linux is both a desktop and server kernel, and Debian, RedHat, and others are also useful for the range of roles from tinker toy to big iron. The distribution maintainers and upstream developers have no requirements other than those they place on themselves. They are volunteers! Anything you want more than what you get, you have to buy or do yourself. If you want guarentees, be prepared to pay someone to get insurance against your guarentee. That's what car companies do.
So, yes, if you care enough if it works to your specs, test it yourself. If you don't care if it works, quitcher bitchin'.
This is not only idiotically expensive but ridiculously wasteful.
Waste is an unwanted byproduct from the process of converting one type of energy into another. A wasteful engine gives off a lot of heat when converting chemical energy into torque. This desk is not a waste because it is wanted. Whatever your pet cherity is, you didn't further it by making this post. The best thing about free enterprise is that the people who produce the most get to decide what's important. If you don't produce anything, you can't give it away.
Idiotically expensive just means you wouldn't pay that much for it. Something is worth whatever someone else is willing to trade for it. That isn't waste. As long as both parties in a trade participate voluntarily and have all the correct information they need to judge whether they wish to participate, then there is no waste. Waste would be if the transaction was taxed, because then there would be energy lost to an unwanted byproduct.
How do these things occur? Does Lego sponsor such or are they truly just some doofus's whim?
If the guy were that much of a doofus, he wouldn't be worth the desk. I doubt Lego had anything to do with this project other than making the materials and inspiring those involved. They don't need publicity. They have a quality product that sells itself.
Next time someone asks for such a stupid thing, why not try to talk them into donating to charity?
Next time you feel like making an emotional ('disgusted' was the subject) post because you're jealous that someone has enough resources to spare to get what they want, why don't you spend the time you would have spent posting working for your favorite charity? My favorite charity is Libertarianism, so this post is not a waste because I get to spout my self-centered tripe on a public forum and I feel like I might be convincing someone to go along with my view point. I'm probably wrong, but I value the feeling I get. Did you get your times' worth when you posted about what someone else should do with their resources? I doubt anyone was swayed by your arguments, so if that was your objective, it's very likely your energy was wasted. Heck, from your point of view, my post is a waste because it's not what you want.:)
Wasting thousands of dollars on a glued together lego desk is so far beyond reasonable that it can't even be expressed in words.
I guess it would have been ok if he'd made just a chair? Or just a lamp? Or a cupholder to protect his dead tree desk? That wouldn't have been far beyond reasonable? It's the audacity of making an entire desk that bothers you?
This desk will probably last for decades, at least as long as a wooden desk, possibly longer. It will provide years of entertainment for all who own it, it serves as an excellent complement to the constructor, the company who bought it, and the employee who receives it. It is a work of art, and it is functional. A normal company would have bought modular cube-farm desks and would not have accepted this employee's demand. Your accusation that this work is wasted is short-sighted and almost as self-centered as my assumption that you care what I think.:)
Anyway, thanks for playing.
Re:LEGO: Not Open Source...
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The LEGO Desk
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· Score: 1
I remember seeing mention of this in a LEGO manual somewhere years before the web. They've always tried to get people to use their name the way they want, and they will never win, any more than people will stop calling non Kleenex tissues "kleenex", and non Thermos liquid storage "thermoses".
I think when these companies ask people to use specific terminology it's more so they can say, "We tried to tell them, but they insist," rather than because they actually care. If I had a product and people called my competition by my name, I'd be stoked.
"Hey, hand me that crag, would you?"
"It's not a real Crag(tm), it's just a crag-like device."
"Yeah, whatever. Hand it to me, smart-alek."
Before putting your machine online you can use "lsof" to determine what ports it is listening to. lsof lists open files, including tcp and udp ports. It exists for most if not all unixes, and is extremely easy to use. For example:
Losing the satelites is a waste, but it's also just a "shit happens" waste, not an "oh my gawd we blew it!" waste.
The efficiency of a device is measured in how much of the input energy got converted into the kind of output energy you wanted. An electric motor converts most of its electrical input into mechanical output with a little heat and noise produced. A space heater converts most of its electrical input into heat output with a little noise going to loss.
In this case, a coroporation is a machine for converting "manpower" into "livelyhood". Had the energy devoted to Irridiam been spent somewhere else, more livelyhood might have been produced, but the loss of a few satelites compared to the livelyhood produced by the company is pretty small. Motorola is still a basically successful company, and in a free market that means enough livelyhood is produced to keep their employees happy.
We destroy old buildings to put up new ones. Living things die so that new ones can grow up in their place, and have a chance to do better than their peers (darwinism). In this case, Irridiam tried to fill a role and proved not to be viable. This is the equivalent of a child dying of some disease so the parents can try again without the burden of keeping the child alive. The parents will mourn their loss, but they will also continue to have children who may be better or worse.
As long as no coercian is involved, things can't be too bad. The stockholders take a calculated gamble, the employees are paid either way, and the customers wouldn't buy equipment if the company had a bad rep. There's no reason for anyone to be too upset.
Actually, the chart includes other kernels: HURD, MACH, and Darwin. The problem is that the question this graph answers isn't clear. If it were to document APIs or ABIs it would need to talk about kernels and libraries. If it's talking about user experiences it needs to include various linux distributions. In any case, it's a monumental effort and I'm glad to have it to refer my friends to when they have questions.
When Netscape went open-source, the mozilla team still started from scratch because the old code was such a mess. If Microsoft released their code, it too would only serve as a reference. The value of giving away the Watcom compiler is not in the binary you get from compiling the source (which you could already get for a fee), but in the freedom to use whatever useful bits are buried in the source itself.
I checked it out yesterday. It is the solution to this and several other problems. It anonymizes publishing and downloading, it rewards contributions of space and CPU, and charges for publishing and network usage. It keeps files on multiple machines simultaneously, and it uses cryptography all over the place so that you don't know what's on your machine, how many copies there are, or where it came from.
Mojo Nation is like a distributed data haven. It's also open source and platform independent. An implementation of the client and server has been ported to Win32 and Linux. Setup is not polished yet, but should be soon enough. This project has a LOT of potential, not just for sharing files, but for defeating all the st00pid ideas out there about information control. This project single-handledly demonstrates why the internet makes so many laws obsolete.
Disclaimer: One of the developers is a friend of mine.
I've observed that the natural selection in OSS software improves the quality. It happens at the patch level (the maintainer will commit the patch with the best proven results), all the way to the distribution level (the shoddy distros fall by the wayside...eventually).
Once again, it's that the users have the freedom to choose the best software for the job. The best software will have the most users, and those users will provide the most feedback, encouraging the branch. Lesser software can exist, but in an environment where it has no advantage over superior software, it cannot interfere with progress.
You're right that UI in strategy games is sorely lacking. Actually, it's lacking in almost all games except those where the UI is open (quake). Interesting...
However, for describing locations, pointing devices are critical for speed. Moving from base to base with a gamepad would be easy, but telling your troops to patrol between two points without a pointing device would be agrivating at best, and tediously slow at worst. There's just no getting around that a mouse is the easiest way we currently have of describing relative locations to a computer.
As for the need for keyboards, I demand more from my games than a little action. I want complexity and lots of customization. I want my games to be as flexible as my OS (unix). I want to name my cities in Civ, I want macros in Quake, I want to be able to type numbers in for quantities, I want my games to have consoles (Quake, Dark Reign 2, etc)... I don't play Street Fighter or any other games that can be condensed down to a pad of a few buttons. If the most complex part of the game is the sequence of triangles and circles I push to get my unit to perform a complex move, I'm not interested. In fact, I want the ability to bind a single key to a complex move, not be forced to enter a complex string of keys to perform a simple task. I also want to pick which key does what.
Also, you can tell some strategy games to keep producing units continuously. Look at Dark Reign, and Dark Reign 2. Both have "shift click" to add 5 to the number of a unit you want. Quickly clicking can queue up far more units than you'll ever use.
So far most games seem to focus on one part of the experience at a time: interface, gameplay, graphics, networking, story, etc. If anyone ever does get it all right, I'll be surprised. It'll probably be a community project.:)
I didn't read the post your reply was replying to (I browse at threshold three), so this may completely miss your point, but I've wanted to point all this out anyway, and this seemed like as good a time as any.
To save readers from my wordy retort, I'm moving the summary I put at the end of my reply at the beginning, which follows:
You're right. The features you named are "missing" in that there is no glossy package you can install as a slam-dunk solution to the general problems involved. On the other hand, for each item, it's either a matter of time (6-18 months away), or the issues involved are much to complex to treat as a simple feature that can be added like a car accessory.
Now the long version.
Taking into consideration your self-reply about these things being available but not production-quality, I would like to add that all of these will be at or above whatever production-quality is _eventually_. Since these things are done when someone volunteers, there is no hurry. If you want it faster, write it yourself. Also, all of these things are a lot closer than they appear:
SMP - SGI seems to be trying to speed up development of this. Judging from recent slashdot activity it would appear that SGI is trying to bring Linux up to IRIX level in all of IRIX' specialties so they can dump OS development on the community and focus on what they really make money on. I think this is great. It's the whole point of cooperation. Let everyone do what they want and as long as it stays cooperative, everyone wins.
3D - Again, SGI seems to be helping out here, as well as CreativeLabs, 3DFX, NVidia, Matrox, and a few other companies. Anyone with 3D hardware to sell wants as many viable platforms as possible, especially stable ones. No, Linux isn't a drop-in replacement for IRIX or an Evans and Southerland workstation...yet.
Journalling FS - SGI and IBM are both bringing their own filesystems to linux. They aren't even asking the community to do it for them. They're doing it themselves and giving it to us all. It could be a gimmick, but I think they Get It.
Dynamic kernel patching - I haven't seen any major threads on this on the kernel list, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was on the horizon for 2.7 or so. On the other hand, with the user space linux kernel doing so well, why bother with a patchable kernel when you can spawn a new kernel with its own VM? Certainly this is an over-simplification, but the point remains that the problem a patchable kernel solves has real-world Linux answers right now.
Real time scheduling - There's a project or two dedicated to RTLinux, and I'm sure they're progressing nicely. No, it's not production quality, if by that you mean 'apt-get install rtlinux' makes your debian box "real time". On the other hand, RT scheduling is a pretty small niche, and it's only being worked on because someone has a need and is willing to do the work themselves, not because we're competing with QNX or something.
Display Postscript - My first thought is "yawn", but I have to remember that people use computers for many more things than I do. I have no idea what projects are underway to satisfy this goal, but I know that Unix and Linux are similiar enough that you could buy DisplayPostscript for Linux if you really wanted to, and a free version will exist some day. It's just a matter of someone having the time and inclination.
ObjectiveC - GnuSTEP anyone?
Management tools - I had a big argument with my previous boss on this one. He wanted a single window he could consult to feel like he was at the helm of a dozen machines. I told him many times that while there are tools that give you that feeling, nothing gives you the control you get from actually having a clue. I probably could have been more diplomatic. The GNU world has NFS/NIS, LinuxConf is its own beast, DebConf is... interesting, and there are many other solutions. I don't see this as a problem. If you have more than a handful of machines, you're going to come up with a solution of your own that suits your situation. Otherwise, you don't need "integrated and functional" management. Your situation is too simple. It would be like using wharehouse tracking software to manage your household. "Where's the toilet paper? - Hold on, I'll look it up in the database..."
Maybe this is preaching to the choir on SlashDot, but the point of free software is not to compete with commercial software in the marketplace, but to satsify the individual programmer's goals, and work cooperatively on goals the community has in common. Whether those goals are compatible with commercial demand is irrelevant. Some day someone will do something for free that already exists for money. It's not that it can't be done, it's just a matter of time. If you want it now, buy it. If you want it free, write it or wait.
"Did you know that Wolfenstein had acceptable 3d like graphics and ran on a 286?"
Acceptable? Nevermind resolution or frame rate, the features that future games added are well beyond looks: six-degrees of freedom, arbitrary map geometry, programmable physics, truely dynamic scenery (destroy stuff, put stuff back together), and then on top of all that, the improvements in graphics are beyond looking more realistic. Games now are really more asthetically pleasing than they were "way back when". Look at Need for Speed (a driving game) or Jane's F15 sim, or Unreal. These games are beautiful. It's beyond alpha channels and lens flare.
Maybe your point is that noone has come up with a new plot? So what? There hasn't been a new story since humans started writing stuff down. The Greeks outlined all the possible stories that could be (father-son battle, gods vs mortals, etc), and everything else is just a variation on that. There hasn't been anything new in Hollywood except actors and technology since the 20s. So what?
I don't know what 2% increase you're talking about, but as much as is possible right now, humans are advancing everything they know how. Just because we haven't gotten to Mars doesn't mean a 2% increase in rocket speed isn't important.
If you want to go play Wolfenstein, be my guest, but good luck trying to modify it to change the behavior of the AI, or add new rules to the game, or change the physics, or add the ability to see through a stain-glass window and still have it run on a 286.
Now, throwing out all the technical aspects, there have still been advances in gameplay itself. All the ID games are basic "kill everything that moves", but as many have already posted, there are dozens of games which deviate from this: half-life, thief, and Tomb Raider, and dozens of non-FPS. There are sims, sports games, strategy games, tactical games, RPGs, MMORPGs, and many games that defy classification (tetris clones, for example).
You could take the stance that none of these are original, and that the creators lacked immagination, but why would you want to? There are pleny of fun games, even if they all have roots in greek comedies and tragedies. Life is fractal: it repeats itself at every scale. There's no point in calling that a lack of immagination. It's just too easy to say "this is just like that was."
So, prove me wrong and go make a game noone has ever thought of before with a story noone has heard and technology noone has seen. That would be cool.
The above comment missed the point
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Hacker Crackdown?
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The article refers to making programmers accountable for the ways their software is used against other people, not for how good the software is. This is very different from the liability the automobile and tobacco companies are fighting. This is more like the lawsuits being pressed against the gun makers.
That being said, this concept (programmer is responsible for how his program is used) is ludicrous. While it is important for people to be aware of the potential uses of their creations, the leaders who gave the orders to drop the atomic bomb are to blame, not the scientists who designed it or the works who built it.
This issue is very complex. There is a lot of energy at stake, and a lot of confusion about what can and what "should" be done. The only sure way to solve all these problems once and for all is to hold the final decision makers responsible for _their_ actions. If you are holding a gun, only use it in self defense or for sport. While driving a car, respect the power of 2000 pounds of steal going 70+ mph. While holding a baseball bat, don't blame the manufacturer if you decide to hit someone with it.
No matter what power you hold, there is noone better qualified to keep you from abusing that power than you.
Blaming doesn't get us anywhere. The change we want is much deeper than making it more difficult to cause harm. We need to stop wanting to cause harm.
(We also need to agree on what harm is - napster is certainly a grey area in many peoples' minds.)
An excellent point (that a lot of OSS or Free Software devlopers "sell out"), and an excellent question (how do I feel about it).
It doesn't matter how I feel. At least in the case of Free Software (as opposed to Open Source), what the developers do doesn't effect the software or the users. If we don't like where the developer is taking the product, we don't have to upgrade.
The whole point of Free Software is that since we (the users) are free to support the product ourselves, we are not dependent on the original developer in any way. Whatever the developer chooses to contribute, we may or may not choose to use, and vice-versa. The products themselves are independent of the developers, and if the developer ceases to contribute his or her efforts "for the good of humanity", another developer may step in and take over. The motivation of the developers is also unimportant as long as the efforts are contributed without restrictions.
That being the case, while there are no guarentees, there are no limitations either.
So, the answer to the question "how do you feel" is "who cares". Noone's feelings are relevant. All that is relevant is what people actually contribute, not what they think of feel.
I started with Turbo Pascal 3.0 on MS-DOS 2.2. I was 10. Don't assume they won't be interested. Admittedly, I didn't have a lot competing for my attention, but I spent a lot of time pouring over the manual figuring out how to draw lines, read the mouse, make linked lists, parse input, and of course draw fractals.
Show them the command line, show them hello world, show them Debian, show them gnome, show them Python and C. If they don't like it, they'll tell you.
I'm going to take 'morality' to mean 'conformity to ideals of right human conduct', per m-w.com. I think it's safe to measure right and wrong as judged with the intent to extend the survivability of all involved: the individual his or her family, his friends, his country, the entire human race, animals, plants, the planet, the universe, etc.
In short, "you can't know what's right without God".
Why must your definition of God be limited to what the Bible contains? Yes, the god I learned about in gradeschool fits this definition, but the god that I created for myself when I rejected Christianity also fits this definition.
It is difficult to know what choices favor the entire universe regardless of whether you believe in a Christian god, Jesus, Satan, Allah, or just The Tao. No matter what belief system you subscribe to, you still have to think for yourself and make hard decisions. Christians do not have the only right answers. Like all humans, they even have a lot of wrong answers, like The Crusades, racism (in some cases), and any number of issues where there are Christians on both sides (alternative lifestyles, the role of government, abortion,...).
There are a lot of people in the world who see Christianity as an overly restrictive lense to view the world through. When you take it for granted that your point of view is the only correct way, you do yourself a great disservice both in degrading the strength of your rhetoric and in limiting your opportunities for learning.
I'm agnostic. I don't care what happens after I die because I can't use that information right now. I would be just as much a fool if I assumed there was a heaven and hell and was wrong, as if I assumed there wasn't and was wrong. If any fanatic tries to tell me they know the things that cannot be known, I am not going to listen to them. If they tell me they think they have some insight into how to make better decisions in life, then I'll keep listening.
So, to bring this back around to the topic at hand, technical people are not better than non-technical people, and neither is the opposite true either. Technical experience has no correlation with a person's ability to know what is the most pro-survival choice. One's choice of religion also does not dictate how well they will make a choice.
I think the problem is that you define morality to be whatever God says, and I define God to be whatever morality says.
How about "there is no morality without self-awareness, responsibility, intelligence, compassion, and love?"
Wow, that's a good example. If such a hypothetical pizza parlor existed (and you know they do), and you knew this was the case, would you then suggest banning pizza parlors? Where do you draw the line? Do you require all italian-sounding restaurants to submit to an audit every year?
Another reason why this is a good example is that money laundering itself as I understand it isn't illegal, it's just a way of hiding other illegal activities, like robbery, extorsion, prostitution or counterfitting. Are you going to shut down that pizza parlor because rather than getting their twenty dollar bills from Bank of America, they get their twenties from Bank of Vito?
Napster isn't the problem, our way of thinking about compensation for creating data is. Creating unique data like music and software takes tallent, time and energy. It is a service I am happy to pay artists and engineers for. I don't believe the amount of work they put in changes relative to how many copies of their work exist, or who has access.
I don't have a solution, but clinging to out-dated ideas of copyright isn't helping our civilization.
Incidentally, it's just as useless to persecute Napster as it would be to persecute any other method of violating copyright. No matter how successful you are, you've spent a lot of energy making a few people's lives unpleasant, and many unjustly so, and the problem hasn't gone away. You can no sooner stop copyright violation than you can abolish alcohol, suicide, or spitting on the sidewalk.
If Napster didn't exist, something else would. If The Internet didn't exist, something else would. We can't stop it, and the world would be a bleaker place if we could.
As a related point, I suspect most people who are on the pro-informational-freedom side of this debate are also for the de-criminalization of drugs and prostitution, and are against gun control. All of these positions fall under the same "it's useless to try to oppose it with legislation" argument. Many of the people who hold these postions do not support the activities themselves, but merely recognize the futility in regulating them in this fashion.
Disclaimer: I didn't read the article, I'm just replying.
Yes, responsibility is important. No, this is not helpful. I see this as akin to requiring a city park to hand out magnetic badges for people to beep in and out so that criminals tempted to commit a crime in the park could be tracked down. A nice thought, but horribly impractical. The criminals will either defeat the security in place (steal a badge, clime the wall, etc) or commit their crime elsewhere. Meanwhile, the park is not a very nice place to have lunch anymore, since everywhere you look there are prison-esq security measures.
I think the "anonymous hosting is banned" title, if a little exagerated, is not off the mark (again having not read the article), in that if you have to identify all your contributors, there's no way for them to be anonymous. If you continue to allow people to post anonymously, it's extremely easy for someone to frame you.
The other problem with data publishing controls is that it's motivated by the idea that someone's going to publish a piece of data that will be harmful, and someone needs to be held accountable. This notion of "dangerous data" needs to be looked at a lot more closely. We're not talking about shouting "FIRE" on a crowded internet. That's impossible. We're talking about porn, plans for bombs, etc. Let's look at how and why data can be harmful and solve those problems, not the general problem of controlling all data flow.
Does the story sound at all like the raid on the California office in the Cryptinomicon to anyone else? Small coincidence perhaps since some of the old io.com regulars are mentioned in the books credits?:)
Hi Doug!
Would this be a meat-space court-based DDoS?
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A New DeCSS
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· Score: 1
Of course, there would be real people behind the cases, so it wouldn't be like the recent high-profile network problems, but still...
If I had a great idea for a new take on ANY hardware, I wouldn't talk about it. Software is well suited to Bazaar-style development, but I would prefer to develop hardware in private. I'd develop the thing in secret, then publish the interface specs. (a la Creative Labs, Matrox, 3DFX, etc).
I may be wrong, but I think with the barriers to entry being so high in the hardware development world, keeping your designs and ideas secret seems to be the only way to have a chance to do anything revolutionary.
I'm still against hardware patents, but I wouldn't go blabbing my ideas on Slashdot, either.
"I find a lot of Linux arrogance (Setting the max MTU packet size is easy under Linux, just edit the correct text file with a command that EVERYONE should know)."
It's not one command, it's your favorite editor.
The point was that it not only possible and easy, it's well documented and not hidden at all. Linux is a '68 volkswagon bug with its engine hanging out. Macs and WinXX machines are akin to highly computerized and proprietary cars ('98 bug?) which do anything they can to hide the workings of the machinery and keep the owner from fixing their own machine.
Just because the Linux config files don't have pretty pictures on them doesn't make them hard to work with. No matter how you use your computer, the point about the MTU still holds its value. If your NetAdmin needs to change the MTU on your machine, it will be easy (for him) on your Linux workstation, moderately challenging on your Windows machine, and darn near impossible on your Mac.
That Mac may be easy for you to use, but if you ever try to do anything Apple doesn't want you to do or didn't think of, you're out of luck.
The best solution is to run a Mac emulator on Linux.:)
I wonder when the last time your NetAdmin used your floppy drive was?
Slashdot Mirror
This post already got a better reply from a member of the Samba team, but there's some points I want to add anyway.
"Is this a model for future company involvement in Linux/Open source software?"
It doesn't matter. The assumptions made in the post are actually false (that HP hadn't contributed, etc), but even if they were true (as they are for other companies), it wouldn't matter.
The point of OpenSource/Free Software development is not getting other people to contribute as much as you do. The point is to gain freedom over your tools. It doesn't matter if anyone abuses that freedom. Someone most certainly will. As long as we are allowed to work with each other, it doesn't matter if the rest of the world plays nice. It's their loss because anything they don't contribute we can't build on.
It's just as selfish to demand all the users of free software to contribute back as it is for proprietary softare vendors to keep their software proprietary. Freedom is not about other people's freedom to help you out. It's not freedom from leaching. It's our own freedom to cooperate that matters.
That being said, we must be ever vigilant to maintain that freedom. Whenever any company, group or individual uses free software, they must be held accountable to the licencing of the software in question. Failure to do so undermines the only system we have for protecting those freedoms. Our need to defend our licences comes only from our need to be allowed the freedom to operate under them, not from our need for "payback" from everyone who uses our software.
I don't think "geeks" have been saying everyone has to do full testing of their entire distribution. That would defeat the purpose of having a distribution at all. You might as well run Slack. :)
Distributions are collections of software pre-maintained at a certain level. If you need more than that (for work or whatever) you add it yourself. If you are building a server, and you're paid to do it, you will do this ANYWAY. It wouldn't even have to be a UNIX server. This is the same as testing the brakes on a shipping vehical. You will do it on delivery, before use, and on a regular basis because money and lives other than your own are at stake.
If you care if someone breakes into your car or computer, it is your responsibility to take whatever steps you feel are sufficient to make sure that doing so is difficult enough. It is never impossible to break into anything.
Linux is both a desktop and server kernel, and Debian, RedHat, and others are also useful for the range of roles from tinker toy to big iron. The distribution maintainers and upstream developers have no requirements other than those they place on themselves. They are volunteers! Anything you want more than what you get, you have to buy or do yourself. If you want guarentees, be prepared to pay someone to get insurance against your guarentee. That's what car companies do.
So, yes, if you care enough if it works to your specs, test it yourself. If you don't care if it works, quitcher bitchin'.
Go ahead, 'cause if you don't like it you can install Linux on it when you're done.
YAY!
This is not only idiotically expensive but ridiculously wasteful.
:)
:)
Waste is an unwanted byproduct from the process of converting one type of energy into another. A wasteful engine gives off a lot of heat when converting chemical energy into torque. This desk is not a waste because it is wanted. Whatever your pet cherity is, you didn't further it by making this post. The best thing about free enterprise is that the people who produce the most get to decide what's important. If you don't produce anything, you can't give it away.
Idiotically expensive just means you wouldn't pay that much for it. Something is worth whatever someone else is willing to trade for it. That isn't waste. As long as both parties in a trade participate voluntarily and have all the correct information they need to judge whether they wish to participate, then there is no waste. Waste would be if the transaction was taxed, because then there would be energy lost to an unwanted byproduct.
How do these things occur? Does Lego sponsor such or are they truly just some doofus's whim?
If the guy were that much of a doofus, he wouldn't be worth the desk. I doubt Lego had anything to do with this project other than making the materials and inspiring those involved. They don't need publicity. They have a quality product that sells itself.
Next time someone asks for such a stupid thing, why not try to talk them into donating to charity?
Next time you feel like making an emotional ('disgusted' was the subject) post because you're jealous that someone has enough resources to spare to get what they want, why don't you spend the time you would have spent posting working for your favorite charity? My favorite charity is Libertarianism, so this post is not a waste because I get to spout my self-centered tripe on a public forum and I feel like I might be convincing someone to go along with my view point. I'm probably wrong, but I value the feeling I get. Did you get your times' worth when you posted about what someone else should do with their resources? I doubt anyone was swayed by your arguments, so if that was your objective, it's very likely your energy was wasted. Heck, from your point of view, my post is a waste because it's not what you want.
Wasting thousands of dollars on a glued together lego desk is so far beyond reasonable that it can't even be expressed in words.
I guess it would have been ok if he'd made just a chair? Or just a lamp? Or a cupholder to protect his dead tree desk? That wouldn't have been far beyond reasonable? It's the audacity of making an entire desk that bothers you?
This desk will probably last for decades, at least as long as a wooden desk, possibly longer. It will provide years of entertainment for all who own it, it serves as an excellent complement to the constructor, the company who bought it, and the employee who receives it. It is a work of art, and it is functional. A normal company would have bought modular cube-farm desks and would not have accepted this employee's demand. Your accusation that this work is wasted is short-sighted and almost as self-centered as my assumption that you care what I think.
Anyway, thanks for playing.
I think when these companies ask people to use specific terminology it's more so they can say, "We tried to tell them, but they insist," rather than because they actually care. If I had a product and people called my competition by my name, I'd be stoked.
huh-huh, that would be cool.
Before putting your machine online you can use "lsof" to determine what ports it is listening to. lsof lists open files, including tcp and udp ports. It exists for most if not all unixes, and is extremely easy to use. For example:
# lsof -i -n | grep ssh
sshd 4828 root 7u IPv4 99669 TCP 10.0.0.1:ssh->10.0.0.111:3625 (ESTABLISHED)
sshd 31752 root 6u IPv4 81997 TCP *:ssh (LISTEN)
#
It looks funny here because I don't know how to make slash comments use <pre>.
To be useful, lsof requires root and that your machine is not already comprimised (or the kernel could be lying to you).
Losing the satelites is a waste, but it's also just a "shit happens" waste, not an "oh my gawd we blew it!" waste.
The efficiency of a device is measured in how much of the input energy got converted into the kind of output energy you wanted. An electric motor converts most of its electrical input into mechanical output with a little heat and noise produced. A space heater converts most of its electrical input into heat output with a little noise going to loss.
In this case, a coroporation is a machine for converting "manpower" into "livelyhood". Had the energy devoted to Irridiam been spent somewhere else, more livelyhood might have been produced, but the loss of a few satelites compared to the livelyhood produced by the company is pretty small. Motorola is still a basically successful company, and in a free market that means enough livelyhood is produced to keep their employees happy.
We destroy old buildings to put up new ones. Living things die so that new ones can grow up in their place, and have a chance to do better than their peers (darwinism). In this case, Irridiam tried to fill a role and proved not to be viable. This is the equivalent of a child dying of some disease so the parents can try again without the burden of keeping the child alive. The parents will mourn their loss, but they will also continue to have children who may be better or worse.
As long as no coercian is involved, things can't be too bad. The stockholders take a calculated gamble, the employees are paid either way, and the customers wouldn't buy equipment if the company had a bad rep. There's no reason for anyone to be too upset.
Actually, the chart includes other kernels: HURD, MACH, and Darwin. The problem is that the question this graph answers isn't clear. If it were to document APIs or ABIs it would need to talk about kernels and libraries. If it's talking about user experiences it needs to include various linux distributions. In any case, it's a monumental effort and I'm glad to have it to refer my friends to when they have questions.
When Netscape went open-source, the mozilla team still started from scratch because the old code was such a mess. If Microsoft released their code, it too would only serve as a reference. The value of giving away the Watcom compiler is not in the binary you get from compiling the source (which you could already get for a fee), but in the freedom to use whatever useful bits are buried in the source itself.
That's one of the main points of Open Source.
I checked it out yesterday. It is the solution to this and several other problems. It anonymizes publishing and downloading, it rewards contributions of space and CPU, and charges for publishing and network usage. It keeps files on multiple machines simultaneously, and it uses cryptography all over the place so that you don't know what's on your machine, how many copies there are, or where it came from.
Mojo Nation is like a distributed data haven. It's also open source and platform independent. An implementation of the client and server has been ported to Win32 and Linux. Setup is not polished yet, but should be soon enough. This project has a LOT of potential, not just for sharing files, but for defeating all the st00pid ideas out there about information control. This project single-handledly demonstrates why the internet makes so many laws obsolete.
Disclaimer: One of the developers is a friend of mine.
I've observed that the natural selection in OSS software improves the quality. It happens at the patch level (the maintainer will commit the patch with the best proven results), all the way to the distribution level (the shoddy distros fall by the wayside...eventually).
Once again, it's that the users have the freedom to choose the best software for the job. The best software will have the most users, and those users will provide the most feedback, encouraging the branch. Lesser software can exist, but in an environment where it has no advantage over superior software, it cannot interfere with progress.
You're right that UI in strategy games is sorely lacking. Actually, it's lacking in almost all games except those where the UI is open (quake). Interesting...
:)
However, for describing locations, pointing devices are critical for speed. Moving from base to base with a gamepad would be easy, but telling your troops to patrol between two points without a pointing device would be agrivating at best, and tediously slow at worst. There's just no getting around that a mouse is the easiest way we currently have of describing relative locations to a computer.
As for the need for keyboards, I demand more from my games than a little action. I want complexity and lots of customization. I want my games to be as flexible as my OS (unix). I want to name my cities in Civ, I want macros in Quake, I want to be able to type numbers in for quantities, I want my games to have consoles (Quake, Dark Reign 2, etc)... I don't play Street Fighter or any other games that can be condensed down to a pad of a few buttons. If the most complex part of the game is the sequence of triangles and circles I push to get my unit to perform a complex move, I'm not interested. In fact, I want the ability to bind a single key to a complex move, not be forced to enter a complex string of keys to perform a simple task. I also want to pick which key does what.
Also, you can tell some strategy games to keep producing units continuously. Look at Dark Reign, and Dark Reign 2. Both have "shift click" to add 5 to the number of a unit you want. Quickly clicking can queue up far more units than you'll ever use.
So far most games seem to focus on one part of the experience at a time: interface, gameplay, graphics, networking, story, etc. If anyone ever does get it all right, I'll be surprised. It'll probably be a community project.
To save readers from my wordy retort, I'm moving the summary I put at the end of my reply at the beginning, which follows:
You're right. The features you named are "missing" in that there is no glossy package you can install as a slam-dunk solution to the general problems involved. On the other hand, for each item, it's either a matter of time (6-18 months away), or the issues involved are much to complex to treat as a simple feature that can be added like a car accessory.
Now the long version.
Taking into consideration your self-reply about these things being available but not production-quality, I would like to add that all of these will be at or above whatever production-quality is _eventually_. Since these things are done when someone volunteers, there is no hurry. If you want it faster, write it yourself. Also, all of these things are a lot closer than they appear:
- SMP - SGI seems to be trying to speed up development of this. Judging from recent slashdot activity it would appear that SGI is trying to bring Linux up to IRIX level in all of IRIX' specialties so they can dump OS development on the community and focus on what they really make money on. I think this is great. It's the whole point of cooperation. Let everyone do what they want and as long as it stays cooperative, everyone wins.
- 3D - Again, SGI seems to be helping out here, as well as CreativeLabs, 3DFX, NVidia, Matrox, and a few other companies. Anyone with 3D hardware to sell wants as many viable platforms as possible, especially stable ones. No, Linux isn't a drop-in replacement for IRIX or an Evans and Southerland workstation...yet.
- Journalling FS - SGI and IBM are both bringing their own filesystems to linux. They aren't even asking the community to do it for them. They're doing it themselves and giving it to us all. It could be a gimmick, but I think they Get It.
- Dynamic kernel patching - I haven't seen any major threads on this on the kernel list, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was on the horizon for 2.7 or so. On the other hand, with the user space linux kernel doing so well, why bother with a patchable kernel when you can spawn a new kernel with its own VM? Certainly this is an over-simplification, but the point remains that the problem a patchable kernel solves has real-world Linux answers right now.
- Real time scheduling - There's a project or two dedicated to RTLinux, and I'm sure they're progressing nicely. No, it's not production quality, if by that you mean 'apt-get install rtlinux' makes your debian box "real time". On the other hand, RT scheduling is a pretty small niche, and it's only being worked on because someone has a need and is willing to do the work themselves, not because we're competing with QNX or something.
- Display Postscript - My first thought is "yawn", but I have to remember that people use computers for many more things than I do. I have no idea what projects are underway to satisfy this goal, but I know that Unix and Linux are similiar enough that you could buy DisplayPostscript for Linux if you really wanted to, and a free version will exist some day. It's just a matter of someone having the time and inclination.
- ObjectiveC - GnuSTEP anyone?
- Management tools - I had a big argument with my previous boss on this one. He wanted a single window he could consult to feel like he was at the helm of a dozen machines. I told him many times that while there are tools that give you that feeling, nothing gives you the control you get from actually having a clue. I probably could have been more diplomatic. The GNU world has NFS/NIS, LinuxConf is its own beast, DebConf is
... interesting, and there are many other solutions. I don't see this as a problem. If you have more than a handful of machines, you're going to come up with a solution of your own that suits your situation. Otherwise, you don't need "integrated and functional" management. Your situation is too simple. It would be like using wharehouse tracking software to manage your household. "Where's the toilet paper? - Hold on, I'll look it up in the database..."
Maybe this is preaching to the choir on SlashDot, but the point of free software is not to compete with commercial software in the marketplace, but to satsify the individual programmer's goals, and work cooperatively on goals the community has in common. Whether those goals are compatible with commercial demand is irrelevant. Some day someone will do something for free that already exists for money. It's not that it can't be done, it's just a matter of time. If you want it now, buy it. If you want it free, write it or wait."Did you know that Wolfenstein had acceptable 3d like graphics and ran on a 286?"
Acceptable? Nevermind resolution or frame rate, the features that future games added are well beyond looks: six-degrees of freedom, arbitrary map geometry, programmable physics, truely dynamic scenery (destroy stuff, put stuff back together), and then on top of all that, the improvements in graphics are beyond looking more realistic. Games now are really more asthetically pleasing than they were "way back when". Look at Need for Speed (a driving game) or Jane's F15 sim, or Unreal. These games are beautiful. It's beyond alpha channels and lens flare.
Maybe your point is that noone has come up with a new plot? So what? There hasn't been a new story since humans started writing stuff down. The Greeks outlined all the possible stories that could be (father-son battle, gods vs mortals, etc), and everything else is just a variation on that. There hasn't been anything new in Hollywood except actors and technology since the 20s. So what?
I don't know what 2% increase you're talking about, but as much as is possible right now, humans are advancing everything they know how. Just because we haven't gotten to Mars doesn't mean a 2% increase in rocket speed isn't important.
If you want to go play Wolfenstein, be my guest, but good luck trying to modify it to change the behavior of the AI, or add new rules to the game, or change the physics, or add the ability to see through a stain-glass window and still have it run on a 286.
Now, throwing out all the technical aspects, there have still been advances in gameplay itself. All the ID games are basic "kill everything that moves", but as many have already posted, there are dozens of games which deviate from this: half-life, thief, and Tomb Raider, and dozens of non-FPS. There are sims, sports games, strategy games, tactical games, RPGs, MMORPGs, and many games that defy classification (tetris clones, for example).
You could take the stance that none of these are original, and that the creators lacked immagination, but why would you want to? There are pleny of fun games, even if they all have roots in greek comedies and tragedies. Life is fractal: it repeats itself at every scale. There's no point in calling that a lack of immagination. It's just too easy to say "this is just like that was."
So, prove me wrong and go make a game noone has ever thought of before with a story noone has heard and technology noone has seen. That would be cool.
The article refers to making programmers accountable for the ways their software is used against other people, not for how good the software is. This is very different from the liability the automobile and tobacco companies are fighting. This is more like the lawsuits being pressed against the gun makers.
That being said, this concept (programmer is responsible for how his program is used) is ludicrous. While it is important for people to be aware of the potential uses of their creations, the leaders who gave the orders to drop the atomic bomb are to blame, not the scientists who designed it or the works who built it.
This issue is very complex. There is a lot of energy at stake, and a lot of confusion about what can and what "should" be done. The only sure way to solve all these problems once and for all is to hold the final decision makers responsible for _their_ actions. If you are holding a gun, only use it in self defense or for sport. While driving a car, respect the power of 2000 pounds of steal going 70+ mph. While holding a baseball bat, don't blame the manufacturer if you decide to hit someone with it.
No matter what power you hold, there is noone better qualified to keep you from abusing that power than you.
Blaming doesn't get us anywhere. The change we want is much deeper than making it more difficult to cause harm. We need to stop wanting to cause harm.
(We also need to agree on what harm is - napster is certainly a grey area in many peoples' minds.)
(Now all the Neal Stephenson haters are gonna kill me. Hooboy. Fan wars. I'm outta here. Ciao!)
ALL OF THEM?
Larry, Curly, AND Moe??
An excellent point (that a lot of OSS or Free Software devlopers "sell out"), and an excellent question (how do I feel about it).
It doesn't matter how I feel. At least in the case of Free Software (as opposed to Open Source), what the developers do doesn't effect the software or the users. If we don't like where the developer is taking the product, we don't have to upgrade.
The whole point of Free Software is that since we (the users) are free to support the product ourselves, we are not dependent on the original developer in any way. Whatever the developer chooses to contribute, we may or may not choose to use, and vice-versa. The products themselves are independent of the developers, and if the developer ceases to contribute his or her efforts "for the good of humanity", another developer may step in and take over. The motivation of the developers is also unimportant as long as the efforts are contributed without restrictions.
That being the case, while there are no guarentees, there are no limitations either.
So, the answer to the question "how do you feel" is "who cares". Noone's feelings are relevant. All that is relevant is what people actually contribute, not what they think of feel.
Talk about a meritocracy!
I started with Turbo Pascal 3.0 on MS-DOS 2.2. I was 10. Don't assume they won't be interested. Admittedly, I didn't have a lot competing for my attention, but I spent a lot of time pouring over the manual figuring out how to draw lines, read the mouse, make linked lists, parse input, and of course draw fractals.
Show them the command line, show them hello world, show them Debian, show them gnome, show them Python and C. If they don't like it, they'll tell you.
(This is on-topic, bare with me. :)
...).
"There is no morality without God."
I'm going to take 'morality' to mean 'conformity to ideals of right human conduct', per m-w.com. I think it's safe to measure right and wrong as judged with the intent to extend the survivability of all involved: the individual his or her family, his friends, his country, the entire human race, animals, plants, the planet, the universe, etc.
In short, "you can't know what's right without God".
Why must your definition of God be limited to what the Bible contains? Yes, the god I learned about in gradeschool fits this definition, but the god that I created for myself when I rejected Christianity also fits this definition.
It is difficult to know what choices favor the entire universe regardless of whether you believe in a Christian god, Jesus, Satan, Allah, or just The Tao. No matter what belief system you subscribe to, you still have to think for yourself and make hard decisions. Christians do not have the only right answers. Like all humans, they even have a lot of wrong answers, like The Crusades, racism (in some cases), and any number of issues where there are Christians on both sides (alternative lifestyles, the role of government, abortion,
There are a lot of people in the world who see Christianity as an overly restrictive lense to view the world through. When you take it for granted that your point of view is the only correct way, you do yourself a great disservice both in degrading the strength of your rhetoric and in limiting your opportunities for learning.
I'm agnostic. I don't care what happens after I die because I can't use that information right now. I would be just as much a fool if I assumed there was a heaven and hell and was wrong, as if I assumed there wasn't and was wrong. If any fanatic tries to tell me they know the things that cannot be known, I am not going to listen to them. If they tell me they think they have some insight into how to make better decisions in life, then I'll keep listening.
So, to bring this back around to the topic at hand, technical people are not better than non-technical people, and neither is the opposite true either. Technical experience has no correlation with a person's ability to know what is the most pro-survival choice. One's choice of religion also does not dictate how well they will make a choice.
I think the problem is that you define morality to be whatever God says, and I define God to be whatever morality says.
How about "there is no morality without self-awareness, responsibility, intelligence, compassion, and love?"
Yes, I like that much better.
Wow, that's a good example. If such a hypothetical pizza parlor existed (and you know they do), and you knew this was the case, would you then suggest banning pizza parlors? Where do you draw the line? Do you require all italian-sounding restaurants to submit to an audit every year?
Another reason why this is a good example is that money laundering itself as I understand it isn't illegal, it's just a way of hiding other illegal activities, like robbery, extorsion, prostitution or counterfitting. Are you going to shut down that pizza parlor because rather than getting their twenty dollar bills from Bank of America, they get their twenties from Bank of Vito?
Napster isn't the problem, our way of thinking about compensation for creating data is. Creating unique data like music and software takes tallent, time and energy. It is a service I am happy to pay artists and engineers for. I don't believe the amount of work they put in changes relative to how many copies of their work exist, or who has access.
I don't have a solution, but clinging to out-dated ideas of copyright isn't helping our civilization.
Incidentally, it's just as useless to persecute Napster as it would be to persecute any other method of violating copyright. No matter how successful you are, you've spent a lot of energy making a few people's lives unpleasant, and many unjustly so, and the problem hasn't gone away. You can no sooner stop copyright violation than you can abolish alcohol, suicide, or spitting on the sidewalk.
If Napster didn't exist, something else would. If The Internet didn't exist, something else would. We can't stop it, and the world would be a bleaker place if we could.
As a related point, I suspect most people who are on the pro-informational-freedom side of this debate are also for the de-criminalization of drugs and prostitution, and are against gun control. All of these positions fall under the same "it's useless to try to oppose it with legislation" argument. Many of the people who hold these postions do not support the activities themselves, but merely recognize the futility in regulating them in this fashion.
Disclaimer: I didn't read the article, I'm just replying.
Yes, responsibility is important. No, this is not helpful. I see this as akin to requiring a city park to hand out magnetic badges for people to beep in and out so that criminals tempted to commit a crime in the park could be tracked down. A nice thought, but horribly impractical. The criminals will either defeat the security in place (steal a badge, clime the wall, etc) or commit their crime elsewhere. Meanwhile, the park is not a very nice place to have lunch anymore, since everywhere you look there are prison-esq security measures.
I think the "anonymous hosting is banned" title, if a little exagerated, is not off the mark (again having not read the article), in that if you have to identify all your contributors, there's no way for them to be anonymous. If you continue to allow people to post anonymously, it's extremely easy for someone to frame you.
The other problem with data publishing controls is that it's motivated by the idea that someone's going to publish a piece of data that will be harmful, and someone needs to be held accountable. This notion of "dangerous data" needs to be looked at a lot more closely. We're not talking about shouting "FIRE" on a crowded internet. That's impossible. We're talking about porn, plans for bombs, etc. Let's look at how and why data can be harmful and solve those problems, not the general problem of controlling all data flow.
Does the story sound at all like the raid on the California office in the Cryptinomicon to anyone else? Small coincidence perhaps since some of the old io.com regulars are mentioned in the books credits? :)
Hi Doug!
Of course, there would be real people behind the cases, so it wouldn't be like the recent high-profile network problems, but still...
If I had a great idea for a new take on ANY hardware, I wouldn't talk about it. Software is well suited to Bazaar-style development, but I would prefer to develop hardware in private. I'd develop the thing in secret, then publish the interface specs. (a la Creative Labs, Matrox, 3DFX, etc).
I may be wrong, but I think with the barriers to entry being so high in the hardware development world, keeping your designs and ideas secret seems to be the only way to have a chance to do anything revolutionary.
I'm still against hardware patents, but I wouldn't go blabbing my ideas on Slashdot, either.
This is getting old:
:)
"I find a lot of Linux arrogance (Setting the max MTU packet size is easy under Linux, just edit the correct text file with a command that EVERYONE should know)."
It's not one command, it's your favorite editor.
The point was that it not only possible and easy, it's well documented and not hidden at all. Linux is a '68 volkswagon bug with its engine hanging out. Macs and WinXX machines are akin to highly computerized and proprietary cars ('98 bug?) which do anything they can to hide the workings of the machinery and keep the owner from fixing their own machine.
Just because the Linux config files don't have pretty pictures on them doesn't make them hard to work with. No matter how you use your computer, the point about the MTU still holds its value. If your NetAdmin needs to change the MTU on your machine, it will be easy (for him) on your Linux workstation, moderately challenging on your Windows machine, and darn near impossible on your Mac.
That Mac may be easy for you to use, but if you ever try to do anything Apple doesn't want you to do or didn't think of, you're out of luck.
The best solution is to run a Mac emulator on Linux.
I wonder when the last time your NetAdmin used your floppy drive was?