Yes, IP routers make the Internet possible. Ethernet switches are nice, but not essential for the Internet. What does any of that have to do with the usefulness of NAT or firewalls?
You seem to be repeating the popular misconception that NAT is the same as firewalling. In fact, NAT makes firewalling much more complex than it should be and NAT adds no security to a properly designed firewall. You say "There is nothing inherently wrong with port forwarding, it's not that much different then proxying." Are you implying that for a host on one network to communicate with a host on another network, it should expect to always go through a proxy or port forward of some kind? Thankfully, that's nothing like the real Internet and I hope it never gets that bad.
Supposed, the MP5SD, the version with an integrated suppressor, is so quiet that you can hear the action cycling over the muzzle report. Now there's dynamic range compression!
I think this idea has been used on some high end server hardware for some years and is called "transactional RAM." I certainly think it would make sense to apply to all non-volatile storage devices. Maybe it would be easier to use in a hybrid disk/flash design, since it might require less energy to guarantee writes to the flash would complete than to keep a platter spinning. The flash would be used by the drive as part of its write-back cache.
I'm not quite sure what your point is. Are you saying that sites that don't wish to communicate the license terms of the Javascript code they use should not be allowed to do so? That seems pointless and almost certainly legally impossible.
Currently, much of the Javascript on websites has no clear license terms communicated with it, but it would be helpful to many users if the terms were clearer. If you're complying with the licenses of the Javascript you're using on your site, you're not legally obligated to do anything else. You can be as helpful or unhelpful to users as you like, but don't attack others for wanting to be more helpful. If you have no interest in more clearly communicating the license terms, why are you even wasting time in this discussion?
One license notice for an entire site doesn't address the extremely common case of Javascript from multiple free libraries being used. You can't say "our javascript is licensed under the GPL" if some of it is under the GPL, some is under the MIT license, and some under a different one. OTOH, if you put a short license notice in a comment at the top of each file, it's very clear for anyone looking at the source. Putting short license terms in a comment at the top of a source file has been the norm for many years, so it's entirely natural to apply it to Javascript. A browser add on that displayed such a notice would be a convenient bonus, not an essential.
So, since the suggestion in the RMS article is technically superior, I will choose it over yours.
If you're asking whether I'm in favor of more litigation, then the answer is certainly "no." I am in favor of being able to quickly determine the license terms of any source code I come across.
From a purely practical perspective, if I see some interesting Javascript functionality on a web site, I want to know if I can use it elsewhere. Since I design web sites, this is a situation I run into frequently. In many cases, I've discovered that it was free Javascript that was in use, and was therefore able to use it on my site. However, much Javascript on the web has no copyright notice or license terms at all, making it difficult to determine if I can use it. If the simple proposal to put license terms in a comment is implemented, I can much more quickly determine whether I can use some Javascript I run across.
I do think that if Javascript code with a free software license is being used in a way that violates its license, that's a bad thing. Such a situation would hopefully be resolved by someone pointing out the violation to whomever was violating the license, but more formal legal enforcement might be necessary. I am not in favor of (and mostly don't care about) any non-free licenses on Javascript being enforced because I haven't written any and don't plan to do so.
There is already plentyofJavascript in use with free licenses, such as GPL and MIT. The main practical advice from TFA is to make it easier for users to see which license Javascript code is under simply by putting the license terms in a comment, which sounds great to me. Are you saying more transparency is a bad thing?
Now that OSS has become even slightly accepted his usefulness as a supporter of OSS is diminished, so he's taking it to the next level and trying to say all non-free software is bad. Read that carefully, 'non-free'. Not open. In this article he in a round about way attacks 'open' standards that are not 'free' by his definition.
You should read a bit more of RMS's writings before attacking his efforts. If you had, you'd know he's been saying that all non-free software is bad since at least 1984 and that he's never been a supporter of "Open Source." He has not changed his core message in the last twenty years, though he has made mistakes.
His warning about non-free Javascript is entirely consistent with his earlier warnings about non-free software in general. In TFA, he doesn't even advocate using GPL instead of other free licenses, but illustrates a simple way to indicate which license the Javascript code is under.
Right at the top of TFA, RMS says "Some of us refuse entirely to install proprietary software, and many others consider non-freedom a strike against the program." I and many others are in the second category. He has long said he believes developing non-free software is immoral, but he's never attacked anyone else for failing to share that extreme view.
I'll take this problem seriously when someone begins to try and enforce copyright on a javascript code. It will surely happen, but right now most javascripts lack a proper license.
That's almost exactly what the bearded one is saying. Except he's saying we need to pay attention to licenses on Javascript now before heavy-handed enforcement happens, rather than just reacting.
Unless Cutler's team had a fully-formed Windows NT when they were hired by Microsoft, it was at least partly developed by Microsoft. This is some interesting history about its history, though. Of course, it's not the only example. The development of OSX is somewhat similar, since it was largely based on code from NeXT.
Yes, you are exactly right. I can't believe how few people understand this. Apparently, everyone forgets that GNU, started by the Free Software Foundation in 1984, had a very clearly stated goal of replacing Unix with a Free alternative. It was not an accident or mere hobby project and laid the foundations for the success of Linux (Linus didn't write a C library, compiler, or all the *nix userspace tools), the Free BSDs (they all use GNU development tools) and probably every other Free operating system in use today.
Different people wrote the components of GNU, since it was based on the very modular design of Unix, but each of those components was written in a fairly isolated process. This is what Eric Raymond would later refer to as the "Cathedral Model" in The Cathedral and the Bazaar. While Raymond seems to be saying that Linux's "Bazaar Model" of development is inherently better, I find it hard to argue against the success of GNU, especially since Linux probably wouldn't have succeeded without it.
I think Raymond is probably the main person responsible for spreading the myth that Free or Open Source has to be "release early, release often" and proprietary has to be "cathedral-style." Even though he gives examples of both models in the Free software world, he still strongly connects the "cathedral" model with the "commercial" world and "bazaar" model with the Linux world. Although he's not totally incorrect in those characterizations, many people still confuse "commercial" with "proprietary."
I'm convinced that frequency of releases and freedom of code are largely independent. The combination of "release early, release often, and listen to your users" with Free code has proven to be very powerful. However, other Free projects have had success with a "cathedral" style, some developed commercially and some outside of companies. There's a huge range of release frequency in the proprietary world.
Yeah, UDF would probably be the best vendor-neutral choice, but you couldn't just format your device as UDF, plug it into a Windows machine, and copy files to it, since the implementation in Windows is incomplete and buggy AFAIK.
Yeah, if you want to be able to use a file system from both Windows and a Linux-based system, it's much more practical to use either FAT or NTFS than Ext2. I think the real problem is that there's no device class for a virtual file system interface of some kind instead of just the low level mass storage device. Ideally, it would be up to the device how to store the files internally and it would just present a high level interface.
Are you sure that NTVDM would run on non-x86 CPUs, since "Virtual DOS machines rely on the virtual 8086 mode of the Intel 80386 processor"? I used a DEC AlphaPC with Windows NT 4.0 that came with FX!32 from DEC, which could run unmodified x86 win32 programs. However, I'm quite sure that nothing from Microsoft enabled unmodified DOS or win32 programs to run on it.
Your whole argument that it "ran on non-x86 processors" is a complete logical non-sequitur. What does one have to do with the other? You do realize that these two things are not related, right?
You do realize that MS-DOS was written for and runs exclusively on Intel 8086-compatible CPUs, right? It was not written in portable C code. It is inextricably tied to the platform. The only way to run MS-DOS on non-x86 computers is using an x86 emulator.
On the other hand, "A main design goal of NT was hardware and software portability". Windows NT uses a Virtual DOS machine for running DOS programs, but that plays no role in the kernel, drivers, or other essential operating system functionality. Windows NT has run natively on at least Alpha, PowerPC, and MIPS, and Itanium in addition to 386 and x86_64. To run MS-DOS programs on any of the non-x86 ports of NT requires full CPU emulation, not just a Virtual DOS machine.
Or just maybe it's because people expect to be able to see some files when they plug their GPS receivers into their Windows machines. If Windows had an Ext2 driver bundled with it, I wouldn't ever format a USB drive as FAT either.
Typically, the Slashdot summary gets it wrong. The article is called "The 25 Best Alternatives To Your Enterprise Applications & Functions" and describes the list as "some of the most cost effective applications on the market that can easily replace some of your more expensive Enterprise solutions and functions." However, the article confusingly has an Open Source logo prominently displayed and doesn't very well distinguish between Open Source, free of cost, and low cost alternatives.
One place you can draw the line is on what is stored in the file systems of your Free operating system. Although it doesn't bother me a lot that some entirely Free Linux drivers (like ivtv) must load proprietary firmware images onto the devices they drive, I also can't claim my system is entirely Free.
It's not entirely inconsistent to consider the firmware in a ROM or flash chip on a device to be part of the device since the operating system and user need never be aware of the firmware, but only the interface it provides.
A firmware image loaded into a device from a file is part of the device once it's loaded, but it's also part of the host system in that it has to be stored as part of the host system, if in no other way. So, someone committed to having no non-Free code on his system could consistently use devices that contain firmware if that firmware is considered part of the device.
I'm not completely committed to that level of purity. To me, proprietary firmware images loaded by Linux are much less problematic technically and philosophically than proprietary drivers in Linux, but I'd still prefer to use a device that is self-contained, so I'll try to buy such devices in the future.
If you read the entire FA, you'll realize that there are some proprietary firmware images defined as literals in C source files in Linux drivers. These can't be removed easily by either distributors or users and do remain in main RAM as long as the driver is loaded even though the CPU never executes them. The effort by Linux developers to remove all of these embedded blobs is supposed to be completed soon (also in TFA).
It is a valid question to ask whether it's more acceptable to use the proprietary firmware in the ROM or flash of many devices (such as hard drives) but not a firmware image that has to be loaded from a file. Although it doesn't bother me a lot that some Free Linux drivers (such as ivtv) have to load such proprietary firmware images in order to make the device work, it's also not reasonable to claim my system contains only Free software if I have those blobs on it. I do think it's important to have the proprietary blobs separated by package so that it's very clear what's Free and what's not.
I respect your open-mindedness, especially compared to a lot of people in this debate. I also believe that God created everything, but I'm not sure how he did it. I think it's quite likely that it took more than 10,000 years and probably involved evolution. Detailed description of the physical world's history is not a primary purpose of the Bible, so I don't think all of the creation account in Genesis should be taken as literally as many Creationists do. Scientific understanding of evolution is very incomplete and constantly evolving itself, as evidenced by this article. Science in general is a tool we use to discover truth, not truth itself. Maybe as we learn more from scientific observation, we'll better understand how God created the world we see today.
The Christian Bible is composed of many books, written by many people over many centuries for many purposes, all of which are much older than any government acceptance of Christianity. The Nicene Creed is not part of the Christian Bible and the First Council of Nicaea did not decide on a canonical list of Biblical books. You seem to be propagating the myth debunked by this article, which is linked to in the First_Council_of_Nicaea article.
In fact deciding on a canonical list of books in the Christian Bible was a very long and gradual process, starting with Hebrew Bible, which was set long before Christ came along. The New Testament books were added in the first few centuries AD and a consensus coalesced, eventually officially recognized by several councils, but there are a few books that aren't even agreed upon by the major branches of Christianity. For more detail, check out the Bible article.
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Yes, IP routers make the Internet possible. Ethernet switches are nice, but not essential for the Internet. What does any of that have to do with the usefulness of NAT or firewalls?
You seem to be repeating the popular misconception that NAT is the same as firewalling. In fact, NAT makes firewalling much more complex than it should be and NAT adds no security to a properly designed firewall. You say "There is nothing inherently wrong with port forwarding, it's not that much different then proxying." Are you implying that for a host on one network to communicate with a host on another network, it should expect to always go through a proxy or port forward of some kind? Thankfully, that's nothing like the real Internet and I hope it never gets that bad.
Supposed, the MP5SD, the version with an integrated suppressor, is so quiet that you can hear the action cycling over the muzzle report. Now there's dynamic range compression!
I think this idea has been used on some high end server hardware for some years and is called "transactional RAM." I certainly think it would make sense to apply to all non-volatile storage devices. Maybe it would be easier to use in a hybrid disk/flash design, since it might require less energy to guarantee writes to the flash would complete than to keep a platter spinning. The flash would be used by the drive as part of its write-back cache.
I'm not quite sure what your point is. Are you saying that sites that don't wish to communicate the license terms of the Javascript code they use should not be allowed to do so? That seems pointless and almost certainly legally impossible.
Currently, much of the Javascript on websites has no clear license terms communicated with it, but it would be helpful to many users if the terms were clearer. If you're complying with the licenses of the Javascript you're using on your site, you're not legally obligated to do anything else. You can be as helpful or unhelpful to users as you like, but don't attack others for wanting to be more helpful. If you have no interest in more clearly communicating the license terms, why are you even wasting time in this discussion?
One license notice for an entire site doesn't address the extremely common case of Javascript from multiple free libraries being used. You can't say "our javascript is licensed under the GPL" if some of it is under the GPL, some is under the MIT license, and some under a different one. OTOH, if you put a short license notice in a comment at the top of each file, it's very clear for anyone looking at the source. Putting short license terms in a comment at the top of a source file has been the norm for many years, so it's entirely natural to apply it to Javascript. A browser add on that displayed such a notice would be a convenient bonus, not an essential.
So, since the suggestion in the RMS article is technically superior, I will choose it over yours.
If you're asking whether I'm in favor of more litigation, then the answer is certainly "no." I am in favor of being able to quickly determine the license terms of any source code I come across.
From a purely practical perspective, if I see some interesting Javascript functionality on a web site, I want to know if I can use it elsewhere. Since I design web sites, this is a situation I run into frequently. In many cases, I've discovered that it was free Javascript that was in use, and was therefore able to use it on my site. However, much Javascript on the web has no copyright notice or license terms at all, making it difficult to determine if I can use it. If the simple proposal to put license terms in a comment is implemented, I can much more quickly determine whether I can use some Javascript I run across.
I do think that if Javascript code with a free software license is being used in a way that violates its license, that's a bad thing. Such a situation would hopefully be resolved by someone pointing out the violation to whomever was violating the license, but more formal legal enforcement might be necessary. I am not in favor of (and mostly don't care about) any non-free licenses on Javascript being enforced because I haven't written any and don't plan to do so.
There is already plenty of Javascript in use with free licenses, such as GPL and MIT. The main practical advice from TFA is to make it easier for users to see which license Javascript code is under simply by putting the license terms in a comment, which sounds great to me. Are you saying more transparency is a bad thing?
You should read a bit more of RMS's writings before attacking his efforts. If you had, you'd know he's been saying that all non-free software is bad since at least 1984 and that he's never been a supporter of "Open Source." He has not changed his core message in the last twenty years, though he has made mistakes.
His warning about non-free Javascript is entirely consistent with his earlier warnings about non-free software in general. In TFA, he doesn't even advocate using GPL instead of other free licenses, but illustrates a simple way to indicate which license the Javascript code is under.
Right at the top of TFA, RMS says "Some of us refuse entirely to install proprietary software, and many others consider non-freedom a strike against the program." I and many others are in the second category. He has long said he believes developing non-free software is immoral, but he's never attacked anyone else for failing to share that extreme view.
That's almost exactly what the bearded one is saying. Except he's saying we need to pay attention to licenses on Javascript now before heavy-handed enforcement happens, rather than just reacting.
Unless Cutler's team had a fully-formed Windows NT when they were hired by Microsoft, it was at least partly developed by Microsoft. This is some interesting history about its history, though. Of course, it's not the only example. The development of OSX is somewhat similar, since it was largely based on code from NeXT.
Yeah, I'm sure Microsoft has no patents on the much more complex NTFS.
That's very interesting. Now I wish I had one of those AlphaPCs so I could try some 16-bit DOS programs.
Yes, you are exactly right. I can't believe how few people understand this. Apparently, everyone forgets that GNU, started by the Free Software Foundation in 1984, had a very clearly stated goal of replacing Unix with a Free alternative. It was not an accident or mere hobby project and laid the foundations for the success of Linux (Linus didn't write a C library, compiler, or all the *nix userspace tools), the Free BSDs (they all use GNU development tools) and probably every other Free operating system in use today.
Different people wrote the components of GNU, since it was based on the very modular design of Unix, but each of those components was written in a fairly isolated process. This is what Eric Raymond would later refer to as the "Cathedral Model" in The Cathedral and the Bazaar. While Raymond seems to be saying that Linux's "Bazaar Model" of development is inherently better, I find it hard to argue against the success of GNU, especially since Linux probably wouldn't have succeeded without it.
I think Raymond is probably the main person responsible for spreading the myth that Free or Open Source has to be "release early, release often" and proprietary has to be "cathedral-style." Even though he gives examples of both models in the Free software world, he still strongly connects the "cathedral" model with the "commercial" world and "bazaar" model with the Linux world. Although he's not totally incorrect in those characterizations, many people still confuse "commercial" with "proprietary."
I'm convinced that frequency of releases and freedom of code are largely independent. The combination of "release early, release often, and listen to your users" with Free code has proven to be very powerful. However, other Free projects have had success with a "cathedral" style, some developed commercially and some outside of companies. There's a huge range of release frequency in the proprietary world.
Yeah, UDF would probably be the best vendor-neutral choice, but you couldn't just format your device as UDF, plug it into a Windows machine, and copy files to it, since the implementation in Windows is incomplete and buggy AFAIK.
Yeah, if you want to be able to use a file system from both Windows and a Linux-based system, it's much more practical to use either FAT or NTFS than Ext2. I think the real problem is that there's no device class for a virtual file system interface of some kind instead of just the low level mass storage device. Ideally, it would be up to the device how to store the files internally and it would just present a high level interface.
Are you sure that NTVDM would run on non-x86 CPUs, since "Virtual DOS machines rely on the virtual 8086 mode of the Intel 80386 processor"? I used a DEC AlphaPC with Windows NT 4.0 that came with FX!32 from DEC, which could run unmodified x86 win32 programs. However, I'm quite sure that nothing from Microsoft enabled unmodified DOS or win32 programs to run on it.
Actually, "Microsoft initially developed what was to become Windows NT on internally-designed i860-based workstations (codenamed Dazzle), only porting NT to the MIPS (Microsoft Jazz), Intel 386 and other processors later." Also, Windows NT was developed at Microsoft following their work with IBM on OS/2. They hired Dave Cutler who had been one of the main architect of DEC's VMS, but NT was not a joint project with DEC. Microsoft only agreed to support NT on Alpha after DEC sued them.
You do realize that MS-DOS was written for and runs exclusively on Intel 8086-compatible CPUs, right? It was not written in portable C code. It is inextricably tied to the platform. The only way to run MS-DOS on non-x86 computers is using an x86 emulator.
On the other hand, "A main design goal of NT was hardware and software portability". Windows NT uses a Virtual DOS machine for running DOS programs, but that plays no role in the kernel, drivers, or other essential operating system functionality. Windows NT has run natively on at least Alpha, PowerPC, and MIPS, and Itanium in addition to 386 and x86_64. To run MS-DOS programs on any of the non-x86 ports of NT requires full CPU emulation, not just a Virtual DOS machine.
Or just maybe it's because people expect to be able to see some files when they plug their GPS receivers into their Windows machines. If Windows had an Ext2 driver bundled with it, I wouldn't ever format a USB drive as FAT either.
Typically, the Slashdot summary gets it wrong. The article is called "The 25 Best Alternatives To Your Enterprise Applications & Functions" and describes the list as "some of the most cost effective applications on the market that can easily replace some of your more expensive Enterprise solutions and functions." However, the article confusingly has an Open Source logo prominently displayed and doesn't very well distinguish between Open Source, free of cost, and low cost alternatives.
One place you can draw the line is on what is stored in the file systems of your Free operating system. Although it doesn't bother me a lot that some entirely Free Linux drivers (like ivtv) must load proprietary firmware images onto the devices they drive, I also can't claim my system is entirely Free.
It's not entirely inconsistent to consider the firmware in a ROM or flash chip on a device to be part of the device since the operating system and user need never be aware of the firmware, but only the interface it provides.
A firmware image loaded into a device from a file is part of the device once it's loaded, but it's also part of the host system in that it has to be stored as part of the host system, if in no other way. So, someone committed to having no non-Free code on his system could consistently use devices that contain firmware if that firmware is considered part of the device.
I'm not completely committed to that level of purity. To me, proprietary firmware images loaded by Linux are much less problematic technically and philosophically than proprietary drivers in Linux, but I'd still prefer to use a device that is self-contained, so I'll try to buy such devices in the future.
If you read the entire FA, you'll realize that there are some proprietary firmware images defined as literals in C source files in Linux drivers. These can't be removed easily by either distributors or users and do remain in main RAM as long as the driver is loaded even though the CPU never executes them. The effort by Linux developers to remove all of these embedded blobs is supposed to be completed soon (also in TFA).
It is a valid question to ask whether it's more acceptable to use the proprietary firmware in the ROM or flash of many devices (such as hard drives) but not a firmware image that has to be loaded from a file. Although it doesn't bother me a lot that some Free Linux drivers (such as ivtv) have to load such proprietary firmware images in order to make the device work, it's also not reasonable to claim my system contains only Free software if I have those blobs on it. I do think it's important to have the proprietary blobs separated by package so that it's very clear what's Free and what's not.
I respect your open-mindedness, especially compared to a lot of people in this debate. I also believe that God created everything, but I'm not sure how he did it. I think it's quite likely that it took more than 10,000 years and probably involved evolution. Detailed description of the physical world's history is not a primary purpose of the Bible, so I don't think all of the creation account in Genesis should be taken as literally as many Creationists do. Scientific understanding of evolution is very incomplete and constantly evolving itself, as evidenced by this article. Science in general is a tool we use to discover truth, not truth itself. Maybe as we learn more from scientific observation, we'll better understand how God created the world we see today.
The Christian Bible is composed of many books, written by many people over many centuries for many purposes, all of which are much older than any government acceptance of Christianity. The Nicene Creed is not part of the Christian Bible and the First Council of Nicaea did not decide on a canonical list of Biblical books. You seem to be propagating the myth debunked by this article, which is linked to in the First_Council_of_Nicaea article.
In fact deciding on a canonical list of books in the Christian Bible was a very long and gradual process, starting with Hebrew Bible, which was set long before Christ came along. The New Testament books were added in the first few centuries AD and a consensus coalesced, eventually officially recognized by several councils, but there are a few books that aren't even agreed upon by the major branches of Christianity. For more detail, check out the Bible article.