I noticed that too about Debian. The "atomicity" of the packages under Debian is far lower than that under FreeBSD. One port in FreeBSD might equate to up to four packages on Debian.
It's silly to claim that one or the other has the most packages. I'll still root for FreeBSD though...
I have to seriously disagree. There are a few games out there that have longevity, but most get old after a few months.
Questions: how many music CDs that you bought five years ago do you still listen to? How many games that you bought five years ago do you still play? To answer my own questions: I still listen to 99% of the music I have ever purchased. I don't play any games I purchased more than five years ago. (Okay, I might still play CivI and CivII if I could find them.
S/Key itself is too difficult for the mere mortals to use (it's not that difficult, but you know how obtuse mere mortals can be). But the style of password is excellent. Its basically your standard hash mapped onto a dictionary of English words.
I'm writing a new password scheme for my company's embedded product. I plan to use S/Key style passwords. We will assign the passwords to the users, but they will still be easy to remember. This should allow me to implement a relatively robust scheme without marketing getting wise to it.
Patents have gotten out of control. I am not the world's biggest GNU fan, but in this area I am in full agreement with Richard Stallman. Software patents (along with any patents on algorithms, processes or methodologies) are absolutely despicable.
I don't know who to blame more, the filers for inhuman audacity, or the USPTO for criminal negligence.
We just got hit by a stunner at work today. One of our competitors (number three in the market) has disclosed a patent for a configuration utility identical to the one we (number one in the market) have had for six years. A configuration utility! There's obvious prior art. It's obvious to anyone in the field. And the only innovation they showed was copying verbatum our name for the utility. How much do you want to bet that our company is going to roll over and license this "technology" from our competitor?
The sad part is that patents have become necessary to protect yourselves against other people with patents. No matter how much you abhore them, they're your only defense against those that don't. It's the IP version of Mutually Assured Destruction.
A patent for pop-under ads doesn't suprise me. Nothing surprises me any more. I've been told flat out at work "let's have a brainstorming session and come up with some new patents." I don't have any yet. I fear that I'll be fired if I don't come up with any disclosable ideas soon. Is there any market out there for software engineers that don't believe in software patents?
Microsoft has made so many verbal blunders in this case I'm starting to suspect that they really do want the maximum possible penalty. Their defense strategy is puzzling.
Maybe they really do want Microsoft broken up, so all their top executives can be the Big Cheese at their own BabySoft(tm).
You want to know why the politicians don't pay attention to geeks? Because you're clueless. You're no more informed about the issues than your common couch potato sucking in the CNN lies.
Last week you were all rallying around your privacy rights. This week you pan the guy that killed a bill that would have taken away your privacy rights. The geek coalition is just as malleable with ten second sound bites as the soccer moms and suv dads.
Go find out what this bill is about before you start clamouring for its passage. It serves you a bowl of shit and you're happy because there's a doggy biscuit mixed in. Sheesh! Oh boo hoo that filthy republican took away my doggy biscuit...
I'm definitely going to let Trent Lott know how I feel. I'll let him know that I'm glad he kept my best interests in mind in that den of weasels they call the Senate. I want a real privacy bill, not this half-assed excuse for a placebo.
That's what he says, but I don't believe him. There are absolutely zero clues in Episode IV that Luke, Leia and Darth are related. There are actually negative clues that C3PO and R2D2 were previously involved in these people's lives.
The biggest piece of evidence though is that every other episode is contrived in one way or another.
FreeBSD is both "free from" and "free to". You won't have any fancy GUI admin tools, but so what? You're not paying your IT department to look at eye candy. On the user side, with KDE or Gnome, it's going to be easy to use.
Episode Four is the only one that can stand on its own. It doesn't need a prequel. It doesn't need a sequel. We don't need to know the history of Darth Vader or his convoluted family tree. Everything we need to know was given to us in the first ten minutes.
ESB and RotJ were great sequels, but they cannot stand on their own. Only A New Hope can claim that. And without the preknowledge that Anakin becomes Darth, TPM and AotC seem confused.
If scarcity were the justification for property, then the scarcer the good, the more valuable it would be. But that is not the case. Real estate is more expensive in California than it is in Wyoming, yet the scarcity is the same. There are other factors involved, such as desirability and convenience.
Take a look at apples. California and Japan grow approximately the same amount of apples. Yet the cost of an apple in Japan is probably ten times the cost of an apple in California. Now consider Washington, which grows lots of apples, and you'll find the cost is pretty much the same as it is in California. Scarcity doesn't explain this. But distribution does. It's cheaper to distribute apples to California than it is to distribute them to Japan.
Still not convinced? Take a look at bottled water. The cost has nothing to do with the actual scarcity.
Material property is purely a social convention codified into law. When I am at work I am not at home. During my work hours I have zero need for my living room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. So why is it still my property while I am away? Why can't someone else use it during my working hours? Surely some arrangement could be made where I use my apartment from 12 to 8, you use it from 8 to 4, and someone else from 4 to 12. But that's not the social convention.
Politicians on the open market it always bad for the minority [insert group here]. Let's say we all band together and buy a politician. What prevents them from selling out again to a Microsoft/MPAA/RIAA coalition? Maybe if the politicians stayed bought it might be worth considering.
As long as the majority is apathetic or ignorant, the minority will never be able to afford keeping a politician in its back pocket.
IP and MP (material property) are similar in that they don't really exist. They are both social conventions so useful that they have been codified into law. But we've had ten thousand years to work out the bugs in MP, while IP is still relatively new on the legal scene.
The reason MP doesn't threaten mobility is because of Right of Way. You can't enter my home without my permission, but you can use the road which I own in front of my house without consulting with anyone. A history of right of ways is instructive. They have been abused in the past in much the same way that IP rights are being abused today. But we got over them.
And unless we start a fund to buy ourselves our own politician...
No! Don't do anything to encourage them! You'll only legitimize the concept that politicians should be bought and sold.
What we need instead is to attack, undermine and evenutally abolish this whole notion that power is a salable commodity. There's a difference between the baksheesh used to grease the wheels, and the wholesale auctioning off the wheels themselves.
Perl hasn't been removed. Please read the other article. Perl is being removed from the *base* system. It is still available in the ports. It sounds like it will also be installed by default anyway, just like X11R6 (which isn't in the base system, but still installed by default).
The reasons they are getting rid of it in the base system are numerous. The top reason in my mind is that Perl is growing enormous. It's a damn useful tool, but it isn't necessary for the base system, especially with the size it's getting. If you need it, install it. Simple.
Unfortunately, "loser pays" will not help our current system. The real problem is that the system can be manipulated to string out the trial. If you can afford a three year trial and the other guy can't, you win. The other guy will settle and you won't have to pay his legal fees because you will not have any judgements against you.
But there are some things that might help if they were enforced. Have the judge set the duration of the trial in advance. Allow only one attorney of record per side. And start citing lawyers for barristry.
Your definition of censorship is quite bizarre. Censorship is about the regulation of information, not actions. Are laws against child pornography the imposition of moral values on others? Absolutely! If you don't like those morals, then I invite you to move to a country where child pornography is not considered immoral.
In the vast majority of nations, the distribution of child pornography is equally immoral, and receives equally strict condemnation. That's where the censorship comes in. Child pornography encompasses the creation of the work, possession of the work and distribution of the work. Pretending that its creation should be illegal but its distribution or ownship should not is to misdefine the crime. It's akin to saying theft should be illegal but the fencing of stolen goods should not be.
Did the brave freedom loving geeks at Bletchly Park download the Colossus from the internet? It took blood, sweat, toil and tears to break the Enigma code. It takes nothing more than a finger click to swap the Backhole Boys.
If I purchased the software commercially then I expect the software to be merchantable. Is that so much to ask? I dumbfounds me why anyone can think this wrong.
It's not about warranties, disclaimers, licenses, or anything like that. It's about honesty. If you tell me your product works, I give you money for it, and it doesn't work, I want my money back. Plain and simple. To print on the back of a shrink wrap box that MyFoo Deluxe does X, Y and Z, when it in fact does not do X, Y or Z at all is fraud.
Sure, go ahead and disclaim your warranties. But make sure those disclaimers are disclosed to be before the commercial transaction is completed.
Slashdot Mirror
I noticed that too about Debian. The "atomicity" of the packages under Debian is far lower than that under FreeBSD. One port in FreeBSD might equate to up to four packages on Debian.
It's silly to claim that one or the other has the most packages. I'll still root for FreeBSD though...
Meatloaf's Bat Out Of Hell II
I have to seriously disagree. There are a few games out there that have longevity, but most get old after a few months.
Questions: how many music CDs that you bought five years ago do you still listen to? How many games that you bought five years ago do you still play? To answer my own questions: I still listen to 99% of the music I have ever purchased. I don't play any games I purchased more than five years ago. (Okay, I might still play CivI and CivII if I could find them.
S/Key itself is too difficult for the mere mortals to use (it's not that difficult, but you know how obtuse mere mortals can be). But the style of password is excellent. Its basically your standard hash mapped onto a dictionary of English words.
I'm writing a new password scheme for my company's embedded product. I plan to use S/Key style passwords. We will assign the passwords to the users, but they will still be easy to remember. This should allow me to implement a relatively robust scheme without marketing getting wise to it.
If you make the change interval frequent enough, users will simply append a number to their favorite password:
r binks4
jarjarbinks1
jarjarbinks2
jarjarbinks3
jarja
jarjarbinks5
jarjarbinks6
and back to
jarjarbinks1
...
Patents have gotten out of control. I am not the world's biggest GNU fan, but in this area I am in full agreement with Richard Stallman. Software patents (along with any patents on algorithms, processes or methodologies) are absolutely despicable.
I don't know who to blame more, the filers for inhuman audacity, or the USPTO for criminal negligence.
We just got hit by a stunner at work today. One of our competitors (number three in the market) has disclosed a patent for a configuration utility identical to the one we (number one in the market) have had for six years. A configuration utility! There's obvious prior art. It's obvious to anyone in the field. And the only innovation they showed was copying verbatum our name for the utility. How much do you want to bet that our company is going to roll over and license this "technology" from our competitor?
The sad part is that patents have become necessary to protect yourselves against other people with patents. No matter how much you abhore them, they're your only defense against those that don't. It's the IP version of Mutually Assured Destruction.
A patent for pop-under ads doesn't suprise me. Nothing surprises me any more. I've been told flat out at work "let's have a brainstorming session and come up with some new patents." I don't have any yet. I fear that I'll be fired if I don't come up with any disclosable ideas soon. Is there any market out there for software engineers that don't believe in software patents?
Microsoft has made so many verbal blunders in this case I'm starting to suspect that they really do want the maximum possible penalty. Their defense strategy is puzzling.
Maybe they really do want Microsoft broken up, so all their top executives can be the Big Cheese at their own BabySoft(tm).
You want to know why the politicians don't pay attention to geeks? Because you're clueless. You're no more informed about the issues than your common couch potato sucking in the CNN lies.
Last week you were all rallying around your privacy rights. This week you pan the guy that killed a bill that would have taken away your privacy rights. The geek coalition is just as malleable with ten second sound bites as the soccer moms and suv dads.
Go find out what this bill is about before you start clamouring for its passage. It serves you a bowl of shit and you're happy because there's a doggy biscuit mixed in. Sheesh! Oh boo hoo that filthy republican took away my doggy biscuit...
I'm definitely going to let Trent Lott know how I feel. I'll let him know that I'm glad he kept my best interests in mind in that den of weasels they call the Senate. I want a real privacy bill, not this half-assed excuse for a placebo.
That's what he says, but I don't believe him. There are absolutely zero clues in Episode IV that Luke, Leia and Darth are related. There are actually negative clues that C3PO and R2D2 were previously involved in these people's lives.
The biggest piece of evidence though is that every other episode is contrived in one way or another.
FreeBSD is both "free from" and "free to". You won't have any fancy GUI admin tools, but so what? You're not paying your IT department to look at eye candy. On the user side, with KDE or Gnome, it's going to be easy to use.
If it has a copyright or license, it isn't Public Domain. Duh!
We may some day all be running nvidia chips in most desktops like x86es.
On that day I'll be abandoning the x86.
Episode Four is the only one that can stand on its own. It doesn't need a prequel. It doesn't need a sequel. We don't need to know the history of Darth Vader or his convoluted family tree. Everything we need to know was given to us in the first ten minutes.
ESB and RotJ were great sequels, but they cannot stand on their own. Only A New Hope can claim that. And without the preknowledge that Anakin becomes Darth, TPM and AotC seem confused.
If scarcity were the justification for property, then the scarcer the good, the more valuable it would be. But that is not the case. Real estate is more expensive in California than it is in Wyoming, yet the scarcity is the same. There are other factors involved, such as desirability and convenience.
Take a look at apples. California and Japan grow approximately the same amount of apples. Yet the cost of an apple in Japan is probably ten times the cost of an apple in California. Now consider Washington, which grows lots of apples, and you'll find the cost is pretty much the same as it is in California. Scarcity doesn't explain this. But distribution does. It's cheaper to distribute apples to California than it is to distribute them to Japan.
Still not convinced? Take a look at bottled water. The cost has nothing to do with the actual scarcity.
Material property is purely a social convention codified into law. When I am at work I am not at home. During my work hours I have zero need for my living room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. So why is it still my property while I am away? Why can't someone else use it during my working hours? Surely some arrangement could be made where I use my apartment from 12 to 8, you use it from 8 to 4, and someone else from 4 to 12. But that's not the social convention.
Politicians on the open market it always bad for the minority [insert group here]. Let's say we all band together and buy a politician. What prevents them from selling out again to a Microsoft/MPAA/RIAA coalition? Maybe if the politicians stayed bought it might be worth considering.
As long as the majority is apathetic or ignorant, the minority will never be able to afford keeping a politician in its back pocket.
IP and MP (material property) are similar in that they don't really exist. They are both social conventions so useful that they have been codified into law. But we've had ten thousand years to work out the bugs in MP, while IP is still relatively new on the legal scene.
The reason MP doesn't threaten mobility is because of Right of Way. You can't enter my home without my permission, but you can use the road which I own in front of my house without consulting with anyone. A history of right of ways is instructive. They have been abused in the past in much the same way that IP rights are being abused today. But we got over them.
And unless we start a fund to buy ourselves our own politician...
No! Don't do anything to encourage them! You'll only legitimize the concept that politicians should be bought and sold.
What we need instead is to attack, undermine and evenutally abolish this whole notion that power is a salable commodity. There's a difference between the baksheesh used to grease the wheels, and the wholesale auctioning off the wheels themselves.
Perl hasn't been removed. Please read the other article. Perl is being removed from the *base* system. It is still available in the ports. It sounds like it will also be installed by default anyway, just like X11R6 (which isn't in the base system, but still installed by default).
The reasons they are getting rid of it in the base system are numerous. The top reason in my mind is that Perl is growing enormous. It's a damn useful tool, but it isn't necessary for the base system, especially with the size it's getting. If you need it, install it. Simple.
A POSIX system needs a Bourne compatible shell.
What do they have to gain by removing Perl from the base installation?
45 megabytes for the next generation "Perl Contract". Read the article.
Unfortunately, "loser pays" will not help our current system. The real problem is that the system can be manipulated to string out the trial. If you can afford a three year trial and the other guy can't, you win. The other guy will settle and you won't have to pay his legal fees because you will not have any judgements against you.
But there are some things that might help if they were enforced. Have the judge set the duration of the trial in advance. Allow only one attorney of record per side. And start citing lawyers for barristry.
Your definition of censorship is quite bizarre. Censorship is about the regulation of information, not actions. Are laws against child pornography the imposition of moral values on others? Absolutely! If you don't like those morals, then I invite you to move to a country where child pornography is not considered immoral.
In the vast majority of nations, the distribution of child pornography is equally immoral, and receives equally strict condemnation. That's where the censorship comes in. Child pornography encompasses the creation of the work, possession of the work and distribution of the work. Pretending that its creation should be illegal but its distribution or ownship should not is to misdefine the crime. It's akin to saying theft should be illegal but the fencing of stolen goods should not be.
Did the brave freedom loving geeks at Bletchly Park download the Colossus from the internet? It took blood, sweat, toil and tears to break the Enigma code. It takes nothing more than a finger click to swap the Backhole Boys.
It won't help. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it ain't a goose.
If a commercial firm distributes a "beta" product to the general public through retail channels at retail prices, then it is a retail product
If I purchased the software commercially then I expect the software to be merchantable. Is that so much to ask? I dumbfounds me why anyone can think this wrong.
It's not about warranties, disclaimers, licenses, or anything like that. It's about honesty. If you tell me your product works, I give you money for it, and it doesn't work, I want my money back. Plain and simple. To print on the back of a shrink wrap box that MyFoo Deluxe does X, Y and Z, when it in fact does not do X, Y or Z at all is fraud.
Sure, go ahead and disclaim your warranties. But make sure those disclaimers are disclosed to be before the commercial transaction is completed.