I talked to Stephenson while he was here in Boston promoting Cryptonomicon. He said that, contrary to rumor, he doesn't hate The Big U -- he just doesn't want it confused with his current writing. He said he feels it's an okay book, but people are foolish to pay so much for it and he hates to see that happen. For that reason, he's open to doing a reprint, but he wants to find a way that won't mislead people into thinking that it's something new he's writen. If suddenly a new book appears in stores, people may to be confused: "It seems like his writing has regressed about twenty years in this new book. Maybe Stephenson is losing it".
That's not true. "Fair use" is also a concept applied to trademarks. I'm not a lawyer either, but I've found a good web page on the topic by someone who is. Recommended reading to anyone interested in this issue.
Don't break them up along functional or product lines. Simply split them into three or four seperate companies, all starting with exactly the same rights to exactly the same intellectual property. Tell them that they can't merge or form alliances for the next n years. Presto, instant competition.
It wouldn't necessarily have to be the UN. It could be any existing international body, or a whole new one. The point wouldn't be to give them the technology in case they feel like using it -- I doubt that any political organization could respond with the required speed. Rather, set up the system and have it live, with the set policy that any nuclear attack will be stopped.
I'd like to see technology like this developed and turned over to the United Nations with a set policy that any nuclear missle originating in any country going to any country will automatically be blocked.
This is drifting from the topic, but: if for some reason you don't agree with the dependencies the package thinks it has (if it thinks it requires X, or sound, or something, and it really doesn't) is there any way to tell debian's package manager to install the damn thing anyway? I really appreciate this feature of RPM.
Cute, but I don't think you've got enough data points to support your theory. I don't know how you can say that they're "very into" anything based on one and a half examples.
Is there any place on Red Hat's web site or ftp site where they list in detail what has changed between 6.0 and 6.1? Or between all of their releases, for that matter?
Not every project follows the Linux kernel convention of making odd-numbered releases devel and even-numbered ones stable. Red Hat doesn't. (Although historically their.1 releases haven't been the most stable, it wasn't on purpose.)
I didn't mean to imply that this is meant to do anything but provide a convenient way to look up whois info. That's a seperate issue from the whole IP debate.
There's a widespread myth that Linux/Unix is hard to use, and conversely that the Macintosh is incredibly user friendly.
In fact, to some people, those statements might seem self-evident. But they miss an important point -- it's the learning curve.
Linux/Unix has a steep learning curve; the MacOS has almost none. But once you've mastered the paradigm of each, you'll find that both are extremely simple to use. And the added flexibilty of Unix allows you to more easily do things that you can't even begin to do on a more closed platform.
Linux isn't hard to use; it just takes more effort to learn. For me, that effort is worth it. For my grandmother (as the cliche goes), it's probably not. But any efforts to "fix" Linux that take away power just to shorten the learning curve are making a mistake.
The smart card is not a java card. Rather, it's exactly like the cards used for pay phones in europe. (It's possible the electronics are located in a slightly different place, but I don't think so. It looks like you could probably use a spent phone card as an id.) They just hold a session number, and nothing else. When you insert the card, if it isn't attached to a session, you're prompted to log in. At that point, the card gets a session id written to it. If you pull the card out and stick it in another machine, the session goes with you. (You may or may not have to reauthenticate, depending on the settings.) When you log out, the session goes away, and the card becomes meaningless.
It looks from the picture and the price that these are Sun's new Sun Ray devices. They're very cool -- much lighter than X Terms. More info from Sun, including tech info and white papers.
The card holds a number which gets connected to your session when you log in. When you pull it out, the session gets disconnected from that Sun Ray. It continues on the server (until an admin-specified timeout) and you can go to another box, pop it in, and instantly have your session. (Instantly, even with multimedia stuff. It's very cool.) It can be set up to always prompt for the password, or to never do that (bad idea of course!), or to allow a certain number of minutes in which you don't need a password.
These don't look like JavaStations but rather the new Sun Rays. These are a lot different -- the clients are extremely thin. They basically don't run anything. They're just network frame-buffers. Everything is done server-side.
Slashdot Mirror
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PS: Interlibrary loan is your friend.
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2. The machine from which the attack oriented was, as they say, owned.
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Constructive criticism would have been avoiding a flamewar -- coming to OSI and Apple privately
with your concerns.
Eric, this seems an odd statement coming from you. Since when is open-source (any aspect of it) supposed to be done by in private back-room deals?
Personal attacks are (unfortunately, not needless to say) are another matter, but discussion should be public.
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In fact, to some people, those statements might seem self-evident. But they miss an important point -- it's the learning curve.
Linux/Unix has a steep learning curve; the MacOS has almost none. But once you've mastered the paradigm of each, you'll find that both are extremely simple to use. And the added flexibilty of Unix allows you to more easily do things that you can't even begin to do on a more closed platform.
Linux isn't hard to use; it just takes more effort to learn. For me, that effort is worth it. For my grandmother (as the cliche goes), it's probably not. But any efforts to "fix" Linux that take away power just to shorten the learning curve are making a mistake.
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