> The way I see it is that Open Source is only free if your time isn't worth anything.
Gee, I wonder where you heard that line.
And I wonder how you feel about all the suckers that have had their networks fuxored by the spate of WinWorms over the past few months. What is their time worth?
> > Also maybe someone should point out that Apache actually gained 0.54% relative market share in the past month, while Microsoft lost 0.21%. In fact, September 2003 looks like it was the Best month ever for Apache so far.
> How do you know people aren't running Apache on Windows 2003?
That's the whole problem with this thing. It would be trivially easy for Netcraft to post platform share vs time just as they do for server share, but for some reason they don't. All they ever say about Linux is cast in terms of some narrow slice of the data, such as the current report, which is a method highly subject to scumming for spinnable results.
Is this 5% notable, or is it just more Gartner-style FUD-for-hire? We aren't given enough data to decide, which for some of us doesn't inspire much confidence.
> Yes, there are some cool examples. However, if a person jumbles up the letters of a word, knowing what the original word is, they may be subconscieously keeping a pattern which denotes the original word. This pattern is how we read. Changing the letters' order in a more mechanical way (as was done by the researchers at British Columbia) seems to produce less readable text.
Notice that fixing the first and last letters of the words means that all words of three are fewer letters remain unchanged, and words of four letters never suffer anything more than a swap of the two middle letters, which makes them an easy guess. This means that most of the "function words" that define the structure of a sentence remain unchanged or nearly so, with the result that you only need to decipher the "content words" to pin down the details of what the sentence says.
Word length in English follows Zipf's Law, at least approximately. The result is a sort of pseudo- Huffman coding for text, where the most common elements require the least representational space.
Let's look at your paragraph with wildcards replacing the words of five or more characters:
Yes, there are some cool *. *, if a * * up the * of a word, * what the * word is, they may be * * a * * * the * word. This * is how we read. * the * * in a more * way (as was done by the * at * *) * to * less * text.
If I leave in the initial capitals that flag proper nouns and the terminal s's that serve as inflections, the structure becomes even clearer:
Yes, * are some cool *s. *, if a * *s up the *s of a word, * what the * word is, they may be * * a * * *s the * word. This * is how we read. * the *s' * in a more * way (as was done by the *s at B* C*) *s to * less * text.
Except for one spot where there are five asterisks in a run of six words, the basic structure is pretty clear, and in fact you can get a basic idea of the subject matter as given away by the words "word" (three times!), "read", and "text".
The phenomenon is scarcely interesting once you recognize that humans read (and hear) on the basis of loose pattern matching greatly constrained by context and other expectations, rather than by deciphering the text one character at a time to build up words and sentences the way a computer program might. Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" told us most of what there is to know about the psychomechanics of reading well over a hundred years ago.
BTW, I have also observed what you're saying. The first example of this that I got had pretty restricted scrambling in even the longer words, with nothing more than two places from where it belonged, but some of the later examples had more vigorous scrambling, sometimes displacing a letter by five or six positions, and those words were much harder to read, though the context still helped greatly.
> Does anyone else get the feeling that this is a vapour-ware announcement (a la Microsoft) designed to delay or prevent people from purchasing the 64-bit AMD processors?
Total installs: 43,144,374(100%) Of those Windows2003: 185,000(0.4%) Of those switched from Linux: ~ 9,500(0.002%)
In the meantime...
Apache runs: 27388860 (63.98%) All IIS combined run: 10165745 (23.75%) (-5.42% compared to Sep2002, -3.70% compared to Apr2002)
Yep, MS is stealing from Linux, but for some reason has still suffered a steady decline for the past year and a half.
Also, they mention the number of Linux sites stolen by Windows, but never not the number of Windows sites stolen by Linux. Does that mean that none were stolen, or is Netcraft just another Gartner-style FUD-for-pay enterprise?
Numbers don't lie, but data scummers certainly do. Let's see how this trend turns out in the long run.
> Sorry it's offtopic, but... This is EXACTLY why firewalls are virtually useless on corporate networks. I have gotten in so many arguments with so-called "security experts" that are convinced they don't need to bother with keeping internal machines up to date, because the magic of the firewall will protect them. Instead, they don't do much more than foul up legitimate traffic and lead management into a false sense of security.
Brunnhilde had a firewall too, and got knocked up all the same.
(Tell your security gurus to put that in their pipes and smoke it.)
> Hubble is hardly Earth-based... tell that to the astronauts that routinely have to service it at amazing price and effort!
Ah, but the conspirators just slipped up and admitted that the space program is a fraud, with the simulations filmed right here on earth, probably in Studio 51.
> The story is also on space.com. they also have a article showing how to find Uranus in the sky - it is quite close to Mars at the moment. Perhaps we should start calling it the 6th planet at/. just to avoid tedious jokes..
If you want to avoid tedious jokes, you can start by avoids phrases like "how to find Uranus".
> They just felt silly writing their legal briefs for their antitrust suit again Microsoft using Microsoft Word. To say nothing about how easy it would be for M$ to put backdoors in the software and use it against them...
Ah, self-modifying legal briefs... Look for them in the next release of MS Word.
> SCO's market performance should be a reality check for ALL of us (myself included) who oppose them and their actions: the world outside thinks they have been doing the right thing, and has bought their stock because of it.
No, it only means someone thinks the stock is worth buying. That may be clueless home traders who think of the investment as a lottery ticket, or it may be insiders/puppetmasters who can afford to spill cash to keep the prices up. (See the comments about "thinly traded stock" elsewhere under this story.)
> The litigious nature of this society is drawing it into a very frightening pattern of litigating for profit.
Only the details are new... they used to hide in a bush until you came walking down the road, at which point they jumped out waving their sword and crying "Half your pack belongs to me!", and you could either draw your own sword or else hand over the goods without a fight.
Now we use lawyers instead of swords, but the basic concept hasn't changed. And there's a potential for lots of profit, if you're good enough with your sword and the shire reeve doesn't string you up.
The meme for the 21st Century seems to be "if your product is faulty, abuse IP laws to squash anyone who mentions it", rather than, say, fixing the damn problem.
Slashdot Mirror
> The way I see it is that Open Source is only free if your time isn't worth anything.
Gee, I wonder where you heard that line.
And I wonder how you feel about all the suckers that have had their networks fuxored by the spate of WinWorms over the past few months. What is their time worth?
> These "In Soviet Russia" jokes long lost their welcome a long time ago.
In Soviet Russia, jokes complain about people getting old.
Linux poops on Netcraft.
> > Also maybe someone should point out that Apache actually gained 0.54% relative market share in the past month, while Microsoft lost 0.21%. In fact, September 2003 looks like it was the Best month ever for Apache so far.
> How do you know people aren't running Apache on Windows 2003?
That's the whole problem with this thing. It would be trivially easy for Netcraft to post platform share vs time just as they do for server share, but for some reason they don't. All they ever say about Linux is cast in terms of some narrow slice of the data, such as the current report, which is a method highly subject to scumming for spinnable results.
Is this 5% notable, or is it just more Gartner-style FUD-for-hire? We aren't given enough data to decide, which for some of us doesn't inspire much confidence.
If I leave in the initial capitals that flag proper nouns and the terminal s's that serve as inflections, the structure becomes even clearer:Except for one spot where there are five asterisks in a run of six words, the basic structure is pretty clear, and in fact you can get a basic idea of the subject matter as given away by the words "word" (three times!), "read", and "text".> Yes, there are some cool examples. However, if a person jumbles up the letters of a word, knowing what the original word is, they may be subconscieously keeping a pattern which denotes the original word. This pattern is how we read. Changing the letters' order in a more mechanical way (as was done by the researchers at British Columbia) seems to produce less readable text.
Notice that fixing the first and last letters of the words means that all words of three are fewer letters remain unchanged, and words of four letters never suffer anything more than a swap of the two middle letters, which makes them an easy guess. This means that most of the "function words" that define the structure of a sentence remain unchanged or nearly so, with the result that you only need to decipher the "content words" to pin down the details of what the sentence says.
Word length in English follows Zipf's Law, at least approximately. The result is a sort of pseudo- Huffman coding for text, where the most common elements require the least representational space.
Let's look at your paragraph with wildcards replacing the words of five or more characters:
The phenomenon is scarcely interesting once you recognize that humans read (and hear) on the basis of loose pattern matching greatly constrained by context and other expectations, rather than by deciphering the text one character at a time to build up words and sentences the way a computer program might. Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" told us most of what there is to know about the psychomechanics of reading well over a hundred years ago.
BTW, I have also observed what you're saying. The first example of this that I got had pretty restricted scrambling in even the longer words, with nothing more than two places from where it belonged, but some of the later examples had more vigorous scrambling, sometimes displacing a letter by five or six positions, and those words were much harder to read, though the context still helped greatly.
> I don't use Linux because it's an unneccessary pain in the ass to do things with it.
Maybe this would be a good time to get specific about what's hard to do on Linux when you're using it for your Web server.
> Does anyone else get the feeling that this is a vapour-ware announcement (a la Microsoft) designed to delay or prevent people from purchasing the 64-bit AMD processors?
Maybe they'll market it as the Pentium "ME 2"...
Also, they mention the number of Linux sites stolen by Windows, but never not the number of Windows sites stolen by Linux. Does that mean that none were stolen, or is Netcraft just another Gartner-style FUD-for-pay enterprise?
Numbers don't lie, but data scummers certainly do. Let's see how this trend turns out in the long run.
> Sorry it's offtopic, but... This is EXACTLY why firewalls are virtually useless on corporate networks. I have gotten in so many arguments with so-called "security experts" that are convinced they don't need to bother with keeping internal machines up to date, because the magic of the firewall will protect them. Instead, they don't do much more than foul up legitimate traffic and lead management into a false sense of security.
Brunnhilde had a firewall too, and got knocked up all the same.
(Tell your security gurus to put that in their pipes and smoke it.)
One suspects that the bong played a bigger role in this project than the drums did.
> Hubble is hardly Earth-based... tell that to the astronauts that routinely have to service it at amazing price and effort!
Ah, but the conspirators just slipped up and admitted that the space program is a fraud, with the simulations filmed right here on earth, probably in Studio 51.
> With so much to learn, we must hope that NASA will probe the depths of Uranus soon.
Ah, so those aliens who keep abducting people are astronomers!
> The story is also on space.com. they also have a article showing how to find Uranus in the sky - it is quite close to Mars at the moment. Perhaps we should start calling it the 6th planet at
If you want to avoid tedious jokes, you can start by avoids phrases like "how to find Uranus".
Fortunately you didn't say "with both hands"...
> "Imagine in 20 years when this makes the front page of Slashdot on a Saturday morning at 1am. I bet no one will see it."
And if he just now thought of it in 2003 he'd announce it on Slashdot and have it modded down to "-1, troll".
> They just felt silly writing their legal briefs for their antitrust suit again Microsoft using Microsoft Word. To say nothing about how easy it would be for M$ to put backdoors in the software and use it against them...
Ah, self-modifying legal briefs... Look for them in the next release of MS Word.
> Proprietary software can also adhere to an open standard.
Where the operative word is "can".
> SCO's market performance should be a reality check for ALL of us (myself included) who oppose them and their actions: the world outside thinks they have been doing the right thing, and has bought their stock because of it.
No, it only means someone thinks the stock is worth buying. That may be clueless home traders who think of the investment as a lottery ticket, or it may be insiders/puppetmasters who can afford to spill cash to keep the prices up. (See the comments about "thinly traded stock" elsewhere under this story.)
> SCO thought IBM would give in early on but this hasn't happened.
It's kind of like when you were playing D&D and your halfling thief back-stabbed a sleeping dragon... and missed.
Now you're all alone in a room full of piles and piles of treasure, and one big angry dragon.
> The litigious nature of this society is drawing it into a very frightening pattern of litigating for profit.
Only the details are new... they used to hide in a bush until you came walking down the road, at which point they jumped out waving their sword and crying "Half your pack belongs to me!", and you could either draw your own sword or else hand over the goods without a fight.
Now we use lawyers instead of swords, but the basic concept hasn't changed. And there's a potential for lots of profit, if you're good enough with your sword and the shire reeve doesn't string you up.
> > I don't think that their systems are faulty. I think they work as designed.
> Its not a bug. Its a feature!
It's not a President, it's a "President"!
> if implemented properly, could revolutionise governance in general - pity it's being so badly implemented thus far.
I think "revolutionise governance" is exactly the problem most of us are worried about.
The meme for the 21st Century seems to be "if your product is faulty, abuse IP laws to squash anyone who mentions it", rather than, say, fixing the damn problem.
> many of our Elderly (at least here in the good 'ole USA) cannot afford their medicine due to Pharma charging them out the Wazoo
And the feds enforcing an artificial scarcity by trying to seal the Canadian border against otherwise legal drug sales.