As for debian wanting to strongly support it's beliefs.. I'm all for that. But here's my outsider point of view. I subscribe to the notion that free software/oss is fantastic. I really DO think it's the future.. however, there are packages that are non-free that I *require* to do my work. I don't have time to fuck around trying to get them to work. Part of what makes debian nice is it's package management.
I would be happy if non-free split off to a separate group.. but having the.deb packages available for these things *is* a convenience. IF they aren't there, I'm just going to do it manually and make a mess.
Aren't they? Just think.. how many servers do they have? what kind of bandwidth? why are they doing any of this in the first place? where did they get the money for these court cases.. they aren't cheap? mp3.com is out to get filthy stinking rich, whether it's off advertising or who knows what later.... To deny that would be silly.
And they are free to design such interfaces into windows... but if they are split, the OS division will HAVE to give the same access to those specs that they give to the MS Software company, lettin *anyone* who wants to get into the busines write apps with an *equal* chance as far as windows goes. THe OS will not favour a single app developer, as it does now.
Yes. I DO think it would open things up soon. It may take a year or two.. but that is soon.
They would be forced (by the market..) to be more honest and forthcoming in publishing the UI for their OS. Their product would become an OS.. and they would have to cater to what people want, not to what microsoft wants you to have.
See.. they adjust their OS so they can keep their apps in the market, and adjust their apps to keep their os in the market. Period. This is the heart of what MS does.
So.. as soon as I can run office on Linux, and have a proper win32 api emulated (and it WILL happen), ms would be in ap osition where they actually have to provide something that is technically superior to what is free in order to make money.
All you heard were rumors. There was no fact. Secondly, simply moving their offices to Canada would be pointless. THey are a US registered company. You don't just 'up and move' like that. You cannot. They can't just say 'now we are registered in XXX country/state'. Shareholders have stock in Microsoft, registered wherever it is registered.....
Gecko's traction is not based on gravity, or pressure, and is only kind of related to friction (I'm saying this because I cant' remember exactly what forces are involved in friction).
Scientists recently figured out that geckos have hairs on their feet (billions on each gecko) that they form a very complete contact with the surface they are standing on at a molecular level. Your hand pressing on a piece of glass would have millions of times less actual molecular contact. It is this intermolecular force that keeps geckos attached to the wall or roof. I'm sorry I can't remember the exact term for this force... vander something... or something like that.. it's an attraction between molecules (not electrical)
I believe friction comes from this force as well. It is not so much the rough surface that causes friction, but the rough surface causes more extreme close molecular contact during motion...
Well.. I have to say.. I think in all seriousness, having contracts UP FRONT would be good thing.
Look at cellular phones.. you don't just buy the phone, turn it on, and suddenly 'by turning on this pohone you have agreed to a contract'. No... you have to sign paperwork before they put the phone online.
Of course, there are the pay-as-you-go phones, with no contract... but then again, you don't have a contract.... no guarantees to you either, though you could probably sue the company if the service was discontinued.
So with software? Every tom, dick, and harry should have to sign an EULA and the vendor should ALSO HAVE TO SIGN the eula to witness it. This alone would clue people in to what was going on.
It's a neat tactic.. hiding something so it's not realy in someone's plain sight. Unions have done this in the past.. and still do... how many jobs are union dues deducted automatically from paycheques? The employer has this done for you (because he has to, by union contract). Most employers don't want this. They would rather the union sent a bill to it's members once a month (or better, once every 6 months) for the couple hundred bucks they owe. The reason they don't? Those people would then start to really question waht they were paying all those dues FOR!
It may be our fault but...
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Copyrant
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· Score: 2
Like I said, it may be our fault.. for being complacent.. for still 'buying' the 'software' even though we don't like the terms.... But the things is.... and we would do well to never forget this.... the common man runs this co untry, whether anyone likes to think so or not. OUR dollars are what count, and OUR votes are what can change laws, not corporations..... The law exists for the betterment of society. Business exists to serve society. If either of these is not going our way.. it *IS* within our rights to change it.
Only to a degree. A knowledge of unix and the interfaces it provides.. for many projects, the only reason many people don't do it in C is because they don't know how.
And compiled code is not just 'somewhat' faster than interpreted code, it is many orders of magnitude faster.
Unix is only dos on steroids when you are trying to describe it to someone who sees the only difference as 'unix uses a command line'
Re:something is wrong in that screenshot !
on
Taking On A Spammer
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· Score: 2
Doesn't mean it's offline... though it may.
The computer sitting next to me was moved from dialup to DSL... and as long as the modem is donw, icq netdetect still thinks the machine is 'offline' (even though ethernet link is up)
See those messages encouraging mass spamming in order to get stock volumes up? That's pump 'n dump. A credible public company on the market does *NOT* need to behave like this, PERIOD. There is *NO* reason to do this. Smallcap (penny) stocks that are basically scams (those with many shares are 'pumping' the stock by all this spam, hence creating volume, and an increase in price, and an increase in demand for the stock, and then dumping what they own for moremoney.) That is not what stock is about, and it's illegal.
If this is real, and it certainly *could* be.. two things come to mind.
1) We are brought up to think two wrongs don't make a right. What the person did here is most likely very illegal. It doesn't matter what caused it. It's illegal. (which makes me wonder if he really did it)
2) Screw what we are brought up to think. The net is different things to those of us in the know. The boundaries are different, the rules are different, and what we thing the 'net' really is is more refined and accurate. So.. how can those who don't know make laws against it?
How is ipv6 supposed to take over though? The original standard worked because many adopted it because they desired connectivity. Until ipv6 and surrounding technology becomes NECESSARY for people to get online.. it won't happen. And I fear, even when it does, many will sieze control of it beforehand.
ie: will the days when *anyone* from *any* network could get a block of IP addresses and register a domain ever be back?
In the case of IETF standards (which there really aren't any.. just rfc's...)... the only enforcement is interoperability. If you don't do it the right way.. it won't work. IF you break interoperability with someone else, and they do it by the book, and you don't.. you look bad, not them. Nothing 'forces' you to do it though.
Raw data.. do they define what they mean by this? You wonder why I ask....
In 10Mbps ethernet, the 10Mbps refers to the capacity of the ethernet as a single, baseband channel. at perfect 100% usage, the channel will contain 10 million bits/second. In practice, the maximum amount any single host can transmit, (full sized 1518 byte frames, smallest legal inter-frame gap (9.6uS, or 96 bits) equals about 9.9Mbps. Accounting for ethernet framing, fcs, plus ethernet headers, plus ip & tcp headers, and accounting for tcp acks... the max throughput on ethernet between two hosts doing ftp is about 9.8Mbps. Fine you say... close enough. True. T1 = 1.544Mbps, raw data rate. This translates to near 1.3 mbps (or higher, I forget) after PPP framing and whatever else is in there.
However... take many wireless networking protocols. Using whatever proxim's protocol (whatever they use in their rangelan-II radios)... a raw data rate of 1.6Mbps translates to a max uni-directional broadcast of about 800Kbps. About 600-700Kbps in normal TCp operation.
I've seen 11Mbps wireless gear that only does 5Mbps in useful throughput....
so.. in other words... be wary when someone says 'raw data rate' or 'throughput'... you (and they) will probably be unsure of what you mean.
Also..for any given medium, one has to take into account latency due to (c), the fact that there really IS no such thing as throughput.. a more relevant profile of a link is... How many of what size packet can our setup move with what latency?
10Mbps ethernet again... it's a good example, because aside from the (frame+header)/(data) ratio changing with the size of (data).. it's efficient.
Many wireless devices I've tested aren't so lucky. Some of them perform just great trying to bridge 1518 byte packets, but then you get down to 64 byte... and they drop *way* off (processing bottleneck or something..). In other words... small packets take up much more than their fair share of resources in some devices... so in a common office ethernet, where 75% of the packets are 200bytes or smaller (not 75% of the total data.. 75% of the packets)... perhaps you don't get the throughput you think?
Actually, although these are not your run of the mill pc-based servers, they *are* standard unix boxes (albeit large ones, but not million dollar boxes probably) running standard BIND.
And afiak, they are not all run by netsol... they are running in several different locations, run by netsol as well as several universities and such, spread around the old internet. They are big machines.. but should not cost millions a year to run.
See the problem though? If I was running a root server from *my* big corporation years and years aog, (or from the research lab I head), i would have been honored to do it. But.. if some compnay like netsol is making DUMPTRUCKLOADS of money off what I am providing for free..w ell.. I want CASH! See where this leads?
Actually.. ditching.com,.net, and.org, and getting back to ccTLD's, (even.us.. it's there you know) and having strict registration types (ie: 1 domain per network, period...) and then setting up ANOTHER lookup system for the WWW would be JUST FUCKIN GREAT!
That is patently rediculous. They administer 100% of the cost of registering those domains themselves... why should the amount the domain is used cause more or less to be paid? what ever happened to honor?
It's all because netsol got greedy instead of acting with honor and running the registry with integrity. Now it's all fucked for the rest of us. Even.ca is deregulating. Why? I *LOVED* the ca system!
Registries are not required in order to maintain the other TLD's. A small handful of DNS pointers that have really never changed, and are no different (other than being TLD) than any other are all it amounts to. Starting a new TLD, from a technical point of view, is EXTREMELY EASY. I bet most poeple have no idea how easy it really is. It's the politics that make it hard. One side sees an ideal, whereby geographic names were picked, and countries left to do what they want beneath them.. another sees profit and greed, as in.com, the whole network solutions fiasco. Both think their way is best.
It's sickening that they now have to 'pay' so icann 'non-profit, of course' can 'manage' something that they have no reason to interfere with. Those TLD's were set out a long time ago as THE WAY IT WAS GOING TO WORK. Why should icann collect a fee from these people? Just so it can force them to pass those fees on to their users, for somethign that should be free in the first place?
The important thing to remember is not to get too technical. At a certain level, of course we can tell the message didn't come from IBM. But... The guy sending the spam. a) new that he was making his messages appear to come from IBM.net to the average user. b) was probably doing this without authority from ibm.net c) Was doing this for the express purpose of misleading the recipients of the spam into reading the spam. THIS is the really bad part. It's fraud.
He doesn't have a problem with them wriging software and selling it. (or at least, that's not what he's talking about here).
RMS is saying, simply, that if you want to call it OPEN SOURCE, or FREE SOFTWARE, then you must MEET THE DEFINITION, not just use the words to dupe people into thinking you are playing the same ball game as everyone else.
Motif is not OSS, even with this new license, so why should they have the privelege of calling it that?
Really.. he's not knocking the fact that they hand out source.. that's a good thing.. he's knocking the fact that they are misrepresenting themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
As for debian wanting to strongly support it's beliefs.. I'm all for that. But here's my outsider point of view.
.deb packages available for these things *is* a convenience.
I subscribe to the notion that free software/oss is fantastic. I really DO think it's the future.. however, there are packages that are non-free that I *require* to do my work. I don't have time to fuck around trying to get them to work. Part of what makes debian nice is it's package management.
I would be happy if non-free split off to a separate group.. but having the
IF they aren't there, I'm just going to do it manually and make a mess.
Aren't they? Just think.. how many servers do they have? what kind of bandwidth? why are they doing any of this in the first place? where did they get the money for these court cases.. they aren't cheap? mp3.com is out to get filthy stinking rich, whether it's off advertising or who knows what later....
To deny that would be silly.
And they are free to design such interfaces into windows... but if they are split, the OS division will HAVE to give the same access to those specs that they give to the MS Software company, lettin *anyone* who wants to get into the busines write apps with an *equal* chance as far as windows goes. THe OS will not favour a single app developer, as it does now.
Yes. I DO think it would open things up soon. It may take a year or two.. but that is soon.
They would be forced (by the market..) to be more honest and forthcoming in publishing the UI for their OS. Their product would become an OS.. and they would have to cater to what people want, not to what microsoft wants you to have.
See.. they adjust their OS so they can keep their apps in the market, and adjust their apps to keep their os in the market. Period. This is the heart of what MS does.
So.. as soon as I can run office on Linux, and have a proper win32 api emulated (and it WILL happen), ms would be in ap osition where they actually have to provide something that is technically superior to what is free in order to make money.
All you heard were rumors. There was no fact.
Secondly, simply moving their offices to Canada would be pointless. THey are a US registered company. You don't just 'up and move' like that. You cannot.
They can't just say 'now we are registered in XXX country/state'. Shareholders have stock in Microsoft, registered wherever it is registered.....
Extremely directional. Depending on the antenna.. could be 30 degrees or less.. probably less.
So it's not a 2 mile radius.. it's a 2 mile point-point link.
Gecko's traction is not based on gravity, or pressure, and is only kind of related to friction (I'm saying this because I cant' remember exactly what forces are involved in friction).
Scientists recently figured out that geckos have hairs on their feet (billions on each gecko) that they form a very complete contact with the surface they are standing on at a molecular level. Your hand pressing on a piece of glass would have millions of times less actual molecular contact.
It is this intermolecular force that keeps geckos attached to the wall or roof. I'm sorry I can't remember the exact term for this force... vander something... or something like that.. it's an attraction between molecules (not electrical)
I believe friction comes from this force as well. It is not so much the rough surface that causes friction, but the rough surface causes more extreme close molecular contact during motion...
Well.. I have to say.. I think in all seriousness, having contracts UP FRONT would be good thing.
Look at cellular phones.. you don't just buy the phone, turn it on, and suddenly 'by turning on this pohone you have agreed to a contract'. No... you have to sign paperwork before they put the phone online.
Of course, there are the pay-as-you-go phones, with no contract... but then again, you don't have a contract.... no guarantees to you either, though you could probably sue the company if the service was discontinued.
So with software? Every tom, dick, and harry should have to sign an EULA and the vendor should ALSO HAVE TO SIGN the eula to witness it. This alone would clue people in to what was going on.
It's a neat tactic.. hiding something so it's not realy in someone's plain sight.
Unions have done this in the past.. and still do... how many jobs are union dues deducted automatically from paycheques? The employer has this done for you (because he has to, by union contract). Most employers don't want this. They would rather the union sent a bill to it's members once a month (or better, once every 6 months) for the couple hundred bucks they owe. The reason they don't? Those people would then start to really question waht they were paying all those dues FOR!
Like I said, it may be our fault.. for being complacent.. for still 'buying' the 'software' even though we don't like the terms.... But the things is.... and we would do well to never forget this.... the common man runs this co untry, whether anyone likes to think so or not. OUR dollars are what count, and OUR votes are what can change laws, not corporations..... The law exists for the betterment of society. Business exists to serve society. If either of these is not going our way.. it *IS* within our rights to change it.
Only to a degree.
A knowledge of unix and the interfaces it provides.. for many projects, the only reason many people don't do it in C is because they don't know how.
And compiled code is not just 'somewhat' faster than interpreted code, it is many orders of magnitude faster.
Unix is only dos on steroids when you are trying to describe it to someone who sees the only difference as 'unix uses a command line'
Doesn't mean it's offline... though it may.
The computer sitting next to me was moved from dialup to DSL... and as long as the modem is donw, icq netdetect still thinks the machine is 'offline' (even though ethernet link is up)
See those messages encouraging mass spamming in order to get stock volumes up? That's pump 'n dump. A credible public company on the market does *NOT* need to behave like this, PERIOD. There is *NO* reason to do this.
Smallcap (penny) stocks that are basically scams (those with many shares are 'pumping' the stock by all this spam, hence creating volume, and an increase in price, and an increase in demand for the stock, and then dumping what they own for moremoney.)
That is not what stock is about, and it's illegal.
If this is real, and it certainly *could* be.. two things come to mind.
1) We are brought up to think two wrongs don't make a right. What the person did here is most likely very illegal. It doesn't matter what caused it. It's illegal. (which makes me wonder if he really did it)
2) Screw what we are brought up to think. The net is different things to those of us in the know. The boundaries are different, the rules are different, and what we thing the 'net' really is is more refined and accurate. So.. how can those who don't know make laws against it?
How is ipv6 supposed to take over though? The original standard worked because many adopted it because they desired connectivity. Until ipv6 and surrounding technology becomes NECESSARY for people to get online.. it won't happen.
And I fear, even when it does, many will sieze control of it beforehand.
ie: will the days when *anyone* from *any* network could get a block of IP addresses and register a domain ever be back?
In the case of IETF standards (which there really aren't any.. just rfc's...)...
the only enforcement is interoperability.
If you don't do it the right way.. it won't work.
IF you break interoperability with someone else, and they do it by the book, and you don't.. you look bad, not them. Nothing 'forces' you to do it though.
Raw data.. do they define what they mean by this?
You wonder why I ask....
In 10Mbps ethernet, the 10Mbps refers to the capacity of the ethernet as a single, baseband channel. at perfect 100% usage, the channel will contain 10 million bits/second.
In practice, the maximum amount any single host can transmit, (full sized 1518 byte frames, smallest legal inter-frame gap (9.6uS, or 96 bits) equals about 9.9Mbps. Accounting for ethernet framing, fcs, plus ethernet headers, plus ip & tcp headers, and accounting for tcp acks... the max throughput on ethernet between two hosts doing ftp is about 9.8Mbps.
Fine you say... close enough. True.
T1 = 1.544Mbps, raw data rate. This translates to near 1.3 mbps (or higher, I forget) after PPP framing and whatever else is in there.
However... take many wireless networking protocols. Using whatever proxim's protocol (whatever they use in their rangelan-II radios)... a raw data rate of 1.6Mbps translates to a max uni-directional broadcast of about 800Kbps. About 600-700Kbps in normal TCp operation.
I've seen 11Mbps wireless gear that only does 5Mbps in useful throughput....
so.. in other words... be wary when someone says 'raw data rate' or 'throughput'... you (and they) will probably be unsure of what you mean.
Also..for any given medium, one has to take into account latency due to (c), the fact that there really IS no such thing as throughput.. a more relevant profile of a link is...
How many of what size packet can our setup move with what latency?
10Mbps ethernet again... it's a good example, because aside from the (frame+header)/(data) ratio changing with the size of (data).. it's efficient.
Many wireless devices I've tested aren't so lucky. Some of them perform just great trying to bridge 1518 byte packets, but then you get down to 64 byte... and they drop *way* off (processing bottleneck or something..). In other words... small packets take up much more than their fair share of resources in some devices... so in a common office ethernet, where 75% of the packets are 200bytes or smaller (not 75% of the total data.. 75% of the packets)... perhaps you don't get the throughput you think?
Why am I on this rant?
Cheers.
D
Actually, although these are not your run of the mill pc-based servers, they *are* standard unix boxes (albeit large ones, but not million dollar boxes probably) running standard BIND.
And afiak, they are not all run by netsol... they are running in several different locations, run by netsol as well as several universities and such, spread around the old internet. They are big machines.. but should not cost millions a year to run.
See the problem though? If I was running a root server from *my* big corporation years and years aog, (or from the research lab I head), i would have been honored to do it. But.. if some compnay like netsol is making DUMPTRUCKLOADS of money off what I am providing for free..w ell.. I want CASH!
See where this leads?
Actually.. ditching .com, .net, and .org, and getting back to ccTLD's, (even .us.. it's there you know) and having strict registration types (ie: 1 domain per network, period...) and then setting up ANOTHER lookup system for the WWW would be JUST FUCKIN GREAT!
That is patently rediculous. They administer 100% of the cost of registering those domains themselves... why should the amount the domain is used cause more or less to be paid? what ever happened to honor?
It's all because netsol got greedy instead of acting with honor and running the registry with integrity. Now it's all fucked for the rest of us. .ca is deregulating. Why? I *LOVED* the ca system!
Even
Registries are not required in order to maintain the other TLD's. A small handful of DNS pointers that have really never changed, and are no different (other than being TLD) than any other are all it amounts to. .com, the whole network solutions fiasco. Both think their way is best.
Starting a new TLD, from a technical point of view, is EXTREMELY EASY. I bet most poeple have no idea how easy it really is. It's the politics that make it hard.
One side sees an ideal, whereby geographic names were picked, and countries left to do what they want beneath them.. another sees profit and greed, as in
It's sickening that they now have to 'pay' so icann 'non-profit, of course' can 'manage' something that they have no reason to interfere with. Those TLD's were set out a long time ago as THE WAY IT WAS GOING TO WORK.
Why should icann collect a fee from these people? Just so it can force them to pass those fees on to their users, for somethign that should be free in the first place?
The important thing to remember is not to get too technical.
At a certain level, of course we can tell the message didn't come from IBM.
But...
The guy sending the spam.
a) new that he was making his messages appear to come from IBM.net to the average user.
b) was probably doing this without authority from ibm.net
c) Was doing this for the express purpose of misleading the recipients of the spam into reading the spam. THIS is the really bad part. It's fraud.
He doesn't have a problem with them wriging software and selling it. (or at least, that's not what he's talking about here).
RMS is saying, simply, that if you want to call it OPEN SOURCE, or FREE SOFTWARE, then you must MEET THE DEFINITION, not just use the words to dupe people into thinking you are playing the same ball game as everyone else.
Motif is not OSS, even with this new license, so why should they have the privelege of calling it that?
Really.. he's not knocking the fact that they hand out source.. that's a good thing.. he's knocking the fact that they are misrepresenting themselves.