Re:Yeh but Linux is actually better...
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Free Solaris 8
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· Score: 2
When I get a new Sun box I have to spend about a week compiling and installing essential software. That's partly because most software these days is designed to "just work" on Linux, and partly because Sun is lazy in installing useful software.
That's very, very odd. First of all, almost anything interesting third party stuff nowadays is as simple as:./configure; make install; on both Solaris and Linux (or xmkmf; make install for X stuff).
Second, if you spend a week compiling and installing essential software for each new Sun box, you're a crappy admin. That's what NFS is for. And even if you can't use NFS if the machine is at its destination, you'd use NFS after you've installed the OS to mount a disk with the "essential software" and copy it over. And if you have to go to a remote, netless site to do the install, well, that's why they have tape drives - and CD burners. That's the same procedure you'd follow if you install a new Linux machine, or a new SGI machine, or whatever.
Solaris may be more robust in some ways, but the fact is that they simply cannot compete well against Linux.
Uhm, can you back this claim up with some, uhm, "facts"?
I wouldn't say you are wrong, but there's no point in stating unfounded things like this.
They're playing catch-up now against an OS with much greater potential and much greater momentum.
Yeah, sure. "catch-up". Dream on.
-- Abigail
Re:What are the Differences?
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Free Solaris 8
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· Score: 2
The various Linux distributions go another step. Theoretically, Solaris 8 will finally ship with Perl!
Distributions don't decide what is "better". You can easily make a Solaris distribution that includes most of the "goodies" that you find in a Linux distribution. However, there's less need for it. While Linux is quite popular as a toy at home, few people will use Solaris at home. Sun's hard- and software is more found in corperate environments where people tend to install more on a 'if needed' bases. What good does web mirroring software do, if you don't mirror web sites? Why bother with GIMP if the marketing drones have Windows PCs on their desks? Well written free software tends to run fine on both Linux and Solaris, thanks to tools like GNUs configure.
What I can do with Sun/Solaris, and were Linux is trailing (hopefully, not for long) is the situation where your N-CPU machine is no longer up to the task, and you order an M-CPU machine. The new machine comes in the morning, you boot from the install server, make a disk layout, install the OS, run your netconfig script, mount the disk(s) which have/usr/local,/home and other shared stuff, and be operational before lunch. That works for M up to 64.
Um, maybe 'cause a) Windows doesn't run on Sparc and b) Solaris on x86 (at least last time I checked which was a while ago), was, well, lacking in many ways (device drivers, speed, applications...)
I would say that Solaris on x86 is far more stable than Windows, and not significant slower than other Unices on x86. At least not according to my experiences. As for price, Solaris x86 has been available for a nominal fee (something like $10) for non-commercial use for quite some time. Which is a lot cheaper than say, a Red Hat CD set.
I've no idea why this project is being done. The current Perl documentation consists of about 1200+ pages of documentation. Except for the 10 files that make the "faq", all the documentation is released under the same conditions as Perl. That is, if you wish, under the GPL. So, the license cannot be a reason to start this project. Unless you want another license than either the GPL or the Artistic license.
Or is it that you do not like the current documentation, and you think you can do better? But given that the current documentation is maintained by the same people developping perl, some of them authors of books like "Programming Perl" and "The Perl Cookbook", and including Larry Wall himself, and given the dubious quality of many Perl books, are you sure you are up to the task of creating something better?
I agree the current documentation is far from perfect, but I think it's far more efficient to improve the current documentation than to write alternative documentation. As an added bonus, if you improve the current documentation, it'll be distributed with current and future versions of Perl, and kept up to date by the team maintaining Perl.
If you're a guy in a basement with an idea for a new distro or something, and instead of the 50$ NSI or (cheaper) alternative, you have to go give 2,000$ to 200,000$ to some squatter for it (and they are using them for money) you're SOL. Linus is giving the middle finger to squatters (who rank with spammers, in my books), and helping keep the domains as cheap as you can find them. And that's a Good Thing (TM).
Except of course that the domain squatters already have the domains. So, all Linus did was removing the possibility of the guy in the basement buying the domain he wants in an auction. Don't even think that seriousdomains.com will just give back the 250 domains to NSI.
I wonder if people would react the same if it would have been Microsoft that threatened legal action against a squatter trying to auction off domains.
However linus has done this kind of thing before, to prevent people from misusing the linux name,think of the (old?) owner of linux.co.uk, who was abusing the linux name and domain, linus used his Tm there in a benifitial way as well. But most of the time, he'll allow just about anything to happen, as long as it doesnt 'hurt' the 'linux(tm)' name.
Uhm, in this case the domain names are not being used yet. So, unless Mr. Torvalds can predict the future, you can't know whether the domain names will "hurt" the linux name or not.
Honestly, can someone help me change my impression of him?
Sure.
Several months ago, I was a newbie in a couple Perl newsgroups (but not a newbie to programming in general) -- and all I thought of him was "pompus ass".
Of course, before I can help to change your mind, you first have to tell why you think the way you do. What makes you think he's a "pompus ass"?
Within the first week of watching the groups, I saw a listing of his supposed kill list including keywords that would pretty much nuke 95% of newbie messages.
Perhaps if you flag your postings with "NEWBIE", "PERL 4", "WINDOWS" or similar things, you get nuked. For that matter, I do the same as well. But if you post a Perl question, chose an appropriate subject, and can be bothered to look at the manual and FAQ first, you would have had a pretty good chance of getting your question answered by Tom. Of course, I speak in the past tense. All the whining of the form "why don't you spoon feed me?" have made Tom follow Larry Walls way, and he no longer posts in clp.misc. Which is a big loss, specially for newbies.
I agree with RMS that normally a corporation letting its employees use software does not count as distribution. However, in this case we have a different situation... Secure Computing (which is completely seperate from the NSA), is being hired by the NSA to make a special version of Linux for them. Therefore, I think you do have to count this as distribution, and as Fare said, it must be distribution to the individuals in the corporation (NSA), not to NSA as a group.
Uhm, no, of course not. For the same reason that if VA Linux sells the company you work for a computer, it isn't up to you (unless you are the autority) to decide you are entitled to take said computer home. And for the same reason, you, as an individual and employee, aren't (in general) responsible for possible crimes the company makes.
If Secure Computing makes a secure version of Linux, and sells that to NSA, NSA has the right to demand source from Secure Computing. And the NSA has the right to sell or give away that product, to whomever they want. As long as the provide the source (if asked) as well.
But the GPL does not give you the right to the modifications Secure Computing makes for NSA.
The GPL isn't my favourite license, but I agree that there isn't a huge hole.
-- Abigail
Re:This was intentional but it can still be a prob
on
Hole in GNU GPL?
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· Score: 2
The problem is that the GPL only prevents the company from distributing their modifications. They are not distributing them, but they are letting users connect to their server and execute code containing the modifications (which is no longer completely "internal"). Shouldn't that situation be protected by the GPL as well?
I am quite sure that in all those years, RMS and the FSF have realized binaries can be run. Since the GPL doesn't restrict use of binaries in the way you'd like to see, I claim that restriction was left out on purpose.
Ergo, the answer to your question is no. You'd need to write yourself another license if you want to restrict your code that way.
-- Abigail
Re:Really OT, and i don't care.
on
Hole in GNU GPL?
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· Score: 2
What slashdot is has EVERYTHING to do with the underlying software. This whole karma/moderation system piqes people to "contend" for karma...it makes it easier to view, so you don't have to see so much noise.
Side stepping the fact I disagree that slashdot is great, or that karma is the best thing since sliced bread - the fact there *is* karma is what matters, not the actual code implementing karma. There aren't any deep tricks involved in keeping track of karma. You have a database. You have a relation between a name and a karma counter. You score a karma point, you add one to the counter; you lose a karma point, you subtract one. That's really programming 101; first lesson: adding and subtracting one to numbers.
If there's anything great about slashdot, it's the ideas. Given the ideas, the implementation is rather simple. Probably the only interesting parts code wise are found just outside slashdot, and that's handling of the load.
However, I thought that people willing to contribute/take part of this contest should be warned that the code they submit might be made propietary by the organizer or someone else.
This suggests worse things than can actually happen. While the X (or MIT) license allows you to relicense code for distribution, it doesn't allow you to strip off an existing license. What that means is that if I write code, and license it under the MIT license, you can take the code, possibly modify it, and distribute it under a license of your choice (GPL if you wish). But that doesn't mean I can no longer distribute my code under the MIT license. I don't lose rights. But I give you more rights than you would get had I distributed the code under GPL.
You can take MIT licensed code, modify it, and distribute it as GPL coded. You can't do it the other way around. MIT licensed code allows you to do anything that GPL code allows you to do - and then some. It's not hard to figure out which gives you more freedom. I prefer MIT style licenses because I don't want to back up my preferences with legal actions.
If you don't see any problem with that, just look at what RMS have to say about it.
RMS isn't God, GNU isn't a religion and the FSF isn't a bunch of prophets. We all know RMS is hardheaded, and only believes in himself. But many people have found out there are more ways leading to Rome. You might have an opinion about the choice of license, but just shouting "Wrong license", waving a political document written by someone else as "evidence" doesn't bring you far.
If you don't like the license, don't participate. Don't use any of the products that might be created with this license. You might even write something better, and release that under your preferred license.
I don't recall anyone saying to Linus Why are you fixing Minix? It ain't broken! Sometimes, you just want to find out whether you can do better then there already is.
I can understand wanting to standardize on one language to help make this "suite" a cohesive whole, but they've got to select the right tool for the job. Hell, I don't even have python installed on most of the boxes I use, but you can bet c and c++ will always be there.
What exactly is the problem? Yeah, I guess Python won't be installed on every machine - but so won't any of those new tools. And if you are going to install new things, what's the problem with installing Python?
I have a friend who said that until she discovered W3 and Emacspeak the Web was closed to her.
I've several blind friends who prefer IE over any other web browser, including Lynx. A speech program like "Jaws" works quite well with IE. Besides images, the hardest things are frames and forms. Navigating frames is quite difficult in Lynx, but much less in IE. And while forms remain difficult, they suck less in IE then on another browser.
What happens if they use patented "stuff"(for lack of a better word right now) in the kernel itself, which is under GPL, meaning they have to make the source avaliable for everyone, who can then change it and so on?
Making it available for inspection isn't a problem - after all, a requirement for getting a patent is to open up the source/technique or whatever you are patenting.
Patenting and the GPL is an interesting issue. The GPL is mainly concerned about copying, distribution, and modification, while patents focus more on production (and in the case of software, running it). I wonder if this means that you can modify and distribute it, but you can't run it.;-) Note also that the GPL *does* make an exception for patented software: If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License. But it's too much lawyer speak for me to figure out what the rights are if you merge in patented software.
I guess we can assume that the NSA version will not remain Open Source.
That entirely depends on what the reasons are for the NSA to bother with Linux. If they want (or are ordered to) to develop an OS that is secure, so that people/companies/governments can protect themselves better, then they'll have to release their modifications. Preventing "secrets" is one of the tasks of the NSA as well - and believe me, there are lots of smart people at the NSA. They recognize a good idea, nor does everyone think all the time that security by obscurity is the only way to go.
The Earth did not acquire its one billionth human until the 18th or 19th century. The second billion came in less than a century. There are many people alive today who were born well before the four billion mark - and now we're over six billion.
Indeed, and there is an enormous momentum, many people are still young, and haven't finished, or even started, reproducing yet.
Which means, that the number of people being born each day is enormous. Just in China alone, (which has pretty good family planning nowadays), the amount of people born each year equals the number of people living in Germany.
I am fully aware of the size of the population, and its rapid growth. And that's exactly why I said travelling away from the planet isn't going to solve the problem - you just can't shoot people of the planet fast enough to even make a dent in the growth of the population.
Dealing with population growth isn't easy, but it's possible. And for much lower costs than space travel. You might want to buy the January issue of Scientific American, it has a nice article about family planning.
The reason, that a manned mission is not heading for Jupiter is that we have wasted too much money developing wars and fighting wars, money which would have been better spent investigating the space. If we don't make that leap soon, humans might forever be doomed to exploring only cyberspace.
That's of course silly. Humans have left this planet for the first time only 40 years ago. Humans have lived without space travel for tens of thousands of years - millions of years, depending on what you define as a human. Jupiter won't take a right turn and head for another star if mankind was the wait an extra 200 or 4000 years.
when the population reaches the point that where earth cannot anylonger sustain it, we are going to have a problem
Going to space will never solve the problem of overpopulation, just like the discovery of the America's, Australia and the exploration of Africa didn't reduce the population of Europe. People will be born at a faster rate than you can shoot them of the planet.
Why they think that a good attacker would not be able to reverse engineer their code?
First of all,the problem appeared on the _server_ side, not on the client. Opening the source of the client wouldn't have made any difference.
Second, this has be discussed several times before. distributed.net is well aware that their code can be reversed engineered. But it does raise a bar. And they rather have a few attempts to disrupt the contest than many. And it isn't that distributed.net hasn't tried a fully open source client. They did. And the script kiddies had their fun, so now the source is partially closed.
It's written in pretty tight C, and main crypto routines are in Asm, which make the program extremely easy to analyze
Yeah, specially since you can download the source of the crypto routines. Isn't it remarkable that the whiners about open source/closed source don't even know most of the code can be downloaded?
Slashdot Mirror
That's very, very odd. First of all, almost anything interesting third party stuff nowadays is as simple as: ./configure; make install; on both Solaris and Linux (or xmkmf; make install for X stuff).
Second, if you spend a week compiling and installing essential software for each new Sun box, you're a crappy admin. That's what NFS is for. And even if you can't use NFS if the machine is at its destination, you'd use NFS after you've installed the OS to mount a disk with the "essential software" and copy it over. And if you have to go to a remote, netless site to do the install, well, that's why they have tape drives - and CD burners. That's the same procedure you'd follow if you install a new Linux machine, or a new SGI machine, or whatever.
-- Abigail
Uhm, can you back this claim up with some, uhm, "facts"?
I wouldn't say you are wrong, but there's no point in stating unfounded things like this.
They're playing catch-up now against an OS with much greater potential and much greater momentum.
Yeah, sure. "catch-up". Dream on.
-- Abigail
Distributions don't decide what is "better". You can easily make a Solaris distribution that includes most of the "goodies" that you find in a Linux distribution. However, there's less need for it. While Linux is quite popular as a toy at home, few people will use Solaris at home. Sun's hard- and software is more found in corperate environments where people tend to install more on a 'if needed' bases. What good does web mirroring software do, if you don't mirror web sites? Why bother with GIMP if the marketing drones have Windows PCs on their desks? Well written free software tends to run fine on both Linux and Solaris, thanks to tools like GNUs configure.
What I can do with Sun/Solaris, and were Linux is trailing (hopefully, not for long) is the situation where your N-CPU machine is no longer up to the task, and you order an M-CPU machine. The new machine comes in the morning, you boot from the install server, make a disk layout, install the OS, run your netconfig script, mount the disk(s) which have /usr/local, /home and other shared stuff, and be operational before lunch. That works for M up to 64.
-- Abigail
I would say that Solaris on x86 is far more stable than Windows, and not significant slower than other Unices on x86. At least not according to my experiences. As for price, Solaris x86 has been available for a nominal fee (something like $10) for non-commercial use for quite some time. Which is a lot cheaper than say, a Red Hat CD set.
-- Abigail
Or is it that you do not like the current documentation, and you think you can do better? But given that the current documentation is maintained by the same people developping perl, some of them authors of books like "Programming Perl" and "The Perl Cookbook", and including Larry Wall himself, and given the dubious quality of many Perl books, are you sure you are up to the task of creating something better?
I agree the current documentation is far from perfect, but I think it's far more efficient to improve the current documentation than to write alternative documentation. As an added bonus, if you improve the current documentation, it'll be distributed with current and future versions of Perl, and kept up to date by the team maintaining Perl.
-- Abigail
Except of course that the domain squatters already have the domains. So, all Linus did was removing the possibility of the guy in the basement buying the domain he wants in an auction. Don't even think that seriousdomains.com will just give back the 250 domains to NSI.
I wonder if people would react the same if it would have been Microsoft that threatened legal action against a squatter trying to auction off domains.
-- Abigail
Uhm, in this case the domain names are not being used yet. So, unless Mr. Torvalds can predict the future, you can't know whether the domain names will "hurt" the linux name or not.
-- Abigail
What's your viewpoint of etoys vs etoy?
-- Abigail
Sure.
Several months ago, I was a newbie in a couple Perl newsgroups (but not a newbie to programming in general) -- and all I thought of him was "pompus ass".
Of course, before I can help to change your mind, you first have to tell why you think the way you do. What makes you think he's a "pompus ass"?
Within the first week of watching the groups, I saw a listing of his supposed kill list including keywords that would pretty much nuke 95% of newbie messages.
Perhaps if you flag your postings with "NEWBIE", "PERL 4", "WINDOWS" or similar things, you get nuked. For that matter, I do the same as well. But if you post a Perl question, chose an appropriate subject, and can be bothered to look at the manual and FAQ first, you would have had a pretty good chance of getting your question answered by Tom. Of course, I speak in the past tense. All the whining of the form "why don't you spoon feed me?" have made Tom follow Larry Walls way, and he no longer posts in clp.misc. Which is a big loss, specially for newbies.
IMO, that's not what newbie help is about.
Then, do tell us, what is newbie help about?
-- Abigail
Uhm, no, of course not. For the same reason that if VA Linux sells the company you work for a computer, it isn't up to you (unless you are the autority) to decide you are entitled to take said computer home. And for the same reason, you, as an individual and employee, aren't (in general) responsible for possible crimes the company makes.
If Secure Computing makes a secure version of Linux, and sells that to NSA, NSA has the right to demand source from Secure Computing. And the NSA has the right to sell or give away that product, to whomever they want. As long as the provide the source (if asked) as well.
But the GPL does not give you the right to the modifications Secure Computing makes for NSA.
The GPL isn't my favourite license, but I agree that there isn't a huge hole.
-- Abigail
I am quite sure that in all those years, RMS and the FSF have realized binaries can be run. Since the GPL doesn't restrict use of binaries in the way you'd like to see, I claim that restriction was left out on purpose.
Ergo, the answer to your question is no. You'd need to write yourself another license if you want to restrict your code that way.
-- Abigail
Side stepping the fact I disagree that slashdot is great, or that karma is the best thing since sliced bread - the fact there *is* karma is what matters, not the actual code implementing karma. There aren't any deep tricks involved in keeping track of karma. You have a database. You have a relation between a name and a karma counter. You score a karma point, you add one to the counter; you lose a karma point, you subtract one. That's really programming 101; first lesson: adding and subtracting one to numbers.
If there's anything great about slashdot, it's the ideas. Given the ideas, the implementation is rather simple. Probably the only interesting parts code wise are found just outside slashdot, and that's handling of the load.
-- Abigail
This suggests worse things than can actually happen. While the X (or MIT) license allows you to relicense code for distribution, it doesn't allow you to strip off an existing license. What that means is that if I write code, and license it under the MIT license, you can take the code, possibly modify it, and distribute it under a license of your choice (GPL if you wish). But that doesn't mean I can no longer distribute my code under the MIT license. I don't lose rights. But I give you more rights than you would get had I distributed the code under GPL.
You can take MIT licensed code, modify it, and distribute it as GPL coded. You can't do it the other way around. MIT licensed code allows you to do anything that GPL code allows you to do - and then some. It's not hard to figure out which gives you more freedom. I prefer MIT style licenses because I don't want to back up my preferences with legal actions.
-- Abigail
RMS isn't God, GNU isn't a religion and the FSF isn't a bunch of prophets. We all know RMS is hardheaded, and only believes in himself. But many people have found out there are more ways leading to Rome. You might have an opinion about the choice of license, but just shouting "Wrong license", waving a political document written by someone else as "evidence" doesn't bring you far.
If you don't like the license, don't participate. Don't use any of the products that might be created with this license. You might even write something better, and release that under your preferred license.
Just don't act as a doomsday sayer.
-- Abigail
I don't recall anyone saying to Linus Why are you fixing Minix? It ain't broken! Sometimes, you just want to find out whether you can do better then there already is.
-- Abigail
What exactly is the problem? Yeah, I guess Python won't be installed on every machine - but so won't any of those new tools. And if you are going to install new things, what's the problem with installing Python?
-- Abigail
I've several blind friends who prefer IE over any other web browser, including Lynx. A speech program like "Jaws" works quite well with IE. Besides images, the hardest things are frames and forms. Navigating frames is quite difficult in Lynx, but much less in IE. And while forms remain difficult, they suck less in IE then on another browser.
-- Abigail
Making it available for inspection isn't a problem - after all, a requirement for getting a patent is to open up the source/technique or whatever you are patenting.
Patenting and the GPL is an interesting issue. The GPL is mainly concerned about copying, distribution, and modification, while patents focus more on production (and in the case of software, running it). I wonder if this means that you can modify and distribute it, but you can't run it. ;-)
Note also that the GPL *does* make an exception for patented software:
If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License.
But it's too much lawyer speak for me to figure out what the rights are if you merge in patented software.
-- Abigail
That entirely depends on what the reasons are for the NSA to bother with Linux. If they want (or are ordered to) to develop an OS that is secure, so that people/companies/governments can protect themselves better, then they'll have to release their modifications. Preventing "secrets" is one of the tasks of the NSA as well - and believe me, there are lots of smart people at the NSA. They recognize a good idea, nor does everyone think all the time that security by obscurity is the only way to go.
-- Abigail
Indeed, and there is an enormous momentum, many people are still young, and haven't finished, or even started, reproducing yet.
Which means, that the number of people being born each day is enormous. Just in China alone, (which has pretty good family planning nowadays), the amount of people born each year equals the number of people living in Germany.
I am fully aware of the size of the population, and its rapid growth. And that's exactly why I said travelling away from the planet isn't going to solve the problem - you just can't shoot people of the planet fast enough to even make a dent in the growth of the population.
Dealing with population growth isn't easy, but it's possible. And for much lower costs than space travel. You might want to buy the January issue of Scientific American, it has a nice article about family planning.
-- Abigail
But according to the movie HAL was activated in 1992.
-- Abigail
Except that Arthur C. Clarke claims it was unintentional.
-- Abigail
That's of course silly. Humans have left this planet for the first time only 40 years ago. Humans have lived without space travel for tens of thousands of years - millions of years, depending on what you define as a human. Jupiter won't take a right turn and head for another star if mankind was the wait an extra 200 or 4000 years.
when the population reaches the point that where earth cannot anylonger sustain it, we are going to have a problem
Going to space will never solve the problem of overpopulation, just like the discovery of the America's, Australia and the exploration of Africa didn't reduce the population of Europe. People will be born at a faster rate than you can shoot them of the planet.
-- Abigail
Uhm, no. It only effects CSC.
-- Abigail
First of all,the problem appeared on the _server_ side, not on the client. Opening the source of the client wouldn't have made any difference.
Second, this has be discussed several times before. distributed.net is well aware that their code can be reversed engineered. But it does raise a bar. And they rather have a few attempts to disrupt the contest than many. And it isn't that distributed.net hasn't tried a fully open source client. They did. And the script kiddies had their fun, so now the source is partially closed.
It's written in pretty tight C, and main crypto routines are in Asm, which make the program extremely easy to analyze
Yeah, specially since you can download the source of the crypto routines. Isn't it remarkable that the whiners about open source/closed source don't even know most of the code can be downloaded?
-- Abigail