In a market sense, what the bnetd guys are doing is a good thing for everyone. By creating an alternative (and thus creating competition) for Blizzard, they are forcing Blizzard to improve what they offer to their users. If Blizzard wants people to pay for their games, they need to continue to create software that blows away the competition - they need to make something so Cool that you have to have it, and are willing to pay.
Stifling competition, especially in a case like this, where the bnetd team doesn't seem to have broken the law, or used any unfair means of designing their alternate software, based on the effort put in by Blizzard's programmers isn't good for either you or them. For you, it means that they will have no reason to write better network gaming software - after all, no one can threaten their particular system, Battle.net. For them, it means that there really isn't any need to keep paying their coders, as Battle.net is in place and nobody is going to levy a serious threat to it.
If you spent years of your life developing a gaming property as valuable as Battle.net, then you should expect that others will try to emulate what you have done and even attempt to do it better. It is only so long as you can continue to do better work than your competition, and at a lower cost, that you deserve "some tall dollars", in my opinion.
The LinkSys DSL Routers, while nice, are not perfect solutions. I run one on the inside of my network, and I've noticed that it passes along packets that I have not explicitly told it to pass. One of the features that doesn't seem to be touted these days is that it "senses" specific types of packets and "intelligently" allows them through. The trouble with this is that the router is not doing stateful packet inspection - it's just guessing based on port number. Not a *huge* deal for most people, but I most certainly would not trust such a system to be my primary border defense.
Cheap and easy, but not as good as the real thing. When it comes to security, I'd rather have a locked-down debian box that I built from source than a piece of plastic that I bought at Staples.
If you're interested in this distro for running such apps, you might want to look into a lightweight window manager (if that's an applicable term) like ion. I personally use it on a number of my leaner boxen, and there's no reason you couldn't run konqueror/mozilla/koffice with it on a 32MB system. I'm not so certain about StarOffice - I haven't tried it on anything except my main (and much more modern) system.
Actually, lawyers should *not* make that sort of moral decision. It is a right, granted in the constitution, for every citizen to be granted a fair trial. Part of our conception of a fair trial is the idea that the accused be represented by someone properly trained in the law. The solution you propose - having a lawyer say, "Nope, I think you're 'obviously wrong', and I won't offer you representation!" - flies in the face of that notion.
A perfect example is a case like this. Regardless of how you, your brother, or the lawyer down the street *feel* about the alleged criminal (keyword: alleged), he is entitled to full and fair representation when his day in court comes. If, in the case of that trial, it comes to light that his basic rights have been violated (for example, he gave a confession after being beaten), it is the job of the lawyer to advise the judge of that fact. Why? Because we understand that certain aspects of our society - the "justice system", for example - supercede any act that one individual commits. A lawyer who acts on his moral sense instead of his professional sense in such a case ("this guy is a murderer, and despite the fact that he confessed under duress, I won't represent him because I don't like murderers") should not be a lawyer.
Ultimately, we vest the power of judgement in a jury (or in some cases, a judge), not in our lawyers. Lawyers are like referees - they make sure that everyone is playing by the rules, and has an equal chance. We do this, presumably, because we understand that morality is a fleeting thing, and different from person to person. Occasionally that means that someone gets to raise a ridiculous case (such as this one!), but I'll take a lifetime of such cases if it means that I can get fair representation were I to be accused of a heinous crime.
Check the GPL. There's no reason why you can't box and sell a distro. You are in no way obligated to offer a free download. However, under the terms of the license - which will propogate to Lindows, most likely, as I assume that they are using GPL code - they cannot stop anyone from redistributing their distro in any form that they like. Burn a copy of the CD, sell it, give it away, allow people to download it - it's up to you.
*sigh* I'd be interested to see how he plans to make a "single-user" version of the software. Unless Lindows is not released under the GPL (which would be difficult to pull off, as it could not use any GPL code in it), there's no reason why you cannot give away $0 copies.
I am almost finished with a philosophy degree, having also taken a few CS courses (data structures, some lower level classes) and deciding I wasn't enjoying it.
In my case, I made the decision that computers were a hobby - one I was very good at, but not something I wanted to make a career out of. Philosophy has always been my other love. At my university (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), it is a respected and challenging program. Fundamental concept classes include logic (introductory, intermeditate, and modal) and a good historical overview class. The typical undergraduate will also study one or two histories (ancient philosophy and/or modern philosophy), and a number of specialization topics. The latter includes everything from existential philosophy to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
For me, philosophy is interesting, and so I do not find it repetitive. I feel that all philosophy comes down to the same questions: the existence of God, the freedom of the will, human nature and sexuality, and a few others. There is a good deal of room beneath those topical headings, however - what Freud says on sexuality and what Sarte says are rather different. Moreover, these are the questions that make me think, and I enjoy them because of that. It's not necessarily "productive", but neither is going to a museum; both (imo) are valuable, nonetheless.
Choose a major that you like. My advice is to not be concerned with whether or not you'll get the "best" job or pull the largest salary in, but instead to focus on what makes you content. Money is nice, certainly, but it's just a tool. Many of the people I've met (especially while working as an intern as a network security company) seem to have forgotten that, and always seemed to be covering up a certain desperation. If philosophy will save you from that, go for it.:)
The issue is not that one needs to pay, it's that one either pays a rather hefty fee or doesn't pay at all. What I would like to see would be a graduated system so that those of us who philosophically agree with what Ximian is doing and want to show our support can do so without taking a $120/year hit to our wallets.
Ease up, chief. You'll get that +1 Insightful someday.
I'm a student. For me, 33c/day is rather expensive, especially (and obviously) in comparison to free. That's a personal opinion on "modest"; I don't have $10/month extra to pay, regardless. $5, maybe, but not $10.
No, I don't "care" about Microsoft. I support Free software in that I use it; it gets a job done for me. I run it for that purpose. The higher distribution cost for Free Software in this case puts it out of my reach, and thus I - like most of the posters you refer to, I presume - complain that I am unable to pay Ximian at this price.
Perhaps a solution would be a graduated pricing solution: "Ximian's service may be used for free, but payments of $5/$10/$25 per month exist if you support what we are doing." Such a scheme would allow you - obviously in possession some money and desiring to pay Ximian - to put in more, perhaps allowing me to pay what I can, and both of us balancing out the non-paying users?
The problem is that a large number of us are in a position where we would be happy to pay for this service, but not willing to shell out $120/year for it. Philosophy and practicality are seperate things here; we *want* to pay, but not that much.
Learning curve? Bah. "apt-get update", "apt-get upgrade". Boom, done. Less time than it will take you to move your mouse. Make a cron job out of that, and I don't need to type it, either. Ximian provides a nice service, but that doesn't mean that it's the easiest. (FUD, FUD...)
Excellent points. Now, if Ximian was asking for a modest fee, I'd sign up. $120/year is far more than I'm willing to pay for my desktop software to be up to date. A personal copy of any given version of windows is apt to cost me around $250; I'd probably use that copy for at least 2 years. Now, Ximian would cost roughly the same - assuming I paid.
My issue isn't that they are asking for money - I can understand that - but it is that they are asking *so much* for a service that's provided for free as well. In my case, it comes down to a choice: do I spend over $100 for this, or just download it for free? I'll choose the latter, thanks; make it a bit less steep ($60/year?) and I'll consider.
My good friend faboo sent this to me; I think it's quite accurate:
"I agree wholly. I've been trying to get my brother-in-law, who is an illistrator, to switch to Linux for some time now. Inevitably he'll ask about the existance of proper illistration and graphic editing tools.
And no answer will come. Yes, there is the GIMP, but it lacks the absolutely ludicrous layering abilities, various color types, and masking abilities of Photoshop (and even Paint Shop to some degree).
For layout type work, one could use Adobe products (which I believe you can get for Linux. True?), but Quark does a much better job of this for large (in scope and size), high quality jobs, and is also the defacto standard in the graphic arts industry (if I'm not mistaken)."
I've had similar conversations, although faboo's point is far better put than I could do justice to.
Not much can be done to avoid this. Linux is a system designed for powerusers; I don't think you can avoid the need for configuration by the end user. The question is then, "How can we minimize the pain of configuring things?" - perhaps with graphical front ends to configs?
They don't want to care about what hardware is in They dont want to untar thingsbox.
Once Linux is installed, no sweat. They don't have to. (This is essentially the same as with Windows...)
They do want to be able to plug stuff in (USB) and have it just work.
If I remember correctly, the last time I had trouble with USB was in the 2.2 series.:)
They don't want to compile a program to install it.
Front-end to apt, no need to compile until they are ready, if ever.
They dont want to untar things
Why not? They unzip things.
They don't want to deal with RPM (they want something called setup.exe).
Graphical package management helps, although it doesn't completely mitigate this. I agree with you that this is the weakpoint to work on right now.
they want easy access to the internet.&&they want a browser that works
Internet Access *is* easy (lots of graphical programs for dialup, and broadband/LAN stuff is as easy as one line on the console, easily put behind a pretty frontend (which already exist). Browsers? Opera, Mozilla, Konq, Netscape (gah), and Galeon all work very well.
and above all they certainly do not want to have to recompile a kernel to upgrade their OS.
I'm not sure that's their biggest concern, but how hard is a kernel compile versus the installation of ME or XP? Initial learning curve is there, but it's not overly tough - you walk them through it once, and the procedure doesn't change from there on out. "Linux" doesn't waste cycles on anything; linux isn't like a company product that can really waste its time on something. If one person makes the system X bits easier for even a handful of people, and that change/program gets integrated into the consciousness (or kernel), it is not wasted. Nice troll, though.
Really. Go look at that "hate crime against stupid people" link. It's from SatireWire - come on, guys. Read the disclaimer: "All stories are fictional and satirical and should not in any way be construed as fact."
First, I'd like to compliment you, valmont, on a reasoned and enjoyable post. Rare stuff, especially on slashdot.
While I agree with parts of your post, I would amend it with certain convictions I hold: that there do exist certain rights which are fundamental to being human, and that these rights (unrestricted and unpunishable expression, choice of personal religion, ability to congregate without fear of repercusion because of such, freedom to enter contracts, etc.) supercede cultural barriers.
However, overthrowing governments should not be taken lightly. A government (in a democratically ideal society) represents the people, and is comprised of those that it represents. I do not think that society exists. Clearly, the Saudi regime is quite far away from the ideal that we (as Americans) espouse, but why is that the *root* of their problem? As I see things currently, there are two possibilities: (a) the majority of the populace of Saudi Arabia is content with their government and do not wish to change it, or (b) the majority of the populace of Saudi Arabia are not content with their government but are unable to change it. If (a) is true, we have no right to interfere, only to offer asylum to individuals whose rights are being infringed upon and who wish to leave. If (b) is true - and determining such would be difficult - then we perhaps are justifiable in stepping in.
Political philosophy aside, you raise excellent points - specifically that we must not assume that swinging in and wiping away the censorware will somehow magically "liberate" Saudis. Change comes from the mind, not the fist. Freedom - not liberty, but freedom - is a mental state. If we (Americans, you, me, whoever) are truly free, then we can only guide by example. That is a determination we all need to make for ourselves.
@stake was not "formed from" the l0pht. the l0pht comprises part of their research and development team.
back orifice was the child of cDc, not the l0pht. there is some overrun between the groups. l0phtcrack was theirs; it is an invaluable resource for system admins as well as black-hats.
lots of people attend DefCon. doing so does not make you evil. lots of people are hackers. same point.
they did not get "banned" from bugtraq, they split from them. there is a difference. they continue to release proof-of-concept code and whitepapers, but their formatting was not compatible with the bugtraq system.
not sure what your beef with @stake is, but they are a decent security company. that has been their focus since their inception, and they are easily among the best in that field. they have a number of brilliant minds working for their management (dan geer, president of USENIX, for example) alongside a powerhouse of a R&D team.
erm...@stake has not exactly been going downhill. the SQB is exactly what you described it as: a strategy guide for suits. valuable because most suits do not understand that there is a need for security, or how it should be implemented.
no real information? whitepapers are released every month, and they continue to keep an up-to-date security bulletin (SNN). they are in no way about to roll over and die, either - as a late-comer into the "dot-com" scene, they were one of the few to harness a working business model, intelligent management, and skilled people and stay alive.
the nice part about the kernel is that you don't have to use the latest version of it. alan cox maintains his own tree which runs a different version of the VM (for now, at least); the 2.2 kernels are also still available.
for the record, i've been running 2.4 since 2.4.1, and i've *never*, on three seperate machines, had a crash. i can't say that about windows. if the reason you aren't switching is because you think a linux-2.4 system will be less stable than your windows boxen, you might be running on a mistaken assumption.
still not where it needs to be for me
on
Debian On DVD
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the dvd-distro is innovative, but i'd be more interested if there was a change in how the installation process was handled - right now, it feels out-of-date and is rather frustrating.
no, i'm not complaining about the install system itself; it's not pretty, but it's stable and powerful. i'd *really* like to see support for installing onto HPT370 RAID partitions (and other IDE RAID chipsets on modern motherboards), though. as of 2.4.10, there has been support for these devices, but as of now the only real way to get an install done is to make a custom 2.4.10 boot floppy, mount and bootstrap onto the devices, and go from there.
I normally run Mozilla on this box, but keep a copy of IE up-to-date out of habit. Seems like those pesky MSN rendering problems aren't Mozilla sspecific at all...
Seriously, the best response that I think anyone could take would be to send an email to MSN's advertisers (I noticed Citibank, Fidelity, and Ameritrade on one page alone) and express your displeasure with not being able to access MSN, and point out that Microsoft has made it impossible for a significant number of potential customers to be exposed to their adverts.
Personally, I'll stick to other media outlets. MSN has always struck me as one of the MTVs of the 'net: shiny, annoying, and geared towards someone with the intelligence and attention span of a fourteen year old. (Read: most of the US population.)
The license you receive at the DMV reflects, at least theoretically, that you are trained (and capable of demonstrating this training) to operate a vehicle on public roads. The DMV license is not "permission" to drive, although such permission does require the possession of the license, but rather it is certification of your ability to meet certain standards. If you lost that license, you could easily obtain a copy; the license is merely tangible proof of the time you spent learning to drive. That training is not transferable; when you sell Mr. Blow your laminated card, you are selling him a bit of paper and plastic, and nothing more.
A software license, on the other hand, fundamentally *is* permission to use the software. It represents no intangible capacity; when you sell it, you are giving away all of your right to use the software, as that right is contained in the license. A better comparison, keeping with the current metaphor, would be the title to your vehicle. It represents your purchase of the car; if you sole that to Joe, he would now legally own your vehicle. Like the software license, possession exists *because* you hold the piece of paper, as opposed to the paper serving as proof that you are qualified to own the car.
I've actually heard some reports that the PS2 has a problem when used as a DVD player on a long-term basis. Apparently, the motor used to spin the discs was not meant for sustained use, as a game only requires occasional spinning, unlike a DVD. Not all units are breaking, although enough are to raise some suspicions.
have you considered SDL? I've used it for some development, and I've found that it is both powerful and flexible enough to support development on both Win32 and Linux environments.
It's equally interesting to note that it supports OpenGL - I happened across the old NeHe tutorials that I learned on at the OpenGL webpage, re-written to include information on SDL. Good stuff.
The technology is there; the trick is to convince developers that learning the new API is worth it, and that by doing so they will make their code more portable - and that this is a good thing.
the first "I'm" (the subject) indicates that the speaker is not aware of the feelings which the recipient - "I", in this case, possess, but that the "readers" are aware of that.
thus, it would seem that we have a firmer grasp on the way that taco feels than he does.
Slashdot Mirror
In a market sense, what the bnetd guys are doing is a good thing for everyone. By creating an alternative (and thus creating competition) for Blizzard, they are forcing Blizzard to improve what they offer to their users. If Blizzard wants people to pay for their games, they need to continue to create software that blows away the competition - they need to make something so Cool that you have to have it, and are willing to pay.
Stifling competition, especially in a case like this, where the bnetd team doesn't seem to have broken the law, or used any unfair means of designing their alternate software, based on the effort put in by Blizzard's programmers isn't good for either you or them. For you, it means that they will have no reason to write better network gaming software - after all, no one can threaten their particular system, Battle.net. For them, it means that there really isn't any need to keep paying their coders, as Battle.net is in place and nobody is going to levy a serious threat to it.
If you spent years of your life developing a gaming property as valuable as Battle.net, then you should expect that others will try to emulate what you have done and even attempt to do it better. It is only so long as you can continue to do better work than your competition, and at a lower cost, that you deserve "some tall dollars", in my opinion.
The LinkSys DSL Routers, while nice, are not perfect solutions. I run one on the inside of my network, and I've noticed that it passes along packets that I have not explicitly told it to pass. One of the features that doesn't seem to be touted these days is that it "senses" specific types of packets and "intelligently" allows them through. The trouble with this is that the router is not doing stateful packet inspection - it's just guessing based on port number. Not a *huge* deal for most people, but I most certainly would not trust such a system to be my primary border defense.
Cheap and easy, but not as good as the real thing. When it comes to security, I'd rather have a locked-down debian box that I built from source than a piece of plastic that I bought at Staples.
If you're interested in this distro for running such apps, you might want to look into a lightweight window manager (if that's an applicable term) like ion. I personally use it on a number of my leaner boxen, and there's no reason you couldn't run konqueror/mozilla/koffice with it on a 32MB system. I'm not so certain about StarOffice - I haven't tried it on anything except my main (and much more modern) system.
Actually, lawyers should *not* make that sort of moral decision. It is a right, granted in the constitution, for every citizen to be granted a fair trial. Part of our conception of a fair trial is the idea that the accused be represented by someone properly trained in the law. The solution you propose - having a lawyer say, "Nope, I think you're 'obviously wrong', and I won't offer you representation!" - flies in the face of that notion.
A perfect example is a case like this. Regardless of how you, your brother, or the lawyer down the street *feel* about the alleged criminal (keyword: alleged), he is entitled to full and fair representation when his day in court comes. If, in the case of that trial, it comes to light that his basic rights have been violated (for example, he gave a confession after being beaten), it is the job of the lawyer to advise the judge of that fact. Why? Because we understand that certain aspects of our society - the "justice system", for example - supercede any act that one individual commits. A lawyer who acts on his moral sense instead of his professional sense in such a case ("this guy is a murderer, and despite the fact that he confessed under duress, I won't represent him because I don't like murderers") should not be a lawyer.
Ultimately, we vest the power of judgement in a jury (or in some cases, a judge), not in our lawyers. Lawyers are like referees - they make sure that everyone is playing by the rules, and has an equal chance. We do this, presumably, because we understand that morality is a fleeting thing, and different from person to person. Occasionally that means that someone gets to raise a ridiculous case (such as this one!), but I'll take a lifetime of such cases if it means that I can get fair representation were I to be accused of a heinous crime.
Check the GPL. There's no reason why you can't box and sell a distro. You are in no way obligated to offer a free download. However, under the terms of the license - which will propogate to Lindows, most likely, as I assume that they are using GPL code - they cannot stop anyone from redistributing their distro in any form that they like. Burn a copy of the CD, sell it, give it away, allow people to download it - it's up to you.
*sigh* I'd be interested to see how he plans to make a "single-user" version of the software. Unless Lindows is not released under the GPL (which would be difficult to pull off, as it could not use any GPL code in it), there's no reason why you cannot give away $0 copies.
I am almost finished with a philosophy degree, having also taken a few CS courses (data structures, some lower level classes) and deciding I wasn't enjoying it.
:)
In my case, I made the decision that computers were a hobby - one I was very good at, but not something I wanted to make a career out of. Philosophy has always been my other love. At my university (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), it is a respected and challenging program. Fundamental concept classes include logic (introductory, intermeditate, and modal) and a good historical overview class. The typical undergraduate will also study one or two histories (ancient philosophy and/or modern philosophy), and a number of specialization topics. The latter includes everything from existential philosophy to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
For me, philosophy is interesting, and so I do not find it repetitive. I feel that all philosophy comes down to the same questions: the existence of God, the freedom of the will, human nature and sexuality, and a few others. There is a good deal of room beneath those topical headings, however - what Freud says on sexuality and what Sarte says are rather different. Moreover, these are the questions that make me think, and I enjoy them because of that. It's not necessarily "productive", but neither is going to a museum; both (imo) are valuable, nonetheless.
Choose a major that you like. My advice is to not be concerned with whether or not you'll get the "best" job or pull the largest salary in, but instead to focus on what makes you content. Money is nice, certainly, but it's just a tool. Many of the people I've met (especially while working as an intern as a network security company) seem to have forgotten that, and always seemed to be covering up a certain desperation. If philosophy will save you from that, go for it.
You, obviously, missed the point entirely.
The issue is not that one needs to pay, it's that one either pays a rather hefty fee or doesn't pay at all. What I would like to see would be a graduated system so that those of us who philosophically agree with what Ximian is doing and want to show our support can do so without taking a $120/year hit to our wallets.
Ease up, chief. You'll get that +1 Insightful someday.
I'm a student. For me, 33c/day is rather expensive, especially (and obviously) in comparison to free. That's a personal opinion on "modest"; I don't have $10/month extra to pay, regardless. $5, maybe, but not $10.
No, I don't "care" about Microsoft. I support Free software in that I use it; it gets a job done for me. I run it for that purpose. The higher distribution cost for Free Software in this case puts it out of my reach, and thus I - like most of the posters you refer to, I presume - complain that I am unable to pay Ximian at this price.
Perhaps a solution would be a graduated pricing solution: "Ximian's service may be used for free, but payments of $5/$10/$25 per month exist if you support what we are doing." Such a scheme would allow you - obviously in possession some money and desiring to pay Ximian - to put in more, perhaps allowing me to pay what I can, and both of us balancing out the non-paying users?
The problem is that a large number of us are in a position where we would be happy to pay for this service, but not willing to shell out $120/year for it. Philosophy and practicality are seperate things here; we *want* to pay, but not that much.
Learning curve? Bah. "apt-get update", "apt-get upgrade". Boom, done. Less time than it will take you to move your mouse. Make a cron job out of that, and I don't need to type it, either. Ximian provides a nice service, but that doesn't mean that it's the easiest. (FUD, FUD...)
Excellent points. Now, if Ximian was asking for a modest fee, I'd sign up. $120/year is far more than I'm willing to pay for my desktop software to be up to date. A personal copy of any given version of windows is apt to cost me around $250; I'd probably use that copy for at least 2 years. Now, Ximian would cost roughly the same - assuming I paid.
My issue isn't that they are asking for money - I can understand that - but it is that they are asking *so much* for a service that's provided for free as well. In my case, it comes down to a choice: do I spend over $100 for this, or just download it for free? I'll choose the latter, thanks; make it a bit less steep ($60/year?) and I'll consider.
My good friend faboo sent this to me; I think it's quite accurate:
"I agree wholly. I've been trying to get my brother-in-law, who is an illistrator, to switch to Linux for some time now. Inevitably he'll ask about the existance of proper illistration and graphic editing tools.
And no answer will come. Yes, there is the GIMP, but it lacks the absolutely ludicrous layering abilities, various color types, and masking abilities of Photoshop (and even Paint Shop to some degree).
For layout type work, one could use Adobe products (which I believe you can get for Linux. True?), but Quark does a much better job of this for large (in scope and size), high quality jobs, and is also the defacto standard in the graphic arts industry (if I'm not mistaken)."
I've had similar conversations, although faboo's point is far better put than I could do justice to.
Not much can be done to avoid this. Linux is a system designed for powerusers; I don't think you can avoid the need for configuration by the end user. The question is then, "How can we minimize the pain of configuring things?" - perhaps with graphical front ends to configs?
They don't want to care about what hardware is in They dont want to untar thingsbox.
Once Linux is installed, no sweat. They don't have to. (This is essentially the same as with Windows...)
They do want to be able to plug stuff in (USB) and have it just work.
If I remember correctly, the last time I had trouble with USB was in the 2.2 series. :)
They don't want to compile a program to install it.
Front-end to apt, no need to compile until they are ready, if ever.
They dont want to untar things
Why not? They unzip things.
They don't want to deal with RPM (they want something called setup.exe).
Graphical package management helps, although it doesn't completely mitigate this. I agree with you that this is the weakpoint to work on right now.
they want easy access to the internet.&&they want a browser that works
Internet Access *is* easy (lots of graphical programs for dialup, and broadband/LAN stuff is as easy as one line on the console, easily put behind a pretty frontend (which already exist). Browsers? Opera, Mozilla, Konq, Netscape (gah), and Galeon all work very well.
and above all they certainly do not want to have to recompile a kernel to upgrade their OS.
I'm not sure that's their biggest concern, but how hard is a kernel compile versus the installation of ME or XP? Initial learning curve is there, but it's not overly tough - you walk them through it once, and the procedure doesn't change from there on out. "Linux" doesn't waste cycles on anything; linux isn't like a company product that can really waste its time on something. If one person makes the system X bits easier for even a handful of people, and that change/program gets integrated into the consciousness (or kernel), it is not wasted. Nice troll, though.
Really. Go look at that "hate crime against stupid people" link. It's from SatireWire - come on, guys. Read the disclaimer: "All stories are fictional and satirical and should not in any way be construed as fact."
Oops.
First, I'd like to compliment you, valmont, on a reasoned and enjoyable post. Rare stuff, especially on slashdot.
While I agree with parts of your post, I would amend it with certain convictions I hold: that there do exist certain rights which are fundamental to being human, and that these rights (unrestricted and unpunishable expression, choice of personal religion, ability to congregate without fear of repercusion because of such, freedom to enter contracts, etc.) supercede cultural barriers.
However, overthrowing governments should not be taken lightly. A government (in a democratically ideal society) represents the people, and is comprised of those that it represents. I do not think that society exists. Clearly, the Saudi regime is quite far away from the ideal that we (as Americans) espouse, but why is that the *root* of their problem? As I see things currently, there are two possibilities: (a) the majority of the populace of Saudi Arabia is content with their government and do not wish to change it, or (b) the majority of the populace of Saudi Arabia are not content with their government but are unable to change it. If (a) is true, we have no right to interfere, only to offer asylum to individuals whose rights are being infringed upon and who wish to leave. If (b) is true - and determining such would be difficult - then we perhaps are justifiable in stepping in.
Political philosophy aside, you raise excellent points - specifically that we must not assume that swinging in and wiping away the censorware will somehow magically "liberate" Saudis. Change comes from the mind, not the fist. Freedom - not liberty, but freedom - is a mental state. If we (Americans, you, me, whoever) are truly free, then we can only guide by example. That is a determination we all need to make for ourselves.
- @stake was not "formed from" the l0pht. the l0pht comprises part of their research and development team.
- back orifice was the child of cDc, not the l0pht. there is some overrun between the groups. l0phtcrack was theirs; it is an invaluable resource for system admins as well as black-hats.
- lots of people attend DefCon. doing so does not make you evil. lots of people are hackers. same point.
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they did not get "banned" from bugtraq, they split from them. there is a difference. they continue to release proof-of-concept code and whitepapers, but their formatting was not compatible with the bugtraq system.
not sure what your beef with @stake is, but they are a decent security company. that has been their focus since their inception, and they are easily among the best in that field. they have a number of brilliant minds working for their management (dan geer, president of USENIX, for example) alongside a powerhouse of a R&D team.erm...@stake has not exactly been going downhill. the SQB is exactly what you described it as: a strategy guide for suits. valuable because most suits do not understand that there is a need for security, or how it should be implemented.
no real information? whitepapers are released every month, and they continue to keep an up-to-date security bulletin (SNN). they are in no way about to roll over and die, either - as a late-comer into the "dot-com" scene, they were one of the few to harness a working business model, intelligent management, and skilled people and stay alive.
the nice part about the kernel is that you don't have to use the latest version of it. alan cox maintains his own tree which runs a different version of the VM (for now, at least); the 2.2 kernels are also still available.
for the record, i've been running 2.4 since 2.4.1, and i've *never*, on three seperate machines, had a crash. i can't say that about windows. if the reason you aren't switching is because you think a linux-2.4 system will be less stable than your windows boxen, you might be running on a mistaken assumption.
the dvd-distro is innovative, but i'd be more interested if there was a change in how the installation process was handled - right now, it feels out-of-date and is rather frustrating.
no, i'm not complaining about the install system itself; it's not pretty, but it's stable and powerful. i'd *really* like to see support for installing onto HPT370 RAID partitions (and other IDE RAID chipsets on modern motherboards), though. as of 2.4.10, there has been support for these devices, but as of now the only real way to get an install done is to make a custom 2.4.10 boot floppy, mount and bootstrap onto the devices, and go from there.
rant, rant. lots of love to debian, nonetheless.
[image link] Internet Explorer 6 also fails to render MSN correctly.
I normally run Mozilla on this box, but keep a copy of IE up-to-date out of habit. Seems like those pesky MSN rendering problems aren't Mozilla sspecific at all...
Seriously, the best response that I think anyone could take would be to send an email to MSN's advertisers (I noticed Citibank, Fidelity, and Ameritrade on one page alone) and express your displeasure with not being able to access MSN, and point out that Microsoft has made it impossible for a significant number of potential customers to be exposed to their adverts.
Personally, I'll stick to other media outlets. MSN has always struck me as one of the MTVs of the 'net: shiny, annoying, and geared towards someone with the intelligence and attention span of a fourteen year old. (Read: most of the US population.)
The license you receive at the DMV reflects, at least theoretically, that you are trained (and capable of demonstrating this training) to operate a vehicle on public roads. The DMV license is not "permission" to drive, although such permission does require the possession of the license, but rather it is certification of your ability to meet certain standards. If you lost that license, you could easily obtain a copy; the license is merely tangible proof of the time you spent learning to drive. That training is not transferable; when you sell Mr. Blow your laminated card, you are selling him a bit of paper and plastic, and nothing more.
A software license, on the other hand, fundamentally *is* permission to use the software. It represents no intangible capacity; when you sell it, you are giving away all of your right to use the software, as that right is contained in the license. A better comparison, keeping with the current metaphor, would be the title to your vehicle. It represents your purchase of the car; if you sole that to Joe, he would now legally own your vehicle. Like the software license, possession exists *because* you hold the piece of paper, as opposed to the paper serving as proof that you are qualified to own the car.
I've actually heard some reports that the PS2 has a problem when used as a DVD player on a long-term basis. Apparently, the motor used to spin the discs was not meant for sustained use, as a game only requires occasional spinning, unlike a DVD. Not all units are breaking, although enough are to raise some suspicions.
~ellF~
no, linus doesn't want to replace the boot information with clouds, penguins, or anything else. FUD, FUD, FUD.
what he said was: "'Informational' messages aren't informational, they're just annoying, and they hide the _real_ stuff."
The "real" stuff is still there. What should be cut (and right on, Linus!) are "version strings, author information, and "good status" messages".
bleh. go read it.
have you considered SDL? I've used it for some development, and I've found that it is both powerful and flexible enough to support development on both Win32 and Linux environments.
It's equally interesting to note that it supports OpenGL - I happened across the old NeHe tutorials that I learned on at the OpenGL webpage, re-written to include information on SDL. Good stuff.
The technology is there; the trick is to convince developers that learning the new API is worth it, and that by doing so they will make their code more portable - and that this is a good thing.
to get anal...
the first "I'm" (the subject) indicates that the speaker is not aware of the feelings which the recipient - "I", in this case, possess, but that the "readers" are aware of that.
thus, it would seem that we have a firmer grasp on the way that taco feels than he does.