I'm not on the wine project or anything but my understanding is that they are attempting to support a pseudo-documented api bugs and all.
That is a lot harder than writing a new system. Emulating a PC is probably on the whole, is also simpler than M$ APIs. (VM ware)
Secondly there probably is a smaller demographic that works on/knows about M$ products and *Nix.
Third, they are grafting two OSs which are quite different together. One would always have to make accomidations for the way one works. This must be a headache.
Hats off to the wine people! Running Office is quite a feat.
Seriously though, what if you wrote some program that allows access to pr0n or some other program that the company would find offensive? Do they automatically own it? Can you get in trouble as an employee for writing possibly illegal or unethical software in your own time, and announcing it--but then it is actually your employer's property? Are they not then liable, as owners, for the damage incurred for an employee writing a virus despite the fact that they are not supervised?
I would imagine that employee contracts that include clauses like this would open up a whole new world for liability. If Tilly's money-grubbing-employer successfuly voids the GPL and the software that is in the wild is not be covered by any EULA.... If it breaks and causes damage, wouldn't grieved parties come knocking on unsaid-money-grubbing-employer's door lawsuits in hand?
I think if you look at some of the past battles regarding content, etc. you'll find that the RIAA and the MPAA are *very* involved in Canadian lobbying. They do participate, sometimes as member companies.
Just as the tax on gasoline is directed to road maintenance, the tax on recordable media will flow to Canadian artists. Don't believe a word of what the Heritage ministry says: whatever the size of the levys are, the money will be dropped into general revenue and handed out to fountain builders, and golf course owners.
It is apparent that there is no longer any federal elected government in Canada. Just a bunch of petty arguing tribes until they hold the leadership race.
This article is insightful? It is deceiving.
I read something interesting about the "Panopticon" not long ago...
"The agency which Poindexter will run is called the Information Awareness Office. You want to know what that is? Think, Big Brother is Watching You. IAO will supply federal officials with 'instant' analysis on what is being written on email and said on phones all over the US. Domestic espionage."
--John Sutherland of UK's Guardian.
Remember John Poindexter? Mr. Iran-Contra? He lied to Congress and kept Ronald out of the loop. He also was responsible for shredding lots of docs on the subject as well. Now he'll be spying on US domestic electronic transmissions.
There is some irony in him destroying thousands emails to cover his ass then and now being in charge of watching everyone else's emails.
I'm also sure that the billions of dollars for his new office may be able to overcome shortcomings of certain search engines. Nobody's going to have to type all those boolean operators.
They *obviously* have their own webcasting plans. Think of the captive audience being channeled to their online music sales sites.. Or the little applet-- says what song is playing... A "Buy Now!" link...The music never stops..
The nice thing for the RIAA is that the members already own 90% or so of popular music. RIAA members will be playing their own music so the costs for *their* streaming will be next to nothing b/c it will simply "net out" between them. The indy stations which promote a diverse set of indy music (I like to code to Somafm.com) from a diverse set of labels would not only have prohibitive fees, but prohibitive paperwork. Any fees will place the indy streamer at a competitive disadvantage.
Slimyness does not pay.
on
Abusing the GPL?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
What benefit does a company accrue to taking someone's work, obfuscating(sp) it and then re-releasing it under GPL as one's own? Unless they are not actually intending to release as GPL.. Well, assuming what you say is correct, the benefits are few... The chances of getting caught are moderate, but if you or one of your staff is laid off/fired/quits then the word will get out and make its way to the original authors.
Nobody needs to "squeal" either. Say I write a lot of code for GPL's project X and this company comes out with product X' which is almost the same, but better. Their code is extremely obscure as well... I might out of curiosity, run one of those web-based code checking tools. These are designed to find cheating students and do not require similar variable names, etc.
If caught the costs would be painfully high. I think most software companies would rather face a ravenous pack of lawyers than face the savage hordes of a jilted Open Source community. Every day operations would become difficult due to clogged email/phone lines, not to mention that your good corporate name would be mud.
The B/C analysis is vastly in favour of crediting the original authors. I think your managers and your lawyers are playing dice with your company's future. If I was a share holder (let alone an OS geek or an employee like yourself) I'd be quite pissed.
You forgot that Microsoft does not pay any federal income taxes: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/138 52.html
So the federal government has a choice of $30 or $0 for corporate income tax. Of course there are other multipliers like personal income tax paid by employees, etc...
Re:Who paid for Ernest F. Hollings?
on
SSSCA Hearing
·
· Score: 1
Does that include soft money?
If it doesn't, I cannot believe it is possible to put the entire computer industry in a tizzy for a paultry $282,984.
If only Enron was so lucky to have a such a lapdog-- they could have spent a mere $300K or so to change GAP accounting rules to use reals instead of integers and still be in the black today!
ESR may or may not be a nutter but he does speak the truth. The costs of software vis hardware is climbing for low end PCs.
Game consoles are typically sold at a loss to expand market share and manufacturers recoup their costs by selling games. I don't think games haven't come down in price over the years have they?
I've heard that the Windows OS licence for a Pocket PC is about $5.00. So how low can they go? There are fixed costs included in producing these products. Companies have to provide support and design-build-package them too. Would MS drop its OS to $2? Perhaps if it can sell services!
Commoditization(SP) of the pc market is very real. As you say, manufacturers are quite competitive at the low end. This also affects pdas, phones, all the trinkets that we used to pay big bucks for. I was the prowd owner of an IBM PC, and a Palm 5000. Both very cheap now (Dammit!). Now that the low end of PCs can play games and surf the web, do word processing, how can PC prices --- for your mom be justified at over $1000? Once a low end pc can manipulate video, I can't think of any use for the average user which would require an expensive PC. Then the price will inevitably drop to $100 or so which *will* squeeze OS software providers. Would MS be willing to pay for design-development-packaging-support of a sophisticated OS that generates only $10 in revenue? I doubt it.
Many on/. would pay big bucks for the latest pc because thats our thing. We are not representive of the general PC market.
Dude, Your getting a Dell! $999->$899 and counting: http://wwwc.us.dell.com/us/en/dhs/offer s/specials_ 3x_special61.htm
350 000 movies x 650 000 000 bytes/movie = 227 500 000 000 000 bytes/day. 1820 000 000 000 000 bits per day. 1820 TB/day world downloads. 1820/20 000 = equivalent of 9.1 percent of all US traffic.
I'm entertained by Jack Valenti's assertion in his Feb 25th letter that "According to the Boston-based consulting firm Viant, some 350,000-plus films are being downloaded illegally every day."
If this is actually the case, then 350 000 * 6 Gbytes per movie (compressed DivX at about 400x300 pixels) = 2 100 000 000 000 000 bytes per day.
That is 16 800 000 000 000 000 bits per day (8 bits per byte) or 16 800 Terra bits per day.
According to CyberAtlas (please see link below) the entire bandwidth of the US internet is only 20 000 Terra bits per day.
So Mr. Valenti is using figures to advance his argument which imply that (world) 'netizens downloading pirate movies would utilize 84% of *all* US internet bandwidth. There must be a very 'fat pipe' to River-City.
Yours,
Bobzibub
http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/hardw ar e/article/0,,5921_900241,00.html
1) I have never heard anyone seriously imply that the US examination system is effective before. Even if it is better than say, Uzbekistan's. Does this mean it is "good"?
2) I have never seen any proof that software patents have helped the US grow a successful software industry. Individual companies (and both side's lawyers) at the expense of other companies but not necessarily the industry as a whole. Remember there are significant transaction costs involved.
3) I do not see any reason how development of the software industry will cease idiotic patents. Not when there is easy money to be made.
4) While in theory, a patent can defend a small company's ideas, in practice this idea is suspect. I do not understand how a small company will be protected against large companies with significant ly more funds for legal defense. Killer app or not. Microsoft can win against the DOJ because of their legal resources; how can one expect joe-coder company's patent to be upheld against Microsoft?
Please enlighten me.
Cheers,
-B
That's Almost 3 bits per millimetre!
on
Intel's Big Chip
·
· Score: 3, Funny
"464 square millimeters which would make it one of the largest ever produced....due to the 64 bit registers."
464^.5=21.54mm a side.
64bits/21.54mm=2.97 bits/mm
I'm curious how a 2cpus @ 1Ghz can achieve 15GFLOPS.
Wouldn't 2 GFLOPS be the theoretical max on a RISC chip??
Anyone know PPC architecture??
Thanks.
-B
Re:Cheap geographical redundancy, not $$$ gimmicks
on
Escape from Data Alcatraz
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Depends upon what kind of attack you plan on defending against. If your enemy is joe with a back-hoe, then you're better off with three geographically dispersed, less secure sites. Wouldn't you agree? Check this out:
http://www.info-sec.com/abuse/abuse_062097a.html -s si
I was touring one of these secured data sites once and (being the shit I am) I asked the techie-sales dude there if they'd secured the site against tempest. He hadn't heard of the technology. Thick bullet-proof glass but no sign of gounded chicken wire.
The roof wasn't shielded as far as I could see either, and there were other businesses on floors above.
You need a very large tft monitor, something like this:
http://samsungelectronics.com/tv/tft_lcd/
Imagine you're improved productivity with one of these babies!
Or maybe just a $400 card:
http://www.telemann.com/products/dtv200.html
My wife now finds it easier to use my Linux box to:
-check web mail
-read and print doc/xls files
-surf w/o crashing browser
-use dial-up
-other business stuff.
...rather than boot up her NT box to do the same.
Now with software we use (Moz/StarOffice/KDE) being so nice, stable, & useful, the desktop is at last becoming a viable alternative for Windoze users--with just a little prompting.
To me, the interoperability with Word/Excel/Exchange is the critical thing for businesses. In 2000, this clearly did not work well at all. I think 2002 will indeed herald the year that linux will be occationally adopted as an alternative in corporate environments. Reading/printing these file formats (and protocols) is now *finally* reliable. Ximian's Exchange connector completes it for most businesses.
I don't think that the desktop not being adopted in large numbers this year was because IT managers didn't want to do it, it was because they couldn't do it.
Now they can.
I wonder if people in Sun get excited every time someone hits the buy button on a $4Million machine. (no recalculate... $5Million) I wonder if they are disappointed when people then back out of the transaction....
It can't happen *that* often..
Well who buys less music b/c of streaming mp3? Personally, I buy more. Streaming audio allows me to buy products which I would not otherwise be exposed to. The RIAA knows this but these increased sales are far outweighed if they could monopolize web streaming just like they (and their ilk) monopolized radio. Make no mistake: the RIAA's goal is to charge monopoly rents for web streaming, and have the entire web captive to their own record sales channels. Those that do not have to pay fees (like, say....Sony) and mainstream "Oops I did it again" licenced sites will be the only ones left streaming if they are successful.
Whether or not this is a winnable battle, I don't know, but it is very important for all online music listeners.
I like to code to somaFM. (Guess the URL!) I doubt if they would survive if this continues.
I fear true evil...
Integrate the Magic Lantern to local Carnavor box. (That would be a *very* short ethernet cable..)
Then the FBI (or whomever) has fully automated detection/extraction capabilities because if Carnavore doesn't like what you post on Slash then all-your-files-are-belong-to-us.
Sooner or later this kind of thing will come crashing down. Someone will happen to snort its packets, post them and they will be disected. Then people will actively search for the signatures and nail the machines when they find the IPs. It'll end up as one big shell script.
It is possible that someone could compromise the "lantern" itself and cause plenty of havoc with a tool like that.
Buncha cowboys. Terrorism must be as addictive as crack.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not on the wine project or anything but my understanding is that they are attempting to support a pseudo-documented api bugs and all.
That is a lot harder than writing a new system. Emulating a PC is probably on the whole, is also simpler than M$ APIs. (VM ware)
Secondly there probably is a smaller demographic that works on/knows about M$ products and *Nix.
Third, they are grafting two OSs which are quite different together. One would always have to make accomidations for the way one works. This must be a headache.
Hats off to the wine people! Running Office is quite a feat.
Cheers,
-b
It is not M$'s predatory practices, it is that a major company was brave enough to publicly complain. Way to go Gateway!
CBDTPA--- Corporations that Bought Democrats, too Tight to Pay Artists.
Seriously though, what if you wrote some program that allows access to pr0n or some other program that the company would find offensive? Do they automatically own it? Can you get in trouble as an employee for writing possibly illegal or unethical software in your own time, and announcing it--but then it is actually your employer's property? Are they not then liable, as owners, for the damage incurred for an employee writing a virus despite the fact that they are not supervised?
I would imagine that employee contracts that include clauses like this would open up a whole new world for liability. If Tilly's money-grubbing-employer successfuly voids the GPL and the software that is in the wild is not be covered by any EULA.... If it breaks and causes damage, wouldn't grieved parties come knocking on unsaid-money-grubbing-employer's door lawsuits in hand?
I think if you look at some of the past battles regarding content, etc. you'll find that the RIAA and the MPAA are *very* involved in Canadian lobbying. They do participate, sometimes as member companies.
Just as the tax on gasoline is directed to road maintenance, the tax on recordable media will flow to Canadian artists. Don't believe a word of what the Heritage ministry says: whatever the size of the levys are, the money will be dropped into general revenue and handed out to fountain builders, and golf course owners.
It is apparent that there is no longer any federal elected government in Canada. Just a bunch of petty arguing tribes until they hold the leadership race.
It is so shameful.
Remember John Poindexter? Mr. Iran-Contra? He lied to Congress and kept Ronald out of the loop. He also was responsible for shredding lots of docs on the subject as well. Now he'll be spying on US domestic electronic transmissions.
There is some irony in him destroying thousands emails to cover his ass then and now being in charge of watching everyone else's emails.
I'm also sure that the billions of dollars for his new office may be able to overcome shortcomings of certain search engines. Nobody's going to have to type all those boolean operators.
The quote above is from the UK's Guardian... Check out what you might have been missing
An interesting story, curiously not in CNN..
Nor MSNBC...
Couldn't find it in Washington Post..
Article in LA times on his appointment does not describe what he is to do in his new job except to blather about Sputnik and stealth aircraft.
Not in CBC.ca : (
Cheers to all the spooks! I think it is a job well done! -b.
They *obviously* have their own webcasting plans. Think of the captive audience being channeled to their online music sales sites.. Or the little applet-- says what song is playing... A "Buy Now!" link...The music never stops..
The nice thing for the RIAA is that the members already own 90% or so of popular music. RIAA members will be playing their own music so the costs for *their* streaming will be next to nothing b/c it will simply "net out" between them. The indy stations which promote a diverse set of indy music (I like to code to Somafm.com) from a diverse set of labels would not only have prohibitive fees, but prohibitive paperwork. Any fees will place the indy streamer at a competitive disadvantage.
What benefit does a company accrue to taking someone's work, obfuscating(sp) it and then re-releasing it under GPL as one's own? Unless they are not actually intending to release as GPL..
Well, assuming what you say is correct, the benefits are few... The chances of getting caught are moderate, but if you or one of your staff is laid off/fired/quits then the word will get out and make its way to the original authors.
Nobody needs to "squeal" either. Say I write a lot of code for GPL's project X and this company comes out with product X' which is almost the same, but better. Their code is extremely obscure as well...
I might out of curiosity, run one of those web-based code checking tools. These are designed to find cheating students and do not require similar variable names, etc.
If caught the costs would be painfully high. I think most software companies would rather face a ravenous pack of lawyers than face the savage hordes of a jilted Open Source community. Every day operations would become difficult due to clogged email/phone lines, not to mention that your good corporate name would be mud.
The B/C analysis is vastly in favour of crediting the original authors. I think your managers and your lawyers are playing dice with your company's future. If I was a share holder (let alone an OS geek or an employee like yourself) I'd be quite pissed.
Good luck!
-b
You forgot that Microsoft does not pay any federal income taxes:8 52.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/13
So the federal government has a choice of $30 or $0 for corporate income tax.
Of course there are other multipliers like personal income tax paid by employees, etc...
Does that include soft money?
If it doesn't, I cannot believe it is possible to put the entire computer industry in a tizzy for a paultry $282,984.
If only Enron was so lucky to have a such a lapdog-- they could have spent a mere $300K or so to change GAP accounting rules to use reals instead of integers and still be in the black today!
Representitive democracy at its finest! = )
-b
ESR may or may not be a nutter but he does speak the truth. The costs of software vis hardware is climbing for low end PCs.
/. would pay big bucks for the latest pc because thats our thing. We are not representive of the general PC market.
r s/specials_ 3x_special61.htm
Game consoles are typically sold at a loss to expand market share and manufacturers recoup their costs by selling games. I don't think games haven't come down in price over the years have they?
I've heard that the Windows OS licence for a Pocket PC is about $5.00. So how low can they go? There are fixed costs included in producing these products. Companies have to provide support and design-build-package them too. Would MS drop its OS to $2? Perhaps if it can sell services!
Commoditization(SP) of the pc market is very real. As you say, manufacturers are quite competitive at the low end. This also affects pdas, phones, all the trinkets that we used to pay big bucks for. I was the prowd owner of an IBM PC, and a Palm 5000. Both very cheap now (Dammit!). Now that the low end of PCs can play games and surf the web, do word processing, how can PC prices --- for your mom be justified at over $1000? Once a low end pc can manipulate video, I can't think of any use for the average user which would require an expensive PC. Then the price will inevitably drop to $100 or so which *will* squeeze OS software providers. Would MS be willing to pay for design-development-packaging-support of a sophisticated OS that generates only $10 in revenue? I doubt it.
Many on
Dude, Your getting a Dell! $999->$899 and counting:
http://wwwc.us.dell.com/us/en/dhs/offe
mebbe this is right then?
350 000 movies x 650 000 000 bytes/movie = 227 500 000 000 000 bytes/day.
1820 000 000 000 000 bits per day.
1820 TB/day world downloads.
1820/20 000 = equivalent of 9.1 percent of all US traffic.
And I thought I was on a role too...
Crap!
; )
Dear Editor;
w ar e/article/0,,5921_900241,00.html
I'm entertained by Jack Valenti's assertion in his Feb 25th letter that
"According to the Boston-based consulting firm Viant, some 350,000-plus films
are being downloaded illegally every day."
If this is actually the case, then 350 000 * 6 Gbytes per movie (compressed
DivX at about 400x300 pixels) = 2 100 000 000 000 000 bytes per day.
That is 16 800 000 000 000 000 bits per day (8 bits per byte) or 16 800 Terra bits per day.
According to CyberAtlas (please see link below) the entire bandwidth of the
US internet is only 20 000 Terra bits per day.
So Mr. Valenti is using figures to advance his argument which imply that
(world) 'netizens downloading pirate movies would utilize 84% of *all* US
internet bandwidth. There must be a very 'fat pipe' to River-City.
Yours,
Bobzibub
http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/hard
1) I have never heard anyone seriously imply that the US examination system is effective before. Even if it is better than say, Uzbekistan's. Does this mean it is "good"?
2) I have never seen any proof that software patents have helped the US grow a successful software industry. Individual companies (and both side's lawyers) at the expense of other companies but not necessarily the industry as a whole. Remember there are significant transaction costs involved.
3) I do not see any reason how development of the software industry will cease idiotic patents. Not when there is easy money to be made.
4) While in theory, a patent can defend a small company's ideas, in practice this idea is suspect. I do not understand how a small company will be protected against large companies with significant ly more funds for legal defense. Killer app or not. Microsoft can win against the DOJ because of their legal resources; how can one expect joe-coder company's patent to be upheld against Microsoft?
Please enlighten me.
Cheers,
-B
"464 square millimeters which would make it one of the largest ever produced....due to the 64 bit registers." 464^.5=21.54mm a side.
64bits/21.54mm=2.97 bits/mm
They've GOT to start using smaller wavelengths!
I'm curious how a 2cpus @ 1Ghz can achieve 15GFLOPS.
Wouldn't 2 GFLOPS be the theoretical max on a RISC chip??
Anyone know PPC architecture??
Thanks.
-B
Depends upon what kind of attack you plan on defending against. If your enemy is joe with a back-hoe, then you're better off with three geographically dispersed, less secure sites. Wouldn't you agree? Check this out:l -s si
http://www.info-sec.com/abuse/abuse_062097a.htm
I was touring one of these secured data sites once and (being the shit I am) I asked the techie-sales dude there if they'd secured the site against tempest. He hadn't heard of the technology. Thick bullet-proof glass but no sign of gounded chicken wire.
The roof wasn't shielded as far as I could see either, and there were other businesses on floors above.
So ymmv.
You need a very large tft monitor, something like this:
http://samsungelectronics.com/tv/tft_lcd/
Imagine you're improved productivity with one of these babies!
Or maybe just a $400 card:
http://www.telemann.com/products/dtv200.html
My wife now finds it easier to use my Linux box to:
-check web mail
-read and print doc/xls files
-surf w/o crashing browser
-use dial-up
-other business stuff.
...rather than boot up her NT box to do the same.
Now with software we use (Moz/StarOffice/KDE) being so nice, stable, & useful, the desktop is at last becoming a viable alternative for Windoze users--with just a little prompting.
To me, the interoperability with Word/Excel/Exchange is the critical thing for businesses. In 2000, this clearly did not work well at all. I think 2002 will indeed herald the year that linux will be occationally adopted as an alternative in corporate environments. Reading/printing these file formats (and protocols) is now *finally* reliable. Ximian's Exchange connector completes it for most businesses.
I don't think that the desktop not being adopted in large numbers this year was because IT managers didn't want to do it, it was because they couldn't do it.
Now they can.
I wonder if people in Sun get excited every time someone hits the buy button on a $4Million machine. (no recalculate... $5Million) I wonder if they are disappointed when people then back out of the transaction....
It can't happen *that* often..
So al Qaeda, FBI, CIA, NSA, and God knows who else all have their hacks in XP? No wonder it weighs in at 45 million lines of code.
Well who buys less music b/c of streaming mp3? Personally, I buy more. Streaming audio allows me to buy products which I would not otherwise be exposed to. The RIAA knows this but these increased sales are far outweighed if they could monopolize web streaming just like they (and their ilk) monopolized radio. Make no mistake: the RIAA's goal is to charge monopoly rents for web streaming, and have the entire web captive to their own record sales channels. Those that do not have to pay fees (like, say....Sony) and mainstream "Oops I did it again" licenced sites will be the only ones left streaming if they are successful.
Whether or not this is a winnable battle, I don't know, but it is very important for all online music listeners.
I like to code to somaFM. (Guess the URL!) I doubt if they would survive if this continues.
I fear true evil...
Integrate the Magic Lantern to local Carnavor box. (That would be a *very* short ethernet cable..)
Then the FBI (or whomever) has fully automated detection/extraction capabilities because if Carnavore doesn't like what you post on Slash then all-your-files-are-belong-to-us.
Sooner or later this kind of thing will come crashing down. Someone will happen to snort its packets, post them and they will be disected. Then people will actively search for the signatures and nail the machines when they find the IPs. It'll end up as one big shell script.
It is possible that someone could compromise the "lantern" itself and cause plenty of havoc with a tool like that.
Buncha cowboys. Terrorism must be as addictive as crack.
hair drier!