It's the fact that we're seeing this kind of thing now which in my mind lends credence to the idea that Linux's relative obscurity is the main reason why we haven't seen such things in the past, rather than any inherent superiority in the multiuser system.
To me there are also a couple of obvious questions to be asked, here...
a) I wonder how many more of these things we're going to be seeing...and I'm assuming that this one is only the initial harbinger of a tidal wave of them, and...
b) I'm also wondering if the authors of any of these are going to be on Microsoft's payroll. Attempting to write Linux-specific malware in an attempt to discredit/sabotage the operating system would be IMHO entirely consistent with Microsoft's track record of corporate ethics. (or lack thereof)
The good news of course is that to a degree the multiuser system still offers *some* protection, in terms of it hopefully being the scenario that the regular user downloading this file will be someone other than root on many systems, and that root will hopefully be someone with more of a clue than said regular user.
Of course, the best defense in situations like this is to *always* use projects like this one in order to create/install your Linux system. As I've said in another of my posts, while Red Hat have made some valuable contributions to Linux in terms of isolated pieces of software, with their overall OS they are still taking the fundamentally broken approach of attempting to make Linux into just more homogenised, predigested "content" that they can then use to make money. As long as that is the main thing they care about, (as opposed to actually making a robust system) they're going have a system which won't be all that much less broken than Windows. On an individual basis, kudzu and Red Hat's other apps are good...but on an integrated basis, I wouldn't use Fedora or RHEL if you paid me.
I wouldn't call Kurzweil an idiot myself by any means, but I will say that I think some of the fundamental underlying premises of his view of reality are different from a lot of people's. One example is that I've heard him referred to numerous times as an atheist, and then read in this interview about him wanting to achieve physical immortality. To me, as an atheist he would view death as the termination of any form of existence, and so from that point of view it is entirely logical that he would want to prolong his physical life as much as possible. I personally believe in an afterlife, and so while I'm not in any tearing hurry to die myself, the idea doesn't fill me with anything like the level of consternation that I suspect it does him. What he himself would realise if he thought about it though is that the instinct for self-preservation itself is only a genetic or instinctive directive...if a person was hypothetically able to give themselves an android body they just as likely would cease to care whether they remained alive or not.
The other thing to remember about all such people (and this will help you take them with the necessary grain of salt) is that although the media love the idea that they can tell us what the future is going to be like, the reality is that they actually can't. If you were to ask Bill Gates what he thought the world would be like in 20 years from now, you'd possibly get a radically different answer from the one Kurtzweil would give you, and the reason for this is that the vision of the future these men have is the vision of what *they want* the future to be like. The future is the product of any number of different variables, as well as the desires of entire societies, not just individual men. Kurtzweil might want nano-based cyberware, but you can bet your boots that other very large demographics of society won't, and therefore there's a good possibility that such inventions either a) won't occur, or b) will be significantly delayed in their development and/or introduction. The media like to promote the idea that the future is something inexplicable which somehow just randomly and magically falls together in a certain way, and that it is unknowable to all but a few select intellectual giants, who are able (with the aid of no small amount of controlled substances, no doubt) to periodically come down from their ivory towers and kindly offer prognostications on what we can expect the world to be like several decades down the track. It's a romantic view, and like most such romaticised perspectives, it's also complete garbage. Contrary to what a lot of these technologists will tell you, public opinion/desire DOES influence technological progression/adoption in my view.
It's important to make sure we don't allow our admiration of some of these individuals to cause us to think that they are somehow inherently intellectually superior to the rest of us...in many cases, they aren't. Many of them might write interesting material, but so can just about anyone, given enough LSD and more than a marginal level of intelligence.;)
This reminds me of another interview I read with Bill Joy recently, which I found seriously underwhelming. I'm also aware that a fair number of people worship this man, but I don't. I think it's a very safe assumption that his shit stinks to an equal or greater degree than my own. So does Kurtzweil's.
>PC Gamer's latest issue has an early review of Half >Life 2. They gave is a 98% rating and said it's >"arguably the best game ever made".
Not to say that it isn't going to be awesome...I think it probably will be...but there are some games/game companies that are unfortunately beyond genuinely objective reviewing. Id were the first, Epic were probably the second, and now Valve. If John Carmack had a really violent attack of diarrhea, wrapped it up in newspaper, and sent it to either PC Gamer or Gamespy in particular, it'd get reviewed at 98%.
Game reviews these days are only likely to be marginally objective when they're about offerings from a relatively unknown company. I'm not saying id and the other two companies mentioned above aren't made up of enormously talented people; of course they are, and we all know that. But just because we know they're as talented as they are doesn't mean we should automatically expect that a new game from them is going to be the best yet, purely because all the others in the past were. Each game needs to be assessed purely on its own merits, not just because it comes from a company that has had X number of other successes in the past. Everyone has bad days, and everyone has misfires, regardless of the level of their intelligence. Wait until the game is in your hands and you've played it for at least a few hours before forming an opinion either way, and try to base said opinion purely on *that individual game*, not on the fact that the game is from Valve or id or whoever.
But who cares? That is essentially my attitude regarding Steam.
a) I don't have a credit card, so that rules me out by default whether I'd *like* to sign up or not. In a move displaying their usual level of intelligence, EA made the credit-card only mistake with the Sims Online, and then scratched their heads wondering why they weren't able to break the 100k user barrier. It ain't rocket science, guys. I bought one of the first copies of TSO available in this country (Australia) and have paid for all of the expansion packs for the offline game up to Unleashed more than once, as well as having bought The Sims 2 roughly 3 days after its global release. In other words, I'm a certified Sims addict, and if EA had made it so that I was able to play via money order, they would have got some of my money. I'm guessing there are a very large number of other people in this category.
b) As others here have already said, HL2 ain't the only FPS in existence. I play offline UT99 on a daily basis, and still haven't played a game that's given me a better online experience than the original Quake...but that's just me. I could also be part of only 1% of people on the planet here as well, but I don't particularly like Counter Strike. The original HL was a fantastic game in my mind, extremely innovative for its time, and one which I enjoyed immensely. I'm also assuming that Valve made a substantial amount of money from the sale of it. If however, they are willing to weather the storm of bad publicity and community abandonment that resorting to the subscription model will cause, in order to prevent a marginal amount of piracy, then I say good luck to them. There have been other game companies in the past, and there will be more in the future, and it will not stop the world from turning if Valve are sunk by their own greed and short sightedness.
This is a rare case in which I don't necessarily think the company in question are in the wrong. I really haven't liked what I've seen of the bnetd's developers' attitudes when I've been to the site...They seem to think that a company should have NO say in what happens to their material at all, which I think is wrong. Don't misinterpret me here...I think Jack Rosen has horns, a tail, and glowing red eyes just as much as the next Slashdotter...but I also think music and software are a slightly different ballgame.
The thing about music is, there generally isn't a possibility of derivative works, or of the original work being modified quite so much. (I know about satire and remixes/covers, yes, but those are an exception) Once a song's been written, for most genres that's customarily the form it stays in. I don't have a problem with the copying of a static medium when there is no loss of definite revenue. (as opposed to *potential* revenue, which is what the RIAA are up in arms about) Software on the other hand very often goes through an evolutionary process, and I believe personally that the creator of a given software project is entitled to govern the direction of its development. I'm not talking about copying here, either...copying binaries doesn't change the nature of the software at all in most instances.
Obviously open source is more desirable, and people should be encouraged to use open source licenses with their projects. But note here the difference between *encourage* and *force.* With the amount of cheating that's occurred on Battlenet already, Blizzard most likely feel that they have very legitimate reasons for not wanting people to back engineer the server software. I also know that the answer a lot of open source advocates are going to give to that is that more people looking at the code will make it more secure. That may be so...but you're still missing the fundamental point here. An author should have the right to determine how to license their own software. If they *choose* to put it under the GPL themselves, great, and it is true that that would most likely benefit them as much as everyone else. But if they don't, that *also* should be their perogative. If we were to start trying to force everyone who writes code to adopt an OSS license, we'd be no better in my mind than Microsoft and other such companies when they try to dominate people. This is the one area in which my own opinion fundamentally differs from that of RMS...in that I believe that freedom must also include freedom of choice.
>Oklahoma experiences quite a few natural events >that can kill, like F5 tornadoes, baseball-sized >hail, 100mph straight line winds from thunderstorm >outflows, and heat and humidity.
Christians (AFAIK anywayz) don't expect good weather or a lack of natural disasters as evidence of God being happy with them, and their motivation for worship does not include the desire to avoid such. That is much more a pagan thing. Christian incentive for worship is usually centred far more around assurance of wellbeing in the afterlife, as opposed to earthly existence, since the idea is that the afterlife is not only going to consume a much greater length of time, but that it is considerably more important/significant than corporeal existence.
Worship motivated by a desire to assure meteorological/environmental stability is much more commonly associated with indigenous/aboriginal groups or belief systems. Although typical Christian belief is that God can and does intervene positively in human affairs, the belief also is generally that God intervenes at times and by methods of his own choosing, rather than as a result of having been petitioned/coaxed into action by human followers. One of the ten commandments ("Thou shalt not tempt the LORD thy God") in fact expressly prohibits this.
The reason why an increase in natural disasters would actually cause an increase in worship is because in the Gospels, Jesus talks about an overwhelming increase in the frequency of natural disasters just prior to the end of the world. It is normal Christian belief (at least in a contemporary sense, anyway) to actually desire and anticipate the end of the world, because the belief is that the end of the current world will then lead to the commencement of eternal/acorporeal existence, which Revelations hints at (albeit rather vaguely) as being an infinitely more enjoyable/pleasurable existence than earthly life. Because of this, an increase in the incidence of natural disasters would logically cause Christians to feel an increase in thankfulness towards God, as well as an increase in optimism generally, as it causes a belief that they are imminently about to go to a better place.
The Bible actually says virtually nothing about the specific nature of the afterlife however, and most especially does not make the sort of hedonistic references that the Quran for example does. The implication is simply made that Heaven's going to be very good, and definitely worth experiencing...but we're not really told anything more specific than that. ("No eye can concieve, or mind can percieve, what God has prepared for those who love him.")
We could focus on the fact that he lied, yes. Or we could focus on what exactly gives Microsoft the right or need to ask why someone would want to reinstall their software. Especially given the number of security problems in existence now that can necessitate a complete install of Windows.
Understand one thing. In founding Microsoft, Gates had only one motivation, and I'm not talking about money. It also didn't have anything to do with wanting to provide the world with PCs because of what a wonderful guy he supposedly is. He was already completely aware that *someone* was going to be in that position, and he wanted it to be him primarily because he could also see how dependent people would eventually become on computers, and the amount of control that being the sole provider of software could give him.
Microsoft aren't motivated by a love of technology, a desire to innovate, or even the love of money. They are motivated solely by the desire to completely control the lives of every single person who uses a computer. The only reason why Gates had the desire to put "a computer on every desk and in every home" is because doing so would give *him* a window into every home. Microsoft's senior management are total megalomaniacs.
>Yes, advanced users hate autoupdates. So what, >they can always be disabled.
Depends on the auto-update program. An app which simply wants to wrest control of my system out of my hands for the time it takes to update something, as well as not giving much feedback or telling me a huge amount about what it is doing is obnoxious, and I won't use it.
Give me an updater however which lets me choose what I want to download, shows me the commands it uses, (and lets me tweak them if I know what I'm doing, no less) shows me on the screen everything it does while it does it, (including progress indicators, etc) and then generates a meticulous log at the end of it, (so that I know the program isn't sending my info anywhere it shouldn't, and also so that I can fault find if something goes wrong) and I'm sold. A program like that makes my life easier, without violating my right to decide what does/doesn't happen on my computer.
The comparitively weak storylines (IMHO anywayz) were the main thing that's always bothered me about Star Wars. I know I'll probably get flamed into oblivion for this, but I thought the storyline of at least the first three movies was probably more generic than any science fiction novel I've read. There of course was a storyline in a broad sense, but to me SW was always a lot more about action than storytelling.
Given that, I find it extremely doubtful that the central premises of either series of films could carry an episodic television series, especially given that episodic TV has by necessity a much smaller budget, which would in turn mean a lower special effects/action quotient than the films. If they based it on prewritten material from other formats (either the novels or the comics, for instance) it *might* work, since comics themselves aren't always as much oriented towards mindless action as some of us would believe.
If you want really good sci fi, read a book. That's probably even truer now than it ever has been, and it was always true in the case of Star Wars.
>You are insane in my opinion. Executing children >because they experiment with computers?
No...look closer. I did not say that I think script kiddies/virus writers should be executed at all. What I meant was that I consider execution to possibly be more humane and less pointless than incarcerating someone in an environment where torture, homosexual rape, and various other forms of *extreme* violence occur on a routine basis, for an indefinite/indeterminate period. I don't believe anyone deserves that, (*especially* not script kiddies and other non-violent offenders) and I don't believe it serves any purpose, because it effectively destroys even a remote chance of rehabilitation, let alone encouraging it. Going to jail in many countries these days doesn't just mean losing freedom of movement. It means being sodomised, bashed, flogged and/or worse on an almost daily basis.
The problem is that your archetypical virus author is (from what I've seen anywayz) at least borderline sociopathic. They generally have no regard whatsoever for the consequences of their actions or the potential damage, and likewise are most likely not capable of even being affected by punishment...they can genuinely be *that* fucked up.
My own feeling with such people is that they should definitely be detained/locked up, but only so that they do not have the ability to reoffend. I would also advocate sending them to a psychiatric inpatient unit, rather than jail par se...because at least there they have some chance of treatment/rehabilitation. Putting them in the prison system would probably in actuality be less humane than killing them, at least as far as the American prison system is concerned.
Virus authors are generally sick people, and need to be viewed as such. We need to determine what sociological factors are producing such tendencies, as well as treating individual offenders. If we can isolate the causes, we can erradicate the effect.
The author of Dansguardian states first that his software is not free for commercial purposes, but then says it is licensed under the GPL. This is a contradiction.
The GPL does not explicitly stipulate commercial or non-commercial use. Its only requirement is that source is distributed with binaries, and that all subsequent derivative works are also licensed under the GPL. If this guy wants to make his software non-free for commercial use, he should write his own license.
>the windows binaries free because he can't >possibly contact all of the contributing authors >and get their permission to charge a fee for >their GPL contributions.
The GPL does not specify that permission is needed from authors in order to charge for the distribution of works/derived works. All he needs to do is distribute the source with the binary, which as I've stated earlier, is why he can be assumed to be in violation of it if he is using the shareware model.
Copyleft requires that if you make derivative works, or want to redistribute someone else's work, you have to make sure source is available with the binaries. End of story.
>The problem is that the source is not adequately >provided.. if it were, we could just build up a new >version without this feature, if we were so >inclined.
Yes, but that's the entire point of the shareware paradigm. The idea that it's time bombed, and you *can't* change the time limit and therefore have to pay for it. Making a GPL compliant shareware program would in economic terms be utterly pointless, because as soon as the code is provided, all someone would have to do would be edit the relevant parts of the code to disable the time limit, recompile, and then get rid of the time-bombed binary. With most of the shareware I've seen, you wouldn't even need to be a particularly competent coder to do it. So violating the GPL with this is the *only* way the author is likely to make money from it...and so therefore it's a reasonably safe assumption that he *is* violating it.
>Seriously, is there any way whatsoever this case >could end in anything resembling a victory for >consumers?
It is a victory for consumers every single time Microsoft appears in court, regardless of the outcome of the individual case. Why? Because it makes progress towards a number of goals the completion of which will be necessary to eventually destroy the company.
1) It continues to expose Microsoft's business ethics (or complete lack thereof) which reinforces to everyone watching the level of disregard Microsoft has for its own customers, or for anyone for that matter who is not merely blindly interested in the company's survival. This sends a very powerful and necessary message to all concerned to avoid doing business with Microsoft at any point in the future.
2) Even if individual settlements are only a small amount per case, it serves to continue to bleed the company economically. As Microsoft's public image and reputation gets worse, their revenue streams will continue to dwindle from declining Windows sales and upgrades, which will force them into an increasingly desperate situation. The non-Microsoft world cannot hope to destroy the company itself...As Cringely said, the only ones capable of that are MS themselves. But it is vital for us to force them into a state of increasingly desperate panic, because once they are in that state, they will commit more and more heinous and unethical acts in order to attempt to regain their control, which will cause the entire chain reaction (the unethical business practices in order to maintain control, which lands them in court, which causes bad PR for them and bleeds them economically, which in turn causes them to engage in even more predatory behaviour to attempt to regain control) to move more quickly, thus accelerating their demise.
It is of vital importance that Microsoft are taken to the courts and held there. Besides the PR bruising it means for them and and the economic loss from settlements, the other advantage is that it takes their focus away from devising such wonderful things as Palladium and other similarly Orwellian technologies which they can then attempt to use to regain/reinforce monopoly control.
>Longhorn is supposed to be a "unified" desktop with >Internet, mail, etc.
The emphasis on unification and the monolithic model has been what has caused Windows virtually all of its security problems. Our (Linux's) strength is modularity. If Microsoft keep pushing unification, we've got them.
Gee, I wonder why you wrote this post as anonymous?;-) The main point here though is that Debian does *not* make up the totality of Linux usage.
Let's have another look at DistroWatch's top 10, shall we? Yes, Debian is at No 5. What you conveniently neglected to mention however is that Mandrake, Fedora, and SUSE are at No 1, 2, and 4 respectively. Slackware is at 6. So from this, we can fairly easily determine that while yes, Debian is highly popular, it is actually NOT the *main* focus at all. People are using a lot of other distributions as well besides Debian...which means that while those in the Debian camp get what they want, different approaches to things are still being looked at and developed. For people here who really NEED to have it spelled out in such simple terms, here it is.
Diversity == Good. Homogeny == Bad.
Why is this? As I've said before, for the evolutionary model to function, there need to be a lot of different variants of any given thing...a lot of mutations, if you like...these mutations are basically a proving ground where the best solutions to given problems can be found. If we only have a single option, that doesn't happen. Things stagnate, and progress grinds to a halt.
1. RPM. Read the Linux Standards Base documents? 2. Anaconda, the install/setup program. 3. Kudzu, the hardware detection system used by Knoppix and others.
I could continue, but I think those three on their own more than justify the company's existence, if nothing else. While I will admit that as an overall distribution I was not overly enamoured of Red Hat 9, RH have contributed solutions to a number of vexing problems for us, and also carry on a very active development effort at sources.redhat.com. I'm also detecting some of the usual commie whining (No, I don't think OSS is communist, but this is) about a company that's daring to actually make a large profit here...as if every company purely by virtue of its existence had to inevitably emulate Microsoft's bad behaviour. However, it might behoove you next time to be a little more sure of your facts before you start bitching.
I shouldn't be judging a book by its cover, but if the website, is any indication, MySQL's direction re commercialism is somewhat painfully obvious. The layout to me suggests the kind of tacky, soulless "content" mentality I'd expect to see on macromedia.com or real.com, not the site of an open source project. I was also unable to locate a reference to the GPL licensed form of MySQL, whereas an advertisement of the "Pro" version was instantly apparent.
From what I've seen Red Hat and some of the other companies doing here, there seem to be around six factors that I've seen that enable businesses to make money selling Linux.
1) An initially proprietary value add which greatly improves the user experience, but which via the GPL also improves "the state of the art." RPM, Anaconda, and YaST would all be examples of this.
2) Consultancy/Installation. "Our operating system is free, but sling us $5-10k and we'll install it on your corporate network, to your specifications."
3) Support. "We'll also show you how to use our free operating system, after you've paid us to install it on your network." This is good for businesses because they only need to pay money on a per-incident basis, and as a result, even though the initial install/training might be several thousand dollars, over time it can still work out to be a lot cheaper than having a resident sysadmin on the books. A per-incident consultant won't ask you to pay his super.
4) Saving time. A corporate or home user can buy a copy of Fedora Core or Mandrake and have a working system in approximately an hour. On my Celeron 1.7, by contrast, even a fully automated Linux From Scratch install takes a bit over four hours, and that doesn't include the roughly 3 months I've spent working out how to do that. What I'm trying to say here is that a company *could* employ an administrator to build a custom Linux system...but prototyping for specific needs takes a lot of time, and the admin will be paid by the hour for that time. Preconfigured software is a lot quicker, and therefore, cheaper again.
5) Although the value added programs mentioned above are lisenced by the GPL, anyone building custom Linux needs to invest time learning how to use them. This means that, while they're free, companies who already have the knowledge of how to implement them can do so for the consumer, which is a service that can be charged money for. Red Hat for example could also leverage the fact that although RPM is GPLed, they were the authors of it. "Other people *can* build an RPM-based system, but we have far more intimate knowledge of the process. We're the *inventors* of RPM!"
6) Branding/Recognition. If you establish a good reputation for yourself as having a solid distribution and doing great after-sale work, this can create the famous "positive spiral" effect which will in turn generate more sales.
I personally don't in any way see Linux as Communist or something which is resistant to making money. What it on the other hand does do is force a vendor to behave in a more ethical and value-oriented way, by shifting the unique selling position from the software itself to the service that the vendor gives the consumer. I can understand how some companies (I won't name names here, but I think we know who I'm talking about) don't like that, if they prefer to make money from hurting and controlling their consumers rather than genuinely helping them.
Server software:- OpenBSD if you can handle it, (link with some info on how to install it here) hardened Gentoo if you can't. I'll probably get flamed for suggesting what seems like massive overkill there, but you mentioned wanting to keep the vermin out, and either of those two will definitely do it.
Client side, I'd probably go either Slackware or Gentoo again myself. Run X with either straight twm or maybe something like fluxbox if you really want, and set a dedicated account ("mozilla" or "guest") using Mozilla/Firefox as the actual login program/shell equivalent. Make sure that account also doesn't have anything other than read access outside that directory as well. That may sound strange, but I figure the less you give people access to, the less resources you're giving them which they can then use to make mischief.
If you absolutely must, put Open Office on for them to do various other things, but doing that will blow the above plan out of the water almost completely. Personally I'd make it myself so that the only thing they have access to is a web browser. If they want to look up a book, do an HTML interface for the library DB, and they can do any other external surfing they want with that as well.
In terms of the surfing, have a deny-by-default firewall on the server...that way the only sites they can go to are those you specifically include. You won't have to worry about anyone using the system to download porn or other such nasty things, and it's a lot more robust at the firewall level than using some lame thing like Net Nanny that does hit-or-miss keyword screening. Also rather than locking the floppy drives on the clients, I'd actually disconnect the thing and pull it out. You most likely won't need it for anything yourself, and if you have it in there, any lock you've got on it will be pickable, which then opens up another avenue for trojans etc to be uploaded.
If you didn't care about security, you could probably get away with running the network with XP clients and a Linux server, but you mentioned wanting to keep deviants out, and that simply is not possible with anything from Microsloth, IMHO. I remember a few years ago on an NT box in a local library, Explorer was supposedly roped off, but Netscape had the option to change the default HTML source viewer from Notepad to something else, so on a whim I changed it to Explorer, went to view source, and lo and behold it worked, giving me complete access to the system. NT/XP's security quite simply isn't.;-)
>doesn't understand. Boot up Windows XP, realize >Word 200(something) can't read OO.org files and >mangles OO.org.doc files' layout. Oh well, we'll >use
Solution:- Write document in OO.org in HTML (which Word XP should understand just fine) send to printers via Intranet or carry it down, convert from HTML to.doc format once there, print, be happy.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect Mr Raymond Jackson could be in for a visit from the proverbial Men In Black by the end of the week. *evil grin*
It's the fact that we're seeing this kind of thing now which in my mind lends credence to the idea that Linux's relative obscurity is the main reason why we haven't seen such things in the past, rather than any inherent superiority in the multiuser system.
To me there are also a couple of obvious questions to be asked, here...
a) I wonder how many more of these things we're going to be seeing...and I'm assuming that this one is only the initial harbinger of a tidal wave of them, and...
b) I'm also wondering if the authors of any of these are going to be on Microsoft's payroll. Attempting to write Linux-specific malware in an attempt to discredit/sabotage the operating system would be IMHO entirely consistent with Microsoft's track record of corporate ethics. (or lack thereof)
The good news of course is that to a degree the multiuser system still offers *some* protection, in terms of it hopefully being the scenario that the regular user downloading this file will be someone other than root on many systems, and that root will hopefully be someone with more of a clue than said regular user.
Of course, the best defense in situations like this is to *always* use projects like this one in order to create/install your Linux system. As I've said in another of my posts, while Red Hat have made some valuable contributions to Linux in terms of isolated pieces of software, with their overall OS they are still taking the fundamentally broken approach of attempting to make Linux into just more homogenised, predigested "content" that they can then use to make money. As long as that is the main thing they care about, (as opposed to actually making a robust system) they're going have a system which won't be all that much less broken than Windows. On an individual basis, kudzu and Red Hat's other apps are good...but on an integrated basis, I wouldn't use Fedora or RHEL if you paid me.
I wouldn't call Kurzweil an idiot myself by any means, but I will say that I think some of the fundamental underlying premises of his view of reality are different from a lot of people's. One example is that I've heard him referred to numerous times as an atheist, and then read in this interview about him wanting to achieve physical immortality. To me, as an atheist he would view death as the termination of any form of existence, and so from that point of view it is entirely logical that he would want to prolong his physical life as much as possible. I personally believe in an afterlife, and so while I'm not in any tearing hurry to die myself, the idea doesn't fill me with anything like the level of consternation that I suspect it does him.
;)
What he himself would realise if he thought about it though is that the instinct for self-preservation itself is only a genetic or instinctive directive...if a person was hypothetically able to give themselves an android body they just as likely would cease to care whether they remained alive or not.
The other thing to remember about all such people (and this will help you take them with the necessary grain of salt) is that although the media love the idea that they can tell us what the future is going to be like, the reality is that they actually can't. If you were to ask Bill Gates what he thought the world would be like in 20 years from now, you'd possibly get a radically different answer from the one Kurtzweil would give you, and the reason for this is that the vision of the future these men have is the vision of what *they want* the future to be like. The future is the product of any number of different variables, as well as the desires of entire societies, not just individual men. Kurtzweil might want nano-based cyberware, but you can bet your boots that other very large demographics of society won't, and therefore there's a good possibility that such inventions either a) won't occur, or b) will be significantly delayed in their development and/or introduction. The media like to promote the idea that the future is something inexplicable which somehow just randomly and magically falls together in a certain way, and that it is unknowable to all but a few select intellectual giants, who are able (with the aid of no small amount of controlled substances, no doubt) to periodically come down from their ivory towers and kindly offer prognostications on what we can expect the world to be like several decades down the track. It's a romantic view, and like most such romaticised perspectives, it's also complete garbage. Contrary to what a lot of these technologists will tell you, public opinion/desire DOES influence technological progression/adoption in my view.
It's important to make sure we don't allow our admiration of some of these individuals to cause us to think that they are somehow inherently intellectually superior to the rest of us...in many cases, they aren't. Many of them might write interesting material, but so can just about anyone, given enough LSD and more than a marginal level of intelligence.
This reminds me of another interview I read with Bill Joy recently, which I found seriously underwhelming. I'm also aware that a fair number of people worship this man, but I don't. I think it's a very safe assumption that his shit stinks to an equal or greater degree than my own. So does Kurtzweil's.
>PC Gamer's latest issue has an early review of Half >Life 2. They gave is a 98% rating and said it's >"arguably the best game ever made".
Not to say that it isn't going to be awesome...I think it probably will be...but there are some games/game companies that are unfortunately beyond genuinely objective reviewing. Id were the first, Epic were probably the second, and now Valve. If John Carmack had a really violent attack of diarrhea, wrapped it up in newspaper, and sent it to either PC Gamer or Gamespy in particular, it'd get reviewed at 98%.
Game reviews these days are only likely to be marginally objective when they're about offerings from a relatively unknown company. I'm not saying id and the other two companies mentioned above aren't made up of enormously talented people; of course they are, and we all know that. But just because we know they're as talented as they are doesn't mean we should automatically expect that a new game from them is going to be the best yet, purely because all the others in the past were. Each game needs to be assessed purely on its own merits, not just because it comes from a company that has had X number of other successes in the past. Everyone has bad days, and everyone has misfires, regardless of the level of their intelligence. Wait until the game is in your hands and you've played it for at least a few hours before forming an opinion either way, and try to base said opinion purely on *that individual game*, not on the fact that the game is from Valve or id or whoever.
But who cares? That is essentially my attitude regarding Steam.
a) I don't have a credit card, so that rules me out by default whether I'd *like* to sign up or not. In a move displaying their usual level of intelligence, EA made the credit-card only mistake with the Sims Online, and then scratched their heads wondering why they weren't able to break the 100k user barrier. It ain't rocket science, guys. I bought one of the first copies of TSO available in this country (Australia) and have paid for all of the expansion packs for the offline game up to Unleashed more than once, as well as having bought The Sims 2 roughly 3 days after its global release. In other words, I'm a certified Sims addict, and if EA had made it so that I was able to play via money order, they would have got some of my money. I'm guessing there are a very large number of other people in this category.
b) As others here have already said, HL2 ain't the only FPS in existence. I play offline UT99 on a daily basis, and still haven't played a game that's given me a better online experience than the original Quake...but that's just me. I could also be part of only 1% of people on the planet here as well, but I don't particularly like Counter Strike. The original HL was a fantastic game in my mind, extremely innovative for its time, and one which I enjoyed immensely. I'm also assuming that Valve made a substantial amount of money from the sale of it. If however, they are willing to weather the storm of bad publicity and community abandonment that resorting to the subscription model will cause, in order to prevent a marginal amount of piracy, then I say good luck to them. There have been other game companies in the past, and there will be more in the future, and it will not stop the world from turning if Valve are sunk by their own greed and short sightedness.
This is a rare case in which I don't necessarily think the company in question are in the wrong. I really haven't liked what I've seen of the bnetd's developers' attitudes when I've been to the site...They seem to think that a company should have NO say in what happens to their material at all, which I think is wrong.
Don't misinterpret me here...I think Jack Rosen has horns, a tail, and glowing red eyes just as much as the next Slashdotter...but I also think music and software are a slightly different ballgame.
The thing about music is, there generally isn't a possibility of derivative works, or of the original work being modified quite so much. (I know about satire and remixes/covers, yes, but those are an exception) Once a song's been written, for most genres that's customarily the form it stays in. I don't have a problem with the copying of a static medium when there is no loss of definite revenue. (as opposed to *potential* revenue, which is what the RIAA are up in arms about)
Software on the other hand very often goes through an evolutionary process, and I believe personally that the creator of a given software project is entitled to govern the direction of its development. I'm not talking about copying here, either...copying binaries doesn't change the nature of the software at all in most instances.
Obviously open source is more desirable, and people should be encouraged to use open source licenses with their projects. But note here the difference between *encourage* and *force.* With the amount of cheating that's occurred on Battlenet already, Blizzard most likely feel that they have very legitimate reasons for not wanting people to back engineer the server software. I also know that the answer a lot of open source advocates are going to give to that is that more people looking at the code will make it more secure. That may be so...but you're still missing the fundamental point here. An author should have the right to determine how to license their own software. If they *choose* to put it under the GPL themselves, great, and it is true that that would most likely benefit them as much as everyone else. But if they don't, that *also* should be their perogative. If we were to start trying to force everyone who writes code to adopt an OSS license, we'd be no better in my mind than Microsoft and other such companies when they try to dominate people. This is the one area in which my own opinion fundamentally differs from that of RMS...in that I believe that freedom must also include freedom of choice.
After having read this, and looking back on my own experiences with Windows, I think the operating system has just found a new mascot.
Linux's mascot is Tux...After today, I suspect Windows' could be Britney Spears.
>Oklahoma experiences quite a few natural events >that can kill, like F5 tornadoes, baseball-sized >hail, 100mph straight line winds from thunderstorm >outflows, and heat and humidity.
Christians (AFAIK anywayz) don't expect good weather or a lack of natural disasters as evidence of God being happy with them, and their motivation for worship does not include the desire to avoid such. That is much more a pagan thing. Christian incentive for worship is usually centred far more around assurance of wellbeing in the afterlife, as opposed to earthly existence, since the idea is that the afterlife is not only going to consume a much greater length of time, but that it is considerably more important/significant than corporeal existence.
Worship motivated by a desire to assure meteorological/environmental stability is much more commonly associated with indigenous/aboriginal groups or belief systems. Although typical Christian belief is that God can and does intervene positively in human affairs, the belief also is generally that God intervenes at times and by methods of his own choosing, rather than as a result of having been petitioned/coaxed into action by human followers. One of the ten commandments ("Thou shalt not tempt the LORD thy God") in fact expressly prohibits this.
The reason why an increase in natural disasters would actually cause an increase in worship is because in the Gospels, Jesus talks about an overwhelming increase in the frequency of natural disasters just prior to the end of the world. It is normal Christian belief (at least in a contemporary sense, anyway) to actually desire and anticipate the end of the world, because the belief is that the end of the current world will then lead to the commencement of eternal/acorporeal existence, which Revelations hints at (albeit rather vaguely) as being an infinitely more enjoyable/pleasurable existence than earthly life. Because of this, an increase in the incidence of natural disasters would logically cause Christians to feel an increase in thankfulness towards God, as well as an increase in optimism generally, as it causes a belief that they are imminently about to go to a better place.
The Bible actually says virtually nothing about the specific nature of the afterlife however, and most especially does not make the sort of hedonistic references that the Quran for example does. The implication is simply made that Heaven's going to be very good, and definitely worth experiencing...but we're not really told anything more specific than that. ("No eye can concieve, or mind can percieve, what God has prepared for those who love him.")
We could focus on the fact that he lied, yes. Or we could focus on what exactly gives Microsoft the right or need to ask why someone would want to reinstall their software. Especially given the number of security problems in existence now that can necessitate a complete install of Windows.
Understand one thing. In founding Microsoft, Gates had only one motivation, and I'm not talking about money. It also didn't have anything to do with wanting to provide the world with PCs because of what a wonderful guy he supposedly is. He was already completely aware that *someone* was going to be in that position, and he wanted it to be him primarily because he could also see how dependent people would eventually become on computers, and the amount of control that being the sole provider of software could give him.
Microsoft aren't motivated by a love of technology, a desire to innovate, or even the love of money. They are motivated solely by the desire to completely control the lives of every single person who uses a computer. The only reason why Gates had the desire to put "a computer on every desk and in every home" is because doing so would give *him* a window into every home. Microsoft's senior management are total megalomaniacs.
>Yes, advanced users hate autoupdates. So what, >they can always be disabled.
Depends on the auto-update program. An app which simply wants to wrest control of my system out of my hands for the time it takes to update something, as well as not giving much feedback or telling me a huge amount about what it is doing is obnoxious, and I won't use it.
Give me an updater however which lets me choose what I want to download, shows me the commands it uses, (and lets me tweak them if I know what I'm doing, no less) shows me on the screen everything it does while it does it, (including progress indicators, etc) and then generates a meticulous log at the end of it, (so that I know the program isn't sending my info anywhere it shouldn't, and also so that I can fault find if something goes wrong) and I'm sold. A program like that makes my life easier, without violating my right to decide what does/doesn't happen on my computer.
The comparitively weak storylines (IMHO anywayz) were the main thing that's always bothered me about Star Wars. I know I'll probably get flamed into oblivion for this, but I thought the storyline of at least the first three movies was probably more generic than any science fiction novel I've read. There of course was a storyline in a broad sense, but to me SW was always a lot more about action than storytelling.
Given that, I find it extremely doubtful that the central premises of either series of films could carry an episodic television series, especially given that episodic TV has by necessity a much smaller budget, which would in turn mean a lower special effects/action quotient than the films. If they based it on prewritten material from other formats (either the novels or the comics, for instance) it *might* work, since comics themselves aren't always as much oriented towards mindless action as some of us would believe.
If you want really good sci fi, read a book. That's probably even truer now than it ever has been, and it was always true in the case of Star Wars.
>You are insane in my opinion. Executing children >because they experiment with computers?
No...look closer. I did not say that I think script kiddies/virus writers should be executed at all. What I meant was that I consider execution to possibly be more humane and less pointless than incarcerating someone in an environment where torture, homosexual rape, and various other forms of *extreme* violence occur on a routine basis, for an indefinite/indeterminate period. I don't believe anyone deserves that, (*especially* not script kiddies and other non-violent offenders) and I don't believe it serves any purpose, because it effectively destroys even a remote chance of rehabilitation, let alone encouraging it. Going to jail in many countries these days doesn't just mean losing freedom of movement. It means being sodomised, bashed, flogged and/or worse on an almost daily basis.
The problem is that your archetypical virus author is (from what I've seen anywayz) at least borderline sociopathic. They generally have no regard whatsoever for the consequences of their actions or the potential damage, and likewise are most likely not capable of even being affected by punishment...they can genuinely be *that* fucked up.
My own feeling with such people is that they should definitely be detained/locked up, but only so that they do not have the ability to reoffend. I would also advocate sending them to a psychiatric inpatient unit, rather than jail par se...because at least there they have some chance of treatment/rehabilitation. Putting them in the prison system would probably in actuality be less humane than killing them, at least as far as the American prison system is concerned.
Virus authors are generally sick people, and need to be viewed as such. We need to determine what sociological factors are producing such tendencies, as well as treating individual offenders. If we can isolate the causes, we can erradicate the effect.
The author of Dansguardian states first that his software is not free for commercial purposes, but then says it is licensed under the GPL. This is a contradiction.
The GPL does not explicitly stipulate commercial or non-commercial use. Its only requirement is that source is distributed with binaries, and that all subsequent derivative works are also licensed under the GPL. If this guy wants to make his software non-free for commercial use, he should write his own license.
>the windows binaries free because he can't >possibly contact all of the contributing authors >and get their permission to charge a fee for >their GPL contributions.
The GPL does not specify that permission is needed from authors in order to charge for the distribution of works/derived works. All he needs to do is distribute the source with the binary, which as I've stated earlier, is why he can be assumed to be in violation of it if he is using the shareware model.
Copyleft requires that if you make derivative works, or want to redistribute someone else's work, you have to make sure source is available with the binaries. End of story.
>The problem is that the source is not adequately >provided.. if it were, we could just build up a new >version without this feature, if we were so >inclined.
Yes, but that's the entire point of the shareware paradigm. The idea that it's time bombed, and you *can't* change the time limit and therefore have to pay for it. Making a GPL compliant shareware program would in economic terms be utterly pointless, because as soon as the code is provided, all someone would have to do would be edit the relevant parts of the code to disable the time limit, recompile, and then get rid of the time-bombed binary. With most of the shareware I've seen, you wouldn't even need to be a particularly competent coder to do it. So violating the GPL with this is the *only* way the author is likely to make money from it...and so therefore it's a reasonably safe assumption that he *is* violating it.
>Seriously, is there any way whatsoever this case
>could end in anything resembling a victory for
>consumers?
It is a victory for consumers every single time Microsoft appears in court, regardless of the outcome of the individual case. Why? Because it makes progress towards a number of goals the completion of which will be necessary to eventually destroy the company.
1) It continues to expose Microsoft's business ethics (or complete lack thereof) which reinforces to everyone watching the level of disregard Microsoft has for its own customers, or for anyone for that matter who is not merely blindly interested in the company's survival. This sends a very powerful and necessary message to all concerned to avoid doing business with Microsoft at any point in the future.
2) Even if individual settlements are only a small amount per case, it serves to continue to bleed the company economically. As Microsoft's public image and reputation gets worse, their revenue streams will continue to dwindle from declining Windows sales and upgrades, which will force them into an increasingly desperate situation. The non-Microsoft world cannot hope to destroy the company itself...As Cringely said, the only ones capable of that are MS themselves. But it is vital for us to force them into a state of increasingly desperate panic, because once they are in that state, they will commit more and more heinous and unethical acts in order to attempt to regain their control, which will cause the entire chain reaction (the unethical business practices in order to maintain control, which lands them in court, which causes bad PR for them and bleeds them economically, which in turn causes them to engage in even more predatory behaviour to attempt to regain control) to move more quickly, thus accelerating their demise.
It is of vital importance that Microsoft are taken to the courts and held there. Besides the PR bruising it means for them and and the economic loss from settlements, the other advantage is that it takes their focus away from devising such wonderful things as Palladium and other similarly Orwellian technologies which they can then attempt to use to regain/reinforce monopoly control.
>Longhorn is supposed to be a "unified" desktop with >Internet, mail, etc.
The emphasis on unification and the monolithic model has been what has caused Windows virtually all of its security problems. Our (Linux's) strength is modularity. If Microsoft keep pushing unification, we've got them.
>The simple fact is that Debian is Linux.
;-)
Gee, I wonder why you wrote this post as anonymous?
The main point here though is that Debian does *not* make up the totality of Linux usage.
Let's have another look at DistroWatch's top 10, shall we? Yes, Debian is at No 5. What you conveniently neglected to mention however is that Mandrake, Fedora, and SUSE are at No 1, 2, and 4 respectively. Slackware is at 6. So from this, we can fairly easily determine that while yes, Debian is highly popular, it is actually NOT the *main* focus at all. People are using a lot of other distributions as well besides Debian...which means that while those in the Debian camp get what they want, different approaches to things are still being looked at and developed.
For people here who really NEED to have it spelled out in such simple terms, here it is.
Diversity == Good. Homogeny == Bad.
Why is this? As I've said before, for the evolutionary model to function, there need to be a lot of different variants of any given thing...a lot of mutations, if you like...these mutations are basically a proving ground where the best solutions to given problems can be found. If we only have a single option, that doesn't happen. Things stagnate, and progress grinds to a halt.
Hmmmmm, let's see...
1. RPM. Read the Linux Standards Base documents?
2. Anaconda, the install/setup program.
3. Kudzu, the hardware detection system used by Knoppix and others.
I could continue, but I think those three on their own more than justify the company's existence, if nothing else.
While I will admit that as an overall distribution I was not overly enamoured of Red Hat 9, RH have contributed solutions to a number of vexing problems for us, and also carry on a very active development effort at sources.redhat.com.
I'm also detecting some of the usual commie whining (No, I don't think OSS is communist, but this is) about a company that's daring to actually make a large profit here...as if every company purely by virtue of its existence had to inevitably emulate Microsoft's bad behaviour. However, it might behoove you next time to be a little more sure of your facts before you start bitching.
I shouldn't be judging a book by its cover, but if the website, is any indication, MySQL's direction re commercialism is somewhat painfully obvious. The layout to me suggests the kind of tacky, soulless "content" mentality I'd expect to see on macromedia.com or real.com, not the site of an open source project. I was also unable to locate a reference to the GPL licensed form of MySQL, whereas an advertisement of the "Pro" version was instantly apparent.
From what I've seen Red Hat and some of the other companies doing here, there seem to be around six factors that I've seen that enable businesses to make money selling Linux.
1) An initially proprietary value add which greatly improves the user experience, but which via the GPL also improves "the state of the art." RPM, Anaconda, and YaST would all be examples of this.
2) Consultancy/Installation. "Our operating system is free, but sling us $5-10k and we'll install it on your corporate network, to your specifications."
3) Support. "We'll also show you how to use our free operating system, after you've paid us to install it on your network." This is good for businesses because they only need to pay money on a per-incident basis, and as a result, even though the initial install/training might be several thousand dollars, over time it can still work out to be a lot cheaper than having a resident sysadmin on the books. A per-incident consultant won't ask you to pay his super.
4) Saving time. A corporate or home user can buy a copy of Fedora Core or Mandrake and have a working system in approximately an hour. On my Celeron 1.7, by contrast, even a fully automated Linux From Scratch install takes a bit over four hours, and that doesn't include the roughly 3 months I've spent working out how to do that. What I'm trying to say here is that a company *could* employ an administrator to build a custom Linux system...but prototyping for specific needs takes a lot of time, and the admin will be paid by the hour for that time. Preconfigured software is a lot quicker, and therefore, cheaper again.
5) Although the value added programs mentioned above are lisenced by the GPL, anyone building custom Linux needs to invest time learning how to use them. This means that, while they're free, companies who already have the knowledge of how to implement them can do so for the consumer, which is a service that can be charged money for. Red Hat for example could also leverage the fact that although RPM is GPLed, they were the authors of it. "Other people *can* build an RPM-based system, but we have far more intimate knowledge of the process. We're the *inventors* of RPM!"
6) Branding/Recognition. If you establish a good reputation for yourself as having a solid distribution and doing great after-sale work, this can create the famous "positive spiral" effect which will in turn generate more sales.
I personally don't in any way see Linux as Communist or something which is resistant to making money. What it on the other hand does do is force a vendor to behave in a more ethical and value-oriented way, by shifting the unique selling position from the software itself to the service that the vendor gives the consumer.
I can understand how some companies (I won't name names here, but I think we know who I'm talking about) don't like that, if they prefer to make money from hurting and controlling their consumers rather than genuinely helping them.
Server software:- OpenBSD if you can handle it, (link with some info on how to install it here) hardened Gentoo if you can't. I'll probably get flamed for suggesting what seems like massive overkill there, but you mentioned wanting to keep the vermin out, and either of those two will definitely do it.
;-)
Client side, I'd probably go either Slackware or Gentoo again myself. Run X with either straight twm or maybe something like fluxbox if you really want, and set a dedicated account ("mozilla" or "guest") using Mozilla/Firefox as the actual login program/shell equivalent. Make sure that account also doesn't have anything other than read access outside that directory as well.
That may sound strange, but I figure the less you give people access to, the less resources you're giving them which they can then use to make mischief.
If you absolutely must, put Open Office on for them to do various other things, but doing that will blow the above plan out of the water almost completely. Personally I'd make it myself so that the only thing they have access to is a web browser. If they want to look up a book, do an HTML interface for the library DB, and they can do any other external surfing they want with that as well.
In terms of the surfing, have a deny-by-default firewall on the server...that way the only sites they can go to are those you specifically include. You won't have to worry about anyone using the system to download porn or other such nasty things, and it's a lot more robust at the firewall level than using some lame thing like Net Nanny that does hit-or-miss keyword screening. Also rather than locking the floppy drives on the clients, I'd actually disconnect the thing and pull it out. You most likely won't need it for anything yourself, and if you have it in there, any lock you've got on it will be pickable, which then opens up another avenue for trojans etc to be uploaded.
If you didn't care about security, you could probably get away with running the network with XP clients and a Linux server, but you mentioned wanting to keep deviants out, and that simply is not possible with anything from Microsloth, IMHO. I remember a few years ago on an NT box in a local library, Explorer was supposedly roped off, but Netscape had the option to change the default HTML source viewer from Notepad to something else, so on a whim I changed it to Explorer, went to view source, and lo and behold it worked, giving me complete access to the system. NT/XP's security quite simply isn't.
Install Linux.
>doesn't understand. Boot up Windows XP, realize >Word 200(something) can't read OO.org files and >mangles OO.org .doc files' layout. Oh well, we'll >use
.doc format once there, print, be happy. :)
Solution:- Write document in OO.org in HTML (which Word XP should understand just fine) send to printers via Intranet or carry it down, convert from HTML to