Some people might want a standard OS for all their server hardware, from NetWinder to Alpha. Unless Mac OS X has this flexibility, LinuxPPC will likely survive to allow this goal to be realized.
(Not that there aren't other good reasons for LinuxPPC to survive.)
viruses still run rampant on NT boxes due to poor administration.
On NT, poor administration is only one possible problem. Some software won't even run without at least some form of elevated privilege; the old habits of Windows programmers die hard. Too many other packages, as well, will introduce security problems at install or run time. Many NT admins are overworked enough as it is just trying to keep the silly boxes up; keeping up with the security implications of every program installed on those boxes (from the CEO's screen saver to the vertical vendor products) can become too much to ask.
Actually, any platform that combines integrated scripting with some form of Internet access is susceptible to Melissa-style viruses. It's theoretically possible to, say, write an automated mail bomber that would run on any version of Netscape. This isn't a "Linux virus"; if anything, it's a Netscape virus. And even on Linux, its potential for damage is limited to a greater extent than on Mac or Windows.
The Great Internet Worm was just that: a worm. Worms are different from viruses, and are an acknowledged security problem on all modern server OSes (NT, Un*x, Linux, *BSD, etc.). More importantly, worms can't be fought with the same tools as viruses; worms are best fought as (slightly:-) dumber versions of script kiddies.
With the advent of high-level office suites for Linux, the potential for macro viruses does arise. True multiuser security helps slow the spread of these viruses, and their damage capacity is significantly limited, but they still could potentially be a problem. Hopefully, the authors of these office suites are considering these problems when writing scripting engines for their suites.
The consensus is correct, however, when it comes to "traditional" viruses: they are not a significant threat, simply because they require root privilege to spread effectively. The virus threat to a typical server (with no local office suites or integrated Internet access programs) is minimal.
I was in the mood to upgrade in November. After serious consideration, I got an Abit BP6 w/ two Celeron 366's (as opposed to an Athlon). I'm now running it overclocked to 550 MHz.
Besides the aforementioned stuff, I also got 128 MB of PC100 and an IBM 13 GB Ultra66 drive for about $600 with priority shipping. I had a spare case, and most of the rest got cannibalized from the old system and other spare parts (who doesn't have spare 3.5 floppy drives laying around:-).
I've been very satisfied with its performance - although, if it makes any difference, this was an upgrade from a P233, so just about anything new would seem good. I expect it will last me for quite a while, or at least until the other LUG guys upgrade.:-)
In defense of the BP6 in the face of the Celeron's future, there are (supposedly) other chip makers coming out with PPGA processors, at least some of which should work with it. If they work out, the BP6 should clock up to at least the lower end of the spectrum for these new chips.
The DMCA is scary, sure, but I think the DeCSS people have more of a leg to stand on than you imply.
The conditions you mention all contain the qualification that the code not have any significant commercial impact or legitimate use. The DeCSS code was designed for the sole purpose of writing a DVD player for Linux. This has commercial impact, as it will become essential for Linux to have an impact in the consumer market, and it is legitimate - at least as legitimate as playing DVDs on Windows is. I doubt that an argument could be made that playing DVDs on a computer is illegitimate unless you run monopolistic OSes.
I don't believe that the DVD lawyers are using this tactic. Their angle is that the license for the Xing DVD player forbids reverse engineering, which was done to extract the initial keys, and they violated this license and revealed trade secret information. I can't see how they can win from a legal standpoint, but the whole "bleed them dry" legal strategy can't be counted out.
Of course, neither can the "whack-a-mole heavy mirroring" and "foreign development" legal counter-strategies be dismissed easily, so I guess it's a fair fight.
Not just benchmarketing, but stale benchmarketing!
They reviewed Caldera 1.3, when 2.2 was out. 2.0.35 kernel, older Apache, libc5. Oh, and the "Win95 bug" crap was lame; Caldera should have had an update out, and if they didn't, how hard would it have been to switch to Red Hat? I'm sure that they had at least Service Pack 3 on that NT box.
NS and MS support "dynamic server APIs", while Apache only has an "extension module API". Difference? Both use C, both produce DLLs (or shared libraries under Unixlike OSes) that link directly into the Web server, both have security problems, both are fast as the dickens. Oh, yeah, I forgot: the makers of Apache are honest about the API's usefulness. If ZD Labs wants real credibility, they need to include some Apache API code along with the NSAPI and ISAPI crap, or drop it entirely and use the dynamic environments we really use. Wouldn't it be nice to see performance evaluations of ASP vs. mod_perl, for example?
There's likely to be some good data buried in there somewhere. But, for once, it would be nice for a benchmark crew to actually provide some honest results, so we don't have to sift through the wreckage for trinkets of relevance.
Suppose that they opened up the source to SETI@home. Then you'd most probably be able to figure out the protocol, and how it sends 'alert' messages. And I guarantee you, someone will start sending fake data to SETI, and it'll totally defeat the purpose of the collaboration.
And, of course, that's totally impossible now. No one today has the ability to disassemble SETI@home, or whatever, and figure out how to send alarms, or send carefully constructed inputs into the client and watch the net output.
I'm so thankful that SETI@home is just as secure as Windows, thanks to that closed source code.
Oh, wait, they do. And they could. And (in the case of Windows) they have.
The problem with Quake and with SETI@home is the exact same problem: spoof detection and prevention. Period. Closed source or open.
The chance of a crack can decrease with closed source; it can also increase as well. (If the vendor thinks he can hide behind closed source and gets sloppy, or if some hacker thinks it'll make him/her e1337 to hack a closed product...) But crappy software is still crappy, source code or not. The only difference is whether people can fix your foulups themselves or not, which appears to be what is happening with Quake.
I wanted to go, but my job placed a ban on all vacation time between December 1 and January 15. I suspect I wasn't alone in this. Running a geek show near Y2K wasn't a terribly wise thing to do.
I hope they don't kill the event because of the poor turnout; it sounded like a lot of fun.
Well, there is the respect issue, Debian being a part of GNU for a while, and so on.
What a lot of people don't realize, however, is that the term gives the project more precision. Debian does have a HURD distribution in active development, called "Debian GNU/HURD". Someone's working on "Debian GNU/BSD" (GNU tools on top of a BSD kernel/libc). There has been speculation about a "Debian BSD/Linux" (BSD toolset on top of a Linux kernel).
Given this, calling the GNU toolset with Linux kernel variant "Debian GNU/Linux" only makes sense.
Uh, you misspelled "Linux" as "Windows", and vice versa.:-)
Windows: Double-click setup... yes, Grandpa, that's called a "license"... yes, it is legally binding, but nobody pays any attention to it anyway... yes, Grandpa, you want to install that program to C:\Program Files\FooBar... OK, what options were those again? No, I don't think you need fribbelized help files... no, wait, don't reboot unless you've saved all your files...
Debian GNU/Linux: "OK, Grandpa, type 'apt-get install foobar'. Is it done yet? Good. Have fun!"
Now that the knees appear to have all jerked, let me try to re-say what Amphigory was trying to say, since I think he hits on some majorly important points.
I find it interesting that everyone on Slashdot becomes instant child psychologists the moment the issue of porno censorship comes up. And while I'm grateful to everyone for the illuminating ideas, I'm also firmly of the opinion that I will raise my children my own way, thank you very much.
(Isn't it ironic that people who don't want to be told what they can and can't put in their Web sites feel free to tell people "you must raise your kids this way"? Which infringement on personal rights is worse? You decide.)
Now, it's true that the conflict between parent's rights and free speech is a hard problem to solve. It seems that the arguments all seem to devolve to each side attempting to restrict the other. It would be nice to come up with a solution that requires as few concessions as possible from either side, while still allowing each side to go on largely as they always have.
But Amphigory's point is this, plainly and simply: So far, we haven't found a solution like this, and the masses are getting restless. If we don't come up with something RIGHT NOW for doing this in a fair and equitable matter, the saviors from the holy hills are going to ride in and earn themselves millions of votes by "cleaning up the Internet", and when they're done, we'll be lucky to keep forums like this one.
This may mean that we have to do things like rate our pages according to some set of guidelines, some of which may seem less fair than others. In return, we should (if we bargain right) be able to get some protection for free speech online: perhaps exemptions for "general public" Web discussions like this one, exemptions for E-mail and Usenet, and/or limitations of liability for various groups. There will likely be a bargaining process that we will have to go through.
If you don't think this has to happen, then tell me: what are you going to say to the restless masses? It had better sound a lot better than the larger-than-life congressman pledging to "get those dirty Internet perverts" - to the cheers of millions of average people who think the Internet was invented by porno freaks. Remember, all you First Amendment types: this is the country that passed a constitutional amendment banning alcohol consumption and who dictates irrevocable public health policy from a document written in 1790.
If you don't have a solution, then you are free to stick your head in the sand and sound all libertarian and anarchist and quote cool people like Chomsky and Ayn Rand. Just don't be surprised if you find a RSACi rating brand on your ass next time you come up for air.
Yes - except "NT is so simple to maintain that you don't need full-time professionals except on the largest networks". Don't laugh - a former boss of mine was told this.
Not to mention the "paper CNE" and "paper MCSE" problems. Certification may be good, but it's no panacea.
You could ignore many of the clauses of those licenses anyway. Things like reverse engineering have legal precedent to be under fair use. That's why the software companies are trying to change the laws on that, and put some legal substance into them, as well as make practices like remote disabling of software legal as well. (Didn't pay your Office bill this month? MS comes in and shuts off your Office apps!)
Even if this ruling implies that you can copy your software all over the place like that, it won't hurt the bottom lines of most companies. It happens now all the time, and MS isn't cash-starved because of it.
In that case, I'm sure you wouldn't mind if these musicians switched to an Internet label like MP3.com, gave away sample tracks for freebies and Internet radio, and sold their CDs for $5.
Believe it or not, if they did this and sold the same number of CDs they do now, they'd make more money.
You wonder why the traditional recording industry is so hated? There's your answer.
There are a few ways to make money off of GPL software. Not to rehash opensource.org (which you should take a look at), but:
1. Sell support. Buy my code from me, and I'll come to your rescue if it breaks.
2. Sell enhancements. If you want my code to do XYZ, that's great; I'd be more likely to get to it if I were paid...
3. Sell your brand. Who knows your code better than you do? So, if they want the best version of your code, go to you. Also, if people want code this good for their own projects, they know who to ask.
4. Sell proprietary licensing terms. So you don't want to release source for your driver for my software? Buy my commercial license, which will let you dynamically link to my software without having to reveal source.
There are some ideas. More are available at www.opensource.org.
On the one hand, you've got the guy from Cox saying that the users are breaking up the gatekeeper role of journalists by doing their own news. His response is that journalism must redefine itself in the face of changing times. While his ideas aren't perfect, it's still a good start for discussing the impact aggregators such as Slashdot and Linux Today have on journalism.
Then, the MSNBC guy stands up and blathers on about the gatekeeper role *expanding* and how the TV news model is going to *take over* the free-range Internet news model.
And guess what MSNBC's business model is? Yep. Coordinated content on the TV and Internet sides, so "the viewer can browse the Internet site to learn more about the TV news story". Do you think he's been a bit brainwashed on their corporate vision?
MS has this idea of people sitting in front of their WebTV, clicking on hot buttons appearing on the newscast that bring up a picture-in-picture browser with MSNBC-approved content, letting Tom Brokaw guide their browsing to the "right" sites. Baloney. If I had that, I'd find myself minimizing Tom & Co. and checking out independent online opinion on the news.
In fact, come to think of it, since I listen to radio for local news and use the Internet for the rest, I haven't watched TV news or read a newspaper in months.
You'll want to go to the PC Mag (PC Week?) site and check out an article they did on the Mindcraft study. Right after the original study, they did a piece on how Mindcraft screwed up and didn't run the benchmarks right.
It isn't much different from other articles in other places; what makes this one different is that PC Mag was speaking as the author of the benchmark suite.
Advocacy pieces by Linux Today may not carry weight, but a discussion of the errors committed by the authors of the software they used will.
Question: How long has your system been running without a reboot? Yes, I know you haven't BSODed in months, but if you power down or reboot every day, it proves nothing. Even Win9x can manage (most days) to run for a day without rebooting.
NT Workstation is much better than 9x as a workstation OS. But as a server, it still doesn't cut it.
RAID 1 (mirroring) provides high reliability. RAID 5 (striping with parity) produces high reliability and more space with a speed penalty. RAID 0 provides more space and lower reliability, since any one hard disk failure caused the whole array to fail.
Personally speaking, I came out against the initial Mindcraft benchmark because it was shoddily done, with an eye to producing the numbers Microsoft wanted. There were demonstrable errors in the running of the benchmark that heavily favored NT. I also have serious problems with Mindcraft the company (or Mindcraft the guy); the benchmarks prove that he has absolutely no integrity.
I don't have as much of a problem with the second set of numbers, although I think the c't tests showed that the platform and setup were carefully chosen to stack the deck against Linux (besides being completely impractical - you're going to serve enough data to keep four 100MB cards busy, and you're installing a RAID, but you're not going to protect any of the data you're serving with a RAID 1 or 5? Right...)
I also didn't have much of a problem with the earlier PC Week benchmarks that positioned NT in a good light - although I still think that, if they're going to evaluate ASP, they need to evaluate mod_perl or mod_php as an equivalent.
1. Person A writes some software, and distributes it under the GPL.
2. Person B thinks the software is cool and starts distributing the software from his/her GeoCities web page.
3. Person B logs on one day and finds that (s)he now has to get a Yahoo account and agree to license all of his/her content with an unrestrictive license to Yahoo. (S)he agrees.
At this point, Person B has granted rights to Yahoo for the software (owned by Person A) that (s)he did not have the right to grant. Yahoo now thinks it can incorporate portions of the code on the site into its own proprietary products.
And who does Person A have the right to sue if (s)he finds out? Person B, and Person B only, who is probably confused as to why just clicking "Yes" is getting him/her into so much trouble.
...or, at least, it isn't if you agree to Yahoo's terms.
By agreeing to their terms, your work now has a dual license: one for Yahoo, and one for everyone else.
Say you have a Java applet with source under the GPL on the site. Guess what? If you agree, they can take your Java code, incorporate it into one of their applets, and not give any source out.
Slashdot Mirror
Some people might want a standard OS for all their server hardware, from NetWinder to Alpha. Unless Mac OS X has this flexibility, LinuxPPC will likely survive to allow this goal to be realized.
(Not that there aren't other good reasons for LinuxPPC to survive.)
I mostly agree, except...
viruses still run rampant on NT boxes due to poor administration.
On NT, poor administration is only one possible problem. Some software won't even run without at least some form of elevated privilege; the old habits of Windows programmers die hard. Too many other packages, as well, will introduce security problems at install or run time. Many NT admins are overworked enough as it is just trying to keep the silly boxes up; keeping up with the security implications of every program installed on those boxes (from the CEO's screen saver to the vertical vendor products) can become too much to ask.
Actually, any platform that combines integrated scripting with some form of Internet access is susceptible to Melissa-style viruses. It's theoretically possible to, say, write an automated mail bomber that would run on any version of Netscape. This isn't a "Linux virus"; if anything, it's a Netscape virus. And even on Linux, its potential for damage is limited to a greater extent than on Mac or Windows.
:-) dumber versions of script kiddies.
The Great Internet Worm was just that: a worm. Worms are different from viruses, and are an acknowledged security problem on all modern server OSes (NT, Un*x, Linux, *BSD, etc.). More importantly, worms can't be fought with the same tools as viruses; worms are best fought as (slightly
With the advent of high-level office suites for Linux, the potential for macro viruses does arise. True multiuser security helps slow the spread of these viruses, and their damage capacity is significantly limited, but they still could potentially be a problem. Hopefully, the authors of these office suites are considering these problems when writing scripting engines for their suites.
The consensus is correct, however, when it comes to "traditional" viruses: they are not a significant threat, simply because they require root privilege to spread effectively. The virus threat to a typical server (with no local office suites or integrated Internet access programs) is minimal.
I was in the mood to upgrade in November. After serious consideration, I got an Abit BP6 w/ two Celeron 366's (as opposed to an Athlon). I'm now running it overclocked to 550 MHz.
:-).
:-)
Besides the aforementioned stuff, I also got 128 MB of PC100 and an IBM 13 GB Ultra66 drive for about $600 with priority shipping. I had a spare case, and most of the rest got cannibalized from the old system and other spare parts (who doesn't have spare 3.5 floppy drives laying around
I've been very satisfied with its performance - although, if it makes any difference, this was an upgrade from a P233, so just about anything new would seem good. I expect it will last me for quite a while, or at least until the other LUG guys upgrade.
In defense of the BP6 in the face of the Celeron's future, there are (supposedly) other chip makers coming out with PPGA processors, at least some of which should work with it. If they work out, the BP6 should clock up to at least the lower end of the spectrum for these new chips.
As I type this on my Abit BP6, dual Celeron 366 o/c to 550, 128 MB RAM, 13 GB Ultra66 drive, running Debian potato...
Nah, it's a total rumor. It can't be done.
:-)
(BTW, the board, chips, RAM, and drive came to about $600 with shipping for me in Nov '99. And that was with priority shipping, too.)
The DMCA is scary, sure, but I think the DeCSS people have more of a leg to stand on than you imply.
The conditions you mention all contain the qualification that the code not have any significant commercial impact or legitimate use. The DeCSS code was designed for the sole purpose of writing a DVD player for Linux. This has commercial impact, as it will become essential for Linux to have an impact in the consumer market, and it is legitimate - at least as legitimate as playing DVDs on Windows is. I doubt that an argument could be made that playing DVDs on a computer is illegitimate unless you run monopolistic OSes.
I don't believe that the DVD lawyers are using this tactic. Their angle is that the license for the Xing DVD player forbids reverse engineering, which was done to extract the initial keys, and they violated this license and revealed trade secret information. I can't see how they can win from a legal standpoint, but the whole "bleed them dry" legal strategy can't be counted out.
Of course, neither can the "whack-a-mole heavy mirroring" and "foreign development" legal counter-strategies be dismissed easily, so I guess it's a fair fight.
:-)
Not just benchmarketing, but stale benchmarketing!
There's likely to be some good data buried in there somewhere. But, for once, it would be nice for a benchmark crew to actually provide some honest results, so we don't have to sift through the wreckage for trinkets of relevance.
Suppose that they opened up the source to SETI@home. Then you'd most probably be able to figure out the protocol, and how it sends 'alert' messages. And I guarantee you, someone will start sending fake data to SETI, and it'll totally defeat the purpose of the collaboration.
And, of course, that's totally impossible now. No one today has the ability to disassemble SETI@home, or whatever, and figure out how to send alarms, or send carefully constructed inputs into the client and watch the net output.
I'm so thankful that SETI@home is just as secure as Windows, thanks to that closed source code.
Oh, wait, they do. And they could. And (in the case of Windows) they have.
The problem with Quake and with SETI@home is the exact same problem: spoof detection and prevention. Period. Closed source or open.
The chance of a crack can decrease with closed source; it can also increase as well. (If the vendor thinks he can hide behind closed source and gets sloppy, or if some hacker thinks it'll make him/her e1337 to hack a closed product...) But crappy software is still crappy, source code or not. The only difference is whether people can fix your foulups themselves or not, which appears to be what is happening with Quake.
I wanted to go, but my job placed a ban on all vacation time between December 1 and January 15. I suspect I wasn't alone in this. Running a geek show near Y2K wasn't a terribly wise thing to do.
I hope they don't kill the event because of the poor turnout; it sounded like a lot of fun.
I wasn't aware that RMS still 'has his undies in a bunch' over BSD. Perhaps he hasn't had a chance to include an update to his essay.
It was, as I remember, RMS himself who lobbied hard for this change to the BSD license, so I'm sure he can't be opposed to it now.
(Are we flaming people in our attempt to tell people not to flame each other?)
Well, there is the respect issue, Debian being a part of GNU for a while, and so on.
What a lot of people don't realize, however, is that the term gives the project more precision. Debian does have a HURD distribution in active development, called "Debian GNU/HURD". Someone's working on "Debian GNU/BSD" (GNU tools on top of a BSD kernel/libc). There has been speculation about a "Debian BSD/Linux" (BSD toolset on top of a Linux kernel).
Given this, calling the GNU toolset with Linux kernel variant "Debian GNU/Linux" only makes sense.
Uh, you misspelled "Linux" as "Windows", and vice versa. :-)
Windows: Double-click setup... yes, Grandpa, that's called a "license"... yes, it is legally binding, but nobody pays any attention to it anyway... yes, Grandpa, you want to install that program to C:\Program Files\FooBar... OK, what options were those again? No, I don't think you need fribbelized help files... no, wait, don't reboot unless you've saved all your files...
Debian GNU/Linux: "OK, Grandpa, type 'apt-get install foobar'. Is it done yet? Good. Have fun!"
And, of course, soon Debian will do CUPS too.
(Maybe this will motivate me enough to get off my rear and get this package DONE!)
Now that the knees appear to have all jerked, let me try to re-say what Amphigory was trying to say, since I think he hits on some majorly important points.
I find it interesting that everyone on Slashdot becomes instant child psychologists the moment the issue of porno censorship comes up. And while I'm grateful to everyone for the illuminating ideas, I'm also firmly of the opinion that I will raise my children my own way, thank you very much.
(Isn't it ironic that people who don't want to be told what they can and can't put in their Web sites feel free to tell people "you must raise your kids this way"? Which infringement on personal rights is worse? You decide.)
Now, it's true that the conflict between parent's rights and free speech is a hard problem to solve. It seems that the arguments all seem to devolve to each side attempting to restrict the other. It would be nice to come up with a solution that requires as few concessions as possible from either side, while still allowing each side to go on largely as they always have.
But Amphigory's point is this, plainly and simply: So far, we haven't found a solution like this, and the masses are getting restless. If we don't come up with something RIGHT NOW for doing this in a fair and equitable matter, the saviors from the holy hills are going to ride in and earn themselves millions of votes by "cleaning up the Internet", and when they're done, we'll be lucky to keep forums like this one.
This may mean that we have to do things like rate our pages according to some set of guidelines, some of which may seem less fair than others. In return, we should (if we bargain right) be able to get some protection for free speech online: perhaps exemptions for "general public" Web discussions like this one, exemptions for E-mail and Usenet, and/or limitations of liability for various groups. There will likely be a bargaining process that we will have to go through.
If you don't think this has to happen, then tell me: what are you going to say to the restless masses? It had better sound a lot better than the larger-than-life congressman pledging to "get those dirty Internet perverts" - to the cheers of millions of average people who think the Internet was invented by porno freaks. Remember, all you First Amendment types: this is the country that passed a constitutional amendment banning alcohol consumption and who dictates irrevocable public health policy from a document written in 1790.
If you don't have a solution, then you are free to stick your head in the sand and sound all libertarian and anarchist and quote cool people like Chomsky and Ayn Rand. Just don't be surprised if you find a RSACi rating brand on your ass next time you come up for air.
Yes - except "NT is so simple to maintain that you don't need full-time professionals except on the largest networks". Don't laugh - a former boss of mine was told this.
Not to mention the "paper CNE" and "paper MCSE" problems. Certification may be good, but it's no panacea.
You could ignore many of the clauses of those licenses anyway. Things like reverse engineering have legal precedent to be under fair use. That's why the software companies are trying to change the laws on that, and put some legal substance into them, as well as make practices like remote disabling of software legal as well. (Didn't pay your Office bill this month? MS comes in and shuts off your Office apps!)
Even if this ruling implies that you can copy your software all over the place like that, it won't hurt the bottom lines of most companies. It happens now all the time, and MS isn't cash-starved because of it.
In that case, I'm sure you wouldn't mind if these musicians switched to an Internet label like MP3.com, gave away sample tracks for freebies and Internet radio, and sold their CDs for $5.
Believe it or not, if they did this and sold the same number of CDs they do now, they'd make more money.
You wonder why the traditional recording industry is so hated? There's your answer.
There are a few ways to make money off of GPL software. Not to rehash opensource.org (which you should take a look at), but:
1. Sell support. Buy my code from me, and I'll come to your rescue if it breaks.
2. Sell enhancements. If you want my code to do XYZ, that's great; I'd be more likely to get to it if I were paid...
3. Sell your brand. Who knows your code better than you do? So, if they want the best version of your code, go to you. Also, if people want code this good for their own projects, they know who to ask.
4. Sell proprietary licensing terms. So you don't want to release source for your driver for my software? Buy my commercial license, which will let you dynamically link to my software without having to reveal source.
There are some ideas. More are available at www.opensource.org.
That is, on the guy from MSNBC.
On the one hand, you've got the guy from Cox saying that the users are breaking up the gatekeeper role of journalists by doing their own news. His response is that journalism must redefine itself in the face of changing times. While his ideas aren't perfect, it's still a good start for discussing the impact aggregators such as Slashdot and Linux Today have on journalism.
Then, the MSNBC guy stands up and blathers on about the gatekeeper role *expanding* and how the TV news model is going to *take over* the free-range Internet news model.
And guess what MSNBC's business model is? Yep. Coordinated content on the TV and Internet sides, so "the viewer can browse the Internet site to learn more about the TV news story". Do you think he's been a bit brainwashed on their corporate vision?
MS has this idea of people sitting in front of their WebTV, clicking on hot buttons appearing on the newscast that bring up a picture-in-picture browser with MSNBC-approved content, letting Tom Brokaw guide their browsing to the "right" sites. Baloney. If I had that, I'd find myself minimizing Tom & Co. and checking out independent online opinion on the news.
In fact, come to think of it, since I listen to radio for local news and use the Internet for the rest, I haven't watched TV news or read a newspaper in months.
Gee. Someone had better tell MSNBC's investors.
You'll want to go to the PC Mag (PC Week?) site and check out an article they did on the Mindcraft study. Right after the original study, they did a piece on how Mindcraft screwed up and didn't run the benchmarks right.
It isn't much different from other articles in other places; what makes this one different is that PC Mag was speaking as the author of the benchmark suite.
Advocacy pieces by Linux Today may not carry weight, but a discussion of the errors committed by the authors of the software they used will.
Question: How long has your system been running without a reboot? Yes, I know you haven't BSODed in months, but if you power down or reboot every day, it proves nothing. Even Win9x can manage (most days) to run for a day without rebooting.
NT Workstation is much better than 9x as a workstation OS. But as a server, it still doesn't cut it.
Um, RAID 0 actually reduces reliability.
RAID 1 (mirroring) provides high reliability. RAID 5 (striping with parity) produces high reliability and more space with a speed penalty. RAID 0 provides more space and lower reliability, since any one hard disk failure caused the whole array to fail.
Personally speaking, I came out against the initial Mindcraft benchmark because it was shoddily done, with an eye to producing the numbers Microsoft wanted. There were demonstrable errors in the running of the benchmark that heavily favored NT. I also have serious problems with Mindcraft the company (or Mindcraft the guy); the benchmarks prove that he has absolutely no integrity.
I don't have as much of a problem with the second set of numbers, although I think the c't tests showed that the platform and setup were carefully chosen to stack the deck against Linux (besides being completely impractical - you're going to serve enough data to keep four 100MB cards busy, and you're installing a RAID, but you're not going to protect any of the data you're serving with a RAID 1 or 5? Right...)
I also didn't have much of a problem with the earlier PC Week benchmarks that positioned NT in a good light - although I still think that, if they're going to evaluate ASP, they need to evaluate mod_perl or mod_php as an equivalent.
Here's how it works:
1. Person A writes some software, and distributes it under the GPL.
2. Person B thinks the software is cool and starts distributing the software from his/her GeoCities web page.
3. Person B logs on one day and finds that (s)he now has to get a Yahoo account and agree to license all of his/her content with an unrestrictive license to Yahoo. (S)he agrees.
At this point, Person B has granted rights to Yahoo for the software (owned by Person A) that (s)he did not have the right to grant. Yahoo now thinks it can incorporate portions of the code on the site into its own proprietary products.
And who does Person A have the right to sue if (s)he finds out? Person B, and Person B only, who is probably confused as to why just clicking "Yes" is getting him/her into so much trouble.
...or, at least, it isn't if you agree to Yahoo's terms.
By agreeing to their terms, your work now has a dual license: one for Yahoo, and one for everyone else.
Say you have a Java applet with source under the GPL on the site. Guess what? If you agree, they can take your Java code, incorporate it into one of their applets, and not give any source out.