College students report something of the same phenomenon - technology keeps them studying, socializing, messaging and researching much of the time, much more than is acknowledged by school administrations.
Huh? I think it's the other way around. I've found after five years of school now, that I do less studying, socializing, and researching because of my computer. I can get what I need to have done faster, because I can sort through huge amounts of data in a single search, can type with a spellchecker running, and turn in assignments online. It's freed up a lot of time to do non studious things. Actually, I'm an architecture student, so it's freed up more time to mess with designs, but for us architecture students, that is non studious time.
On a side note, I work in IT as well. When you're paid hourly, you work 40 hours a week or less (no one wants to pay IT overtime costs), but when you move into salary (as I did last summer), you suddenly end up working more. But you know, the important thing isn't how much you work, it's how happy you are with your job. I may have been working 50-60 hours a week, but it didn't feel like it, and it's a lot more fun than most other jobs. It's not like I was forced into it.
Name for me one significant end-user application that is clearly superior than the equivalent in Windows.
The argument is a self-fulfilling one. 90% of apps are written for Windows because it's the dominant OS. Nothing is as good when it is ported or copied to another OS (look at Microsoft's own trouble with Office on the Macintosh and the ire it has provoked from those die-hard users). Since applications for Linux are invariably either ported or copied from existing Windows apps, yes, their quality is going to be lower. But I think there's one that at least comes close.
The GIMP. This may be highly debatable, but I run the GIMP on my 40 MB RAM, Pentium 120 and it never crashes, has all of the features I've come to expect from Photoshop, many many many more default filters, and a much better interface (no large single window). And that's just the development version (Adobe won't let me use their development version).
Photoshop is a good program, but it frequently crashes and is a huge memory hog (relatively speaking). I use both regularly and I find myself saying, "Man, I can do this in the GIMP," a lot more than "Man, I can do this in Photoshop."
So what happens when continents collide? I mean, what if CorpNet runs head on into TechNet? Do we get a whole bunch of mountains? Or are they molehills?
The fact is that this whole thing isn't Internet-specific. The same idea can be applied to any culture at any time. We may have a few new continents here and there (TechNet?), but you can always apply whatever vague analogy to culture and have it make sense. It's like a horoscope in that sense, and it's worth about the same, too.
It's obvious that the Open-Source (free-software) community is under attack from those who don't understand it and would like to kill it. This is probably the best way for us to meet this challenge - leveraging the one thing that makes us different (and arguably nimbler and better) than our closed-source nemeses.
Oh please. The open-source model is not under attack from people who don't understand it. It's not like Sony, Microsoft, and Paramount are all gathered around a table going, "That damn OSS. We don't know what it is, but it's high-time it stopped!" While I'm not sure what you mean by open-source, I'll go over both possible explanations (since you're ambiguous about it). Free software has actually been given out by Microsoft (remember Internet Explorer? Netmeeting? Messenger?) and Microsoft recognizes and even links to many sites that promote Windows freeware. I think companies like Apple and Microsoft that deal in decidedly pay-for software recognize the value of free software in promoting their operating system and would never want the practice to stop. As for open-source software, Apple has supported it. IBM has supported it. The DVD consortium is not against it. The NSA is not against it. Wal-Mart is not against it. There's not a coordinated attack against open-source software and to say it is so is to not understand the nature of the legal battles that involve potential OS/free software concepts.
I don't think the law idea is necessarily a bad one. I do think trying to characterize it as a champion of OS/free software is. I will also point out that the open-source community model is a software model and does not always translate into other professions. Law is practiced by registered lawyers for a reason, because there are many intricacies to law that need to be studied to be understood (IANAL). While a community of free lawyers may be a great idea, considering the incredible time-commitment it takes to become a lawyer and the decidedly puny return on pro bono services, I don't see it as a profession you're going to get the world's best and brightest in. Lawyers do not have the mentality of programmers.
And while we're on the topic of open-source models, I use open-source software and I support it, too, but I do not live an open-source life. I do not give people permission to reproduce and change my ideas. I do not give a community the group right to tinker with my car. I do not want an open-source model managing my electric utilities or my sewage or my education. I think open-source ideas have their place, and I think they rightly belong in information services, like programming, writing, and support, but I don't necessarily think they extend into everything.
Sometimes, I don't like computers to cross into real life, and the paranoid comments that prompted this reply highlight a fear of mine that that is exactly what's happening.
Honestly. I don't want to wait for someone to release 140GB of data for me to read. I want to make it myself. An FMD-ROM does me no good, really. I'd have to by new equipment to read it, and no one's producing discs for it. But if I can make it, I will.
Where do I write on it?
I am not going to try to fit my CD label information on that silly inner ring. If I write on the disk, isn't that going to ruin it?
I don't see what the fuss is with Hollywood's desire to control content. I think the more interesting point is that their trying to control the method of distribution (Want to make a DVD player? Buy a license.) but that's another issue altogether. I think people who distribute copyrighted works should have the right to control how that work is distributed. If I write a piece of software, I want to have the right to say, "No, you can't use it unless you give me money." Conversely, I also want the right to say, "You can have it for free." But I should be able to make money off of it, and you shouldn't be able to simply give my product away if I don't want you to.
I realize there are other issues with the whole CSS debacle, but I know if I were Hollywood, I would definitely want some way to prevent people from easily copying and distributing my product. If I don't have this, I don't have a business, and there's no incentive for me to make the product. As a capitalist society (I'm in America), this is how things work, and frankly, I don't see the problem with it.
To be fair, I never said that Rob accused Microsoft, and I am well aware of that fact that it was the poster of the article that made that accusation. Slashdot, though, is a journalistic source, and Rob is an editor. Editors verify facts and approve stories. That's why not all stories are posted to Slashdot. It's up to the editors to determine the validity of the story and whether or not it has merit. Rob has the full right to edit that poster's text and not doing so was a conscious effort on his part.
If Slashdot is truly to be respected as media source, it's going to need to get it's act together. It rails against FUD from Microsoft, but it turns around and spews the same type of FUD back out against Linux. I'd rather hold Slashdot to a higher standard than my typical news service, and to do that, the editors are going to have maintain a higher standard. That means cutting out some of the sensationalism and making sure that they verify their stories.
So yes, the blame for this post falls squarely on Taco's shoulders. He should never have posted it for general discussion without first making sure that those ridiculously (and wrongly) anti-Microsoft comments were either toned down or removed altogether. That's his job as editor. If he's not going to maintain at least some journalistic ethics, then I may as well read CNN for my Linux news.
What article did you read? The article I read didn't mention anything about source code. The article I read talked about a company that offers a web solution to determining whether or not your system's security is compromised, making it available to the daemons that run these types of attacks. Nowhere did I read anything about why Linux and Solaris are more vulnerable.
So, either we're reading different articles, you didn't read the article, or I skipped an entire paragraph or something (hey, I'm not perfect).
So I guess they haven't heard of BO/BO2k/Netbus or anything else....
No, my bet is that they have heard of BO/BO2K/Netbus, as have most ITs working in the NT field. College campuses (which the FBI is concentrating heavily on right now) regularly do scans for BO and Netbus. It was publicized so heavily that most people knew about it and at least had the knowledge that they should be checking for it. I remember when I worked for our campus network checking for BO and cleaning off people's systems. But they don't scan their systems for these Unix vulnerabilities because the Unix community does such a good job of saying, "Oh, our systems are super-secure." That's true, if they're set up properly, but most aren't (especially when it comes to college kids running Linux), and that's what's being exploited. At least when Microsoft gets a bug, it's heavily publicized. When Unix gets a bug, unless the admin is on bugtraq (of which many aren't), no one will hear about it. Our network admin at my current school doesn't know too much about Unix or admining, but he gets a lot of help from the press when it comes to running his NT network.
Basically, there are enough stupid people admining Linux and other Unix systems that those networks are probably much more vulnerable than your average NT network. Maybe instead of saying, "This is such FUD!" Linux advocates should do a lot more education about how to make systems secure, starting at the company level (Redhat and Corel) and working down to the level of the user (LDP).
You claim the article is sensationalistic?! Hell, I can't believe this post made it through the editors with its sensationalistic undertones. I see one line that says the code can't run on Windows. It's absolutely right. What these people are looking for is a daemon that runs on Unix systems. I don't see Microsoft's hands in here manipulating the story and I don't see an over "Linux/Solaris is bad" undertone either. What I see is that a lot of Linux/Solaris systems are vulnerable because their IT folks don't know how to manage them.
And suggesting that Microsoft had a hand in these attacks is incredibly more irresponsible than this article saying that vulnerable Linux/Solaris systems were the host machines. If you've got proof, fine, post it. But don't say it because you didn't like the fact that someone pointed out that poorly managed Unix systems were the starting point for a massive web attack. Basically, the Unix community just got slapped in the face for being so complacent about the security of their systems. That's it.
I really thought Slashdot was above this sort of thing.
Ford's support of Adolf Hitler had very little to do with anti-Semitism. It had more to do with the developing German economy and their trends towards industrialization. The Germans greatly admired Ford's approach to engineering and manufacturing and wanted to copy the process to get the German economy back on its feet as fast as possible. To the engineering-oriented German, Henry Ford was a sort of Linux Torvalds, willing to help and keeper of some sort of secret that he would freely give them. This was not lost on Ford. He felt it was quite the ego boost and graciously helped them as he admired their work ethic.
Just like Katz rather glorifies Henry Ford, you rather vilify him. The truth to Henry Ford lies somewhere in the middle has he is human, with both admirable qualities and awful flaws. This whole computer deal lies somewhere in the middle, too. Yes, Ford is doing a great thing by helping their employees, but at they same time, they expect to (and probably will) receive a return on their investment that includes a more educated work force and a happier employee base.
The article makes a big deal about VA Linux vs. Redhat, saying that they're going to be going head-to-head and they'll probably cause at least the demise of one of them. Basically, all I know about VA I've learned from reading Slashdot (although I will soon have VA stock from this nice little buyout), but I've always thought that VA was primarily a hardware company and Redhat was primarily a software company. To me, it seems, it's much more likely that these two companies will work together rather than against each other. Does anyone else see it that way, or am I wrong about VA Linux?
On a side note, even with all this commercialization, the Linux community is stronger than ever. The companies that are investing themselves in Linux (like VA Linux and Redhat, but not companies like IBM) understand the community and are doing everything they can to support it and each other. It's a far cry from the nasty capitalism that most companies partake in.
You obviously have a great deal of thoughts about what the Internet is, will be, and should be, many of which I have never agreed with. However, one thing I am impressed by is how you continually use the evolving Slashdot forum as both fodder and testing ground for your ideas. Are you representative of an emerging crop of journalists that will rely just as much on discussion and interpretation as on actual topical reports or are you just filling a niche here on Slashdot?
There is no Constitution for the Net, no bylaws or widely agreed-upon system or Constitution to protect widely agreed upon system to protect such rights as privacy, openness, and property.
Yes, that quote's taken straight from Katz. You figure out the grammar.
Anyway, it's this type of thinking that completely pisses me off. There are laws on the Internet and they're the same laws that you live by every day. If someone hacks into your system, that's a federal law. If someone takes GPL source, modifies it, and distributes it binary-only without source, that's a violation of the license. If someone slanders me on the 'Net, I can take that information and proceed to court. The people who set up the Internet weren't thinking about laws and rules. They were thinking about systems and data. To say that the 'Net is without laws or protections is naive. It's governed by the same rules that the 'real world' is. Why? Because it's part of the real world. If you break a law on the 'Net, you are breaking a law period. You're not any different because you're on your computer rather than on the street. You do not become a different kind of person because you sit in front of a monitor.
<rant type="petty"> Maybe Katz should try actually saying something insightful rather than repeating the rhetoric of paranoids and brats. He might actually get published in a magazine where he doesn't have to rely on his readers to make it worth something (that is a compliment of Slashdot and its readers, not a criticism). </rant>
Then maybe they'll learn the error of their ways and not monitor people's traffic anymore! If all of the Slashdot people stopped going to Russian sites, I bet they'd implement whatever we want them to!
NOTE: This post not for the humor (or humour) impaired. Also, this post is not for anyone who doesn't know about Slashdot's tendency to boycott anything and everything they don't agree with.
A lot of free software projects these days could really use that woman's touch.
What is this supposed to mean? When I look at open-source projects these days, I don't see a male-oriented slant or perspective on them. I see a computer slant. It's not like GNOME icons feature naked women or anything.
Option 3 in the article I think is the best. Hackerdom doesn't need to be changed to allow more women in as women geeks already seem to fit in quite nicely. It's not as if the community isn't accepting now, and when (not if) more women go into technology fields, I don't see a radical shift in programming or ideology or ideas. Why? Because they're all geeks! Geekiness is gender-neutral, AFAIK. Yes, geeks tend to be male, but they don't have the same issues involving maleness that, say, jocks and Wall Street investors have.
The problem isn't a geek one. The problem is a social one, and as more and more computer filter into daily life, you'll see more women. The only benefit that we're going to get by having more female geeks is the same one that we get by having more geeks in general: more innovating people.
ps. Wasn't this argument already beaten into the ground here on Slashdot about a month ago?
As a college-aged American, I can drink anything. Remember, we hold parties with cases and cases of piss called "Natural Light" and "Milwaukee's Best" (affectionately known as "Natty Light" and "The Beast"). If I can hold down 12 of those, I can hold down a liter or two of Mountain Dew.
But after about 3 liters, I start shaking. That's not good when you depend on the stuff to keep you awake for all-nighters in the architecture studio and you use pointy things.
Hello?! How can you dare talk about computers and the drug culture without talking about the nectar of the gods, Mountain Dew?! Any author who fails to see that connection is smoking the proverbial crack.
NOTE: This isn't flamebait. It's just the product of a mind just slightly bent on the Dew.
There is one major fundamental difference that everyone seems to ignore when it comes to MP3s and DVD piracy. Whereas with videocassettes and cassette tapes and photocopies, you had to pay for some sort of medium on which to copy the target work, with MP3s and DVD rips, you don't need anything but disk space, which people already have. I see people say that copyright laws were there to prevent people from rattling off 1000 copies of a book and then selling them, but a) it cost a bit of money to rattle off 1000 copies and b)the copies weren't identical to the original. But with an MP3 rip, it is identical, and it doesn't cost anything to do it. Sure, no one's selling MP3s, but copyrights weren't meant to prevent people from selling stuff, they were meant to give the author the right to manage the content, including distribution. Giving something away still steals a sale from the copyright owner.
The VCR debate is not an analogy to the Mp3/DVD debate since it required both a) an extra machine and b) another video cassette. Both induced financial burdens that could be monitored, but the warez activity on USENET shows that this is not the case for MP3s. What the RIAA and MPAA are worried about is not controlling your lives to make sure that you can't get your information, but controlling their information which they have the legal right to distribute. The problem they have is that people are ignoring that right, just simple blatant ignorance. I think the MPAA and RIAA are taking a typical corporate hard-line stance in favor of their legal arguments, their open-source opponents are taking an equally hard-line stance against them, and the end result is helping neither side. OS people look like a bunch of little anarchist brats with no regard for the world they live in. Just as the MPAA and RIAA have been adversarial in their approach to the situation, OS members have been just as adversarial in theirs ("Oh, well, if we post DeCSS to all the newsgroups and message boards on the Internet, they can't stop us!").
The article's suggestions about a jukebox and about new copyright laws are what I would call constructive ideas. They show the MPAA how to control distribution in such a way as to give the people what they want. I think the idea itself is a bit too much like radio and does not take into account that people can freely copy the data and ignore the signal, but at least it's constructive. It ignores that fundamental difference, though, free and easy redistribution.
I personally wouldn't mind paying for my MP3s or DVD rips. Figure out a way to code in a security check that replies with a key unique to your player, so that even if you do copy it, it needs a certain key to play. Granted, any security system can be cracked with brute force, but if that's the only way it can be cracked (ie. no deCSS our there for the files), then that's ten times better than battles between crackers and corporates.
The idea is not to reject our current copyright system, for it does work very well to protect intellectual rights. The idea is to figure out a way to respect those rights and give the people their data. I would much rather listen to my music knowing that I had respected the author's right to distribute it than listen to brats and bigwigs bicker back and forth about what each other's rights are.
Why does Slashdot have to always assume that the dating method they use is the one that everyone uses? It's like Taco and Hemos and the others are saying, "Well, we use it, and we're Slashdot, so everyone else must use it, too, because we're the Start Page of the universe!" Well, I got news for you, bubbas, there are other dating systems.
There's the Muslim calendar. There's the Jewish calendar. There's the Greek Orthodox calendar. Some guy came up with a calendar where every month got 30 days, except December which got 35. Is it Happy Even Day in these cultures? Oh, no, and they're left out of the fun because of it. Personally, I use the Personal calendar, where the date is 154/22 (the 154th day of my 22nd year). Give it a few more months and I'll be celebrating Happy Even Day, but will Slashdot recognize that?! Oh, no. Because Slashdot's calendar is the only calendar.
I want news, not this editorial garbage. If Slashdot's truly news for nerds, how come we're not celebrating Happy Even Day on the moment when the number of seconds since the epoch has all even digits, huh?
Sheesh.
NOTE: This post not meant for the humor (or humour) impaired.
If you think about it, any date after 1000 made it kind of hard to create all even dates, since the first digit was a one. The same thing's true now. We're not going to have an all odd date until 11/11/3111 (or, if you don't count preceding zeros, 1/1/3111).
Of course, it's all completely irrelevant if you don't go by the Gregorian calendar.
I alluded to this in another post, but it bears mentioning here. Arthur C. Clarke used a Chinese space program in 2010 and the race to the Discovery. They landed on Europa to get water from the surface (a risky move) and ended up getting destroyed by life beneath the crust.
Who knows, ten years from now, maybe we'll see some sort of similar scenario involving the Chinese. Heck, they're surprising us now, aren't they?
The primary motivating factor at the beginning of the space race was not competition! It was fear. Unless you lived through the time, you have no idea how terrifying it was to the national consciousness that Sputnik was going "beep, beep, beep". The American propaganda machine, if anything, was at least as effective as the Soviet one in getting America scared enough to support keeping space out of the hands of those damn Communists. The primary motivating factor was not any sort of competition pride, but rather it was making sure that Soviet Russia did not control space and use it as a weapon against us.
We have no need to compete to China, and the only possible NASA benefit is if the US government can get the people scared enough of a Chinese Red threat to put more money in. I don't see that happening, since space has sort of become this peaceful no-man's land, kind of like Antarctica only colder. Right now, the Chinese are more scared of use than we are of them, and thus, we have no reason to 'compete' against them. If China does threaten us from space, you can bet that it's going to be more of a diplomatic war than a space race.
But, it does sort of make Arthur C. Clarke's 2010 story about the Chinese landing on Europa a bit more realistic, eh?
NOTE: This doesn't mean we shouldn't fight it, if no one fights it then it MAY go through.
I don't know about you, but sometimes it's good to let laws like this go through so that they can be shot down by the courts. Don't get me wrong, I'm not in favor of excessive litigation, but some things definitely need to be tried in court. The deCSS thing is one of those things. This may well be another. Personally, I'm glad that the CDA was actually passed and then erased by the courts. What's the old saying, something like, "The undefined is the most dangerous?" If companies aren't explicitly told that they can't do this, they may very well do it.
IANAL, so they may already be told they can't do this. But if there's currently no legal basis one way or the other, I'd take a court decision over a law any day. Court precedents do a lot more to help you in present day America, with its highly litigious environment, than actual laws do.
The stuff they use to make these things is flexible, yet extremely durable. Think about it. We already have spacesuits designed to protect astronauts from micrometeorites, balloons that can protect a spacecraft from impact without being punctured by hitting rocks after a fall from at least 400 feet, and if a stray supply module hits one of these things, it's most likely going to bounce off, rather than puncturing it. The result is going to be much better than if it hits a solid container, which will probably buckle under the stress and cause joints and connections to come apart.
Think about how much it takes to puncture and completely deflate a steel-belted radial tire, and then realize that tires are like paper balloons compared to the inflatable tools being designed for space.
Slashdot Mirror
College students report something of the same phenomenon - technology keeps them studying, socializing, messaging and researching much of the time, much more than is acknowledged by school administrations.
Huh? I think it's the other way around. I've found after five years of school now, that I do less studying, socializing, and researching because of my computer. I can get what I need to have done faster, because I can sort through huge amounts of data in a single search, can type with a spellchecker running, and turn in assignments online. It's freed up a lot of time to do non studious things. Actually, I'm an architecture student, so it's freed up more time to mess with designs, but for us architecture students, that is non studious time.
On a side note, I work in IT as well. When you're paid hourly, you work 40 hours a week or less (no one wants to pay IT overtime costs), but when you move into salary (as I did last summer), you suddenly end up working more. But you know, the important thing isn't how much you work, it's how happy you are with your job. I may have been working 50-60 hours a week, but it didn't feel like it, and it's a lot more fun than most other jobs. It's not like I was forced into it.
Name for me one significant end-user application that is clearly superior than the equivalent in Windows.
The argument is a self-fulfilling one. 90% of apps are written for Windows because it's the dominant OS. Nothing is as good when it is ported or copied to another OS (look at Microsoft's own trouble with Office on the Macintosh and the ire it has provoked from those die-hard users). Since applications for Linux are invariably either ported or copied from existing Windows apps, yes, their quality is going to be lower. But I think there's one that at least comes close.
The GIMP. This may be highly debatable, but I run the GIMP on my 40 MB RAM, Pentium 120 and it never crashes, has all of the features I've come to expect from Photoshop, many many many more default filters, and a much better interface (no large single window). And that's just the development version (Adobe won't let me use their development version).
Photoshop is a good program, but it frequently crashes and is a huge memory hog (relatively speaking). I use both regularly and I find myself saying, "Man, I can do this in the GIMP," a lot more than "Man, I can do this in Photoshop."
So what happens when continents collide? I mean, what if CorpNet runs head on into TechNet? Do we get a whole bunch of mountains? Or are they molehills?
The fact is that this whole thing isn't Internet-specific. The same idea can be applied to any culture at any time. We may have a few new continents here and there (TechNet?), but you can always apply whatever vague analogy to culture and have it make sense. It's like a horoscope in that sense, and it's worth about the same, too.
It's obvious that the Open-Source (free-software) community is under attack from those who don't understand it and would like to kill it. This is probably the best way for us to meet this challenge - leveraging the one thing that makes us different (and arguably nimbler and better) than our closed-source nemeses.
Oh please. The open-source model is not under attack from people who don't understand it. It's not like Sony, Microsoft, and Paramount are all gathered around a table going, "That damn OSS. We don't know what it is, but it's high-time it stopped!" While I'm not sure what you mean by open-source, I'll go over both possible explanations (since you're ambiguous about it). Free software has actually been given out by Microsoft (remember Internet Explorer? Netmeeting? Messenger?) and Microsoft recognizes and even links to many sites that promote Windows freeware. I think companies like Apple and Microsoft that deal in decidedly pay-for software recognize the value of free software in promoting their operating system and would never want the practice to stop. As for open-source software, Apple has supported it. IBM has supported it. The DVD consortium is not against it. The NSA is not against it. Wal-Mart is not against it. There's not a coordinated attack against open-source software and to say it is so is to not understand the nature of the legal battles that involve potential OS/free software concepts.
I don't think the law idea is necessarily a bad one. I do think trying to characterize it as a champion of OS/free software is. I will also point out that the open-source community model is a software model and does not always translate into other professions. Law is practiced by registered lawyers for a reason, because there are many intricacies to law that need to be studied to be understood (IANAL). While a community of free lawyers may be a great idea, considering the incredible time-commitment it takes to become a lawyer and the decidedly puny return on pro bono services, I don't see it as a profession you're going to get the world's best and brightest in. Lawyers do not have the mentality of programmers.
And while we're on the topic of open-source models, I use open-source software and I support it, too, but I do not live an open-source life. I do not give people permission to reproduce and change my ideas. I do not give a community the group right to tinker with my car. I do not want an open-source model managing my electric utilities or my sewage or my education. I think open-source ideas have their place, and I think they rightly belong in information services, like programming, writing, and support, but I don't necessarily think they extend into everything.
Sometimes, I don't like computers to cross into real life, and the paranoid comments that prompted this reply highlight a fear of mine that that is exactly what's happening.
Honestly. I don't want to wait for someone to release 140GB of data for me to read. I want to make it myself. An FMD-ROM does me no good, really. I'd have to by new equipment to read it, and no one's producing discs for it. But if I can make it, I will.
I am not going to try to fit my CD label information on that silly inner ring. If I write on the disk, isn't that going to ruin it?
Mm
I don't see what the fuss is with Hollywood's desire to control content. I think the more interesting point is that their trying to control the method of distribution (Want to make a DVD player? Buy a license.) but that's another issue altogether. I think people who distribute copyrighted works should have the right to control how that work is distributed. If I write a piece of software, I want to have the right to say, "No, you can't use it unless you give me money." Conversely, I also want the right to say, "You can have it for free." But I should be able to make money off of it, and you shouldn't be able to simply give my product away if I don't want you to.
I realize there are other issues with the whole CSS debacle, but I know if I were Hollywood, I would definitely want some way to prevent people from easily copying and distributing my product. If I don't have this, I don't have a business, and there's no incentive for me to make the product. As a capitalist society (I'm in America), this is how things work, and frankly, I don't see the problem with it.
To be fair, I never said that Rob accused Microsoft, and I am well aware of that fact that it was the poster of the article that made that accusation. Slashdot, though, is a journalistic source, and Rob is an editor. Editors verify facts and approve stories. That's why not all stories are posted to Slashdot. It's up to the editors to determine the validity of the story and whether or not it has merit. Rob has the full right to edit that poster's text and not doing so was a conscious effort on his part.
If Slashdot is truly to be respected as media source, it's going to need to get it's act together. It rails against FUD from Microsoft, but it turns around and spews the same type of FUD back out against Linux. I'd rather hold Slashdot to a higher standard than my typical news service, and to do that, the editors are going to have maintain a higher standard. That means cutting out some of the sensationalism and making sure that they verify their stories.
So yes, the blame for this post falls squarely on Taco's shoulders. He should never have posted it for general discussion without first making sure that those ridiculously (and wrongly) anti-Microsoft comments were either toned down or removed altogether. That's his job as editor. If he's not going to maintain at least some journalistic ethics, then I may as well read CNN for my Linux news.
What article did you read? The article I read didn't mention anything about source code. The article I read talked about a company that offers a web solution to determining whether or not your system's security is compromised, making it available to the daemons that run these types of attacks. Nowhere did I read anything about why Linux and Solaris are more vulnerable.
So, either we're reading different articles, you didn't read the article, or I skipped an entire paragraph or something (hey, I'm not perfect).
So I guess they haven't heard of BO/BO2k/Netbus or anything else....
No, my bet is that they have heard of BO/BO2K/Netbus, as have most ITs working in the NT field. College campuses (which the FBI is concentrating heavily on right now) regularly do scans for BO and Netbus. It was publicized so heavily that most people knew about it and at least had the knowledge that they should be checking for it. I remember when I worked for our campus network checking for BO and cleaning off people's systems. But they don't scan their systems for these Unix vulnerabilities because the Unix community does such a good job of saying, "Oh, our systems are super-secure." That's true, if they're set up properly, but most aren't (especially when it comes to college kids running Linux), and that's what's being exploited. At least when Microsoft gets a bug, it's heavily publicized. When Unix gets a bug, unless the admin is on bugtraq (of which many aren't), no one will hear about it. Our network admin at my current school doesn't know too much about Unix or admining, but he gets a lot of help from the press when it comes to running his NT network.
Basically, there are enough stupid people admining Linux and other Unix systems that those networks are probably much more vulnerable than your average NT network. Maybe instead of saying, "This is such FUD!" Linux advocates should do a lot more education about how to make systems secure, starting at the company level (Redhat and Corel) and working down to the level of the user (LDP).
You claim the article is sensationalistic?! Hell, I can't believe this post made it through the editors with its sensationalistic undertones. I see one line that says the code can't run on Windows. It's absolutely right. What these people are looking for is a daemon that runs on Unix systems. I don't see Microsoft's hands in here manipulating the story and I don't see an over "Linux/Solaris is bad" undertone either. What I see is that a lot of Linux/Solaris systems are vulnerable because their IT folks don't know how to manage them.
And suggesting that Microsoft had a hand in these attacks is incredibly more irresponsible than this article saying that vulnerable Linux/Solaris systems were the host machines. If you've got proof, fine, post it. But don't say it because you didn't like the fact that someone pointed out that poorly managed Unix systems were the starting point for a massive web attack. Basically, the Unix community just got slapped in the face for being so complacent about the security of their systems. That's it.
I really thought Slashdot was above this sort of thing.
Ford's support of Adolf Hitler had very little to do with anti-Semitism. It had more to do with the developing German economy and their trends towards industrialization. The Germans greatly admired Ford's approach to engineering and manufacturing and wanted to copy the process to get the German economy back on its feet as fast as possible. To the engineering-oriented German, Henry Ford was a sort of Linux Torvalds, willing to help and keeper of some sort of secret that he would freely give them. This was not lost on Ford. He felt it was quite the ego boost and graciously helped them as he admired their work ethic.
Just like Katz rather glorifies Henry Ford, you rather vilify him. The truth to Henry Ford lies somewhere in the middle has he is human, with both admirable qualities and awful flaws. This whole computer deal lies somewhere in the middle, too. Yes, Ford is doing a great thing by helping their employees, but at they same time, they expect to (and probably will) receive a return on their investment that includes a more educated work force and a happier employee base.
The article makes a big deal about VA Linux vs. Redhat, saying that they're going to be going head-to-head and they'll probably cause at least the demise of one of them. Basically, all I know about VA I've learned from reading Slashdot (although I will soon have VA stock from this nice little buyout), but I've always thought that VA was primarily a hardware company and Redhat was primarily a software company. To me, it seems, it's much more likely that these two companies will work together rather than against each other. Does anyone else see it that way, or am I wrong about VA Linux?
On a side note, even with all this commercialization, the Linux community is stronger than ever. The companies that are investing themselves in Linux (like VA Linux and Redhat, but not companies like IBM) understand the community and are doing everything they can to support it and each other. It's a far cry from the nasty capitalism that most companies partake in.
You obviously have a great deal of thoughts about what the Internet is, will be, and should be, many of which I have never agreed with. However, one thing I am impressed by is how you continually use the evolving Slashdot forum as both fodder and testing ground for your ideas. Are you representative of an emerging crop of journalists that will rely just as much on discussion and interpretation as on actual topical reports or are you just filling a niche here on Slashdot?
There is no Constitution for the Net, no bylaws or widely agreed-upon system or Constitution to protect widely agreed upon system to protect such rights as privacy, openness, and property.
Yes, that quote's taken straight from Katz. You figure out the grammar.
Anyway, it's this type of thinking that completely pisses me off. There are laws on the Internet and they're the same laws that you live by every day. If someone hacks into your system, that's a federal law. If someone takes GPL source, modifies it, and distributes it binary-only without source, that's a violation of the license. If someone slanders me on the 'Net, I can take that information and proceed to court. The people who set up the Internet weren't thinking about laws and rules. They were thinking about systems and data. To say that the 'Net is without laws or protections is naive. It's governed by the same rules that the 'real world' is. Why? Because it's part of the real world. If you break a law on the 'Net, you are breaking a law period. You're not any different because you're on your computer rather than on the street. You do not become a different kind of person because you sit in front of a monitor.
<rant type="petty">
Maybe Katz should try actually saying something insightful rather than repeating the rhetoric of paranoids and brats. He might actually get published in a magazine where he doesn't have to rely on his readers to make it worth something (that is a compliment of Slashdot and its readers, not a criticism).
</rant>
Then maybe they'll learn the error of their ways and not monitor people's traffic anymore! If all of the Slashdot people stopped going to Russian sites, I bet they'd implement whatever we want them to!
NOTE: This post not for the humor (or humour) impaired. Also, this post is not for anyone who doesn't know about Slashdot's tendency to boycott anything and everything they don't agree with.
A lot of free software projects these days could really use that woman's touch.
What is this supposed to mean? When I look at open-source projects these days, I don't see a male-oriented slant or perspective on them. I see a computer slant. It's not like GNOME icons feature naked women or anything.
Option 3 in the article I think is the best. Hackerdom doesn't need to be changed to allow more women in as women geeks already seem to fit in quite nicely. It's not as if the community isn't accepting now, and when (not if) more women go into technology fields, I don't see a radical shift in programming or ideology or ideas. Why? Because they're all geeks! Geekiness is gender-neutral, AFAIK. Yes, geeks tend to be male, but they don't have the same issues involving maleness that, say, jocks and Wall Street investors have.
The problem isn't a geek one. The problem is a social one, and as more and more computer filter into daily life, you'll see more women. The only benefit that we're going to get by having more female geeks is the same one that we get by having more geeks in general: more innovating people.
ps. Wasn't this argument already beaten into the ground here on Slashdot about a month ago?
As a college-aged American, I can drink anything. Remember, we hold parties with cases and cases of piss called "Natural Light" and "Milwaukee's Best" (affectionately known as "Natty Light" and "The Beast"). If I can hold down 12 of those, I can hold down a liter or two of Mountain Dew.
But after about 3 liters, I start shaking. That's not good when you depend on the stuff to keep you awake for all-nighters in the architecture studio and you use pointy things.
Hello?! How can you dare talk about computers and the drug culture without talking about the nectar of the gods, Mountain Dew?! Any author who fails to see that connection is smoking the proverbial crack.
NOTE: This isn't flamebait. It's just the product of a mind just slightly bent on the Dew.
There is one major fundamental difference that everyone seems to ignore when it comes to MP3s and DVD piracy. Whereas with videocassettes and cassette tapes and photocopies, you had to pay for some sort of medium on which to copy the target work, with MP3s and DVD rips, you don't need anything but disk space, which people already have. I see people say that copyright laws were there to prevent people from rattling off 1000 copies of a book and then selling them, but a) it cost a bit of money to rattle off 1000 copies and b)the copies weren't identical to the original. But with an MP3 rip, it is identical, and it doesn't cost anything to do it. Sure, no one's selling MP3s, but copyrights weren't meant to prevent people from selling stuff, they were meant to give the author the right to manage the content, including distribution. Giving something away still steals a sale from the copyright owner.
The VCR debate is not an analogy to the Mp3/DVD debate since it required both a) an extra machine and b) another video cassette. Both induced financial burdens that could be monitored, but the warez activity on USENET shows that this is not the case for MP3s. What the RIAA and MPAA are worried about is not controlling your lives to make sure that you can't get your information, but controlling their information which they have the legal right to distribute. The problem they have is that people are ignoring that right, just simple blatant ignorance. I think the MPAA and RIAA are taking a typical corporate hard-line stance in favor of their legal arguments, their open-source opponents are taking an equally hard-line stance against them, and the end result is helping neither side. OS people look like a bunch of little anarchist brats with no regard for the world they live in. Just as the MPAA and RIAA have been adversarial in their approach to the situation, OS members have been just as adversarial in theirs ("Oh, well, if we post DeCSS to all the newsgroups and message boards on the Internet, they can't stop us!").
The article's suggestions about a jukebox and about new copyright laws are what I would call constructive ideas. They show the MPAA how to control distribution in such a way as to give the people what they want. I think the idea itself is a bit too much like radio and does not take into account that people can freely copy the data and ignore the signal, but at least it's constructive. It ignores that fundamental difference, though, free and easy redistribution.
I personally wouldn't mind paying for my MP3s or DVD rips. Figure out a way to code in a security check that replies with a key unique to your player, so that even if you do copy it, it needs a certain key to play. Granted, any security system can be cracked with brute force, but if that's the only way it can be cracked (ie. no deCSS our there for the files), then that's ten times better than battles between crackers and corporates.
The idea is not to reject our current copyright system, for it does work very well to protect intellectual rights. The idea is to figure out a way to respect those rights and give the people their data. I would much rather listen to my music knowing that I had respected the author's right to distribute it than listen to brats and bigwigs bicker back and forth about what each other's rights are.
Why does Slashdot have to always assume that the dating method they use is the one that everyone uses? It's like Taco and Hemos and the others are saying, "Well, we use it, and we're Slashdot, so everyone else must use it, too, because we're the Start Page of the universe!" Well, I got news for you, bubbas, there are other dating systems.
There's the Muslim calendar. There's the Jewish calendar. There's the Greek Orthodox calendar. Some guy came up with a calendar where every month got 30 days, except December which got 35. Is it Happy Even Day in these cultures? Oh, no, and they're left out of the fun because of it. Personally, I use the Personal calendar, where the date is 154/22 (the 154th day of my 22nd year). Give it a few more months and I'll be celebrating Happy Even Day, but will Slashdot recognize that?! Oh, no. Because Slashdot's calendar is the only calendar.
I want news, not this editorial garbage. If Slashdot's truly news for nerds, how come we're not celebrating Happy Even Day on the moment when the number of seconds since the epoch has all even digits, huh?
Sheesh.
NOTE: This post not meant for the humor (or humour) impaired.
If you think about it, any date after 1000 made it kind of hard to create all even dates, since the first digit was a one. The same thing's true now. We're not going to have an all odd date until 11/11/3111 (or, if you don't count preceding zeros, 1/1/3111).
Of course, it's all completely irrelevant if you don't go by the Gregorian calendar.
I alluded to this in another post, but it bears mentioning here. Arthur C. Clarke used a Chinese space program in 2010 and the race to the Discovery. They landed on Europa to get water from the surface (a risky move) and ended up getting destroyed by life beneath the crust.
Who knows, ten years from now, maybe we'll see some sort of similar scenario involving the Chinese. Heck, they're surprising us now, aren't they?
The primary motivating factor at the beginning of the space race was not competition! It was fear. Unless you lived through the time, you have no idea how terrifying it was to the national consciousness that Sputnik was going "beep, beep, beep". The American propaganda machine, if anything, was at least as effective as the Soviet one in getting America scared enough to support keeping space out of the hands of those damn Communists. The primary motivating factor was not any sort of competition pride, but rather it was making sure that Soviet Russia did not control space and use it as a weapon against us.
We have no need to compete to China, and the only possible NASA benefit is if the US government can get the people scared enough of a Chinese Red threat to put more money in. I don't see that happening, since space has sort of become this peaceful no-man's land, kind of like Antarctica only colder. Right now, the Chinese are more scared of use than we are of them, and thus, we have no reason to 'compete' against them. If China does threaten us from space, you can bet that it's going to be more of a diplomatic war than a space race.
But, it does sort of make Arthur C. Clarke's 2010 story about the Chinese landing on Europa a bit more realistic, eh?
NOTE: This doesn't mean we shouldn't fight it, if no one fights it then it MAY go through.
I don't know about you, but sometimes it's good to let laws like this go through so that they can be shot down by the courts. Don't get me wrong, I'm not in favor of excessive litigation, but some things definitely need to be tried in court. The deCSS thing is one of those things. This may well be another. Personally, I'm glad that the CDA was actually passed and then erased by the courts. What's the old saying, something like, "The undefined is the most dangerous?" If companies aren't explicitly told that they can't do this, they may very well do it.
IANAL, so they may already be told they can't do this. But if there's currently no legal basis one way or the other, I'd take a court decision over a law any day. Court precedents do a lot more to help you in present day America, with its highly litigious environment, than actual laws do.
The stuff they use to make these things is flexible, yet extremely durable. Think about it. We already have spacesuits designed to protect astronauts from micrometeorites, balloons that can protect a spacecraft from impact without being punctured by hitting rocks after a fall from at least 400 feet, and if a stray supply module hits one of these things, it's most likely going to bounce off, rather than puncturing it. The result is going to be much better than if it hits a solid container, which will probably buckle under the stress and cause joints and connections to come apart.
Think about how much it takes to puncture and completely deflate a steel-belted radial tire, and then realize that tires are like paper balloons compared to the inflatable tools being designed for space.