Read the press release. This is us invading them, not us throwing in the towel:
"The challenge in connecting decentralized Linux workgroups with larger Windows-based enterprises has been a barrier for Linux desktops to make inroads into the corporate world.... Ximian Connector for Microsoft Exchange is designed to break down those barriers... The overwhelming customer response to Ximian Connector for Microsoft Exchange shows that we have clearly struck a chord with companies increasingly adopting Linux for desktop use. By providing this key missing ingredient to interoperability with office document and messaging standards, Ximian is helping companies support their Linux users without compromise while eliminating the costs normally associated with the purchase of second PCs or mail systems."
It makes the slow (and, for some, fearful) migration from windows to linux possible, instead of requiring a clean break. There is a lot of resistance to "clean breaks". Slow migrations don't get much resistance, especially if said migration doesn't show up on budget outlines or requisition forms.
The other important thing is that programs often don't work very nicely with each other, or need certain versions to work. This is where having a central system for controlling dependencies is rather important.
Don't get me wrong, I'm totally jazzed about this.
But I imagine home robots are supposed to *do* things, not be an expensive novelty item. I don't want to program a robot to be a mobile mp3 player. I don't even want it to "welcome" me when I come home.
I want it to do work.
I want it to take out the trash, do the laundry, vaccuum, cook, mow the lawn, etc. While I read, travel, program, and spend time with my family. That's I look forward to.
That might only be 5-10 years away now. What will the world be like then? What will all the landscaping and housecleaning services do? What will most of the human population do? Flesh Fairs?
... NNTP access. The excuse - and it has only ever been an excuse - for not providing one has been that no-one has worked out how to force ads down people's pipes over NNTP. I'll subscribe, so get no ads, but I want to read over NNTP...
Good comment, but I have one question. How will you take advantage of user moderation and your filters (threshold friend/foes, reason modifer, etc.) A killfile only goes so far.
if you lose it or it gets stolen, you can call up the speedpass place and report it as stolen and the ID inside the speedpass you had will be rendered invalid and you can get a new one
It's a question of liability. If this gadget is widely adopted, and yours gets stolen, your bank account/credit limit could be wiped out in minutes. You might not notice it's missing till the next morning (or x hours after the thief has used up your money).
Who pays for all that? Who's sol? If it comes directly out of your bank account, I doubt they'll put money back into your account.
I bet they eventually sue ISPs. Common-carrier defense or no, they'll be a target. By not blocking 'x' ports, they are willfully facilitating copyright infringement by their user base. Or even universities, for allowing students to violate copyright with government funded networks.
After that, it'll be individual users. A few high profile examples of Gnutella users with 40GB of music shared from an always-on cable connection being carted off to jail in cuffs, and that'll scare the pants off some people.
It's gonna get ugly. The RIAA should get the ATF to raid the homes. That'd be good tv.
Sorry, but if you register some domains and then hope to extort thousands out of it, you deserve to have it taken from you.
Translation: You can be a company afraid of the Internet and be slow to adjust to market market pressures. When you finally open your eyes and see that others have taken advantage of your lethargy in hopes of monetary gain, you need not fret -- just taken them to court.
After all, we now know that successful corporations are not allowed to fail. In times of trouble, entire industries will recieve multi-billion dollar bailouts. Laws and courts will favor successful companes (like anti-cybersquatting laws) and in the rare cases that a corporation does fail, Congress will hold dozens of hearings to find out why and make sure that it doesn't happen again.
Existing corporations and existing power-structures are not allow to fail or be challenged.
I imagine slashdot ads would be highly targeted, since it has such a well-defined demographic. I'm actually interested in seeing what sponsors they have.
Will slashdot run ads for MSDN,.NET, or MSCE certification?
Pardon my stupidity on the subject, but what exactly does an ANTI-hydrogen atom do? Is a particular application of this type of knowledge useable such as radioactive waste disposal or something? *clueless*
No no no. All we need now is some dilythium crystals and a warp containment field. Then, we just modify the deflector array to trap the positron emissions into the matter/anti-matter reactor, and we should be able to hit warp 9.7 before the Romulans know what hit them.
The pro-corporate BSD license allows closing of the source, which means less rights for the user.
... and even the author of the code.
Re:Good for some, nightmare for others
on
Peek-a-Boo(ty)
·
· Score: 1
On the other side, as a Security Manager in a bank who's sometimes asked to go find out if person XYZ has been accessing nakedhairyeyebrowedcheerleaders.com, I can see how this utility might make it impossible for me to do my job.
Poor you. My heart bleeds.
Exactly how does that affect security? He's a loser for doing it, but exactly how is it insecure? Or is it just a matter of Control instead of Security?
I'm a litte more anti-coporate that usual this morning, so forgive my coarseness.
Every time I read the name "Phillip Greenspun", I can't help but to think, for a brief second, that he should have the title of former Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
I appreciate these guys' efforts, but I can't help but question the accuracy of the survey. They based the stats of those who voluntarily responded to an email survey, and just over a third responded.
What about the other two-thirds? What was the deliniating factor between those who did respond and those who didn't?
I'm betting those who didn't reply were the weenies who didn't want to admit (even to themselves) -- via the survey -- that they were, indeed, a weenie.
The only way to know for sure is to track down the randomly selected group and get 100% percent response.
That's my gut feeling about the SF response rate.
Have no clue about why the Linux list got such a miniscule response rate. I doubt any kernel hackers are weenies.
Unless -- and I'm wildly guessing -- most of list subscribers are really weenies who feel non-weenie-ish by being on the kernel list? How many people on that list contribute code? And how many are lurkers?
In your local markets, how many broadband providers do you have? Odds are, at most, two. Your cable provider, i.e. TimeWarner Cable (a locally sanctioned monopoly) offering cable net access and your telcom provider, i.e Sprint (yet another locally sanctioned monopoly) offering DSL access.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that with multi-billion corporations engaged some friendly pseudo-competition, and with the barriers to entry so high no other competition is forseeably possible, that they have no incentive to lower prices.
Costs going up? No problem, they don't need to innovate, or figure out ways to do things better, they can simply up their prices. TimeWarner and AT&T will trade users back and forth as they ratchet up prices in turn.
I predict broadband prices will continue to go up, until some technology (like wireless broadband) make the barriers to entry signifcantly less. Wireless will allow a competitor to enter the market by setting up a few towers, instead of laying hundreds of miles of wire.
1) The survery is a self-selected group. Britney Spears nuts aren't going to visit planetary.org
2) NASA is not independently wealthy. The funding they get is ultimately reliant on public opinion, because they are the ones who pay for, and if they complain loud enough in these recessionary times, politicians will look for things to cut. By doing thing, they (hopefully) will be working on projects that *do* have public support, and therefore will be spared the ax.
But I do find it flawed. Better solutions would be:
1) Privatize NASA so they aren't dependent on public funds.
I'm quite anti-corporate, and as a topic for another thread I could discuss reforms in corporate law and legal status, but I don't view them as inheritly evil.
That said, it's obvious that corporations are many times better at marshalling resources and getting things done than a government agency, given the motivation of shareholder return on investment.
And just how many closed source distributions of FreeBSD are there? NetBSD? OpenBSD?
Why would Microsoft want to do distribute a closed source version of *BSD? I was refering to the BSD License, not the OS.
How many closed source distributions of kerberos are there? I know of one: Microsoft Kerberos. Like the lead of the article says, BSD license allows MS to "Embrace, Extend, [and] Extinguish" OSS initiatives.
I had the deluded notion that the GPL was all about making certain that those who contributed to Open Source didn't try to just steal from it outright and wanted to provide more protection than the BSD license. But, it is quite clear that the agenda is bigger than that. It is that there be no closed code at all. The viral nature of the GPL isn't there as a side effect of trying to protect Open Source. It is there to deliberately attempt to eliminate closed source.
Okay, Mr. Gates.
Closed closed source is fine.
If you want to spend your time and money developing code and never release the source, you have that right. That should not ever be prohibited.
But you can't take millions of lines of code that was developed, for free by volunteer developers, behind your walled garden and label that as 'closed'.
Under BSD, you can.
As a developer, if you write a program, and you don't want *your* code to be used by AOL or MSFT in their unending quest to crush their competition and meet their quarterly target -- with zero compenstation to you -- then you have the GPL to protect you against that.
This is a Good Thing.
Outside of MS/AOL/et al, I don't understand the resistance to GPL, especially among slashdotters.
BSD: I wrote this code for Microsoft, but you can use it too.
What we got from Linux users were not sales, but tons of email demanding that we put up the binary executeables on an ftp site for free so they could download them and use them with their Windows version of the game.
Hypothetical:
I bought a VHS copy of, say, the Mystery Men movie because it was my favorite movie in recent years.
I have a VCR and a DVD, but for some legal or licensing reason, the DVD release was delayed by six months.
I watch Mystery Men on VHS many many times over that six month period.
When the DVD is finally released, I realize that it is only the movie itself. No director's commentary, no deleted scenes -- just the movie.
Sure, it'd be nice to have Mystery Men on DVD, but I already *have* it on VHS, and the DVD offers no compelling reason to buy a second copy.
Why would I buy a second copy of the same movie for the same (or more) amount of money? The only difference is the format of the medium, but the benefits are only marginal, and questionally marginal at that if I only have a 19" TV with no surround sound.
To add another wrinkle: Licensing usually says you don' *own* your copy Mystery Men, or Tribes. You merely bought the right to view or play it. If I bought/own a license to view Mystery Men, why can't I exercise that use on both VHS and DVD without having the buy two separate licenses?
The analogy is not complete. But the argument remains...
The truth behind the story is that I bought MM on VHS way before I got a DVD. Eventually, I got a DVD, but could not bring myself to by another copy of MM in that format, even with all the extra added features. Luckily, I recieved it as a gift.
We're not cheap bastards, we just want real value for our money.
Slashdot Mirror
It makes the slow (and, for some, fearful) migration from windows to linux possible, instead of requiring a clean break. There is a lot of resistance to "clean breaks". Slow migrations don't get much resistance, especially if said migration doesn't show up on budget outlines or requisition forms.
The other important thing is that programs often don't work very nicely with each other, or need certain versions to work. This is where having a central system for controlling dependencies is rather important.
;)
You mean, something like a Registry?
Why so small? That's an expensive toy or pet.
Don't get me wrong, I'm totally jazzed about this.
But I imagine home robots are supposed to *do* things, not be an expensive novelty item. I don't want to program a robot to be a mobile mp3 player. I don't even want it to "welcome" me when I come home.
I want it to do work.
I want it to take out the trash, do the laundry, vaccuum, cook, mow the lawn, etc. While I read, travel, program, and spend time with my family. That's I look forward to.
That might only be 5-10 years away now. What will the world be like then? What will all the landscaping and housecleaning services do? What will most of the human population do? Flesh Fairs?
I don't spend much time on usenet. What newsreader are you using?
... NNTP access. The excuse - and it has only ever been an excuse - for not providing one has been that no-one has worked out how to force ads down people's pipes over NNTP. I'll subscribe, so get no ads, but I want to read over NNTP...
Good comment, but I have one question.
How will you take advantage of user moderation and your filters (threshold friend/foes, reason modifer, etc.) A killfile only goes so far.
if you lose it or it gets stolen, you can call up the speedpass place and report it as stolen and the ID inside the speedpass you had will be rendered invalid and you can get a new one
It's a question of liability. If this gadget is widely adopted, and yours gets stolen, your bank account/credit limit could be wiped out in minutes. You might not notice it's missing till the next morning (or x hours after the thief has used up your money).
Who pays for all that? Who's sol? If it comes directly out of your bank account, I doubt they'll put money back into your account.
I won't be signing up for this service.
I do this too. My net connection is generally pretty reliable, but when it went down for about four hours one afternoon, it was eerily quiet.
Then I turned on the radio.
I almost forgot I had one. I only ever listen to the radio in the car, and then it's NPR.
Wierd.
I bet they eventually sue ISPs. Common-carrier defense or no, they'll be a target. By not blocking 'x' ports, they are willfully facilitating copyright infringement by their user base. Or even universities, for allowing students to violate copyright with government funded networks.
After that, it'll be individual users. A few high profile examples of Gnutella users with 40GB of music shared from an always-on cable connection being carted off to jail in cuffs, and that'll scare the pants off some people.
It's gonna get ugly. The RIAA should get the ATF to raid the homes. That'd be good tv.
Sorry, but if you register some domains and then hope to extort thousands out of it, you deserve to have it taken from you.
Translation: You can be a company afraid of the Internet and be slow to adjust to market market pressures. When you finally open your eyes and see that others have taken advantage of your lethargy in hopes of monetary gain, you need not fret -- just taken them to court.
After all, we now know that successful corporations are not allowed to fail. In times of trouble, entire industries will recieve multi-billion dollar bailouts. Laws and courts will favor successful companes (like anti-cybersquatting laws) and in the rare cases that a corporation does fail, Congress will hold dozens of hearings to find out why and make sure that it doesn't happen again.
Existing corporations and existing power-structures are not allow to fail or be challenged.
...how many people are bothered by the ads on /. ?
.NET, or MSCE certification?
I imagine slashdot ads would be highly targeted, since it has such a well-defined demographic. I'm actually interested in seeing what sponsors they have.
Will slashdot run ads for MSDN,
There can be no real trust without real disclosure
Trust no one.
I'm like so sure that microsoft wouldn't lower their prices or anything like that if the alternative was loss of their monopoly.
With Win* selling for $25, MS will eventually run out of their gadzillion dollar cash reserve, and be about the same size as Red Hat.
I can live with that.
Pardon my stupidity on the subject, but what exactly does an ANTI-hydrogen atom do? Is a particular application of this type of knowledge useable such as radioactive waste disposal or something? *clueless*
No no no. All we need now is some dilythium crystals and a warp containment field. Then, we just modify the deflector array to trap the positron emissions into the matter/anti-matter reactor, and we should be able to hit warp 9.7 before the Romulans know what hit them.
The pro-corporate BSD license allows closing of the source, which means less rights for the user.
... and even the author of the code.
On the other side, as a Security Manager in a bank who's sometimes asked to go find out if person XYZ has been accessing nakedhairyeyebrowedcheerleaders.com, I can see how this utility might make it impossible for me to do my job.
Poor you. My heart bleeds.
Exactly how does that affect security? He's a loser for doing it, but exactly how is it insecure? Or is it just a matter of Control instead of Security?
I'm a litte more anti-coporate that usual this morning, so forgive my coarseness.
Every time I read the name "Phillip Greenspun", I can't help but to think, for a brief second, that he should have the title of former Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
But that's just me.
I appreciate these guys' efforts, but I can't help but question the accuracy of the survey. They based the stats of those who voluntarily responded to an email survey, and just over a third responded.
What about the other two-thirds? What was the deliniating factor between those who did respond and those who didn't?
I'm betting those who didn't reply were the weenies who didn't want to admit (even to themselves) -- via the survey -- that they were, indeed, a weenie.
The only way to know for sure is to track down the randomly selected group and get 100% percent response.
That's my gut feeling about the SF response rate.
Have no clue about why the Linux list got such a miniscule response rate. I doubt any kernel hackers are weenies.
Unless -- and I'm wildly guessing -- most of list subscribers are really weenies who feel non-weenie-ish by being on the kernel list? How many people on that list contribute code? And how many are lurkers?
In your local markets, how many broadband providers do you have? Odds are, at most, two. Your cable provider, i.e. TimeWarner Cable (a locally sanctioned monopoly) offering cable net access and your telcom provider, i.e Sprint (yet another locally sanctioned monopoly) offering DSL access.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that with multi-billion corporations engaged some friendly pseudo-competition, and with the barriers to entry so high no other competition is forseeably possible, that they have no incentive to lower prices.
Costs going up? No problem, they don't need to innovate, or figure out ways to do things better, they can simply up their prices. TimeWarner and AT&T will trade users back and forth as they ratchet up prices in turn.
I predict broadband prices will continue to go up, until some technology (like wireless broadband) make the barriers to entry signifcantly less. Wireless will allow a competitor to enter the market by setting up a few towers, instead of laying hundreds of miles of wire.
I can hope, anyway.
Because by the time we can find another one that is, this one won't be.
Damn, dude. Can you be a little more fatalistic?
1) The survery is a self-selected group. Britney Spears nuts aren't going to visit planetary.org
2) NASA is not independently wealthy. The funding they get is ultimately reliant on public opinion, because they are the ones who pay for, and if they complain loud enough in these recessionary times, politicians will look for things to cut. By doing thing, they (hopefully) will be working on projects that *do* have public support, and therefore will be spared the ax.
But I do find it flawed. Better solutions would be:
1) Privatize NASA so they aren't dependent on public funds.
2) Do what we need to do to extricate ourselves from the Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space Treaty, which effectively outlaws any private interests in space.
I'm quite anti-corporate, and as a topic for another thread I could discuss reforms in corporate law and legal status, but I don't view them as inheritly evil.
That said, it's obvious that corporations are many times better at marshalling resources and getting things done than a government agency, given the motivation of shareholder return on investment.
Dear NASA,
Please find a cheap way to escape Earth's gravity well.
And just how many closed source distributions of FreeBSD are there? NetBSD? OpenBSD?
Why would Microsoft want to do distribute a closed source version of *BSD? I was refering to the BSD License, not the OS.
How many closed source distributions of kerberos are there? I know of one: Microsoft Kerberos. Like the lead of the article says, BSD license allows MS to "Embrace, Extend, [and] Extinguish" OSS initiatives.
I had the deluded notion that the GPL was all about making certain that those who contributed to Open Source didn't try to just steal from it outright and wanted to provide more protection than the BSD license. But, it is quite clear that the agenda is bigger than that. It is that there be no closed code at all. The viral nature of the GPL isn't there as a side effect of trying to protect Open Source. It is there to deliberately attempt to eliminate closed source.
Okay, Mr. Gates.
Closed closed source is fine.
If you want to spend your time and money developing code and never release the source, you have that right. That should not ever be prohibited.
But you can't take millions of lines of code that was developed, for free by volunteer developers, behind your walled garden and label that as 'closed'.
Under BSD, you can.
As a developer, if you write a program, and you don't want *your* code to be used by AOL or MSFT in their unending quest to crush their competition and meet their quarterly target -- with zero compenstation to you -- then you have the GPL to protect you against that.
This is a Good Thing.
Outside of MS/AOL/et al, I don't understand the resistance to GPL, especially among slashdotters.
BSD: I wrote this code for Microsoft, but you can use it too.
GPL: I wrote this code for you -- not microsoft.
that they don't leverage this to try to quash their competition, the most excellent Plucker
Keep dreaming. That's what software patents are for .
What we got from Linux users were not sales, but tons of email demanding that we put up the binary executeables on an ftp site for free so they could download them and use them with their Windows version of the game.
Hypothetical:
I bought a VHS copy of, say, the Mystery Men movie because it was my favorite movie in recent years.
I have a VCR and a DVD, but for some legal or licensing reason, the DVD release was delayed by six months.
I watch Mystery Men on VHS many many times over that six month period.
When the DVD is finally released, I realize that it is only the movie itself. No director's commentary, no deleted scenes -- just the movie.
Sure, it'd be nice to have Mystery Men on DVD, but I already *have* it on VHS, and the DVD offers no compelling reason to buy a second copy.
Why would I buy a second copy of the same movie for the same (or more) amount of money? The only difference is the format of the medium, but the benefits are only marginal, and questionally marginal at that if I only have a 19" TV with no surround sound.
To add another wrinkle: Licensing usually says you don' *own* your copy Mystery Men, or Tribes. You merely bought the right to view or play it. If I bought/own a license to view Mystery Men, why can't I exercise that use on both VHS and DVD without having the buy two separate licenses?
The analogy is not complete. But the argument remains...
The truth behind the story is that I bought MM on VHS way before I got a DVD. Eventually, I got a DVD, but could not bring myself to by another copy of MM in that format, even with all the extra added features. Luckily, I recieved it as a gift.
We're not cheap bastards, we just want real value for our money.