While some people would object to their viewing habits being tracked and used for directed advertising, I'm not so sure it's the inherent evil that a lot of people make it out to be.
Getting arbitrary FOX spam because you watch the Simpsons is bad, but it would be far less objectionable if it was something you actually *wanted*. While it may sound offensive when you look at it from the point of view that people will be trying to market products to you based upon information they have on your viewing habits, it's worth noting that the more they know about you, the less likely you are to get random advertisements for products you'd never think about buying.
Doing market research purely on TV viewing habits is of limited use, because the only thing you're demonstrating a willingness to pay for in this instance is the TV setup and the programming, assuming it's not broadcast. However, if this information could be correlated with actual buying data, they could actually direct useful marketing at you.
I can certainly understand not wanting strangers to have this kind of info about you, but it's worthwhile to consider the possible benefits of better marketing profiles. I'd like to see something more like Amazon's recommendation engine (which works very well once you've bought a lot of books from them) but perhaps generalized a bit more. -- Kevin Doherty kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
However, I don't think there are alot of women who would enjoy being called whores and sluts because they're better at a game than some random loser.
I don't see why it's much different than cries of "asshole", "dickhead", and various "insult" implications of homosexuality levied at any other player. If you're playing with immature losers, they're going to act immature. If you can't deal with it, go play elsewhere where there's a more acceptable environment. I and most other friends I know are perfectly capable of dealing with silly insults, and I really fail to see why anything less would be expected of women than men in this regard. If I were a woman, I'd be more insulted by the implication that I couldn't handle that kind of crap than the crap itself. -- Kevin Doherty kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
If you want a real negative review, tryhttp://www.mrcranky.com/movies/beach.html . Mr. Cranky makes everyone else's negative reviews look like glowing endorsements. -- Kevin Doherty kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
How many CD's are worth 16 dollars? I'd say maybe 10% of my collection qualifies. Do you realize CD prices haven't changed in about 10 years? Am I the only one who is bothered by this?
You want to make a statement? Don't buy the music and don't pirate it. By not buying the music the record companies lose money, and by not pirating you don't look like a wanker who just isn't willing to spend money for music.
Yeah, record companies suck. Yeah, CDs are overpriced. So you're not buying the albums, that's great, it's the right tact. I still haven't seen a compelling argument as to why piracy is therefore legitimate. If you're willing to pay 16$ to listen to a CD, then pay it and listen. If you aren't willing, then you don't deserve to listen to it. The argument of "I'm not willing to pay therefore I'll just take it" falls flat. -- Kevin Doherty kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
Let's face it, most geeks are interested in our machines and whatever directly affects that, not large viewpoints about all the massive changes to society which our behaviour is influencing.
This is mostly because Katz tends to be representative of those who do care about this stuff. Some of the people here might like the whole "geek community" thing and having it publicized ad nauseam, but some of us don't like being associated with a lot of the ideas and stereotypes put forth, especially when those ideas and stereotypes are put forth by one of those we don't like being associated with in the first place. I read slashdot, I hack code for a living, and probably fit at least a fair number of the stereotypes put forth, but this incessant rambling on social alienation and such like makes the "geek community" Katz purports to represent look like a bunch of whiners.
The movie "Hackers" is a good example of the general problem I'm trying to explain. I suppose there's some segment of the population that supported the idea of hackers as portrayed in the movie as being correct, but many who would otherwise describe themselves as a "hacker" ended up getting lumped into the idea of a punk kid whose goal it is to break into computers and generally use computer knowledge to subvert laws for personal gain (ignoring the rather trite "poor little hackers v. big mean ol' corporation" plot).
Is it so much to ask just to be considered another person, who happens to work with computers and enjoy it? I might have had a different adolescent experience than a lot of people and have different interests than others, but it gets aggravating to have the idea that childhood alienation defines my being shoved down my throat in every post by Jon Katz.
Social implications of the community may be very interesting, but I don't work in the tech industry and use computers to be involved in a social movement, I do it because I like computers. If I wanted a social movement, I'd join one, but this whole social agenda that's being increasingly associated with "geeks" and "hackers" is irritating, and misses the mark completely. -- Kevin Doherty kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
All he said was "improve the GUI installer". That is by no means constructive feedback. Constructive feedback actually gives information that can help improve the system. "improve the GUI installer" only says that the poster is dissatisfied with the installer, but nothing about what aspects of it are poor or suggested ways of improving. It's only a useful statement if the authors of the software know exactly what weaknesses the poster is referring to, in which case the comment is completely unnecessary.
If the flaws in the installer are obvious (which is implied, as no specific flaws are cited), then something as general as "improve the installer" is useless except as a simple vote. Good feedback tends to be appreciated, but that was not good feedback. -- Kevin Doherty kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
Except the advisory isn't talking about any actual bugs, it's talking about sites which take un-verified input and use it to produce HTML pages. It has nothing to do with browsers not being 100% rock solid. The browser can't tell the difference between JavaScript that's part of a comment on a messageboard and JavaScript that's in the header bits the server puts on.
That said, it's still a dumbass advisory;) -- Kevin Doherty kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
As someone who works for an ISP and hacks mail code for a living, I can say that your example of the DNS server is not completely a bad thing.
I can't count the number of times we've had stupid problems because other people run lameass SMTP daemons, which were likely all written from scratch. I guess it's irritating that companies would make money off one's code though I don't object to it much. But having a free (free enough to be closed) reference or standard implementation means that there's fewer morons out there writing their own bogus code to mess with my servers.
You can say that it's dishonest or unethical or whatever to just take bind or whatever, close it and add a little interface, but would you rather have 8 bind-alikes out there or 8 scratch written DNS servers with their own little bugs and idiosyncracies making everyone else's lives miserable?
Personally, I see that as a win for Open Source. The point is to make software better. If someone's good free code can prevent a moron from writing his own crappy closed code, software is better. While irksome in its cheapness, that behavior is far better than many alternatives. -- Kevin Doherty kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
There seem to be an awful lot of posts here along the lines of "blocking napster won't stop piracy, we can still use FTP", etc. The point here is not total elimination of piracy. Of course there's always going to be piracy, and don't think the RIAA doesn't know that. The situation they want to prevent at all costs is a majority of people actually pirating when they might otherwise buy music.
Yeah, you can put your mp3s up for ftp and such, but it's not going to be nearly as convenient as searching on napster. Napster provides a very simple and easy interface to piracy. People who might otherwise not spend their time searching though banner-ad laden warez sites and obscure sites with poor bandwidth for a few choice mp3s can now go out and grab most things they want with ease, and without having to pay for it. Napster is within the threshold of effort most people are willing to put forth to get free music. That's what the RIAA dreads. Not piracy, but rampant piracy used in place of legitimately paying for music.
College dorm students are a special case which is even more inclined towards this behavior, as they tend to have very little spending money in general, and access to large amounts of bandwidth through school. -- Kevin Doherty kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
I ripped all my CDs into mp3 format, and those are the only mp3s I have. In addition, I make a point of not distributing my mp3s for precisely this reason. I burn CD-R's with about 13 albums a piece, which means that I have a way to listen to many albums at work without having to lug upwards of 50 CDs around and switch CDs every hour.
That said, I still think napster is pretty vile. -- Kevin Doherty kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
This article is a prime example of one of the more aggravating effects of flaming. Katz is, in essence, picking on flamers, because they're easy targets, thus making him look better.
Too often people pick the most inane and profane responses to their content to reply to, thus creating the illusion of active response to their critics, while not actually providing good responses to their reasonable, intelligent critics. Jon might use words like "often" or "most", but he conveniently ignores those critics who just might actually have a good reason for not wanting him to post, or for disagreeing with him. Not in public, at least. I've written relatively courteous replies of dissent to Jon in the past and gotten back decent responses. But you wouldn't know it from the content of his articles. Katz points out that most flamers, when engaged in direct one-on-one confrontation will back down and be more polite, while in public being rude and profane. But how does this differ from the practice of only publicly responding to flame mail?
Jon Katz is hardly the only person to practice this and hardly the worst offender, but this kind of writing gets old quickly. Yeah, you get flames, so does everyone else who posts in a public forum. And yet, somehow, most people seem quite capable of dealing with this without producing article upon article of self-centered garbage.
The funny thing is that the "common knowledge" seems to state that flamers are crying for attention, and if you ignore them, they'll stop or go elsewhere. Yet Jon Katz goes so far as not only to respond, but to write a 3-piece article about it. For someone whose gimmick appears to be having his finger on the pulse of the Net, so to speak, it's pretty amazing how unaware of common netiquette Jon Katz appears to be. -- Kevin Doherty kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
But no, it seems that some folks on here would rather get rid of Katz completely, and deny him any right to post on Slashdot.
Let's be very clear on this, no one here has a "right to post". Any privileges are solely granted by the administrators of the site, and can be taken away at any time for any reason.
You want a reason why Katz should be removed? Sure, the regular readers of Slashdot can avoid reading him, but when people first come to the site, they see Katz along with everyone else, and it contributes to their opinion of the site. For a simple news site, Slashdot is one of the most visible and well-known facades of the Open Source/Geek/Unix/Whatever community. As such, its content is often associated with that community, if unfairly. Witness the articles on other "reputable" sites that, when doing an article on Slashdot, or mentioning it, almost always pick the most inane AC posts to quote from. Without Katz, there's less content to reflect poorly on the community.
Now, I personally don't necessarily advocate Katz being barred from Slashdot (I more advocate him censoring himself;), but I'm getting more than a little tired of this opinion being stated over and over. There IS a difference between kicking Katz off and simply not reading his posts, and it IS significant. -- Kevin Doherty kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
It has nothing to do with Linux in any way just about people who don't want to use MSN as their ISP or have to stay with them for a period of 3 years.
Er, maybe it's just me, but I think their solution would be more along the lines of "Don't take the deal in the first place".
The real conundrum here is why the moronic post I'm replying to was actually moderated up. The "point" made is bogus, and worth being moderated down. -- Kevin Doherty kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
a GPL or BSD-style license for Qt wouldn't have these issues, but at the same time, a BSD-style (or X) license on lib-apt would have made this a non-issue as well. RMS can call the GPL truly free all he wants, but the fact is that with another license on the other software, this wouldn't be an issue. -- Kevin Doherty kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
From the first paragraph: "It's a great movie, but is it worth the cover of both 'Time' and 'Newsweek?'"
From the fourth paragraph: "The 'Blair Witch Project' is a lot of fun. And it's truly original. But it's not a great movie, nor even a particularly frightening one."
Okay, so is it a great movie or isn't it? This is pretty blatant self-contradiction. I think Katz needs a proofreader or something.
From http://pobox.com/~djb/qmail/dist.html "If you want to distribute modified versions of qmail (including ports, no matter how minor the changes are) you'll have to get my approval."
Please reply in email if you feel the need, I'd rather not start a flamewar here:) -- Kevin Doherty kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
This has no bearing on the ability of the free software community to develop large applications. If Mozilla had been free from the start, it would be in much better shape, most likely. As it is, Mozilla was a closed application that had been developed in-house for years, and probably not always with the intention of releasing the source. Postfix would be a more reasonable example (though the MTA world is decidedly simpler than the web browser world and it's not an end user app). -- Kevin Doherty kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
> The sooner someone comes up with a modern, easily configurable alternative the better.
A few points: 1) sendmail is the only solution in many cases. The incredible power of sendmail's configuration is unmatched by any other MTA. 2) As cryptic as it is, and as much maligned as it is, sendmail cf is actually amazingly simple. I learned it in the course of a day easily. The learning curve is steep, to be sure, but it's short. Once you understand a few simple concepts, it's a snap, and allows you to do just about anything. Most people I've heard complaining about sendmail configuration recently never took the time to actually learn it. -- Kevin Doherty kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
A few notes on selling out: 1) Usually, selling out involves blatantly reversing one's previously stated position. 2) Selling out (if we must use that term) always includes not only a change in one's public persona, but altering one's art to fit someone else's ideas.
Now, let's take Lucas. I see nowhere in Katz's article where he cites Lucas explicitly stating that he will not do promotions with fastfood places, etc. This is all based on incredibly vague implications as seen by Katz about the "myth" of Star Wars, and the assertion that somehow these things that have nothing to do with the movie itself degrade the quality of the art.
Of course, none of this can be backed up by pointing out examples in the actual movie, as we haven't seen it yet. But Jon Katz still feels the need to make blatantly ignorant statements on the subject and defile a man whose work in the past has been impeccable. I'll admit that I tend to find Jon Katz's writings rather puerile and generally foolish, this kind of attack on someone's character shocks even me. -- Kevin Doherty kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
Yeah, DejaNews and just about every other mail server on the planet does this. How is this news? Logging source address/ip and dest address is common practice and pretty requisite for running a mail server. -- Kevin Doherty kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
I think the more important story here is that AMD is much more friendly to overclocking than Intel is. As I recall, Intel won't let Kryotech sell systems with overclocked Intel chips. It's nice to see AMD being more friendly to the overclocking community. Now what I'd REALLY like to see is something along the lines of "This chip is verified to run at speed X MHz at temperature A and at speed Y MHz at temperature B...", etc. -- Kevin Doherty kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
One take I've seen on this is that with Corel (and arguably with Debian in general), Qt can be considered "system software", and therefore GPL kosher. With Debian in general it's a little questionable, but depending on how Corel does their distro, I could see it considered as such. -- Kevin Doherty kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
Slashdot Mirror
While some people would object to their viewing habits being tracked and used for directed advertising, I'm not so sure it's the inherent evil that a lot of people make it out to be.
Getting arbitrary FOX spam because you watch the Simpsons is bad, but it would be far less objectionable if it was something you actually *wanted*. While it may sound offensive when you look at it from the point of view that people will be trying to market products to you based upon information they have on your viewing habits, it's worth noting that the more they know about you, the less likely you are to get random advertisements for products you'd never think about buying.
Doing market research purely on TV viewing habits is of limited use, because the only thing you're demonstrating a willingness to pay for in this instance is the TV setup and the programming, assuming it's not broadcast. However, if this information could be correlated with actual buying data, they could actually direct useful marketing at you.
I can certainly understand not wanting strangers to have this kind of info about you, but it's worthwhile to consider the possible benefits of better marketing profiles. I'd like to see something more like Amazon's recommendation engine (which works very well once you've bought a lot of books from them) but perhaps generalized a bit more.
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
However, I don't think there are alot of women who would enjoy being called whores and sluts because they're better at a game than some random loser.
I don't see why it's much different than cries of "asshole", "dickhead", and various "insult" implications of homosexuality levied at any other player. If you're playing with immature losers, they're going to act immature. If you can't deal with it, go play elsewhere where there's a more acceptable environment. I and most other friends I know are perfectly capable of dealing with silly insults, and I really fail to see why anything less would be expected of women than men in this regard. If I were a woman, I'd be more insulted by the implication that I couldn't handle that kind of crap than the crap itself.
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
If you want a real negative review, tryhttp://www.mrcranky.com/movies/beach.html . Mr. Cranky makes everyone else's negative reviews look like glowing endorsements.
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
How many CD's are worth 16 dollars? I'd say maybe 10% of my collection qualifies. Do you realize CD prices haven't changed in about 10 years? Am I the only one who is bothered by this?
You want to make a statement? Don't buy the music and don't pirate it. By not buying the music the record companies lose money, and by not pirating you don't look like a wanker who just isn't willing to spend money for music.
Yeah, record companies suck. Yeah, CDs are overpriced. So you're not buying the albums, that's great, it's the right tact. I still haven't seen a compelling argument as to why piracy is therefore legitimate. If you're willing to pay 16$ to listen to a CD, then pay it and listen. If you aren't willing, then you don't deserve to listen to it. The argument of "I'm not willing to pay therefore I'll just take it" falls flat.
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
Interesting post, but I'm not sure I see Larry Wall as Val Venis and Guido van Rossum as Kurt Angle (Guido is certainly no match for MY Olympic Hero!)
:)
I guess CRZ is on one more website now though
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
Let's face it, most geeks are interested in our machines and whatever directly affects that, not large viewpoints about all the massive changes to society which our behaviour is influencing.
This is mostly because Katz tends to be representative of those who do care about this stuff. Some of the people here might like the whole "geek community" thing and having it publicized ad nauseam, but some of us don't like being associated with a lot of the ideas and stereotypes put forth, especially when those ideas and stereotypes are put forth by one of those we don't like being associated with in the first place. I read slashdot, I hack code for a living, and probably fit at least a fair number of the stereotypes put forth, but this incessant rambling on social alienation and such like makes the "geek community" Katz purports to represent look like a bunch of whiners.
The movie "Hackers" is a good example of the general problem I'm trying to explain. I suppose there's some segment of the population that supported the idea of hackers as portrayed in the movie as being correct, but many who would otherwise describe themselves as a "hacker" ended up getting lumped into the idea of a punk kid whose goal it is to break into computers and generally use computer knowledge to subvert laws for personal gain (ignoring the rather trite "poor little hackers v. big mean ol' corporation" plot).
Is it so much to ask just to be considered another person, who happens to work with computers and enjoy it? I might have had a different adolescent experience than a lot of people and have different interests than others, but it gets aggravating to have the idea that childhood alienation defines my being shoved down my throat in every post by Jon Katz.
Social implications of the community may be very interesting, but I don't work in the tech industry and use computers to be involved in a social movement, I do it because I like computers. If I wanted a social movement, I'd join one, but this whole social agenda that's being increasingly associated with "geeks" and "hackers" is irritating, and misses the mark completely.
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
All he said was "improve the GUI installer". That is by no means constructive feedback. Constructive feedback actually gives information that can help improve the system. "improve the GUI installer" only says that the poster is dissatisfied with the installer, but nothing about what aspects of it are poor or suggested ways of improving. It's only a useful statement if the authors of the software know exactly what weaknesses the poster is referring to, in which case the comment is completely unnecessary.
If the flaws in the installer are obvious (which is implied, as no specific flaws are cited), then something as general as "improve the installer" is useless except as a simple vote. Good feedback tends to be appreciated, but that was not good feedback.
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
Except the advisory isn't talking about any actual bugs, it's talking about sites which take un-verified input and use it to produce HTML pages. It has nothing to do with browsers not being 100% rock solid. The browser can't tell the difference between JavaScript that's part of a comment on a messageboard and JavaScript that's in the header bits the server puts on.
;)
That said, it's still a dumbass advisory
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
As someone who works for an ISP and hacks mail code for a living, I can say that your example of the DNS server is not completely a bad thing.
I can't count the number of times we've had stupid problems because other people run lameass SMTP daemons, which were likely all written from scratch. I guess it's irritating that companies would make money off one's code though I don't object to it much. But having a free (free enough to be closed) reference or standard implementation means that there's fewer morons out there writing their own bogus code to mess with my servers.
You can say that it's dishonest or unethical or whatever to just take bind or whatever, close it and add a little interface, but would you rather have 8 bind-alikes out there or 8 scratch written DNS servers with their own little bugs and idiosyncracies making everyone else's lives miserable?
Personally, I see that as a win for Open Source. The point is to make software better. If someone's good free code can prevent a moron from writing his own crappy closed code, software is better. While irksome in its cheapness, that behavior is far better than many alternatives.
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
There seem to be an awful lot of posts here along the lines of "blocking napster won't stop piracy, we can still use FTP", etc. The point here is not total elimination of piracy. Of course there's always going to be piracy, and don't think the RIAA doesn't know that. The situation they want to prevent at all costs is a majority of people actually pirating when they might otherwise buy music.
Yeah, you can put your mp3s up for ftp and such, but it's not going to be nearly as convenient as searching on napster. Napster provides a very simple and easy interface to piracy. People who might otherwise not spend their time searching though banner-ad laden warez sites and obscure sites with poor bandwidth for a few choice mp3s can now go out and grab most things they want with ease, and without having to pay for it. Napster is within the threshold of effort most people are willing to put forth to get free music. That's what the RIAA dreads. Not piracy, but rampant piracy used in place of legitimately paying for music.
College dorm students are a special case which is even more inclined towards this behavior, as they tend to have very little spending money in general, and access to large amounts of bandwidth through school.
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
I ripped all my CDs into mp3 format, and those are the only mp3s I have. In addition, I make a point of not distributing my mp3s for precisely this reason. I burn CD-R's with about 13 albums a piece, which means that I have a way to listen to many albums at work without having to lug upwards of 50 CDs around and switch CDs every hour.
That said, I still think napster is pretty vile.
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
This article is a prime example of one of the more aggravating effects of flaming. Katz is, in essence, picking on flamers, because they're easy targets, thus making him look better.
Too often people pick the most inane and profane responses to their content to reply to, thus creating the illusion of active response to their critics, while not actually providing good responses to their reasonable, intelligent critics. Jon might use words like "often" or "most", but he conveniently ignores those critics who just might actually have a good reason for not wanting him to post, or for disagreeing with him. Not in public, at least. I've written relatively courteous replies of dissent to Jon in the past and gotten back decent responses. But you wouldn't know it from the content of his articles. Katz points out that most flamers, when engaged in direct one-on-one confrontation will back down and be more polite, while in public being rude and profane. But how does this differ from the practice of only publicly responding to flame mail?
Jon Katz is hardly the only person to practice this and hardly the worst offender, but this kind of writing gets old quickly. Yeah, you get flames, so does everyone else who posts in a public forum. And yet, somehow, most people seem quite capable of dealing with this without producing article upon article of self-centered garbage.
The funny thing is that the "common knowledge" seems to state that flamers are crying for attention, and if you ignore them, they'll stop or go elsewhere. Yet Jon Katz goes so far as not only to respond, but to write a 3-piece article about it. For someone whose gimmick appears to be having his finger on the pulse of the Net, so to speak, it's pretty amazing how unaware of common netiquette Jon Katz appears to be.
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
But no, it seems that some folks on here would rather get rid of Katz completely, and deny him any right to post on Slashdot.
;), but I'm getting more than a little tired of this opinion being stated over and over. There IS a difference between kicking Katz off and simply not reading his posts, and it IS significant.
Let's be very clear on this, no one here has a "right to post". Any privileges are solely granted by the administrators of the site, and can be taken away at any time for any reason.
You want a reason why Katz should be removed? Sure, the regular readers of Slashdot can avoid reading him, but when people first come to the site, they see Katz along with everyone else, and it contributes to their opinion of the site. For a simple news site, Slashdot is one of the most visible and well-known facades of the Open Source/Geek/Unix/Whatever community. As such, its content is often associated with that community, if unfairly. Witness the articles on other "reputable" sites that, when doing an article on Slashdot, or mentioning it, almost always pick the most inane AC posts to quote from. Without Katz, there's less content to reflect poorly on the community.
Now, I personally don't necessarily advocate Katz being barred from Slashdot (I more advocate him censoring himself
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
It has nothing to do with Linux in any way just about people who don't want to use MSN as their ISP or have to stay with them for a period of 3 years.
Er, maybe it's just me, but I think their solution would be more along the lines of "Don't take the deal in the first place".
The real conundrum here is why the moronic post I'm replying to was actually moderated up. The "point" made is bogus, and worth being moderated down.
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
a GPL or BSD-style license for Qt wouldn't have these issues, but at the same time, a BSD-style (or X) license on lib-apt would have made this a non-issue as well. RMS can call the GPL truly free all he wants, but the fact is that with another license on the other software, this wouldn't be an issue.
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
If it prevented companies from selling your code and claiming that theirs is better, I don't see why it would be staggeringly stupid.
I don't want to prevent this. I want my code to
be free. Hence, I would use the BSD/X license.
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
From the first paragraph: "It's a great movie, but is it worth the cover of both 'Time' and 'Newsweek?'"
From the fourth paragraph: "The 'Blair Witch Project' is a lot of fun. And it's truly original. But it's not a great movie, nor even a particularly frightening one."
Okay, so is it a great movie or isn't it? This is pretty blatant self-contradiction. I think Katz needs a proofreader or something.
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
qmail is actually not Open Source.
:)
From http://pobox.com/~djb/qmail/dist.html
"If you want to distribute modified versions of
qmail (including ports, no matter how minor the
changes are) you'll have to get my approval."
Please reply in email if you feel the need, I'd
rather not start a flamewar here
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
This has no bearing on the ability of the free
software community to develop large applications.
If Mozilla had been free from the start, it would
be in much better shape, most likely. As it is,
Mozilla was a closed application that had been
developed in-house for years, and probably not
always with the intention of releasing the source.
Postfix would be a more reasonable example (though
the MTA world is decidedly simpler than the
web browser world and it's not an end user app).
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
> Maybe next I can get advertisments on my car's odometer and possibly on toilet paper!!
... oh.. damn."
But what if MS starts advertising on toilet paper? "I wouldn't wipe my ASS with
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
> The sooner someone comes up with a modern, easily configurable alternative the better.
A few points:
1) sendmail is the only solution in many cases. The incredible power of sendmail's configuration is unmatched by any other MTA.
2) As cryptic as it is, and as much maligned as it is, sendmail cf is actually amazingly simple. I learned it in the course of a day easily. The learning curve is steep, to be sure, but it's short. Once you understand a few simple concepts, it's a snap, and allows you to do just about anything. Most people I've heard complaining about sendmail configuration recently never took the time to actually learn it.
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
A few notes on selling out:
1) Usually, selling out involves blatantly
reversing one's previously stated position.
2) Selling out (if we must use that term) always
includes not only a change in one's public persona,
but altering one's art to fit someone else's
ideas.
Now, let's take Lucas. I see nowhere in Katz's
article where he cites Lucas explicitly stating
that he will not do promotions with fastfood
places, etc. This is all based on incredibly vague
implications as seen by Katz about the "myth" of
Star Wars, and the assertion that somehow these
things that have nothing to do with the movie
itself degrade the quality of the art.
Of course, none of this can be backed up by
pointing out examples in the actual movie, as
we haven't seen it yet. But Jon Katz still feels
the need to make blatantly ignorant statements
on the subject and defile a man whose work in the
past has been impeccable. I'll admit that I tend
to find Jon Katz's writings rather puerile and
generally foolish, this kind of attack on someone's
character shocks even me.
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
Yeah, DejaNews and just about every other mail
server on the planet does this. How is this news?
Logging source address/ip and dest address is
common practice and pretty requisite for running
a mail server.
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
I think the more important story here is that AMD
is much more friendly to overclocking than Intel
is. As I recall, Intel won't let Kryotech sell
systems with overclocked Intel chips. It's nice
to see AMD being more friendly to the overclocking
community. Now what I'd REALLY like to see is
something along the lines of "This chip is
verified to run at speed X MHz at temperature A
and at speed Y MHz at temperature B...", etc.
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
One take I've seen on this is that with Corel (and arguably with Debian in general), Qt can be considered "system software", and therefore GPL kosher. With Debian in general it's a little questionable, but depending on how Corel does their distro, I could see it considered as such.
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net