"Under the GPL, people cannot use data however they want but must share it with others."
False. The GPL requires you to share source code if and only if you've also shared binary files.
And the REASON for this is to make sure that the NEXT person has as much freedom as you do. But, again, if there were no other copyright/licensing restrictions on the "next person" I wouldn't have to give them the source code.
The GPL makes use of the system in order to undermine it. The BSD tries to avoid the system but gets easily trapped by it. --
"The purpose of the GPL is to protect property and limit it's use."
No. The philosophy behind the GPL is that people should be allowed to use their data however they want (including sharing with others). The implementation of this philosophy (the GPL) uses the existing IP laws to make this so. If there were no IP laws, the philosophy would be automatic and the GPL superfluous. --
You see, the purpose of the GPL is to help bring about the happy day when IP laws no longer restrict us. So if there were a network that let us "route around" copyright/licensing laws the GPL would no longer be needed.
The difference between the GPL and the RIAA is that the GPL is using the system against itself. --
Don't fork the OS for each web request--fork one for each customer. Think about it--you buy ONE mainframe and ONE copy of Linux. You can 41,000 customers each with their own "machine". They can do whatever they want with it, including configuring the security themselves. It doesn't matter if they do it wrong, the other 40,999 customers aren't affected (with the possible exception of bandwidth). --
I don't think the excitement is over some unnamed thing that bacteria can do that silicon can't. I think the excitement is about the manufacturing. Look how hard it is to create chips--ultra-clean conditions, etc. Whereas with bacteria, just build a mold (ha ha), swab some sugar on it, dip it into a tank full of bacteria and viola! You have a biochip!
Of course, I'm exaggerating. But still, what's easier: growing a chip or building one? --
I get this feeling quite often, but it generally doesn't last longer than a day. That's because I recognize the issue and have learned to deal with it.
I generally get this feeling when faced with a bug report (that's not the only time, but it serves as an example). The other day I had one where all my command-line commands were pausing for up to 3 seconds before doing anything. Well, those commands had to pass through a couple different daemons, do some file access, yada yada yada. Where's the problem? Just thinking about it made me feel dejected.
So I put off trying to find a solution by spending some time playing with it. Will THIS command pause? Yes. How about THIS one? Yes. What if I do a bunch in rapid succession? Sometimes. Etc.
Eventually I latched onto one definitive case as easy to perform and reliable in behavior. Then I thought to myself "I wonder if it's just taking extra long to start the program". Load it into GDB--same problem, but it isn't in main(). Great, that means it's in one of the daemons. Load the first one into GDB and break in the socket accept routine. Nope, not in there.
By this time I was on a roll and past the block. How? Because I stopped thinking about the "big picture" and Just Did The Next Thing. The longest journey begins with etc. It's just like they tell you in writing or art classes: The mechanics of pretending to work will lead you inexorably to real work.
In your particular case, I would do this: 1) Make a backup 2) Find some little corner of what you want to create and just start it. Don't worry about error codes or UI issues or anything. Just start typing something. Even a comment. 3) Do everything else. --
"It does not matter if your intent in messing with the insides of an insfrastructure you do not own is to break it or not."
This is EXACTLY the problem I'm talking about. You've got "hacker" and "cracker" so mixed up in your mind, you thinking "hacking" requires a network connection. Get this through your head: Hacking per se has nothing to do with gaining access to a remote system. Hacking is about understanding how things work and making them do other things. Cracking is about entering places you are not allowed to be (and possibly doing damage while there). Note that the only connection between these two things is that they rhyme.
Unfortunately, the general public is being led to believe the follow series of steps:
1) People who break into computer systems are called "hackers". 2) Therefore, hackers are bad. 3) The people who figured out how their DVD players worked called themselves "hackers". 4) Therefore, figuring out how your DVD player works is bad. --
What do you mean "distributed operating system"? The purpose of an operating system is to be an abstraction between the hardware and software. Being distributed doesn't help this.
I can think of two possible interpretations.
Network management You want to check diskspace on ALL your fileservers or create a user that can log in from anywhere or something else network-wide. There are products that handle all this stuff, although it's arguable whether a "distributed operating system" could do it better.
Seamless multi-processing You want to submit jobs to "the system" so that unrelated jobs can go fast and related jobs can go fast AND communicate easily. That's a worthy goal, but isn't a "distributed operating system" overkill? Wouldn't a job control system work just as well? Or even, if you don't mind spending the money, an SMP machine?
I suspect none of this is what the poster had in mind. Probably s/he (or Cliff) is just playing buzzword bingo with us. Watch for upcoming Ask/. articles: "Where Are The Multimedia Personal Digital Portals"? "What's The Best Java To XML Empowerment Paradigm?" --
"Don't try to enforce technical definitions on people who have no need for them...
This right here is the entire key. CNN is in desperate need to understand the difference between "hacker" and "cracker". So is Congress and the general public. The importance of network security is at an all-time high and is rising every day. Rights are being eroded away because there are people who don't understand that "messing with the insides" doesn't mean "trying to break it". Affording them a means to think about that difference (making them understand "hacker" vs "cracker") benefits us (immediately) AND them (eventually). --
"To them there is no objective difference between hackers and crackers."
True.
"And there never will be. The differece is only useful to "technical types"."
False.
What if I went to my son and said "Look this *holding up a Ruffle* is a chip--but this *holding up a bran flake* is cereal". After several repetitions he would start using the words although he still wouldn't understand the difference. But there is an immediate gain: *I* know what he means when he asks for "chips". He means chips. If he wanted raisin bran he'd ask for "cereal". Eventually there will be another gain--he'll understand the difference. This will give him power of thought/expression previously unavailable to him. He will know that Special K is cereal while Fritos are chips without having to be told.
The same for the media. Just because they don't currently differentiate between hackers and crackers doesn't mean they wouldn't benefit from doing so. Imagine if we didn't have the distinction between "inventor" and "mad scientist". Edison and Frankenstein would have been lumped together in the "tech news" section of the newspaper with the confused readers not knowing that "lightbulbs are good, rampaging monsters are bad".
Yes, language evolves. But language evolution is only useful when it conserves (or extends) granularity of meaning. We can drop the difference between the terms "rock-to-hit-enemy-on-head-with" and "rock-to-sharpen-with" because we don't need those meanings. We can't drop the difference between "hacker" and "cracker" just when network security is becoming a life and death matter. --
The only thing that was displeasing about the Sun mouse was that you HAD to use their mousepad. Otherwise it totally rocked! Always perfectly smooth movement, no gumming up the works. --
My 18 month-old knows the word "chip", but doesn't realize that flaked cereals aren't chips. So shen he wants some raisin bran, he asks for "chips". What if we all started saying "chip" when we meant either chips OR flaked cereals? We would lose a useful shade of meaning. Point: Words are not just labels, they are differentiators.
There is an objective difference between hackers and crackers. Calling both by the same name destroys the ability to talk about them easily. This ability is not much prized (or even noticed) by the general public (including the mainstream media), but it IS useful to technical types. That's why I, as a technical type, resist this change. --
"Because this allows developers to make Mozilla on at least 3 platforms simaltaneously..."
In other words, a feature. WWLD? (What Would Linux Do?) Concentrate on one platform (either OS or hardware). Don't do anything platform specific to lock the other out, but don't make everyone wait for the slowest member.
"Mozilla needs to have editing capabilities for 1) mail composition, and 2) filling out web-based forms."
You don't need HTML editing to fill out a webform. And I think we can ALL agree that HTML mail is a bug, not a feature. In any case the answer to "why do we need unnecessary feature A (HTML editing)" is not "because it supports unnecessary feature B (integrated mail)"
"[Feature X] was developed by an independent programmer." (argument used for several features)
So why are these features being folded into the mainline Mozilla code? Let them be modules or something distributed separately. Let them be upgrades that you can download as suggested by another poster. Anything to prevent them from being put into Bugzilla and the Mozilla regression testing. I don't want my browser's release pushed back for 6 months because some dimwit wants to click on Grammy's name and send "Happy Birthday" in FONT+6.
I'm not saying "abandon the features", I'm saying "release the features incrementally". Get a browser out NOW. Get a mail client out TOMORROW. Get an HTML editor out NEXT WEEK. Etc. --
I bet RH really really wanted to put XF86 4.0 and kernel 2.4 into 7.0. Can you imagine the problems if the kernel release schedule was dictated by RH (or any company)? They would be shipping 2.4.0-test3 (or whatever test we are at now)--with all the problems that implies. Long Live Open Source! --
First, Mozilla is not dead. Mozilla cannot die. As long as someone has a copy of the source code, Mozilla is, at worst, "mostly dead" (a la The Princess Bride).
However, to the extent that the goal of the current Mozilla project (funded by Netscape) was to defeat IE, it is failing. This is because the people running the show are apparently living on another planet.
What a BUSINESS would do: Optimize for income. Cut the feature creep, fix the bugs, ship, start on the next version.
What an Open Souce project would do: Optimize for usability. Cut the feature creep, fix the bugs, ship, start on the next version.
What Mozilla is doing: Optimize for number of features. Accelerate the feature creep, fix the bugs, don't ship.
Don't get me wrong: I have not been a Mozilla nay-sayer in the past. But this has GOT TO STOP. I've used the last 4 milestones, and they were all "pretty good". Always "not quite as good" as Netscape. Sweet Creeping Zombie Jesus, those 4 milestones cover a span of 5 months. What are they DOING over there?? --
Does anyone know where we got the term "beta" for "nearly (but still un-) finished software"? It just seems to me that "Beta 3" is a little bit of an odd phrase. Why not "alpha", "beta", "gamma", "delta"? --
My ride to work is nearly a straight shot on a four lane (not including two-way left-hand turn lane). There are many lights (probably 10-15 lights, during the 20 minute drive). Due (apparently) to some zoning oddity the speed limit is artificially low: 40 MPH most of the way, 35 in some spots. The road could easily handle 50-60.
A few years ago, a lot of money was spent "synchronizing" the traffic lights due to complaints from drivers. Some say it didn't work, but I have found that during times of high use (i.e. during my commutes) they ARE synchronized--if you drive 50-55. That's right, if you drive 10-15 MPH OVER the speed limit you can sail through every light while it's green (assuming no one is in your way).
So my conclusion: Sane traffic management is not what is being optimized. My question is: Why would it be? Sure, driver's want quick rides. But shop owners would like people to drive slowly (if not stop) to read their signs. City Hall likes people to speed because it brings in revenue. Etc. There are many different factors to optimize for, don't be surprise that YOUR goal isn't met as well as you'd like. --
Admittedly I AM using 4.2.something. I also forgot to mention that the hardware is really loud too--can't blame AIX for that, but I CAN blame IBM. -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
At work I use Linux, Tru64 and AIX. Of the three, AIX is, by FAR, the least sane. You can't boot from anything but harddrive or TAPE, the NIS stuff is hosed and many of the supposedly POSIX functions are screwed up. -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
*wipe tears from eyes* AAAAaaanyway, you'll still have a blame game problem. When you call up with an OS problem (and you will) the tech support guy will say "that sounds like a DB problem, here's the number". It's not going to matter that it's nominally the same vendor--from IBM's point of view it's a different business unit. -- Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
Slashdot Mirror
You are confusing "medium" with "message". The FSF has a task to perform--freedom. The GPL is the tool, not the task.
--
"Under the GPL, people cannot use data however they want but must share it with others."
False. The GPL requires you to share source code if and only if you've also shared binary files.
And the REASON for this is to make sure that the NEXT person has as much freedom as you do. But, again, if there were no other copyright/licensing restrictions on the "next person" I wouldn't have to give them the source code.
The GPL makes use of the system in order to undermine it. The BSD tries to avoid the system but gets easily trapped by it.
--
"The purpose of the GPL is to protect property and limit it's use."
No. The philosophy behind the GPL is that people should be allowed to use their data however they want (including sharing with others). The implementation of this philosophy (the GPL) uses the existing IP laws to make this so. If there were no IP laws, the philosophy would be automatic and the GPL superfluous.
--
You see, the purpose of the GPL is to help bring about the happy day when IP laws no longer restrict us. So if there were a network that let us "route around" copyright/licensing laws the GPL would no longer be needed.
The difference between the GPL and the RIAA is that the GPL is using the system against itself.
--
If there is a legal way to do what Napster is doing, why isn't Napster doing it?
--
"I thought that the PC vs. mainframe debate was settled years ago, and the PC won."
Yep, it was--on the desktop. People with serious reliablity and performance needs (like banks and gov't agencies) still use mainframes.
--
Don't fork the OS for each web request--fork one for each customer. Think about it--you buy ONE mainframe and ONE copy of Linux. You can 41,000 customers each with their own "machine". They can do whatever they want with it, including configuring the security themselves. It doesn't matter if they do it wrong, the other 40,999 customers aren't affected (with the possible exception of bandwidth).
--
I don't think the excitement is over some unnamed thing that bacteria can do that silicon can't. I think the excitement is about the manufacturing. Look how hard it is to create chips--ultra-clean conditions, etc. Whereas with bacteria, just build a mold (ha ha), swab some sugar on it, dip it into a tank full of bacteria and viola! You have a biochip!
Of course, I'm exaggerating. But still, what's easier: growing a chip or building one?
--
I get this feeling quite often, but it generally doesn't last longer than a day. That's because I recognize the issue and have learned to deal with it.
I generally get this feeling when faced with a bug report (that's not the only time, but it serves as an example). The other day I had one where all my command-line commands were pausing for up to 3 seconds before doing anything. Well, those commands had to pass through a couple different daemons, do some file access, yada yada yada. Where's the problem? Just thinking about it made me feel dejected.
So I put off trying to find a solution by spending some time playing with it. Will THIS command pause? Yes. How about THIS one? Yes. What if I do a bunch in rapid succession? Sometimes. Etc.
Eventually I latched onto one definitive case as easy to perform and reliable in behavior. Then I thought to myself "I wonder if it's just taking extra long to start the program". Load it into GDB--same problem, but it isn't in main(). Great, that means it's in one of the daemons. Load the first one into GDB and break in the socket accept routine. Nope, not in there.
By this time I was on a roll and past the block. How? Because I stopped thinking about the "big picture" and Just Did The Next Thing. The longest journey begins with etc. It's just like they tell you in writing or art classes: The mechanics of pretending to work will lead you inexorably to real work.
In your particular case, I would do this:
1) Make a backup
2) Find some little corner of what you want to create and just start it. Don't worry about error codes or UI issues or anything. Just start typing something. Even a comment.
3) Do everything else.
--
"It does not matter if your intent in messing with the insides of an insfrastructure you do not own is to break it or not."
This is EXACTLY the problem I'm talking about. You've got "hacker" and "cracker" so mixed up in your mind, you thinking "hacking" requires a network connection. Get this through your head: Hacking per se has nothing to do with gaining access to a remote system. Hacking is about understanding how things work and making them do other things. Cracking is about entering places you are not allowed to be (and possibly doing damage while there). Note that the only connection between these two things is that they rhyme.
Unfortunately, the general public is being led to believe the follow series of steps:
1) People who break into computer systems are called "hackers".
2) Therefore, hackers are bad.
3) The people who figured out how their DVD players worked called themselves "hackers".
4) Therefore, figuring out how your DVD player works is bad.
--
What do you mean "distributed operating system"? The purpose of an operating system is to be an abstraction between the hardware and software. Being distributed doesn't help this.
/. articles: "Where Are The Multimedia Personal Digital Portals"? "What's The Best Java To XML Empowerment Paradigm?"
I can think of two possible interpretations.
Network management You want to check diskspace on ALL your fileservers or create a user that can log in from anywhere or something else network-wide. There are products that handle all this stuff, although it's arguable whether a "distributed operating system" could do it better.
Seamless multi-processing You want to submit jobs to "the system" so that unrelated jobs can go fast and related jobs can go fast AND communicate easily. That's a worthy goal, but isn't a "distributed operating system" overkill? Wouldn't a job control system work just as well? Or even, if you don't mind spending the money, an SMP machine?
I suspect none of this is what the poster had in mind. Probably s/he (or Cliff) is just playing buzzword bingo with us. Watch for upcoming Ask
--
Rob: on behalf of anyone who has every said Slashdot was ugly, I apologize profusely.
Everyone else: I suggest you visit macslash to see what happens when good code goes bad.
--
"Don't try to enforce technical definitions on people who have no need for them...
This right here is the entire key. CNN is in desperate need to understand the difference between "hacker" and "cracker". So is Congress and the general public. The importance of network security is at an all-time high and is rising every day. Rights are being eroded away because there are people who don't understand that "messing with the insides" doesn't mean "trying to break it". Affording them a means to think about that difference (making them understand "hacker" vs "cracker") benefits us (immediately) AND them (eventually).
--
"To them there is no objective difference between hackers and crackers."
True.
"And there never will be. The differece is only useful to "technical types"."
False.
What if I went to my son and said "Look this *holding up a Ruffle* is a chip--but this *holding up a bran flake* is cereal". After several repetitions he would start using the words although he still wouldn't understand the difference. But there is an immediate gain: *I* know what he means when he asks for "chips". He means chips. If he wanted raisin bran he'd ask for "cereal". Eventually there will be another gain--he'll understand the difference. This will give him power of thought/expression previously unavailable to him. He will know that Special K is cereal while Fritos are chips without having to be told.
The same for the media. Just because they don't currently differentiate between hackers and crackers doesn't mean they wouldn't benefit from doing so. Imagine if we didn't have the distinction between "inventor" and "mad scientist". Edison and Frankenstein would have been lumped together in the "tech news" section of the newspaper with the confused readers not knowing that "lightbulbs are good, rampaging monsters are bad".
Yes, language evolves. But language evolution is only useful when it conserves (or extends) granularity of meaning. We can drop the difference between the terms "rock-to-hit-enemy-on-head-with" and "rock-to-sharpen-with" because we don't need those meanings. We can't drop the difference between "hacker" and "cracker" just when network security is becoming a life and death matter.
--
The only thing that was displeasing about the Sun mouse was that you HAD to use their mousepad. Otherwise it totally rocked! Always perfectly smooth movement, no gumming up the works.
--
The mouse is also a breakthrough in technological design.
Ummm...how? I used my first optical mouse in...1993. Apple will be the first company to bundle an optical mouse with all its desktop systems.
Nope. Sun was selling optical mice with the SparcStations LONG ago.
--
It's natural, therefore it's good?
My 18 month-old knows the word "chip", but doesn't realize that flaked cereals aren't chips. So shen he wants some raisin bran, he asks for "chips". What if we all started saying "chip" when we meant either chips OR flaked cereals? We would lose a useful shade of meaning. Point: Words are not just labels, they are differentiators.
There is an objective difference between hackers and crackers. Calling both by the same name destroys the ability to talk about them easily. This ability is not much prized (or even noticed) by the general public (including the mainstream media), but it IS useful to technical types. That's why I, as a technical type, resist this change.
--
"Because this allows developers to make Mozilla on at least 3 platforms simaltaneously..."
In other words, a feature. WWLD? (What Would Linux Do?) Concentrate on one platform (either OS or hardware). Don't do anything platform specific to lock the other out, but don't make everyone wait for the slowest member.
"Mozilla needs to have editing capabilities for 1) mail composition, and 2) filling out web-based forms."
You don't need HTML editing to fill out a webform. And I think we can ALL agree that HTML mail is a bug, not a feature. In any case the answer to "why do we need unnecessary feature A (HTML editing)" is not "because it supports unnecessary feature B (integrated mail)"
"[Feature X] was developed by an independent programmer." (argument used for several features)
So why are these features being folded into the mainline Mozilla code? Let them be modules or something distributed separately. Let them be upgrades that you can download as suggested by another poster. Anything to prevent them from being put into Bugzilla and the Mozilla regression testing. I don't want my browser's release pushed back for 6 months because some dimwit wants to click on Grammy's name and send "Happy Birthday" in FONT+6.
I'm not saying "abandon the features", I'm saying "release the features incrementally". Get a browser out NOW. Get a mail client out TOMORROW. Get an HTML editor out NEXT WEEK. Etc.
--
I bet RH really really wanted to put XF86 4.0 and kernel 2.4 into 7.0. Can you imagine the problems if the kernel release schedule was dictated by RH (or any company)? They would be shipping 2.4.0-test3 (or whatever test we are at now)--with all the problems that implies. Long Live Open Source!
--
First, Mozilla is not dead. Mozilla cannot die. As long as someone has a copy of the source code, Mozilla is, at worst, "mostly dead" (a la The Princess Bride).
However, to the extent that the goal of the current Mozilla project (funded by Netscape) was to defeat IE, it is failing. This is because the people running the show are apparently living on another planet.
What a BUSINESS would do: Optimize for income. Cut the feature creep, fix the bugs, ship, start on the next version.
What an Open Souce project would do: Optimize for usability. Cut the feature creep, fix the bugs, ship, start on the next version.
What Mozilla is doing: Optimize for number of features. Accelerate the feature creep, fix the bugs, don't ship.
Don't get me wrong: I have not been a Mozilla nay-sayer in the past. But this has GOT TO STOP. I've used the last 4 milestones, and they were all "pretty good". Always "not quite as good" as Netscape. Sweet Creeping Zombie Jesus, those 4 milestones cover a span of 5 months. What are they DOING over there??
--
Does anyone know where we got the term "beta" for "nearly (but still un-) finished software"? It just seems to me that "Beta 3" is a little bit of an odd phrase. Why not "alpha", "beta", "gamma", "delta"?
--
My ride to work is nearly a straight shot on a four lane (not including two-way left-hand turn lane). There are many lights (probably 10-15 lights, during the 20 minute drive). Due (apparently) to some zoning oddity the speed limit is artificially low: 40 MPH most of the way, 35 in some spots. The road could easily handle 50-60.
A few years ago, a lot of money was spent "synchronizing" the traffic lights due to complaints from drivers. Some say it didn't work, but I have found that during times of high use (i.e. during my commutes) they ARE synchronized--if you drive 50-55. That's right, if you drive 10-15 MPH OVER the speed limit you can sail through every light while it's green (assuming no one is in your way).
So my conclusion: Sane traffic management is not what is being optimized. My question is: Why would it be? Sure, driver's want quick rides. But shop owners would like people to drive slowly (if not stop) to read their signs. City Hall likes people to speed because it brings in revenue. Etc. There are many different factors to optimize for, don't be surprise that YOUR goal isn't met as well as you'd like.
--
Admittedly I AM using 4.2.something. I also forgot to mention that the hardware is really loud too--can't blame AIX for that, but I CAN blame IBM.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
At work I use Linux, Tru64 and AIX. Of the three, AIX is, by FAR, the least sane. You can't boot from anything but harddrive or TAPE, the NIS stuff is hosed and many of the supposedly POSIX functions are screwed up.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
"...an excellent OS (AIX)."
*spit out milk* HAHAHAHAHAHA!
*wipe tears from eyes* AAAAaaanyway, you'll still have a blame game problem. When you call up with an OS problem (and you will) the tech support guy will say "that sounds like a DB problem, here's the number". It's not going to matter that it's nominally the same vendor--from IBM's point of view it's a different business unit.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!