What CNNIC is doing is creating their own system
of root servers and TLD's that are pure Chinese.
Thus ".cn" becomes the two hanzi characters,
"Zhong Guo", ".net" becomes the two hanzi characters,
"Wang Luo", ".com" becomes the two hanzi characters,
"Gong Si", etc.
Anyone who wants to use these hanzi TLD's will
have to set their DNS servers to CNNIC-approved
root servers. Anyone who wants a pure-Chinese
URL that is accessible to Mainland users will
have to do business with CNNIC.
This is not a unilateral move by CNNIC, however.
They have done this in cooperation with the NICs
in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.
The hack was a hardware hack. They broke into the bank after hours, and installed a homemade dongle on the interface port of one of the teller terminals.
Afterward, they were able to operate the bank terminal remotely, creating accounts and transfering funds.
"I personally believe that the GPL is a Good Thing, since it forces what I consider to be moral behavior on anyone who wants to use code that I've written."
And therein lies the difference between supporters of Free Software licences and supporters of free software licences: some people think it's appropriate to try to force their morals on others, and some don't.
Why not create the Christian Software License? All Christians get unlimited "use, modify, and redistribute" rights (I'm sure many people must be deeply disturbed by the possibility that their software might be used for un-Christian purposes). And, if you don't like it, well, you can just write your own software and put it under your own license (like, maybe the Pagan Software License).
The biggest obstacle to Linux in China is the fact that, for many, if not most people, Microsoft software costs the same as Linux: nothing.
Piracy is everywhere.
On the bright side, though, the pirate CD vendors have started selling bootleg copies of the latest Red Hat releases, and Linux is gaining ground in the growing ISP industry.
"but they don't want to give people the right to make the code proprietary."
This is the problem BSD'ers have with the GPL: the overwrought drama over the possibility that someone, somewhere might hide some code.
Most BSD'ers support free code, and they have full confidence in the relative merits of free code. What they don't have is the compulsion to coerce others into involuntary compliance with this view.
If people take free code and turn it proprietary, then they automatically suffer all the increased costs and headaches associated with developing, debugging, and maintaining a closed source tree. That's their karma. BSD'ers are willing to let it go at that, and not make a religious crusade out of the issue.
If a certain small niche gets served by a proprietary solution, that's fine too. But overall, the fact is that the cards are stacked against largescale exploitation of BSD code. People will figure that out eventually, and in the meantime, there's no point in alienating present and future allies in a fit of ideological intransigence.
>I find it suitably ironic that the de-formatting that happened to that example would cause it not >to run. I'll take a language that isn't whitespace-sensitive, thanks.
There's always a wise guy. Here: for person in persons: \ map(set, facts, person);\ print text % globals()
"10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for permission."
Richard Stallman now:
"The most serious practical problem in the NPL is that it is incompatible with the GNU GPL. It is impossible to combine NPL-covered code and GNU GPL-covered code together in one program, not even by linking separate object files or libraries; no matter how this is done, it has to violate one license or the other."
Slashdot Mirror
Thus ".cn" becomes the two hanzi characters, "Zhong Guo", ".net" becomes the two hanzi characters, "Wang Luo", ".com" becomes the two hanzi characters, "Gong Si", etc.
Anyone who wants to use these hanzi TLD's will have to set their DNS servers to CNNIC-approved root servers. Anyone who wants a pure-Chinese URL that is accessible to Mainland users will have to do business with CNNIC.
This is not a unilateral move by CNNIC, however. They have done this in cooperation with the NICs in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.
Actually, "so hu" == "search fox" in Chinese.
The hack was a hardware hack. They broke into
the bank after hours, and installed a homemade
dongle on the interface port of one of the teller
terminals.
Afterward, they were able to operate the bank
terminal remotely, creating accounts and transfering
funds.
www.turbolinux.com.cn
Double *cough*.
www.turbolinux.com.cn
(Slashdot: where everyone is an expert, but some people are more expert than others.)
So when are we going to get the specs for the mwave DSP in the Thinkpads?
Until then, there's always civil disobedience.
"I personally believe that the GPL is a Good
Thing, since it forces what I consider to be
moral behavior on anyone who wants to use code
that I've written."
And therein lies the difference between supporters
of Free Software licences and supporters of free
software licences: some people think it's
appropriate to try to force their morals on
others, and some don't.
Why not create the Christian Software License?
All Christians get unlimited "use, modify, and
redistribute" rights (I'm sure many people must be
deeply disturbed by the possibility that their
software might be used for un-Christian purposes).
And, if you don't like it, well, you can just
write your own software and put it under your own
license (like, maybe the Pagan Software License).
The biggest obstacle to Linux in China is the
fact that, for many, if not most people, Microsoft
software costs the same as Linux: nothing.
Piracy is everywhere.
On the bright side, though, the pirate CD vendors
have started selling bootleg copies of the latest
Red Hat releases, and Linux is gaining ground in
the growing ISP industry.
"but they don't want to give people the right to
make the code proprietary."
This is the problem BSD'ers have with the GPL: the overwrought drama over the possibility that someone, somewhere might hide some code.
Most BSD'ers support free code, and they have full confidence in the relative merits of free code. What they don't have is the compulsion to coerce others into involuntary compliance with this view.
If people take free code and turn it proprietary, then they automatically suffer all the increased costs and headaches associated with developing, debugging, and maintaining a closed source tree. That's their karma. BSD'ers are willing to let it go at that, and not make a religious crusade out of the issue.
If a certain small niche gets served by a proprietary solution, that's fine too. But overall, the fact is that the cards are stacked against largescale exploitation of BSD code. People will figure that out eventually, and in the meantime, there's no point in alienating present and future allies in a fit of ideological intransigence.
>I find it suitably ironic that the de-formatting that happened to that example would cause it not
>to run. I'll take a language that isn't whitespace-sensitive, thanks.
There's always a wise guy. Here:
for person in persons: \
map(set, facts, person);\
print text % globals()
Happy now?
# A simple database
persons = (
("Moe Howard", "CEO", "Three Stooges Ltd.", "moe@threestooges.com"),
("Larry Fine", "Manager", "Dept. of Knuckleheads", "larry@kheads.gov"),
("Curly Howard", "Mascot", "Wise Guys Club", "curly@wiseguys.org")
)
# The fields of the database as words:
facts = ("name", "title", "company", "email")
# The format used to print the info:
text = "%(name)s of %(company)s is at %(email)s"
# Emulate Rebol "set" feature
def set(attr, val): globals()[attr] = val
# The loop that prints the database:
for person in persons:
map(set, facts, person)
print text % globals()
P.S. Hey, Rob, how about allowing (pre) or (code) tags, eh?
Richard Stallman then:
"10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for permission."
Richard Stallman now:
"The most serious practical problem in the NPL is that it is incompatible with the GNU GPL. It is impossible to combine NPL-covered code and GNU GPL-covered code together in one program, not even by linking separate object files or libraries; no matter how this is done, it has to violate one license or the other."