Microsoft is retiring Windows 98 because of licensing problems with Sun. Starting June 1, 2003, Sun will begin suing Windows 98 end-users for IP violations, unless they pay $1400 per processor. Act before the date, and Sun will discount the IP license to only $699 per processor.
So upgrading to Windows XP at only $500 a license will be a huge discount, plus you get a better OS! Even bigger savings if you have a multiprocessor!
I can tell that you're trying to make a valid point, even if it's one that's been tried many times before. It's a misguided point, of course... would software be so much better if the industry didn't have so much duplicated effort and everyone went to work at Microsoft? I hardly think so. Besides, Gnome developers usually become that way because they can't stand the thought of coding for KDE, and vice versa.
However, Gnome and KDE are most certainly not an example of forking. They grew up entirely on their own, and there was never a common parent. Forking means taking one project and making new projects from it, starting at a branch point. Examples: Emacs and XEmacs, XFree86 and Xouvert, Sodipodi and Inkscape, RedHat and Mandrake, Debian and UserLinux (in the future), Net/Open/Free BSD's.
Sometimes forking can hurt a project, but often times it encourages innovative work in a different direction. Usually, however, it signifies a problem in the management of the project; if a developer is frustrated by the project leadership, they might fork the project rather than struggle to get their viewpoint heard on the main project. One of the testaments to the managerial skills of Linus Torvalds and his lieutenants is the fact that the Linux kernel has not undergone major forking. Kernel developers in general feel that they can get their work done adequately on the main Linux branch.
Microsoft no longer develops for Windows 98... Apple no longer develops for OS9...
So they don't want to move on to "untested" 2.6? If people added features to 2.4, it would become just as untested. Nobody's saying to halt all development on 2.4, just not to add new features. Stability fixes will still go in... heck, stability and security fixes are still being added to 2.2! Those who don't want "untested" software favor stability and security anyways... so stick with 2.4.
I think I understand now...
on
SCOrched Earth
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· Score: 5, Funny
It seems that Darl & Co. have a very specific (and obviously very wrong) idea of what the GPL actually is. They seem to believe that Open Source advocates think the GPL applies to everything, just automatically. This is in accordance to their paranoid beliefs that Linux is actually SysV Unix that was "stolen" with the GPL. I can just imagine this happening in court:
IBM: "No, actually Mr. McBride, the GPL can only be applied by the copyright holder. Just like any other license."
Darl: "Umm, you mean... So the GPL... Hey, look over there!" *flees the country*
They may be targeting flash memory now, but where does this lead? It could be that flash memory is just a trial run to see if their patent holds. Preformatted floppy disks generally use FAT. How about software that understands FAT, like Linux?
Granted, this/should/ be overturned since they've never enforced it before (and in fact encouraged it, IIRC). But GIF patents were upheld, so you never know.
Did you miss the "may suspend the (user's) account while the customer is contacted" part? Besides, actually looking at the emails would be a huge privacy offense and I would hope that would be a bigger issue than some false positives on spam detection.
Anyway, this is a pretty stupid way to catch spammers... most of them just use their own SMTP servers anyhow.
Passwords in linux
on
Real Security?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
There was a time when I was upset by the fact that Linux accepts very strange characters in the passwords (the arrow keys for instance) that couldn't be typed into most GUI password fields. Now I realize that that's not a bug, it's an accidental feature. Effectively, root can't log in on a GUI (including gksu), on a machine so configured, which adds to the security of the system. Fake login screens are foiled by that trick.
(UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT A B A B) anyone?
Well if anyone said you can ignore a EULA, they lied. A EULA may not be legally binding in general (a hidden provision signing off your first-born child would just be so many useless words) because you hven't actually signed anything. But it does affect your use of the software. Agreeing to a EULA can legally limit the things you can do with the software and your legal recourse against the distributor.
EULAs are, however "unenforceable" in that it would be impossible/impractical for a software distributor to catch you violating the EULA, or gain enough evidence to prosecute you for it. It's like laws prohibiting oral sex in your home... It might be illegal, but for anyone (including the police) to catch you doing it, it would require them to break the law in the process of obtaining evidence. This is what most people mean by "unenforcable" (dunno about the legal definition if any... IANAL).
The GPL is significantly more enforcable, since it deals with the distribution of software, which must be done in public. These embedded devices contain GPLed software, that much anyone can verify, but the companies are not distributing the code. All the evidence needed to make a case is publicly available.
No reason to wait... This kind of thing has happened many times before. You send 'em a "comply or desist" letter, which should weed out all those infringing due to ignorance. So far, all GPL infringment cases have been settled out of court, which is why everybody's saying it's "untested in court". In reality, no lawyer in their right mind would actually try to fight the GPL. It's not like this issue's never come up before.
Phoenix d-NA will incorporate a new class of Windows-advantaged components that leverage the Microsoft CryptoAPI (CAPI) to provide unprecedented trust and intrinsic security for systems running Windows and.NET applications.
"Trust us... it's secure, for your own good. Never mind that we've locked out all unapproved applications (read: open-source and anyone who doesn't kowtow to MS) including ones that you've compiled yourself with any compiler other than Visual Studio.NET with an MSDN subscription. Never mind that the BIOS will now prevent you from booting onto "untrusted" linux partitions and using the hardware you paid for. Never mind that we've DRMized all our drivers so you can't make fair-use copies of your own CDs. Never mind that MS now has total control of your computer and therefore your life, and that any attemt to audit the security or privacy your the system is either cryptographically impossible or outlawed by the DMCA. And why should you ignore our blatant power-grab? Because we're fighting a holy war. That's right, a war against Spam and Viruses and Hackers and Employee Unproductivity. Your rights of choice as a consumer are secondary to this war, because the ends justify the means. And our paycheck. We are building a chain of trust that is anchored on Microsoft, and if you don't trust Microsoft than you are a Filthy Communist Pig."
Startup time is a large part of responsiveness. If I double-click on MS Word 2002 at work, it loads instantly, because it's already in memory starting at bootup. This makes Windows Explorer (the program launching Word) seem very responsive. If I run KWord from Gnome, it takes about over 10 seconds for the KDE backend theme/DB libraries and QT toolkit libraries to load and all the widgets to be arranged properly. This is very unresponsive. It could be very responsive if I loaded Gnome and KDE at the same time, but then I'd have both of them taking up a ton of memory at once - unacceptable.
Abstraction is not something to be feared. Without it we'd still be programming on patchboards. WxWindows apps don't feel integrated? Well OOo isn't integrated with Gnome in the first place. Compiling it to GTK2 would be a good first step in integration. An abstraction library can encompass the functionality of all its constituents, and intelligently "fake it" when something isn't implemented in the target. Both QT and GTK do this very well in their Windows ports.
The bottom line is that Linux on the desktop won't be embraced until it's more responsive. Maybe QT is the way to go (even though it's currently both slow AND ugly) because of better API design and we should port Gnome to it somehow. Nautilus on Gnome (even with recent improvements) still isn't anywhere near as responsive as Windows Explorer or even Konqueror. But telling anyone to run a KDE app under Gnome is like telling them to put deisel fuel in their Honda.
The biggest problem I see for desktop interoperability is the fact that there are so many GUI toolkits, and there's a huge overhead to keep them all loaded. IMHO as a Gnome user, having to run a QT app is an embarassment - takes way too long to load the QT libraries an initialize the GUI for even a small window. Of course I could keep the libraries loaded, but that's a ton of memory wasted. I'd imagine the same is true for KDE users trying to load GTK2/+ apps. This applies to loading Mozilla and OpenOffice.org as well. OOo especially runs like a cow in the mud - I can't even pay attention to the impressive feature set since it's so unresponsive. I always end up shutting it down and going with Abiword instead.
There's one good thing about MS Windows GUI; it's very responsive. That's because everything uses the same widget set that is kept in memory with little extra overhead. The fact that it runs in Kernel mode doesn't hurt it, but Linux's improved job control should balance that out. Using Linux with a unified widget set, like GTK2, is very responsive. Adding others, like QT, motif, swing, XPT (mozilla), and whatever Sun crap OOo uses, makes it very much less so.
I know nobody would agree with any proposal to scrap QT and port everything to GTK2, or the reverse. What I'd like to see instead is a library similar to wxWindows, or maybe an across-the-board improvement of wxWindows. Port QT and motif to it, add bindings for everybody's favorite language, etc. You could even use translation libraries to ease the transition process. That way you could compile Gaim for QT, Mozilla for motif, Konqueror for GTK, and everything in between. Only one GUI library would need to be loaded and everyone could use their favorite. It would certainly help for Windows ports as well. Thoughts?
Easy come, easy go... here's another cliche: Give and Take. What's great about the web is that it has effectively demolished the barriers to entry in publishing. Everybody and their grandmother has a blog now - you can't compare webpages to magazine articles or newspapers. There's just so much more information being published now that its average lifespan is bound to go down. So what?
Publications that cite [web pages] lose their authorities? Who the hell told you to cite a webpage? Might as well cite a poster you saw downtown. If the webpage is a reputable source in the first place, it'll keep it around permanently. Still better than scientific journals that are squirrelled away in the basements of university libraries - anyone can get to a webpage.
This is no way to run a culture. Last time I checked, nobody ran our culture... It kinda runs itself. The proliferation of accessable, ephemeral webpages over permanent, priveliged paper publications (wah, too many p's!) is a sign that our information culture has moved on into a new era. Liked the old one? Tough! Now information has to maintain its own relevance in order to be permanent... and I for one welcome that change.
You using the NVidia binary drivers? There are longstanding issues between the NVidia drivers and Linux kernel framebuffer. Solution: don't run the framebuffer, or run the non-accelerated free nv driver.
We have over two million servers actively running today. Customers continue to come to us.
And then he says:
The second dial is the 2.5 million Linux servers out there today that are paired with our intellectual property in them.
Where the hell does Herr McBride get these numbers? Does he really think people will swallow that? 2.5M linux servers, and 2.0M+ OpenServer servers? Get real! (wait, never mind... forgot who I was talking to)
Um, it communicates via bluetooth. A potential terrorist would have to be within 30 ft flying it around for it to work. Sure you could make it larger and carry longer-range communications, but at some point you have to realize there's lots of easier ways for bioterror delivery. Like vending machines.
One possibility for "new artist services" is that they will be making a kind of mix between iTunes and mp3.com, serving as a digital-only publisher for small artists. I've got nothing to back this up, but it could be pretty cool if they did it right.
...it does not say any actual copyright infringement must take place--only that the file be available in a shared folder, Web site or FTP (File Transfer Protocol) site.
Only shared folders (SMB?), Websites (HTTP), and FTP are covered? Looks like Kazaa is out of this bills reach. They can't even draft stupid laws correctly.
So the music companies want to distribute a music on a new kind of media? So it'll probably have DRM? Fine, that's their prerogative. The problem with copy protection on CDs is that it breaks the Compact Disk standard, and you can't call it a CD anymore.
The industry will obviously have to deal with all sorts of problems, like getting the new media readers available in cars, walkmen, home audio systems, and computers. This will be a major undertaking. When the readers are available on computers, then it will be time to pressure the DRM providers for open-source decoding software. If they don't, boycott. The only real problem with DRM currently is the fact that it limits decoding software to proprietary Windows/Mac software.
And remember, being able to store all your legal music on your hard drive is a big selling point - I expect even more so 5 years from now. It just won't sell if that's not an option.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft is retiring Windows 98 because of licensing problems with Sun. Starting June 1, 2003, Sun will begin suing Windows 98 end-users for IP violations, unless they pay $1400 per processor. Act before the date, and Sun will discount the IP license to only $699 per processor.
So upgrading to Windows XP at only $500 a license will be a huge discount, plus you get a better OS! Even bigger savings if you have a multiprocessor!
I can tell that you're trying to make a valid point, even if it's one that's been tried many times before. It's a misguided point, of course... would software be so much better if the industry didn't have so much duplicated effort and everyone went to work at Microsoft? I hardly think so. Besides, Gnome developers usually become that way because they can't stand the thought of coding for KDE, and vice versa.
However, Gnome and KDE are most certainly not an example of forking. They grew up entirely on their own, and there was never a common parent. Forking means taking one project and making new projects from it, starting at a branch point. Examples: Emacs and XEmacs, XFree86 and Xouvert, Sodipodi and Inkscape, RedHat and Mandrake, Debian and UserLinux (in the future), Net/Open/Free BSD's.
Sometimes forking can hurt a project, but often times it encourages innovative work in a different direction. Usually, however, it signifies a problem in the management of the project; if a developer is frustrated by the project leadership, they might fork the project rather than struggle to get their viewpoint heard on the main project. One of the testaments to the managerial skills of Linus Torvalds and his lieutenants is the fact that the Linux kernel has not undergone major forking. Kernel developers in general feel that they can get their work done adequately on the main Linux branch.
Microsoft no longer develops for Windows 98... Apple no longer develops for OS9...
So they don't want to move on to "untested" 2.6? If people added features to 2.4, it would become just as untested. Nobody's saying to halt all development on 2.4, just not to add new features. Stability fixes will still go in... heck, stability and security fixes are still being added to 2.2! Those who don't want "untested" software favor stability and security anyways... so stick with 2.4.
It seems that Darl & Co. have a very specific (and obviously very wrong) idea of what the GPL actually is. They seem to believe that Open Source advocates think the GPL applies to everything, just automatically. This is in accordance to their paranoid beliefs that Linux is actually SysV Unix that was "stolen" with the GPL. I can just imagine this happening in court:
IBM: "No, actually Mr. McBride, the GPL can only be applied by the copyright holder. Just like any other license."
Darl: "Umm, you mean... So the GPL... Hey, look over there!" *flees the country*
I'd suspect there would be little difference in the eyes of a judge. Besides, most Linux distros do both via vfat kernel support and mkfs.vfat.
They may be targeting flash memory now, but where does this lead? It could be that flash memory is just a trial run to see if their patent holds. Preformatted floppy disks generally use FAT. How about software that understands FAT, like Linux?
/should/ be overturned since they've never enforced it before (and in fact encouraged it, IIRC). But GIF patents were upheld, so you never know.
Granted, this
Did you miss the "may suspend the (user's) account while the customer is contacted" part? Besides, actually looking at the emails would be a huge privacy offense and I would hope that would be a bigger issue than some false positives on spam detection.
Anyway, this is a pretty stupid way to catch spammers... most of them just use their own SMTP servers anyhow.
There was a time when I was upset by the fact that Linux accepts very strange characters in the passwords (the arrow keys for instance) that couldn't be typed into most GUI password fields. Now I realize that that's not a bug, it's an accidental feature. Effectively, root can't log in on a GUI (including gksu), on a machine so configured, which adds to the security of the system. Fake login screens are foiled by that trick.
(UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT A B A B) anyone?
So can I... just hit enter a bunch of times in the Debian installer. (sorry, too easy)
Well if anyone said you can ignore a EULA, they lied. A EULA may not be legally binding in general (a hidden provision signing off your first-born child would just be so many useless words) because you hven't actually signed anything. But it does affect your use of the software. Agreeing to a EULA can legally limit the things you can do with the software and your legal recourse against the distributor.
EULAs are, however "unenforceable" in that it would be impossible/impractical for a software distributor to catch you violating the EULA, or gain enough evidence to prosecute you for it. It's like laws prohibiting oral sex in your home... It might be illegal, but for anyone (including the police) to catch you doing it, it would require them to break the law in the process of obtaining evidence. This is what most people mean by "unenforcable" (dunno about the legal definition if any... IANAL).
The GPL is significantly more enforcable, since it deals with the distribution of software, which must be done in public. These embedded devices contain GPLed software, that much anyone can verify, but the companies are not distributing the code. All the evidence needed to make a case is publicly available.
No reason to wait... This kind of thing has happened many times before. You send 'em a "comply or desist" letter, which should weed out all those infringing due to ignorance. So far, all GPL infringment cases have been settled out of court, which is why everybody's saying it's "untested in court". In reality, no lawyer in their right mind would actually try to fight the GPL. It's not like this issue's never come up before.
This can't be /.'s own Robin Miller (roblimo), can it? Of course not, it's Robin MilNer!
::cough::slashcode::cough::cough::
(sorry, had to be said)
"Trust us... it's secure, for your own good. Never mind that we've locked out all unapproved applications (read: open-source and anyone who doesn't kowtow to MS) including ones that you've compiled yourself with any compiler other than Visual Studio
Startup time is a large part of responsiveness. If I double-click on MS Word 2002 at work, it loads instantly, because it's already in memory starting at bootup. This makes Windows Explorer (the program launching Word) seem very responsive. If I run KWord from Gnome, it takes about over 10 seconds for the KDE backend theme/DB libraries and QT toolkit libraries to load and all the widgets to be arranged properly. This is very unresponsive. It could be very responsive if I loaded Gnome and KDE at the same time, but then I'd have both of them taking up a ton of memory at once - unacceptable.
Abstraction is not something to be feared. Without it we'd still be programming on patchboards. WxWindows apps don't feel integrated? Well OOo isn't integrated with Gnome in the first place. Compiling it to GTK2 would be a good first step in integration. An abstraction library can encompass the functionality of all its constituents, and intelligently "fake it" when something isn't implemented in the target. Both QT and GTK do this very well in their Windows ports.
The bottom line is that Linux on the desktop won't be embraced until it's more responsive. Maybe QT is the way to go (even though it's currently both slow AND ugly) because of better API design and we should port Gnome to it somehow. Nautilus on Gnome (even with recent improvements) still isn't anywhere near as responsive as Windows Explorer or even Konqueror. But telling anyone to run a KDE app under Gnome is like telling them to put deisel fuel in their Honda.
The biggest problem I see for desktop interoperability is the fact that there are so many GUI toolkits, and there's a huge overhead to keep them all loaded. IMHO as a Gnome user, having to run a QT app is an embarassment - takes way too long to load the QT libraries an initialize the GUI for even a small window. Of course I could keep the libraries loaded, but that's a ton of memory wasted. I'd imagine the same is true for KDE users trying to load GTK2/+ apps. This applies to loading Mozilla and OpenOffice.org as well. OOo especially runs like a cow in the mud - I can't even pay attention to the impressive feature set since it's so unresponsive. I always end up shutting it down and going with Abiword instead.
There's one good thing about MS Windows GUI; it's very responsive. That's because everything uses the same widget set that is kept in memory with little extra overhead. The fact that it runs in Kernel mode doesn't hurt it, but Linux's improved job control should balance that out. Using Linux with a unified widget set, like GTK2, is very responsive. Adding others, like QT, motif, swing, XPT (mozilla), and whatever Sun crap OOo uses, makes it very much less so.
I know nobody would agree with any proposal to scrap QT and port everything to GTK2, or the reverse. What I'd like to see instead is a library similar to wxWindows, or maybe an across-the-board improvement of wxWindows. Port QT and motif to it, add bindings for everybody's favorite language, etc. You could even use translation libraries to ease the transition process. That way you could compile Gaim for QT, Mozilla for motif, Konqueror for GTK, and everything in between. Only one GUI library would need to be loaded and everyone could use their favorite. It would certainly help for Windows ports as well. Thoughts?
Easy come, easy go... here's another cliche: Give and Take. What's great about the web is that it has effectively demolished the barriers to entry in publishing. Everybody and their grandmother has a blog now - you can't compare webpages to magazine articles or newspapers. There's just so much more information being published now that its average lifespan is bound to go down. So what?
Publications that cite [web pages] lose their authorities? Who the hell told you to cite a webpage? Might as well cite a poster you saw downtown. If the webpage is a reputable source in the first place, it'll keep it around permanently. Still better than scientific journals that are squirrelled away in the basements of university libraries - anyone can get to a webpage.
This is no way to run a culture. Last time I checked, nobody ran our culture... It kinda runs itself. The proliferation of accessable, ephemeral webpages over permanent, priveliged paper publications (wah, too many p's!) is a sign that our information culture has moved on into a new era. Liked the old one? Tough! Now information has to maintain its own relevance in order to be permanent... and I for one welcome that change.
You using the NVidia binary drivers? There are longstanding issues between the NVidia drivers and Linux kernel framebuffer. Solution: don't run the framebuffer, or run the non-accelerated free nv driver.
Nice google-like interface...
What, you mean like a textbox?
And then he says:
Where the hell does Herr McBride get these numbers? Does he really think people will swallow that? 2.5M linux servers, and 2.0M+ OpenServer servers? Get real! (wait, never mind... forgot who I was talking to)
Um, it communicates via bluetooth. A potential terrorist would have to be within 30 ft flying it around for it to work. Sure you could make it larger and carry longer-range communications, but at some point you have to realize there's lots of easier ways for bioterror delivery. Like vending machines.
One possibility for "new artist services" is that they will be making a kind of mix between iTunes and mp3.com, serving as a digital-only publisher for small artists. I've got nothing to back this up, but it could be pretty cool if they did it right.
Only shared folders (SMB?), Websites (HTTP), and FTP are covered? Looks like Kazaa is out of this bills reach. They can't even draft stupid laws correctly.
So the music companies want to distribute a music on a new kind of media? So it'll probably have DRM? Fine, that's their prerogative. The problem with copy protection on CDs is that it breaks the Compact Disk standard, and you can't call it a CD anymore.
The industry will obviously have to deal with all sorts of problems, like getting the new media readers available in cars, walkmen, home audio systems, and computers. This will be a major undertaking. When the readers are available on computers, then it will be time to pressure the DRM providers for open-source decoding software. If they don't, boycott. The only real problem with DRM currently is the fact that it limits decoding software to proprietary Windows/Mac software.
And remember, being able to store all your legal music on your hard drive is a big selling point - I expect even more so 5 years from now. It just won't sell if that's not an option.
What the heck does Transmeta have to do with SCO? The fact that they employ Linus shouldn't involve them in this mess...