What I want to know is how they made a 200GB hard drive with 60GB platters. Doesn't seem to add up.
That 60GB is two sides at 30GB apiece, so I'd guess they've used 4 platters, but are only using seven sides to keep the phyiscal drive height down. That still leaves an error of 10GB mind you, but hey, that's only 5% for the sake of a round number.
Actually, "make EULA's legally binding and allows them to be undisclosed until after the sale is made" sounds more pro-open source to me. I mean, what fsck-wit is going to pay a chunk of cash for what could easily turn out to be a completly bug-ridden PoS, with no refund because you've opened the box and require you to perform demeaning sexual acts for the personal gratifaction of the software vendor?
Oh, wait a minute, apart from the sexual acts, a large proportion of commercial software fits that description already, doesn't it?
Since EXT3 is just EXT2 with a journal tacked on, there is no reason why you can't run the EXT2 fsck utility accross it in the normal way. You are obviously worried about loosing the entire file system, so you probably want to start by running fsck with the verbose (-V) and interactive (-r) options to see exactly what is going on and have the ability to prevent unwanted changes being made.
Since you appear to use tar for backups, you could also backup the affected filesystem using the exclude (-X [filename]) option first, which might be a *really* good idea.;)
Me neither, and it was a pretty good and well informed information site too. I guess it's time to start looking at alternatives just in case the trend continues - any suggestions?
Maybe you should try pointing out to them the *huge* number of websites that are hosted by US citizens, on US soil that are still operating despite being in contravention of another country's legislation. Request that they explain why the US government is not practicing what it preaches before you will even consider complying.
You could then suggest that they adopt a more internationally friendly attitude to sites like this and take the approach adopted by the Chinese, Saudi's and *Taliban* by firewalling off the sites their country considers undesirable at *their* borders. They won't, of course, because the backlash by US netizens would be prolific to say the least (although with George "McCarthy" Bush" in the Whitehouse, you never can tell). It might give them pause for thought though.
What *is* the URL by the way? I have some small kids in my family that might like to pay a visit, or do you fear the Slashdotting?;)
This seems like a needlessly complex solution to me; what's wrong with using a network storage device (or devices) in a dedicated DMZ for crying out loud? All you need to do is allow writes from your "dev" machines and simply drop write requests from anything else. Plenty of firewalls understand the appropriate protocols (CIFS, NFS...) enough to do this.
Surely two heads is going to have a considerable effect on the MTBF, in the order of 40% maybe, since most of the the drive failures I've had have resulted from head failure. With enough drives in your storage array that increase is going to become very visible, very quickly.
In this case I tend to partly side with Microsoft. OK, they put the bug there in the first place, but when you consider that:
Every coder makes programming errors (some more than others, true).
Microsoft released a *working* patch a few months before the exploits started.
A work around was also available.
A properly installed & configured server was *not* vulnerable.
A web server does not need to *establish* outbound HTTP connections through the firewall, only to accept and reply to them.
You kind of get an idea where they are coming from.
PS. That last point is the crux, and denying webservers the ability to establish outbound HTTP connections would have stopped Code Red type exploits dead. If your network is properly configured, even if you are exploited, then the exploit should have a much harder time propagating and thus making you look like a complete incompetent. The *real* problem is that a *huge* proportion of sysadmins don't seem to understand the most basic of security principles, and that's not Microsoft's problem at all.
Yes, but this *is* Debian we are talking about, so their logo's probably under some equivalent of the GPL. Since Elektrostore *are* providing the source (right click, save as...) technically they are in compliance with the GPL and thus in the clear.;)
Seriously though, isn't the actual logo trademarked by Debian? I know that several other big distros have trademarks on their logos and so on, and it must be under copyright cover at the very least. Maybe it's time for a "cease and desist and make a (large) contribution to the EFF" order?
Sounds like you are already doing a lot of my second paragraph then, which is a start, but ultimately patents *need* peer reviews. The number of potential fields for a patent is vast, too vast to expect a patent office to employ someone to know enough about an arbitrary subject to make a judgement of whether the patent is valid or not.
Suppose I file a patent for the cat-flap (assuming we live in a parallel universe were it is a brand new thing and Isaac Newton only discovered gravity and invented the milled edge coin). It's a pretty simple matter to say, "Yes, that's a brand new and clever idea. Patent approved". Now suppose I file a bullshit, but highly technical, patent in the field of quantum mechanics. Unless there is a quantum physicist at the PTO concerned, then it's highly likely that no-one is going to understand the implications of the patent. Hell, even quantum physicists have problems comprehending quantum physics...
I don't doubt the USPTO is amongst the worst of the bunch, and I applaud the EUPTO for *some* of their stands on software patents, but still feel that peer review is required with todays often highly complex patent applications, regardless of the PTO concerned. It's nice to see that at least some people are trying though, in spite of what appears to be the USPTO's apparent "approve everything and rely on the lawyers" approach.
Also, the USPTO needs serious reform, training, and procedural improvement. They should be REVIEWING these things for relevance, prior art, etc, not just rubber stamping.
I just don't see that working. The USPTO (or any patent office) are just a bunch of clerks when it comes to the crunch. There is simply no amount of training that will enable them to pick up an arbitrary patent application and say whether it's bogus or not. They *should* be able to check for basic prior art, obviously bogus filing and so on, but that's really all they can be expected to do without being omnipotent.
The only thing I can see working is that instead of simply rubber stamping it as "approved" at this point, it's stamped as "provisional". The patent can then go into a very public place on the PTO's site indexed under a variety of searchable keywords for peer review. That way the onus is on those who are going to be nailed by the patent to demonstrate applicable prior-art and expose wild claims for what they are. A failure to raise any suitable objections within a pre-defined period causes an automatic upgrading to "approved", while objections enter a pre-defined process of resolution.
You can't rush out and make your own filing, because it will, (unless you are patenting time travel), have to be submitted after the date of the provisionally approved patent. The filer of the patent can't complain about their information being exposed to the public, because patents are a matter of public record anyway. There are probably a few other safeguards an expert patent lawyer could devise too, but blaming the PTO is not the way to go.
Ever heard the saying "behind every sleazy lawyer is a sleazy client"? Clearly, behind every sleazy patent office is a sleazy patent applicant trying to abuse the system as well...
It's not just office workers that have seating problems - people on long haul flights have been known to suffer from sitting in the same position for too long as well. In that case it's sometimes referred to a "economy class syndrome", but it's proper title is "Air Flight Associated Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT)". There have been documented fatalities due to these DVT induced blood clots caused by remaining essentially motionless for too long. The solution in the airline case seems to be to just get up off your ass and move around occassionally, which is not a bad recommendation for posture disorders too. Stretch the muscles and let the blood and lymphatic fluids flow (lymphatic fluid relies on physical motion to move, since there is no regular pump to move it like there is with the blood stream).
Like many things today, I think that expensive chairs are little more than a combination of marketing hype and psychological effect - after all, you must be getting some bang for your buck, right? Well, perhaps not as much as you might think. I know that I have an atrocious sitting posture, a cheap chair at work and a slightly more expensive one (leather, but still under £150 new) at home, yet no back problems. Why? Probably because I spend as little time as possible sitting in the things. When I need to ponder some problem I get up and wander around (preferably outside), I go and talk to people instead of reaching for the phone where possible.
Of course, we are all unique so YMMV, but for me motion beats luxorious comfort everytime, so why not give it a shot? It's free to try ans it might just save you enough money to go out and do something fun, or if you really must upgrade that graphics card again...
I can almost here the intro to the session now; "OK, we are now going to perform some live demonstations of Social Engineering. If you want some easy meat to try out your new l33t 5k1llz when you get home; try the local AT&T offices, as they should be letting their guard down nicely by Monday thanks to some prep work we did on Friday...".;)
Hey, it's Microsoft *and* the Internet - you can't be too paranoid! You're correct in the assumption that I'm using a personal firewall app (Tiny Personal Firewall v2 infact), but I also have a hardware perimeter firewall to verify things with and it's all hunky dory.
As an aside, I'm still using v2 of Tiny PF, because I thought v3 was horrendously complex to get running smoothly. Has anyone out there persevered and come to the conclusion it's worth the effort, because on paper it seems like quite a good system?
You may not have actually disabled it then, because my first reaction when playing with XP was to switch this off. Since then neither my personal nor perimeter firewalls have recorded any attempts at access by Windows Update apart from when I've been updating manually.
In fact, looking at my current rules, I'm actually blocking very little of Windows' guts from seeing the web, yet not seeing any traffic. I've got rules for LSASS.EXE, SERVICES.EXE and Microsoft-DS (are of which are not enabled - I must have figured out how to turn them off), SVCHOST.EXE is allowed to perform DNS resolution, and that's it. I get prompts everytime an unknown/unrecorded app tries to access non-local IPs, and Microsoft's apps don't make
I have to admit, despite the rumours to the contrary, I think that Microsoft has probably cleaned up its act for real.
But won't you rest easier at night knowing a portion from the sale of each OpenBSD CD will go to financing Britney Spears video clips?
Why should it? I'd have thought it would be a relatively trivial matter to look for CD audio tracks and cross check with a CDDB type thing to ID the track(s). Save the results in a database and you can divide up the royalties proportionately between the artists whose works were copied. Or at least divide up the remaining scraps after the industry has taken its "administration fee". Once that's working it wouldn't be too hard to scan MP3, OGG and other media files either.
Of course, you can then link music tastes to a given credit card number and that leads to other YRO type issues, but hey, like what you buy on plastic isn't analysed to death already.
You say you want to move into project management, so if you haven't done so already, get yourself onto a project management course or three. Apply what you are taught where appropriate, whenever it's appropriate so you have evidence that you know what you are doing.
Then, the next time you are in one of those post mortems because your useless PM fscked up, tear his/her project apart in front of some senior managers. Point out the flaws. Suggest how things could have been done better and how to get things back on track. Have purdy gant and pert charts and so on to back it all up. Know the facts and figures. Don't directly blame the PM, but leave the implication hanging. For bonus points walk the walk after talking the talk and deliver what you suggested.
Do it right and you'll get a fat bonus, pay rise, satisifaction of an incompetent leaving your life and kudos from your colleagues.
I note that the article doesn't say how the cybercafe is "operated illegally", and given the track record of the Chinese government for suppression of the Internet lots of people are assuming they are some speakeasy type dive. It could just be that they sell coffee and danish that are past their sell by date you know, or more likely given the deaths, infringe on lots of safety regulations.
I do know that just about every time I've tracerouted to a site in Europe I've seen "ebone" in the trace. I think this could be bad for a lot of people.
Yeah, and almost everytime I traceroute to East Asia (I'm in the UK) I see the US in there, but that doesn't mean I can't hop across Eurasia. KPNQwest isn't the only major network in Europe, so if the worst comes to the worst, we're going to lose those sites only connected via KPNQwest and experience an unknown speed reduction on the whole. The problem is no one can say for sure what will happen.
While I wish those caught on the hop by their management the best of luck, I have to admit to a certain desire to see what happens if the plug is pulled. There are bound to be some interesting lessons in there about network design and monopolies both I'm sure...
It's on The Register too, but no one really seems to know for sure what's going on, or what the effects of a shutdown will be. I've seen reports of between 20% and 50% of current traffic, but no one is sure about what contingency plans (if any) are in place with KPNQwest's customers. As a result what are really only guesses as to the effect of shutdown vary from "none" to "disaster". It seems to me that the only thing that can be said for certain is that only time will tell. Anyway, are we always being told that the Internet was designed to withstand and route around this kind of thing?;)
One of the more useful assignments I had when learning to code (this was machine code, but the principle stands) was to debug someone else's code. All the code had been produced by the lecturer, but using several styles of writing, comments etc. to simulate a basic algorithm that had evolved into something more advanced. The code had numerous errors, some obvious, some subtle, some downright fiendish. The object was to find and fix the bugs and flaws.
Ideally you want to ease them into this slowly, give away the location of the first bug - bombing if you enter a string where numbers are expected for example, provide test data for the second and so on. Another important thing is to ensure that if the student chooses to re-write an entire function they don't side step another part of the exercise by obliterating another of your carefully crafted flaws.
The exercise tests the students understanding of the language, ability to prepare realistic test data, and ability to find common bugs like off-by ones, buffer underruns, overflows and so on. It's also pretty good preparation for the "real world" where you will need to read other code, fix other people's errors and improve their code, besides being damned interesting if done right.
I had something a bit simpler than the full FAQ in mind, ie. that could be included with the source and/or binary and answer maybe the top 10 PHB questions. After all, a 22 page FAQ for a 7 page license doesn't exactly make it sound simple does it? I have quite often left Microsoft vs Open Source discussions with the feeling that people are going with Microsoft purely because of the KISS principle. They understand MS style EULAs, because they usually boil down to "I've bought x seat licenses, so I can install on x PCs". They likewise understand their support options, upgrade options, likely costs in the near future, and so on. It might well be costing their employer more, but they don't have to understand this "GPL" thing or (heaven forbid) have to explain it to some senior manager who barely knows how to turn a computer on.
To give a real life example, I did some work at one site recently who wanted some very basic network usage monitoring - the kind of stuff that would be a no brainer for MRTG. Because of the KISS argument above they were about to spend the best part of £1000 on an overkill commerical product, with additional outlay as they added additional devices because it was licensed per node. They were happy with this because they understood the license and costs, even when I said I could set up an a Linux box with an MRTG config for then in a morning and have a web configuration front-end tailored for them by the end of the same day.
(For those who want to know - they agreed to give it a shot, and I was in the local pub with it all done by 14:00 the following day. They were so happy and their license concerns sufficiently assuaged that I'm replacing their NT based mail gateway with a Linux box next month...)
What does it really matter? The crux of the Microsoft EULA for most of their products is that "you can install this product on one PC only. It is not transferable." Period. Just about everyone that uses a PC understands this, whether they choose to obey it or not. All the other stuff about becoming Bill's bitch is really just icing on the cake from a Microsoft revenue point of view.
I took the GPL quiz (I got all but one right, but that was more down to logical deduction than knowledge), and use GPL'd software in a corporate environment daily, so I feel that I should understand the license, but from the quiz I feel that I don't. In comparison with the Microsoft EULA the GPL really is inpenetrable to the layperson, with numerous "ifs" and "ors" , which is maybe not a good thing. The wording of the GPL leaves the door wide open for this kind of FUD which will no doubt be accepted as truth by many who should know better.
Perhaps what the GPL needs is an companion document that answers the FUD in plain language - the explanatory answers from the quiz would be a good place to start. The fact that the proponents of the GPL can dispel the FUD is not the point - the point is that they are being required to do so in the first place.
What, about the way you completely changed the context of what I originally said, or that AMD has to abandon Intel compatability?;)
Assuming the latter, of course not; unless they have an absolutely bullet proof customer base and guaranteed application support it would clearly be commercial suicide. The point was, that until this unlikely day arrives, AMD will forever be having to add their take on what ever additions to the x86 Intel has success with, like a future revision of SSE perhaps.
I don't know about that "Won by Intel" either, this battle maybe, but not the war as yet. The x86 market is at an interesting junction; Intel is backing the "migrate to 64 bit" horse while AMD is very much on the "make 32 bit faster" horse. We've been here before, when we all went from 16bit to 32bit CPUs, and sooner or later Intel's horse is going to win - it just depends on when Microsoft ships a 64 bit "desktop" version of Windows the consumers actually buy.
In the mean time AMD and Intel are really talking about two completely different markets for their wares. Intel want to make a serious pile of money out of selling new (and hence overpriced) Itaniums for use in multi-way servers for bespoke applications where compatability is not such an issue. AMD on the otherhand looks to be targetting the consumer who wants to squeeze every last frame out of their Quake sessions and other (less important) "legacy" 32 bit code. Both companies will probably make a big pile of cash out of their respective sectors, so no problems there.
In the long term though, unless AMD is going to make a seriously brave (or rash) departure from Intel compatability, ultimately they are always going to be playing catchup with Intel for compatability. There's a long history of that too, and in that context, I'm just amazed that AMD has lasted as long as they have when other ventures have long since come and gone - best of luck with giving us all a choice I say!
Slashdot Mirror
That 60GB is two sides at 30GB apiece, so I'd guess they've used 4 platters, but are only using seven sides to keep the phyiscal drive height down. That still leaves an error of 10GB mind you, but hey, that's only 5% for the sake of a round number.
Oh, wait a minute, apart from the sexual acts, a large proportion of commercial software fits that description already, doesn't it?
Since you appear to use tar for backups, you could also backup the affected filesystem using the exclude (-X [filename]) option first, which might be a *really* good idea. ;)
Me neither, and it was a pretty good and well informed information site too. I guess it's time to start looking at alternatives just in case the trend continues - any suggestions?
You could then suggest that they adopt a more internationally friendly attitude to sites like this and take the approach adopted by the Chinese, Saudi's and *Taliban* by firewalling off the sites their country considers undesirable at *their* borders. They won't, of course, because the backlash by US netizens would be prolific to say the least (although with George "McCarthy" Bush" in the Whitehouse, you never can tell). It might give them pause for thought though.
What *is* the URL by the way? I have some small kids in my family that might like to pay a visit, or do you fear the Slashdotting? ;)
Surely two heads is going to have a considerable effect on the MTBF, in the order of 40% maybe, since most of the the drive failures I've had have resulted from head failure. With enough drives in your storage array that increase is going to become very visible, very quickly.
- Every coder makes programming errors (some more than others, true).
- Microsoft released a *working* patch a few months before the exploits started.
- A work around was also available.
- A properly installed & configured server was *not* vulnerable.
- A web server does not need to *establish* outbound HTTP connections through the firewall, only to accept and reply to them.
You kind of get an idea where they are coming from.PS. That last point is the crux, and denying webservers the ability to establish outbound HTTP connections would have stopped Code Red type exploits dead. If your network is properly configured, even if you are exploited, then the exploit should have a much harder time propagating and thus making you look like a complete incompetent. The *real* problem is that a *huge* proportion of sysadmins don't seem to understand the most basic of security principles, and that's not Microsoft's problem at all.
Seriously though, isn't the actual logo trademarked by Debian? I know that several other big distros have trademarks on their logos and so on, and it must be under copyright cover at the very least. Maybe it's time for a "cease and desist and make a (large) contribution to the EFF" order?
Suppose I file a patent for the cat-flap (assuming we live in a parallel universe were it is a brand new thing and Isaac Newton only discovered gravity and invented the milled edge coin). It's a pretty simple matter to say, "Yes, that's a brand new and clever idea. Patent approved". Now suppose I file a bullshit, but highly technical, patent in the field of quantum mechanics. Unless there is a quantum physicist at the PTO concerned, then it's highly likely that no-one is going to understand the implications of the patent. Hell, even quantum physicists have problems comprehending quantum physics...
I don't doubt the USPTO is amongst the worst of the bunch, and I applaud the EUPTO for *some* of their stands on software patents, but still feel that peer review is required with todays often highly complex patent applications, regardless of the PTO concerned. It's nice to see that at least some people are trying though, in spite of what appears to be the USPTO's apparent "approve everything and rely on the lawyers" approach.
I just don't see that working. The USPTO (or any patent office) are just a bunch of clerks when it comes to the crunch. There is simply no amount of training that will enable them to pick up an arbitrary patent application and say whether it's bogus or not. They *should* be able to check for basic prior art, obviously bogus filing and so on, but that's really all they can be expected to do without being omnipotent.
The only thing I can see working is that instead of simply rubber stamping it as "approved" at this point, it's stamped as "provisional". The patent can then go into a very public place on the PTO's site indexed under a variety of searchable keywords for peer review. That way the onus is on those who are going to be nailed by the patent to demonstrate applicable prior-art and expose wild claims for what they are. A failure to raise any suitable objections within a pre-defined period causes an automatic upgrading to "approved", while objections enter a pre-defined process of resolution.
You can't rush out and make your own filing, because it will, (unless you are patenting time travel), have to be submitted after the date of the provisionally approved patent. The filer of the patent can't complain about their information being exposed to the public, because patents are a matter of public record anyway. There are probably a few other safeguards an expert patent lawyer could devise too, but blaming the PTO is not the way to go.
Ever heard the saying "behind every sleazy lawyer is a sleazy client"? Clearly, behind every sleazy patent office is a sleazy patent applicant trying to abuse the system as well...
Like many things today, I think that expensive chairs are little more than a combination of marketing hype and psychological effect - after all, you must be getting some bang for your buck, right? Well, perhaps not as much as you might think. I know that I have an atrocious sitting posture, a cheap chair at work and a slightly more expensive one (leather, but still under £150 new) at home, yet no back problems. Why? Probably because I spend as little time as possible sitting in the things. When I need to ponder some problem I get up and wander around (preferably outside), I go and talk to people instead of reaching for the phone where possible.
Of course, we are all unique so YMMV, but for me motion beats luxorious comfort everytime, so why not give it a shot? It's free to try ans it might just save you enough money to go out and do something fun, or if you really must upgrade that graphics card again...
I can almost here the intro to the session now; "OK, we are now going to perform some live demonstations of Social Engineering. If you want some easy meat to try out your new l33t 5k1llz when you get home; try the local AT&T offices, as they should be letting their guard down nicely by Monday thanks to some prep work we did on Friday...". ;)
I thought the object was to *reduce* the amount of crap floating around out there; these guys spew the stuff practically non-stop.
Hey, it's Microsoft *and* the Internet - you can't be too paranoid! You're correct in the assumption that I'm using a personal firewall app (Tiny Personal Firewall v2 infact), but I also have a hardware perimeter firewall to verify things with and it's all hunky dory.
As an aside, I'm still using v2 of Tiny PF, because I thought v3 was horrendously complex to get running smoothly. Has anyone out there persevered and come to the conclusion it's worth the effort, because on paper it seems like quite a good system?
In fact, looking at my current rules, I'm actually blocking very little of Windows' guts from seeing the web, yet not seeing any traffic. I've got rules for LSASS.EXE, SERVICES.EXE and Microsoft-DS (are of which are not enabled - I must have figured out how to turn them off), SVCHOST.EXE is allowed to perform DNS resolution, and that's it. I get prompts everytime an unknown/unrecorded app tries to access non-local IPs, and Microsoft's apps don't make
I have to admit, despite the rumours to the contrary, I think that Microsoft has probably cleaned up its act for real.
Why should it? I'd have thought it would be a relatively trivial matter to look for CD audio tracks and cross check with a CDDB type thing to ID the track(s). Save the results in a database and you can divide up the royalties proportionately between the artists whose works were copied. Or at least divide up the remaining scraps after the industry has taken its "administration fee". Once that's working it wouldn't be too hard to scan MP3, OGG and other media files either.
Of course, you can then link music tastes to a given credit card number and that leads to other YRO type issues, but hey, like what you buy on plastic isn't analysed to death already.
Then, the next time you are in one of those post mortems because your useless PM fscked up, tear his/her project apart in front of some senior managers. Point out the flaws. Suggest how things could have been done better and how to get things back on track. Have purdy gant and pert charts and so on to back it all up. Know the facts and figures. Don't directly blame the PM, but leave the implication hanging. For bonus points walk the walk after talking the talk and deliver what you suggested.
Do it right and you'll get a fat bonus, pay rise, satisifaction of an incompetent leaving your life and kudos from your colleagues.
Just playing devil's advocate...
Yeah, and almost everytime I traceroute to East Asia (I'm in the UK) I see the US in there, but that doesn't mean I can't hop across Eurasia. KPNQwest isn't the only major network in Europe, so if the worst comes to the worst, we're going to lose those sites only connected via KPNQwest and experience an unknown speed reduction on the whole. The problem is no one can say for sure what will happen.
While I wish those caught on the hop by their management the best of luck, I have to admit to a certain desire to see what happens if the plug is pulled. There are bound to be some interesting lessons in there about network design and monopolies both I'm sure...
It's on The Register too, but no one really seems to know for sure what's going on, or what the effects of a shutdown will be. I've seen reports of between 20% and 50% of current traffic, but no one is sure about what contingency plans (if any) are in place with KPNQwest's customers. As a result what are really only guesses as to the effect of shutdown vary from "none" to "disaster". It seems to me that the only thing that can be said for certain is that only time will tell. Anyway, are we always being told that the Internet was designed to withstand and route around this kind of thing? ;)
Ideally you want to ease them into this slowly, give away the location of the first bug - bombing if you enter a string where numbers are expected for example, provide test data for the second and so on. Another important thing is to ensure that if the student chooses to re-write an entire function they don't side step another part of the exercise by obliterating another of your carefully crafted flaws.
The exercise tests the students understanding of the language, ability to prepare realistic test data, and ability to find common bugs like off-by ones, buffer underruns, overflows and so on. It's also pretty good preparation for the "real world" where you will need to read other code, fix other people's errors and improve their code, besides being damned interesting if done right.
To give a real life example, I did some work at one site recently who wanted some very basic network usage monitoring - the kind of stuff that would be a no brainer for MRTG. Because of the KISS argument above they were about to spend the best part of £1000 on an overkill commerical product, with additional outlay as they added additional devices because it was licensed per node. They were happy with this because they understood the license and costs, even when I said I could set up an a Linux box with an MRTG config for then in a morning and have a web configuration front-end tailored for them by the end of the same day.
(For those who want to know - they agreed to give it a shot, and I was in the local pub with it all done by 14:00 the following day. They were so happy and their license concerns sufficiently assuaged that I'm replacing their NT based mail gateway with a Linux box next month...)
I took the GPL quiz (I got all but one right, but that was more down to logical deduction than knowledge), and use GPL'd software in a corporate environment daily, so I feel that I should understand the license, but from the quiz I feel that I don't. In comparison with the Microsoft EULA the GPL really is inpenetrable to the layperson, with numerous "ifs" and "ors" , which is maybe not a good thing. The wording of the GPL leaves the door wide open for this kind of FUD which will no doubt be accepted as truth by many who should know better.
Perhaps what the GPL needs is an companion document that answers the FUD in plain language - the explanatory answers from the quiz would be a good place to start. The fact that the proponents of the GPL can dispel the FUD is not the point - the point is that they are being required to do so in the first place.
What, about the way you completely changed the context of what I originally said, or that AMD has to abandon Intel compatability? ;)
Assuming the latter, of course not; unless they have an absolutely bullet proof customer base and guaranteed application support it would clearly be commercial suicide. The point was, that until this unlikely day arrives, AMD will forever be having to add their take on what ever additions to the x86 Intel has success with, like a future revision of SSE perhaps.
In the mean time AMD and Intel are really talking about two completely different markets for their wares. Intel want to make a serious pile of money out of selling new (and hence overpriced) Itaniums for use in multi-way servers for bespoke applications where compatability is not such an issue. AMD on the otherhand looks to be targetting the consumer who wants to squeeze every last frame out of their Quake sessions and other (less important) "legacy" 32 bit code. Both companies will probably make a big pile of cash out of their respective sectors, so no problems there.
In the long term though, unless AMD is going to make a seriously brave (or rash) departure from Intel compatability, ultimately they are always going to be playing catchup with Intel for compatability. There's a long history of that too, and in that context, I'm just amazed that AMD has lasted as long as they have when other ventures have long since come and gone - best of luck with giving us all a choice I say!