Some people here say that since VMware is a good product, the authors are justified in keeping their software proprietary. Some even go so far as to say that a free VMware clone would be stealing well-deserved money from the authors of VMware.
I could not disagree more. Furthermore, I will be the first to way that I would pay the $99 student price for a GPL'd VMware. I am not against selling software. I am against the common practice whereby companies withhold (i.e. steal) millions of dollars of value from society by keeping their software proprietary.
I will not buy VMware, even though the product is worth more to me than the asking price. It seems obvious to me that if everyone who wants VMware puts their money into freemware instead, there would be ample money to fund a superior Open Source replacement. If you think VMware is a valuable contribution to society, then how much would an Open Source replacement be worth? Answer: much, much more.
Since I emphasize societal benefit so much in this post, a lot of you out there might accuse me of being socialist, and, by hidden implication, anti-capitalist. Well, I've got news for you: Capitalism is socialism, and socialism is capitalism. Folks, that isn't ideology, that's a proven mathematical theorem. Specifically, the first and second welfare theorems of microeconomics state that:
A free market always maximizes net societal welfare,
Any state of maximalization of net societal welfare is achievable through a free market.
I know that socialism/capitalism is not directly on topic but I just wanted to pre-emptively fend off the knee-jerk attack that since I'm against proprietary software I must be against entrepreneurism, capitalism, and the American dream.
By the way, in case you haven't figured it out, the proprietary software market is based on a copyright monopoly, hence is not a free market economy, and that's why this market sucks from both a capitalist and socialist standpoint.
This is stating the obvious here, but there is a relationship between copyright law and software licenses. Let me state it precisely.
When I buy MS Windows, copyright law by default prohibits me from copying the software. If I want to copy the software (for example, by installing Windows) I need to obtain permission from Microsoft. The only way I can obtain permission to copy from Microsoft is to accept their software license, along with whatever it says (for instance, the license might require that I not decompile the software).
So you see that copyright law has everything to do with software licensing. The only reason most people agree to licenses to begin with is that if they do not agree to the license, they may not copy the software (because of copyright law). Nobody would agree to a Microsoft license just for the hell of it. They agree to the license because otherwise they cannot copy the software at all.
That, in a nutshell, is the reason why respecting copyright law requires that you respect software licenses as well.
I posted the gist of this comment already up above. It is relevant here, so I'll post it again.
You apparently think that writing US export law into a license doesn't add any more restrictions to the software than US export law already imposes. This thinking is simple-minded and wrong. It assumes that US export law applies universally, when in fact it doesn't, and it assumes that US export law is logically written, when in fact it isn't.
People who are not US citizens are subject to the software license (through international copyright laws), but they are not subject to US law. By adding provisions of US law into the software license, international developers are subject to US laws that do not otherwise apply to them.
Contrary to what you might expect, US export restrictions do NOT automatically mean there is no legal way to transmit the software to international developers. For instance, PGP is subject to cryptography export laws, yet it was legally transmitted to the outside world through export in book form. If the PGP license had restated US export restrictions, then PGP International would not be able to distribute PGP today! The reason is simple: PGP International is not subject to US export law, but they are subject to international copyright law.
Your post blindly supposes that software written in the US is subject to US export law, which is wrong. Only US residents are exposed to US export law. International developers have absolutely no exposure to US export law, no matter where they obtained the software or how they got it.
I can explain, in a very few words, why writing export restrictions into a license does indeed violate the discrimination clause of the OSD.
People who are not US citizens are subject to the software license (through international copyright laws), but they are not subject to US law. By adding provisions of US law into the software license, international developers are subject to US laws that do not otherwise apply to them.
Contrary to what you might expect, US export restrictions do NOT automatically mean there is no legal way to transmit the software to international developers. For instance, PGP is subject to cryptography export laws, yet it was legally transmitted to the outside world through export in book form. If the PGP license had restated US export restrictions, then PGP International would not be able to distribute PGP today! The reason is simple: PGP International is not subject to US export law, but they are subject to international copyright law.
Your post blindly asserts that all software written in the US is subject to US export law, which is wrong. Only US residents are subject to US export law. International developers have absolutely no exposure to US export law.
Ousterhout fails to make a clear distinction between commercial and proprietary software in his article. Judging by his interchangable use of the two terms, he seems to consider the two equivalent, which is not at all the case.
The debate in my mind is not whether free software benefits from commercial backing. I think everyone here agrees that commercial support for free software is an inevitable development, and that it's good when businesses write free software.
The actual point of contention is whether we need to have proprietary software companies using free software to further their business. When talking about this point, the argument that "programmers need to eat" doesn't apply: as Red Hat Software shows, a software company can feed programmers without writing any proprietary software at all. The jury is still very much out on the role of proprietary software in the free software world.
By failing to distinguish clearly between commercial and proprietary software, Ousterhout pretty much misses the boat with his article.
As best I can tell, you say this license is useful because it helps coders make money so they can eat. I might sympathize with your point, if it weren't so blatantly wrong. Right now I am running a great deal of free software on my computer, and apparently the coders who wrote that software are able to eat.
We wouldn't have Ghostscript without licenses like that (AFPL).
I'm not so sure about that. The programming effort that Ghostscript entails is a fraction of the effort that many other free software projects entail. There's just no way to tell how ghostscript "might" have developed without the AFPL.
People can license their software any way they please. However, software licensed under the NCL is not free software. The NCL is almost identical to the Aladdin Free Public License, which people have already decided is not free.
Even the way in which NCL software reverts to GPL after two years is identical to the way Aladdin Ghostscript reverts to GNU ghostscript after one year. That doesn't make NCL software free software.
The NCL is not a copyleft as defined by the Free Software Foundation. The Aladdin Free Public License is not a free license as defined by the Free Software Foundation. Please do not be misled by these abuses of the terms "free" and "copyleft." Recognize these licenses for what they are: non-free licenses.
I use Enlightenment and Alt-N switching
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Enlightenment 0.15
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· Score: 1
In order to configure E so that Alt-N switches to the N-th virtual desktop (which, in my mind, is highly desirable behavior), you need to download the separate package called enlightenment-conf and run e-conf. e-conf is highly flexible and lets you configure all manner of keyboard shortcuts.
Here is a Wired News article with a few more details on this bill. According to the EFF, the bill actually does nothing for individuals who want to write software. This includes most free software projects.
Any step towards loosening restrictions is a good one, but this bill does not address the concerns that the free software community cares most about.
The reason beta lost out to VHS was because JVC kept VHS an open standard and freely licensed the technology to other companies. When an open standard goes against a closed standard, the open standard almost always wins.
Mp3 vs. VQF is likewise. MP3 is a published ISO standard. VQF is very closed and proprietary. So despite VQF's supposed technical superiority, it's not going to get anywhere in the marketplace. I admit that MP3 is not as open as I'd like it to be. Fraunhofer still enforces their patent rights to MP3. However, VQF is much worse -- the specification is not even made public.
AAC has more promise than either VQF or MP3. It will be interesting to see how open the AAC standard is.
Open source is the choice for me
on
Opera for Linux
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· Score: 1
Like some others here, I will hold out for Mozilla when it is finally released. I just can't see any compelling advantages to using a proprietary browser instead of a free one.
A free software browser offers much more customizability, feature potential, and long term credibility than a proprietary browser. It's also a lot easier to fix bugs in free software. If other people want to use Opera, that's fine. That's their choice. It's not my choice.
John, you are sadly mistaken if you think that people can easily buy computers without Windows. For instance, there is no x86 laptop vendor in the world who will sell you a new laptop without Windows. Even VA Research laptops come bundled with Windows.
Your suggestion that people can avoid Windows by building their own computers also does not apply to laptops. It is simply not possible to build a laptop from parts.
If you can point me to a single vendor who will, from the start, sell me an Intel x86-based laptop without making me buy Windows, then I will concede your point. Until then, you must accept the fact that there is currently no choice available in this market.
Your analogy is flawed. The hardware address of your ethernet card is not ever broadcast over the internet. It is only broadcast over your local subnet. So it is impossible to track people by their ethernet card. Intel, on the other hand, has stated very clearly that the CPU ID will be broadcast over the internet.
Besides, many people on the internet don't even have ethernet cards. Ever heard of modems?
I don't need to comment on why Intel CPU ID is bad--see Anne Observer's comments below
I am with the majority of posters here. I cannot see any way Intel's CPU ID can possibly be useful to anyone.
Intel has given two arguments in favor of CPU ID. The first is that software licenses can be tied to CPUs. The second is that e-commerce sites can use it to identify customers. Both arguments are bogus.
Tying software licenses to CPU ID would prevent software vendors from selling to owners of AMD chips, Cyrix chips, or the existing installed Intel Pentium I/II base. No software vendor would ever go for that.
If e-commerce sites required CPU ID for transactions, they would in effect be limiting their customer base to Intel Pentium III based PCs running Microsoft Windows. Well, guess what? Not all internet clients are PCs. Of the PCs, not all of them are Intel. Of the Intel ones, not all of them are Pentium IIIs. And not all the Intel Pentium IIIs run Windows.
So are e-commerce sites going to require CPU ID? Not unless they want to royally piss off Mac users, Linux users, and anyone who already owns a 486, Pentium, or Pentium II today.
Many mp3s are illegally distributed under US law. But illegal does not automatically imply wrong. Indeed, for a long period of time it was illegal to free someone else's slaves in the US. I'm not comparing mp3s to slavery. I'm just saying that the law should not be automatically given the moral force that you ascribe to it. We're grown ups. We can make our own decisions about the morality of the law, thank you.
Naturally the record companies are pissed about losing money, and consumers are happy about saving money. Moral judgment should compare the welfare of the two parties and the consequences that changes imply to total creative output. In this discussion, the law is completely irrelevant.
The record labels are leveraging their existing monopoly in physical media distribution to obstruct the development of the nascent digital music market. It is not entirely clear that such collusion is legal under the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. Leveraging monopoly power in one market to gain an advantage in another is (rightly) prohibited by the Sherman Act.
Moreover, the recording industry's actions are not only accountable to law. Just because something is legal does not mean it is moral. Remember that slavery was legal in the US for a long time.
I don't have this book myself. I think that people who know what they're doing can successfully avoid nearly all e-mail spam, but for people who don't know where to start, this book could be a good place to start.
I try to avoid the practice of obfuscating or protecting my e-mail address, on the grounds that there are better ways to protect yourself from spam. Hiding your e-mail address is just dodging the main issue. No matter how much you hide it, they will get your address. You'll have to put up sooner or later.
Here's what I do to avoid e-mail spam. I think these steps work rather well. My e-mail address is publicized on slashdot, my home page, Usenet archives, and various other places, and yet I get very little spam (once a month at most, never more than once from the same place).
Use the Spam Bouncer to filter out all the spam that the author of the program knows about (which is quite a lot; 200 kb of filters at last count), and send simulated bounce messages back to the spammers.
Run blackmail over sendmail to block relays and allow for additional manual filtering (e.g. if Netscape, Microsoft, or some loser sends me unwanted mail, they're not ever mailing me again:)
Between all of these, I live a nearly spam-free life without having to worry about hiding my mail address. If this sounds like heaven to you, then, well, why don't you try these things too ^_^
A lot of posters here are offended that Slashdotters would find imacfloppy.com useless. Yet, the fact is, anyone who runs Linux and knows what they are doing would find this site useless. There are tons of ways to transfer data on a Linux box:
distributed file systems: NFS, AFS, Coda
internet protocols: FTP, HTTP, SMB, e-mail
command line utilities: rcp, scp
Some of these methods even secure your data in transit. All of these methods require no third party who might possibly leave you hanging with service glitches, or get their grubby little hands on your data.
For Linux users, if you leave your computer connected to the internet all the time, there is no excuse for using a third party for data transfer. If you can't transfer data to and from your own computer on the internet at will, then you're not doing things right.
So, my main objection to imacfloppy.com is that it feeds off user ignorance to sell a service that really isn't necessary. By implying that imacfloppy.com is the best way to transfer data, the site delivers misinformation bordering on fraud. Every user of imacfloppy.com is one more person who isn't using the computer the way it could be used. We have enough of this type of behavior already. We don't need to have web sites encouraging it.
Many people here are saying that $1 is a reasonable amount for the effort that Apple has spent developing this technology. As the original submitter of this story, let me explain why the license fee is a bad thing.
I do not object to charging money for a product. I object to charging money for a standard. Where would we be if all makers of IBM compatible PCs had to pay a license fee to IBM? What if IDE and SCSI were toll roads? What if VHS had required license fees?
The assertion that the fee is small is not adequate defense. Months back, the Open Group attempted to levy a "small" fee for X11R6.4. Even though the fee was small, people balked. The problem with a small fee is that it might not stay small.
For those of you with short memories, the VHS story is instructive. Back in the 80's, JVC invented the VHS standard and held numerous patents on it. Although JVC made money from VHS products, they did not charge anyone a single cent of licensing fees for the standard. Result: VHS trounced the competing (but closed) Beta standard, which everyone agrees is technically superior.
Restaurants don't buy Pepsi because Pepsi is made by the same company that owns competitors such as Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut. In the same vein, licensing fees for FireWire will discourage hardware vendors from popularizing it. It may be too early to say this, but I am already ready to chalk up FireWire as yet another good Apple technology killed by their short-sighted management.
Sigh. I made a mistake. What I meant to say above was: "[the article] implied very strongly that popular e-mail encryption programs use RSA to encrypt the whole e-mail."
The article didn't actually name PGP. Instead, it claimed RSA was widely used to encrypt letters. It's not such a stretch to extend that to e-mails.
This article just screams "snake oil" all over. The claims made in the article are completely unjustified. In the field of cryptography, no algorithm or idea is considered worthy unless it has been publicly scrutinized and tested with time.
Consider the following points:
"her code can encrypt a letter in just one minute - a widely used encryption standard called RSA would take 30 minutes." No justification is given, and indeed we all know that PGP does not take 30 minutes to encrypt e-mail.
"She has also proven that her code is as secure as RSA." Again, no justification is given. Proofs of correctness are rare in computer science. Moreover, there are many different levels and definitions of security in the field (known plaintext, chosen ciphertext, complete break, etc.) and this quote does not cite any of them.
Consider the source: Most of the material is quoted from her father.
I urge everyone to first read the Snake Oil FAQ before taking this and other similar articles at face value.
Swanson predicted that FireWire could supplant SCSI but that IDE would survive. Let's ignore the SCSI bit (which has been thrashed to death already) and focus on the IDE bit. I don't see any conceivable way that SCSI could die while IDE survives.
Many people have put forth passionate arguments explaining just how much better FireWire is than SCSI. These same arguments are just as damning against IDE, if not more so. Combined with the fact that FireWire is targeted at the "low-end" consumer market (which is the only market that uses IDE), it seems absolutely incredible to me that consumer markets would reject SCSI on grounds of being inferior to FireWire, while still accepting IDE.
I admit that IDE has a rather large installed base. However, at least one person here has argued that the size of the SCSI installed base is no defense against FireWire. Turning that argument around, I posit (for the same reasons) that the size of the IDE installed base will not prevent IDE from being supplanted by FireWire.
I hope that my remarks have convinced some people that at least one of Swanson's statements is wrong.
You claim that once the Firewire interface gets faster than magnetic media, SCSI has no further advantages over FireWire. Nothing could be further from the truth.
SCSI is unsurpassed in dealing with multiple peripherals on one bus because of the intelligence of the SCSI protocol and controller cards. If you fill a FireWire line to the max with devices, the CPU will run out of cycles to service them all. By contrast, if you fill a SCSI bus to the max, all your devices hum along smoothly because the SCSI card manages everything well.
I agree that FireWire has some incredible advantages which will help it dominate the consumer market. However, SCSI will survive in the high end, not just (as you say) the very high end. Many servers require the intelligent I/O handling that SCSI provides. It's not just the NSA that needs SCSI.
Off topic points:
SCSI development will certainly continue, and you're right, it does have a considerable head start.
Mixing fast and slow SCSI devices in general doesn't hurt anything in the least. The only type of mixing that does hurt performance is mixing Ultra2 (LVD) devices with slower devices.
Slashdot Mirror
I could not disagree more. Furthermore, I will be the first to way that I would pay the $99 student price for a GPL'd VMware. I am not against selling software. I am against the common practice whereby companies withhold (i.e. steal) millions of dollars of value from society by keeping their software proprietary.
I will not buy VMware, even though the product is worth more to me than the asking price. It seems obvious to me that if everyone who wants VMware puts their money into freemware instead, there would be ample money to fund a superior Open Source replacement. If you think VMware is a valuable contribution to society, then how much would an Open Source replacement be worth? Answer: much, much more.
Since I emphasize societal benefit so much in this post, a lot of you out there might accuse me of being socialist, and, by hidden implication, anti-capitalist. Well, I've got news for you: Capitalism is socialism, and socialism is capitalism. Folks, that isn't ideology, that's a proven mathematical theorem. Specifically, the first and second welfare theorems of microeconomics state that:
- A free market always maximizes net societal welfare,
- Any state of maximalization of net societal welfare is achievable through a free market.
I know that socialism/capitalism is not directly on topic but I just wanted to pre-emptively fend off the knee-jerk attack that since I'm against proprietary software I must be against entrepreneurism, capitalism, and the American dream.By the way, in case you haven't figured it out, the proprietary software market is based on a copyright monopoly, hence is not a free market economy, and that's why this market sucks from both a capitalist and socialist standpoint.
When I buy MS Windows, copyright law by default prohibits me from copying the software. If I want to copy the software (for example, by installing Windows) I need to obtain permission from Microsoft. The only way I can obtain permission to copy from Microsoft is to accept their software license, along with whatever it says (for instance, the license might require that I not decompile the software).
So you see that copyright law has everything to do with software licensing. The only reason most people agree to licenses to begin with is that if they do not agree to the license, they may not copy the software (because of copyright law). Nobody would agree to a Microsoft license just for the hell of it. They agree to the license because otherwise they cannot copy the software at all.
That, in a nutshell, is the reason why respecting copyright law requires that you respect software licenses as well.
You apparently think that writing US export law into a license doesn't add any more restrictions to the software than US export law already imposes. This thinking is simple-minded and wrong. It assumes that US export law applies universally, when in fact it doesn't, and it assumes that US export law is logically written, when in fact it isn't.
- People who are not US citizens are subject to the software license (through international copyright laws), but they are not subject to US law. By adding provisions of US law into the software license, international developers are subject to US laws that do not otherwise apply to them.
- Contrary to what you might expect, US export restrictions do NOT automatically mean there is no legal way to transmit the software to international developers. For instance, PGP is subject to cryptography export laws, yet it was legally transmitted to the outside world through export in book form. If the PGP license had restated US export restrictions, then PGP International would not be able to distribute PGP today! The reason is simple: PGP International is not subject to US export law, but they are subject to international copyright law.
Your post blindly supposes that software written in the US is subject to US export law, which is wrong. Only US residents are exposed to US export law. International developers have absolutely no exposure to US export law, no matter where they obtained the software or how they got it.- People who are not US citizens are subject to the software license (through international copyright laws), but they are not subject to US law. By adding provisions of US law into the software license, international developers are subject to US laws that do not otherwise apply to them.
- Contrary to what you might expect, US export restrictions do NOT automatically mean there is no legal way to transmit the software to international developers. For instance, PGP is subject to cryptography export laws, yet it was legally transmitted to the outside world through export in book form. If the PGP license had restated US export restrictions, then PGP International would not be able to distribute PGP today! The reason is simple: PGP International is not subject to US export law, but they are subject to international copyright law.
Your post blindly asserts that all software written in the US is subject to US export law, which is wrong. Only US residents are subject to US export law. International developers have absolutely no exposure to US export law.See my post below (which bears the same title) for a detailed explanation of the bare-bones argument presented here.
The debate in my mind is not whether free software benefits from commercial backing. I think everyone here agrees that commercial support for free software is an inevitable development, and that it's good when businesses write free software.
The actual point of contention is whether we need to have proprietary software companies using free software to further their business. When talking about this point, the argument that "programmers need to eat" doesn't apply: as Red Hat Software shows, a software company can feed programmers without writing any proprietary software at all. The jury is still very much out on the role of proprietary software in the free software world.
By failing to distinguish clearly between commercial and proprietary software, Ousterhout pretty much misses the boat with his article.
We wouldn't have Ghostscript without licenses like that (AFPL).
I'm not so sure about that. The programming effort that Ghostscript entails is a fraction of the effort that many other free software projects entail. There's just no way to tell how ghostscript "might" have developed without the AFPL.
Even the way in which NCL software reverts to GPL after two years is identical to the way Aladdin Ghostscript reverts to GNU ghostscript after one year. That doesn't make NCL software free software.
The NCL is not a copyleft as defined by the Free Software Foundation. The Aladdin Free Public License is not a free license as defined by the Free Software Foundation. Please do not be misled by these abuses of the terms "free" and "copyleft." Recognize these licenses for what they are: non-free licenses.
In order to configure E so that Alt-N switches to the N-th virtual desktop (which, in my mind, is highly desirable behavior), you need to download the separate package called enlightenment-conf and run e-conf. e-conf is highly flexible and lets you configure all manner of keyboard shortcuts.
Any step towards loosening restrictions is a good one, but this bill does not address the concerns that the free software community cares most about.
The reason beta lost out to VHS was because JVC kept VHS an open standard and freely licensed the technology to other companies. When an open standard goes against a closed standard, the open standard almost always wins.
Mp3 vs. VQF is likewise. MP3 is a published ISO standard. VQF is very closed and proprietary. So despite VQF's supposed technical superiority, it's not going to get anywhere in the marketplace. I admit that MP3 is not as open as I'd like it to be. Fraunhofer still enforces their patent rights to MP3. However, VQF is much worse -- the specification is not even made public.
AAC has more promise than either VQF or MP3. It will be interesting to see how open the AAC standard is.
Like some others here, I will hold out for Mozilla when it is finally released. I just can't see any compelling advantages to using a proprietary browser instead of a free one.
A free software browser offers much more customizability, feature potential, and long term credibility than a proprietary browser. It's also a lot easier to fix bugs in free software. If other people want to use Opera, that's fine. That's their choice. It's not my choice.
John, you are sadly mistaken if you think that people can easily buy computers without Windows. For instance, there is no x86 laptop vendor in the world who will sell you a new laptop without Windows. Even VA Research laptops come bundled with Windows.
Your suggestion that people can avoid Windows by building their own computers also does not apply to laptops. It is simply not possible to build a laptop from parts.
If you can point me to a single vendor who will, from the start, sell me an Intel x86-based laptop without making me buy Windows, then I will concede your point. Until then, you must accept the fact that there is currently no choice available in this market.
You make it sound much easier than it really is. There does not exist a single vendor of laptops that will sell you a new laptop without Windows.
Even VA Research laptops come with Windows, although it is not installed by default.
Besides, many people on the internet don't even have ethernet cards. Ever heard of modems?
I don't need to comment on why Intel CPU ID is bad--see Anne Observer's comments below
Intel has given two arguments in favor of CPU ID. The first is that software licenses can be tied to CPUs. The second is that e-commerce sites can use it to identify customers. Both arguments are bogus.
Tying software licenses to CPU ID would prevent software vendors from selling to owners of AMD chips, Cyrix chips, or the existing installed Intel Pentium I/II base. No software vendor would ever go for that.
If e-commerce sites required CPU ID for transactions, they would in effect be limiting their customer base to Intel Pentium III based PCs running Microsoft Windows. Well, guess what? Not all internet clients are PCs. Of the PCs, not all of them are Intel. Of the Intel ones, not all of them are Pentium IIIs. And not all the Intel Pentium IIIs run Windows.
So are e-commerce sites going to require CPU ID? Not unless they want to royally piss off Mac users, Linux users, and anyone who already owns a 486, Pentium, or Pentium II today.
Naturally the record companies are pissed about losing money, and consumers are happy about saving money. Moral judgment should compare the welfare of the two parties and the consequences that changes imply to total creative output. In this discussion, the law is completely irrelevant.
Moreover, the recording industry's actions are not only accountable to law. Just because something is legal does not mean it is moral. Remember that slavery was legal in the US for a long time.
I try to avoid the practice of obfuscating or protecting my e-mail address, on the grounds that there are better ways to protect yourself from spam. Hiding your e-mail address is just dodging the main issue. No matter how much you hide it, they will get your address. You'll have to put up sooner or later.
Here's what I do to avoid e-mail spam. I think these steps work rather well. My e-mail address is publicized on slashdot, my home page, Usenet archives, and various other places, and yet I get very little spam (once a month at most, never more than once from the same place).
- Subscribe to the Realtime Blackhole List to dodge known spam hosts.
- Use the Spam Bouncer to filter out all the spam that the author of the program knows about (which is quite a lot; 200 kb of filters at last count), and send simulated bounce messages back to the spammers.
- Run blackmail over sendmail to block relays and allow for additional manual filtering (e.g. if Netscape, Microsoft, or some loser sends me unwanted mail, they're not ever mailing me again
:)
Between all of these, I live a nearly spam-free life without having to worry about hiding my mail address. If this sounds like heaven to you, then, well, why don't you try these things too ^_^- distributed file systems: NFS, AFS, Coda
- internet protocols: FTP, HTTP, SMB, e-mail
- command line utilities: rcp, scp
Some of these methods even secure your data in transit. All of these methods require no third party who might possibly leave you hanging with service glitches, or get their grubby little hands on your data.For Linux users, if you leave your computer connected to the internet all the time, there is no excuse for using a third party for data transfer. If you can't transfer data to and from your own computer on the internet at will, then you're not doing things right.
So, my main objection to imacfloppy.com is that it feeds off user ignorance to sell a service that really isn't necessary. By implying that imacfloppy.com is the best way to transfer data, the site delivers misinformation bordering on fraud. Every user of imacfloppy.com is one more person who isn't using the computer the way it could be used. We have enough of this type of behavior already. We don't need to have web sites encouraging it.
I do not object to charging money for a product. I object to charging money for a standard. Where would we be if all makers of IBM compatible PCs had to pay a license fee to IBM? What if IDE and SCSI were toll roads? What if VHS had required license fees?
The assertion that the fee is small is not adequate defense. Months back, the Open Group attempted to levy a "small" fee for X11R6.4. Even though the fee was small, people balked. The problem with a small fee is that it might not stay small.
For those of you with short memories, the VHS story is instructive. Back in the 80's, JVC invented the VHS standard and held numerous patents on it. Although JVC made money from VHS products, they did not charge anyone a single cent of licensing fees for the standard. Result: VHS trounced the competing (but closed) Beta standard, which everyone agrees is technically superior.
Restaurants don't buy Pepsi because Pepsi is made by the same company that owns competitors such as Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut. In the same vein, licensing fees for FireWire will discourage hardware vendors from popularizing it. It may be too early to say this, but I am already ready to chalk up FireWire as yet another good Apple technology killed by their short-sighted management.
The article didn't actually name PGP. Instead, it claimed RSA was widely used to encrypt letters. It's not such a stretch to extend that to e-mails.
Consider the following points:
- "her code can encrypt a letter in just one minute - a widely used encryption standard called RSA would take 30 minutes." No justification is given, and indeed we all know that PGP does not take 30 minutes to encrypt e-mail.
- "She has also proven that her code is as secure as RSA." Again, no justification is given. Proofs of correctness are rare in computer science. Moreover, there are many different levels and definitions of security in the field (known plaintext, chosen ciphertext, complete break, etc.) and this quote does not cite any of them.
- Consider the source: Most of the material is quoted from her father.
I urge everyone to first read the Snake Oil FAQ before taking this and other similar articles at face value.Many people have put forth passionate arguments explaining just how much better FireWire is than SCSI. These same arguments are just as damning against IDE, if not more so. Combined with the fact that FireWire is targeted at the "low-end" consumer market (which is the only market that uses IDE), it seems absolutely incredible to me that consumer markets would reject SCSI on grounds of being inferior to FireWire, while still accepting IDE.
I admit that IDE has a rather large installed base. However, at least one person here has argued that the size of the SCSI installed base is no defense against FireWire. Turning that argument around, I posit (for the same reasons) that the size of the IDE installed base will not prevent IDE from being supplanted by FireWire.
I hope that my remarks have convinced some people that at least one of Swanson's statements is wrong.
SCSI is unsurpassed in dealing with multiple peripherals on one bus because of the intelligence of the SCSI protocol and controller cards. If you fill a FireWire line to the max with devices, the CPU will run out of cycles to service them all. By contrast, if you fill a SCSI bus to the max, all your devices hum along smoothly because the SCSI card manages everything well.
I agree that FireWire has some incredible advantages which will help it dominate the consumer market. However, SCSI will survive in the high end, not just (as you say) the very high end. Many servers require the intelligent I/O handling that SCSI provides. It's not just the NSA that needs SCSI.
Off topic points: