Please, don't take the post out of context. I have been told numbers of both $1000 or $2000 for opening an E-trade account. For point 2, I know you don't have to take them up on it. Regarding point 3, true, but a.fi address is a good tip-off. The point is, that it is a spam.
Regarding point 4, I have said before that I am glad they are making this offer. I simply object to the delivery (spam), and thus by extension, the possible ways the list for spamming may have been made.
Regarding point 5, it was an honest question, I have no idea what the correct answer is.
Regarding point 6, certainly it is nice to be given the chance. It is a nice offer. I object to the delivery.
My objection is not to the message -- I think it's a great idea! The objection is to the delivery. This is just the sort of thing that spammers need to legitimize their actions, and shouldn't be used. I am glad to see them offering the community these options; I am just not glad to see them doing so in this way.
You can argue about semantics if you wish, but the point remains.
I don't object to the offer, but more so to being spammed about it. I should have thought that they would have been more responsible about it. They must be mining e-mail addresses of their competitors or something....
They apparently used some sort of software to snarf e-mails from the Debian list of packages for people to spam. Outside of Debian developers, I don't know who else received them.
For one thing, you are commiting a fallacy: just because RMS says something is so (or rather, just because you claim he says it) does not make it so. Granted, I agree with him on a large number of issues, but it's better to see for yourself why something is so.
It is not fundamentally incompatible with the GPL to include the GPL. The GPL text clearly states that it should not be modified. This is not a problem.
I fail to see the problem with not specifying those sections that can not be modified (excepting, of course, the GPL which so states).
Yes, pay do need to offer the source to your friend. (Keep in mind, it will be on the Web, so this is not as hard as you may think.) Good for you! Your friend then derives the same benefits here as from other GPL software, which has the same restrictions.
Finally, I can say that, as an author of the book, it was not my choice to use the GPL; there were other factors at work. However, I am happy with the result and satisfied with its freeness.
It's based on Debian 2.1. You are correct, the binary-i386 set for 2.1 is indeed a 2-CD set. However, the first CD contains all the more essential software; the second has the "extras". So, the book ships with the first CD in order to keep the cost down.
We are extremely pleased to have had this opportunity to work with such a major publishing firm (MCP/New Riders) on a project of such importance with a Free license such as this. Our ideals are indeed spreading, and this can only be a Good Thing.
I also want to say a big thank-you to New Riders Publishing for their extremely friendly stance on this book with regard to the Free Software movement. The book is licensed entirely under the GPL; such is specified not only in the book also by contract. Ossama and I will be publishing the LaTeX and EPS sources as well as a HTML version online within a week or two -- possibly sooner, depending on how the logistics are worked out.
The copyright on the book is assigned to Software in the Public Interest, Debian's parent organization.
There seem to be some rather strange comments in this area from people that do not quite understand the GPL. The entire source code will be available online; GPL does not require the source code to be available on CD-ROM. Yes, this does mean LaTeX and EPS files.
A portion of the sale of each book will go to the FSF, and Mr. Othman and myself will, of course, get some royalties as well.
For those of you wishing to find more details, you may refer to my post to debian-devel.
The book does include a CD-ROM of Debian. The book should be appearing in bookstores in about three weeks; online bookstores like Amazon, B&N, and Borders should be accepting pre-orders already for those interested.
I don't understand why everyone is so excited. We already have Alphas that are far faster than this, and have better price/performance in the high end. x86 is outdated, outmoded, and deserves to die. Why not use something better? Alphas are cost-effective and fast. There are also fast Sparcs, but they're more expensive so I can understand the resistance there.
Perhaps it is that AOL is almost completely based on proprietary software? You can't even use AOL's Internet service without Windows. Obviously, the same is true of many of their other acquisitions.
Next time, try the facts. First, their chips simply can NOT out do any other's any day. My 600MHz Alpha box, purchased last year for $1000 less than the dual PII model that would have come closest to giving me the same speed, still is faster than anything Intel has, and from the looks of it, will be for some years to come.
Intel's CPUs have a very poor architecture. This is perhaps one reason for the animosity. How many times have you heard people complaining about the stupid BIOS on PCs, the lack of registers on x86s, etc? Well, it's mostly Intel's fault.
Also, have you been intentionally ignoring the other buzz about them? That they intentionally put incorrect information in their manuals? That sort of thing is bothersome as well. There is a reason that the DoJ has been investigating Intel.
This is nothing but an extension of the old Usenet notion of kill files (now called scoring in GNUS).
Killfiles, or their more powerful score file cousins, can be great. There are some people who just never have anything useful to say. And when you receive hundreds or thousands of pieces of mail a day, you don't read every one anyway. Scoring simply helps to narrow them down in a useful, SELF-DEFINED way. I would do the exact same thing mentally. It is a perfect use of the power of computers -- to free up my mind for better things.
Now, the netnanny stuff is different. There, people don't specifically decide to ban things. Rather, others ban them for people. This, I agree, is bad. But please don't lump them all together as one.
For some reason, this version of the Jargon File has a lot of inaccuracies. For instance, see the entry for Borg. The show is "Next", not "New" Generation, and resistance is "futile", not "useless". See also his editorializing over the "Eric conspiracy" and the "Halloween Documents" (note: the effect on Microsoft was not nearly that of shutting up their PR for six months.)
If Compaq cares about Linux, why are they letting em86 (the program that runs x86 binaries on Alpha) flounder? I notice that they recently removed it from their Alpha Migration Tools page (http://www.digital.com/amt/), too. Because of this, em86 has been languishing. It can't run a modern Netscape without crashing quickly, it can't run libc6 programs very well, etc. Whereas their FX!32 program for NT is being kept very well up-to-date (and always was better than em86 anyway).
It would be nice if the source code would compile, or they'd at least provide binaries for my architecture. Yes, I did edit the Makefile for __64BIT__ as the.h files want.
There are many lines of these sorts of things:
m_misc.c:485: initializer element for `defaults[41].defaultvalue' is not computa ble at load time m_misc.c:486: initializer element for `defaults[42].defaultvalue' is not computa ble at load time m_misc.c:487: initializer element for `defaults[43].defaultvalue' is not computa ble at load time m_misc.c:488: initializer element for `defaults[44].defaultvalue' is not computa ble at load time m_misc.c: In function `M_LoadDefaults': m_misc.c:600: warning: cast from pointer to integer of different size make: *** [m_misc.o] Error 1
Off to figure out just what it's goofing on, I guess.
The topic says "Supreme Court Rules Algorithms Can Be Patented." That is not correct. The Supreme Court refused to even look at the case. This means that they have not issued any ruling on it, and means that they may still rule on it in the future.
Umm, did you even read the post you linked to at http://lwn.net/1999/0107/a/lt-isdn.html? It's not Linus's fault; he's doing what he should. Kick the ISDN4Linux people instead. Geez.
I cannot listen to it because RealPlayer is not free software, plain and simple. There is no RealPlayer for AlphaLinux, PowerPC Linux, SparcLinux, etc. Nor is there any RealPlayer for many other platforms. If RealPlayer had source available, it would be trivial to compile it on these platforms.
Slashdot Mirror
Regarding point 4, I have said before that I am glad they are making this offer. I simply object to the delivery (spam), and thus by extension, the possible ways the list for spamming may have been made.
Regarding point 5, it was an honest question, I have no idea what the correct answer is.
Regarding point 6, certainly it is nice to be given the chance. It is a nice offer. I object to the delivery.
My objection is not to the message -- I think it's a great idea! The objection is to the delivery. This is just the sort of thing that spammers need to legitimize their actions, and shouldn't be used. I am glad to see them offering the community these options; I am just not glad to see them doing so in this way.
I don't object to the offer, but more so to being spammed about it. I should have thought that they would have been more responsible about it. They must be mining e-mail addresses of their competitors or something....
They apparently used some sort of software to snarf e-mails from the Debian list of packages for people to spam. Outside of Debian developers, I don't know who else received them.
It is not fundamentally incompatible with the GPL to include the GPL. The GPL text clearly states that it should not be modified. This is not a problem.
I fail to see the problem with not specifying those sections that can not be modified (excepting, of course, the GPL which so states).
Yes, pay do need to offer the source to your friend. (Keep in mind, it will be on the Web, so this is not as hard as you may think.) Good for you! Your friend then derives the same benefits here as from other GPL software, which has the same restrictions.
Finally, I can say that, as an author of the book, it was not my choice to use the GPL; there were other factors at work. However, I am happy with the result and satisfied with its freeness.
It's based on Debian 2.1. You are correct, the binary-i386 set for 2.1 is indeed a 2-CD set. However, the first CD contains all the more essential software; the second has the "extras". So, the book ships with the first CD in order to keep the cost down.
I also want to say a big thank-you to New Riders Publishing for their extremely friendly stance on this book with regard to the Free Software movement. The book is licensed entirely under the GPL; such is specified not only in the book also by contract. Ossama and I will be publishing the LaTeX and EPS sources as well as a HTML version online within a week or two -- possibly sooner, depending on how the logistics are worked out.
The copyright on the book is assigned to Software in the Public Interest, Debian's parent organization.
There seem to be some rather strange comments in this area from people that do not quite understand the GPL. The entire source code will be available online; GPL does not require the source code to be available on CD-ROM. Yes, this does mean LaTeX and EPS files.
A portion of the sale of each book will go to the FSF, and Mr. Othman and myself will, of course, get some royalties as well.
For those of you wishing to find more details, you may refer to my post to debian-devel.
The book does include a CD-ROM of Debian. The book should be appearing in bookstores in about three weeks; online bookstores like Amazon, B&N, and Borders should be accepting pre-orders already for those interested.
Thanks, John Goerzen
I don't understand why everyone is so excited. We already have Alphas that are far faster than this, and have better price/performance in the high end. x86 is outdated, outmoded, and deserves to die. Why not use something better? Alphas are cost-effective and fast. There are also fast Sparcs, but they're more expensive so I can understand the resistance there.
Perhaps it is that AOL is almost completely based on proprietary software? You can't even use AOL's Internet service without Windows. Obviously, the same is true of many of their other acquisitions.
Intel's CPUs have a very poor architecture. This is perhaps one reason for the animosity. How many times have you heard people complaining about the stupid BIOS on PCs, the lack of registers on x86s, etc? Well, it's mostly Intel's fault.
Also, have you been intentionally ignoring the other buzz about them? That they intentionally put incorrect information in their manuals? That sort of thing is bothersome as well. There is a reason that the DoJ has been investigating Intel.
Killfiles, or their more powerful score file cousins, can be great. There are some people who just never have anything useful to say. And when you receive hundreds or thousands of pieces of mail a day, you don't read every one anyway. Scoring simply helps to narrow them down in a useful, SELF-DEFINED way. I would do the exact same thing mentally. It is a perfect use of the power of computers -- to free up my mind for better things.
Now, the netnanny stuff is different. There, people don't specifically decide to ban things. Rather, others ban them for people. This, I agree, is bad. But please don't lump them all together as one.
For some reason, this version of the Jargon File has a lot of inaccuracies. For instance, see the entry for Borg. The show is "Next", not "New" Generation, and resistance is "futile", not "useless". See also his editorializing over the "Eric conspiracy" and the "Halloween Documents" (note: the effect on Microsoft was not nearly that of shutting up their PR for six months.)
If Compaq cares about Linux, why are they letting em86 (the program that runs x86 binaries on Alpha) flounder? I notice that they recently removed it from their Alpha Migration Tools page (http://www.digital.com/amt/), too. Because of this, em86 has been languishing. It can't run a modern Netscape without crashing quickly, it can't run libc6 programs very well, etc. Whereas their FX!32 program for NT is being kept very well up-to-date (and always was better than em86 anyway).
It would be nice if the source code would compile, or they'd at least provide binaries for my architecture. Yes, I did edit the Makefile for __64BIT__ as the .h files want.
There are many lines of these sorts of things:
m_misc.c:485: initializer element for `defaults[41].defaultvalue' is not computa
ble at load time
m_misc.c:486: initializer element for `defaults[42].defaultvalue' is not computa
ble at load time
m_misc.c:487: initializer element for `defaults[43].defaultvalue' is not computa
ble at load time
m_misc.c:488: initializer element for `defaults[44].defaultvalue' is not computa
ble at load time
m_misc.c: In function `M_LoadDefaults':
m_misc.c:600: warning: cast from pointer to integer of different size
make: *** [m_misc.o] Error 1
Off to figure out just what it's goofing on, I guess.
The topic says "Supreme Court Rules Algorithms Can Be Patented." That is not correct. The Supreme Court refused to even look at the case. This means that they have not issued any ruling on it, and means that they may still rule on it in the future.
Umm, did you even read the post you linked to at http://lwn.net/1999/0107/a/lt-isdn.html? It's not Linus's fault; he's doing what he should. Kick the ISDN4Linux people instead. Geez.
Silly? SILLY? No, VALID!
I cannot listen to it because RealPlayer is not free software, plain and simple. There is no RealPlayer for AlphaLinux, PowerPC Linux, SparcLinux, etc. Nor is there any RealPlayer for many other platforms. If RealPlayer had source available, it would be trivial to compile it on these platforms.
Free software is bad. RMS is right.
Anybody have this in MP3, au, or some playable format? RealAudio isn't available on most Linux platforms.
Isn't it ironic that one has to use non-free software to listen to someone advocating free software?