They are concerned about the use of brain image scans as an adjunct tool for interrogation of captured terrorists - and yet have seldom (if ever) lifted a finger to defend my rights under the 9th and 10th amendments, and NEVER defended the individual's rights under the 2nd amendment.
Come on ACLU - you have more important things to spend your resources on. Start with US Citizens first.
"CLASSIFIED CPU's should be at least 3 feet from UNCLASSIFIED CPU's - Cooties?"
No. RFI, couling induction and TEMPEST concerns are what I was told. Although only God knows why 3 ft is the magic number - and LCD vs tube doesn't seem to matter.
Actually, since RMS lieks to bring moralityinto it:
Isn't the BSD icense the mor moral of the two?
It doenst hold a legal gunto the head of the person reciveing the work. It instead depends on their generousity and choosing to "do the right thing" in contributing back additions and changes. Volunarily!
So which is the better moral act - a forced one under threat of coercion, or one voltionally made of one's own sense of justice? Not trolling, but just saying you can make a moral case for BSD being morally superior, from a deontological point of view for ethics (i.e. the ends do *not* justify the means).
As Kant himself said:
Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end (in himself/yourself).
So from a deontological poitn of view, the BSD is moral and the GPL is immoral?/boggle.
"Sir, if you're making $50 an hour, you certainly can afford the bandwidth."
50 an hour is a pittance for consultants - remember you have to pay self employment taxes, eat your down time, market and advertise, eat the time you spend on bookeeping, eat the accounting and tx prep pro fees, etc. This isnt 50/hour punch a clock at the local best-buy geeksquad. I doubt, given your remark, that you have ever run your own business.
And I stipulated rural - ther are still plenty of areas in the US that you cannot get a good high bandwidth connection to (no bale, and DSL is too far), and which have poor southern visibility (mountain areas), so satellite is not an answer. Its nto ananswer anyway - hav you read the restrictions on bandwidth and data volumes that are in place on those services?
So go call your local provider and ask how much a 15 mile T-1 from the nearest CO will cost. THEN com back and tell me 50/hr can afford that. Local RBOCs and even the CLECs will rape you on custom data lines out past the 'burbs.
"Ignore the "cost" you state: this is not the cost of doing the work, but the opportunity cost."
Your words sound as if they were spoken by someone who has never run their own business...
It is the consultants *time* that has value - its the one thing we have that we cannot ever get back. Time spent processing GPL source requests is time not spent with family, or time not spend earning a living to pay bills, student loans, etc. Or even time not spent doing what one enjoys - hacking, drinking, etc.
Suppose that consultant were to get 100 requests a week, and cannot meet them in any sort of a timely fashion without cutting into his work time - your way of thinking would obligate him to become a pauper for the convenience of the GPL at the demand of people who recieved a gift from him!
So it is reasonable for a person to charge what you call "opportunity cost", which becomes a direct cost if you are going to coerce him to do so under threat of legal action via the GPL.
To put it the way I see it, basically, when you start making demands of my time for your convenience after I do you the favor of donating code to freely, your freedom stops and mine begin! You have no right to dicate how I supply the source outside of what the GPL stipulates, only that I supply it and at a reasonable cost. And reasonable costs can be charged as long as they are directly related to the distribution of the source. My time and your consumption of it are a reasonable cost to charge.
My solution would be to amend the GPL to allow distros to simply supply the diffs - and to deem that to be sufficient if the larger complete source tree is freely available elsewhere. Its seems more common-sense to say one need not carry the whole upstream distro if all one is doing is tweaking a few things in a few files in the kernel and associatied utilities, etc.
Do that and you somewhat get around this.
Or use a BSD-style license and avoid the whole mess.;-)
"Although it is costly, all of the underground issues mentioned (including long term replacement of aging cables) can be dealt with if proper planning is done UP FRONT."
Have you ever seen anyone in Clearwater or St Pete plan anything well in advance?
I used to work for old Vision Cable out on the beach as a second job when I was stationed at MacDill. So I know exactly how crappy the infrastructure is, and the kind of restricitons it places on cable plant - and how bad the tax base is with the snowbirds.
I left it at $50 because I didn't want to trigger an argument over the amount being outrageous - some of our younger./'ers werestill in middle school when the big money was still around. I was making $1600/day for day-to-day contracts (T&M) or 1000/day with a minimum buy of a 10 day block; thats the rate, expenses were additional of course (plane tickets, hotel, food, taxi, etc). That was back in the dot-com days, and again in 2002 as a partner in a 2 man company (with a shitload of credit card debt in between and a frighteningly long period of unemployment, in excess of a year). But now I'm a salaryman, part of a very large stable company since they bought out both of us and the rights to our product in late 2002. Security related, so outsourcing is not a factor. Enough of the e-peen showoff from me.
I just found it interesting that somone could concievably charge a fairly large amount that would be difficult for the "hobby" coder to afford for source distribitution - and the fundmantal tacit assumption that the GPL places the programmer at the disposal of the user, potentially to the detriment of the programmer! Thats an angle I've never thought o before.
True - it doesn't cost Redhat nearly the money to create and ship a CD as it would that hypotheitical consultant. They dont use a US$50/hour consultant to do mailroom work - they use large batch manufacturing and bulk rate shipping and a local highschool intern/mailclerk at US$7 an hour. So maybe $2 per CD is reasonable for them.
Differences in scale between artisan and mass production are pretty will illustrated. Thanks for your thoughts!
Not a troll, nor flamebait - just "hacking" the 'reasonable' clause and cost in the GPL.
Hypothetical:
Say I make (ast an hourly rate of my annual salary) $50 an hour. Not unresaonable for a consultant.
I am distributing a baby distro and I do the source via DVD and postal request since I cannot afford a lot of bandwidth.
Figure it takes me 20 minutes to process the request, type up the label, grab the latest from my repository and DL the rest fromthe upstream, burn a DVD, and put it in a protective mailer package. And other 20 to go to the post office and 20 to come back (assume I'm in a rural area outside the suburbs). So thats and our of my time. Add in that this is essentially overtime in addition to my real job, so I bill it at time and a half. Thats $75 baseline in cost.
Add in the postage ($8 or whatever the USPS "Priority Mail" rate is), the mileage and gas on the car to go to the post office, the CD cost (including mileage on the car and gas and time to go buy them, plus wear and tear amortization on my CD burner), cost of the bandwidth, etc.
So all in all:
"Yes, you can have the whole source tree from my upstream and the 2K of diffs I have added - the reasonable cost for this source is $94.37 per CD"
Is that the right answer?
Every penny of it is documented and accounted for. Every bit of it is involved with the cost in materiels and time that it takes to prepare and ship the source. My software is free, my time is not. If you think otherwise, go ahead and put yourself down as a slave who will work for free at the demands of people that use the software you donated - is that the intend of the GPL, to enslave authors to the whims of the recipients of their gifts?
Again: Not a troll, nor flamebait - just "hacking" the 'reasonable cost' clause in the GPL.
Who decides what is reasonable?
Does the GPL give someone the right to dictate to the person releasing the software what they can and cannot do with their time? Think about it.
If not, then how do you overcome the situation above, where the GPL seems to imply that you have to release the whole of the code, including upstreams, not just your diffs, especially where releasing the whole of the upstream is cumbersome or onerous - and the response ($94.37 per DVD) is likewise.
Personally, I never looked at it this way before - the only thing I've released as open source (long ago) has been under the BSD license just to avoid the entanglements the GPL requires. And that only to be able to avoid warranty that Public Domain doenst expressly mention.
"Taking the code and making a proprietary branch doesn't improve the world."
Umm thats the nugget of the debate. Having NO drivers versus proprietary ones - which is better?
From the average non-Slashdot user's viewpoint, the ability to have someone make an imporved, if propriatary, branch *IS* and improvment over having a video car unsupported or a network driver that doesnt work.
Secondly "The GPL does improve the world- it forces offshoots to be GPLed as well" often results in the non-production of the offshoots - especially if the product is on proprietary silicon. FORCING anyone to do anything is wrong, isn't it?
So don't assume the conclusion of your argument without proving it.
As far as duty goes, the entire operant clause is:
"I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same"
Note the clause about "domestic" in there. Make of that what you wish.
The complete Franklin quote is about exchanging ESSENTIAL liberty for a LITTLE TEMPORARY safety. Why did you leave those very important qualifiers out?
Please get that part right -- you relay your bias and ignorance quite effectively by selectively and deliberately misquoting Franklin.
Secondarily, your use of one-sided arguments above (based on improper assumpitons), loaded language, and other fallcious techiques and propagandistic approaches show that you really aren't interested in discussing the point as you pretend to be. You're merely interested in arguing.
Disucssing military service and Iraq with you and your fixed assumptions and self-limited reasoning would be as productive as arguing choice abortion with Pat Robertson, or legaliozation of recreational drugs with John Ashcroft. You've made you mind up, selected points to support it (but have not apparently researched the truth of those points), ignored facts that dont support your positon, made unjust and possibly unreasonable assumptions. In efect, you have cemented yoruself in place and try to bait others into arguing the straw man you have set up for them. Were you intereested in genuinely debating, you'd first have to concede a great many of your premises and open them to questioning - especially your obvious biases. And I rather doubt you'd do that - most of the far left is as open minded as Rush Limbaugh when it comes to thier cherised but incorrect assumptions.
So "No thanks". Stay happy in your self-righteous lefty echo-chamber with political hacks like Koz and DU, and let the Limbots and the self-righteous goofballs stay happy in their rightist echo chamber. All I ask is that you both keep each other busy, and stay out of the way while those of us with things to do try to repair the damage the far left and far right do.
"how could one have faith enough to serve an inept institution?"
I didnt serve the Army - I served *IN* the Army.
What I served was the American People, through their elected Commander in Chief, and the primary focus of the Oath I and others swear is:
to Uphold and Defend the Constitution of the United States
Second error bythe OP is the "institution" that lost the data was not the military per-se but the Veterans Administration, a cabinet level office that is seperate fromthe Army, Navy, Airforce, marines and Coast Guard,m etc.
When will./ editors have enough of the spin and editorializing - especially when its egregiously wrong as it is in this case. How about getting an editor with some military background instad of the usual suspects? A little bit if diversity might help./ avoid posters like the originator who completely misses the point of the article and instead tries to spin it politically (point is veterans records were taken via a moron breaking security at the VA, not some anti-military screed that the OP tries to spin it into).
There Plenty of libertarian geek veterns out there who post here regularly - Rob, grab one and add some diversity to the editorial clique.
It may have been off topic - but where the else are visual acuity and color-deficiency (color-blindenss) and other usability ("handicapped") issues to be raised?
They conveniently did NOT leave a topic for these sorts of posts.
Sorry - the new serif font is unreadable against the blinding white expanses of the new sparse layout.
Did you guys even TEST this with the simpel and the low-bandwidth layouts?
And Blue with Green? Come on, lets select the 2 most common colorblind combos out there.
The msg/text density is WAY low - making a ton of scrolling neccesary, and the most immediate criteria on read-worthy-ness for a message are no longer colocated nor do they scan quickly: topic is there on the left margin, but the Moderation results are WAY the hell over - farther right than even Rush Limbaugh would look. And far seperated form the rest of the message data, completely forcing the eyes to dart back and forth.
So your layout was idiotic, and so was your font choice. How about letting us overide it?
Fix this -or at least give us the option to go back to the old CSS. This shit is giving me a headache. If I wanted Digg, I'd go there.
The font is horrid - its tiny and not nearly as readable as the old one, at least not on Firefox/WinXP.
There is far too much whitesapce - makes for inefficient scanning.
And the scoring for the comments is WAY over on the right - needs to be back on the left.
Whoever picked this font and this size should be beaten to death with a dead Mac powerbook.
At least give us the option to go back to the old setup (seems/. learned "just cram it down their trhoat" from Microsoft's marketing bag of tricks).
I had some things set just the way I like them, and it was quick to load as well. Give me the option of getting back theold stylesheets. Or someone do a greasemonkey script.
"Loss depend on not getting the objectives you want. And therefore the US has lost (remember - the cakewalk? Did that happen?)"
The objective was not to achieve "a cakewalk" - the objective of the US and allied military was to toss out the Saddam backed government and replace it with a government that would not threaten the US and that would be more open and more democratic. And to do so with the minimum use of force needed.
So looking at the facts, it is a success. The new government and parliament were seated today, the result of a series of plebicitess, constitutional votes and generla elections, nationwide. And the combat fatality count of US & Allied troops due to enemy action (exclude heart attacks, accidents, etc) is historically amazingly low for such a large scale operation.
Before the mods go ape on me for being a "Bushie" - observe that the goal and achievement were at question - and thats what I'm looking at, as clearly as looking at whether Napoleon acheived his victory at Waterloo (he didn't - losing his bid to split the allied armies into 2 parts and defeat each in detail, ensuring the survival of his Imperial reign), or the Germans achieved their goals in the Franco Prussian wars (they did with the awarding of Alsace-Lorraine, etc).
This isnt to say the goal and its acheivement was "right" or "just" or "proper" - those involve judging the *reasons* for that goal - those judgements are a different thing altogether, and highly debatable.
So did the US military achieve its goal, as set forth by the politicians, in Iraq?
SO far, "yes" is the resonable answer.
As to is it WHY they went after that goal, thats a debate for elsehwere - its a different question.
I beg to differ. I was in Baghdad and in Kabul and Uzbekistan over the past few years (post invasion for both), and there *are* people that want nothing more than our destruction and subjugation. They may be few in number, but they are quite fanatical, and well funded by our stupid addiction to oil. I've seen their literature, heard the captives talk, seend them blow their fellow citizens to bits along with themselves to further the cause of Jihad and the Caliphate.
Try reading up on Wahabbism and the Salafists and Tahwidists. They "declared war" onn us back inthe 1990's, when we didnt bother to pay attention to them. 9/11 was a result of doing what you want to do: nothing. Get out of your cublice farm or dorm room, and learn that not everythign fed to you by the media or blogs is true, and a good deal of it is simply trash designed to inflame rather than inform.
And stuff your false pity for the deaths in NY. "Statistically Insignificant" is for jackasses liek you. Suppose a terrorist were to sniper shoot you in the head. Thats "Statistically insignificant" but very important to you and anyoen that values life and freedom - so do you value life so little that you dont care even about your own, that you are completely unreasonable when viewing and assessing risks? These risks probability are low, but very consequential and high impact if allowed to occur. Aside form the economic dislocations, the security backlash, military actions, etc - there is the simple fact of the large life of human life. I am unwilling to throw those people under the bus as "statistically insignificant" like you are. Collectivists like you are disgusting to individualists.
Your false positioning belies your purpose and your willingness to blind yourself for a political cause. You and yours are just a different kind of scum from the ones on the other side of the political coin from you.
And you might want to inform yoruself if you can get those idealogical blinders off. Not everythign is the propaganda that you have manged to ingest and regurgitate on command. In that way, you and the left are no better than the Right and its Rush Limbots. You refuse to see all the facts in your rage against your enemy, George Bush. You're as stupidly blind as the Republicans were against Clinton.
The problem is the Republicans could be dealt with - if they were "wrong" on thier impeachment we had a "liar" as president - nothign new there,they all lie, I think its congential. However, now, if you and yours are wrong, thousands more innocents will die, and many more will suffer.
Consider the cost. Carefully and fully. And value the individual, however "statistically insignificant" they are.
The "wiretapping" is legal - as long as at lesat one end is in a forgien nation, the NSA, as directed by the PResidane under article III of the Constitution, does have the power to "wiretap" without warrant. This goes back to WW2 and FDR.
As for the CIA secret prisons - try fact checking - the Boston Globe (hardly a right wind bastion that) investigated as did others and there is no evidence that such prisons exist or existed - the conlcusion many have come to is that it was a fabricated story used to entrap leakers.
"I don't see how a single life was endangered by any of those leaks."
And you were trained as an intellgience analyst when and where? Your criticisms of this on an intelligence basis are as invlaid as they would be to a neurosurgeon (unles you happned to be either an intelligence analyst or a neurosurgeon of course - then again you're posting flames to slashdot so...)
Certainly such severe accusations as you make require at least amodicum of proff, none of which has been produced.
Stop the conspiracy truck, take off the tinfol hat and *gather*evidence* - all of it, not jsut what agrees with you and dont discard that which disagrees with you (like evidence that there is atrror thret to the US). Paranoid hysteria is not the right way to bring such charges (your error), nor is it a way to secure the nation against an implacable enemy (Bush's error).
Umm, there are some craters in NYC and PA and a lot of relatives of dead people that differ with you on your opinion of "nebulous". One of them is a firefighter cousin of mine.
There is a substantive threat out there, and all the naysaying you put forth doesnt change it. Please start dealing with reality, not fantasy.
Whats important is that we do recoginize that there is a threat and as a nation PUBLICLY decide what we are going to do about it. Pretending its not there and we can go back to 1996 isn't going to work (thats your mistkae). Neither is hiding all our efforts under blanket secrecy to prevent such a thing from happening (thats Bush's mistake).
As for this article, please go read it - and other related articles for more detail. The FBI is investigating a crime - the unlawful disclosure of classified information to those not authorized to recieve it USC 18 700-something (you can look it up - its on the books online someplace). Its also a crime to recieve such information and not notify the proper authority, so the reporters may be culpable as well (but may be exempt under Freedom of the Press - thats for the court to decide).
As a result the FBI have gotten court orders to get the call detail records of those suspected of being complicit in this crime. From my time in telecom, I can tell you that this is a routine occurance, and most telcos even have an office that deals with these things, one that is in weekly contact with the local FBI field offices. The surprising thing is that they dont even need a warrant - a simple "Section 2701" court order suffices - and the law even orders that the judge "Shall Issue" such an order when it comes to these kinds of records (in other words the judge doesn't have much choice if the FBI says the need it for investigation into a possible criminal offense - they show up, tell them what they want and walk out with a court order for the telco). There is very little legal protection for this sort of record when a crime is being investigated.
Just though a few facts might counter the hysteria. The sky isnt falling - at least in this instance - the laws are working as they are written to do. And those of you who cite "Secret Prison Camps" - go back and re-research that. They apparently never existed and were a story planted in order to catch leakers (which is what this may be all about).
[And mods, please remember an opposing point of view is not flamebait nor is it a troll. Funny that I oppose both sides, so Im probably going to get modded into oblivion by both sides]
/* Ever try to get native Java working on FreeBSD? First you have to download the Linux Java distribution, install it, then download the FBSD patchset for native Java, build and install it. This takes a day, even on my 2.4GHz, 768MB laptop. */
Nope - you need to keep up. Native Binaries are now out from Sun - the announcment was April 5, so thats old news that you didn't care to look for. So either correct your knowledgebase or (if this was a troll) find another troll point, I hear that Netcraft still has ones people recycle.
First, he is a convicted felon. He broke the tacit agreement with society to live within its rules and lwas, and by ding do he lost his ability to take advanatage of them - including fines, incarceration, and the loss of his ability to own a firearm or vote.
Second, Giving his DNA in the manner the law prescribes is a condition of his PROBATION. If he is this opposed, and its truly a religious issue, his faith should help him wait it out and serve the whole sentence.
Additionally, the reason for the DNA database isnt "secret research" for "a genetic profile of a hacker/genius/criminal" (sell that to the tinfoil hat conspiracy crowd, it doesnt hold water here in the real world). Its to be able to search out and find repeat offenders quickly and with high degree of precision. Many crimes are comitted by recidivists, so the database makes sense in that these are people already proven to have broken the law seriously (feonly), and are thus inclined to do so again (statistics are very solid about this, good causality). To sum this point: crimes are frequently done by repeat offenders, so having the DNA database allows the repeat felon to be quickly identified and more easily apprehended.
I applaud Mr Lamo's stand for his religious rights, but he and others should realize that often you have to pay a price for staying true to your beliefs, not to mention paying a price for comitting a crime.
You are in charge of gathering information to prevent catastrophic loss of life. Your enemies are operating within the borders of your own country. You are a GS-13 NSA analyst that probably graduated at the top of your class and could easily walk into a corporate job that would pay 3 times your current salary. Why do you think that analyst is there? To catch you talking to your pot dealer over the phone? To support the agenda of a narrow minded politician? To take away your civil liberties or freedom of speech? I don't think so. How about too make a positive impact on the world by gathering and protecting information to prevent terrorists from carrying out acts of violence and to stop hostile countries from threatening the security of the United States and its allies. Because that is what the NSA does! I agree that the government should not have unilateral power to surveil American citizens, or anyone for that matter. However, a tool like the database being discussed would be extremely valuable to the intelligence community. With appropriate oversight, such a system may prevent and probably already has helped prevent domestic acts of terrorism. Remember our elected officials still call the shots and make the rules. If politicians misuse the database then we as a society have a mechanism to remove them from office. It's called free elections. Everyone complaining about the NSA database voted in the last election right? Before you criticise the actions of our government, and I do feel that the current administration deserves criticism, remember that it is your government and you have the power to change it by speaking out and being politically active. Make your feelings known by writing to your congressmen and senators, and vote!!
. . . . . . . . .
Who the hell modded the parent (reposted above) a troll? This is moderator abuse at its worst.
Just because someone presents an alternate point of view doens't mean its a troll. Especially since its a clear and simple presentation with no loaded language or inflammatory position - and the remedy he suggests is to get hold of Congress to complain about this if you dont like it. I credit the poster with a good job of trying to show why somone might want to do such a possibly illegal thing, and how they got the phone companies to go along.
If you disagree - do so properly, don't try to silence the other side by shouting them down (or moderation abuse), try to convince them and counter thier argument. Otherwise you're no better than any other tinpot politician that wants to silence dissent instead of deal with it.
Slashdot Mirror
They are concerned about the use of brain image scans as an adjunct tool for interrogation of captured terrorists - and yet have seldom (if ever) lifted a finger to defend my rights under the 9th and 10th amendments, and NEVER defended the individual's rights under the 2nd amendment.
Come on ACLU - you have more important things to spend your resources on. Start with US Citizens first.
"CLASSIFIED CPU's should be at least 3 feet from UNCLASSIFIED CPU's - Cooties?"
No. RFI, couling induction and TEMPEST concerns are what I was told. Although only God knows why 3 ft is the magic number - and LCD vs tube doesn't seem to matter.
Actually, since RMS lieks to bring moralityinto it:
/boggle.
Isn't the BSD icense the mor moral of the two?
It doenst hold a legal gunto the head of the person reciveing the work. It instead depends on their generousity and choosing to "do the right thing" in contributing back additions and changes. Volunarily!
So which is the better moral act - a forced one under threat of coercion, or one voltionally made of one's own sense of justice?
Not trolling, but just saying you can make a moral case for BSD being morally superior, from a deontological point of view for ethics (i.e. the ends do *not* justify the means).
As Kant himself said:
Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end (in himself/yourself).
So from a deontological poitn of view, the BSD is moral and the GPL is immoral?
Quick, someone call a philosophy major!
"Sir, if you're making $50 an hour, you certainly can afford the bandwidth."
50 an hour is a pittance for consultants - remember you have to pay self employment taxes, eat your down time, market and advertise, eat the time you spend on bookeeping, eat the accounting and tx prep pro fees, etc. This isnt 50/hour punch a clock at the local best-buy geeksquad. I doubt, given your remark, that you have ever run your own business.
And I stipulated rural - ther are still plenty of areas in the US that you cannot get a good high bandwidth connection to (no bale, and DSL is too far), and which have poor southern visibility (mountain areas), so satellite is not an answer. Its nto ananswer anyway - hav you read the restrictions on bandwidth and data volumes that are in place on those services?
So go call your local provider and ask how much a 15 mile T-1 from the nearest CO will cost. THEN com back and tell me 50/hr can afford that. Local RBOCs and even the CLECs will rape you on custom data lines out past the 'burbs.
"Ignore the "cost" you state: this is not the cost of doing the work, but the opportunity cost."
;-)
Your words sound as if they were spoken by someone who has never run their own business...
It is the consultants *time* that has value - its the one thing we have that we cannot ever get back. Time spent processing GPL source requests is time not spent with family, or time not spend earning a living to pay bills, student loans, etc. Or even time not spent doing what one enjoys - hacking, drinking, etc.
Suppose that consultant were to get 100 requests a week, and cannot meet them in any sort of a timely fashion without cutting into his work time - your way of thinking would obligate him to become a pauper for the convenience of the GPL at the demand of people who recieved a gift from him!
So it is reasonable for a person to charge what you call "opportunity cost", which becomes a direct cost if you are going to coerce him to do so under threat of legal action via the GPL.
To put it the way I see it, basically, when you start making demands of my time for your convenience after I do you the favor of donating code to freely, your freedom stops and mine begin! You have no right to dicate how I supply the source outside of what the GPL stipulates, only that I supply it and at a reasonable cost. And reasonable costs can be charged as long as they are directly related to the distribution of the source. My time and your consumption of it are a reasonable cost to charge.
My solution would be to amend the GPL to allow distros to simply supply the diffs - and to deem that to be sufficient if the larger complete source tree is freely available elsewhere. Its seems more common-sense to say one need not carry the whole upstream distro if all one is doing is tweaking a few things in a few files in the kernel and associatied utilities, etc.
Do that and you somewhat get around this.
Or use a BSD-style license and avoid the whole mess.
"Although it is costly, all of the underground issues mentioned (including long term replacement of aging cables) can be dealt with if proper planning is done UP FRONT."
Have you ever seen anyone in Clearwater or St Pete plan anything well in advance?
I used to work for old Vision Cable out on the beach as a second job when I was stationed at MacDill. So I know exactly how crappy the infrastructure is, and the kind of restricitons it places on cable plant - and how bad the tax base is with the snowbirds.
The same reasons most houses in coastal areas of Florida and other sandy-soil areas near water don't have basements. Water pushes right into them.
Try putting underground *anything* in gulf-coast Florida, etc.
I left it at $50 because I didn't want to trigger an argument over the amount being outrageous - some of our younger ./'ers werestill in middle school when the big money was still around. I was making $1600/day for day-to-day contracts (T&M) or 1000/day with a minimum buy of a 10 day block; thats the rate, expenses were additional of course (plane tickets, hotel, food, taxi, etc). That was back in the dot-com days, and again in 2002 as a partner in a 2 man company (with a shitload of credit card debt in between and a frighteningly long period of unemployment, in excess of a year). But now I'm a salaryman, part of a very large stable company since they bought out both of us and the rights to our product in late 2002. Security related, so outsourcing is not a factor. Enough of the e-peen showoff from me.
I just found it interesting that somone could concievably charge a fairly large amount that would be difficult for the "hobby" coder to afford for source distribitution - and the fundmantal tacit assumption that the GPL places the programmer at the disposal of the user, potentially to the detriment of the programmer! Thats an angle I've never thought o before.
True - it doesn't cost Redhat nearly the money to create and ship a CD as it would that hypotheitical consultant. They dont use a US$50/hour consultant to do mailroom work - they use large batch manufacturing and bulk rate shipping and a local highschool intern/mailclerk at US$7 an hour. So maybe $2 per CD is reasonable for them.
Differences in scale between artisan and mass production are pretty will illustrated. Thanks for your thoughts!
Not a troll, nor flamebait - just "hacking" the 'reasonable' clause and cost in the GPL.
Hypothetical:
Say I make (ast an hourly rate of my annual salary) $50 an hour. Not unresaonable for a consultant.
I am distributing a baby distro and I do the source via DVD and postal request since I cannot afford a lot of bandwidth.
Figure it takes me 20 minutes to process the request, type up the label, grab the latest from my repository and DL the rest fromthe upstream, burn a DVD, and put it in a protective mailer package. And other 20 to go to the post office and 20 to come back (assume I'm in a rural area outside the suburbs). So thats and our of my time. Add in that this is essentially overtime in addition to my real job, so I bill it at time and a half. Thats $75 baseline in cost.
Add in the postage ($8 or whatever the USPS "Priority Mail" rate is), the mileage and gas on the car to go to the post office, the CD cost (including mileage on the car and gas and time to go buy them, plus wear and tear amortization on my CD burner), cost of the bandwidth, etc.
So all in all:
"Yes, you can have the whole source tree from my upstream and the 2K of diffs I have added - the reasonable cost for this source is $94.37 per CD"
Is that the right answer?
Every penny of it is documented and accounted for. Every bit of it is involved with the cost in materiels and time that it takes to prepare and ship the source. My software is free, my time is not. If you think otherwise, go ahead and put yourself down as a slave who will work for free at the demands of people that use the software you donated - is that the intend of the GPL, to enslave authors to the whims of the recipients of their gifts?
Again: Not a troll, nor flamebait - just "hacking" the 'reasonable cost' clause in the GPL.
Who decides what is reasonable?
Does the GPL give someone the right to dictate to the person releasing the software what they can and cannot do with their time? Think about it.
If not, then how do you overcome the situation above, where the GPL seems to imply that you have to release the whole of the code, including upstreams, not just your diffs, especially where releasing the whole of the upstream is cumbersome or onerous - and the response ($94.37 per DVD) is likewise.
Personally, I never looked at it this way before - the only thing I've released as open source (long ago) has been under the BSD license just to avoid the entanglements the GPL requires. And that only to be able to avoid warranty that Public Domain doenst expressly mention.
"Taking the code and making a proprietary branch doesn't improve the world."
Umm thats the nugget of the debate. Having NO drivers versus proprietary ones - which is better?
From the average non-Slashdot user's viewpoint, the ability to have someone make an imporved, if propriatary, branch *IS* and improvment over having a video car unsupported or a network driver that doesnt work.
Secondly "The GPL does improve the world- it forces offshoots to be GPLed as well" often results in the non-production of the offshoots - especially if the product is on proprietary silicon. FORCING anyone to do anything is wrong, isn't it?
So don't assume the conclusion of your argument without proving it.
YHBT. HAND.
HTH
As far as duty goes, the entire operant clause is:
"I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same"
Note the clause about "domestic" in there. Make of that what you wish.
The complete Franklin quote is about exchanging ESSENTIAL liberty for a LITTLE TEMPORARY safety. Why did you leave those very important qualifiers out?
Please get that part right -- you relay your bias and ignorance quite effectively by selectively and deliberately misquoting Franklin.
Secondarily, your use of one-sided arguments above (based on improper assumpitons), loaded language, and other fallcious techiques and propagandistic approaches show that you really aren't interested in discussing the point as you pretend to be. You're merely interested in arguing.
Disucssing military service and Iraq with you and your fixed assumptions and self-limited reasoning would be as productive as arguing choice abortion with Pat Robertson, or legaliozation of recreational drugs with John Ashcroft. You've made you mind up, selected points to support it (but have not apparently researched the truth of those points), ignored facts that dont support your positon, made unjust and possibly unreasonable assumptions. In efect, you have cemented yoruself in place and try to bait others into arguing the straw man you have set up for them. Were you intereested in genuinely debating, you'd first have to concede a great many of your premises and open them to questioning - especially your obvious biases. And I rather doubt you'd do that - most of the far left is as open minded as Rush Limbaugh when it comes to thier cherised but incorrect assumptions.
So "No thanks". Stay happy in your self-righteous lefty echo-chamber with political hacks like Koz and DU, and let the Limbots and the self-righteous goofballs stay happy in their rightist echo chamber. All I ask is that you both keep each other busy, and stay out of the way while those of us with things to do try to repair the damage the far left and far right do.
HAND.
"how could one have faith enough to serve an inept institution?"
./ editors have enough of the spin and editorializing - especially when its egregiously wrong as it is in this case. How about getting an editor with some military background instad of the usual suspects? A little bit if diversity might help ./ avoid posters like the originator who completely misses the point of the article and instead tries to spin it politically (point is veterans records were taken via a moron breaking security at the VA, not some anti-military screed that the OP tries to spin it into).
I didnt serve the Army - I served *IN* the Army.
What I served was the American People, through their elected Commander in Chief, and the primary focus of the Oath I and others swear is:
to Uphold and Defend the Constitution of the United States
Second error bythe OP is the "institution" that lost the data was not the military per-se but the Veterans Administration, a cabinet level office that is seperate fromthe Army, Navy, Airforce, marines and Coast Guard,m etc.
When will
There Plenty of libertarian geek veterns out there who post here regularly - Rob, grab one and add some diversity to the editorial clique.
It may have been off topic - but where the else are visual acuity and color-deficiency (color-blindenss) and other usability ("handicapped") issues to be raised?
They conveniently did NOT leave a topic for these sorts of posts.
Sorry - the new serif font is unreadable against the blinding white expanses of the new sparse layout.
Did you guys even TEST this with the simpel and the low-bandwidth layouts?
And Blue with Green? Come on, lets select the 2 most common colorblind combos out there.
The msg/text density is WAY low - making a ton of scrolling neccesary, and the most immediate criteria on read-worthy-ness for a message are no longer colocated nor do they scan quickly: topic is there on the left margin, but the Moderation results are WAY the hell over - farther right than even Rush Limbaugh would look. And far seperated form the rest of the message data, completely forcing the eyes to dart back and forth.
So your layout was idiotic, and so was your font choice. How about letting us overide it?
Fix this -or at least give us the option to go back to the old CSS. This shit is giving me a headache. If I wanted Digg, I'd go there.
The font is horrid - its tiny and not nearly as readable as the old one, at least not on Firefox/WinXP.
/. learned "just cram it down their trhoat" from Microsoft's marketing bag of tricks).
There is far too much whitesapce - makes for inefficient scanning.
And the scoring for the comments is WAY over on the right - needs to be back on the left.
Whoever picked this font and this size should be beaten to death with a dead Mac powerbook.
At least give us the option to go back to the old setup (seems
I had some things set just the way I like them, and it was quick to load as well. Give me the option of getting back theold stylesheets. Or someone do a greasemonkey script.
I differ.
"Loss depend on not getting the objectives you want. And therefore the US has lost (remember - the cakewalk? Did that happen?)"
The objective was not to achieve "a cakewalk" - the objective of the US and allied military was to toss out the Saddam backed government and replace it with a government that would not threaten the US and that would be more open and more democratic. And to do so with the minimum use of force needed.
So looking at the facts, it is a success. The new government and parliament were seated today, the result of a series of plebicitess, constitutional votes and generla elections, nationwide. And the combat fatality count of US & Allied troops due to enemy action (exclude heart attacks, accidents, etc) is historically amazingly low for such a large scale operation.
Before the mods go ape on me for being a "Bushie" - observe that the goal and achievement were at question - and thats what I'm looking at, as clearly as looking at whether Napoleon acheived his victory at Waterloo (he didn't - losing his bid to split the allied armies into 2 parts and defeat each in detail, ensuring the survival of his Imperial reign), or the Germans achieved their goals in the Franco Prussian wars (they did with the awarding of Alsace-Lorraine, etc).
This isnt to say the goal and its acheivement was "right" or "just" or "proper" - those involve judging the *reasons* for that goal - those judgements are a different thing altogether, and highly debatable.
So did the US military achieve its goal, as set forth by the politicians, in Iraq?
SO far, "yes" is the resonable answer.
As to is it WHY they went after that goal, thats a debate for elsehwere - its a different question.
I beg to differ. I was in Baghdad and in Kabul and Uzbekistan over the past few years (post invasion for both), and there *are* people that want nothing more than our destruction and subjugation. They may be few in number, but they are quite fanatical, and well funded by our stupid addiction to oil. I've seen their literature, heard the captives talk, seend them blow their fellow citizens to bits along with themselves to further the cause of Jihad and the Caliphate.
Try reading up on Wahabbism and the Salafists and Tahwidists. They "declared war" onn us back inthe 1990's, when we didnt bother to pay attention to them. 9/11 was a result of doing what you want to do: nothing. Get out of your cublice farm or dorm room, and learn that not everythign fed to you by the media or blogs is true, and a good deal of it is simply trash designed to inflame rather than inform.
And stuff your false pity for the deaths in NY. "Statistically Insignificant" is for jackasses liek you. Suppose a terrorist were to sniper shoot you in the head. Thats "Statistically insignificant" but very important to you and anyoen that values life and freedom - so do you value life so little that you dont care even about your own, that you are completely unreasonable when viewing and assessing risks? These risks probability are low, but very consequential and high impact if allowed to occur. Aside form the economic dislocations, the security backlash, military actions, etc - there is the simple fact of the large life of human life. I am unwilling to throw those people under the bus as "statistically insignificant" like you are. Collectivists like you are disgusting to individualists.
Your false positioning belies your purpose and your willingness to blind yourself for a political cause. You and yours are just a different kind of scum from the ones on the other side of the political coin from you.
And you might want to inform yoruself if you can get those idealogical blinders off. Not everythign is the propaganda that you have manged to ingest and regurgitate on command. In that way, you and the left are no better than the Right and its Rush Limbots. You refuse to see all the facts in your rage against your enemy, George Bush. You're as stupidly blind as the Republicans were against Clinton.
The problem is the Republicans could be dealt with - if they were "wrong" on thier impeachment we had a "liar" as president - nothign new there,they all lie, I think its congential. However, now, if you and yours are wrong, thousands more innocents will die, and many more will suffer.
Consider the cost. Carefully and fully. And value the individual, however "statistically insignificant" they are.
Shamne is you have one point completely wrong:
The "wiretapping" is legal - as long as at lesat one end is in a forgien nation, the NSA, as directed by the PResidane under article III of the Constitution, does have the power to "wiretap" without warrant. This goes back to WW2 and FDR.
As for the CIA secret prisons - try fact checking - the Boston Globe (hardly a right wind bastion that) investigated as did others and there is no evidence that such prisons exist or existed - the conlcusion many have come to is that it was a fabricated story used to entrap leakers.
"I don't see how a single life was endangered by any of those leaks."
And you were trained as an intellgience analyst when and where? Your criticisms of this on an intelligence basis are as invlaid as they would be to a neurosurgeon (unles you happned to be either an intelligence analyst or a neurosurgeon of course - then again you're posting flames to slashdot so...)
Certainly such severe accusations as you make require at least amodicum of proff, none of which has been produced.
Stop the conspiracy truck, take off the tinfol hat and *gather*evidence* - all of it, not jsut what agrees with you and dont discard that which disagrees with you (like evidence that there is atrror thret to the US). Paranoid hysteria is not the right way to bring such charges (your error), nor is it a way to secure the nation against an implacable enemy (Bush's error).
"nebulous bad things"?
Umm, there are some craters in NYC and PA and a lot of relatives of dead people that differ with you on your opinion of "nebulous". One of them is a firefighter cousin of mine.
There is a substantive threat out there, and all the naysaying you put forth doesnt change it. Please start dealing with reality, not fantasy.
Whats important is that we do recoginize that there is a threat and as a nation PUBLICLY decide what we are going to do about it. Pretending its not there and we can go back to 1996 isn't going to work (thats your mistkae). Neither is hiding all our efforts under blanket secrecy to prevent such a thing from happening (thats Bush's mistake).
As for this article, please go read it - and other related articles for more detail. The FBI is investigating a crime - the unlawful disclosure of classified information to those not authorized to recieve it USC 18 700-something (you can look it up - its on the books online someplace). Its also a crime to recieve such information and not notify the proper authority, so the reporters may be culpable as well (but may be exempt under Freedom of the Press - thats for the court to decide).
As a result the FBI have gotten court orders to get the call detail records of those suspected of being complicit in this crime. From my time in telecom, I can tell you that this is a routine occurance, and most telcos even have an office that deals with these things, one that is in weekly contact with the local FBI field offices. The surprising thing is that they dont even need a warrant - a simple "Section 2701" court order suffices - and the law even orders that the judge "Shall Issue" such an order when it comes to these kinds of records (in other words the judge doesn't have much choice if the FBI says the need it for investigation into a possible criminal offense - they show up, tell them what they want and walk out with a court order for the telco). There is very little legal protection for this sort of record when a crime is being investigated.
Just though a few facts might counter the hysteria. The sky isnt falling - at least in this instance - the laws are working as they are written to do. And those of you who cite "Secret Prison Camps" - go back and re-research that. They apparently never existed and were a story planted in order to catch leakers (which is what this may be all about).
[And mods, please remember an opposing point of view is not flamebait nor is it a troll. Funny that I oppose both sides, so Im probably going to get modded into oblivion by both sides]
/*
h tml
Ever try to get native Java working on FreeBSD? First you have to download the Linux Java distribution, install it, then download the FBSD patchset for native Java, build and install it. This takes a day, even on my 2.4GHz, 768MB laptop.
*/
Nope - you need to keep up. Native Binaries are now out from Sun - the announcment was April 5, so thats old news that you didn't care to look for. So either correct your knowledgebase or (if this was a troll) find another troll point, I hear that Netcraft still has ones people recycle.
FYI, here's the link: http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/downloads/java.s
First, he is a convicted felon. He broke the tacit agreement with society to live within its rules and lwas, and by ding do he lost his ability to take advanatage of them - including fines, incarceration, and the loss of his ability to own a firearm or vote.
Second, Giving his DNA in the manner the law prescribes is a condition of his PROBATION. If he is this opposed, and its truly a religious issue, his faith should help him wait it out and serve the whole sentence.
Additionally, the reason for the DNA database isnt "secret research" for "a genetic profile of a hacker/genius/criminal" (sell that to the tinfoil hat conspiracy crowd, it doesnt hold water here in the real world). Its to be able to search out and find repeat offenders quickly and with high degree of precision. Many crimes are comitted by recidivists, so the database makes sense in that these are people already proven to have broken the law seriously (feonly), and are thus inclined to do so again (statistics are very solid about this, good causality). To sum this point: crimes are frequently done by repeat offenders, so having the DNA database allows the repeat felon to be quickly identified and more easily apprehended.
I applaud Mr Lamo's stand for his religious rights, but he and others should realize that often you have to pay a price for staying true to your beliefs, not to mention paying a price for comitting a crime.
Fusion power has been 20 years away now for quite a few decades.
Call me when they can sustain it for 28 minutes, instead of 28 seconds.
You are in charge of gathering information to prevent catastrophic loss of life. Your enemies are operating within the borders of your own country. You are a GS-13 NSA analyst that probably graduated at the top of your class and could easily walk into a corporate job that would pay 3 times your current salary. Why do you think that analyst is there? To catch you talking to your pot dealer over the phone? To support the agenda of a narrow minded politician? To take away your civil liberties or freedom of speech? I don't think so. How about too make a positive impact on the world by gathering and protecting information to prevent terrorists from carrying out acts of violence and to stop hostile countries from threatening the security of the United States and its allies. Because that is what the NSA does! I agree that the government should not have unilateral power to surveil American citizens, or anyone for that matter. However, a tool like the database being discussed would be extremely valuable to the intelligence community. With appropriate oversight, such a system may prevent and probably already has helped prevent domestic acts of terrorism. Remember our elected officials still call the shots and make the rules. If politicians misuse the database then we as a society have a mechanism to remove them from office. It's called free elections. Everyone complaining about the NSA database voted in the last election right? Before you criticise the actions of our government, and I do feel that the current administration deserves criticism, remember that it is your government and you have the power to change it by speaking out and being politically active. Make your feelings known by writing to your congressmen and senators, and vote!!
. . . . . . . . .
Who the hell modded the parent (reposted above) a troll? This is moderator abuse at its worst.
Just because someone presents an alternate point of view doens't mean its a troll. Especially since its a clear and simple presentation with no loaded language or inflammatory position - and the remedy he suggests is to get hold of Congress to complain about this if you dont like it. I credit the poster with a good job of trying to show why somone might want to do such a possibly illegal thing, and how they got the phone companies to go along.
If you disagree - do so properly, don't try to silence the other side by shouting them down (or moderation abuse), try to convince them and counter thier argument. Otherwise you're no better than any other tinpot politician that wants to silence dissent instead of deal with it.