GNU!=OpenSource, indeed, they are two separate organizations.
But the GPL is most definitely an open-source licence, or else you should take it up with the authors of http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ as to why it appears in their list.
Spammers look to make 1 connection to an MX for a domain and move on. If they can't make it, or in some cases if there's a suitable error message in the SMTP dialogue, there is quite a strong chance they'll take you off the list.
This is what greylisting (http://projects.puremagic.com/greylisting/) is all about.
Do you know if they have the same things along the Perth road? (Zoom out a couple of times from your URL...)
I went along there a couple of times in August, and got the impression that people simply dawdle along, even out of rush-hour, at that annoying sort of speed that makes it implausible to overtake and intolerable to sit behind:/
Did anyone see this phrase? FairUCE only sends a challenge when the mail appears to be spoofed.
So, um, right when we *don't* want you to be adding to the spam problem, it goes and makes it worse for everyone else?
As for the description of what it does, well, we already have RBLs (which I generally hate, but they do sort-of fulfil the description "looking up who it claims to be from"), we have reverse/forward DNS lookup ability - in exim and postfix and sendmail already.
I prefer my licenses not to touch on the issues of patents; I really object to them talking about US crypto export regulations as well. These things are not license clauses in my view, they are extra legalities - see the clauses about "if parts of this license are unenforceable".
There is copyright, there are licenses, there are patents, there are export laws. Let them all be separate, don't conflate them.
But that's mostly my own taste, apart from this quote from opensource.org: Some countries, including the United States, have export restrictions for certain types of software. An OSD-conformant license may warn licensees of applicable restrictions and remind them that they are obliged to obey the law; however, it may not incorporate such restrictions itself.
Can you solve both all lightning strikes and camp-fire problems, thereby totally eradicating the risk of any more forest fires? No? So you're going to ascertain which is the bigger threat ("*can* cause fires") and tackle that *first*, right?
Interesting analogy; it is the currently held opinion that some forest fires are better than none, as long as they aren't too devastating nor too near to human settlement. Maybe a little "global warming" is natural and/or even a good thing, too?
> If there is a fork, doesn't that present huge problems for the development community?
Why should it?
You use a library that implements an API, you use the library. You decide the library's not quite the way you want it, you implement the diffs you require and send them back upstream for potential inclusion; alternatively, you fork it and go. And here's the crucial bit: if enough other people think your fork is worthwhile, they'll follow you.
And why on earth would we want to compile anything statically? List an application's dependencies properly and there'll never be a problem.
You have a spurious `a ' in there. Autonomous cars will need to be pretty seriously defensively programmed to cater for me glaring down their rear-view mirrors.
Fact-check yourself. The human species, such as it is, has survived quite well for the past couple of centuries without having to shove a leash up the bums of its offspring, with the parents and teachers actually instilling a reasonable degree of trust in the little brats.
Yes, that was half a quote from _Demolition Man_, which is frankly where this nanny-state civilisation seems to be headed the way some things are going.
You're absolutely right. People vote in the politicians, it's the people who make the law. If you spend all your life just doing as others tell you, you probably aren't living up to your responsibilities in a democracy, or something (does the US still believe in one of those, btw?;) Not to mention, if I hadn't gone round a mini-roundabout the wrong way, or cut between a few cars deliberately, I wouldn't've survived at least two road-rage incidents before now, either...
So many things the government seems to want to meddle and stick its nose in, so few where it actually *needs* to. These things are not a matter of law, only economics and choice.
" yet uses P2P applications that, by design, force him to do so."
Um, I hope you don't mean bittorrent. Don't forget that --max_upload_rate option, y'know... and failing that, how hard do you think it would be to hack the source a bit?
Fortunately, that's not the only aspect that goes into sentencing, otherwise it would be sufficient for him to simply pay back what he owes to people and be done. There is also the matter of it being wrong to have imposed himself on people; just as being a thief is wrong and will reasonably be met with custodial sentence or community service, even if you return stolen goods.
"You should care about whether people will switch. "
You fail to give me any reason, so no thanks, I won't care at all.
"If software doesn't have a critical mass of users, it will die."
Congratulations on observational abilities;]
"Where volunteers are required, it's essential that enthusiasm is maintained. "
Yes. That's why persuading people to "switch" really won't get you anywhere at all. Because when you force people to use something, they'll do nothing useful but nag those who should be getting on with doing the work.
By far the best way to make people move is to be seen to be having fun doing something *useful*. If you've got it, they'll come. If not, then face it, your utility only enhances your own joy.
"Linux has to offer at least as good a product as Office XP for free or a BETTER product "
Define "good". Does "open-source" help? Does "standards-compliant" help? I take it you've investigated Star/OpenOffice, gnumeric and friends? Do you know (X)emacs backwards?
"Currently held knowledge about how to use applications is a real asset."
Yes, but not a very useful one; it says "don't do it like this": it's at most one or two data-points, a study in "what M$loth can sell" rather than "what people actually want", let alone "what is actually good".
"if you want the world at large to switch."
I don't. I hear too much of these "if you want" statements to be interested, frankly; this is not some kind of count(bums_on_seats) exercise here, it's about making a good piece of software. If people find it useful, good; if not, well, stay away. Nowhere is there any agenda saying "the whole world has to dump M$loth and run linux yesterday".
"The foolish push to get everyone to use linux for everything is misguided. "
I just agreed entirely.
And yes, I've contributed a grand total of 1 little application to the open-source world, and no it's not as well evolved a specimen of programming as it could be - I can see several examples of places where it could be improved - but it works pretty solidly for what it does, and that's all I asked from it. Now we have functionality, elegance can come later.
Saying that my software is naff because the article author's never bothered to look at it at all, let alone submit a diff, really isn't very complimentary.
More to the point, why is "the desktop" synonymous with "stop all the microsofties using what they know only to replace it with a functionally identical linux-based equivalent"?
Linux already rocks on the desktop. In fact, it has done for the last 5 years or more - that's how long I've been using it in anger as primary desktop OS. Now, remember, don't compare linux-5-years-ago against windoze XP; compare it instead against NT4 or windoze 98, which is what you had at the time, and MacOS 8 or 9 (mostly 9). Behold, it's at least as usable at all times in its prior history, and is always *more* configurable. Long may that last.
I truly get fed up of this "linux is not ready for The Desktop" drivel. It really makes no sense at all, so why do people keep trotting it out, when what they really mean is "I'm too thick to learn something new for what it's worth and will settle for slagging it off for being different"???
"Why were these phones allowed in the first place?"
Quite. I'm not so stupid as to use a device where GPS data is actively fed into the data-stream back to my provider in the first place.
I mean, GPS is receive-only, right? Why should integrating that with a phone be a privacy invasion? Sure, it'd be nice to be able to link GPS data into an outgoing SMS or something, but you don't need a continual stream flying back of which you're unaware.
In your (rather dodgy) analogy, my "locks and keys" are spamassassin and bogofilter. They prevent nasty people from getting in without assuming that everyone is a bad guy.
"If you take offense at being asked to verify yourself with me exactly one time.... You have issues"
Yeah, right. Now what about the risk of impersonation? You're running a bot that rejects all your mail, what if a spammer decides to set me as the "sender" for a while? What happens when someone sets the mail half of a mail2news gateway as the sender address and your poxy little program sends it a mail demanding verification? Don't you care about the risk of spamming entire newsgroups at a time? (I've seen it happen, more than once.)
Now who's the selfish little idiot whose software "believes" everything it reads in the headers alone?
"then I think they can take a few seconds to verify their humanity"
And this is what I disagree with. A lot. The work required to send an email should be exactly that; you type it and push Send, that's quite enough. Having to go through extra hoops because someone defaults to assuming you're a bad-guy is totally uncalled-for.
"(and thus, are a spammer)."
You really do have an offensive view of the world, don't you know? Without thought for people's modes of operation or needs, you tar everyone a baddie until they take the trouble to prove otherwise. You *are* going to get some false-positives this way.
"There are other whitelist-based packages, such as TMDA, but ASK is simple and painless to set up."
And how do you feel about making all innocent senders of mail do extra work, while spammers simply ignore it and move on?
I simply cannot justify that, based on the redistribution of workload and increased aggravation - you send me a bounce message, I consider your email address invalid whether that bounce is "500 address unrouteable" (a valid, understandable error) *or* "500 I Don't Like You" - which I consider frankly offensive.
Go back to SpamAssassin, get 2.50 or better, which includes Bayesian analysis as well as all the above. Or just shove a Bayesian filter in the way after SA; here, I have outright regexp-based rejection and SA in exiscan, followed by bogofilter in procmail - very few spams get past the first hurdle (From: headers snarfed from Usenet) and those that do are caught either by SA and/or bogofilter. This way happiness lies.
Slashdot Mirror
GNU!=OpenSource, indeed, they are two separate organizations.
But the GPL is most definitely an open-source licence, or else you should take it up with the authors of http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ as to why it appears in their list.
What do you mean by a `bounceback'?
Spammers look to make 1 connection to an MX for a domain and move on. If they can't make it, or in some cases if there's a suitable error message in the SMTP dialogue, there is quite a strong chance they'll take you off the list.
This is what greylisting (http://projects.puremagic.com/greylisting/) is all about.
Bounces don't come into it.
Do you know if they have the same things along the Perth road? (Zoom out a couple of times from your URL...)
:/
I went along there a couple of times in August, and got the impression that people simply dawdle along, even out of rush-hour, at that annoying sort of speed that makes it implausible to overtake and intolerable to sit behind
Did anyone see this phrase?
FairUCE only sends a challenge when the mail appears to be spoofed.
So, um, right when we *don't* want you to be adding to the spam problem, it goes and makes it worse for everyone else?
As for the description of what it does, well, we already have RBLs (which I generally hate, but they do sort-of fulfil the description "looking up who it claims to be from"), we have reverse/forward DNS lookup ability - in exim and postfix and sendmail already.
I prefer my licenses not to touch on the issues of patents; I really object to them talking about US crypto export regulations as well. These things are not license clauses in my view, they are extra legalities - see the clauses about "if parts of this license are unenforceable".
There is copyright, there are licenses, there are patents, there are export laws. Let them all be separate, don't conflate them.
But that's mostly my own taste, apart from this quote from opensource.org:
Some countries, including the United States, have export restrictions for certain types of software. An OSD-conformant license may warn licensees of applicable restrictions and remind them that they are obliged to obey the law; however, it may not incorporate such restrictions itself.
HTH,
> Just how did you plan to tackle the problem of sunspot activity?
There is nothing problematic about "sunspot activity", it is simply a fact of nature. Deal with it.
> And maybe it will destroy 95% of the species on Earth
After you...
The only "additional restrictions" I can see are that the license includes talk about patents. I can't say that's altogether appealing.
> And if you cannot freely reditribute your modifications to others, I -for one- question how "open" such source is.
What has this to do with the CDDL at http://www.sun.com/cddl/cddl.html ? Perhaps you should actually read it, especially section 2.2a.
You don't have to question how open it is, go check the OSD at http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php.
Can you solve both all lightning strikes and camp-fire problems, thereby totally eradicating the risk of any more forest fires? No? So you're going to ascertain which is the bigger threat ("*can* cause fires") and tackle that *first*, right?
Interesting analogy; it is the currently held opinion that some forest fires are better than none, as long as they aren't too devastating nor too near to human settlement. Maybe a little "global warming" is natural and/or even a good thing, too?
Care to point us at a few such things?
I'm rather worried about the mention of `quarantining' calls - sounds too much like challenge-response to me.
> see which ports have what sort of protocol activity over them. Document the information,
Why not buy from vendors who list their dependencies properly?
> If there is a fork, doesn't that present huge problems for the development community?
Why should it?
You use a library that implements an API, you use the library. You decide the library's not quite the way you want it, you implement the diffs you require and send them back upstream for potential inclusion; alternatively, you fork it and go.
And here's the crucial bit: if enough other people think your fork is worthwhile, they'll follow you.
And why on earth would we want to compile anything statically? List an application's dependencies properly and there'll never be a problem.
> and at best be of most consequence to nanomachines for that time.
.. what? Build your own custom Natalie Portman, as others have said?
A fabricator that builds nanomachines that do
"Hello, is that the cloning lab? I've got this cell, here, I was wondering if you could make anything of it...".
You have a spurious `a ' in there. Autonomous cars will need to be pretty seriously defensively programmed to cater for me glaring down their rear-view mirrors.
Fact-check yourself. The human species, such as it is, has survived quite well for the past couple of centuries without having to shove a leash up the bums of its offspring, with the parents and teachers actually instilling a reasonable degree of trust in the little brats.
Yes, that was half a quote from _Demolition Man_, which is frankly where this nanny-state civilisation seems to be headed the way some things are going.
You're absolutely right. People vote in the politicians, it's the people who make the law. If you spend all your life just doing as others tell you, you probably aren't living up to your responsibilities in a democracy, or something (does the US still believe in one of those, btw? ;)
Not to mention, if I hadn't gone round a mini-roundabout the wrong way, or cut between a few cars deliberately, I wouldn't've survived at least two road-rage incidents before now, either...
So many things the government seems to want to meddle and stick its nose in, so few where it actually *needs* to. These things are not a matter of law, only economics and choice.
" yet uses P2P applications that, by design, force him to do so."
Um, I hope you don't mean bittorrent. Don't forget that --max_upload_rate option, y'know... and failing that, how hard do you think it would be to hack the source a bit?
Fortunately, that's not the only aspect that goes into sentencing, otherwise it would be sufficient for him to simply pay back what he owes to people and be done. There is also the matter of it being wrong to have imposed himself on people; just as being a thief is wrong and will reasonably be met with custodial sentence or community service, even if you return stolen goods.
"You should care about whether people will switch. "
;]
You fail to give me any reason, so no thanks, I won't care at all.
"If software doesn't have a critical mass of users, it will die."
Congratulations on observational abilities
"Where volunteers are required, it's essential that enthusiasm is maintained. "
Yes. That's why persuading people to "switch" really won't get you anywhere at all. Because when you force people to use something, they'll do nothing useful but nag those who should be getting on with doing the work.
By far the best way to make people move is to be seen to be having fun doing something *useful*. If you've got it, they'll come. If not, then face it, your utility only enhances your own joy.
"Linux has to offer at least as good a product as Office XP for free or a BETTER product "
Define "good". Does "open-source" help? Does "standards-compliant" help? I take it you've investigated Star/OpenOffice, gnumeric and friends? Do you know (X)emacs backwards?
"Currently held knowledge about how to use applications is a real asset."
Yes, but not a very useful one; it says "don't do it like this": it's at most one or two data-points, a study in "what M$loth can sell" rather than "what people actually want", let alone "what is actually good".
"if you want the world at large to switch."
I don't. I hear too much of these "if you want" statements to be interested, frankly; this is not some kind of count(bums_on_seats) exercise here, it's about making a good piece of software. If people find it useful, good; if not, well, stay away. Nowhere is there any agenda saying "the whole world has to dump M$loth and run linux yesterday".
"The foolish push to get everyone to use linux for everything is misguided. "
I just agreed entirely.
And yes, I've contributed a grand total of 1 little application to the open-source world, and no it's not as well evolved a specimen of programming as it could be - I can see several examples of places where it could be improved - but it works pretty solidly for what it does, and that's all I asked from it. Now we have functionality, elegance can come later.
Saying that my software is naff because the article author's never bothered to look at it at all, let alone submit a diff, really isn't very complimentary.
More to the point, why is "the desktop" synonymous with "stop all the microsofties using what they know only to replace it with a functionally identical linux-based equivalent"?
Linux already rocks on the desktop. In fact, it has done for the last 5 years or more - that's how long I've been using it in anger as primary desktop OS. Now, remember, don't compare linux-5-years-ago against windoze XP; compare it instead against NT4 or windoze 98, which is what you had at the time, and MacOS 8 or 9 (mostly 9). Behold, it's at least as usable at all times in its prior history, and is always *more* configurable.
Long may that last.
I truly get fed up of this "linux is not ready for The Desktop" drivel. It really makes no sense at all, so why do people keep trotting it out, when what they really mean is "I'm too thick to learn something new for what it's worth and will settle for slagging it off for being different"???
"Why were these phones allowed in the first place?"
Quite. I'm not so stupid as to use a device where GPS data is actively fed into the data-stream back to my provider in the first place.
I mean, GPS is receive-only, right? Why should integrating that with a phone be a privacy invasion? Sure, it'd be nice to be able to link GPS data into an outgoing SMS or something, but you don't need a continual stream flying back of which you're unaware.
In your (rather dodgy) analogy, my "locks and keys" are spamassassin and bogofilter. They prevent nasty people from getting in without assuming that everyone is a bad guy.
"If you take offense at being asked to verify yourself with me exactly one time.... You have issues"
Yeah, right. Now what about the risk of impersonation? You're running a bot that rejects all your mail, what if a spammer decides to set me as the "sender" for a while? What happens when someone sets the mail half of a mail2news gateway as the sender address and your poxy little program sends it a mail demanding verification? Don't you care about the risk of spamming entire newsgroups at a time? (I've seen it happen, more than once.)
Now who's the selfish little idiot whose software "believes" everything it reads in the headers alone?
"then I think they can take a few seconds to verify their humanity"
And this is what I disagree with. A lot. The work required to send an email should be exactly that; you type it and push Send, that's quite enough. Having to go through extra hoops because someone defaults to assuming you're a bad-guy is totally uncalled-for.
"(and thus, are a spammer)."
You really do have an offensive view of the world, don't you know? Without thought for people's modes of operation or needs, you tar everyone a baddie until they take the trouble to prove otherwise.
You *are* going to get some false-positives this way.
"There are other whitelist-based packages, such as TMDA, but ASK is simple and painless to set up."
And how do you feel about making all innocent senders of mail do extra work, while spammers simply ignore it and move on?
I simply cannot justify that, based on the redistribution of workload and increased aggravation - you send me a bounce message, I consider your email address invalid whether that bounce is "500 address unrouteable" (a valid, understandable error) *or* "500 I Don't Like You" - which I consider frankly offensive.
Go back to SpamAssassin, get 2.50 or better, which includes Bayesian analysis as well as all the above. Or just shove a Bayesian filter in the way after SA; here, I have outright regexp-based rejection and SA in exiscan, followed by bogofilter in procmail - very few spams get past the first hurdle (From: headers snarfed from Usenet) and those that do are caught either by SA and/or bogofilter.
This way happiness lies.